Using Young's Literal Translation Bible Readings 365 for serious Bible students
Season 1
by Sally Ann Jackson
What can we do if we are married and our spouse suspects we are guilty of adultery? They can spy on us, they can watch over us with suspicion, they can stand away from us and hold their love away from us. Whatever is done, the closeness is gone, the intimacy is gone, the trust is gone. God gives a way to clear away such suspicion and restore the marriage. What does this mean spiritually, for all Scripture must be read with the help and the eyes and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. The Bible cannot be read as a secular book, as a book of history, or sociology or science or any other kind of worldly knowledge. All Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for conviction, for setting aright, for instruction in righteousness. 2 Tim 3:16 Where any relationship we have is marred and we do not know why, we can pray that God will reveal it to us. We may be convicted in our soul, and this is a bitter thing. Then when we experience this bitterness of soul, we can ask God, if we do not know what we have done wrong, to tell us what it is, that we may acknowledge it, face it and confess it before God with sorrow in our heart, that we might be forgiven and restored. Jesus said that if a person lusted in their heart for another person who is not their spouse then they were already guilty of adultery. What is inside us cannot be seen but God sees. Those who choose to follow Jesus will be convicted by the Holy Spirit who lives in us, of sin, of righteousness and of judgement, and will come to a knowledge of the truth. Then we can choose to be cleansed by Jesus who is willing that we should be clean, and we will be clean. Whom the Son has freed shall be free indeed. Then we are no longer outside of the community where God dwells among His people but together with them in a restored relationship. All things will be brought into the light and seen for what they are clearly. John 3:20 Luke 8:17 Lord, cleanse us inside for, as you have said, it is not the outside of our bodies which needs washing but the inside, for from our heart comes all evil. Matt 15:19. And from our hearts also comes all good, when God has washed us and we are washed in the Word: for every good thing comes from God and is of God James 1;17 Luke 18:19
The precision of God's instructions for the work of the moving and setting up of the Tabernacle is that of a mighty adminstrator, a perfect Director, giving clarity and decisive commands of great authority to the leaders he has chosen to work under Him: Moses and Aaron and the princes who were heads over their tribes, also as chosen by God. When we follow God's commands, we are secure, we are well ordered, we are clear about our way, about how to proceed, day by day. What a personal approach this is that God has: everyone is in a right place and doing the task they are commanded to do. The ensuing peace and order is great. For us, our job is to listen to God and know that He will guide us throughout our day if we will listen to Him and keep checking in with Him as our day advances. Jesus said: I only do what I see the Father doing. "Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The sayings that I speak to you, from myself I speak not, and the Father who is abiding in me, Himself doth the works" John 14:10. We are to be so in tune and attuned to God that what we speak is what God chooses to speak through us, and to know that the Holy Spirit abiding in us will do the works that He chooses through us. How do we do this? How do we become attuned to the mind of God? Read God's word. "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" Romans 12:2 Do not give your mind to other input than God's. Ask God if what you are choosing to do is what He wants you to do. If God says "No", then obey it. This is to be a servant of God. Mark's Gospel shows us Jesus as the perfect servant, the odedient servant, obedient unto death, the suffering servant, acquainted with grief, the son of the Father who always does what the Father commands, "Yet not my will but yours be done". Luke 22:42 Moses too is the servant of God, a forerunner and signpost to Jesus: the commands go from God through Moses, "And the sons of Israel do according to all that Jehovah hath commanded Moses, so they have done": a perfect chain of command and resulting order. The repetition in the words of Numbers in so many places shows the consistency of these instructions, that no tribe is treated differently, they are all numbered in the same way according to God's command, except for the Levites whom God says are not to be numbered in their midst. "Appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all its vessels and over all tha tit hathr, they bear the tabernacle and all its vessels and they serve it and round about the tabernacle they encamp." (Numbers 1:50) Among all God's people there will be those called by God who minister to the people as the servants of God. "I Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, (1 Cor 1:1) Oh that we might learn this obedience to God. To be in His presence to hear his commands, as Moses did. Again and again in Numbers, we hear the words, "God spoke to Moses ..." We need to practise this listening, to fine tune our hearing to the voice of God coming from within us. O for a closer walk with Thee. "O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, walk with thee more nearly, day by day" Prayer of St Richard of Chichester
Numbers are not numbers to God: each one of us is individually named and each one of us is individually known and each is counted and each is precious to God. "I have called you by name, you are mine." How awesome it is, that the people of Israel were counted, by their families, by the house of their fathers, in the number of names, by their polls - that is individually - and there is order in the manner of their counting, that each of the sons of Israel had a prince who would work with Moses and Aaron to count the great number who had been born and grown up in the 40 years of being in the wilderness. How astonishing that this people had kept such records and each was named and organised by families, by the house of their fathers. How huge is the number of people who had been 70 in number when Jacob came to Egypt during the time of the famine when Joseph was second to the Pharoah in authority four hundred years previously, and who now numbered six hundred and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men over 20 years of age, everyone going out to the host, the army, in Israel - and this besides the tribe of Levi who were not to be counted, who were not going out to the army but were appointed over the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all its vessels and over all that it hath they bear the tabernacle and all its vessels and they serve it. And this besides all the women and those under the age of 20, the children. The age of 20 is God's choice of age for men to go out to God's army - this is maturity, and we cannot serve God until we have reached spiritual maturity - and Psalm 68:11 says: "The Lord doth give the saying, The female proclaimers are a numerous host (army)". Understand the Scriptures by the wisdom of the Spirit who dwells in us who believe the Gospel: "We have not the wrestling with blood and flesh but with the principalities, with the authorities, with the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with the spiritual things of the evil in heavenly places."(Ephesians 6:12) We fight by our word and living according to God's commands. God is a God of order and discipline. These tribes were to camp in an order which God commanded, marked out by their ensigns, 3 tribes to the East, 3 to the South, 3 to the West and 3 to the North. It has been said that if someone were able to look down on the arrangement of the whole camp from a great height, they would see the shape of a cross with the tabernacle in its heart, its centre. The tribe of Judah were to leave first, to lead the way - the name Judah means praise. When we rise up our first thought shall be to praise God. "Be Thou my best thought by day and by night." (from 'Be thou my vision' hymn, translated from an Old Irish hymn, by Mary E. Byrne in 1905)
The Church, meaning all churches, has introduced many "traditions of men" which has in some cases led to excommunication from the church while ignoring the Word of God which contradicts those traditions or gives a different teaching to follow which is God's way. "This people with the lips doth honour me, and their heart is far from me. and in vain do they worship Me, teaching teachings, commands of men, for having put away the command of God, ye hold to the tradition of men" In Leviticus, giving to God could mean devoting that gift to God, in which case it would not be redeemed. This is Korban and would not be given to the mother or father to honour them and care for them. In European law, the emphasis on interpretation of the law is on the purpose of the law: it is a purposive system of law. In England and Wales, the law is interpreted as the letter of the law, where each word in a law has significance and meaning that must be met in the application of judgement. In God's law, Jesus shows that it is a matter of the heart, and the judgement is based on whether the act was in love or against love, was in obedience to God's law, His word, or in disobedience to God's law, as in this case of Korban, where 'man's tradition' led to the setting aside of God's law.
I wonder how our land would be if we obeyed the command which God gave to give a year of Sabbath rest to it every seventh year when it would be neither sown nor harvested: "a year of rest it is to the land". Surely we wouldn't need to pump in so much artificial feeding for the earth to continue producing for us. And surely if we lived off the produce we already had for two years there would not be so much waste, mountains of butter and wheat? Surely what we saved in costs and work we could use instead to distribute food around the world. How precious is rest and how we ignore it and suffer the consequences. Our land has to be artificially fertilised every year with tons of fertiliser dug out of, raided from other areas of our earth and transported and sold in order to enable the land to cope with year after year of giving to the crops and fruit we grow. It is a miracle at work to see how the earth feeds the plants and trees growing in it. The tiny shoots that first appear feeding on that earth are astonishing, a wonder that they come up without us being able to make that growth happen. There is truth in the children's song: "Oats and beans and barley grow but not you nor I nor anyone knows how oats and beans and barley grow." Oh yes, we can describe scientifically what happens, we can give plants the conditions to grow, but what gives that life is only explicable as being the work of the Creator. How precious is the earth and all that grown in it. The land is seen as a faithful giving servant, enduring the polluting activities of those living on it and being polluted also. It swallows the blood that is shed by people on the earth who murder and wound others. It is polluted by the activities of people on the land, by their idolatry and their sin against God's commands. It opened at God's command to swallow up those who rebelled against Moses, God's servant. The land is precious to God and is to be loved and cherished and treated well. We need to have compassion on the land and look after it well, not demanding that it produce year after year without relief, as a woman producing a baby year after year must be worn down and exhausted by so much giving. We should not pillage the earth, nor rip it up, nor take continually from it, neither from the deep resources nor those at the surface. We need to view the earth as animate not inanimate as full of life and ability having its own right to continue doing what it does so well producing food for us and for all that live on it. It is not ours to abuse and demand from. We must love the land. And God saw all that He had made and it was very good.
God's plan for human beings day by day was that we should have a sabbath of rest every week: "six days shall you work and do all that you have to do and the seventh day you are to rest." Every week was to have a "sabbath of rest" at the end of the week: a day in which no work was done, "in all your dwellings". No servile work was to be done. If we had a weekly schedule like this, wouldn't we be healthier, better rested, less tired, less stressed, more relaxed in mind and body? Our priorities, our lifestyle, our lifestyle choices would have to change. Time with family and neighbours and community might prevail instead. Food and conversation and recreation. Home centred lives shared with others? We might not all have the same day as a Sabbath, as hospitals and carehomes and other places need to provide 7 days a week care, but there should always be one day of REST a week: the same day so that a rhythm of work and rest is set up, that can be relied on. We seem to be such a driven people, that a day of rest is anathema, a waste of time, or impossible for us as the pressure to get things done which we have added to our lives drives us on. It is interesting that it is not 2 days. We have now had to introduce a weekend to give more time to people to do the things they need to or choose to which is not paid work and a three day week has been set up in the past to cope with particular employment difficulties BUT one day holiday, holy day, a set aside day, a separate and different day a week should be the norm for productive work and good health. God declared that there would be festivals, holidays, every year - Young translates these as "appointed seasons": the Sabbath, the Passover, the Feast of First Fruits, the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. These set aside days were to celebrate God, together as a community, to remember Him and His goodness, to thank him, to give offerings to Him, to be with Him without distraction - quality time we would call this. "I will be your God and you will be My people". How different our understanding of holidays is now. Yet Jesus fulfilled all the festivals, his death as the Passover lamb, a day of Atonement for us, his resurrection as the First Fruits from the dead, the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which He gained the right for God to give to us by His life and death, and He came and dwelt, tabernacled, among us, announced by heaven's messengers, and will come again also, with the sound of the Trumpet (I Cor 15:52) . He worked tirelessly for us, obedient to the Father's will. He is our Sabbath. The Sabbath was a day in which to do good, as is every day. Working for God is Sabbath rest every day. We enter into His rest. Peace with God is rest. Every day of our life we give to God. Work for God while it is still day. In all we do, remember God. Be with God, our Emmanuel God, who dwells with us and in us. Listen to God, speak to God, read His word, be filled with His Spirit, do His will. "I will be your God and you will be My people"
Our uncleanness comes from within. When Jesus speaks to the Pharisees in response to them asking why He did not wash before eating as is the tradition of the Pharisees, he says that it is not the outside which needs cleaning but the inside, the evil within us comes from our hearts which need cleansing. There are examples of physical situations which are founded in the culture of the time which have spiritual truths that we need to understand. Even as Jesus spoke in similes so that only those who would seek Him and be enabled by the Holy Spirit to understand the teaching of God, so we also will not understand Scripture unless we have our eyes opened and our ears unstopped by a willingness and desire to know the truth that Jesus teaches. We need to ask Jesus to explain the Word to us that we might see with our eyes and hear with our ears and be healed from the hardness of heart that prevents God from entering in and being born in us by His Spirit today. In our uncleanness we need to be separated from others, because our lives can contaminate others, our uncleansed thinking, our wrong thinking, our wrong speaking, can affect others, to damage them. An angry person can by their constant anger being expressed cause the person they live with or share a work space with to also become angry. Only a person of peace and compassion and kindness can counter such anger. Choose not to sit "with vain men And with dissemblers I enter not. I have hated the assembly of evil doers And with the wicked I sit not." from yesterday's reading of Psalm 26: 4-5. Separate yourself from those who can influence you to wrong doing, and keep away from those who gather to speak or do evil. Get up and move away from those who speak evil of others, who gossip or criticise. Make good choices. "I, in my integrity I walk, redeem me and favour me. My foot hath stood in uprightness, in assemblies I bless Jehovah." Psalm 26:11-12 There is only one verse from Proverbs in today's readings: "The wise in heart accepteth commands, And a talkative fool kicketh." Proverbs 10:8 Even a person in authority will be under authority - the wise in heart accept commands, but a talkative fool resists commands and talks about it to others in their choice to resist, to kick out instead.
In Mark Chapter 1 we read: "and there doth come to him a leper, calling on him, and kneeling to him and saying to him - 'If thou mayest will, thou art able to cleanse me.' And Jesus having been moved with compassion, having stretched forth the hand, touched him and saith to him, 'I will; be thou cleansed' " v 40-41 " And having sternly charged him, immediately he put him forth, and saith to him, 'See thou mayest say nothing to anyone but go away. thyself shew to the priest, and bring near for thy cleansing the things Moses directed, for a testimony to them.' " v44 Here in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14, we see what Moses directed, as instructed by God in order to know what to do in this situation in the community of the Israelites. In Scripture, the spiritual meaning given to leprosy, is pride. The Holy Spirit teaches that to have pride is to oppose God, by supplanting Him in our mind with ourself. Lucifer, the angel of light, rose up against God in pride and was cast out of heaven. Isaiah 14:12-17 Ezekiel 28;12-19, John 8;44. The leper in human life endured a terrible experience of being cast out of the community, to the place outside the city which is where the unclean remaining elements from the sacrifices are cast, having to cover their head and shout 'unclean, unclean' not permitted to come near or be touched by anyone. The leper who comes to Jesus kneels before him and asks Jesus to be willing to cleanse him for he knows Jesus is able to. Jesus is filled with compassion and says 'I will'. He chooses to heal us, to restore us, to make us whole because he is good and he is able. Jesus is full of compassion towards us, when we come to him. Spiritually, for all Scripture must be read with the teaching of the Holy Spirit, we can come to Jesus and in humility kneel before him and ask him to cleanse us from our self-centred, selfishness and ambition. We are in reality unclean to be like this, if we could but see it with our spiritual eyes opened.
Our God is a God who separates, who says: Be holy as I am holy. HIs way is that we must always choose between right and wrong. This is freewill. If we are ignorant of God's commands or we do something without knowing it is wrong in God's eyes, when we know it, we have a way to forgiveness by being sorry, asking God's forgiveness and, because of Jesus, the ransom of his life paid for us, we are forgiven and in our continuing life, we show we are sorry by a reformed life. We can know our wrong doing without being told, by our conscience which is God given which gives warning if we stay soft hearted to hear that warning. With repetition of ignoring such awareness of wrong, our hearts become calloused and we do not notice the warning any more. Beware the state of our heart when it ignores the uncomfortable feeling of choosing a wrong action or words and pushes ahead regardless. Stop! and do not go that way. But if we deliberately disobey, knowing what God has said we should or should not do, then we need a saviour to save us from the judgment that God justly will bring to bear on us when we are judged. Adam and Eve did not express their contrition, instead justifying their action as Adam did, the woman whom You (God's bad judgment is implied and therefore His fault and His responsibility) didst place with me, gave me of the fruit of the tree and I did eat, or explaining it, as Eve did, "the serpent hath caused me to forget and I did eat" but neither expressed sorrow. God judges and God justly punishes. Without one to intercede, a saviour, we cannot escape God's righteous judgement. It is given for human beings to die once and then to face judgment. Neither blaming God nor our own weakness nor the circumstances we find ourselves in and which we may blame for our actions, can excuse us - we need a Saviour. If we do not throw ourselves upon the mercy of God through Jesus our saviour, we are lost - we have no other way to be reconciled with God. Nevertheless remember this, that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it but to save it. He has made a way for every person in the world to be saved but we are tasked with responsibility for choosing to be saved.
Mark 1: 23-45 I am filled with wonder at Jesus. His authority is astonishing as the crowd are also amazed seeing him command the evil spirit, that had just shouted out uncontrollably and loudly that Jesus has come to destroy them, to be silent and to come forth out of the man. But I am even more moved by the leper coming in such abject hopelessness, rejected by society, an 'untouchable', asking Jesus if he is is willing to heal him, and Jesus, filled with compassion, saying 'I will'. He doesn't speak to the disease to command it to go, He touches the man, an experience that man would not have had in his whole adult life. How could anyone not love such a man as this? Surely His goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Leviticus 9.1-Leviticus 10.20 Aaron and his sons have to make atonement for themselves before they can minister to others. What a lesson this is for our church leaders to know that they must come before a holy God in humility and repentance before they can offer themselves in the service of God. 'Take a calf, a perfect one' - for Jesus has given himself as the sacrifice for our forgiveness, for once and for all. After the offerings Aaron has made for himself and for the people, then he can lift up his hand, now holy hands, set apart for thee my saviour, ready to do your will, to bless them and God's honour, his glory, appears unto all the people and fire from God consumes the burnt offering at which the people see and cry aloud and fall on their faces. How awesome is our God, we stand on holy ground, Be still for the presence of the Lord is moving in this place. Psalm 25: 1-7 Our prayer is that God will remember his mercies and his kindnesses, and according to His kindness 'do not remember sins of my youth and my transgressions.'. There is a story of a priest who had been guilty of doing wrong in his youth and he asked a woman in his church who claimed that she could hear God, to pray for him and ask God what the sin was that he had committed. The woman did so, and when she came to the priest and he asked her what God had said to her about his sin, she replied, "He said, "I don't remember". As far as the East is from the West, He has put our sins from us. We need to live in the forgiveness that God gives and not under the conviction of Satan, the accuser. Proverbs 9:13-18. Foolishness is noisy, simple and undiscerning. Those who are going straight on their paths can be diverted, to those who are simple and lack heart, 'stolen waters are sweet and hidden bread is pleasant' and, in listening to such words, the deep places of Sheol that are there are not discerned. Jesus offers bread and water freely and openly. Come to me all you who are thirsty. Eat bread for no cost. If we drink of the water and eat of the bread of Jesus's good words and good life, out of us will come likewise living waters to refresh others.