Author: John Tillman

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Deuteronomy 31 Listen: (4:57) Read: Romans 11 Listen: (5:23)

Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 31.9-13

9 So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. 10 Then Moses commanded them: “At the end of every seven years, in the year for canceling debts, during the Festival of Tabernacles, 11 when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose, you shall read this law before them in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people—men, women and children, and the foreigners residing in your towns—so they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. 13 Their children, who do not know this law, must hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

Reflection: Reading As Resistance

By John Tillman

If you know something will fail eventually, is there any point trying to delay or prevent that failure?

God revealed to Moses that Israel would fail to fulfill the covenant. Eventually, Israel’s sins would lead to exile and suffering, however, even after banishment, when their hearts turned back to God, God would restore them. However, Moses wasn’t a fatalist. He didn’t shrug his shoulders and say, “It can’t be helped.” Moses had a plan of resistance.

Was it a military campaign? High walls to keep out undesirables? More restrictive laws and more severe penalties? Forsaking all aesthetic pleasures, in case they might lead to sin? No. It was reading scripture.

Moses charged the community to regularly gather and hear the scripture read publicly. The Levites were to keep the writings Moses had collected and created. They would read and explain them to the people every seven years, at the time of canceling debts. It is no accident that reading God’s word is connected to freedom from debts and slavery. Reminding themselves of the debt they owed to God could fuel dutiful obedience and forgiveness among the community.

Israel read scripture to resist the idolatries and ideologies of the land. So must we. Reading scripture is not a task on a spiritual checklist. Reading scripture is an act of resistance. God’s word is an inoculation against the poisoned wisdom of the world that enslaves us to sin. The wisdom of scripture is the truth that sets us free. (John 8.31-34)

Israel, like other cultures of the time, was an oral culture. Few people could read. Even fewer would ever see or hold what Moses wrote and the Levites kept. Israel didn’t have the privileges we do. Those who waited to attend synagogue to hear sections of scripture read or waited seven years to hear the entirety of God’s word read would be shocked that we own personal copies of God’s word. They’d be even more shocked to learn how little we actually read them.

Like Israel, you will fall into sin. But that doesn’t mean you give up and give in. Resist by reading scripture and living out its wisdom. (Matthew 7.24) Don’t neglect the incredible gift of God’s word. Give time and attention to reading God’s word individually and with others. Read your Bible like it makes a difference and it will.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting

You are my hiding place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. — Psalm 32.8

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: Ways of Canaan, Ways of Christ

Seek God’s face and ask him to reveal and remove “ways of Canaan” within you.

Read more: Between Gerizim and Ebal

Standing in between Gerizim and Ebal, there is more at stake than personal holiness or individual choices.

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Deuteronomy 29 Listen: (4:14) Read: Romans 9 Listen: (5:15)

Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 29.18-21

18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison. 19 When such a person hears the words of this oath and they invoke a blessing on themselves, thinking, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” they will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. 20 The Lord will never be willing to forgive them; his wrath and zeal will burn against them. All the curses written in this book will fall on them, and the Lord will blot out their names from under heaven. 21 The Lord will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.

Reflection: Poisoned Roots? Poisoned Fruits

By John Tillman

Metaphors of trees and vineyards echo through scripture.

Isaiah sang a mournful song about God’s vineyard that produced bloodshed rather than righteousness. John the Baptizer shouted about God setting his axe at the root of wicked trees. Jesus taught that bad trees could not produce good fruit and about an unfruitful tree given one final chance to produce fruit. Jesus also condemned and cursed an unfruitful fig tree. Arguably, all these examples are calling back to the “root” metaphor Moses introduced in Deuteronomy.

Moses warned strongly about a “root…that produces…bitter poison.” In Moses’ prophetic parable, the root was a person or group living among Israel with duplicitous hearts. Moses imagined them hearing the covenant’s words, yet thinking in their hearts that they could persist in going their own way without harm. They would turn away from God to idols, yet claim safety under God’s covenant. Moses foresaw this root would lead to judgment and exile.

We see in Israel’s future from this point that Moses was right. The poison root of idolatry spread, sickening the tree. The sickened tree produced sickened fruit. Israel said, “peace,” when there was rebellion in their hearts. They spread out hands in prayer to God that had shed innocent blood, sacrificed to an idol, and taken advantage of the weak, poor, and marginalized. Ultimately, without good fruit, the tree was good only for the fire. Through Assyrian and Babylonian exile, God uprooted his tree, Israel, cut it up, and burned it.

We may think personal sins or idolatry harm no one else. “I can go my own way. I’m not hurting anyone.” God’s word shows us that poisonous roots lead to poisonous fruits and the contents of our hearts corrupt from inside out. Just as good fruit blesses others, bad fruit curses them. There is no such thing as sin that only affects the sinner. The consequences of sin always go beyond the individual.

We must treat sin as the bitter poison it is. We cannot explain it away or take it in moderation. We cannot hide or limit its outcomes. Sin’s effects always spread beyond our attempts at containment.

Take sin seriously. Do not call safe what God calls poison. What is at stake goes beyond your own life. Do not be the poisonous root that harms others’ futures. Root yourself in Christ’s righteousness and produce good fruit that heals rather than poisons.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

I hate those who have a divided heart, but your law do I love. — Psalm 119.113

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: The Ever-Patient Agriculturalist

Throughout the Bible, God is often pictured as an ever-patient agriculturalist. God wants to give us every opportunity to flourish.

Read more: Family Tree

Our family tree is sick at heart and only sickened fruit can come from us without Christ’s intervention.

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Deuteronomy 28.20-68 Listen: (10:11) Read: Romans 8 Listen: (6:22)

Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 28.15-19

15 However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:
16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

“You wish to have the curse reversed? I’ll need a certain potion first…” — The Witch, Into the Woods, Steven Sondheim

Reflection: Reversible Blessings and Curses

By John Tillman

Curses in fairy tales are written to be reversed. The musical, Into the Woods, uses this storytelling trope as its primary plot device. Reversing the curse involves multiple characters from familiar storylines interacting and confronting each other with lies, betrayals, and, at times, the truth.

The opening sections of Deuteronomy 28 promise a blessing to God’s people that will be a pervasive good, touching their lives in every way. They will be “blessed in the city and blessed in the country…blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.”

However, God’s blessing can be reversed into an all-encompassing curse. They will be “cursed in the city and cursed in the country…cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.” God says this curse will “come on you and overtake you.” At times Israel would run an impressive race as God’s people, eventually this curse would overtake them.

Anyone steeped in the magic stew of fairy tales tends to see salvation through the lens of a heroic quest. Heroes in fairy tales, often through a combination of cooperation, wit, and luck, typically reverse their own curses. Divine assistance, from fairy godmothers or otherwise, is elusive and typically not determinative of the outcome. Humans, not the gods, exert heroic effort to break fairy tale curses.

Yet, we are not plucky heroes who can, with just a bit of luck, turn the tables on our enemy and reverse our own curse. We can’t make the potion. We can’t kill the dragon. We can’t climb the tower. And our kiss is the kiss of death, not a kiss of life.

Like many other curses of God, the curse of Mount Ebal is a reflection and reenactment of the curse of Eden. It overtook Israel, and it overtakes us. Peter describes our adversary as a roaring lion seeking to devour us. Paul describes an inner curse of sinfulness that even he, the great “Hebrew of Hebrews,” cannot escape.

Yet, the curse of Eden is written to be reversed. Within its words, a hero is promised who will break it. Jesus is that hero. The gospel message we carry is that, in Christ, our curse is broken and all people can join him to be blessed in the city, in the country, when we come in, and when we go out.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting

Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long. — Psalm 25.3-4

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: Praying Priestly Blessings

As followers of God today, a part of our identity is as carriers of the blessings of God that are intended for the world.

Read The Bible With Us

Invite someone to join you in our Bible reading plan and in discussing our devotionals. Walk with friends through scripture at a sustainable, two-year pace.

https://mailchi.mp/theparkforum/m-f-daily-email-devotional

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Deuteronomy 24 Listen: (3:21) Read: Romans 4 Listen: (4:08)

Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 24.14-18

14 Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. 15 Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. 16 Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin. 17 Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. 18 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.

Reflection: Do Not Take Advantage

By John Tillman

We live in an exaggeratedly opportunistic culture and economy.

We are pressured to compete with one another because life is a zero-sum game where my profit can only come at your loss. If I win and you lose, I should be praised, not shamed. Right?

In that kind of system, it is foolish to not take advantage of every opportunity. We must exploit weakness to gain an advantage in the marketplace. After all, doesn’t a meritocracy mean that winning, no matter how I do it, proves I deserve it and you don’t? Doesn’t the survival of the fittest imply the elimination of the weak?

But the weak are also our neighbors. Can Christians exploit our neighbors in the market while saying we love our neighbors in our churches? If not, how can we live in this system of cruelty and greed?

The Old Testament has a reputation for harshness but a reality of mercy. Old Testament law has a recurring pattern of aggressively protecting the vulnerable. Our culture has a history and pattern of aggressively taking advantage of the vulnerable.

Over and over the Bible commands those with means, power, or opportunity to not take advantage of those weaker, poorer, and less fortunate. God takes special interest in their welfare.

The marginalized groups God mentions most include widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor. Tim Keller referred to them as the “quartet of the vulnerable.” He said, “If you aren’t intensely concerned for the quartet of the vulnerable…it’s a sign your heart is not right with God.” (Church Leaders) If we take advantage of them, we will answer to God sooner or later.

Profit and growth are part of our human calling. The first divine command was to cultivate and flourish. So the answer is not to eschew profit, competition, or efficiency. Rather, we must remember that our gains must not come by causing losses for those on the margins. Rather than profit at the expense of the poor, we should profit along with them, building opportunities for them to rise, rather than rising by pushing them down.

It is not evil to make a profit any more than it is evil to be poor. However, the poor are God’s special concern. If we profit by taking advantage of them, the wealth we pile up testfies against us and we store up judgment for ourselves rather than security.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

No good things will the Lord withhold from those who walk with integrity. — Psalm 84.11

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle

Read more: Vulnerable Quartet

The “quartet of the vulnerable” is a term for those vulnerable to harm, particularly in the Bible: the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the poor.

Read more: Why The Cross?

Every good thing before the cross pointed to it. Every good thing after the cross is evidence of the power broken on it.