The DJBRP Jan 7th

The reading for Jan 7th was Matthew 4:1-11, Acts 4:23-37, Psalm 7, and Genesis 18-20.

The passage from Matthew covers Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. It seems that temptation is always the strongest when we are in the wilderness, but Jesus shows us how to combat temptation. In verses 4, 7, and 10, Jesus uses scripture to defend himself from the devil's tempting. This is why scripture memorization is so imprtant and why we need to do more of it.

The passage from Acts covers the believers in Jerusalem praying for boldness to preach the gospel. The prayer is amazing and is a helpful model of how we should make our desires known to God. Maybe one day the church will pray like them again...

Psalm 6 was written by David in response to false accusations. He calls upon God repeatedly to vindicate him. This is where people overstep their bounds most of the time. If someone insults us or says something false about us, we want to fight and correct them immediately. We respond in anger and sin. David left it in God's hands to do the vindicating, right where it belongs.

The passage in Genesis covers God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah through Abraham's pawning Sarah off as his sister. A lot of really crazy stuff goes on in this portion of scripture, most of which I don't want to even try to discuss because the sins are so grotesque, but the incident with Abraham and Sarah prentending that they were brother and sister is really interesting to me. It wasn't that they did it thats interesting, it is what God did to the one they tricked. God was going to kill Abimelech because he had taken Sarah into his house. The crazy thing is, it was God who kept Abimelech from sinning with her and then he makes Abimeleech ask for Abraham to pray for him so that God won't kill him. Genesis is the weirdest book sometimes :-) I sure don't understand everything that happens in it...thats for sure.