God's Purpose in the Temple

Read from the bible Site at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+kings+8%3A22-60&version=VOICE

1 Kings 8:22-60

22 Solomon was standing in front of the Eternal’s altar before the entire community of Israel, and he lifted his hands up toward heaven.

Solomon: 23 O Eternal One, Israel’s God, there is no other God who compares to You in heaven or on earth. You have guarded Your covenant and revealed Your loyal love to those who serve You with all their being. 24 You have kept Your word to Your servant, my father, David. You have promised with Your mouth and fulfilled Your promise with Your actions as it is today. 25 Eternal One, Israel’s God, preserve that which You have promised my father, David, when You told him, “Your descendants will sit upon Israel’s throne for as long as your sons walk the way you have walked before Me.”[a] 26 Israel’s God, fulfill what You have promised to my father, David, who served You.

27 Is it true that God will live upon the earth? The heavens and even the highest heaven are not big enough for You, so how will You live in the house I have raised? 28 Please listen to the prayer and humble request of Your servant today, Eternal One my God, 29 that Your gaze might fall upon this temple all night and day, that You might look upon the place about which You said, “My name will be there,” and hear the humble request of Your servant when he prays in the direction of this place. 30 And hear the prayer of Your servant and Your people Israel when they pray in the direction of this place. Hear them from heaven, Your dwelling place. Hear them, and forgive them.

31 If a man does evil against his neighbor, and he is instructed to make a promise at the altar of Your temple, 32 then hear him from heaven and act. Judge those who serve You. Denounce the evil man by returning his evil to him, and redeem the righteous man by blessing him according to his righteousness.

33 When Your people Israel are defeated by an enemy because they have acted against You and wronged You, if they come back to You and praise Your name and send their requests to You in this temple; 34 then hear them in heaven, forgive them for their sins, and lead them back to the promised land You gave to their ancestors.

35 When the heavens are dried up and no rain is given to the earth because Your people sinned against You, if they turn and pray in the direction of this place and praise Your name and turn away from their sins after You afflict them, 36 then hear them in heaven and forgive the sins of those who serve You and of Your people Israel. Show them the best path, the good path, upon which to walk. Give them rain for the portion of Your earth which You have given to them as an inheritance.

37 If there is food shortage, epidemic, plant disease, mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, enemies surrounding the land of their cities, plagues, or any other sickness; 38 whatever it is that is prayed or requested by any one person or all of Your people Israel who expresses the suffering of his own being and lifts his hands in the direction of this temple; 39 then hear him in heaven where You live. Grant forgiveness according to each person’s heart, for You know the heart of every man. You, and only You, know every heart 40 so that all people might live in awe and fear of You for as long as they live in the land You gave to their ancestors.

41 Whenever a foreigner, a person who is not a part of Your community of Israel, comes from a distant land in honor of Your name 42 (for everyone will hear about Your great reputation, mighty actions, and outstretched strength), when he prays in the direction of this temple; 43 then You will hear in heaven where You dwell and grant the foreigner’s requests. This is so Your reputation will spread all throughout the earth and so all may live in awe and fear of You, just as Your people Israel do, and so all will know that this temple I raised honors Your reputation.

44 When Your people enter the battlefield to face their enemies along the path You have sent them, when they pray to the Eternal in the direction of the city You have appointed and the temple I have raised in honor of Your reputation; 45 hear their prayers and requests in heaven, and You will do justice on their behalf.

46 When they sin against You (for there is not one person who will not sin), and in Your anger You hand them over to their enemies who take them away to enemy territory, whether it is near or far away, 47 if they repent from their wrongdoings during their captivity, confess to You that they have been sinful and acted wickedly, 48 give their hearts back to You, offer You their entire beings while being held captive by their enemies, and send their prayers to You in the direction of the land You gave to their ancestors (the city you appointed to be sacred) in the direction of the temple I have raised in honor of Your name; 49 then hear their prayers and requests in heaven where You live and do justice on their behalf, 50 forgive Your people who have wronged You, erase all their sins, and transform them into examples of compassion in the sight of their captors so that their enemies might be compassionate toward them.

51 These are Your people, the vessels of Your earthly legacy, whom You led out of Egypt and away from the iron furnace of slavery 52 so that Your eyes may be open to the requests of those who serve You—Your people Israel—and hear them whenever they call out to You. 53 You have set them apart from all other people on the earth; You have chosen them as vessels of Your earthly legacy. You revealed this to us when You chose Your servant Moses to be Your mouthpiece. It all began when You led our ancestors out of Egypt, Eternal, our True God.

54 After Solomon had finished praying to the Eternal, he stood up before the Eternal’s altar where he had been kneeling and lifting up his hands toward heaven. 55 With a booming voice, he blessed the entire community of Israel.

Solomon: 56 Blessed is the Eternal One who has given rest to His people Israel and who has fulfilled all His promises. He has been true to every last word of the promise He gave through His servant Moses. 57 May the Eternal our God live among us, just as He lived with our ancestors. May He never abandon or neglect us 58 so that He can make us desire and walk in His ways, keeping all the commands, laws, and judgments He gave to our ancestors. 59 May my words and everything I have requested of the Eternal our God be close to His heart continuously, both day and night, so that He will support His servant and His people Israel according to the needs of each day as it is today. 60 Then all the people of the world will understand for themselves that He is the only True God.

3-9-22 Wednesday - Seeing is Not Believing

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

[Sunday] Mark 10 | Amazing Ask - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. Describe a time when you saw someone ask questions just to prove they were right.

2. Read Mark 10:17-30. What is the question the rich man asks Jesus? Why do you think he asks this question?

3. How does Jesus respond to this man?

4. What then do the disciples ask Jesus? How is this different from the question the rich man asks?  

5. How does Jesus respond to the disciples? How is it astonishing for you, to know that Jesus has done the impossible and saved you?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

At The Crossroads of Lent

Read the Whole article at https://mbird.com/literature/at-the-crossroads-with-jonathan-franzen-and-gerhard-forde/

onathan Franzen’s Crossroads and Gerhard Forde’s Where God Meets Man are two books that have little in common on the surface: the latest novel by one of America’s pre-eminent fiction writers and a fifty-year-old book of Lutheran theology, but there are affinities. Franzen’s novel is set in the early 1970s, mostly in the Midwest, and deals with mainline protestant Christianity. Forde’s is a book of mainline protestant theology written and published in Minnesota in 1972. While Franzen has said that theology was not his concern in Crossroads, the characters of the Hildebrandt Family find themselves repeatedly confronted by God and/or the church. It is this confrontation which is the theme of Forde, who believed that theology is inextricable from its significance for people — that God revealed himself “down to earth.”………………..

[Ash Wednesday] 2022 Live Stream

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

Seeing is not Believing

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Seeing is Not Believing:  A Deep Dive into the Passion of the Gospel of Mark

[Sunday] Mark 9 | Greatness - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. What qualities and actions make someone great?

2. Read Mark 9:33-37, 42.   How does Jesus define greatness? 

3. In our pursuit of greatness, what does that do to our relationships with God and with one another?     

4. In Jesus’ actions, how does he free us from the pursuit of greatness?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

[Bible Study] Chapter 28-27 | Book of Job

The Moms Are (Still) Not Alright

Read the Whole article at The Moms Are (Still) Not Alright - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

The dread can hit anywhere, anytime. Last week, I was in the fancy grocery store, where I met my friend for prepackaged sushi from a refrigerator case in the back. We sat in the little dining space at the front of the store where just moments earlier, my friend had stopped a fire from breaking out in the communal microwave. An older woman had microwaved foil. My phone rang and the dread took over — the fire was the least of my worries. Every phone call from the school or even an unknown caller with a similar area code can make my head pound. Before I accepted the call, I ran through the list of things I would need to cancel for the afternoon. 

Just a few days before, my kindergartener arrived at the nurse’s office with a headache and was sent home from school. She could not return until she had a n………………..

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No Other Name!

Read whole Sermon at No Other Name! | 1517

On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:5–12)……………………………….

[Sunday] Mark 8-9 | Knowing Christ - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. Describe a time when you’ve said all the right things, but been completely wrong?

2. Read Mark 9:14-29.   What are the disciples unable to do?

3. What does Jesus do?  What does He say about why the disciples couldn’t do it?

4. How have you been mistaken about Jesus in your life?  How can Jesus reorient your thinking about him through humbleness and prayer?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

[Bible Study] Chapter 20-27 | Book of Job

God's Hideous Self-Portrait

Read the whole article at
https://mbird.com/theology/gods-hideous-self-portrait/

One of the theological distinctions from the works of Martin Luther that, I’d say, is deserving of more attention is his juxtaposition between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. These categories might seem like esoteric abstractions. Distinguishing between the two can feel as though you’re splitting hairs, a meticulous theological and philosophical tincture that doesn’t offer much in the way of “rubber-meets-the-road” applicability. But Luther’s discrimination between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross represents a fundamental hermeneutic not only for the crucifixion narratives of the Gospels but also for the entire text of Scripture. 

This theological apparatus finds its roots in Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, in which the German reformer was afforded the opportunity to abdicate or affirm some of his statements in the previous year’s infamous Ninety-Five Theses. In so doing, Luther was granted the bandwidth to more accurately articulate his quarrels with the church and the papacy. Gerhard Forde writes in On Being a Theologian of the Cross, pseudo-commentary on Luther’s 1518 disputations, that “the Heidelberg Disputation is the most influential of all Luther’s disputations. It is theologically much more important and influential, for instance, than the Ninety-five Theses, even though the Ninety-Five Theses caused more of an ecclesiastical and political stir.” (19) This due in large part because of Luther’s insistence on the basic tenets of theology itself, particularly in Thesis 20, in which he avers, “He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.” For Luther, the cross wasn’t merely the coronation of God’s saving action through his only begotten Son, it was the culmination of God’s self-disclosure. 

What Does it Look Like to Practice Rest?

Read the whole article at
https://relevantmagazine.com/faith/what-does-it-look-practice-rest/

Rest is an important spiritual practice that has big implications for our day-to-day lives. Countless Scriptures, from Genesis to Psalms to the Gospels, remind us that rest is necessary. But rest can quickly become a buzzword that no one really understands. We say we need rest, but what does that actually look like? Is it a nap, a walk, a few minutes along? And so often, as we work to find rest, we end up feeling even more restless.

Because while rest and finding rest are important, there’s more to the answer than just removing something from your life in order to create margin (though that’s important). What we;re really seeking is something more fulfilling, more beautiful, more essential: the Sabbath…………………………….

[Sunday] Mark 7-8 | 4,000 Crumbs - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. What is a ridiculous rule someone has tried to make you follow?

2. Read Mark 7:1-23.   What is the issue that Jesus is concerned about?

3. What are some rules we put on our faith that actually point people further away from Jesus and each other?

4. How does Jesus bring us closer to Him and each other?

5. Read Mark 7:24-30.   How is it encouraging to know that even if we get the crumbs of God’s grace, it is enough?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

Anxious About Grace

Read the whole article Here
https://mbird.com/theology/reformation/anxious-about-grace-some-thoughts-on-max-weber/

Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) has been immensely influential, with the “Weber thesis” being one of the most well-known Interesting Ideas around.  The idea, basically, is that Protestantism, especially in Calvinist and Wesleyan and Baptist and ‘Pietistic’ forms, has been a major contributor to the ‘Spirit’ behind capitalism.

But there’s so much more. In looking at religious ideas not strictly in terms of their truth or doxological value, but also in terms of emphases and influence, Weber helped map out a distinctly modern way of doing and evaluating theology.

When I read his book, I hear a trenchant appreciation of how human hearts take the gifts of divine grace and turn them into methods for propelling ourselves toward God. From the perspective of Christian anthropology, the psychic respon…………………………………………….

[Bible Study] Chapter 11-19 | Book of Job

[Sunday] Mark 6 | Hearts & Loaves - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. What is the craziest abuse of power you’ve heard about in the news recently?

2. Read Mark 6:14-29.  What words would you use to describe Herod as a leader? What does his reaction to the girl’s dance show us about him?

3. Read Mark 6:30-43. Specifically looking at verse 34, how is Jesus a different type of leader than King Herod?

4. When our hearts are hard, how does Jesus show us compassion? How does having a serving and compassionate king in Jesus change how we view power in the world?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

[Bible Study] Chapter 4-10 | Book of Job