1 Kings 15 – In Judah, Abijah (also
called Abijam) takes
over and reigns for three years. “He committed all the sins that his father did
before him; his heart was not true to the Lord his God, like the heart of his
father David” (15:3). It is for David’s sake (memory of his devotion) that the
monarchy is permitted to continue.
The writer speaks of how David pleased the Lord in everything except the
“matter of Uriah the Hittite” (15:5). This last
“gloss,” the Jerusalem Bible note
says is absent from the Greek.
The war with
Rehoboam continues through his reign, and when he dies, his son Asa becomes
king. One thing to note here is the similarity between
the way the moral failures who follow David are carried along “in him” because
of the great love God had for David and the great commitment David made to God
in his own name and in the name of his people. The gospel truth here is that we are all lifted up by the holiness of
the few. It is an example of
the kind of salvation that will be offered to man through Christ.
Asa reigns for 41 years—though one text I've read says he is Abijah’s son, he actually seems to be his brother. They have the same mother—Maacah,
the daughter of Absalom. “Asa did what
was right in the sight of the Lord, as his father David had done” (15:11).
He got rid of the male prostitutes, removed the idols and he removed his own
mother from being queen mother because she had made “an abominable image for
Asherah” (15:13). But the high places are not removed.
War continues
with Israel (now under Baasha). Asa sends great treasure to the king
(Ben-hadad) in Damascus to get him to break his alliance with Israel and form
one with Judah. This turns the
tide—causes Baasha to cease the building of Ramah. The stones of that town were carried away by Asa to build
Geba. When Asa dies, his son Jehoshaphat
succeeds him.
In Israel, Nadab, Jeroboam’s son rules for two years. “He did what was evil in the sight of
the Lord” (15:26). Baasha, son of
Ahijah (Issachar’s tribe) “struck him down” when they were laying siege to a
Philistine town. He takes over as
king and kills all the house of
Jeroboam. It is confusing that Baasha’s father is Ahijah and the prophet of
Shiloh, who foretold of the death of Jeroboam’s family (1 Kings 14:10) is also
Ahijah. Sounds like they might have been the same person, but it isn’t clear
and it seems unlikely that a prophecy would come true out of a worldly desire
of the prophet’s son to make it happen. Baasha moves the capital of the
northern kingdom from Shechem to Tirzah (slightly to the north). He reigns at
Tirzah for 24 years and “sinned against
the Lord and led Israel into sin” (15:34).
Introduction to the
Gospel of Luke: According
to Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to
the New Testament, 1997), Luke is believed to have been a physician and
traveling companion of Paul; from the content, it appears he was an educated
Greek-speaker and writer who knew the OT in Greek but who was NOT an eyewitness
of Jesus’ ministry. He was probably not raised a Jew (Brown, 226), and was not
a Palestinian. He might have been a convert to Judaism first. The Gospel of
Luke and Acts of the Apostles were part of one long compilation of information,
which Luke assembled from different sources. The two books were separated in
the 2nd century, but most scholars continue to believe they were
from the hand of the same writer. A good many of the descriptions I wrote on
Luke’s gospel relate to what sets it apart from Mark.
Those
parts of Luke that are new (not in Mark at all) are in green.
Luke 1:1-38 – Luke undertakes to set down “an orderly account of events that have taken place among us” (1:1) “as
they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and
servants of the word” (1:2). Luke has the most thorough account of the
pre-birth events of the gospel.
First we see the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. They have
never had any children and now they are very old. One day, in the Temple,
Zechariah hears a prophecy from an angel (Gabriel), that his wife Elizabeth
will have a son; he is to name the boy John and this boy will “be filled with
the Holy Spirit (1:16). He “will go ahead of the Lord, strong and mighty like
the prophet Elijah. Brown points out that the very last prophetic book of the
OT, Malachi, says that Elijah “will be sent before the coming Day of the Lord”
(229). He will bring fathers and children together again; he will turn
disobedient people back to the way of thinking of the righteous; he will get
the Lord’s people ready for him” (1:17). Because Zechariah has trouble
believing this will happen, he is rendered unable to speak “until the day [the]
promise to [him] comes true” (1:20).
Six months into Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sends the angel Gabriel
toa town in Galilee name Nazareth, to a “young woman promised in marriage to
man named Joseph, who was a descendant of King David. Her name was Mary”
(1:27). “Blessed are you among women” Gabriel says to her. She will become
pregnant and give birth to a son, whom she will name Jesus. Mary is “deeply
troubled” (1:29).
Gabriel tells her that Jesus “will be great and will
be called the Son of the Most High God” (1:31). He will be called “the Son of
God” (1:35). Troubling as all this may seem to her, she responds, “I am the
Lord’s servant . . .may it happen to me as you have said’” (1:38).
Mary’s submission to God’s will for her is a model for us to follow
so that in us, as in her, Christ’s life may be formed. This doesn’t mean Mary wasn’t
“troubled” by the burden laid upon her, but her obedience was not less perfect
on that account. Mary is the
preeminent model of the Church as well since it is the corporate calling of the
Church to bear Christ into the world. She and Jesus represent the “male and
female [God] created” – mankind – made in His image and likeness, God’s
“helpmate” in this creation of His. That’s what I think anyway. It is
interesting in Luke that the prophecy concerning Jesus refers to him as Son of the Most High. The title of Most
High God is first used in connection with Melchizedek, priest of the Most High
God.
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