We have touched upon this once but since then these problems still arise in my classes when we study Genesis.  Understand:  what we think of as a genealogy is not what the Hebrews thought of.  Most of this information comes from my son Nathan’s book The Growth of the Seed:  Studies in the Book of Genesis. I have been known to copy whole pages of it about this particular topic and pass it out to every class member.  If you misuse a genealogy, you will come up with something absolutely ridiculous, like the date in the title of this essay.  Let me explain.

   The Hebrew people, like most ancients, relied on oral history.  Yes, important events were eventually written down, first by Moses, and then by others as the Old Testament writings were written and collected.  But family histories were oral capsules called toledots.  For example, if I wanted to tell you about my ancestors, I would not tell you about every single generation.  I would only mention the important ones, the ancestors who did something notable or whose lives were especially interesting.  Occasionally I might mention someone just for the sake of a time landmark, especially if I had skipped a couple hundred years, but many I would omit.  It only makes sense, and it only made sense to those ancient people as well. 

 Look at Matthew 1.  This is the genealogy, or toledot, of Jesus.  Did it really start with Abraham?  And how can there be exactly 14 generations between Abraham and David, David and the captivity, and the captivity to Christ?  Doesn’t that seem a little contrived?  And it all falls apart when you see that David is in there twice!  There must be a reason it is done this way and it has nothing to do with listing every single generation.  We also have sets of ten in Genesis 5 and 11, another place where the numbers are meant to mean something. And if you do not believe generations are skipped compared Matthew 1:8 and 1 Chron 3:11,12.  Then check Ezra 7:3,4 and 1 Chron 6:6-14.

 You simply cannot start adding and subtracting numbers in any certain genealogy and think you know exactly how much time has passed and who was alive when someone else was.  A man did that a long time ago and came up with the notion that the world was created on October 24, 4004 BC, at 9:30 AM 45th Meridian time, but that would be about 4:00 PM in the area of the Garden of Eden’s creation, and are we counting when God started or when He finished?  See what sort of nonsense we get into?

 None of the Bible writers ever used genealogies this way.  Let’s be smart and follow their examples.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten, Or even by reason of strength fourscore years; Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; For it is soon gone, and we fly away Who knows the power of your anger, And your wrath according to the fear that is due unto you? So teach us to number our days, That we may get us a heart of wisdomPs90:10-12.

Dene Ward

I have been a regular subscriber of several different cooking magazines for many years.  When we moved I let a couple of subscriptions go and I have had a lot of fun going through the older issues to discover recipes I never even tried because there were simply too many to get to in a month’s time.  One of those recipes was for Two Fat Biscuits. As you might suspect, the biscuits use two different shortenings—both butter and lard.  Finding the lard eventually required an Amazon order, but finally I was able to give this recipe a whirl. 

 I looked through the ingredients a little more carefully and immediately had misgivings.  What was said to make 9 biscuits required 4 1/2 cups of flour!  I have made biscuits for well over 50 years now and my usual recipe that produces about 8 biscuits, uses only 2 cups of flour!  What was up with these biscuits?  Must be something about the two fats, I thought, or something in the procedure that changes things somehow, so I kept on going.

 First, you chop both the butter and lard into half inch cubes and freeze them.  Well, that’s a nuisance, but I worked on the rest of the meal while the cubes sat in the freezer for the requisite 30 minutes.  Then you put them in the food processor with the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar (I never put sugar in my biscuits, but I was being very careful with this recipe).  When I turned on the food processor, it only took a couple of spins for the cubes to get caught under the blade and stop the whole thing!  I unplugged it, fixed the problem and tried again—only to have the same problem.  After a good dozen tries, I gave up and dumped it all into a large bowl and went at it with a pastry blender.  Nope, the cubes were too frozen.  Usually a recipe like this will tell you to keep cutting the flour into the fat(s) until it “looks like peas.”  Well, mine looked like overripe lima beans, but it was the best I could do.

 Next came the buttermilk and I experienced another “are you kidding me?” moment.  One and a quarter cups, the recipe said, for four cups of flour?  I ended up just as I thought I would—with a pile of dry crumbs.  By this point I was going on instinct.  I kept adding buttermilk—at least another half cup—until the crumbs became a dough I could pat out and cut.

 But wait!  We have another problem.  The picture showed the nine biscuits on an 11 x 7 sheet pan.  I looked at the mound of dough and thought, “unh, unh—cannot possibly fit.”  Yet I got out my pan, cut the dough exactly as told to and put the resulting biscuit behemoths on it.  25 minutes the recipe said, but I no longer questioned my intuition—I knew it would be longer. I also thought the biscuits would grow completely together.  That was the only thing I was wrong about, though they did get within an eighth inch of each other.  At the 32 minute mark, they were done enough, but I did worry about the one in the middle. 

 What I learned from that experience was to “trust my gut.”  After nearly 60 years of cooking and baking I have a pretty good idea of what will and won’t work.  Knowledge and experience will do that for you.

 May I suggest that the same is true of the Bible?  Read it.  Over and over, again and again, every day of your life.  When you know something that well, false doctrine will not be so likely to fool you, in fact; it will jump right out at you.  Something inside you will say, “This isn’t right.  This isn’t the God I have learned through His Word.  Let’s check this out before believing it and certainly before sharing it.”  God told His people that if a prophet told them something other than His Word, or lived a life contrary to His Word, that he was a false prophet and they should not listen to him (Deut 13 and 18).  That means the obligation is upon us to know His Word and through it to know Him.  Falling for false doctrine is simply inexcusable.

 Those biscuits tasted pretty good once I fixed all the problems with the recipe, but I will never follow that recipe again without considerable adjustment, adjustment that experience has taught me.  Now is the time to get that experience with God and His Word before someone hands you a recipe that will lead you to disaster.

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness Eph 4:17-24

Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Joanne Beckley.

During my years in Africa, I taught the ladies how to take useful notes during the sermon and then

how to make them useful during the week. This proven method took hold and brought a lot of

smiles and discussion after worship. How proudly they shared their success with each other and

with me. In our subsequent ladies’ classes, their notes became useful by referring to the date code

of the verse in their bible. They loved to surprise me with their ability to find and refer to their

previous notes on that particular verse. I loved it!

Today, when I scrolled down my list of lessons and articles I had written, I thought, why shouldn’t

you, dear reader, also benefit from this method of taking down sermon notes that can become

useful to you now and later? Do try this method (adapted) and see if you too will benefit, as will I.

1. Choose a workable notebook paper.

2. Divide each page as demonstrated below.

3. Add date and speaker at the top of your page.

4. During the sermon take notes on the right side of the page (“Sermon Notes”).

5. Write key word questions in the “Recall Column” across from your key points.

6. At home read and review your notes and scriptures as soon as possible. Choose one key

verse to memorize for the week.

7. If you did not manage to write down quick questions on the left side of the page, do this

now.

8. Write down how the lesson applies to YOU in the “Application and Key Verse” area at the bottom of the page.

9. In the margin/top/bottom of your Bible, code the key verse/scripture with the date recorded

on your sermon notes.

10. Use the Date Code to refer back to these notes whenever you study the verse again.

11. During the week review the sermon by covering the right hand side of the paper and answer

the questions you wrote on the left side.

12. From now on you can know that your time while listening to the sermon was not wasted, but

instead has become very useful to you.

From Cornell Notes and the Five Rs

I have to admit it—I seldom look at Bible dictionaries.  They scare me a little.  I cannot read a word of Hebrew or Greek so how can I check out what these guys are saying?  At some point I just have to trust them.  That’s why I love it when the Bible itself tells us what a word means.  Sometimes you have to read carefully or you will miss it, usually because you have read past it all your life and can’t seem to stop that bad habit.  At least that’s my problem.  You have to pay attention when you read God’s Word, like every time you read it is the first time.

And by doing just that I found a new, obvious definition.  Read Ezekiel with me.

If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul, Ezek 3:18-21.

Did you catch it?  God tells Ezekiel exactly what a righteous man is—someone who warns (and delivers his soul) or someone who listens to the warning and repents.  But what about the “righteous man” who commits injustice, you ask?  He has “turned from his righteousness” and “none of his righteous deeds are remembered,” which means he is no longer righteous.  The only two righteous people in that whole paragraph are the one who warns and the one who repents.

Notice, God says nothing about the way he is warned.  If you have not read the book of Ezekiel you need to.  Ezekiel preached hard sermons.  He preached plain sermons.  Yet God still demanded that those people repent.  Getting their feelings hurt did not make them “righteous.”  Getting angry about the way they were spoken to did not make them “righteous.”  The only thing that made them “righteous” was heeding the warning and repenting. 

Think about that Syrophenician mother who came asking Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter.  At first Jesus ignored her. Then he insulted her.  If she had left with her feelings hurt, her daughter would never have been healed.  She understood that something was more important than her feelings.  And Jesus called that attitude “faith.”  Ah!  Another Bible definition.

When I hear the warning, if I want to be counted righteous, I must stop blaming others and recognize my responsibility to listen and act.  The failures of others will not save me.

Take heed how you hear…Luke 18:8.

Dene Ward

I am constantly shocked by the way people, including Christians, treat the Bible.  We act like God wrote it in some way other than normal communication.  I have actually heard these things come out of the mouths of believers:  “Jesus never used figurative language.”  “You won’t find irony in the Bible.”  “Sarcasm is neither present nor allowed in the scriptures.”  And because of that you will hear some of the weirdest interpretations of scripture imaginable.

We knew a man once who said that since Jesus said you should not “let your right hand know what your left hand doeth,” that you should reach into your pocket before the plate is passed and take out whatever you find without looking at it.  I wonder how he got whatever was in his pocket in there that morning without knowing what it was, or did he make sure nothing over $10 was lying on top of his dresser?

But you will also find those who deny there is any literary aspect to the scriptures at all.  Try studying the psalms in detail and see if you think that’s so.  The psalms are poetry.  Like all poets, those inspired poets used poetic elements to make them catch our fancy, speak to us more keenly than prose would, and make us think deeper thoughts than we might have otherwise.  You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.  Doesn’t that say more to you than, “These people are really upset”?

One place this is obvious is the fifteen Psalms of Ascents.  Psalms 120-134 are presumed to have been sung while the Jews traveled up the hill to Jerusalem to worship on the various feast days.  The word for “ascents” is the same Hebrew word translated “steps” in Ezek 40:26 and 31, as in the steps of a staircase.  One psalm in particular uses words to show these steps.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.  Psalm 130.

Imagine each of the following words, taken in order from the psalm above, sitting on the steps of a staircase from bottom to top:  depths, pleas, iniquities, wait, hope, steadfast love, plentiful redemption.  Now add this to the mix:  the word for “depths” is used several times in the scripture for the deepest places on earth, including the very bottom of the ocean.  And that implies a man’s complete inability to get himself “out of the depths.”  All through this psalm we see the literary devices of the poet, gradually pulling us out of the mire we are stuck in and up the staircase to the place of full—and even more than necessary, “plentiful”—redemption.  God didn’t barely save us, He pulled us up on top of the mountains.  Read through that psalm again now.  Can you see it?  Can feel it? 

God is the one who made us able to appreciate art of all kinds, including literary art.  He gave us the emotions that a good artist of any type can evoke.  It’s one of the things that makes you different from your dog!  God wrote the Bible.  He made you and made you able to communicate.  He speaks to us the way He knows is best for our understanding.  Who am I to say otherwise?

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person discerns all things…1Cor 2:14-15.

Dene Ward

Retirement is a wonderful thing.  No more rushing around every morning, swallowing a quick breakfast whole, throwing on an outfit, and rushing out the door after a quick peck on your wife’s cheek.  At least that’s the way it was for Keith for several decades. 

Now it’s a leisurely breakfast in your pajamas with a second cup of coffee, and then a third out on the carport, watching the birds swoop down in front of us to the bird feeder, hummingbirds battling over their feeder like tiny pilots in fighter planes, and Chloe sitting next to us, her tail swishing sparkly grains of sand over the concrete.

We have a little ritual with her—three or four doggie treats that Keith sails out toward the flower bed one at a time with her tearing after them, sniffing around in the grass until she finds the morsel, then rolling in the dew wet grass in doggy euphoria before returning to her post at our feet, or even under our chairs—the better to garner a belly rub.

He always throws the treats in the same direction, slightly south of east, and makes the same whistle like a missile falling to the earth, and she has become habituated to the whole routine.  We did not realize how much until one morning he threw it north of east instead of south.  Even though she watched him do it, she still ran southeast and sniffed the ground in ever widening circles, becoming more and more frustrated when she could not find the treat.  Finally he had to get up and walk in the direction he threw it and call her over.  Eventually her nose found it, but you would have thought we had punished her as she dragged herself back without her customary cheerfulness, her tail sagging almost between her legs.  She was not happy again until he had thrown the next treat in the right direction—translation:  the one she expected.

Have you ever shown a friend a scripture that teaches something obvious, only to have him say, “I can’t see that?”  Have you ever had her read something out loud only to answer your unspoken comment with, “But I don’t believe it that way?”  Almost unbelievable, isn’t it?  Don’t think for a minute that you are immune to the same failing.  What you can see, what you do believe, depends a whole lot on what you are looking for. 

The worst thing you can do in your Bible study is go searching for something to back up what you already think.  In fact, I often tell brand new classes, “The biggest hindrance to learning is what you think you already know.”  I have had students who were intelligent and sincere look at something everyone else could see but not see it, and nearly every time it is because of some preconceived notion they grew up with or heard somewhere a long time ago and have not been able to let go.  Even something as plain as the nose on their faces.

What you already know will also raise a stop sign in your learning path.  As soon as you find what you thought was there, you will stop looking, when just a little more study and uninhibited consideration would have shown you something brand new.  The same thing happens when you rely on old notes.  You will never see anything new until you rid yourself of old ideas.  You will never find a deeper understanding if you think you have already dredged as far as you can go.

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind,” John 9:39.  He was not talking to unbelievers.  He was not talking to pagans.  He was talking to people who thought they knew God’s word inside out, who could quote whole books, who kept the law in the minutest detail, proud of how exact they were—even beyond exact—and the fact that they were children of Abraham.  Guess who that translates to today? 

When was the last time you learned anything new?  Thought any new thoughts?  Discovered any new connections in the scriptures?  When was the last time you changed your mind about something? Can you see it if it’s thrown in a direction you never thought of before, or are you as blind as those people who were sure they knew what their Messiah would look like and how he would act?  When he came out of left field, they were lost.  How about you?

…and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself…? Rom 2:19-21.

Dene Ward

If you watch much television, you know about reruns.  When I was a child, a show lasted at least 9 months and you didn’t have any reruns at all until summer.  Nowadays you are likely to have one by Thanksgiving, and then off and on all year long. 

One thing about growing older—reruns are a lot more interesting.  You don’t always remember what happened the first time, or whodunit or why.  In fact, since I usually watch only older shows, I really don’t remember.  It’s like watching a brand new show, and since it’s an older one, it’s a lot more palatable too.  Have you noticed that even when they care to “bleep” these days, they leave so much of the word you might as well have heard it in the first place?  Talk about UNpalatable.

A year or so ago someone said about the blog, “I finally read a new article that had something in it you already said!”  What in the world is he thinking, I wondered.  I've written well over a thousand posts.  How in the world could I NOT repeat myself?  And I have scriptural authority to do so:

Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things, 2Pet 1:12-15.

All things being equal, my departure should not be quite as imminent as Peter’s, but I will follow his example as long as I can by reminding you of things you have already heard at least once, if not a hundred times.

And all that got me to thinking about the admitted reruns in the Bible—things the writers said were repeats of former lessons.  I did some research and have found a list of things these inspired men thought they should remind people of.  And that means I have a scripturally sound, ready-made list of things to remind you of.  And that’s what we will do every so often.  I hope you don't find these "reruns" too boring to read.  If God thought these things were worth repeating, we should probably pay close attention.

Dene Ward

“A wall of fire about me, I’ve nothing now to fear.”

 If I were surrounded by fire, I would probably be scared to death.  Obviously this figure is meant in an entirely different way.

 And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the LORD, and I will be the glory in her midst, Zech 2:5.

 Zechariah was a minor prophet who prophesied shortly after Haggai.  In fact, you can think of him as writing the sequel to that prophet’s book, Homer Hailey once said.  The Jews have returned from Babylon and are in the midst of rebuilding the Temple.  Zechariah’s job was not only to encourage them to finish the task, but to look ahead to the glorious coming of the promised kingdom.  But here they were, a small remnant (42,360, Neh 7:66, out of an estimated million in Babylon), with no armies, no weapons, and not even a wall around their old city. 

 In the vision Zechariah sees a young man trying to measure the city, as if it were a finite place.  In verse 4 God says Run, say to that young man, ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it.

 “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus told Pilate.  It would not be a physical, measurable location at all.  The Jerusalem God had in mind was one too big for walls.  It is open to multitudes of peoples.  And the only wall it needs is the protection of God Himself.

 The Hebrew writer calls the church “the heavenly Jerusalem.”  We are in that city and we do not need stone walls or mighty weapons of war.  We have “a wall of fire about” us in the person of the Almighty God.  That fire represents not just the protection, but also the glory of our Savior.  Even as we approach what could be a new era of persecution in our country, if we have faith in those promises, what have we to fear?

 Of all the old hymns we sing, I can’t think of another with as many scriptural references as The Lily of the Valley, over forty if you count them all.  Wouldn’t it be a shame to assign this one to the trash pile just because it doesn’t have modern rhythms or harmonies?  And isn’t it shameful to us if we can’t understand what these lyrics mean?  Jesus should be to us and to our descendants in ages to come “the fairest of ten thousand” to our souls, and God “a wall of fire about” us.

What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also, 1 Cor 14:15.

Dene Ward

He’s the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morningstar,

He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

 Three phrases, three passages, two in the same book.  This will take some explanation.

 The old view says that the Song of Solomon was an allegory of Christ and the church.  Fewer people accept that any longer, and though it may have sparked the original lyrics, I am not certain they were meant in precisely that way.  For one thing, the analogy doesn’t hold up.

 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley, Song of Solomon 2:1.

 My beloved is white and ruddy, The chiefest among ten thousand, Song of Solomon 5:10.

 In the first passage, the shepherdess is talking about herself.  In the second, the shepherdess is speaking about her beloved, the shepherd (or Solomon if you prefer that interpretation of the book).  Those passages are about two different people in the narrative, so how could the poet be following the old interpretation of Christ and the church in the hymn if the analogy does not hold up? 

 Here is the point we are so bad about seeing sometimes:  they are figures of speech.  The lyricist has borrowed various phrases out of the Bible to depict how wonderful Christ is to the believer.  Did you catch the Rose of Sharon reference too?  These are poetic metaphors.  Making literal arguments from figures of speech is something we ridicule our religious neighbors for doing.  Why do we?  Jesus is like a beautiful flower.  He is so fair (as in “Fairest Lord Jesus” too, by the way) we could say he is the fairest among ten thousand. 

 Does that mean number 10,001 is fairer than he is?  Of course not, not any more than the other phrase means he has a stem and petals.  None of these is meant to be taken literally whether you believe in the allegorical version of the Song of Solomon or not.  As it happens, I don’t.  I believe it is in there to show us how to order our romantic marital love.  If that isn’t what it’s about, then God left something awfully important out of the Bible and I don’t believe that for a minute.  He tells us too many times that it contains everything we could possibly need in any circumstance.  And if Paul can talk about the church being the “bride of Christ” why can’t I use these terms for my spiritual “husband?”

 Then we have the “Bright and Morningstar.”  What is that all about?  Balaam prophesied, “There shall come forth a star out of Jacob,” Num 24:17.  Peter tells us, “And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,” 2 Pet 1:19.  The Morningstar, or daystar, was a bright star that appeared just before dawn at certain times of the year, Venus I read in one place, which at other times of the year is the Evening Star.  Jesus is our Morningstar. He appeared before the coming of his kingdom, the “day” Joel speaks of in Joel 2.  He will appear again on the “day” he takes us to our promised rest.  When we accept him in our hearts by our obedience, he “appears” to us individually (and figuratively) on that “day” as we enter his spiritual body.  Take your pick of interpretations and “days.”  Any of them satisfy the metaphor.

 That leaves us with just one more wonderful phrase to cover next time, a promise that should encourage us all.  But for now, dwell on these a little while.  Is Christ that important to you?  Is he that beautiful to you?  Would these figures of speech rise from your lips?  Or are we a little too ignorant of the Word and a lot too embarrassed to say such syrupy words about a Savior who gave up everything for us?

Dene Ward

I have found a friend in Jesus, He’s everything to me,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul;
The Lily of the Valley, in Him alone I see
All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.
In sorrow He’s my comfort, in trouble He’s my stay;
He tells me every care on Him to roll.

• 
  
• Refrain:
  He’s the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,
  He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

He all my grief has taken, and all my sorrows borne;
In temptation He’s my strong and mighty tow’r;
I have all for Him forsaken, and all my idols torn
From my heart and now He keeps me by His pow’r.
Though all the world forsake me, and Satan tempt me sore,
Through Jesus I shall safely reach the goal.

(Refrain)

He’ll never, never leave me, nor yet forsake me here,
While I live by faith and do His blessed will;
A wall of fire about me, I’ve nothing now to fear,
With His manna He my hungry soul shall fill.
Then sweeping up to glory to see His blessed face,
Where rivers of delight shall ever roll.

(Refrain)

 I bet you have sung that song all your life.  It’s one of those old ones that so many sneer at nowadays.  Yet this song does something very few of the new ones can. It contains a different scriptural reference in nearly every line.  Take a minute and look at the song.  Can you find them?  Here is the shame on us—in the days when this song was written, everyone who claimed to be a Christian, even some we would not classify as “New Testament Christians,” could find them all—they knew their scriptures that well--while we sit here at best thinking, “That sounds vaguely familiar.”

 Obviously I don’t have space to go over them all.  Let me do the obvious ones quickly, and then we will spend two more sessions on the rest.

 “I have found a friend in Jesus,” Matt 11:19.

 “All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole,” 1 John 1:7; Acts 9:34.

 “In sorrow he’s my comfort, in trouble he’s my stay;” you will find this sentiment all over the psalms and the prophets, too many to list.

 “He tells me every care on him to roll,” 1 Pet 5:7.

 “He all my griefs has taken and all my sorrows borne,” Isa 53:4.

 “He’s my strong and mighty tower,” Psa 61:3.

 “I have all for him forsaken and all my idols torn from my heart,” Ezek 36:25; Hos 14:3,4.

 “He keeps me by his power,” 1 Pet 1:5.

 “Through Jesus I shall safely reach the goal,” Phil 3:14.

 “He will never never leave me, nor yet forsake me here,” Heb 13:5.

 “While I live by faith” Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:38.

 “Do his blessed will” Matt 7:21.

 “With his manna he my hungry soul shall fill,” nearly two dozen verses from Exodus 16 to John 6 along with Matt 5:6.

 “To see his blessed face,” Rev 22:4.

 Did you catch all those?  I defy you to find more than a few songs written after 1960 that have that many scriptural references in them, unless they repeat one Biblical phrase over and over, or are lifted whole cloth out of the scriptures.  It’s time we learned what those old songs were about before we go throwing them out just because we think them “old” and “archaic” and “boring.”  Maybe they wouldn’t be so difficult to understand if we knew God’s Word like we ought to. 

 And these phrases were just the easy ones, the ones you can probably figure out for yourself with no help.  In the next two days, the two remaining posts on this hymn will begin to get a little more difficult.  While you wait for those, though, spend a little time with the scriptures listed above and ask yourself, “Could I even begin to do the job this poet did?” 

Dene Ward