God and the Nations Introduction
Introduction
All but one of the past several years, our church has spent the six weeks before Easter doing a forty-day faith experiment we call (creative titling not really being our thing) the 40 Days of Faith. It’s our somewhat unique approach to the traditional church season of Lent. You can learn more about the 40 Days of Faith in general, and about the 2009 40 Days of Faith, in Dave Schmelzer’s 40 Days Users’ Manual, which is usually close at hand wherever you might have picked up this guide. What you have in your hands or on your screen is one element of the larger 40 Days experience. These Bible guides are something of a guided tour through a book, story, or (in this year’s case) theme of the Bible. Many of us have found that a joint experience of the Bible brings a certain richness to our prayer lives, thought lives, and conversation as we go through the 40 Days together.
On a side note, over time I’ve discovered that an increasing number of readers are not, in fact, in Boston, during the Lent of 2009, participating in a wider 40 Days experience. I’ve recently heard, for instance, from people in Chicago, New York city, New York state, and Germany who have ended up using previous guides. I’m delighted to know that my thoughts, questions, and suggestions have been of some broader appeal. To those of you tuning in from Germany, Minneapolis, or 2011, welcome, and thanks for bearing with the wrong dates and the occasional Boston-centric references.
Whether you’ve never opened a Bible before in your life or you’ve been reading the Bible ever since you did memory verses as a kid, I’ve written this guide with you in mind. People of both varieties have told me that previous guides have been helpful and interesting, occasionally thought-provoking, and not-too-infrequently relevant to their lives. Hopefully, you’ll find the same to be true of this year’s guide.
This season’s theme: ‘the Nations’
In previous Bible guides, we’ve read a book of the Bible together, or followed the story of a specific Bible character. This time around, we’re doing something a bit different and following a theme through the entire Bible: the theme of ‘the Nations.’
The Nations is the Bible’s way of referring to ‘the rest of the world’ or ‘everyone else.’ Much of the time, the Bible’s setting is surprisingly intimate. In a majority of the Bible, the spotlight is on the doings of a single nation: the Israelites, a small and rather unimportant people group (in ancient geopolitic terms at least) living on a rather tiny piece of land in the Middle East. In fact, much of the time the Bible focuses singularly on God’s dealings with one person or family. And yet, from beginning to end, whenever we start getting comfortable in that cozy setting, the Bible drops a hint—and sometimes more than a hint—that God is up to something much larger, that the story isn’t really just about one person or one nation at all. The Bible widens out its perspective to show us that God’s attention is very much on the Nations—that is, on everyone, everywhere.
In preparing this guide, I read every reference to the Nations in the Bible, and out of the upwards of 750 references, I’ve chosen out forty-two that I think give us a pretty good picture of the story the Bible seems to be telling about the Nations. Of course, given our limited space, I did have to make some difficult decisions about what to include and what not to include. The story being played out among God, Israel, and the Nations is a long and fairly complex one. At different times over the course of the story, the Nations play different parts: an audience watching and commenting on God’s performance; a jury, judging between God and Israel; God’s agents, executing his will (often in punishing Israel); the enemy of God or Israel or both; and seducers, trying to pull Israel away from God. I imagine we’ll get glimpses of each of these roles along the way, but I decided not to give equal weight to all of them. Instead, in my passage selection, I particularly looked for passages that spoke to God’s ultimate intentions toward the Nations. We’ll make our way from the beginning of the Bible to the end, spending about a week along the way in each of the Bible’s major sections:
1. the Old Testament histories (which take us from the creation of the world to before Jesus’ birth);
2. the psalms (the Bible’s prayer book);
3. the prophets (which collect the words of God’s prophetic messengers during the Old Testament period);
4. the gospels (the stories of Jesus’ life);
5. the book of Acts (the experiences of Jesus’ followers shortly after his death);
6. and the New Testament letters (words of guidance written from more experienced Jesus-followers to newly-established churches).
The Daily Bible Guide Format
Each day’s guide is broken into three sections:
1. The Bible passage for the day. We’ll follow our theme in 42 bite-sized portions, meant to be short enough that you can comfortably read them in a single sitting, but long enough that each day is a satisfying stand-alone experience. The passages tend to be between about half a page and about a page-and-a-half long (maybe a little longer, if it’s poetry—but each of the lines is pretty short). For your convenience, I’ve included the Bible text of each day’s story in Today’s New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005). I find it to be a very readable translation, with current vocabulary and a modern sensibility.
2. Points of Interest. This section briefly explores aspects of the day’s passage that might be especially interesting or potentially confusing. It offers some historical notes and references that might help to interpret the story, frames some of the issues or questions presented by the passage, and offers some possibilities as to the passage’s meaning.
3. Taking it home. In this section, I offer some suggestions for how the day’s reading might apply practically to our lives and the lives of the people around us. Much of the time, I’ll propose a way we might want to respond to the passage through prayer; other times, I might propose a little experiment, or a conversation. Each day, we’ll look at the passage from the perspective of three groups of people:
a. For you—we’ll explore how the passage might apply to us and the people closest to us. We’ll discuss implications it has for how we look at ourselves, how we approach our lives, and how our families relates with God;
b. For ‘your six’—think of six people in your life who live locally, who aren’t currently followers of God (but who may be interested in God or exploring issues of faith), and for whom you’d like to see God do good things. What does this passage have to offer to those six friends?
For America—we’ve found that it’s often helpful to consider how the passage might apply beyond just our own social circle. This year, we’ll be thinking about America. As Dave discusses further in the aforementioned Users’ Manual, there’s some evidence that America is in the midst of an interesting time, religiously speaking. We seem to be in the middle of a swift and steady transition from being a largely church-based culture to a largely secular culture. And yet, perhaps that shift away from church affiliation doesn’t necessarily imply a similar decline in interest in spiritual things. What, exactly, does faith look like in a secular culture? Each day, we’ll see if the passage has anything to say about how the nation of America might address that question.