In light of God's promises to provide for our needs and the work He has called us to do, greed is a major affront to His character. Greed is not a problem merely because it feeds sinful behaviors, such as theft and manipulation and occasionally murder, but because of what it says of God. To hold, and especially to act on, greed is to declare that you know what you need and how to get it better than God does. This is a denial of the goodness, the faithfulness, and the knowledge of God, and an idolatrous elevation of self.

God consistently thwarts the will of those who seek their own benefit. As noted in James above, and stated multiple times by Jesus, those who put their stock in earthly treasures and power will have the fullness of their reward in this life, and even that may fall away before their very eyes. When the people complained in Numbers 11 that they wanted the fish of Egypt rather than the miraculous food God Himself had provided for them and them alone, He reminded them of His power by delivering prophesy through the elders before letting the greedy among them die of plague as soon as their mouths touched the meat they sought. When Herod planned to kill Peter in order to gain more favor and power with the Jewish leaders of the day in Acts 12, God miraculously led Peter out of the prison in a way that showcased how little power Herod really had against Him. 

It is more important to God that we have what we need to reflect His glory to the world around us than that we be comfortable or have all that we desire. We must never lose sight that God knows what He is doing, that He is not slack on His promise to provide, and that we can never do better for ourselves than He does. Let us seek after His kingdom and righteousness rather than our desires and greed, and trust that Jesus was serious when He promised that all other needs would be handled.

Today is Michaelmas, apparently, so all of the readings I got for the day had to do with angels, especially Michael. I find it interesting that, in finding verses about Michael, neither source included Jude 9, but I'll be using it anyway. ​While the goal behind the reading for the day was to make the reader ponder Michael, I found myself noticing a different thread running through all of them, due to the nature of how Michael is generally mentioned: the great victory of God.

It is one thing to recognize that God is mighty to save, that He is our rock and our shelter, but we can go beyond that. Our faith in God is not simply that He can do mighty things, or that He can protect us from the trials we face. Our faith in Him ultimately is in the claim that He will be victorious--in fact, that He has already claimed the victory. There is a difference between believing that God is capable of claiming victory, and believing that He will and has claimed victory.

We do not worship an indifferent God, who watches but has no investment in our affairs. We do not worship a fickle God who has power but only occasionally bothers to use it. We do not worship a God who requires that we prove ourselves before He will act on our behalf. His victory is assured, and we are promised to share in it. Nothing we can do will make Him leave or exclude us.

This also frees us from thinking that God needs us to fulfill His victory. He has won, that part is not in dispute, and His victory will be made complete. It is not our strength, or faith, or guile, or service that will determine if God's purposes are fulfilled. Just like "Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you!'" we operate in His victory, under His power, and need not rely on our own (Jude 1:9, NASB).

Ecclesiastes is generally seen as a pretty depressing book, and for good reason. The author takes a grim view of the state of the world, the value of basically anything done in this life, even the way God allows judgement and blessing to flow. The book is legitimately dark and difficult. But I submit that this is not entirely because of the things the author sees, but because they are allowing themselves the limitation of earthly wisdom. Consider the opening of the book, quoted in part above.

Where the author bemoans that there is nothing truly new on the Earth in chapter one, he does so through the lens of verses 8 and 11. The fundamentally unchanging nature of mankind and the world are, from the perspective used by the author, tiring in their repetition and empty in our forgetfulness of them. But is an unchanging nature inherently tiresome and empty? It is, after all, the unchanging nature of God that allows David to boldly proclaim:

It is on God's unchanging nature that both His faithfulness and judgement rely. He makes promises throughout scripture, both for the joy of His people and the condemnation of those who oppose Him, and it is on the solid rock of His nature that these promises stand. Even that which appears as new in scripture, like the awesome grace of God to remove sins from undeserving people in the New Testament, is seen in the very same psalm.

God is merciful and unchanging in his mercy. He made known His lovingkindness and desire to bring fallen man into relationship with Him from the beginning. And in the process, He actually opposes the author of Ecclesiastes. For where it is true that, under earthly wisdom and through earthly means, the essential nature of fallen mankind is unchangeable, God is able to change it. He promises to put a new heart into His people, to inscribe His law into our very being, making us a reborn people with a basic nature built on His righteousness rather than our sin.

The Earth has nothing better to do with stability than to grow bored with it, and forget it only to discover it again. But we can hope and take joy in the stability of God, and in His unwavering promise that we can yet be made new.

The book of Esther largely centers around a very personal series of events that revolve around four people. Because of this, it can be easy to forget just how large of a problem the book actually records. We understand, conceptually, that Haman was trying to wipe out an entire people, but if we never look beyond Mordecai and Esther, we may have trouble remembering that the lives of many thousands, if not more, of people spread across the middle east were on the line. And when we we lose sight of that, we can miss how massive Haman's pride actually is.

Listen, God protects His people, He always has, at least so far as to ensure that there is never a time since Abraham when He was lacking a people. There is a whole lesson that can be drawn about God's faithfulness to Israel from the book of Esther, and it is rightfully drawn frequently; but for right now, consider that there is also a lesson about how deeply God hates selfish pride.

This goes all the way back. In pride, Adam and Eve sought to take for themselves the power to be like God on their own terms, and the world still reverberates with the condemnation of that action. When the people sought to built their own path to God and rise up to the heavens under their own power, they were struck and scattered and cursed to never fully understand each other. In the end, those who were too proud to recognize their need of Christ will be laid low for all eternity. God is serious about breaking our pride. Paul recognized this when he said:

We may think that pride is a personal matter, a problem that should be handled, sure, but is ultimately between us and God. It's not like one of those other sins, like murder or theft, that hurt people, after all. But Haman's blood testifies against us on this delusion. Haman's pride caused him to grow so hateful toward Mordecai that he sought to eradicate an entire race of people. The folly of his pride was shown when it was turned around on him, when it forced him to show Mordecai an honor that he coveted for himself. His pride drove him to not only build a gallows for a man who had done him no wrong, but to build it fifty cubits high, so everyone could see the glory of his victory over the man who stood at the gate of the king; and it was his pride that hung him there in disgrace, instead.

Oh, let us never forget the lesson from Haman about our pride. God will not tolerate it, and the higher we strive to be, the lower He will surely bring us down. Like Jesus, who laid aside His great riches and glory to save a world that did not deserve Him, let us ever esteem others over ourselves and seek to glorify the God who works in us rather than ourselves.

Oh, the deep joy we draw from Romans 8:28. Well, the first part, anyway. "All things work together for good for those who love God," we will repeat, through every hardship and every period of confusion. We invoke these words as an absolute statement, but it isn't even a complete thought. How often we leave off not only the end of that sentence, but the description given after about what that good actually is!

A whole post could be written just on what is meant by "called according His purpose," but let's focus on defining the good being promised. What do we think the good promised to us is? I was told once that there was concern that I was not on the path God actually had for me, because the speaker expected it would be a good bit easier for me if I was. "We walk in the steps of martyrs," I replied, "what ease are you expecting?" When we hear that God has good for us, do we think it will be wealth or comfort or ease? But the proverb says:

The author has a minimum, which is basically just that God meet their basic needs, but note where the priority lies. Asking for good things, for basic needs and freedom from deception, are not ends in themselves; if they were, there would be no cap on them. The focus is on glorifying God. The author is calling out to God to give enough that they can glorify God, but not so much that they fail to give God the proper glory. The ultimate good being requested isn't the material goods or even the freedom from deception, but the glory of God. And how many of the Psalms have the same message?

The whole psalm, David is crying out for salvation from enemies, for help in his time of need, but at the end he clarifies that this isn't just something he's asking for his own comfort. The desire behind asking for deliverance is that God's glory would be shown in how He handles the situation.

The good promised by God, like that sought after by the writers of Proverbs and Psalms, is to glorify God. And we most glorify Him when we can reflect Him to the world around us. The good God promises is that we will grow, and develop more and more in our walk with Christ, that we will enter into glory in the end. But this is a painful promise to fulfill. Paul, the man through whom God delivered this promise, could also honestly state that:

Paul not only endures, but praises, the trials God has brought Him through. Not because going through these things shows him to be a better Christian or a more devout follower. Paul is not praising the pains he has endured or his ability to endure it. He is praising the God who has brought him through it and taking joy in the way God has used these pains to conform him ever more to the image of Christ. Do we think any good greater than the glory of God? Do we think our growth must be easier than it is for other Christians?