Teachings that King Solomon attributed to King Lemuel’s mother began by emphasizing the dangers of living a desire-driven life. It is difficult to avoid that in today’s culture with songs, movies, and advertising all pushing the idea of constant and immediate self-satisfaction as the standard of the good life. Buy this, order that, do this, dress for success. If that is not happening, then you are not a happening person; or so they say. “For the wicked boast of the desires of

God has, through the preaching of Jeremiah, established a sustained critique of kings and prophets, a condemnation of authoritarians and charlatans. Now God warns the people themselves about listening to too much TV and reading too many conspiracy theories online. Jeremiah 23:16-17. Thus says the LORD of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they are deluding you. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. They keep

Last week we were introduced to someone we did not know; King Lemuel or Chief Lemuel, probably the leader of a clan outside the Israelites, but still one of the children of Abraham, just not a child of the Isaac–Jacob line that leads to the Israelites. King Solomon collected wisdom sayings, mostly his own, but he also added at the end Lemuel’s mother's teachings. Though not in the Hebrew tradition, wisdom is wisdom, and all wisdom is God’s wisdom. Lemuel’s mother’s first tea

You probably remember this line from the movie The Blues Brothers (1980); “We’re on a mission from God.” Jake and Elwood Blues make this claim to justify their aggressive behavior while they carry out their plan to save a Catholic orphanage. Oddly enough, people seem to believe them. Good comedy, bad theology. Don’t believe what people say just because they claim to have a word from God. Often they don’t. Yet, people are quite gullible. The ‘false prophet dodge’ worked when

The glorious story of Esther comprises the book of Esther which, in the Christian arrangement of Bible books, comes at the end of the Historical books (Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah) and at the beginning of the Writings or more poetic books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs). Therefore, in our series on “Women with a Story to Tell,” it is appropriate to find our next woman with a story to tell in Proverbs. Proverb is the word w

God through Jeremiah has been criticizing the current government of Judah. King Josiah’s sons, and one nephew, one after the other have served themselves, remodeling the capital while misleading the people, enriching themselves through corruption and violence, and playing a losing game of shifting alliances with Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon (reread chapters 21 and 22; especially the central theme in 22:13-17). Now we are ready to read the conclusion of God’s judgment of polit