Lectionary Commentaries for October 13, 2024
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

The first thing to say about this text, and hopefully not the last thing to say, is that there’s pretty much nothing we can do but manage it.¹

Mark’s is a relentless Gospel, which seems not so much to invite to faith as to prove again and again the impossibility of faith. A few times, that pattern is broken—we will all be really relieved to meet the blind man Bartimaeus in a few weeks’ time. But today’s pericope is killer. So we have to manage it.

Some time-honored strategies of management:

• The rich young man didn’t actually keep the law, so that business about giving up his possessions was just a way of calling his bluff.
• Nobody can actually keep the law, hence nobody can give up everything either; it’s just a rhetorical device to call our bluff, and once we grasp that, we’re off the hook.
• Giving up everything was a command to this particular rich young man, but only to him. It makes no claim on anyone else, being but an object lesson on acquisitiveness.
• It was a real command, but it applies only to the rich. All of us can think of someone richer, so by contrast we don’t qualify.
• Then again, the disciples infer just the opposite: everyone is rich (presumably because even the poor can think of someone poorer). Luckily, Jesus gives us the ultimate divine out: we can’t do it, but God can. Whew. Off to the mall.
• Or if we’re still in the game at this point in the story, we can point to our paltry efforts at discipleship like Peter did, at which point we get rewarded with a hundredfold of everything. As long as we somehow “give up” everything we’ve got (preferably in our hearts—you know, like, detachment from material things as an act of spiritual self-will), we’ll get something better in return. Invest a penny, earn a pound. Even those unnerving “persecutions” will lend us martyr/rock-star status. It’s a brilliant act of hermeneutical contortion to get Jesus to sound like a prosperity preacher.

It’s easy to criticize and dismiss these management strategies, but seriously, what else are you going to do? I found myself ruminating on this passage while walking through downtown Chicago. I passed by a beggar (maybe Bartimaeus, if not actually Jesus) and didn’t give him a dime, but I did reflect deeply on (1) my salutary Christian guilt over it and (2) every poverty activist who ever told me not to hand out cash to people on the street. Well managed, O Christian.

In some cases, texts like this one have inspired not management but amazing efforts to obey, like in the case of St. Anthony heading out into the desert. Such efforts have also produced amazing unintended side effects.

In the days of yore, some monastic orders would try to keep the price of their goods below that of other local producers so as not to earn a sinful profit. The result was destroying everyone else’s business, since consumers naturally preferred the monastery’s cheaper goods. (Contemporary monastic produce is very expensive, especially the beer, so they’ve apparently learned that lesson.)

Or as Peter Brown details in his aptly named Through the Eye of a Needle, pious, wealthy Christians of the early church wished to launder their gains, ill-gotten or otherwise, by making huge donations to the church. Net result: an insanely wealthy church, with all the problems attendant thereon.

Who can argue with Jesus on this one? We know he’s right about the law and about the wealth. It’s the double-bind of our Christian formation: this lesson is so deeply internalized that it’s nearly impossible to hear it for the chasm in our lives of faith that it is.

What an odd advantage that rich young man had: being an attentive, devout, open-hearted keeper of a law that was intended to shield and uphold life, yet still ready to learn more from the Master. If only we were as ready and listened as well as he! He’s the only person in the entire Gospel of Mark singled out as being loved by Jesus. (In fact, the only other three uses of “love” in this Gospel appear in chapter 12, where Jesus quotes Leviticus and Deuteronomy in his summation of the law.)

And this one dearly, uniquely loved person just walks away, “disheartened” and “sorrowful.” How terribly shocking to discover that, after all, you love your stuff more than you love eternal life. Mark seems to pause here in his relentless challenge to give a nod toward the tragedy that is the human being.

Is there any way to hear this text, and preach it, without management? Is there any way to resist the temptation to say, publicly or silently, “But Jesus doesn’t really mean that we should sell everything …”? Probably the only hope is to leave it as open-ended as Mark does.

We have no idea what became of the rich young man. He simply vanished from the scene. Maybe he got more tight-fisted as he aged. Maybe he even gave up trying to keep the law since it was all rendered useless in the face of his greed. Or maybe he was in the crowd at the foot of the cross, or a hearer on the day of Pentecost; maybe he became an unsung evangelist.

We have no more idea what happened to him than to the women who fled in “trembling and astonishment” from the empty tomb. And yet—those women must have told somebody, finally, or we wouldn’t know about them at all. That ending is Mark’s invitation to us to confess despite fear, as the women ultimately did. In the same way, the unresolved ending of the rich young man may invite us all to obedience yet unknown.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website October 14, 2018.

In a course on the prophets, a professor of mine once commented that any time he did a Bible study on Amos, about half the people didn’t show back up after the first session. And it’s little wonder why. This is a prophet¹ who speaks very directly with little to no filter regarding the social injustice he observes in Israel, and of the impact it will have on the survival of the nation.

For instance, to expose the excesses of the haves at the expense of the have-nots, Amos has no problem referring to certain individuals as “cows of Bashan” (4:1). To highlight the stark disconnect between ritual worship and the way that far too many people are actually treated in society, Amos declares that God hates Israel’s (religious) festivals, assemblies, offerings, and songs (5:21–23).² Yes, it can be quite uncomfortable to hear Amos, particularly when we realize that his indictments against ancient Israel have biting applicability to us moderns.

Amos is no more buffered when he speaks to the results of people neither embodying righteous principles among one another nor upholding justice when unrighteous behavior is called into question. In a word, the result is death. This grim forecast is the cloud that hangs over chapter 5.³

Most translations lead the reader to see chapter 5, at least in part, as a lament. While there are certainly elements of lament in the chapter, the term misleadingly brings to mind the lament genre of the Psalms, most of which end on rather resounding notes of hope.⁴ Gowan rightly gives the beginning of chapter 5, however, the heading “funeral song” since the Hebrew word rendered “lament” by the New International Version and “lamentation” by the New Revised Standard Version (5:1) is qina, which points not to the classic lament genre but rather to a funeral dirge.⁵

In Amos 5:2, the dirge likens Israel to a virgin⁶ who has died. This alone is a great tragedy, for to die childless is to have no memory preserved and thus to suffer ultimate oblivion in death. Worse still, this childless one who dies is “forsaken on her land,” probably indicating a lack of burial.⁷ So the outlook presented for Israel is about as shocking and grief-inspiring as it could get—akin to a childless person dying and left without so much as a burial. It is not a pretty picture, but it is important to note the tone this sets for the chapter in which we find our pericope.

Amos wants to be unequivocal and unmistakable regarding the road he sees Israel heading down and where it will lead. It’s no time for polite language when you see someone about to blindly walk off a cliff. While the danger of the impending cliff is a major focus of much of Amos’s messaging, there is also a hint of the possibility, if not to avoid, at least to be able to survive the fall off the cliff. There are two key aspects to this possibility.

Although Amos is convinced that God’s judgment is coming against Israel, he seems also convinced that judgment does not fully define who God is, particularly in relation to God’s people. Today’s passage ends with Amos saying, “It may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.” This is no “get out of jail free” card. It is only a possibility of God being gracious, and it would only be to a remnant (in other words, after nearly everyone has gone over the cliff). Nevertheless, Amos’s words indicate that our behavior can never be so bad as to completely snuff out God’s mercy and grace.⁸ Furthermore, there is no death from which God is unable to bring life.

Nevertheless, our behavior is important and does have consequences, for it is egregiously unrighteous behavior among the Israelites that led them to the precipice in the first place. In calling for righteousness and justice, Amos is calling for action. These are not academic ideas. They are unmistakable principles that should guide, direct, and govern a people’s behavior—not for the sake of following rules, but so that a people might have life.⁹

Indeed, in this handful of verses, Amos twice (verses 6 and 14) urges the Israelites in the direction of life. To be clear, for the Hebrew mindset having life means much more than just having a pulse. Having life means holistic prosperity and wellness—things that many are being robbed of by the unrighteous behavior of the elite.

Regarding Amos’s call to action, to repentance—a change of direction, you might say—note the active imperatives: “seek the LORD” (verse 6), “seek good” (verse 14), “hate evil, love good, establish justice” (verse 15). Worship and ritual are by no means bad things. But if they don’t produce the fruits of at least an attempt toward righteous behavior, then why bother? God doesn’t hate worship—God hates empty, meaningless worship that just goes through the motions and has no impact on a person’s life. Thus, the urgings to hate evil and love good in verse 15 are not just about feelings; they are about active dispositions that result in righteous behavior.

It would appear to be too late for those to whom Amos speaks: “The end has come upon my people Israel” (8:2). So why mention the possibility of God’s graciousness? Why encourage anyone to “seek the LORD, seek good, establish justice”? Perhaps it is because, as a colleague of mine has commented, “God plays the long game.” God’s long-range plan and intention for humanity will not be thwarted by humanity’s failings. God can bring forth new beginnings where all we see are endings. Perhaps a remnant will heed the words of Amos. Perhaps a people many millennia later will read these ancient words and see the cliff a little sooner than their ancient forebears. It may be that the Lor, the God of hosts, will be gracious to a remnant.

Notes

1. Although Amos shuns identification with this term: see Amos 7:14.
2. However, as correctly noted by many commentators, Amos here does not condemn the practice of ritual or worship, but only that which does not produce behavior worthy of God’s chosen people.
3. Donald E. Gowan, “The Book of Amos: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. 7 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 385.
4. A noteworthy exception is Psalm 88.
5. Gowan, “Book of Amos,” 385.
6. New International Version; Hebrew betulah
7. Gowan, “Book of Amos,” 386.
8. See also Exodus 34:6; Psalm 86:15; 103:8.
9. Or as the book of Deuteronomy often puts it, “so that it may go well for you in the land which the LORD your God is giving to you.”

This is the second of four lections from Job. We saw in Job 1–2 that Job is blameless, and that God prompted the satan to do terrible things to him. These remarks on Job 23 build on my comments on the previous lection, which address the book’s theologically challenging first scenes.

Job 23 in context

The first two chapters of Job tell the story that sets the stage for everything that follows. After that, the book shifts to an extended poetic deliberation over the nature of God and divine (in)justice, as Job grapples with undeserved suffering and a silent God, especially as his friends increasingly blame Job for what has befallen him.

I often hear Eliphaz and company referred to as Job’s “so-called friends,” but this gives us a certain self-congratulatory ease. These men are his friends. They come to be with him in his grief; they weep, they mourn alongside him, and they know how to sit in silence with him because his suffering is so terrible (2:11–13). But they’re human, and the more Job insists he did nothing wrong (and he didn’t), the more they each dig into their positions and react with blame. The argument escalates.

We might feel, when we read this poignant book, that we identify with Job. And we may, but leaving it at that is a bit too comfortable. We’re also the friends.

Much of the book of Job consists of three cycles of poetic speeches between Job and his friends, with Job responding to each friend in turn—Eliphaz/Job, Bildad/Job, Zophar/Job; another such cycle; and the beginning of a third. The current lection is part of Job’s response to Eliphaz at the beginning of that third cycle. (The pattern breaks down soon after.)

This means that we’re catching Job deep into an escalating argument. Eliphaz has just accused Job of awful things. All his friends are confident that he’s to blame.¹ Job now laments that he can’t take God to court to prove his innocence.

Taking God to court

Verses 3–7 are full of legal language. Job wishes he could find God, because if he could, “I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments” (23:4).² He wants to be vindicated, “acquitted forever by my judge” (23:7). This picks up on a theme throughout Job’s earlier speeches: that he wishes he could meet God at trial (9:32), that he wants to argue his case with God (13:3).

This court theme is provocative in two ways. First, it shows that Job shares a core premise of his friends’ arguments, and it’s a premise with which many of us are likely uncomfortable—though we may inadvertently buy into it sometimes. Even from the gentle start of Eliphaz’s first speech (4:1–9), we see the assumption that suffering indicates wrongdoing on the part of the sufferer. Job doesn’t actually contradict this. He agrees on principle that suffering befalls the unrighteous (as in his final speech, 31:3–4).

In wanting to take God to court to argue his case and be “acquitted,” he’s agreeing that the suffering God inflicted upon him is an implicit statement that he’s guilty. He just knows that he’s innocent, and that in his particular case there has been a miscarriage of justice. (There has.) Even as he has moments of self-doubt throughout the book, he continually comes back to this—he knows in his bones that he’s not guilty, despite how his suffering makes it look (to them). Recognizing that Job shares that core premise with his friends is valuable because it helps us see how Job is grappling with divine injustice, not arguing a theological point.

The fact that Job shares his friends’ sense of the general principle also matters because there’s a line of Christian interpretation claiming that Job has a “new” outlook that counters the friends’ “traditional” theology. This smacks of supersessionist tendencies (even though the story takes place outside of Israel and none of the characters are Israelite). But the book of Job doesn’t show “new” theology versus “old”; it shows a multifaceted ancient Jewish reflection on the problem of divine injustice, to which no neat answer is provided.

The association between suffering and sin is problematic wherever it appears—in the Bible, and in various forms in modern religious discourse, including in Christianity. If we object to the association, then instead of pinning it on the “old” or on others’ views (which can be easier to critique than our own), we can learn something from how the book of Job continually calls into question different ideas about suffering and attitudes of people toward those suffering. We can recognize our discomfort and let that prompt us to question our own assumptions and to consider how we respond to people who are suffering.

The second way in which the court theme is provocative is that it’s a repeated callback to the opening of the book. Job’s suffering all began with the meetings of the heavenly court in which God, as judge, prodded the divine prosecutor, the satan, to go after Job. On one level, wanting desperately to take God to court is a powerful expression of grappling with divine injustice. But on another level, Job’s hope to find justice by taking God to court serves as a painful reminder that his suffering began with God’s miscarriage of justice in the heavenly court.

The twin dangers of the absence and presence of God

Verses 8–9 comprise one of Job’s many laments about the inaccessibility of God. There are intriguing correspondences between parts of Job 23 and Psalm 139. But while the poet of Psalm 139 can’t flee from the presence of God because God is in each place, Job laments that he could search every place and never find God.

Job goes on to reaffirm that he hasn’t strayed from God’s commands and has treasured God’s words in his heart—but that God is going to do whatever God wants anyway (23:10–14); “Therefore I am terrified at his presence; when I consider, I am in dread of him” (23:15).

The lectionary skips verses 10–15. As we saw in Job 1, the lectionary has omitted the part that doesn’t sit comfortably with some modern Christian theological emphases. It’s fair to choose one’s emphases, but it’s important to be aware that the lectionary doesn’t simply condense texts; it presents an interpretation by excising certain types of material. One type is material that clearly contextualizes the scripture within ancient Israel or Judaism (the way the lectionary cuts the final two verses of Psalm 51, even when including all the rest). Another type is what we see here and in Job 1: passages that show the diversity of biblical views of God’s nature.

The lection skips to 23:16, where Job repeats that God has terrified him. Moving directly from the inaccessibility of God in verse 9 to Job’s fear in verse 16, we could imagine—or even assume—that Job fears God’s absence. But those verses in between are blunt: Job laments that although he has been faithful, God is going to do whatever he wants regardless—“therefore I am terrified at his presence” (23:15). Job is in a bind. The only thing as terrible as God’s absence is God’s presence.

In the first Job lection, we saw that Job has good reason to fear. In the next, we’ll see what happens when God does finally respond, as the book of Job continues its poignant exploration of questions of divine injustice.

Notes

1. The friends’ views and arguments differ from one another. On this, and for those wanting a brief, excellent treatment of the book overall, see Stuart Weeks, An Introduction to the Study of Wisdom Literature (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 49–70.
2. All biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition unless otherwise indicated.

If, on occasion, the Revised Common Lectionary may be said to do the interpreter no favors in its delineation of the boundaries of a text, the reading before us from Psalm 90 surely presents such an instance.¹

Reading only from verse 12 onward, it is difficult to avoid the impression of a congregation seeking to wheedle as many good things as they can think of out of God, in an almost childlike, “praying for candy” tone. Were it not for the anomalous “So” that begins verse 12 and the hints of some darker reality lurking in the background found in the “Turn, O LORD! How long?” of verse 13 and the “as many days as you have afflicted us” of verse 15, the interpreter might be led to think this a fairly uninteresting piece.

The conjunctive force of that “So” turns the reader’s attention to the preceding verses of the psalm by framing the petitions of the selected reading as the result of what has gone before. When the entire psalm is considered, the hints of darkness acquire substance, and the petitions may be seen and understood more fully in context. Thus, the interpreter, at minimum, should attend to the whole psalm, if it is not possible to read the entirety in worship.

Taken as a whole, Psalm 90 presents a sequence of three observations or contentions, followed by a set of petitions deriving from them. The three observations, in brief, are as follows:

• God is eternal, and God’s reign extends beyond even the lifespan of the creation. God’s role as the “dwelling place” of God’s people is similarly without end (verses 1–2).
• Human lives, by contrast, and even the longest spans of time that human beings can contemplate (“a thousand years”), are, by comparison, ephemeral. All return to the dust within what doesn’t even amount to the blink of an eye in God’s frame of reference (verses 3–6).
• Even the oh-so-brief span of a human life, 70 or perhaps 80 years at best, is beset with constant toil and suffering, and this toil and suffering is the expression of God’s judgment and wrath against human sin. The best that can be hoped for is that knowledge of the brevity of human existence will somehow grant wisdom (verses 7–12).

The weight and meaning of the petitions in verses 13–17 are now much clearer. The cry “Turn, O LORD!” is a plea that God might turn away from the judgment and wrath that have long shaped human existence and toward compassion and mercy for his covenant people.

The question “How long?” reflects the conviction that, in the grander scope of God’s eternal sovereignty, the era of his wrath and therefore of human misery and toil is only of limited duration. When the psalmist prays that the years of gladness will be as many as the years of affliction, that prayer represents nothing less than a call for a change of era, a new dispensation in God’s dealings with the people.

In this context, the final petition of the psalm, that God might prosper the work of the people’s hands, is no longer a mere request for prosperity but rather a request that in the new era, it may be the work of God’s servants—and, through them, the work of God himself—that is the sign of the times, replacing the sins of God’s servants and their suffering under his wrath.

Understanding the logic of the full psalm allows for richer and more responsible exposition of the text. The interpreter could explore the phenomenon of prayers for God’s mercy and steadfast love that arise from a location of suffering and finitude, reflecting on the theological convictions that must be in place for such prayers to be meaningful. Such reflection might encompass not only the eternity and sovereignty of God, as highlighted in this psalm, but also the enduring mercy and forgiveness that are extolled elsewhere in both the Old and New Testaments.

In particular, some congregations may be receptive to an exposition that looks at the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate and decisive “turn” from judgment to compassion. There is ample testimony in the Bible and in the teaching of the church that Jesus’ life on earth represented the turning point between eras, and that the crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah made a decisive difference in the calculus of God’s wrath and God’s forgiveness.

The preacher must, however, be careful not to imply that these two characteristics are mutually exclusive, or that either is entirely absent from the character and activity of God, before or after the Incarnation. To do so would be to introduce a far more grave distortion of the psalm’s meaning than that brought about by omitting the first 11 verses!

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website October 11, 2015.

The preacher of Hebrews, whose focus is on God’s salvation history, includes 21st-century Christian believers in an unbroken line of Israelites as one pilgrim people whose wilderness experiences are like all the vicissitudes of believers. As God appeared to and sustained Israelites in their wilderness struggles and pilgrimage, he will indeed manifest his godliness to us who have faith in him. God, who is the author of the “Sabbath,” invites eschatological believers to have a time of rest, or sabbatizing—a period to desist from all forms of labor. 

Indeed, Sabbath rest is both an experience of salvation and a divine season to be formed, shaped, awakened to, and transformed by the wisdom of God. Regardless of the pressures of this world, the Sabbath rest is legalized by God, and it remains available to all who have been called by God. As a symbol or metaphor for salvation, Sabbath rest involves hearing from God, whose word is “living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (verse 12). 

From a Global South Christian perspective, Sabbath rest summons believers into a deeper understanding and living out of what it entails to be a true believer in God. First, all who believe in God, in the gospel, and in the power of the Holy Spirit are assured in knowing that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ provided them with salvation as a gift. The only requirement and “work” one must do is to have faith in Jesus Christ and an unwavering trust in God. Hence, disobedience and self-pride may lead to a forfeiting of one’s eternal life with God. 

Second, resting leads to a deep sense of humility, thanksgiving, and obedience in all that God has done, is doing, and will do in the future. In a humble caution, the Hebrews sermon summons all believers to know that God is an all-seeing One, whose divinity observes all that humans do on the earth. Hence, God’s voice is as active as it has always been, and will continue to bear fruits for the benefit of all believers. 

In other words, the preacher of Hebrews emphasizes that God is the source of all things and that his Word, or Scripture, is living and has the power to penetrate and expose human inner thoughts. God has the power to search, judge, test, and condemn, and as such, hearers of the Word should be doers of God’s words in the world. Christians as creatures of habit can act in ways not open to the physical eye and ear, but Hebrews informs us that there is no way humanity can cover up its sins or disobedience from God. Pretense, performance, and trickery are skill sets of the self-pride of humanity, but God in his own time will expose all for the world to see. 

The inspired words of the Hebrews preacher are echoed in all Gospels, especially in Mark 12:28–31, where Jesus says: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (see also Luke 10:27; Matthew 22:36–40).

In simple but poignant words, God’s wisdom allows all human beings to see their true nature. Hence, confession is the heart of all who fear and love God, for in our words, God forgives, renews, molds, shapes, and restores us to our creaturely status. The comforting message in the Hebrews sermon is that our relationship with God is one of both belief and faith. These two are the balancing spiritual practices that keep us centered on God and shape our being and discipleship in this world. 

With Jesus Christ as the center and our redeemer, the preacher returns to the main theme, which was left in verse 3, pointing us to the pastoral and priestly experiences of Jesus in his humanity, for he went through the pain, grief, suffering, and fears of this world, so believers have an empathizer. The human Jesus, who did not sin but was tempted and tried in every way, is able to bear with us in our weaknesses, and by his grace, we will also be victors in all ways. Hence, the invitation is to all who believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

In an inclusive gospel call we are invited by the preacher, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence” (Hebrews 4:15–16). Individually and as a community, we are invited to approach God whenever, wherever, and at any cost, with the assurance that God is near to us, inside of us, and ready to respond to all our prayer requests. 

Yes, Jesus the human brother and sibling, the divine Son of God, is touched by the feelings and experiences of our pain, suffering, and sorrow. Regardless of the intensity of our pain, struggles, fears, and sufferings, we should not yield to the voices of negativity or shrink in shame, but always know that our high priest, Jesus Christ, is our victor. For in times of challenge, Christians succumb to fears that God is not present with us, but the preacher of Hebrews reminds us that God is never a distant power, absent from human pain. 

Instead, God always cares deeply, so much that he graciously condescends deep into our innermost humanity and pulls us into greater heights of heaven. Christ was tempted for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness, but he did not yield to any of the devil’s pressures, and Christians should not yield, even if it means death. Temptations, trials, persecutions, and sufferings are part of one’s Christian faith and journey, but temptations leave us much stronger in faith and in spirit. 

The preacher’s exhortation is meant for all Christians in every age, and our lips should confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In our faith journeys, each one of us stands to give an account to God on Judgment Day, and the account may involve our testimonies for both the pains and joys of earthly living. Hence, confession is balm for the soul, and acknowledging our shortfalls is not a sign of weakness but an acknowledgment of our vulnerability. It is only Jesus Christ, by his grace, love, and blood, who covers our human sins and weaknesses. 

Like Joshua, who led the children of Israel into the promised land after Moses’ death, Jesus is our true high priest who entered the heavenly sanctuary on behalf of all believers and will at his second coming lead us into God’s heavenly sanctuary. The present tense of the exhortation in “Let us …” means that the throne of God is always available to welcome us and afford us mercy and dwelling in God’s grace, to assist us in times of need (verse 16). 

At the end of it all, and when all is said and done, the preacher of Hebrews reiterates the truth of the faithfulness of God as Emmanuel, God with us and for us. In him we live, move, and have our being (Acts 17:28). The “drawing near” in verse 16 signals that believers have a bold right to enter the presence of God, made possible by the blood of Jesus, who dispenses gifts of grace from God.