Yesterday morning's newscasts were all ablaze over Miley Cyrus' MTV Awards performance last night. Funny, because I couldn't help but wonder what made her performance different to these newscasters from Howard Stern's bare-cheeked "fart man" fly-in of 1992 and Lady Gaga's bloody bikini clad performance of Papparazi in 2009 (to name just a few I'm sure). I remembered back to the very early 1980s when MTV first aired and we were new homeschoolers; we parents were frightened about what it would do to our children, some forbade kids watching it (only to have them watch it elsewhere, you know how it all goes). I saw it then as I see it now. The difference is the visuals. You see, previous generations listened to music that was lyrically charged about drug, sex and social issues, but we weren't certain that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about LSD or Hotel California about Satanism - there were many discussions, but no one knew for certain the lyrical intent. Music brought to life issues, debates, value challenges, but left a whole heckuvalot to one's own interpretation. Not so since MTV began showing us what the songs mean. Music is no longer subjective. It's a video producer's marketing tool and, every year as the envelope is pushed by these MTV awards, their message is getting clearer and clearer : You are an animal. Act like one. And don't tell parents, Howard Dean as you did on Morning Joe this morning, to sit down and tell your children it's wrong - we do! but, in this technological age and, unless we want to shun society, we can no longer protect our children (or now grandchildren) from the digital onslaught. For example, not too long ago, I watched in sorrow Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines video (also one of Miley's numbers) on the big screen of an outdoor bar patio that faced the mall where families congregated in full view of the titillating screen. And cell phones are allowed in school classes now - teachers say recess now consists of isolated kids sitting in groups, not conversing, but checking out their cell phones. And I don't think they're using the calculator app. So what is the answer and just why am I posting anything on this at all? Dr. Nancy Snyderman on Morning Joe said, "a psychiatrist should have been meeting her [Miley Cyrus] offstage and saying, 'Cookie, we're taking you out of public for about six months.'" Well, that's one solution. But I think my mom had a better one many many years ago when she wrote an editorial for the North Bay Nugget entitled, "Will the Real Church Please Stand Up?" You see, we are not animals. We are made in the image of God whether we acknowledge Him or not. Dr. Snyderman called Cyrus' act "amoral". But without a compass, we are just that - amoral. And Miley, there is a God who is calling you to true north - I pray someone will love you enough to tell you the truth and lead you out of the thicket that entangles you. In my opinion, the answer is not going to be legislated content, which seems the likely solution, but a return to that internal compass. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says "God has set eternity in our hearts" and it pulls just like a magnet. Like President John Adams wisely stated in 1798, "While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." So if we've lost that moral compass, lost our religion, is it any surprise we are degrading to beastlike behavior? Romans 1:18-32 makes very clear that the end result of sin is death. Death of the individual, death of the corporate, death of our society. Hannah Montana's progression to Miley Cyrus depicts the journey from dignity to beast perfectly. In fact, I could not have come up with a better visual than Cyrus' siren call to today's youth to accompany my previous post "O Wretched Man That I Am?" Sin is my problem. Sin is your problem. Sin is our problem. A little bit leavens a whole lump - whether that lump be society or within the church. And that is the difference the newscasters saw. Sin in all its glory permeating their lump. I pray it shakes them up. I pray it shakes up the church. It's shaking me up. Read the words to Blurred Lines and listen to the desperate battle for the hearts and minds of mankind. The good news is that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save, to turn hard hearts into feeling hearts and conform me (you) into his image again.
"You are the salt of the earth but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill." Matt. 5:13-17
The other morning, mom asked me to read Romans 6 & 7 and give her my thoughts on it. The debate we have been having, which I am sure so many of you have, is, if sin is no longer accounted to us as believers, can we continue to sin? It's a tough argument because if you answer, "No! you can't go on sinning," then you're confronted with, "well, you sin every day, like when you tell that little white lie" or "you're telling me you always faith?" - "well, no" - "then whatsoever is not of faith is sin, so you sin all the time." Or the piercing accusation, "Well, you're like the Pharisees then, self-righteous." Ouch. How does one answer challenging questions like that? We've always settled it with Paul's battle in Rom. 7:15, "For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do," deciding that this is the conclusion Paul came to "It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me" [7:20].
What mom didn't know is that the night before I had read the prologue to the book I told you about: Jerusalem by Simone Sebag Montefiore vividly describing the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. My heart cried and my eyes shed more than a few tears, seriously. I was horrified by the depravity of men. Let me share just a bit with you [beware if you are reading this to children].
"Around the walls, there were gruesome scenes that must have resembled hell on earth. Thousands of bodies putrefied in the sun. The stench was unbearable. Packs of dogs and jackals feasted on human flesh. In the preceding months, Titus had ordered all prisoners or defectors to be crucified. Five hundred Jews were crucified each day.... Titus' soldiers amused themselves by nailing their victims splayed and spread-eagled in absurd positions."
or this,
"So desperate were many Jerusalemites....they swallowed their coins, to conceal their treasure, which they hoped to retrieve when they were safely clear of the Romans.... As their bellies exploded, the soldiers discovered their reeking intestinal treasure troves, so they started to gut all prisoners, eviscerating them and searching their intestines while they were still alive."
"Armed gangs prowled for food.... Even the fighters started to run out of food, so they too probed and dissected the quick and the dead, for gold, for crumbs, for mere seeds....They ate cow dung, leather, girdles, shoes, and old hay. A rich woman named Mary, having lost all her money and food, became so demented that she killed her own son and roasted him, eating half and saving the rest for later."
"Josephus, the eyewitness, said 'No other city did ever allow such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, since the beginning of the world.'"
Wow. Men were horrible then.
Men were horrible during the Holocaust. You can read women Holocaust survivors' accounts at Holocaust Research Project. Here is an excerpt:
"A policeman told me to undress and pushed me to the edge of the pit where another group was waiting for its fate. But before the shooting started, I driven by terror, fell into the pit. I fell on dead bodies. At first, I could not understand anything: Where was I? How did I get there?” I thought I had gone mad. But when people started falling on me, I came to my senses and understood everything. I started checking my arms, legs, abdomen, head, it turned out I was not even wounded. I pretended to be dead. Under me and above me there lay the killed and wounded. Some of them breathed, others moaned. Suddenly I heard a child cry, “Mommy!” It seemed like it was my little daughter. I burst into tears. The execution went on, and people kept falling, I was pushing corpses away in fear of being buried alive. But I did this in a way so that the policemen would not notice."
"Ukraine had a history of free peasant farming. This fierce spirit of independence continued even after Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union. But in 1928 Stalin began his program of collectivizing Ukrainian agriculture. The author describes how city-dwelling Communists, who had virtually no knowledge of agriculture and exhibited utter contempt for farmers, took over rural villages and began to enforce collectivization on the hostile populace. In the process, the deeply religious Ukrainians witnessed their churches torn down or turned into Communist Party offices, priests murdered, and religious objects, such as crosses confiscated.
In 1930, Stalin announced a stepped-up campaign of collectivization and declared that all 'kulaks' (so-called rich farmers, often paupers by comparison with American farmers) were to be liquidated “as a social class.”
The Stalin regime confiscated the entire 1932 crop inculding even the seed grain... Faced with starvation, the villagers tried everything possible to save themselves and their families. Some of them started eating dogs and cats. Others went hunting for birds: crows, magpies, swallows, sparrows, storks, and even nightingales. One could see starving villagers searching in the bushes along the river for birds’ nests or looking for crabs and other small crustaceans in the water. Even their hard shells, though not edible, were cooked and the broth consumed as nourishment. One could see crowds of famished villagers combing the woods in search of roots or mushrooms and berries. Some tried to catch small forest animals.
Driven by hunger, people ate everything and anything: even food that had already rotted - potatoes, beets, and other root vegetables that pigs normally refused to eat. They even ate weeds, the leaves and bark of trees, insects, frogs and snails. Nor did they shy away from eating the meat of diseased horses and cattle. Often that meat was already decaying and those who ate it died of food poisoning. By 1933 there were numerous incidents of cannibalism, and this despite the fact that the 1932 Fall harvest had been a good one.
The Soviet-created famine in Ukraine was apparently intended to break the independent spirit of the Ukrainians once and for all."
Now I realize that these are radical examples of depravity and I'll be posting my thoughts on that later, but reading Montefiore's account the night before reading Romans 6 and 7 made me theorize I'd been reading these two chapters wrong. Maybe you will disagree. Feel free to comment - I'd like to hear them!
I pictured myself listening to Paul who had been Saul. Listening when early believers heard his supposed tale of conversion. Seeing leary eyes look his way, wondering if this was a trick, where he derived such knowledge so quickly. Questioning whether he had seen the risen Christ.
Remember Paul was a fervent Jew. Remember that Gentiles were outside God’s covenant of the law. Remember that Paul, the fervent Jew, who persecuted Christ and his followers, suddenly understood the Gospel of Grace. It was as if a light suddenly went on his head. (It did! Literally, read about his conversion here.) Remember how reluctant Christians were to welcome Paul into their homes. In light of all this, imagine the questions thrown at Paul as he begins with his summarizing statement in Romans 1:16-17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to EVERYONE that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For THEREIN is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’” [Habakkuk 2:4]
From then on, like Ricky Ricardo, Paul is saying to this totally confused crowd, “let me ‘splain!”
He goes on in Romans 1:18-32 to show the natural progression of sin, and it gets so ugly, that by the time Romans 2:3 comes along, another fleshly sin is arising, one of pride, especially amongst those who have the law, thinking perhaps, “well, we are not like the Gentiles, we have the law!” The verse actually reads, “But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things!” But Paul asks them a question (vs. 3) “and thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?” Don’t worry, he says, in vs. 11, “God is no respecter of persons with God, for as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law.”
Imagine the uproar amongst both Jews and Gentiles - sinners? all of us? really? We are going through the same dang thing today. Every religion thinks their way is right, but religion is always about works of the flesh, whether it be Buddhism, Islamism, Hinduism, Judaism, or Christianity that adds anything to faith and Paul is out to demonstrate that NO WORK of the flesh ever justifies anyone before a just God in heaven.
He must have met with severe ostracism from his own religion [we’re talking about Paul who had been Saul the Extremist! Killing those who ‘blasphemed’ his religion]. But Paul concludes all under condemnation in 2:17-25, and says further, “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.”
Again, imagine the uproar! And Paul, who I’m sure went mad with these questions himself after meeting the risen Christ, anticipated them. Let's just pick out the questions beginning in Chapter 3.
What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?
Because the oracles of God were committed to them. [3:2]
[Because] our unrighteousness commends the righteousness of God. [3:5]
What then? Are we better than they? [3:9]
No. All are under sin. For by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. [3:20]
Where is boasting then? (And this question I will write about in a future post).
Excluded.
By what law? of Works?
No, by the Law of faith.
Is He the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles?
Yes...seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
Skipping ahead to Ch. 7, Paul speaks specifically to those under the law. I can almost hear their confusion.
Is the law sin?
No, I had not known sin, but by the law.
Was then that which is good [the law] made death unto me?
No, but sin - that it might appear sin - working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
For example, I might fix my hair and do my makeup and think I look pretty darn good, but without a mirror I have no way to judge that. The law is like that mirror that shows me what I really look like. But it’s more than that because it’s also the standard - Galatians 3:24 says, “But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” When I look into that mirror I can clearly see that I don’t quite measure up to perfection [remember the examination period of the perfect lamb for the Passover - no flaw, no spot]. Had not the law come, I just might not see what Paul clarifies - that sin is the problem in me, sin is in my flesh no matter how holy I think I am and the law clearly shows me I have a problem. But the law is not the problem. Contrary, the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good [7:12]. It says to us, “Okay, this is the standard” and then we are given that mirror.
And this is where I think I have gravely misunderstood and misused 7:15 “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,” as if this is the plight of the believer's walk.I have used this verse over and over again to enable my sin, continue in my sin, and justify my sin. But I now see Paul is building the case with the unregenerated man where the law is working death in me to the point where I look in that mirror and say, “Egads! I am ugly! Who can help me?” I may not be as ugly as Titus, Hitler, or Stalin, but I’ve got it in me! Thus I believe Paul’s agonizing crescendo is the cry of every born again believer at the moment of his birth: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Which makes it crucial - CRUCIAL - that Jesus Christ came IN THE FLESH to fulfill the law. There was no other way for sin was in the flesh. The law and all its fastidious requirements, the feasts and ceremonies given to Moses were not to father a fleshly nation, but to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God as laid out in Ephesians 2, and to fulfill the blessed hope of redemption given to Adam in the garden [Gen 3:15] “I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,” Abraham and his son [Gen.22:18] “and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,” David [Psalm 51], “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” and Job [Job 19:25] “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth.”
So what a glorious truth it is for Paul (and every born again believer), knowing that Jesus is that flawless sacrificial lamb who takes away the sin of the world, who imputes his own righteousness to us by faith, to proclaim as in Romans 8:
There is therefore now, no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin AND DEATH. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”
Why the crucial difference in my thinking regarding 7:15? Because vs 14 is clearly speaking about the unregenerated man: “...but I am carnal, sold under sin, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,” whereas Paul fully explains the freedom from sin’s power by grace through faith in Chapter 6. Verses 16-17 clarifies, “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.
"But God be thanked!" is the same responseas that of the wretched man in 7:24-25, “Who can deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
Like the circumcision, Ch. 6:18-22make clear the sign of the regenerated man in Christ Jesus vs. the unregenerated man : “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness...For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed [repentant of]? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life.”
The grand and final question really should then be rephrased from Romans 8:10, “Am I in Christ?”
“...and if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.....therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God.”
Rather than a message of defeat or even allowance, Romans 7:15 is a message of victory, a message of hope. Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” What was finished? My debt, my slavery to sin and death.
It is surmised that Martin Luther King quoted an old Negro spiritual when he proclaimed his own emphatic relief,
"FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, THANK GOD ALMIGHTY, WE ARE FREE AT LAST."
The following poem was written by my mother in 1977. I felt it appropriate to our last few posts.
Take an oak of some 100 years growth.
How was that oak born? In a Grave.
The acorn was planted in the ground; a grave was made for it that the acorn might die. It died and disappeared, casting its roots downward and shoots upward, and now that tree has been standing a hundred years.
Where is it standing? In its own Grave.
All he time - in the very grave where the acorn died, it has stood there stretching its roots deeper and deeper into that earth in which its grave was made and, yet, all the time - though it stood in the very grave where it had died, it had been growing higher and stronger, and broader, and more beautiful. All the fruit it ever bore, all the foliage that adorned it year by year, it owed to that grave in which its roots are cast and kept.
Even so, Christ owed everything to His death and His Grave. And we, too owe everything to that grave of Jesus.
Oh, let us live everyday rooted in the death of Jesus. To my own will, will I die; to human wisdom and strength and to the world, will I die. For it is in the grave of my Lord that His life has it beginning, its strength, and its glory.
Christ is the acorn that went down into the Grave. And waited for His Father trusting in Him to give Him new life. His roots bore fruitful branches and, in death, was His true life...to go back to the Father so that we could copy Him and do the same. God gave Him life back ten thousand times more glorious than His life or our on earth. Jesus was born twice - the first time in Bethlehem, a life born into weakness - the second time, from the Grave - He is the "first-born" from the Grave.
Is God sovereign over the little things? I do so believe and I'll give you a personal instance. I just told you how much I loved the YouVersion Holy Bible app because I could jump my readings to the current date if I had fallen too far behind so as not to get discouraged and just quit. Well, I had done just that when I posted on 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. A couple days before, I had visited Costco and browsed through many books before choosing one entitled Jerusalem by Simone Sebag Montefiore (I thought it was purely fiction, but I particularly love historical fiction). Had I not been sovereignly where I was in the Bible, I would have totally missed this tidbit I read last night from pg. 30 of the book.
"When David heard that the prince [his son Absalom] was dead, he lamented: 'Oh my son, my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!' As famine and plague spread across the kingdom, David stood on Mount Moriah and saw the angel of death threaten Jerusalem. He experienced a theophany, a divine revelation, in which he was ordered to build an altar there [see post]. ...One of the original inhabitants of the city, Araunah the Jebusite, owned land on Mount Moriah...."
and then the footnote on pg. 32:
"Where was the Holy of Holies? This is now a politically explosive question and an intractable challenge for any Israeli-Palestinian peace deal sharing Jerusalem. There are many theories, depending on the size of the Temple Mount which was later extended by Herod the Great. Most scholars believe it stood atop the rock with the Islamic Dome of the Rock. Some argue that this mysterious yellow, twisted cavern was originally a burial cave of around 2000 BC, and there seem to be folk memories of this: when exiles returned from Babylon around 540 BC, they were said to have found Araunah the Jebusite's skull.The Misnah, the compilation of oral Jewish traditions of the second century AD, calls it the Tomb of the Abyss, hollowed for "fear of any grave in the depths." The Muslims called it the Well of the Souls, Jews and Muslims believe this was where Adam was created and Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. It is likely that in AD 691, the caliph Abd al-Malik chose the site for the Dome at least partly to create an Islamic successor to the Temple. Jews regard the Rock as the foundation stone of the Temple."
Wow. Not only do we expand that the threshing floor was the site of Abraham's intended sacrifice, David's sacrifice, and the threshing floor of our Lord, it was also the site of Araunah's grave, and potentially of Adam's creation.
Like David, Jesus wept over Jerusalem seeing the angel of death threatening. "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you were not willing." Over the altar of sacrifice loomed the angel of death, for both Jerusalem of 70 AD and Jesus before - the place of Araunah's grave was perhaps the place of creation, the threshing floor, and death - the Tomb of the Abyss, or the Well of the Souls - the dead burying the dead - ending with one stone remaining, the sure foundation of whom Isaiah prophesied.
David, in what I believe was a prophecy, cried, "Would God that I had died for thee," regarding his son. No wonder David has a heart after God's own heart.
The good news is that place of creation and death was also the place of a new creation - 2 Corinthians 5:17 reads, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" Through His son's death and resurrection, a new and living temple, made up of every tongue and tribe and nation, one that the gates of hell cannot prevail against, has arisen. Truly Jesus came to offer life to all who would believe, but he didn't offer it to you based on the color of your skin, the religion you rest in, your gender, or, yes, even your sexual orientation, he offered it to all those who would die. No partition. Like the Samaritan woman, we might say, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water...whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
I do hope that as this song by Aaron and Amanda Crabb begs, you will Take Him to the Place.
Yesterday I commented that I so enjoy the richness of God's word. To know that there is not one aspect of God's creation that He is not sovereign over - even names. I ended yesterday's post with the meaning of "Araunah", the owner of the threshing floor which David bought at a cost, to be "Ark." The Ark of our salvation being Jesus himself, sacrificed right there on the threshing floor, the cross that separates the wheat from the chaff, this foreshadowed by Abraham and Isaac and, of course, before that by Noah. That's rich.
So today I share a new nugget with you from my reading through 1 Chronicles 21-27. Just a little nugget amongst David passing the kingship on to his son Solomon, the instructions to the Levites, the division of Aaron's sons, musicians, porters, overseers, and the officers of the kingdom. I might have missed it from the sheer length of names and obligations.
It's verse 27:24 of 1 Chronicles. "Joab the son of Zeruiah began to number, but he finished not, because there fell wrath for it against Israel; neither was the number put in the account of the Chronicles of King David."
Remember yesterday we spoke of sin. Adam's, Israel's, David's. Mine. Why would God subsequently include verse 24 amongst a host of instructions and names? To demonstrate his mercy and grace toward us.
The first verse that came to my mind is 1 Corinthians 13:5 "Love keeps no record of wrongs."
Psalm 103
Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits -
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The Lord works righteousness
and justice for all the oppressed.
He made know his ways to Moses,
his deeds to the people of Israel:
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord's love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children's children -
"And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah."
1 Chronicles 21:1
"And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel."
Oh the beauty again of the Chronological Bible. I did a double take when 1 Chronicles 21 repeated 2 Samuel 24, but the very first verse appeared to credit two very different agents, respectively: "Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number Israel," and "God moved David [to number Israel and Judah]."
As I have said, I am not a theologian. I just really love the riches of the word of God, have a "teaching" instinct from so many years of homeschooling and am blessed to exchange thoughts and inspiration now with my lovely mother, who mothered me not only in the flesh, but in the spirit. Of late our sharpening seems to be on mercy and grace.
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head that went down to the skirts of his garments. It is as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore." Ps. 133. She might laugh and say, "yea, I'm 83 and the Lord seems like He's giving me life for evermore!"
What bothered me about these two readings is that God considered what David did (numbering the people) to be sin and punished him thereafter. But was it not God who moved David to sin? Or was it Satan? How is God fair, if He moves us to sin, then punishes us for it? Is Satan a big scary monster or a tool in the hands of the living God? So many questions. I remember as a new Christian being tremendously afraid of Satan. I (emphasize "I") wanted to perfect my life, not out of love for the author of my life, but often out of fear I was giving Satan an inch into it. You see, I spent a sleepless night, shaking in my boots, at 17 years old after seeing the Exorcist. That's how I saw Satan and I sure didn't want him to possess me. So, I burned my Led Zeppelin [and the likes] albums, rid my house of evil objects and probably gave my children some very distorted views of both God and the devil. If you kids are reading this, I apologize.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that Satan is alive and well; it's just that I now realize he comes as an angel of light, not the destroyer he ultimately is. Remember he exalted himself above God, and that has been his mission ever since, identified clearly in the Garden of Eden when he inserted the seed of rebellion into Adam's heart. God told Adam, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: BUT of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in that day you shall surely die." Satan asked Eve (who did not personally hear God's command for she was not yet created....Gen. 17), "Hath God said, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'" Eve knew the right answer (I'm quite certain Adam told her what God said), but Satan instilled a desire to exalt herself. "Ye shall not die! For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened....and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Satan also knew the right answer, mixing truth (you shall know good and evil) with lies (you shall not die, you shall be as gods!). She ate, she gave Adam to eat, and henceforth we all have the seed of rebellion against God in us, because we do have the knowledge of good and evil, and as surely as we do, we surely have died. In the physical, it is easy to see that death reigns, but in the spiritual, it is much harder to tell (unless you see it clearly in the Exorcist!), but we surely died spiritually that day. How do we know? Because we know good and evil.
This scene in the Garden of Eden is much like the two seemingly contradictory passages of 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1. You see somewhere in the scheme of things good and evil already existed (that is definitely for another topic!) - God told Adam..."but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat!" So arguably, we can say God planted the seed of rebellion, right? So why is Satan blamed?
Job also depicts this dichotomy. God asks Satan in Job 1:8, "Did you notice my servant Job? There is no one on earth as faithful and good as he is. He worships me and is careful not to do anything evil." Satan responds, "Would Job worship you if he got nothing out of it? ...But now suppose you take away everything he has - he will curse you to your face!"
So God lets Satan loose. Test Job, but these are the conditions.....
And these were the conditions David faced in 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1 and why God used Satan to accomplish God's purpose: to reveal the rebellion in our hearts. You see David sinned outwardly by numbering Israel and Judah, yet God had moved him to, to reveal what was in hisown heart. God sends a first witness to David - Joab, who said, "Now the Lord thy God add unto the people how many soever they be, a hundred fold, and that the eyes of my lord the king may see it: but why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?" You see, David had just wrought great victories over the "termites" as my mom likes to say. His pride was raging, but also he showed that in his heart he didn't really trust God. If you read the preceding verses, you'll see that it's always mentioned how many men in the enemies' armies, or how much spoil was taken, how many captives enslaved and you can almost imagine David (insert me) estimating the vastness of his own army. Clearly Joab said the numbers don't matter because the battle is the Lord's! In fact, the only times I have been able to research that God told the Israelites to be counted was, going out of Egypt, and after the 40 years in the wilderness. Clearly Gideon shows us the battle is the Lord's.
1 Chronicles 21:7 says God smote Israel; 2 Samuel 24:10 says "...and David's heart smote him after that he numbered the people." He then repented.
However, the consequence still remained. David's prophet, Gad, came to David and said, "God is offering you the choice of one of three punishments: seven years of famine in the land, three months of being chased by his enemies, or three days pestilence in the land. You pick." [paraphrased...]
David's response is so like our own, especially when we realize just how cruel men can be. 2 Sam. 24:14: "David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man." So God sent pestilence and 70,000 of David's people died, with God, ultimately saying, "that is enough" (or it is finished!). David is devastated over his sin and asks God, "Lo, I have sinned, but what have these sheep done?" Oh Lord! Isn't that the truth? The consequences of sin do not just affect the sinner, but the entire body! Go to your brother - if he repents, you've won him back! If he doesn't, give him another chance - bring another witness. If he still doesn't, bring him before the whole body. Then, let him have his way, "Let me fall into the hands of the Lord; for His mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man." That is brotherly love. Sounds harsh, but really it is God's mercy.
The consequences of David's sin greatly affected the people and David cried in vs. 17, "Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house."
If you read again 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1, however, you see that the anger of the Lord was stirred up against ISRAEL, not David. You see David was King and, while he may not have been commanded to number the army, I can't find that it was ever forbidden (correct me if I'm wrong please!). In fact, God warned Israel through Samuel when they wanted a King (1 Samuel 8:11-13), "If you have a king, this is how he will treat you. He will force your sons to join his army. Some of them will ride in his chariots, some will serve in the cavalry, and others will run ahead of his own chariot. Some of them will be officers in charge of a thousand soldiers, and others will be in charge of fifty....etc." But Israel insisted they wanted a King for a leader just like all the other nations. So God gave them a King. And this was the consequence of their own sin. God answered, grieving Samuel, "Do everything they want you to do. I am really the one they have rejected as their king. Ever since the day I rescued my people from Egypt, they have turned from me to worship idols. Now they are turning away from you. Do everything they ask, but warn them and tell them how a king will treat them."
What I take from all of this rambling, is that God is really after our hearts. After David begs mercy for his people, Gad prophecies to David to buy the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Google that man. You'll find that Araunah the Jebusite's threshing floor was located on the summit of Mount Moriah. The same place Abraham offered his son Isaac, his only son, as the sacrifice, and the same place God offered his son, his only son, as the consummate sacrifice. Think about it. Our sacrificial lamb gave his life on a threshing floor.
thresh(thrsh)
v.threshed, thresh·ing, thresh·es
v.tr.
1.
a. To beat the stems and husks of (grain or cereal plants) with a machine or flail to separate the grains or seeds from the straw.
b. To separate (grains or seeds) in this manner.
When David approached Araunah, Araunah willingly GAVE the threshing floor, the threshing instruments and the oxen's wooden yokes for fuel. But David's response to Araunah was, "Nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which cost me nothing."
You see Jesus truly is the pearl of great price. Reflecting back to the Garden of Eden, that seed of rebellion had to be threshed. Our sin separated us from God. He removed the chaff (our stony hearts), gave us a heart of flesh ready to receive the seed of salvation. So perfection does not come from the outward man, as the Pharisees thought who used the scriptures with no cost, but the inward man - the new creation Jesus spoke of. Now He is at work in me, his seed bearing the fruit of salvation. Now, when I sin I have an advocate; I see God's chastening as evidence I am his child - God's consequences his mercy, bringing me back. I don't cast blame on Satan in the garden, David as King, Israel for wanting a King, or any reason I might justify my sin. Like Job and David, a man after God's own heart, I repent. Because I have a heart after God's own heart.
The end result of Job I think is summed up in two verses 1) Job 42:5-6 "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes," and 2) Job 1:22, "In spite of everything that had happened, Job did not sin by blaming God."
I would encourage you in light of this to re-read Matthew chapter 13, but I will close with vs. 16:
"But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."
I'm trying to read through the Bible again this year, and admittedly, as every year, I fall behind and then in a frenzy try to catch up, get discouraged and say "oh well, maybe next year." Trying to reschedule in the paper age proved difficult for the perfectionist me; I'd end up with my intended dates scratched out, photocopying a new sheet, ruining that one, and eventually losing track of where I was entirely. So I am thankful now to have an app that allows me to continue seamlessly, catch up if possible, or just reschedule where I'm at. I love it. What it ensures is that I will get through it, even if it takes two years instead of one. (If you're wondering what the app is, it's the YouVersion Holy Bible.) I love it because it allows me to press on, despite the failures, as if my failures were never there at all. As such is God's mercy and grace. This very topic seems to dominate my mom and my bible studies lately. What is mercy? What is grace? What is the difference between the two? If you google the definition of each, without including "the Christian definition of..." (which gives you every denominational interpretation), you get: mercy: noun. Compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm grace: verb. Do honor or credit to (someone or something) by one's presence. Something about the stark simplicity of these definitions is so beautiful. We all comprehend mercy. It's not too hard to understand what the term means, maybe because we always beg for it. I've broken the law; I deserve prosecution to the fullest extent of the law, I beg for mercy. Mercy is the judge's prerogative at sentencing. Grace, however, is much harder to grasp. We tend to remember it in short blurbs: God's unmerited favor, or by acrostics: God's Riches At Christ's Expense, or God's Righteousness At Christ's Expense. But I wrestle with the depth of grace. Somehow there is something "alive" about grace that in my little mind differs from mercy, so I know the above definition, "do honor or credit to someone by one's presence," is perhaps too simple for the biblical concept of grace. We may have used grace this way derogatorily about some snooty acquaintance, "oh yeah, she GRACED us with her presence." But think about it. Grace IS crediting us with God's presence. Matthew 1:23 proclaims, "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which translated means, 'God with us.'" When God the just judge issues the sentence to the full extent of the law, there's God the substitutionary Lamb receiving it. Hebrews 9:26 "...but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." He's paid my price, satisfying the law. In turn, I've received mercy. That's all well and good. But how does Christ's satisfaction of my debt CHANGE me? If I was a murderer before sentencing, am I not still a murderer after, even after my debt to society has been paid? Titus 3:4-7 tells us the good news, "But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." It's pretty obvious that not only did He save me from the debt of sin, he changed me as if I never sinned. I am adopted into his family by his blood. In John 14, Jesus says thatHe is the truth (vs. 6), that He will send the Spirit of Truth to us, that he will ask the father to send Him (vs. 16), that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth (vs. 17),and that not only do you [disciples] know the Spirit of Truth, but he will be IN you (vs. 17). So literally grace is God's presence, not only WITH us, but IN us. His mercy regenerates and renews us, resulting in his grace [presence IN US] justifying us. To sum it up simplistically, mercy is granted us, grace enables us.
More on this next post. Until then,
"Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed,
Because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him"
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