Abraham's obedience

By the time we come across Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, we have already seen God flood the Earth out of anger at the existence of semi-divine mutant babies and scatter the languages of men because they tried to build a tower to heaven.  The consistent theme to this point is that humans are simply messed up.  But despite all of these horrible things preceding chapter 12, something incredible happens.  God comes to a random guy named Abraham and says:

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

As mentioned above, we have seen story after story (following the fall of Adam and Eve) of men disobeying God and acting unrighteously with disastrous consequences. From Cain murdering his brother Abel, to semi-divine/human intermarriages, to questionable activities of Ham and his drunk father, to the tower of Babel, it has been all downhill since Genesis 3.  But the momentum seems to change as God elects this man Abram, and promising that he will be the father of many nations, telling him to go to the land that He will reveal.  And perhaps the most refreshing and surprising part of this passage is what happens in verse 4: “so Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”  We do not know exactly how much Abram would have known about Yahweh, in fact he was among those who worshiped pagan Gods. 

But despite having to leave his homeland, he obeys God’s command, and as a result blesses his family, ancestors, and all of the nations.  Abraham’s story begins a series of stories in Genesis in which God elects men (descendents of Abram) that obey God’s call and father His holy nation.  A common thread in the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph is that of obedience, and Abram sets a precedent for this in the very beginning of his journey.  In the rest of his story, Abram is not always the greatest or most righteous of men, but he is obedient to Yahweh’s commands, most exemplified in his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.  In the end, Abraham is an important bearer of one of the most significant themes in all of Genesis, the Pentateuch, and Scripture as a whole; namely, obedience to Yahweh.

Wisdom from a father in law

      Normally when we think of in-laws, we think of toil, tempers, trouble, and all kinds of tragedy.  Fortunately for Moses, this is not the case for him and his father-in-law.  In Exodus chapter 18, Moses comes across his father-in-law Jethro, and receives a great deal of help and sound advice from him, which serves him in a way that should be noted by ministers and leaders of any kind.
Jethro sits in as Moses presides as judge over the people, and the people gather around him all day as he helps settle disputes among the people.  After observing the process, Jethro provides a great service to Moses in the form of advice.  The text explains the following:
      17Moses' father-in-law said to him, "What you are doing is not good. 18 you will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you.  For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone. 19 You should represent the people before God, and you should bring their cases before God; 20 teach them statutes and instructions and make known to them the way they are to go and the things they are to do. 21 You should also look for able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain; set such men over them as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. 22 Let them sit as judges for the people at all times; let them bring every important case to you, but decide every minor case themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you."
       In this passage, Jethro provides Moses with extremely practical leadership advice.  He explains that in order to effectively rule and judge over the people, Moses needed to be able to find trustworthy people to help carry the burden.  Not only does Moses learn the importance of delegating tasks to trustworthy leaders in this passage, but he also displays the wisdom of listening to the instruction of his elders.  In this way, Moses exemplifies two qualities of an effective leader, finding trustworthy subordinates and listening to wise instruction.  If we as ministers are to take seriously our task of serving God and others, we must emulate Moses by finding leaders in whom we can trust and delegate important tasks to while we listen to the instruction of those who have experience and knowledge.

Saul's lack of obedience

If there is something to be said about Saul in 1 Samuel, it is that he is ruled by his passions.  In chapter 14, he takes an oath that none of his troops should eat any food before he is avenged on his enemies.   It seems as though he makes this decision based on his own pride and reputation.  So when Jonathan (his son) sees the folly in Saul’s command and eats honey from a honeycomb, Saul is ready to kill him.  Fortunately for Jonathan, the people of Israel were on his side, leading Saul to withhold his rage from his son.  All of this to say, Saul is a man ruled by his passions and in many instances he will make decisions solely based on what the people of Israel will think of him, which eventually leads him to disobedience and disenfranchisement from God.

One telling example of Saul’s disobedience toward God takes place in 1 Samuel chapter 15.  In verse 3 God commands Saul to “attach Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”  This seems like a pretty straightforward command, right?  Well it seems that Saul misunderstood what God required of him.   But when God handed the Amalekites into his hands, Saul left King Agag and the best of the lambs, cattle, and fatlings alive.

When Saul returns with the spoils of the battle at his disposal, Samuel confronts him, asking why Saul brought back King Agag and the spoils when God had clearly “sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed’ (Verse 18).”  Saul is taken aback by Samuel’s reprimanding, claiming that he brought back the spoils as a sacrifice to the Lord, but Samuel responds with a statement that is quite telling of Saul’s time as king. He says:

Has the Lord as great delight in

burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obedience to the voice of the

Lord?

         Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to heed than the fat of rams. 

         For rebellion is no less a sin than

divination,

         and stubbornness is like iniquity

and idolatry.

         Because you have rejected the word

of the Lord,

         he has also rejected you from being King. (v. 22-23)

The thing that Saul misunderstands is that the Lord does not solely desire to have homage paid to Him after each battle via burnt offerings and sacrifices.  If that were the case, He would be no different than the gods of the Canaanites.  The Lords desire is for obedience, which Saul proves time and again to misunderstand.  Perhaps this is why God rarely chooses the strongest, best looking, and most talented candidates to do his work in the OT.  This harkens back to Genesis 6, where God utterly rejects the heroes of old, the warriors of renown, and later in Genesis where God chooses the weaker brother Jacob of the stronger Esau.  God’s concern is not for who is the aristoi (the best) among all others, but who will be the most obedient. This is one of the common themes we see with the prominent OT charaters: Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and eventually David’s lives were marked by obedience. 

Of course I am imposing a particular arc on the OT narrative, all of these great heroes of the OT had their shortcomings and moments of disobedience, but overall each of these lived in obedience to God’s commands.  Maybe this is why David is called a man after God’s own heart, while the Lord becomes sorry that he ever made Saul king over Israel (verse 35)

Gideon and 300 guys that drink water like dogs

In the period of the judges, we often see God being very deliberate in proving Himself faithful and powerful to the Hebrews.  The pattern in the period of the Judges tended to be as follows: the Israelites sin and turn to gods other that Yahweh, God allows the Israelites to be besieged and oppressed by their neighbors, the Israelites would cry out to God and He would send a judge to deliver them, then they would sin again.  Because of this, God often finds ways to intentionally show His power and sufficiency to the Israelites.

One such example comes in Judges 7.  Jerubbaal (Gideon) and his troops were preparing to fight against the Midianites, but the Lord had other plans for the group.  In verse 2 he says this to Gideon, “The troops with you are too many for me to give the MIdianites into their hand.  Israel would only take credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’”  So the Lord has Gideon dwindle down the troops and allow those who were fearful to return home.  After this, 22,000 of the troops returned home, leaving 10,000 remaining with Gideon.  But God said that this was still too many troops for the task, and he told Gideon to lead the troops to the water, and all those who cupped water in their hands to drink could go home, but those who lapped up the water like a dog should stay.  This left Gideon with 300 troops remaining; this is what God desired for battling the Midianites. 

In the end, the Lord gave these 300 men the strength to defeat the entire company of the Midianites.  The Lord’s interest in this whole situation was to show Himself strong to the Israelites, to make them understand that is only through His hand that they might be delivered.  It seems ridiculous that God would need to do such a thing for the Israelites to put their trust in God, yet over and over again in the period of the judges they would sin and turn away from the rule of Yahweh.  Ultimately they would completely reject God when they ask to have a king like all of their neighbors in 1 Samuel.  This lack of understanding on the part of the Israelites extends all the way back to the wanderings in the desert in which they continually forgot about God’s faithfulness in delivering them from Egypt.  The same concept applies here, although God continually delivers the Israelites from trouble through the judges, the Israelites continue to sin and forget God.

As I have found myself asking often this semester when reading the opening books Scripture, how often do I, like the Israelites, forget God’s power and faithfulness and wander away from Him?  And what can we do as individuals and as the church to avoid these same mistakes that are repeated over and over by the Israelites?  I suppose these are questions that the church must tackle and resolve as a community with a prayerful and humble spirit.

12 Stones in the Jordan

A reoccurring theme that I have noticed in the process of reading the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges is that God is constantly leaving “sign-posts” to remind the Israelites of His faithfulness.  We can see these all over the text from Exodus onward, whether it be songs passed down to Israelite descendants, the Law itself, the tablets on which the book of the law were written being placed inside the arc of the covenant, or structures built by the patriarchs, God gives the Israelites many reasons to remember His generosity and faithfulness.

One such “sign post” comes in Joshua chapter 4, after God had allowed the Israelites to cross the Jordan on dry land, He commanded Joshua to say the following:

5 “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, one for each of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 so that this may be a sign among you.  When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ 7 Then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord.  When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.  So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever.”

The physical sign of the twelve stones opposite the Jordan River served to remind the Israelites in times long to come of the faithfulness of the Lord in bringing the Israelites to the Promised Land.  The obvious pattern emerging to me from all of these texts is that the Hebrew people, in spite of God’s many acts of faithfulness and even with the signs that serve as reminders of the things He has done, continue to turn away from Him and worship other Gods. 

When I impose my 21^st century perspective on the text, I find myself invariably frustrated with the continual faithlessness from the Hebrews and I almost rejoice in the moments that God allows some enemy nation to lay waste to the Israelites.  But when I take a more serious look at the text, I realize that the majority of my life I am exactly like the Israelites, God has been ever faithful to me, yet I continually turn away from Him with my actions.  Perhaps as Christians, we should take care to be intentional in understanding the “sign-posts” that God leaves us as reminders of His goodness, and constantly be looking for ways in which we may be rebelling against God at any given moment.

Disobedience and Consequences in Judges 1 and 2

In my last post I wrote about Israel’s cyclical disobedience in the Pentateuch and God’s prophesy of how this will continue for the duration of the OT.  This pattern continues through Joshua and into the beginning of Judges when the Hebrew’s disobey God’s commands as they enter the Promised Land.  God essentially commanded each of the Hebrew tribes to enter into the Promised Land and to wipe out all of the pagan people-groups who dwelled therein.  We see in Judges chapter 1 that the houses of Judah, Simeon, and Joseph were all obedient to this command, and all were able to take the respective cities that they sacked.  But Manasseh, the Benjaminites, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and the remainder of the tribes were disobedient and did not drive out the Canaanites from their land, but instead dwelled alongside them.

As one would imagine, Yahweh was not particularly pleased to see the Hebrews disobeying His command and not trusting His power to drive out the Canaanites.  This leads us to Judges 2, in which the angel of the Lord expresses God’s anger over the situation, saying:

“I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land that I had promised to your ancestors.  I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.  For your part, do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of this land; tear down their altars.’  But you have not obeyed my command.  See what you have done!  So now I say, I will not drive them out before you; but they shall become adversaries to you, and their god shall be a snare to you.” Judges 2:1b-3 (NRSV)

To my post-modern ear it initially sounds like Yahweh is being a tad unreasonable.  But the point of this passage is that Yahweh will not resign Himself to share the hearts of His people with any other God other than Himself.  And of course, the Hebrews living among the Canaanites will inevitably lead to not only the persecution of the Hebrews, but also their turning away from God to pagan gods, as was prophesied in Deuteronomy 31.  So, as we see the Lord do in later passages, He says that He will not drive out the Canaanites, but instead He will allow them to continue to live among the Hebrews, which will eventually lead to all of the problems that occur in the duration of Judges.

The cyclical pattern of worshipping other gods, being put under the subjugation of another people, and crying out to God who delivers them in the entirety of Judges results because the Israelites were not obedient to God’s command upon entering the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 31 as a Prophetic Warning

In Deuteronomy 31, the mood becomes quite somber as Moses approaches his death.  God makes it quite clear that Moses is not to enter the promised land because of his mistake with the rock at Meribath-kadesh.  But one major theme stood out to me, both Moses and Yahweh continually refer to the cyclical disobedience of the Israelites.  I will site a few of these here:

“Take this book of the law and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God; let it remain there as a witness against you. For I know well how rebellious and stubborn you are.  If you already have been so rebellious toward the Lord while I am still alive among you, how much more after my death!” 31:26-27

“For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey… they will turn to other gods and serve them, despising me and breaking my covenant.  And when many terrible troubles come upon them, this song will confront them as a witness, because it will not be lost from the mouths of their descendants.” 31: 20-21a

“Then this people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst, the gods of the land into which they are going; they will forsake me, breaking my covenant that I have made with them.” 31: 16

Something I found quite interesting about this passage is that the Lord tells the Israelites ahead of time that they are going to continue in their disobedience, but he provides checks to help them when they stray.  He tells Moses to teach the Israelites a song that will serve as a witness to their ancestors that Yahweh is the God of Israel when they inevitably stray away.  Likewise, Moses instructs the Israelites to place the book of the law near the ark of the covenant as another witness against their iniquity when they stray away from Yahweh. 

In this single chapter, we are provided a basic outline of the things that will take place in the remainder of the Old Testament cannon.  From Joshua and Judges, to the monarchy, to the exile and time of the prophets, the pattern of Israel’s history is that of “prostituting themselves” to other gods, coming upon great woe and trouble, and then being reminded of their true allegiance toward and worship of Yahweh.  In the course of the Old Testament, we see the law, songs, and prophets/judges serve as the “witnesses” against the iniquity of the people that eventually draw Israel back to the correct worship of the Lord.  In this one chapter, we can look back and see the wandering and complaining of the Israelites in the wilderness serve as a warning and foreboding of what the Israelites will continue to do for thousands of years.  Yet we also see that God remains patient and faithful, providing mechanisms to remind the Israelites of His goodness towards them.