1 SAMUEL #16: THE BOY WITH A GOOD HEART.

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Bible, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Saul was willing to grudgingly obey to a certain extent, but he never gave the Lord his heart. What God wants from us, above all, are hearts that seek him, and have found their belonging in him. What we look like, our personal history, our talents – all these things are secondary to our hearts. The Lord found that kind of heart in young David. When our hearts belong fully to God, he can use us. No one in this life perfectly surrenders their heart to the Lord, of course, but when we trust him, he begins a work that will be complete and beautiful in the new creation. All of the good that David did, his lasting, permanent legacy, is that his heart belonged to the Lord.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 16

1 SAMUEL #16. 1 SAMUEL 16:1-13

I mentioned previously that we need to understand the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament. It contains the first two acts of a three-act play. It won’t make sense until you also see the end. It is all about Jesus. If we just read the Old Testament alone, we get a message that seems to contain a lot about following rules and a mean, incomprehensible God. But every once in a while we get a hint that this is a set up for something more to come – the more that was fully explained and fulfilled in Jesus. In 1 Samuel 16, we get another of these hints.

Saul struggled with insecurity. In his fears he did not turn to God for mercy and grace – instead, he tried to control and manipulate God through religion. He did not want a relationship of trust in the Almighty – he just wanted an Almighty who would do what he (Saul) wanted him to. When it came right down to it, Saul wanted God to serve him, not the reverse. Ultimately, he rejected God, and so God made plans to bring in a different king. That is how things stood at the end of 1 Samuel chapter 15.

The prophet Samuel grieved over this turn of events, and even mourned for Saul personally. This shows us something of the man Samuel was. He knew it was wrong for the people to want a king. He knew that Saul was insecure and not a true follower of the Lord. But Samuel hated to see him fail, hated that he had turned away from God. He knew that because of Saul’s own choices, God could not do anything more with him, but even so, he grieved for Saul.

Here in chapter sixteen, the Lord told Samuel to go anoint the one who would be the next king of Israel. It is interesting to note that Samuel, for all his care for Saul, had no illusions about what kind of man he was. He thought Saul would have him killed if he found out he was anointing another person to be king. Even so, he obeyed and went to the home of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, who lived in Bethlehem.

He had Jesse bring his sons with him to a sacrifice that they offered to the Lord. When Samuel saw Jesse’s oldest son, he was impressed.

6 When they arrived, Samuel took one look at Eliab and thought, “Surely this is the LORD’s anointed!”
7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:6-7

This is one of those times when the curtain is drawn back, and the Old Testament shows plainly what God is after. It may be one of the most important verses in the Old Testament. God looks at the heart. The word for “heart” is a form of the Hebrew word “leb.” This is a word with a rich meaning, just as “heart” is in English. In Hebrew this word means innermost being, intellect, the center of a person or thing.

Writer Brent Curtis points out how important the heart is:

We describe a person without compassion as “heartless,” and we urge him or her to “have a heart.” Our deepest hurts we call “heartaches.” Jilted lovers are “brokenhearted.” Courageous soldiers are “bravehearted.” The truly evil are ‘black-hearted” and saints have “hearts of gold.” If we need to speak at the most intimate level we ask for a “heart-to-heart” talk. “Lighthearted” is how we feel on vacation. And when we love someone as truly as we may, we love “with all our heart.” But when we lose our passion for life, when a deadness sets in which we cannot seem to shake, we confess, “My heart’s just not in it.”

[Curtis adds], “it is in our heart that we first hear the voice of God and it is in the heart that we come to know him and live in his love…For above all else, the Christian life is a love affair of the heart.”

Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance

No wonder Solomon calls the heart “the wellspring of life”(Proverbs 4:23). Both Saul and Jesse’s son Eliab were impressive on the outside. Though probably not as tall as Saul, Jesse’s first born, Eliab, was apparently tall and impressive looking.

There is a reason the creator of 1 Samuel put this narrative right after the one about Saul’s failure. Saul’s problem was that his heart was not turned toward God. Outwardly, he was impressive. Outwardly, he pretended to follow God by being superficially religious. But God is after our hearts. Saul’s heart was closed to him. Eliab’s also, apparently. What the Lord wanted was not an impressive looking person. He wasn’t after a great warrior or commander of men. He wanted first and foremost a heart that would belong to him.

Samuel went down the line of Jesse’s sons – seven of them. The Lord did not choose any of them. Finally, they called in the youngest, a boy named David. The fact that David was not at the sacrifice with the others opens up the possibility that at this time he was younger than thirteen years old, and so not a normal adult guest at an audience with the Prophet. We can’t know this for sure, however. At any event, he was quite young, and unimportant enough in his family to be left tending the sheep while the older men held council with Samuel. If I had to guess, I would say that this event was pretty close to David’s thirteenth birthday, either just before or after, because in those days,  a male was considered a man at his thirteenth birthday. This brings to mind the history of Samuel himself, who was very young when God began to speak to him. God told Samuel that this youngest brother was the one he had chosen to be the next king of Israel.

I want to give us a bit more background on how surprising God’s choice was. David was born into the tribe of Judah. Although the founder of the tribe, the patriarch Judah, was eventually considered the leader among his brothers, he had a inconsistent spiritual history, to say the least. Judah was the one who saved his brother Joseph when the others wanted to kill him. But he “saved” Joseph by suggesting they sell him into slavery. Later, Judah participated in deceiving his father Jacob about what had happened to Joseph. A few years on, Judah slept with a woman pretending to be a prostitute, and his ultimate line of descendants – including Jesse and David – came from that union. Centuries later as the Israelites were entering the promised land, a Canaanite prostitute named Rahab converted to the worship of the Lord. A man from the tribe of Judah married her, and she became one of the ancestors of David’s family as well. Three generations before David, his great-grandfather married a widow woman who wasn’t even an Israelite. So in David’s family history are two prostitutes, and two women who didn’t even come from the tribes of Israel. If you were imagining the family that God would use, you might not think it would be one like this.

Next let’s look at David’s own position in the family. In those days, firstborn sons were considered more important than all other children. The firstborn usually got twice as much inheritance as anyone else. The family line was usually counted through the firstborn. The remaining birth order was also generally considered important. So, the second born was next in importance, and so on. There was also some significance to the number seven, which was associated with God’s perfection. David however, was not the firstborn, and not even the seventh! He was eighth, and last, and barely thirteen years old. There was nothing about his position in his own family that would make him important.

All of this may not be such a big deal to us, but to Samuel, and David, and the others alive at that time, the idea that David would become the Lord’s new anointed king was utterly surprising, maybe even flabbergasting.

However, we have seen that Samuel was a true and faithful follower of the Lord. So, he obeyed the Lord, and anointed David with oil. Up until Saul was anointed by Samuel, anointing usually  meant pouring oil on vessels that were dedicated to be used in worshipping God, or pouring oil on a priest to show that he was set apart to serve God. No one except Samuel and Saul had been present when Saul was anointed to serve God as king. Therefore, though the his family probably understood that David was being set apart to serve God in some way, most of them would have been fuzzy on exactly how he was meant to serve. In other words, though his father and brothers were present when Samuel did this, it is not clear that any of them understood that David was being chosen as the next king of Israel.

The physical pouring on of oil was  a symbol of what the Lord did spiritually. For at that time, the Spirit of the Lord came into David, and left Saul. Remember, before Jesus, the Spirit of God usually worked only in one or two individuals or one small group in any given generation of people.

 Now I want to stop with the text here, and seek some application. I cannot over emphasize the importance of the heart when it comes to our interactions with God. If the Lord has your religious service, but he doesn’t have your heart, he doesn’t have you. If God has your intellectual agreement, but he doesn’t have your heart, he doesn’t have you. I think this was partly what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1Cor 13:1-3 (ESV)

We are going to learn more about David. He became a fierce warrior. He turned into the greatest king of Israel in a thousand year period. He was wise. He was a tremendous musician, with the soul of a poet, who wrote worship songs that are still being used today, three thousand years later. But ultimately, the legacy of David was this: his heart belonged fully to God (1 Kings 14:8; 1 Kings 15:3; Acts 13:22). Everything that David achieved was merely a result of that.

Listen to David’s heart, expressed in the words he wrote:

1 ​​​​​​​​As a deer pants for flowing streams, ​​​​​​​so pants my soul for you, O God. ​​​ 2 ​​​​​​​​My soul thirsts for God, ​​​​​​​for the living God. ​​​​​​​When shall I come and appear before God? ​​​ Ps 42:1-2 (ESV)
1 God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water. 2 So I gaze on You in the sanctuary to see Your strength and Your glory. 3 My lips will glorify You because Your faithful love is better than life. Ps 63:1-3 (HCSB)

Now sometimes, I think we don’t give our hearts to God because we don’t recognize it when he calls to our hearts. Like Saul, we tend to think God mainly wants religious service. And in some ways, he does, but he wants that to flow out of hearts that belong fully to him. David heard God calling his heart as he was alone in the wilderness with sheep. Somewhere inside that sharp pang of loneliness he heard the voice of the Lord, and he answered in faith, and wrote songs and poems. He recognized God was romancing his heart through the beauty of the wild lands. He recognized God reaching to his heart through the excitement and fierce rushing joy of protecting his sheep from bears and lions. When he saw beauty and was drawn to it, he recognized that it was ultimately God’s beauty and God seeking his heart.

We can do the same. Maybe there is music that stirs your soul, that wakes you up and makes you yearn for something – you might not even know what. Recognize that that yearning is actually for  God. He is reaching out to you through that music (I don’t think it matters if the music is overtly Christian or not). Listen to it more. Let God into your heart through it.

Maybe being in nature causes a stirring in you, a desire. Recognize that the God who made nature is reaching out to you. Don’t mistake nature for God himself. But let him use the beauty of the mountains and fall colors and rushing streams to draw you to Him.

Maybe you long to have a soul mate, another person who really knows you completely and accepts you for who you are. Sometimes the Lord fulfills that desire partially through the person we marry. Often, however, we get disappointed. I don’t know about you, but the soul mate of my wife Kari turned out to be a sinful, flawed human man, who often fails to meet her needs. I bet if you are married, the same thing has happened to you. We can rejoice at the gift our spouses are. But what our spouses lack is supposed to help us desire God even more. He is calling to your heart with that yearning.

Perhaps you long for adventure, for the rush and thrill of danger or accomplishment. We can get some of that in this world, and there is nothing wrong with it. But recognize that we can only get part of it without God. The true fulfillment of that yearning is found when our hearts belong to the God of adventure.

I think one common mistake we make is to believe that our yearning can be fully satisfied in this mortal life. That is why we chase desperately after achievement, money, sex, adventure, and relationships. It is also why, when we are disappointed in those things, we often turn to drugs, alcohol, or overeating. But we were not meant to be fulfilled in this life. Our desires here and now are supposed to point us toward God, and eternal fulfillment. C.S. Lewis wrote:

“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and pose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

(C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain)

God is calling your heart. In this life, while we still inhabit these mortal bodies, the call is bittersweet, and never fully satisfied. The presence of sin prevents full satisfaction. But when we give him our hearts, he begins in us the work that will be complete in the new creation. There, and only there, we will be fully satisfied in our hearts.

David was the eighth son of a family with a pretty sketchy history, and barely thirteen years old. None of that mattered. What mattered then and through all history was that he turned his heart toward God as fully as a sinful person can. What you look like, what you do for a living, how successful you are – none of those things really matter. What God looks at is your heart. Does it belong to him? Will you trust that He is both the source and fulfilment of all your heart’s longing?

The truth is, we can’t even recognize his call, or trust that he is the source of our desires, without help from the Holy Spirit. Take a moment now to ask him to give you a heart that seeks him above all else. If you will, you might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

1 SAMUEL #15: TRUSTING OBEDIENCE

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Bible Teaching, Christianity, Faith, Jesus, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, Uncategorized3 Comments
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The essence of following Jesus can be summed up in three words: Trust and Obey. But it is so very important that we keep the concepts in that order. Without trust, all the obedience in the world is only a pointless work of the flesh. And if we truly trust Jesus, we will naturally obey him. The two are deeply connected. Saul shows us a negative example: he did not trust God, and therefore he did not obey him. On the other hand, Jesus obeyed perfectly on our behalf.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 15

1 SAMUEL #15. 1 SAMUEL 15:10-26

The Old Testament has a lot of value for us in many ways. We can learn from examples, both positive and negative. We can see how God deals with people who live by faith, and with those who don’t. We can receive comfort in God’s promises to his people (and if we trust Jesus, we are his people, those promises are for us). We can learn about God’s standard for holiness.

But we must never forget that the Old Testament is first and foremost about Jesus. The Life, death and resurrection of Jesus are the central concern not only of the New Testament, but also of the Old Testament. Luke describes how Jesus helped his disciples to understand this.

He said to them, “How unwise and slow you are to believe in your hearts all that the prophets have spoken! Didn’t the Messiah have to suffer these things and enter into His glory? ” Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted for them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

Luke 24:25-27

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures

Luke 24:44-45

The Jews divided the Old Testament into two parts: “the Law” or “the book of Moses” which are the first five books of the Bible. The second part was called “the Prophets” and it included not only the books which we call “prophetic” but in fact, all of the other books of the Old Testament. So when the New Testament says “the Law and the Prophets” or “Moses and the Prophets” (as it does in the verses above) it means “the entire Old Testament.”

The purpose of the entire Bible is to help us to know Jesus better and walk with him in faith. So even as we read these Old Testament scriptures, we should be asking, “Holy Spirit, show us Jesus in this part of scripture.”

I think this is particularly important when we come to a section like 1 Samuel 15. We talked about the concerns of Holy War for two messages. Let’s be done with the considerations of Holy War and get to the main point of this passage: the obedience that comes from faith.

Saul disregarded the Lord’s command to utterly destroy the Amalekites. He spared the life of the Amalekite king. Quite possibly he did this because, out of fear for his own head, he wanted his followers as well as foreign armies, to differentiate between royalty and ordinary people. In any case, he disobeyed God’s command in this respect. He also allowed his followers to keep the best livestock alive. When Samuel first confronted Saul about what he had done (or, failed to do) Saul claimed that he saved all the animals for sacrificing to the Lord. He was lying. He got caught in disobeying the Lord’s command, and so he decided in that moment to make up for his failure to obey by making a sacrifice with the captured animals.

Samuel didn’t buy it. He said:

22 “Which does the LORD prefer: obedience or offerings and sacrifices? It is better to obey him than to sacrifice the best sheep to him. 23 Rebellion against him is as bad as witchcraft, and arrogance is as sinful as idolatry. Because you rejected the LORD’s command, he has rejected you as king.” (1 Samuel 15:22-23, GNT)

Saul’s warriors may have been grumbling about pointlessly killing good animals. Even if they weren’t, he may have wanted to appear gracious and become popular by rewarding those who fought with him. There may not be anything wrong with that, except that the Lord clearly commanded otherwise. In fact, Saul himself told Samuel that he failed to kill the animals because he wanted the approval of his men:

24 “Yes, I have sinned,” Saul replied. “I disobeyed the LORD’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of my men and did what they wanted. (1 Samuel 15:24, GNT)

Samuel’s proclamation that obedience is better than sacrifice is a theme repeated throughout both the Old and New Testaments. The Psalms reference this exact concept several times. So does Isaiah, and also Hosea. Jesus mentioned the idea a few times in the New Testament. Even so, we need to be careful as we apply this to our own lives. It is very easy to say, “That’s right. I just need to obey God. We just need to do the right thing. What’s the point of saying we follow God if we don’t obey him?” I understand this attitude. There are in fact times when some people just need to step up and obey what God tells us through the Bible. Some of us ought to stop making excuses, quit fooling around, and get serious about doing what Jesus tells us to do. It’s appropriate for some of us to take this approach at times. But this attitude, if it is applied in the wrong way, can also lead us away from what God is really after. It can tend to make us rely on our own strength and effort in the flesh.

So, first, we need to understand that Jesus fulfilled this passage on our behalf. The writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 40, and says that it is fulfilled in Jesus:

​​​​​​​​In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, ​​​​​​​but you have given me an open ear. ​​​​​​​Burnt offering and sin offering ​​​​​​​you have not required. ​​​ ​​​​​Then I said, “Behold, I have come; ​​​​​​​in the scroll of the book it is written of me: ​​​ ​​​​​​​​I delight to do your will, O my God; ​​​​​​​your law is within my heart.” ​​​ Ps 40:6-8 (ESV)

Jesus delighted in God’s will. He didn’t live according to religious rules – the law of God was within his heart and during his time on earth he lived out that law through dependence upon the Father. He obeyed God perfectly. We cannot obey perfectly. So Jesus did it on our behalf. The obedience we owe God is complete and perfect in Jesus Christ, and only in Him. So when you think, “Oh, I have to obey God, because to obey is better than sacrifice” actually what you should hear is “I need to trust Jesus even more. Trusting him is my obedience, because he has already done the obedience for me.” Jesus even said so:

8 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (John 6:28-29, ESV)

I think in the New Testament most of the times it says “believe” it would be more helpfully translated as “trust.” So, trusting is our obedience.

One reason we sometimes get confused is because obedience and trust can sometimes look the same. When you live by faith, it does result in certain actions. It does eliminate other actions. The Bible does use the term “obedience.” But we must remember, it is the obedience of faith – not the obedience of self-effort and religion.

Saul was religious, but had no relationship with God. He claimed that what he did was good, because he was thinking about religious appearances. Saving the animals to sacrifice later was a religious thing. After all, sacrifices were part of Jewish religion. But Saul used this aspect of religion to keep from actually interacting with God, actually listening to him and responding in faith to what God said. Jesus said the Pharisees were religious in this way, also. Instead of listening to what the Lord actually said, they obeyed man made rules and put their trust in their own efforts. Religion keeps track of rules and regulations to follow, instead of living in a real, faith-relationship. The Pharisees obeyed religiously. But, again, they put their trust in man-made rules, and also in their own efforts to keep those rules.

So, what does living in faith look like? Are we supposed to obey, or not? Let me give you a little analogy to help us understand this.

I love spy/suspense shows like the Bourne Identity. Not everything in these shows is entirely righteous, but living in faith, we can find good things in them. Sometimes in shows like this, one of the characters may encounter a bomb that is counting down to an explosion. Picture a scene like this, where the heroine of the story has just a minute or so to defuse a bomb. She doesn’t know how to do it. But she gets on the phone with her superior officer who does. He tells her, “cut the blue wire, but be sure not to cut the red one.” So she carefully cuts the blue wire, but not the red one.

Now what is going on here? Is she obeying her boss, or trusting him? Reflecting on this takes us right to the heart of the matter. Before you read on, think about this for a moment.

She is doing, both, of course. But you see, her actions of obedience proceed from her trust of her chief. She trusts that he knows how to save her. She trusts that if she does what he says, she will be safe. And so, because of that trust, she acts according to what he says – that is, she obeys. She isn’t just doing what her bomb-expert supervisor says because obeying superior officers is the right thing to do. She isn’t doing it from a sense of moral obligation. She is “obeying” him because she trusts that he wants to save her life, and has the power (in this case knowledge) to do so.

You could call it obedience. But I would call it primarily trust. The obedience is a result of the trust. This is so important: we obey because we trust. Sometimes Christians call this “the obedience of faith.”

I want to pursue this analogy a little bit further so let’s return to the time bomb scene. In order to get this kind of trust-obedience, you need several factors. First, the heroine had to believe that her life really was in danger. If she didn’t believe the bomb was real, chances are, she wouldn’t have called her boss anyway. She would not have been seeking to follow his instructions, because she wouldn’t have believed she had any reason to do so. Second, she had to believe that her supervisor had the knowledge that could save her. Third, she had to believe that he wanted to save her.

When we encounter problems with obeying God in our own lives, I think it is usually a combination of these factors at play. Maybe we believe that the situation isn’t really very serious. Although we think obeying God is the right thing, when it comes down to it, we think we’ll be OK even if we don’t. We don’t see his words as life and salvation. So we don’t obey because we don’t believe our problems, or struggles with sin, are really that serious. We aren’t truly convinced that we need saving.

Second, maybe we doubt whether God truly has the answers we need. Perhaps we don’t obey him because we aren’t sure that what he is saying to us is relevant and helpful to us in our own situation. I think this was one of Saul’s major issues. He seemed to feel that God was fine for religious things, but in everyday life, you had to take care of yourself and use your common sense. Saul didn’t seem to think the commands of God had any value in his own situation.

Third, we sometimes don’t obey because we aren’t sure we can trust God. Maybe we aren’t sure if he really has our best interests at heart. This was also part of Saul’s issue. He was insecure about his position as king of Israel, even though God had called him to be king. Saul felt he had to look out for himself; he didn’t trust God to protect or defend him.

Do you see the solution to the obedience problem – no matter what causes it? Faith. In each case, we need to address what we believe; it is essential for us to learn to trust God more deeply. We must accept that our situation is in fact serious – deadly serious, fatally serious – and that we really do need the Lord at the very deepest level. We need to trust that the Lord really does have what it takes to save us, that his words are life. We have to develop the confidence that He is relevant in every moment of our lives. And we ought to rely on the fact that he truly loves us and has our best interests in his heart. I think this last one is where a lot of us struggle. We tend to think that what we want is best, and if there is a conflict between what we want and what the Lord wants for us, our own way is better. We have to abandon that attitude entirely, and place our hope in His goodness and grace.

Peter expressed this attitude of faith. A lot of people had turned away from following, and Jesus was left with just the twelve apostles.

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that  you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:66-69)

Peter understood that there was no alternative to Jesus. “Where else would we go? You are the one with the words of eternal life.” That is magnificent trust. He knew he needed help. He didn’t think he could, through his own effort, please God. He trusted that Jesus, and only Jesus, could save him. He actively trusted that God’s way was always best.

The reality is, we all behave according to what we believe to be true. In the past, I’ve mentioned the story of the four minute mile. For decades, no one believed that a person could run a mile in less than four minutes. Then one man began to believe it might be possible. Within six weeks of believing it, he had done it. As soon as he proved it could be done, several others broke the same barrier within a matter of months. A few decades later, hundreds of people had done it. The only thing that changed from before was that people believed it could be done. What I’m trying to say is that if you truly do trust Jesus, your actions will begin to reflect that trust. It might be slow, with fits and starts, but over time, you will act differently. You will obey him because you trust him.

The devil likes to trick us into religion. Do the right thing because it is the right thing. And something in us responds to that. After all, it is the right thing. But it is the wrong path, the wrong way to go about it. This attitude can lead us to trust in our own efforts. We can do the right thing with our own effort – for a while. If we manage it, the devil leads us astray through our pride in our own accomplishments. But most of us fail eventually because it is based upon our efforts, not the obedience that Jesus has already done on our behalf.

Instead, we should do the right thing because we believe we are in desperate need of help, and we trust that only God can help us, and that he really does want the very best for us.

When we fail, the devil likes to beat us up: You just aren’t obedient enough. You just don’t try hard enough. But the problem isn’t effort. The real solution lies in trusting more. Jesus has obeyed perfectly. His righteous obedience has become ours (2 Corinthians 5:21). Our part is to trust. If we do truly trust, then our lives will reflect the kind of actions the Lord desires. But it doesn’t start with our action, it starts with our trust. You see, because Jesus has perfectly obeyed in our place, we can no longer fail at this. The more we truly believe that, the more our behavior reflects it.

So let me put it to you today. Do you trust that your situation is serious? Do you remember that no one gets out of this world without dying? Do you recognize that even handling day to day life is difficult? Do you know that you are in a desperate place, the bomb is about to go off and you can only get help from one place?

Do you trust that the Lord has the right, relevant Word for you? Do you accept that he knows better than you, that he will save you and guide you if you trust him to?

Do you know that he wants to save you and help you? Do you trust his goodness?

And finally, do you accept that Jesus has already obeyed perfectly as a “stand in” for you? In other words, do you trust that you are safe, that you can no longer fail?

Take a moment right now to let the Lord into your thoughts and prayers as you consider these things.

1 SAMUEL #14: HOLY WAR, PART II.

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Bible, Bible Teaching, Jesus, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Whether or not we take the command to kill every last Amalekite as literal, and even though these commands are strictly limited to specific historic situations and places, we still have to deal with the fact that God commanded a very violent action against a few Canaanite tribes. This time, we will grapple with the reasons a loving God might give such a command.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 14

1 SAMUEL #14. 1 SAMUEL 15:1-35 (PART 2)

Last time we considered the topic of Holy War. I suggested that in the rare places when the Bible commands the killing of every man, woman and child, it may not mean that literally. That sort of talk was typical for the ancient middle east, and there are many instances from history, and within the Bible, that helps us to see that it was normal to use such exaggerated language. It is similar to the way we talk of one sports team “obliterating” another.

Having said all that, I don’t think we can say definitively that it is not literal. I could be wrong about it being expressed in cultural idiom. And even if it doesn’t mean the death of literally every last person in the tribes named, it clearly does mean death for a great number of them, and the complete destruction of their cultures. Therefore, literal or not, we need to grapple with this issue. How could a loving God command such violence?

First, God does not answer to us. The questions are natural, but the truth is, God does not owe us an explanation. Our human nature wants God to justify himself toward us. But this is exactly the opposite of the situation the Bible describes. We are accountable for our actions before God, not the other way around. If God indeed made the universe, if he is infinite and we are not, then he has the right to do what he wants.

Not only that, but he may choose to do something that looks terrible to us, and yet, if we only had the knowledge and wisdom he has, we would be able to see that it is actually good and right. In short, God’s ways are often beyond the ability of our limited minds to comprehend.

The third thing to consider is that this is about holiness. Several weeks ago I shared what happens when pure sodium is exposed to water. The sodium explodes and burns up. Pure sodium simply cannot exist in the presence of water. The greatest scientist in the world cannot bring the two things into actual contact without creating spontaneous combustion. In the same way, sin simply cannot exist in the presence of God. So unless there is some kind of intervention, God’s presence will destroy sin. We live after the time of Jesus. Jesus and his sacrifice have eliminated the holiness problem for us, if we trust him. He has made us holy. He took the destruction of sin into himself so we could be spared. But we sometimes forget that without Jesus, God’s holiness is a huge problem for sinful people (which is to say, all people). Sin is so serious and God’s holiness is so pure that if it wasn’t for Jesus every living thing associated with sin would have to be destroyed.

 The Israelites, however imperfectly, were living in faith that God’s promises to Abraham and Moses were true, and that God would redeem them from their sins. So the Lord included them in what he was going to do through Jesus. Their faith in God’s promises protected them from the effect of God upon sin. Paul writes to the Romans:

1 So what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? 2 Considerable in every way. First, they were entrusted with the spoken words of God. 3 What then? If some did not believe, will their unbelief cancel God’s faithfulness? 4 Absolutely not! God must be true, even if everyone is a liar, as it is written: That You may be justified in Your words and triumph when You judge. 5 But if our unrighteousness highlights God’s righteousness, what are we to say? I use a human argument: Is God unrighteous to inflict wrath? 6 Absolutely not! Otherwise, how will God judge the world?  (Rom 3:1-6 )

Is God unrighteous to inflict wrath? Absolutely not. His presence destroys sin, whether or not you believe his words. The only salvation is through Jesus Christ, by faith. This was true even for the generations who lived before Jesus came:

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus. (Romans 3:22-26 NLT, emphasis mine)

Everyone in the past who believed God’s promises was included in what God was going to do through Jesus. But in Old Testament times, before Jesus had come, those who rejected God became physical illustrations of how serious God’s holiness is, and how big a problem our sin is. God was showing the world their desperate need for a messiah who could bridge a gap between our sin and God’s holiness.

The fourth thing to consider is that all these people groups were given both a witness to God’s holiness and grace, and an abundance of time to repent and turn to him. All the way back in the time of Abraham, the Lord said this:

13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be foreigners in a land that does not belong to them; they will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years. 14 However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. 15 But you will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. 16 In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” Gen 15:13-16 (emphasis mine)

The Amorites were just one of the cultures that Israel was supposed to drive out or destroy. All of the Canaanite tribes were witnesses to the truth of God through Abraham, Lot, Isaac, and Jacob. They had four hundred years after Jacob to correct their ways. This was while Israel was in Egypt. God was still giving them a chance to repent and live in faith. Then, for forty years, after the Israelites left Egypt the nations in Canaan heard about what God did for his people. They had the chance to repent during that time, also, and a few of them did (Joshua 2:9-15).

The Israelites invaded the Canaanite lands under Joshua. Subsequent generations did not overcome the Canaanite cultures as they were supposed to. During that time, those Canaanite tribes often corrupted the Israelites, and led them away from worshipping the Lord. Even so, as it worked out, the tribes of Canaan had four hundred more years through the time of the Judges to repent and follow the Lord.

I want to make sure this is clear: If anyone in these tribes wanted to repent and serve the Lord, they were welcomed into the people of God. One of king David’s mighty men was a Hittite (one of the Canaanite tribes) who did exactly that. So did other, less famous people.

All told, these cultures had  roughly 800 years before the time of Saul to repent and follow God. During all of those centuries, they were witnesses to the truth about God through the Israelites. So it isn’t as if God suddenly woke up one day and said, “ You know,  I hate the Amalekites.” Basically, the Canaanite cultures had showed, over the course of those 800 years, that most of them would not live by faith in the Lord, that they would not repent, that they were determined to continue in their sinful, rebellious ways. As such, there was no purpose in giving them more time, and until they were eradicated, they remained a spiritual and military threat to God’s people.

Another reason for this harsh command was that while the Canaanite peoples continued to live in the land next to the people of Israel, the people of God were often led astray. The Israelites were the only people in the whole world who understood about living in faith. They were the people entrusted with the Word of God, as Paul points out in the first Romans passage I quoted above. God could not allow them to be corrupted and lose that truth. If they lost it, the whole world lost it. So the Lord commanded his people to take extreme measures to make sure the world did not lose the truth about faith-relationship with God.

Yet another point is this: the Promised Land was situated at a crossroads of civilizations, and the people who lived there influenced many, many other nations. Trade routes flowed through the land from Africa to Asia and Europe, back from Europe to Asia and Africa, and from Asia to Africa and Europe. It is the meeting place of three continents and two oceans. Whoever lived in this geographical location from the beginning of civilization until the fall of the Roman Empire was in a position to spread ideas, culture and religion to most of the people in the world. In fact, one reason Christianity spread so quickly and influentially is because it began in the Holy Land. It is not coincidence that the three most influential religions in the world – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – all began in the Holy Land. The reasons these three are so widespread is due in part to geography. Even today, Israel is a major epicenter of the world political situation.

Back in the time of Saul, God did not want the depraved, evil practices of the Canaanites to spread around the entire world. The Canaanites engaged in prostitution as a part of worship. They sacrificed their children to false gods in acts of demonic worship, burning the infants alive. They accepted sexual perversions without question, even bestiality. Their religion and culture was like a cancer. It was a cancer situated in a prime spot to spread quickly around the entire world. So God had to take the extreme measure of completely removing the cancer before it metastasized. He did not want traders and travelers carrying these depraved demonic ideas around the world. In Leviticus 18:21-30, the Lord describes some of the vile practices of the Canaanites.

21 “You are not to make any of your children pass through the fire to Molech. Do not profane the name of your God; I am Yahweh. 22 You are not to sleep with a man as with a woman; it is detestable. 23 You are not to have sexual intercourse with any animal, defiling yourself with it; a woman is not to present herself to an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. 24 “Do not defile yourselves by any of these practices, for the nations I am driving out before you have defiled themselves by all these things. 25 The land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its sin, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants. 26 But you are to keep My statutes and ordinances. You must not commit any of these detestable things — not the native or the foreigner who lives among you. 27 For the men who were in the land prior to you have committed all these detestable things, and the land has become defiled. 28 If you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it has vomited out the nations that were before you.

We don’t have God’s all knowing perspective. Last time I mentioned how the Allied nations annihilated Germany and Japan, dismantling their economies, and their cultures of brutal conquest. It is possible that one of the Canaanite tribes could have become the Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan of the ancient world. We don’t know what kind of horror might have been unleashed upon the world if these tribes had been allowed to grow and prosper.

Another thing I mentioned previously is that Jesus made it clear that his disciples are not to engage in war to kill his enemies, nor to convert them. Just to make sure, here are some verses that are pretty clear:

52 Then Jesus told him, “Put your sword back in its place because all who take up a sword will perish by a sword. 53 Or do you think that I cannot call on My Father, and He will provide Me at once with more than 12 legions of angels? (Matthew 26:52-53)
49 When those around Him saw what was going to happen, they asked, “Lord, should we strike with the sword? ” 50 Then one of them struck the high priest’s slave and cut off his right ear. 51 But Jesus responded, “No more of this! ” And touching his ear, He healed him. (Luke 22:49-51, HCSB)
36 “My kingdom is not of this world,” said Jesus. “If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. As it is, My kingdom does not have its origin here.” (John 18:36 HCSB)
38 “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. 40 If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. 41 If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. 42 Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.
43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. 46 If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. 47 If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. (Matthew 5:38-47, NLT)

So if someone ever comes to you and says, “the bible commands holy war, just like the Koran,” you know it is not true. The two are in fact very different. Even in the Old Testament this kind of “holy war” is very rare and limited both geographically and historically. In addition, the New Testament shows us that Jesus completely rejects it. We Christians interpret the entire Bible in the light of Jesus and the New Testament. The teachings of Jesus and his apostles are the lens through which we understand even the Old Testament. So this is absolutely clear: Christians are not to engage in literal warfare to spread the gospel, nor to kill the enemies of the gospel.

But there is still a kind of Holy War for we who have put our faith in Jesus. It isn’t literal warfare. But it is an internal commitment to follow Jesus, even if it means utterly rejecting something in our lives that is holding us back from him. Jesus did command this type of “war”:

29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell! Matt 5:29-30 (HCSB)

In many ways, the challenge to obey this is the same as Saul’s challenge. Is there anything this coming year that God wants you to leave entirely up to him? Anything about which he is saying to you, “this belongs to me – all of it. And it all belongs to me alone. It is time to give it up.”

Maybe you like to drink sometimes. Drinking moderately – drinking without getting buzzed/tipsy or drunk – is something that the Bible does not condemn. But maybe in your own personal relationship with the Lord, alcohol is a hindrance. Maybe you can’t drink without getting a buzz. Maybe it is costing you too much money. Maybe it is something you find comfort in instead of seeking God. It could be that the Lord is calling you to stop consuming all alcohol. Maybe that feels radical. But the Lord may be calling you to that kind of radical obedience.

Maybe it is a friendship or relationship. I’m not talking about marriage now, but maybe you are dating someone that the Lord is asking you to break up with. Or maybe you are hanging out with friends who are actually a hindrance to you growing in your faith. I am not saying you should cut off all contact with them. But I am saying that sometimes the Lord calls us to obey him radically in that kind of situation, so radically that he does ask us to do those sorts of things. So, ask him, and pay attention.

God is compassionate and gracious. But this scripture reminds us that he also calls us to a life of radical obedience. It reminds us that he does not want anything to get between us and him. We might not understand immediately why we have to take such a drastic step, but we can trust that his reasons are good, even when we don’t understand. Let him speak to you right now.

1 SAMUEL #13: HOLY WAR, PART I

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Bible, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment
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God’s commands to the Israelites to wage “holy war” are difficult for us to understand today. How could a holy and loving God desire the deaths of women and children, and even animals? Why would texts like this one be included in God’s Word? How can Christians still trust the Bible as God’s Word when things like this are in it?

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1 SAMUEL #13. 1 SAMUEL 15:1-23

There is one big and totally natural question when we read 1 Samuel chapter 15: Why did God want the Israelites to destroy every living Amalekite? Why the women and children and babies too? How can we accept that God wanted this, and yet still believe that he is merciful, forgiving and loving? There are a handful of passages like this in the Old Testament, and for the modern Western mind, it seems inexplicable and even repulsive. We will dive into this topic in detail. Many people who aren’t Christian or Jewish use these sorts of bible passages to criticize and even mock the Bible, so it’s worth spending some time on the issue.

Before we get into detail however, I want to point out that every single religion and worldview has a similar problem. Even now, in the 21st century, Buddhists in Myanmar are brutally persecuting Muslims and Christians in the name of Buddhism. The Japanese used their Shinto Buddhism to justify the Second World War, and many of the atrocities they committed during it. The history of Hinduism includes wars to spread it, and to suppress rival religions. Even today, Hindus severely persecute Christians in India. We all know that Islam has a history and culture of war and terrorism in the name of Allah.

Some atheists tend to get smug at this point, and claim that religion in general is the big problem. However, when it comes to the genocidal extermination of enemies, history shows that no one is more relentless and vicious than atheists. Hitler and the core Nazis were atheists who were deeply influenced by Darwinism and by the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. That’s right: it was atheists that tried to exterminate the Jews, Roma, Slavs, etc.. Joseph Stalin, who ordered the killing of tens of millions directly and indirectly, was a committed communist atheist. So was Mao Tse Tung, the communist leader of China who was responsible for more than 100 million deaths, and likewise Pol Pot, and Ho Chi Minh in South East Asia. In the 20th century alone, atheism inspired the brutal deaths of almost 200 million people, many of them women and children.

So don’t let anyone get smug. If someone doesn’t like this part of the Bible, they must reckon with the same issues – usually at a much worse level – in every other major worldview, including their own, no matter what it happens to be. In other words, if this invalidates the Bible, it also invalidates every single worldview held by humans.

Even so, let’s be honest: knowing the fact that every world view has a similar problem does not really answer any questions about the issue as it pertains to Christianity. So we’ll dig into it.

I’ll talk more about this next time, but I want to note first that Jesus makes it very clear that from his time onwards, the people of God are not to engage in physical warfare in his name. After Jesus, the focus is on the spiritual war, and nothing in the New Testament supports the idea of fighting a literal war in the name of God.In other words, the Christian reading of the Bible does not teach or endorse wars in the name of God. In fact, the main reason we have issues with texts like this in the present day is because of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Just to be perfectly clear, the Bible does not prohibit people from being soldiers. What I’m saying is, we are not commanded to fight in the name of Jesus. There may be other legitimate reasons to participate in a war, but eliminating non-Christians, or converting people by force, are not legitimate reasons for Christians to fight. I know that to some extent Christians did those very things in the wars and persecutions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe, but they did them in contradiction to the teachings of Jesus. In other words, though they claimed to be fighting in the name of Jesus, those wars were clearly against his own teachings.

Now, let’s get to it. Throughout the history of both Judaism and Christianity, God’s commands to destroy the Canaanites (and Amalekites, as in our text today) have been understood to be severely limited. These wars were to be against only certain specific peoples at specific times and specific places. The texts make it clear that this is not a general endorsement of war in the name of God, and the overwhelming majority of Jewish and Christian theologians throughout the past 3,000 years have seen these commands to war as historically and geographically limited to those specific instances. In other words, even in Old Testament times, this was not an endorsement of “holy war” as a general thing.

Second, it is also important to understand that the language of killing every single man, woman and child is a figure of speech. This kind of hyperbolic exaggeration was quite typical of the ancient Middle East. For instance, Tuthmosis III, Pharoah of Egypt about five hundred years before king Saul, boasted that when he fought the army of Mitanni, they were “annihilated totally, like those (now) not existent.” But historians know that actually, at least some of Mitanni’s soldiers survived. In fact, they even survived as an effective fighting force, and went on to engage in later battles. Ramses II, about two hundred years later, announced that he killed the “entire force” of the Hittites, however, the truth was that he merely defeated them. In about 835 BC, the king of Moab declared that the Northern Kingdom of Israel had “utterly perished for always,” but once more, we know that actually, that kingdom survived for another century before the Assyrians devastated it. Other ancient middle eastern leaders used similar language in the same way. So, this language of killing every man, woman and child is not meant to be understood at face value. It’s a bit like how we in modern times sometimes speak about sporting events. A sports announcer might say: “The Seahawks obliterated the Rams, 42 to 3.” When we hear that, we know that the Seahawks won an impressive victory, but we also know it was not literal obliteration for the Rams. After the game, there was still a normally functioning team called “the Rams.”

In the same way, “kill every man, woman and child, do not spare them,” is just typical language for the situation, and it is an exaggeration for illustration. The people at the time would have understood that God’s command didn’t mean to literally kill every single human, including women and babies. (I do want to say that the command to kill the animals was different, and was literal. We’ll come back to this point in a moment.)

It’s not that the writers of the Bible were trying to be deceptive. They were using words and idioms that the people at the time knew were not meant to be taken literally. Actually, even people reading today should be able to realize that this kind of language was not meant literally. All we have to do is keep reading the book of 1 Samuel. Look at chapter 15, verses 7-8:

7 Then Saul struck down the Amalekites from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is next to Egypt. 8 He captured Agag king of Amalek alive, but he completely destroyed all the rest of the people with the sword. (1 Samuel 15:7-8, HCSB, italic formatting added for emphasis)

So it says Saul completely destroyed all the rest of the Amalekites with the sword. Now fast forward to chapter 30, where the same writer in the same book, says this:

1 David and his men arrived in Ziklag on the third day. The Amalekites had raided the Negev and attacked and burned down Ziklag. (1 Samuel 30:1, HCSB)

Wait, what? The same writer who told us that all the Amalekites were completely destroyed now tells that they still had an army big enough to mount an effective raid. Is he an idiot, who can’t even keep track of what he’s already written? No. He is simply using typical Middle Eastern exaggeration to describe decisive military conquests. So we can see clearly for ourselves that the language of killing all human beings is just a figure of speech.

By the way, included with the command completely wipe out these peoples is another command forbidding the Israelites from marrying any of them (Deuteronomy 7:1-6, quoted below). This makes no sense if they are supposed to all be dead. Therefore, the command against intermarriage is another clue that they didn’t need to kill literally every single human of these tribes.

Now, if we don’t take the killing of every human being literally, how should we understand this sort of language? Actually, it isn’t too difficult. It’s a lot like asking, “How should we understand it when we say the Seahawks obliterated the Rams?” It means “a very decisive victory.” When the Bible records God commanding this type of Holy War, it means that the Israelites were to utterly defeat the enemies in question. Specifically, there should be no peace treaties, nor intermarriage, and the Israelites were to continue the warfare until the Canaanite tribes no longer functioned as distinct societies.

One analogy might be the way Germany and Japan were defeated at the end of the Second World War. Many Germans and Japanese survived the war – many millions, in fact. But the allies utterly defeated them, and destroyed not only their armies, but also their economies, institutions, and all ability they had to sustain themselves as independent nations. The allies dismantled the cultures of pride and conquest that led those nations to start the war. Both countries were essentially rebuilt from the ground up, with an entirely different cultural ethos. This is the sort of thing God is commanding the Israelites to do.

Again, I want to emphasize that the Bible does not command the Israelites to do this with all of their enemies. In fact, this kind of holy warfare is only ever commanded concerning the people groups who were living in the promised land, plus the Amalekites, who were nomadic, but roamed within the promised land. The reason is to protect the true worship of the Lord, so that God’s people would remain his people.

1 “When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, and He drives out many nations before you — the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you — 2 and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 because they will turn your sons away from Me to worship other gods. Then the LORD’S anger will burn against you, and He will swiftly destroy you. 5 Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn up their carved images. 6 For you are a holy people belonging to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be His own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 7:1-6, HCSB, bold format added for emphasis)

Out of all the people in the world at the time, only the people of Israel, as a nation, worshipped the one true God. Sometimes, it might be hard for us to realize how different the world was back then. The idea that there was only one God was considered ludicrous. The morality of the Israelites – not murdering, not committing adultery, not stealing, being honest, and so on – was considered weak and pointless. The big danger to God’s people was that they would turn away from God because of the influence of the pagans living around them. If the Israelites did not resoundingly defeat their neighbors, they were in danger of being led astray into the worship of false gods, and leaving no one in the world who worshipped the one true God. So the command was given for them to defeat the people of Canaan so completely that they no longer functioned as separate, ungodly societies in the holy land. This didn’t actually require that every single Canaanite human being be killed, but rather that they were so thoroughly defeated that they ceased to function as separate cultures within the land of Israel, and instead became assimilated into the nation of Israel and the worship of the one true God. The commands for this to happen were written in typical ancient middle eastern exaggerated language.

Just to be clear: if a Canaanite wanted to convert to the worship of the Lord and join the Israelites, they were welcome to do so. Many did, including famous individuals like Rahab of Jericho, and Uriah the Hittite, who was one of David’s mighty men. The problem wasn’t their existence as individuals, but rather the cultures that led the Israelites astray. It was those cultures that had to be utterly defeated. This was one reason it was so bad for Saul to keep the Amalekite king alive. A king is a unifying figure for a group of people. The people needed to stop seeing themselves as “Amalekites” but by keeping their king alive, Saul preserved some of their sense of cultural identity.

Also, the Bible is radically different from other middle eastern sources in that when God commands this war to be waged, he commands that all the animals and goods belonging to the defeated foe must be destroyed. This is wildly different from other ancient middle eastern wars, and I do think this part was meant literally, as 1 Samuel 15 confirms.

The killing of animals seems strange to modern people. But in those days, animals were wealth. Everyone lived by farming. The more animals you had, the wealthier you were. Typically in warfare, the animals of the defeated were seized by the victorious army, and this enriched them immensely.

By commanding that all the animals be killed, and all the loot destroyed, it meant that these wars did not make the Israelites wealthier. In fact, it would cost them in material goods and lives lost, without them gaining anything. This was to keep the Israelites from making war simply in order to enrich themselves. In other words, no one would fight this way to benefit themselves. The only reason to do it was because God commanded it. God’s command to kill the animals kept the Israelites from becoming habitual warriors in order to get rich.

Secondly, killing all the animals and destroying all goods makes much more sense if, as I have been saying, they did not kill literally all of the human beings. The people who were left would have no animals, no wealth or economic base from which to build a separate culture, or to influence the Israelites. Destroying the economic base of a people group means that they have to assimilate into the more powerful society.

Saul did not trust that God knew what he was doing. He wanted to enrich himself with the animals. (His claim that he kept them for sacrifice is almost certainly a face-saving lie). I think he kept the king alive because he was afraid that if he let his men kill the king, they might start to think that kings were no different from anyone else, and then they might consider killing him. In short, Saul was not willing to trust the Lord, and therefore he did not obey him. That is the real point of this text. That is what we should meditate on. Obviously we should think about how we can be different from Saul when the Lord asks us to do something we don’t fully understand.

Now, I don’t want to pretend that we have solved all the problems raised by these kinds of texts. In fact, we’ll have another message on this topic, and even after that, it won’t be all wrapped up in a tidy bow. We can see Saul’s issues of trust and obedience, but still, the holy war thing seems difficult to wrap our heads around. I think we are dealing with things here that human beings may never fully understand.

However, though we may not understand God when he commands Holy War, (even though it is in a very constrained and limited way), we cannot deny that God is gracious, loving and forgiving. Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies, and forgive them. He told his followers not to fight back when he was arrested. In fact, he allowed his enemies to kill him. He suffered in ways we cannot even comprehend to save anyone (including the Amalekites) who is willing to put their trust in the Lord. Paul Copan writes:

Since God was willing to go through all of this for our salvation, the Christian can reply to the critic, “While I can’t tidily solve the problem of the Canaanites, I can trust a God who has proven his willingness to go to such excruciating lengths—and depths—to offer rebellious humans reconciliation and friendship.” However we’re to interpret and respond to some of the baffling questions raised by the Old Testament, we shouldn’t stop with the Old Testament if we want a clearer revelation of the heart and character of God.

… Though a Canaanite-punishing God strikes us as incompatible with graciousness and compassion, we cannot escape a redeeming God who loves his enemies, not simply his friends (Matt. 5:43–48). Indeed, he allows himself to be crucified by his enemies in hopes of redeeming them.

(Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster? (p. 197). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Let’s be different than Saul today. Let’s entrust ourselves to a God who has proved his trustworthiness and love by dying for us. As a part of that trust, let’s obey him, even when we don’t fully understand his ways.

1 SAMUEL #12: LEGALISM VS. GRACE

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Even when his army was victorious, Saul continued to be controlling. He imposed his own foolish impulses on others, and cost him, and those he loved. Jonathan continues to show us the way: he was willing to die for Saul’s foolish and hasty mistakes. That gives us a picture of Jesus, who did indeed die for our sins.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download 1 Samuel Part 12

Last time we looked at how Jonathan single-handedly attacked the Philistines. He acted out of faith, not fear, and God used that to create a huge victory for the people of Israel. The Israelites pushed the Philistines back to the edge of the hill country in fact, back to the previously held borders between the two peoples. But Saul, once again, showed his lack of real relationship with God. Because of his legalism and false religion, the victory was not as great as it should have been. Nothing spoils true good works like false religion and religious pretenses.

The situation was this: The Israelites had routed the Philistines, and were pursuing them back toward their own territory. This was in spite of the fact that the only two people who had iron weapons were Saul and Jonathan. Perhaps Saul remembered this fact. For whatever reason, even though the battle was going well – literally, miraculously well –  he became worried about the outcome, and so he made an oath and imposed it upon all the army. The oath was that no one should eat until the sun went down. It sounds very religious and impressive. The oath was supposed to show the soldiers that their mission was serious; it was supposed to motivate them. It was supposed to impress God, so that God would help them even more.

It backfired because it was a stupid idea that again came not from faith, but fear, selfishness and pride. By the way, I want to point out the fact that Saul was not content to make the vow for himself alone. Instead, he imposed his fake religion (which sounded holy) on everyone else. This is typical of people who do not live by relationship with God. Precisely because they do not have their own relationship with God, they feel that everything they experience must be a rule that everyone should follow. They don’t recognize the give and take and unique life experiences that go along with walking with God in faith. They live only by rules, and they must impose those rules on others in order to feel secure.

Saul’s oath is actually much more like a curse. He says: “Cursed be the man who eats food until it is evening and I am avenged on my enemies.” This doesn’t sound like the voice of the Lord. It sounds more like the devil. There is an Old Testament tradition of making vows that are associated with curses. However, such vows are also associated with blessings and promises from the Lord. Saul does not include any blessings in his vow. Neither is it associated with any promises from the Lord. To put it simply, there is nothing positive about it.

Notice too, how Saul sees this as his own battle, with the Philistines as his own personal enemies. This is in contrast to Jonathan, who clearly saw the battle as the Lord’s fight, with himself simply a tool in God’s hands.

Three negative things came out of Saul’s religious pretenses.

First, the victory was not as great as it could have been. In other words, the vow had the opposite effect of the one Saul wanted. The men were weakened by hunger, so they could not sustain their offensive against the Philistines. Saul’s vow proceeded not from faith, but from the flesh. It was all about self-effort. Because of that, it was as weak as the flesh. Flesh without food is weak. So the vow flopped. Jonathan’s act of faith energized and sustained the troops. Saul’s rash vow, based in self effort and the flesh, drained them, and robbed them of strength. Jonathan himself realized this. After he himself had eaten in ignorance of the vow, one of the soldiers told him of his father’s words. Jonathan said:

“My father has brought trouble to the land. Just look at how I have renewed energy because I tasted a little honey. How much better if the troops had eaten freely today from the plunder they took from their enemies! Then the slaughter of the Philistines would have been much greater.”

(1 Samuel 14:29-30)

Second, because they were so hungry, when sundown arrived, the troops began to slaughter the captured livestock of the Philistines and eat without regard to the laws of Moses. Specifically, they were eating meat that had not been properly drained of blood. Moses had commanded the people of Israel to drain the blood from any animal that was butchered.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, No person among you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood.

(Leviticus 17:11-12)

The idea expressed in the Old Testament is that the life of an animal (or person) is carried in the blood. The life belongs to God, and so the blood must be given to him, not consumed by people. It is a way of saying, “Even as I take this food, I recognize that the life of this animal belongs to God, not to me. I receive it as a gift, and I give its life into God’s hands.” This was something that God still wanted his people to practice in the days of ancient Israel.

But Saul’s vow weakened the resolve of the people who had been running, fighting and marching all day long, and when sundown finally came, they were tempted to sin. They were in such a hurry to eat that they did not properly bleed out the animals. To look at it another way, Saul’s vow did not protect people from sin, but rather made them more vulnerable to it. As a result, Saul had to waste valuable time and energy getting the people to butcher the animals properly.

Third, Saul’s foolish vow led to strife when it came to Jonathan. Saul had bound everyone to his vow – even those who didn’t know about it. Jonathan, unaware of his father’s oath, ate some of the wild honey that was in the forest where they were passing through in pursuit of the Philistines. The Hebrew says that as a result his eyes became bright. This is one of those Hebrew expressions that is very obscure. The HCSB says, “he had renewed energy” which is probably pretty close to the meaning, though not the exact words. You might say, “brightened up” or “perked up.”

After the men had finally eaten and regained some strength, Saul decided to pursue the Philistines further – as he could have done earlier, if he had not subjected his troops to such hunger. Once again, Saul was simply moving ahead without regard to what God might have wanted him to do. He was acting not out of faith or his relationship with God, but rather out of a rash desire to make up for the loss of time that he himself had caused.

In the earlier part of chapter 14 we saw that Saul was indecisive. He wasn’t sure whether or not he was going to win the battle, and so he sent for the priest to inquire of the Lord. However, before the priest had finished asking God, Saul saw how things were going and told the priest to shut up while he charged ahead. In other words, he wasn’t asking God because he really wanted to hear from God, he just wanted to know whether or not he would win. Once he saw that winning was virtually a certainty, he didn’t bother to ask God. After the men had eaten he made a decision to continue the attack without even considering if it is God’s will or not.

It was the priest who had to stop Saul, and say: “Let’s ask God first.” But when they did there was no clear answer from the Lord. We know that the Israelites cast lots, trusting that the Lord would determine the result. However, we don’t know exactly how this worked. Obviously, there was some possibility that the Lord would not answer at all. In this case that’s what happened.

Sometimes – not always, but certainly at times – we can’t hear God because we are separated from Him by our own sin. If your heart is turned away from God, if there is un-repented sin in you, it will be difficult for you to hear what he wants to say to you. This was a physical demonstration of that fact. Again, I’m not saying that every time you fail to hear from God, it is because of sin. However, if you are asking God to speak and you are not hearing, the very first thing to do is to ask Him to show you if there is any sin standing in the way. We can at least credit Saul for recognizing this. Again, Saul is not 100% evil. He is a complicated man who had his good moments. On the other hand, though he was right to recognize that sin might potentially stop them from hearing God, he tried to make himself look good by declaring: “Even if the problem is Jonathan my son, I will kill whoever committed the sin.” Saul didn’t need to say this. There were certain sins that were supposed to be punished by death. But this was not one of them. In fact, eating on the day of battle was not actually a sin against God – it was Saul’s curse, not God’s. By making it into a sin punishable by death, Saul was taking upon himself more authority than God himself.

Now, a straightforward reading shows that Jonathan was the one who caused God not to answer. He was the one chosen by lot. And yet, as I just said, we know that eating honey is not intrinsically a sinful act. In addition, Jonathan was totally unaware of the curse Saul had called down on the army concerning food, so he did not deliberately or knowingly violate any oath. I don’t think the Lord chose Jonathan by lot to show that Jonathan was sinful. I think he did it to expose Saul – to impress upon Saul his own arrogance and foolishness and show him the results of it. God did not withhold his answer because Jonathan ate honey. He withheld it because of Saul’s oath. Without the oath, Jonathan’s eating would have had no significance.

So Saul’s oath weakened the army both physically and spiritually, it prevented them from hearing the Lord, and now it led to the condemnation of their greatest warrior. Let’s say it plainly: the result of Saul’s rashness was to condemn his own son to death for simply eating when he was hungry, even when that son was responsible for their great victory that very day.

Yet, even when his arrogance and insecurity were exposed in this way, Saul did not repent. He didn’t say: “I am so sorry, that was a foolish vow to make, let us ask the Lord for forgiveness and mercy.” No, he would rather kill his own son than admit that he was wrong. He continued his rashness and said, ““May God punish me and do so severely, if you do not die, Jonathan! ”

Remember those words. Nothing bad ever happened to Saul that he did not bring upon himself.

The people protested. Jonathan was the one that achieved the great victory that day. He was ignorant of the curse. He didn’t deserve to die. Notice that Saul finally backed up. We can hope that he did so because he had a tender heart toward Jonathan, and really didn’t want him to die. But truthfully, that tender heart wasn’t enough. He didn’t back up until the people protested. What really changed his mind was popular opinion. Again, he shows his insecurity.

It is quite likely that during all these proceedings, which probably took several hours, the Philistines made their escape. In other words, again, it was Saul’s rashness, harshness and foolishness that made the victory less than it could have been.

A thousand years later, Saul’s namesake, who became known by his Roman name, Paul, wrote this:

 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations: “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)-according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

(Colossians 2:16-23)

King Saul’s oath, imposed on the entire army, did indeed have an appearance of wisdom. It promoted self-made religion and severity to the body. But it was of no value. Unfortunately, even today there are people try to impose their false sense of religion upon others. I’m not talking about people who speak the truth about what the bible says. I’m talking about people like Saul, who don’t really operate out of a faith-based relationship with the Lord. These are the folks who tell you that you cannot eat meat on Fridays, or wear blue jeans in church, or that you are not holy unless you sound like they do when you pray. You must worship in exactly the same way as them.

There are certain core things that all Christians believe and agree upon. I’m not talking about things like these. But apart from those core beliefs, when another Christian insists your faith must look and sound and feel exactly like her faith, she is operating out of a sense of law and false religion, not a sense of relationship.

I have fasted many times in my life. Often, fasting is a spiritually rewarding time for me. However, a few times, I’ve been in the middle of a fast and I realized it wasn’t doing me any good. At those times, I simply quit. This is because I’m walking in relationship, not by law. The whole point of fasting is to bless the relationship that I have with the Lord. When it doesn’t accomplish that, there is no point in doing it. Once or twice, I have fasted even when I didn’t feel called to, but only because others told me they wanted me to fast with them. Those times were counterproductive, spiritually speaking.

Most people don’t make vows like Saul’s anymore. Maybe we’re too fond of our food. But the truth is, we do sometimes make internal promises to ourselves. Sometimes we let our negative emotions control us, and we act or speak rashly, or make quick, impulsive decisions that somehow bind us. You might say something like “I’ll never do something nice for that person again.” You might have almost forgotten that you said that, but as the years have gone on, your relationship with that person has soured, and you have become bitter and unforgiving even in other relationships.

Or maybe you decide because of a certain incident that you hate and distrust all men, or all Asian people, or something like that. We may not think of it like a harsh or rash vow, but it is basically the same thing that Saul did. I think we should expect the same types of results, which are not good.

But, Jonathan gives us a kind of picture of Jesus. Though he did no wrong, and in fact, was the one who delivered Israel that day, he was willing to die. It wasn’t his own sin that he had to die for, but that of Saul. The Lord protected Jonathan and delivered him through the protests of the people. However, the Lord did not protect himself when it was time to die for the sins of others. He allowed himself to be slaughtered for our sins, mistakes and failings.

It seems obvious now what Saul should have done. He ought to have repented and asked the Lord for mercy and forgiveness. That would have involved humbling himself in front of his people. But everything might have been different for him if he had done those things. If there is some way in which we have taken Saul’s course, we can still correct that by doing what Saul was too proud to do. If we humble ourselves and ask for forgiveness and mercy, if we repent of our ungodly internal commitments, I am confident that the Lord will forgive us and help us.

All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your care on Him, because He cares about you.

(1 Peter 5:5-7, HCSB)

Let the Lord speak to you right now. Maybe you need to give up an internal commitment or vow that you have made. Maybe you need to realize that you are free from the invalid religious expectations of others, so long as you continue to walk and true faith and in relationship with the Lord. Remember that Jesus allowed himself to be killed for our sins, our mistakes, which are as bad, in their own way, as Saul’s. Saul remained proud, and the Lord had to resist him. But if we will be humble, he will forgive us, and lift us up in due time.

Let him talk to you about this right now.

HEAVEN, PART 3. WHAT DID JESUS HIMSELF PROMISE US?

On By Pastor TomIn Podcast, Religion, Resurrection, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Asad Photo Maldives on Pexels.com

Greetings, and Happy New Year!

This is the third (of four) in the series about Heaven from pastor Peter Churness.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Heaven Part 3

Peter preaches from an outline, and does not provide a written version, but below is a rough outline.

Jesus promised three major things about life after death:

  • 1. A home.
  • 2. Rewards
  • 3. A wedding (his own presence, fully with us).

Three major application points:

  • 1. Cultivate longing for your eternal home.
  • 2. Live in both worlds at once
  • 3. Evaluate your eternal investment portfolio.

OFFENSIVE FOOLISHNESS: CHRISTMAS 2023

On By Pastor TomIn Christmas, Podcast, Religion, Sermon1 Comment

The heart of the Christian message has always been foolish and offensive. God enters the world as a baby? The victorious messiah conquers by being tortured to death? It sounds nuts. But there is a deeper wisdom here, a strength that is beyond comprehension. For those who receive it, the benefits are beyond comparison.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Christmas 2023

CHRISTMAS 2023. MATTHEW 2:1-20. LUKE 2:34-35. 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-31.

At Christmas time we like to have warm cozy feelings about stars and mangers and babies. And those feelings have their place. Childbirth is a natural time for tender feelings. I believe the power of our feelings at Christmas is an echo of the incredible power of the moment when God took on human flesh. But sometimes, we use those warm cozy thoughts to affirm our own self-oriented ways. Christmas becomes a moment each year when we feel good and peaceful, regardless of the state of our souls.

I’m all for feeling good and peaceful, but let’s feel that way for the right reasons. If they are true Biblical reasons, we can feel peaceful at any time of year, not just Christmas. If they are the wrong reasons, it will be a false, deceptive peace. The angels declared “Peace on earth,” to the shepherds. but it wasn’t a general peace. It was peace specifically among those with whom God is pleased. In other words, peace among those who have received the Messiah as the Lord.

The fact is that baby entering the world helplessly was the opening salvo of a tremendous spiritual battle. Responding with “Aww, how sweet,” is not really an option Jesus gives us. Simeon puts his finger on the heart of the matter: We stand or fall based upon how we react to him.

When we look at the whole Christmas story, told between both Matthew and Luke, we get a snapshot of how different people responded to God’s unfathomable appearance as a baby born in poverty and humility. We have Mary, Elizabeth and Zachariah, Joseph, Simeon and Anna. We also have Herod, the leaders in Jerusalem, the Magi, and the shepherds. I want to look at how some of them responded to Jesus, and then think about our own response to him.

Even before he was born, Jesus shattered and reoriented the lives of the people around him. It is virtually certain that almost no one believed Mary when she claimed to still be a virgin. By accepting Jesus into her body and her life, Mary lost the respect of her entire town, and probably also many friendships.

Joseph also lost the respect of the town. He had to give up his business in Nazareth, and later, he and his family had to flee for their lives.

When he was eight days old, Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem, which was about five miles away from Bethlehem. While they were there, they encountered an old man named Simeon. The Holy Spirit revealed to Simeon that the little baby was the promised messiah. Simeon praised God, and then:

34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, “This child is the reason that many people in Israel will be condemned and many others will be saved. He will be a sign that will expose 35 the thoughts of those who reject him. And a sword will pierce your heart.” (Luke 2:34-35, GW)

Simeon didn’t see only a sweet little baby. He saw in Jesus the crossroads of life. He understood prophetically that the way people chose to respond to Jesus would become the most important thing.

When Jesus himself grew up, he made it clear, over and over again, that he agreed with Simeon. He plainly thought the fate of every human being would be determined by how they responded to him.

32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

MATTHEW 10:32-39, ESV

Listen to him. He’s saying: “You must love me more than anyone else in the world. You must be ready to choose me over even your own family. You must be ready to die for my sake.” These aren’t the words of a mellow “everyone get along” type of spiritual guru. This is someone who clearly believes that he stands in the place of God. He might be a egomaniac, or he might be God in the flesh, but he doesn’t leave us the option of seeing him as some sort of metaphor of love, or the goodness of all mankind. We must either condemn him as a dangerous sociopath, or worship him as God.

The point I’m getting at here is that even when he was a baby, people were forced to make that choice. From his very conception, he was the reason people were either saved or condemned. The way others responded to him exposed their inward state of mind. Hundreds of years before the day of Jesus’ birth, the prophet Isaiah spoke about the coming messiah:

12 Do not call everything a conspiracy that these people say is a conspiracy.
Do not fear what they fear; do not be terrified.
13 You are to regard only the LORD of Armies as holy. Only he should be feared; only he should be held in awe.
14 He will be a sanctuary;
but for the two houses of Israel, he will be a stone to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
15 Many will stumble over these; they will fall and be broken; they will be snared and captured. (Isaiah 8:12-15, CSB)

He will be a sanctuary to those who receive him. The center of joy and peace. But he will also be “a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” who rejected him. We find that this is quite literally true not only when Jesus was grown, but even when he was first born. Herod, king in Jerusalem, heard of this child in the most unsettling way possible. Magi came from a far country, seeking to worship a recently-born king. Matthew 2:3 says: “When King Herod and all Jerusalem heard about this, they became disturbed.” Herod and his cronies saw this only as a threat to his own power (a conspiracy?), and to the future of his dynasty. The innocent child, simply by being who he was, provoked Herod to immediate contempt, fear and hatred. Herod’s malice failed to eliminate the threat. Instead, he perpetrated a horrible atrocity to no purpose.

Herod fell in relationship to this Baby. When the Baby had grown into a child, Herod died. Even those who eventually succeeded in killing the messiah are long dead, while the messiah himself lives.

These days, we think humility is good. We think it’s cool that lowly shepherds were given the good news while princes were ignored. We think it’s wonderful that in the birth of the messiah, God honored the poor, while leaving the rich to their own devices. But we only think this way because of the Baby Himself, and we don’t always realize that.

People in those days honored noble blood and wealth. The idea that God did not was unthinkable. God, born in a stable? Ridiculous! The messiah part of a poor family? No way. God, dying for his enemies, killed by his enemies, rather than he killing them? Never!

That little stable 2,000 years ago turned much of what was believed to be true on its head.

Let’s be honest. Even today, the idea that God came into the world as a human baby sounds incredibly far-fetched. The claim that he obtained victory by being publicly humiliated and killed is ridiculous. To insist that we will stand or fall based upon how we respond to him is offensive. It’s foolish to worship one little baby from one poor family. The apostles of this messiah agreed:

18 The message about the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but it is God’s power to us who are being saved. 19 Scripture says,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.
I will reject the intelligence of intelligent people.”
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the scholar? Where is the persuasive speaker of our time? Hasn’t God turned the wisdom of the world into nonsense? 21 The world with its wisdom was unable to recognize God in terms of his own wisdom. So God decided to use the nonsense of the Good News we speak to save those who believe. 22 Jews ask for miraculous signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but our message is that Christ was crucified. This offends Jewish people and makes no sense to people who are not Jewish. 24 But to those Jews and Greeks who are called, he is Christ, God’s power and God’s wisdom. 25 God’s nonsense is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
26 Brothers and sisters, consider what you were when God called you to be Christians. Not many of you were wise from a human point of view. You were not in powerful positions or in the upper social classes. 27 But God chose what the world considers nonsense to put wise people to shame. God chose what the world considers weak to put what is strong to shame. 28 God chose what the world considers ordinary and what it despises—what it considers to be nothing—in order to destroy what it considers to be something. 29 As a result, no one can brag in God’s presence. 30 You are partners with Christ Jesus because of God. Jesus has become our wisdom sent from God, our approval, our holiness, and our ransom from sin. 31 As Scripture says, “Whoever brags must brag about what the Lord has done.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-31, GW)

It is foolish. It is offensive. And God made it that way deliberately. God chose an ordinary poor family, the kind of people who are despised by elites. He chose a humiliating death to bring about eternal abundant life. He chose to be a baby in a stable, to be part of a family with no home of their own, so that we could have an everlasting home. There is sweetness and tenderness to the scene of Mary, Joseph, and the little baby. But those things are just extras. The magnificent power of God was infused into that simple, humble moment. And the way we respond to that baby means everything to our future.

She never knew it during her earthly life, but even though Mary lost the respect of the people of Nazareth, she gained the respect of untold millions throughout all generations since then. So did Joseph. Herod, however, rightly went down in history as the murdering despot that he was. We celebrate the wisdom of the Magi, and shake our heads at the Jerusalem rulers. But for all of us there comes a moment when we become aware that we are asked to take a leap of faith. There’s a moment when we realize, “This is offensive. This is crazy. This turns the wisdom of the world on its head.”

What could give us the strength to choose this weakness, this foolishness, this offensive trust? The certainty of God’s love. He came as that little baby and died for all of us long before we were even born. Knowing the times we would reject him, knowing the ways we would hurt him, he went through it all any way. He willingly suffered to save us. Knowing that can give us the courage to choose him, even when we feel foolish, even when it might offend those around us. He loved us first. He loves us still, whether or not we know it.

So, I pray that when we experience those moments of opportunity to trust him, we will not be like Herod, having contempt for this child, despising and fearing him. Instead, let’s be like Simeon, who rejoiced, and who recognized that what is most important is how we receive the incredible gift of this child. Don’t worry about the times in the past we’ve ignored him. Trust him now. Receive him now. Let his grace cover the times we have failed.

This isn’t a one time thing. Over and over in our lives, there are moments when we can receive God’s will and work in our lives, or turn away from it. Let’s make it a habit to receive the wonderful gift of this child, over and over again, now and every day.

Merry Christmas

ADVENT #2: TRUTH FROM THE BIBLE ABOUT HEAVEN

On By Pastor TomIn Advent, Bible, Podcast, Religion, SermonLeave a comment
Photo by Matthew Montrone on Pexels.com

This is the second from pastor Peter Churness in his advent series with a focus on heaven. Again, there is no written version, so you’ll have to listen.

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Advent 2023 Week 2

ADVENT #1: HINTS FROM THE HEART ABOUT HEAVEN

On By Pastor TomIn Advent, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by Aaron Burden on Pexels.com

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

For some people, the player above may not work. If that happens to you, use the link below to either download, or open a player in a new page to listen.

To download, right click on the link (or do whatever you do on a Mac) and save it to your computer: Download Advent 2023 Week 1

This year for advent will do a short series by pastor Peter Churness, who serves in Gig Harbor, Washington. Peter is actually the founder of Life Together Churches (LTC). For the first couple years, Peter served as the primary leader of LTC, and I offered him support and encouragement, along with various resources that I had created. Then our roles reversed. Peter is a very dear friend, and a gifted teacher, and I’m looking forward to hearing his advent messages.

Peter doesn’t usually write out his sermons, so we do not have a text version to share, but he will be giving us some optional discussion questions. I’ll post those here, and you can consider those as you reflect on his message.

By the way, I do realize that we’re already in the second week of advent, but there is no law that requires us to adhere to the church season. It just worked out best to do it this way. Enjoy the message!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

Warm up Question:
Growing up (or even more recently) what was something that you had a hard 􀆟me wai􀆟ng for?
Discussion Questions

  1. Going into this series, what has been your view of heaven? How do you picture it?
  2. What ques􀆟ons do you have about heaven?
  3. What do you think about the idea that the New Earth is not a totally different place, but our present Earth made new again?
  4. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 speaks of the centrality of faith, hope and love. It’s maybe easy to see what Paul means by faith and love. What does he mean by hope?
  5. How is your hope these days?
  6. How can we pray for you?

1 SAMUEL #11: FOLLOWING IN FAITH

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment
Photo by Maria Pop on Pexels.com

Jonathan lived by faith. He trusted the Lord, and gave the Lord opportunities to lead him and use him. The result was a great victory for God’s people. Today, the most important way we learn to know God and trust him like that is through the Bible.

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1 Samuel #11. 1 Samuel 14:1-23

Please read 1 Samuel chapter 14 in order to understand what we will talk about here. I recommend using the New Living Translation (NLT) because it helps to clarify some things that are a little confusing in other versions.

Last time we saw what came out of Saul when he was pressured. In that particular situation, what the Lord wanted him to do was wait in faith. He did not want Saul to try and save himself. He did not want Saul to just do something to hold things together. Instead, he wanted Saul to trust Him. But Saul tried to make something happen on his own. This revealed his internal commitment to his own way of doing things, and the prophet Samuel told Saul that the Lord could not use him to build a dynasty.

In chapter 14, Saul and his son Jonathan and the rest of the army were still basically in the same situation. The Philistines had almost cut the nation of Israel in half. The ordinary people in the region of the invasion went into hiding. Saul started out with 3,000 professional soldiers, but at the beginning of chapter 14, he was left with only 600. In other words the only difference between the situation recorded here in chapter 14 and that in chapter 13, is that now, Saul has lost two thirds of his men to desertion. All his efforts to do something on his own achieved nothing. Some might have thought of Saul’s actions as bold leadership. He offered the sacrifice. He made a move. He didn’t just sit there. But that didn’t stop a large majority of people from deserting anyway.

Now, we might conclude from this that when great pressure is upon us, the Lord wants us to sit still and wait for him, and do nothing. That could indeed be true. But we can’t make a law out of it. Sometimes the Lord may indeed want us to wait, even when things seem to be falling apart. But at other times, in almost the exact same situation, he may want us to act. The key to understanding whether you should act, or whether you should sit still is to cultivate your relationship with the Lord. The Bible is an indispensable tool in doing that. If we treated it as only a rule-book, we wouldn’t need God at all. We could just follow the book. But actually, “the book” is all about helping us follow God, not a pre-determined set of rules covering all possible eventualities.

In fact, I think that is one of the major lessons of this part of 1 Samuel. We are to walk in ongoing faith, seeking the Lord and listening to him. But Saul tried to live by rules – rules which he changed to suit himself. In chapter fourteen we have a better example: Saul’s son Jonathan.

Jonathan, is NOT a chip off the old block. He appears to be a man of great faith. Even though he saw that his father had made a mistake, Jonathan did not, from that, assume that it meant things were the same for him and he should sit still and do nothing. He seems to have had a genuine faith relationship with God. He is willing to act, but he is also willing to not act. He knew the point was to ask this question: “Lord, what do you want to do in this situation?”

We see Jonathan’s faith first in his remarks to his armor bearer, his assistant in battle.

6 “Let’s go across to the outpost of those pagans,” Jonathan said to his armor bearer. “Perhaps the LORD will help us, for nothing can hinder the LORD. He can win a battle whether he has many warriors or only a few!” (1 Samuel 14:6, NLT)

He had it on his heart to do something. He assumed that the Lord was working through that. In addition, see how he was motivated not by fear, but by faith. In chapter 13, Saul acted out of fear. He thought, “I am outnumbered already, and now I am losing men. I just need to do something.” Jonathan thinks the opposite: “It doesn’t matter how many men we have. What matters is whether or not God wants us to do something. If he does, the two of us are enough.” Jonathan’s actions were prompted not by fear, but by faith. The things he did came from the relationship he had with God.

Notice that Jonathan didn’t leave it there. He was prompted by faith. He trusted that God didn’t need 3,000 or even 600 men to defeat the Philistines. But he did want God to confirm that he was leading Jonathan to fight. So when they got closer, Jonathan gave the Lord a chance to show him, one way or another, what He wanted him to do.

8 “All right, then,” Jonathan told him. “We will cross over and let them see us. 9 If they say to us, ‘Stay where you are or we’ll kill you,’ then we will stop and not go up to them. 10 But if they say, ‘Come on up and fight,’ then we will go up. That will be the LORD’s sign that he will help us defeat them.” 1 Samuel 14:8-10, NLT).

Jonathan was not following a rule book. He was following the living God. And so he made sure that he allowed space for the Lord to interact with him, to show him what to do. As it happened, what the Lord wanted Jonathan to do was the opposite of what he had wanted Saul to do just a short time earlier.

The Philistines taunted Jonathan. Basically, they shouted, “Hey, c’mere. We want to show you something.” It was basically trash-talking. If he were to climb up to their position, they would kill him. They didn’t expect him to take the bait. But this is the sign that Jonathan asked for, so he and his armor-bearer climbed up to them.

The Philistines had assumed they were just trading taunts. They didn’t really expect two people to be crazy enough to attack uphill against overwhelming numerical superiority. They didn’t count on a warrior like Jonathan, and they didn’t count on God. Jonathan and his assistant killed twenty Philistines in a short span of time and within a pretty small area. We already know from the end of chapter 13 that Jonathan had iron weapons and armor. It is possible that many of the Philistines in the garrison he attacked did not, which explains in part how he was able to overwhelm them, and also explains part of their panic. Even so, it is likely that at least a few of the Philistines had good weapons, since they were stationed close to the Israeli army. The text clearly means us to understand that Jonathan was victorious because the Lord was with him, not because of better weapons. One possibility is that Jonathan quickly defeated the soldiers who had iron weapons, and this caused the others with inferior weapons to flee.

The attack threw the Philistine garrison into panic and confusion. Perhaps they sensed something supernatural in the ferocity and deadliness of Jonathan’s attack. Their panic spread to the other Philistine soldiers as they fled. Apparently, God timed an earthquake to coincide with the assault, only increasing the confusion and fear.

Soldiers talk about the “fog of war.” In the midst of battle things are very hectic and often happen very fast and confusion develops in a hurry. The Philistines had no radios, no overhead airplanes or other modern conveniences to offset the fog of war. Things got worse for them and soon there was a general panic.

Saul, encamped some distance away with his army noticed the stir in the Philistine positions. Just a few days (at the most, weeks) earlier, Saul had been ready to do something – anything – to try and make something happen and show himself a leader. If he had listened to God, he would have heard that at that point in time, that was the wrong course. But Saul still hadn’t learned his lesson. Now was the time to act. If he had prayed and listened for God’s response, he would have known it. But Saul did not have that kind of relationship with God. Last time, Samuel told him that it was wrong to act. So now, when he should have been following up on Jonathan’s bold blow, Saul hesitated.

He sent for the priest and the Ark of the Covenant. Saul didn’t have the confidence that Jonathan had, the confidence that God would lead him. So he wanted to have the priest perform a religious ceremony to tell him what to do. Even so, as the ceremony began, the confusion among the Philistines increased even more, and Saul basically said to the priest, “Forget it. Let’s just go.”

So you see he wasn’t really serious about hearing from God. He just wasn’t sure at first if the battle would go his way. When things got to a point where it was obvious that the Philistines could be defeated, he dropped his attempt to hear from God, and instead, joined in the battle without seeking the Lord’s will. As before in his life, in this situation, Saul just looked at God as a means to an end. He only wanted to connect with God in situations where God could do something for him. When he saw all of the Philistines running away, he decided he didn’t need God’s guidance. You can see that he didn’t know God well enough to be led by him in the way that Jonathan was.

The battle became a rout. Remember, the Philistines were led by five kings, from five different Philistine cities. So, many of the professional warriors on the battlefield did not know each other, and most of the peasant-soldiers certainly didn’t. It is highly unlikely that there were any kind of regular Philistine uniforms. There would have been many different war banners, designating different leaders and army units.

Now, during the initial assault, the first garrison of Philistines were faced with only two warriors: Jonathan and his armor bearer. They lost a lot of men, and quickly fled. It is likely that those retreating Philistines ran headlong toward other Philistine positions to get away. But the other Philistine units may not have recognized them. They may have been on the lookout for enemies, and then they saw a group of unknown soldiers running towards them. In other words, the retreat of the Philistine unit that Jonathan routed was probably mistaken as an Israelite attack by the other Philistine units that they fled toward. This kind of confusion spread rapidly. Scripture records that they began fighting each other, and this is probably why.

By the time Saul and the rest of his 600 men joined in it was easy. The Israelites who had been hiding realized the Philistines were fleeing, and they came out to help also. Apparently some Israelites had joined the Philistines, or been conscripted by them. They turned on their Philistine masters. Now the victory was really on.

So in chapter thirteen, the Lord wanted Saul to wait but Saul didn’t. Now, in chapter fourteen Jonathan was not supposed to wait, and Saul hesitated when he should not have. How was he supposed to know what to do?

Part of Saul’s problem is that he didn’t approach God as a person. He treated God like a thing to be used. So, he had no idea how to understand God’s will in any situation. When I was at Oregon State University, I took a course in botany. I was given a “key” to the flora of Western Oregon. It was a book, about as thick as a bible, that could help me figure out the species of virtually any plant I was likely to see in that area. The way it worked was to present me with a possible choice, and, depending on what I chose, send me to another page with another set of choices, until my choices narrowed down to the correct answer. So I might start by deciding if I was dealing with an evergreen or deciduous plant. Say I chose deciduous. Then it would ask me to choose whether the leaves were lobed or not. Say I chose lobed. Next I might choose whether the leaves were directly opposite each other, or if they were staggered, or if they were in clumps. And so in one case I proceeded through each step, covering every possible plant I might encounter, until I narrowed it down to find out I was holding poison oak, which I could have found out just by waiting a few days for the rash to appear.

Sometimes, we are tempted to treat the Bible or religion like a “key” to life. We expect that we should find specific instructions for every possible scenario. And we assume that if the answer was “X” one time, than the next time we encounter a similar scenario, the answer will still be “X.” That was part of Saul’s mistake. For him, religion was only ever a means to an end.

But that isn’t what true faith is about. True faith is about getting to know God, and responding to him. Though the Bible is not some kind of “answer key,” it is the most important way we have to get to know God. You cannot get to know God apart from the Bible. The Bible helps us get to know the Lord – and then the Lord tells us what he wants us to know, trust or do. God’s guidance will not contradict the Bible.

The lesson here is not, “you should wait when you are pressured.” Nor is it, “you should move forward decisively when you are pressured.” No. The message is that you should cultivate your relationship with God. Then when you are under pressure and need to know what to do, you won’t be like Saul, hesitating and unsure. You can simply check with the Lord, and move forward – or not – as he leads you. Jonathan shows us the way.

This shows us how much we need to read the Bible regularly, because the Bible helps us get to know God. Again, the Bible is not like an answer key, but it is indispensable. If you don’t read (or listen to) the Bible regularly, you are in danger of thinking your own feelings are the voice of God. You might start, like Saul, using God or religion as a tool to justify whatever you want to do. It is clear that Saul practiced religion without really knowing God at all. I know I sound like a broken record, because I say this sort of thing all the time. But I am still talking with people all the time who claim that they want to follow Jesus, but they don’t take even five minutes a day to get to know God by reading the Bible. I don’t understand how you can be serious about following Jesus if you don’t read the Bible. Without something objective, outside yourself – like the Bible – you will end up thinking your own thoughts and feelings are God. You may end up thinking “Christianity didn’t really work for me.” I say: “It won’t work for you without the Bible.” Please, please, read your Bible regularly. If you are having trouble knowing how to go about it, please, reach out to me through the messaging sections on this blog site. Or, read my book: Who Cares About the Bible?

Now, I did say that the Bible is not an “answer key” but instead, the way we get to know God. So, let’s assume we are getting to know God through the Bible. How do we know if we are being led by God in a particular situation? I have some thoughts. My thoughts are not hard and fast rules, but they are questions that can help us discern God’s will in various situations. Let’s  pretend we are Jonathan’s armor bearer, and evaluate the guidance that Jonathan said he received from God:

1. Is it true of God’s nature? We can only answer this if we have begun to get to know God’s nature. We do this by – you guessed it! – reading the Bible. But the question is essentially this: Does this course of action seem consistent with what I know about God, as revealed to me through the Bible? So, Jonathan knew that God often uses the small and weak to defeat and shame the strong. Yes it is consistent with God’s nature.

2. Is it consistent with Biblical truth? Again, we need to know the Bible a little bit to answer that. But for instance, if you think you are being led to do something that the Bible says is a sin, that guidance is not from God. For Jonathan, the idea that God’s help is worth more than an army is consistent with scripture. There is nothing in scripture that labels Jonathan’s actions as sinful.

3. Is it true of the personal life of the person offering the guidance? Jonathan was bold and faithful. The guidance he got was consistent with his own character.

4. Do those close to that person testify to the integrity of that person’s life? The armor bearer knew Jonathan. He knew that Jonathan was someone who earnestly tried to follow God.

5. Is it wise? Jonathan didn’t start with a headlong attack. He set up a situation where he would be safe while he waited for God’s answer. He made room for God to tell him “no.” So, he showed wisdom.

6. Are there circumstances that confirm the word? Again in the case of Jonathan, he made it so that the guidance would be confirmed by the response of the Philistines. So he had confirming circumstances built right in to the guidance he received.

Maybe there is something else in this text for you. You might be in a difficult situation, with what seems like no way out. Although this text ends with victory for the Israelites, at the beginning of it, they were still just a step away from a national catastrophe. With Saul’s tiny army, there appeared to be no hope. So, for you right now, you might be facing a situation where things might appear hopeless. Perhaps you need to hear God speak through Jonathan: “nothing can stop the Lord from saving, whether by many, or by few.” Maybe you are tempted, like Saul, to believe deliverance cannot come until you have more – more people, more resources, more time, more money…whatever. But maybe the Lord is saying to you, “what you have is plenty. The point is not your resources, but mine.”

Let Him speak to you right now.