Archive for » December, 2008 «

Theological Propaganda

Sunday, December 21st, 2008 | Author:

Therefore, let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or Sabbath days, things which are a [mere] shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Colossians 2:16-17 (NASB)

Mere – When you read the word “mere” in this verse, does it communicate the idea that those things which Paul has just described as of lesser importance?  We see that Paul lists those activities that would be part of Torah observance, but when the translators introduce the word “mere” into this verse, they change the emphasis, don’t they?  Since there is no Greek equivalent for the word “mere”, the translators put the word in brackets.  They better!  What they have done is alter the text so that it reads according to their theological bias.  It makes the text appear to discount Torah observance.  Try reading the verse without the word “mere” and you will get a different message.  The NASB is committed to a two covenant theology, and the translation puts it into this verse without giving the reader any explanation or justification.

The NIV is worse.  The translators of the NIV actually change the tense of the Greek so that this verse reads, “These are a shadow of things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”  This is blatant theological propaganda disguised as accurate translation.  You will also notice that the rest of the verse has been changed the further diminish the connection to Torah by adding the word “however.”  Now you know why I often refer to the NIV as the “Nearly Inspired Version.”  The translators alter, add or subtract from the Greek and Hebrew in order to communicate their particular theological position.  Of course, they don’t tell the reader anything about these decisions, so the poor reader doesn’t know that they are being spoon-fed theological propaganda, not an accurate translation.

The NIV and NASB aren’t alone in this anti-Semitic view.  The New Living Translation changes the tense and the secondary phrase.  The RSV adds the word “only” instead of “mere” – with the same effect.  Only the KJV, NKJV, ESV and the NRSV actually translate the verse as it is written in the Greek text.  Unless you know something about the bias of the translating committees, you will always be subject to their interpretations hidden in the choice of words.  There is no English translation that accurately conveys the full meaning of the Greek or Hebrew.  As you can see, this is not simply the result of the difficulty of capturing the nuances and depth of meaning in one language and converting it to another.  There are deliberate alterations in play here as well.

So, what are we to do?  If you find this discouraging, don’t despair.  Yes, you will have to be a lot more careful about what you claim to be God’s Word if you are reading a translation, but now you know some of the red flags.  At least the NASB puts the words in brackets.  The NIV doesn’t even bother to show you that they have changed the text.  Now you know that you will need several different English Bibles to get closer to the original.  And, of course, you could start exploring an interlinear whenever you think that the English text doesn’t quite sound right.  In addition, there are a number of internet links that can help.  Just start looking for explanations that give full weight to the fact that all these writers were Jewish.

There’s a movement afoot to recapture the cultural heritage we lost when Christianity left its true Jewish roots behind.  It’s a grassroots effort to understand God’s point of view from the perspective of the people He chose for His self-revelation.  As we approach the end of this year, it might be worth while to make a commitment to take a much longer look at Jesus, the Jewish Messiah.  I am quite sure you will discover that you have been grafted into a way of living that is far richer than you could have imagined.  May you be blessed in your diligence to uncover what God really said.

Topical Index:  Translation

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Reading Backwards

Saturday, December 20th, 2008 | Author:

Therefore, let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or Sabbath days Colossians 2:16

No One – Every letter Paul wrote fits into the cultural context of the audience he addressed.  The first principle of biblical interpretation is to determine that cultural context.  Unless we know what the original audience understood, we are almost certainly going to read the text from our own cultural perspective, and that can cause all kinds of problems.  This verse is a classic example of reading the message as if it were written yesterday, not two thousand years ago to a particular body of believers who were struggling with issues in a city in Turkey.

What do we know about these believers?  Well, we know they were followers of YHWH.  We know that they had a good grip on the Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament).  We know that there were Gentile proselytes in this group.  We know that they believed Jesus was the Messiah.  And we know that there were those in the city who accused them of religious fanaticism.  With just this much in mind, let’s try reading this verse again.

Paul tells the disciples in Colossae to allow no one (Greek: me tis humas) to act as judge.  The construction is important.  The first word (me) is a Greek word for the conditional no.  This is not ou, a word that also means no but is without conditions.  Me would be used in a sentence like “I might not make it for lunch.”  Ou would be used in “I will not break the commandment.”  So, Paul is telling his readers not to let something happen as a matter of the present circumstances.  In other words, do not let the circumstances of your situation cause you to be judged.

Who would do such judging?  Well, Paul uses the Greek tis humas.  This is literally “someone or anyone (second person personal pronoun).”  Ah, this means someone you know.  Not simply an external acquaintance or third party, this is someone familiar to you.  Don’t let anyone who has a familiar relationship to you become your judge.

OK, judge over what?  Well, now we see the real concern.  Everything that Paul lists here is a part of Torah obedience.  What you eat and drink, what festivals you celebrate, what calendar you follow (the Jewish calendar is lunar, not solar) and keeping Sabbath are all found in God’s instruction book of life.  Paul tells his readers in this pagan city, “Don’t let anyone you know stand in judgment over you with regard to keeping these instructions.”

Uh, that’s not the way we read this verse today, is it?  We read it backwards.  Instead of seeing that Paul is defending believers for keeping Torah, we side with the pagans and claim that Paul is advocating on behalf of those who want to push Torah-obedience out of the picture.  That would have been impossible from Paul’s perspective.  He was Torah-observant all his life.  He says so on numerous occasions.  He even fulfills a vow ritual proclaiming his endorsement of Torah.  Why would he side with the ones who want to argue that Torah observance doesn’t matter?  No, we read this verse from the pagan perspective.  We are the accusers, not the defenders.  Paul might as well include us in the “no one” category for we are the ones judging those who keep the Torah.  Maybe it’s time to read this verse in the right direction.

Topical Index:  Obedience

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Status Symbol

Friday, December 19th, 2008 | Author:

for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” Romans 1:17

Righteous – Tim Hegg, in the book The Letter Writer, makes an incredibly important point about Paul’s understanding of righteousness after his encounter with Christ.  Paul as a Pharisee thought of righteousness as the identifying mark of those elected by God.  Since he believed that election was a matter of ethnic heritage, he thought that all those who could trace their bloodline back to Abraham were therefore marked as righteous before God.  It was on the basis of Abraham’s faith that every Jew was saved.  This stamp of righteousness ultimately applied only to those who were descendents of Abraham.

Then something happened.  Paul encountered the living Christ.  His theology was radically altered.  He saw the light.  Righteousness was not an ethnic status symbol.  It was a spiritual status symbol.   It indicated the status that the righteous God imputed to all those who trusted Him.  So, as the summation of all that Paul knows about faith, he quotes Habakkuk 2:4.  But he doesn’t quote it the way that we usually think of it in this translated verse.

The Hebrew of Habakkuk should read, “It is on the basis of faith that the righteous one lives.”  In other words, the one who trusts God demonstrates righteousness.  That’s what it means to be righteous.  On the basis of this trust, this one will live.   This means that trust produces the kind of person who perseveres.  Righteousness is not something that I procure as I place my trust in God.  God counts me righteous and because of that I have faith in Him.  As a result, I live my life based on that faith and that is the demonstration of righteousness.  Hegg says, “for Paul, the words ‘righteous’ or ‘righteousness’ . . . do not describe an idea or ideal (as they would in Greek) but rather the character of holiness within the confines of a relationship – in this case, the relationship of the sinner with God as well as the man. . .  Entrance into the covenant (which ascribes the status of righteous) also brings an enablement to live within the guidelines of that covenant – ‘to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age.’”

God makes sinners righteous.  In doing so, He enables men and women to live out the demonstration of that righteousness by keeping His covenant instructions.  That means that Habakkuk does not say, “It is on the basis of my faith that I am given righteousness.”  He says, “Those who are marked as righteous are preserved on the basis of faith (trust).”  In other words, those who go forward after God has chosen them, live according to the trust they place in God.  They are members of the covenant of grace, and that covenant affects every thought, decision and action that they make in the world.  Grace dominates them, saturates them and infuses them until they have no other way of being in the world.  They didn’t earn that grace.  It didn’t come from their heritage or their personal efforts, but once it arrived, it changed everything about them.  Now they cannot live without it.  They were stamped righteous and they now live righteously.  The two go hand-in-hand.

We may never really know why God chose us.  All we know is that we were confronted, humbled and abased.  He chose us and we submitted to Him.  From that moment on, our lives exhibited being grace-filled, resulting in the process of exhibiting righteousness.

Topical Index:  Righteousness

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Church Fanatics

Thursday, December 18th, 2008 | Author:

“You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;” Acts 21:20

 

Zealous – There’s a lot of discussion these days about the impact, power and outreach of the early church.  There are a lot of books, programs, videos and training tools that try to recapture all that energy for our struggling congregations.  We read the accounts of the demonstration of God in power and we wonder why we don’t see the same things happening today.  Of course, we could listen to the theologians who tell us that God only managed such demonstrations for the grand opening celebration.  However, those pronouncements seem like rationalizations of our ineptitude rather than explanations of a God who has been shaking up things for a long, long time.  There’s another problem that makes all the New Testament evidence even more difficult to explain.  Since God opened the doors on His grand plan way back at Sinai, it hardly seems likely that He shut them when the last apostle died.  Maybe we need to read a bit more carefully.

When Paul shows up in Jerusalem, recounting his work visiting synagogues and preaching the truth of the Messiah, he is greeted enthusiastically with this comment, “You see, brother . . .”  What are these fellow believers anxious for Paul to see?  That there are thousands of believers and that they are all zealous for the Law?  Let’s re-read this from a Hebrew perspective (which was, of course, how it was originally expressed).   The Jerusalem counsel tells Paul that thousands of Jews have come to believe that Yeshua is the Messiah.  They are still Jewish, but now they are what we would call Messianic Jews.  Notice the next part of this eager announcement.  Every one of these believers is zealous for the Torah.  They haven’t stopped being Jewish in their outlook on life.  In fact, they are more enthusiastic than ever about practicing Torah observance.  Actually, the Greek text doesn’t use the word as a verb.  It’s a noun.  They are zelotai.  They are zealots. It’s not just what they do.  It’s who they are.  They are walking, talking examples of Torah-living.  They aren’t just a few left-overs from prior Jewish rituals.  All of the new converts to Messianic Judaism are living affirmations of the central place of the Torah.

Do you suppose that this had anything to do with the outpouring of God’s Spirit in their community?  Do you think that God found these believers incredibly useful to Him since they were living in obedience to His ways?  The rather amazing fact, subsequently ignored, is that when the lives of men and women find grace in God and become followers of His way of doing things, His Spirit floods them with demonstrations of His desire to reach the rest of the world.  They become the channels of God’s majesty, power and compassion.  Suddenly those tiny restricted pipelines that couldn’t accommodate God’s greatness are opened wide and He comes pouring through.

I wonder if we haven’t missed the obvious.  Maybe we don’t experience the same kind of amazing church growth, transformed lives and cultural impact because we are no longer zelotai for the Torah.  We’ve put those books on the shelf under “Interesting History but No Longer Applicable.”  We’ve closed down the pipeline to the smallest possible opening and allowed only grace to squeeze its way through.  Consequently, the excited announcement of the Jerusalem council doesn’t gush from our lips – and neither do the signs and wonders that accompany it.

Topical Index:  church, Acts 21:20

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Follow Me

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | Author:

This is how we know we are in him:  whoever claims to live in him must walk as Yeshua did.  1 John 2:5-6 (NIV)

Walk – It seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?  John says that if we claim to be in Christ, we must walk as He did.  The Greek verb, peripateo, is a nice Hebrew idiom translated into Greek.  In Hebrew, it would be halach, used figuratively to express a way of life.  Even today the Jewish community uses the term halachah to describe rules for living.  So, John is merely telling us that Jesus observed certain halachah, and we need to do the same.

Ah, now you know what’s coming.  What were Jesus’ rules for living?  If you want to claim to be His follower, then you need to follow Him.  Apparently John didn’t think that following meant sort of imitating the general style of life that Jesus might have adopted in the modern world.  Apparently John was not concerned about being relevant to the culture.  John was concerned about particular and specific patterns of obedience.  He tells us that the claim to be a disciple will manifest itself in our lives because we will observe the same things that Jesus observed.  Shall we make a list?

Go read the Gospels again.  Each time you see Jesus displaying a behavior, ask yourself if that action is also present in your life.  Don’t spiritualize it!  John is not suggesting that walking means traveling in generally the same direction.  John is saying that what Jesus did, we must do.  So, we could start with Jesus’ actions with regard to worship.  Oops!  Maybe we better skip that one since it was Jesus’ practice to go to a synagogue and participate in a worship service that had its roots in the tabernacle and the temple.  Maybe we should start with His actions in the community.  Ah, maybe not.  It looks as if Jesus was constantly putting others before His own needs.  It looks as if He acted without regard to personal concern.  It looks like He embraced all genders and all ethnic varieties and all enemies as equal.   Let’s move on.  Maybe we could just have a ham sandwich and a soda and think about all this.  Oh, that doesn’t work either.  Jesus was kosher.  Goodbye shrimp cocktails.

Maybe John was wrong.  Maybe he forgot about grace.  Under grace, we don’t have to pay attention to halak, do we?  After all, we’re free.  We can worship God anyway we want, can’t we?  We can live any kind of life we want, as long as it’s morally correct, right?  We don’t have to be Jewish.  Just because John and Paul and James and Matthew and a bunch of other first century disciples actually did what Jesus did doesn’t mean we have to, does it?

Do you ever wonder why we systematically filter out the obvious implications of what the New Testament authors say in favor of a lifestyle that accommodates contemporary culture?  Do you ever wonder why we elevate the principle of love beyond the acts of obedience?  Do you ever wonder why none of the writers of the New Testament do the same thing?  They seem to think that the way Jesus walked is the way we should walk, but what do they know?  They didn’t have to deal with the pressures we face, did they?  Weren’t their lives a lot easier?  After all, it was only life and death for them.  They didn’t have to commute.

Topical Index:  Obedience

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Just Think About It

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 | Author:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge Hosea 4:6

Knowledge – How often have you heard this verse quoted in a plea for renewed diligence toward the things of God?  The quotation is usually followed by an enumeration of our lack of Bible study, church attendance, daily devotion or some other missing element in the quest to understand God’s ways.  But what if the verse doesn’t really say anything about our scarcity of divine information?  What if it’s about something that has nothing to do with mental cognition?  Would that change our actions?

This Hebrew word (da’at) comes from the word ‘yada.  Of course, ‘yada is not just about factual information.  It covers the range from knowing that 2+2=4 to Adam knowing Eve.  In its application to God, it’s not about information.  It’s about relationship in action.  Why are God’s people destroyed (actually, the word means “cut off”)?  It’s because they lack an intimate, working relationship with Him.  They have plenty of information, but they lack desire to apply it.  We would have seen this immediately if we had just continued to read the rest of the verse.  “Because you have rejected the knowledge, I also rejected you from being priest to Me.  Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will forget your sons.”  What does it mean to lack knowledge?  It means to forget God’s instructions.  Knowledge of God is practical application of His Torah.  The people God rejects, the ones He forgets, are the ones who no longer practice His commandments.  They don’t lack systematic theologies, liturgies or rituals.  They lack compassion, mercy and forgiveness.  Doesn’t that sound like something Jesus said about the weightier matters?

Quoting Hosea is important, especially today.  But we must never think that Hosea’s verse is about Bible study, sermons or Sunday school.  We must never imagine that Hosea was telling us to get back to school, study more or earn another theological degree.  God speaks through Hosea calling His people to action.  DO WHAT I SAY! That’s what it means to have knowledge.

Now we can easily see how much we know.  Just look at our actions.  Are we in conformity with God’s directions?  Do we share His concerns?  Do we follow His instructions?  As the song goes, “Make a list and check it twice.”  What do you eat?  When do you celebrate His holidays?  What do you give to His kingdom?  How do you interact with the people of His concern?  How do you treat your enemies?

By the way, just in case you haven’t carefully read the rest of this verse, did you notice the result of lack of knowledge?  The people are no longer suitable as priests.  You can’t fulfill God’s mission in the world if you aren’t living according to His direction.  You can, of course, do a lot of noble, wonderful, illuminated, altruistic work, but it won’t be useful to God.  You might win the Peace Prize or the accolades of the church, but God will have to forget you.  You see, there is only one way to be useful to God and that’s to do it His way.  That’s why knowledge is practical application.  It shows up in the way we live, move and have our being.  It’s not what’s in my head.  It’s what’s in my hands.

Topical Index:  Knowledge

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A Wedding Date

Monday, December 15th, 2008 | Author:

And you shall put this ark in front of the veil that is near the ark of the testimony, in front of the mercy seat that is over [the ark of] the testimony, where I will meet with you. Exodus 30:6

Meet – Where would you go to keep an appointment with God?  Does that question sound strange to you?  In an age when we think of God’s presence everywhere we are, the stipulation that God will meet the sons of Israel in a particular place seems very odd.  God is everywhere.  Why would we have to go to some designated spot to meet Him?  Why does God make such a big deal out of this particular place?

The significance of God’s appointed meeting place is found in the relationship between the testimony and the mercy seat.  The testimony is the Torah, God’s instruction book about life.  It contains all those provisions that make life work in blessed harmony.  Of course, as a consequence of spelling out those provisions, the Torah also reveals our sinfulness.  Although it was intended to show us how to be holy, it had the effect of displaying our sin.  There isn’t much point in God meeting me over a copy of the Torah.  I would be condemned.  The meeting would be over.

So, God meets me above the mercy seat, the place of atonement, which covers the testimony.  The mercy seat was the lid of the ark.  Once in place, it covered the commandments, offering a way to blot out my guilt.  God meets me in the place where we can actually converse, the place where my sin is covered by His grace.  What’s amazing about this particular stipulation is that the necessity of grace has been a part of the covenant community since God initiated the covenant.  God’s appointed meeting place is just one more demonstration of the fact that deliverance has always been the operation of grace.

The Hebrew word ya’ad (meet) has two rather interesting meanings.  The first, of course, is about pointing out a place of meeting, specifying or designating a gathering place.  But this word is also used in Exodus 21:8-9 to describe choosing a wife.  The common link between the two meanings is the idea of appointing.  Isn’t it fascinating that even the word associated with the gathering place of God has marriage connotations?  The trust, loyalty, fidelity and commitment involved in marriage are displayed in our encounter with God at the mercy seat.  Atonement is not simply forgiveness.  It is a wedding ceremony with the Most High.  It’s a place where vows are exchanged.  We become His because He has chosen us.

I wonder if we think about atonement when we get married.  Probably not.  We don’t realize that the deepest meaning of a wedding is not about the union of two human beings.  It’s about God’s love affair with us.  It takes God’s grace to make the greatest wedding possible.  His wedding vows can only be given in the place of atonement.  I wonder if the vows we make to each other on our wedding day would be deeper and stronger if we realized that atonement is behind this divinely-ordained ritual.  I wonder if our choosing a partner would become a much more significant and important process if we first thought of marriage as becoming God’s partner for eternity.

Topical Index:  Mercy

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A Man Of the People

Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | Author:

And Moshe spoke to YHWH, saying, “Let YHWH, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation” Numbers 27:15-16

Appoint – Not many leaders display the character of Moses.  There’s a reason that he was called the most humble man who ever walked the earth.  If we look hard, we can see this amazing humility right here, at the end of his life.  Moses’ request should instruct us about true leadership, and it has nothing to do with center stage miracles or divine displays of power.

Replay the scene.  God speaks to Moses, telling him to go up to the mountain to view the Promised Land.  Moses is informed that he will not enter it because years ago he was disobedient.  He will die in the wilderness, never setting foot in the land that he spent his entire life waiting to possess.  Imagine how we would have responded with our preoccupation with grace.

“Lord, this isn’t fair.  My sins have been covered.  You have forgiven me.  I spent my whole life serving You.  I deserve to reap the reward.  Besides, these people need me.”

Moses, the man groomed to become Pharaoh, had already experienced the destruction of one dream.  His vision for freeing his people as the head of Egypt died forty years ago.  Now God informs him that because of a tiny error in judgment years before, Moses’ other great dream will also evaporate.  Not many of us would have responded as Moses does.

And how does Moses respond.  He asks nothing for himself.  He doesn’t utter a word of complaint.  He doesn’t make a single excuse.  His answer focuses entirely on the people.  He asks God to be sure to replace Him with someone trustworthy.  Moses instantly accepts God’s judgment and immediately turns his attention toward the welfare of the very people who have been such a burden.  Moses displays his true leadership quality.  His life is not about what he wants.  It’s about what is good for the people of God.

Moses asks God to appoint a new shepherd.  The Hebrew root is paqad.  It means a bit more than “appoint.”  Some of the nuances of this verb include “to attend to, to pay attention, to seek and to assign.”  The context usually determines the intended meaning, but the background contains the flavor of all these.  Moses might be asking God to simply appoint someone, but it seems more likely that he is asking God to examine, seek and assign the perfect new shepherd to replace him.  Not anyone will do.  This has to be the right man for the job, and only God is able to determine precisely who that right man is.  Here’s another characteristic of true leadership.  I leave the appointment of my replacement in the hands of God.

We, of course, have the tendency to do our own succession planning.  We try to put our replacement choice in the position, usually because we want someone who will carry on our marvelous legacy.  Notice that this is not Moses’ concern.  Moses doesn’t care who follows him as long as it is God’s choice.  Once again we see that Moses isn’t thinking about himself, not even about his reputation or legacy.  His only concern is that the people have God’s chosen shepherd.  We have a lot to learn, don’t we?

Topical Index:  Leadership

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Sex Problems

Saturday, December 13th, 2008 | Author:

and they took their daughters to them for wives, and gave their daughters to their sons; and they served their gods Judges 3:6

Took – It’s a pattern that is repeated over and over in Scripture.  Idolatry is introduced into God’s family through sexual relations with outsiders.   Time after time, we see that as soon as Israel begins to intermarry with those who do not follow the path of YHWH, they fall under the influence of the imported gods.  Idolatry enters on the wings of sexual attraction.

Remember how careful Abraham was when it came to the marriage of his son.  He sent his servant back to the homeland to find a wife who came from a believing family.  Isaac didn’t check the personal ads.  He didn’t join a dating service.  He didn’t even “fall in love.”  His father arranged the marriage with someone who was a strong believer.  Love came afterward.  Attraction didn’t interfere with the most important decision – whom do you worship?

Remember what happened to Esau.  He rejected the possibility of such arrangements.  He took for himself two wives from the Canaanites.  It was a disaster.  The same mistake is repeated by Solomon (who certainly should have known better) and many others.  Sexual attraction pushes aside spiritual commitment.  No wonder the Bible has so much to say about its dangers.

If we pay attention to the choice of verbs in this verse, we see something else that reveals the nature of this danger.  The Scriptures tell us that the sons of Israel took the daughters of these foreign cultures as wives.  The verb is laqach.  It is used to describe the actions of acquiring by purchase, seizing, snatching, carrying away, taking possession of and marrying.  Of course, in this context we want to think of marrying, but notice the fuller meaning of this verb.  All of the actions are forceful.  All of the actions are possessive.  All of the actions describe behavior that is about getting something that I want by nearly any means necessary.  Isn’t it interesting that Scripture uses this kind of word to describe marriages outside the household?  If this verse were written in Greek, the verb would be eros, not agape.  Eros is a word about love, but it is love that desires to possess, not to give.  That’s what we see happening here.  The sons of Israel desired to possess the women of Canaan.  What they didn’t realize, or didn’t care to consider, was that this desire to possess had disaster hidden under the covers.  Their sexual interest destroyed their spiritual awareness.

Our culture doesn’t arrange marriages anymore.  We are thoroughly committed to the Greek-Canaanite model.  We think that marriage is about finding the perfectly compatible partner that will make us feel complete.  We go about seeking to possess what we are missing.  And when we find that special solution to our emptiness, we take it.  I wonder if we realize the consequences.  I wonder if we care.  Maybe we need to really re-think how marriage works in God’s house.  Maybe we need to put marriage completely in the hands of God.  He usually knows what He’s doing. J

Topical Index:  Marriage

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Enemy Occupation

Friday, December 12th, 2008 | Author:

so that by them I may test Israel Judges 2:22

Test – Why doesn’t God just remove temptations?  Wouldn’t it be easy for Him to just take away all the seductive opportunities that we face?  If He really wants our holy obedience, why doesn’t He just get rid of all those things that could trip us up?  A lesson from the history of Israel helps us answer these questions.

When God gave the Promised Land to Israel, He told them to exterminate the idolatrous nations that lived there.  No covenant agreements were to be made with any of the defeated nations.  Nothing of the fertility cults was to be left behind.  But the tribes of Israel did not follow God’s game plan.  Once they established their domination in the land, they let some of the previous cultures remain.  They didn’t exterminate all those people.  A small group remained in the hills, another group in the plains.  Some were even allowed to mix in with the tribes.  After Joshua died, the Angel of the Lord rebuked Israel, saying “What have you done?  Because you did not follow My commandment, I will not drive these people out of the land.  They will become your enemies, living among you, and their gods will become a snare to you” (Judges 2:1-3).  Israel’s initial disobedience resulted in a permanent struggle for holiness.

The Scriptures tell us that God never intended for His children to deal with the constant presence of idolatry.  Had Israel obeyed God in the first place, this threat would have been removed.  But once Israel failed to obey, God did not rush to their rescue.  He deliberately left the idolatrous cultures in the places Israel refused to eliminate.  Why?  In order to test Israel’s subsequent obedience.  The Hebrew word here is nasa.  It is used to describe determining the worth of something by testing it.  It’s the same verb used when the Queen of Sheba tests Solomon with questions aimed at determining the quality of his wisdom, as well as the verb used when God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a test of Abraham’s devotion.  It does not describe a temptation.  Instead, it describes an opportunity to demonstrate quality.  This change in perspective is crucial.  Too often we think of seductive circumstances and spiritual obstacles as unnecessary hindrances, but now we see from Israel’s history that these are the very things God uses to refine obedience.

Israel’s failure can become our victory.  God did not punish Israel by leaving their enemies in place.  God allowed the natural results of their original disobedience to become an opportunity for further obedience and refinement.  God’s intention was not retribution.  It was second-chance restoration.  Of course, it would have been much easier to be obedient in the first place.  The enemies would have been removed.  But God didn’t give up on Israel.  He simply found another way to bring them to spiritual maturity.  In fact, the entire history of Israel can be summed up in God’s faithfulness in creating alternatives.  Every failure produced another way for Israel to become obedient again.

That’s usually what happens to us.  Typically, we don’t execute God’s original, perfect plan.  We mess up.  But God doesn’t give up.  He leaves behind what we didn’t take care of and uses it to reshape our chance for obedience.  Every past failure becomes an opportunity for future victory.  It all depends on how you look at it.

Topical Index:  Testing

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