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No, there isn’t anything wrong with the server today. I just forgot to write a Today’s Word for today. Frankly, I’m not surprised. I’m feeling quite a bit of stress these days and am really near exhaustion. I just forgot that July has 31 days. That’s a pretty good indicator of how crazy my life is right now.
August will be better.
PS – I did post several more audio lessons on Ruth. Click here to listen to them.
We have completed the study of Ruth. Here are some comments about the lessons we learn from this story.
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Here is the audio lecture on Ruth 4:13-22
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Here is the audio lecture on Ruth 4:1-13
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Here is the audio lecture on Ruth 3:9-18
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Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:29 ESV
Yoke – Yesterday we connected Paul’s idea of “bond” with Yeshua’s statement about “yoke.” “Freedom comes in chains,” we said. When Yeshua invites us to take His yoke, He is not offering liberty. He is offering glorious constraint; constraint that instructs us in a way of life delivered from toxic anxiety and confusion. But the Greek word zygos has another meaning that heightens His invitation. Zygos also means “scales.” It is found in Revelation 6:5 and in Leviticus 26:26 (LXX). The horseman of judgment comes with scales in his hand. He will weigh the deeds of men. But by what standard? Both the rabbis and Yeshua tell us that the standard for these scales is the “yoke” of the law (Torah), an excellent wordplay in Greek!
Do you suppose that the translator of Yeshua’s words in Matthew’s Greek had this wordplay in mind? When you hear, “Take my yoke upon you,” do you also hear, “Take my scales upon you”? Do you connect “yoke” and “law”? It would be hard to read the Greek translation of Yeshua’s Hebrew without making this connection.
Far too often we read this verse without its connection to Jeremiah or its nuances in Greek. We read the verse with the eyes of Plato and Aristotle. We think Yeshua is offering assistance (forgiveness and restoration) without obligation, at least without obligation to others. We want rest, not duty. So we convert zygos into something akin to “removing all my burdens.” We look for Platonic peace, that is, freedom from everyone else. But zygos as “scales” can never provide such fictitious folly. All of Torah is about obligation – to God and to others. The “Law” is a way of living in the world, among those who occupy the same place and time. When we take on Yeshua’s zygos, we take on the standard which the third horseman brings. There is no rest without scales just as there is no peace without chains.
Perhaps this is enough for today. Perhaps we have already been convicted of our ungodly desire to be “free” of all those burdens of others. Perhaps the horseman finds us wanting.
Topical Index: Matthew 11:29, yoke, zygos, freedom, law, Torah
TRAVEL NOTES: In about a week, I will be traveling to Europe where I will lecture on a cruise ship through the Greek islands. Don’t worry, Today’s Word will continue as usual and all your book orders will be taken care of without delay. I will just be out of email contact for some time.
being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:3 NASB
Bond – Syndesmos is the Greek combination of words that mean “together” and “band or shackle.” We might think of this word with the imagery of a chain. Each link is welded together with the next. The “bond” is only as strong as its weakest link. This all seems quite ordinary.
Until we connect this idea to two others: peace and yoke.
First we must recognize that Paul’s concept of peace is tied to chains, not freedom. To preserve the unity of the Spirit, we must be chained together. Those seeking freedom from obligation are not suitable for unity of the Spirit. They are, in fact, opposed to God’s exhibition of unity, found in the community that embraces the Spirit of the Lord. In the Bible, freedom is a function of voluntary obligation, not individual liberty. The biblical concept stands in utter opposition to our culture of indulgence even if that indulgence is laced with spirituality.
Once we realize that freedom comes in chains, then we are prepared to understand Yeshua’s statement about the zygos, the yoke. A yoke not only ties us to Him, it shackles us to each other. The yoke is the implement of peace, the equipment of the saints. Just as Yeshua exhorts us to take His yoke and find rest, Paul reminds us that the bond of true fellowship is the unity of mutual obligation. And, of course, this is one of the meanings of that great Hebrew word hesed.
Do you think of chains when you think of peace? Do you see yourself as handcuffed to the Spirit, shackled to the truth? Do you rejoice in your obligations toward others? Do you know what it means to be bound to the Lord? Does your desire to serve Him result in yoking yourself to another?
Unless you can answer these questions with affirmation, you probably haven’t left the world of Greek “freedom” behind. There is no unity without the clank of metal or the feeling of restraints.
Topical Index: bond, syndesmos, yoke, zygos, peace, freedom, Ephesians 4:3
So she sat down besides the reapers. He handed her roasted grain, and she ate her fill and had some left over. Ruth 2:14 JPS
Ate her fill – When we read this description of Ruth’s meal, we find connections to other stories about eating until satiated and having leftovers. We think of stories in both the Tanakh and the Brit Hadasha. Of course, the first readers of the story of Ruth would not connect this passage to a story about Yeshua, but we can because we have 2000 years of hindsight. Roasted grain is now gathered together with loaves and fish. Nevertheless, the first readers of this story undoubtedly connected the key phrase, tokhal va-tisba’, with stories of Israel in the wilderness and passages like Deuteronomy 6:11 and 11:15. Perhaps you can add other stories of satisfied consumption; stories that are recounted after Ruth’s experience.
Now that we have this background (and extension), we should notice the roles played by the characters in this drama. Ruth’s role is obvious. She is the stranger, the outsider and the one who receives life-giving blessing. The once-pagan convert to the God of Israel finds nourishment in God’s community among God’s chosen people. We may certainly identify. Of course, there is a major theological shift when we as Christians suggest that modern Jews need to come to our community, convert to our view of God and join the Church if they are going to find nourishment. It seems to me that we have it backwards, at least with regard to the parallels in this story.
Be that as it may, there is yet another important role player here who bears investigation. The second party to our drama is Boaz. Careful inspection reveals that Boaz plays the role of God Himself. It is Boaz who pronounces a blessing over Ruth (“May the LORD reward your deeds. May you have a full recompense from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have sought refuge!” v. 12). And it is Boaz who fulfills the very blessing he pronounced. Boaz does not wait for God to act. Boaz acts for God by providing precisely what he once wished for Ruth. Full recompense begins with his offer to eat and be satisfied. In fact, this is one of the themes of the book of Ruth. God’s blessings arrive on the hands of the faithful. We act for God when we do exactly what we wish God would do.
This theme raises some potent questions for our lives. How many times have you wished to see God’s goodness poured out on someone in need? And how often have you done what you wished God would do? Isn’t this exactly what James has in mind when he scolds followers who speak blessings but do nothing to bring them about (James 2:16)? The feeding of the five thousand began with bringing what was available. Yeshua didn’t manufacturer food from thin air. He multiplied what was given. Isn’t that lesson also a lesson about doing what we can do with what we have? In the story of Ruth, Boaz plays God. In the application of Ruth, we need to do the same.
Topical Index: ate her fill, tokhal va-tisba’, Deuteronomy 6:11, James 2:16, Matthew 14:17, Boaz, Ruth 2:14
207,557 people on Facebook viewed the offer of the “spiritual bracelet for men,” a hand woven bracelet that “promotes feelings of spiritual well-being.”
I find that fact disheartening. Imagine what kind of “feeling of spiritual well-being” would be fostered if these 207,557 people gave $1 a month to the efforts to rescue children from abuse or disease. Imagine if these 207,557 people each did one kind deed a day for the next year. No, I’m afraid that they would rather seek some non-involved way of fostering spiritual well-being for themselves. The horrific assumption of this offer is that I can find spiritual well-being apart from acts of hesed.
This brings me to a common subject. It begins with a question similar to the assumption of the offer for this “amazing” bracelet. “Why shouldn’t I get what I need out of the relationship I seek with some other special person?” Bear with my comments and observations:
1. The idea of romantic love, invented in the Enlightenment and perpetrated by this culture, is false. It is worse than false. It is a lie – a powerful, seductive lie that twists relationships into contractual (spoken or unspoken) exchange agreements. Rather than finding a partner whom we can serve with delightful enrichment, we look for someone who can serve us! And the predictable result is that we find what we are looking for – self-serving inwardly focused narcissism – only to discover that the one we thought would be so invested in us isn’t what we wanted – because the focus has always been on what WE wanted, not what we are able to give.
2. God does not punish us for these mistakes. We take care of that by ourselves. There are consequences for every action – even if we think we can avoid them, delay them or modify them. So, choosing to measure our relationships by what they do for us has consequences. The scars of guilt, the wounds of lost trust, the remorse of life not given away, the pangs of constant fear of rejection. It is an unfortunate consequence of living that we often don’t realize these things until many years afterward. Then it is too late to repair the damage. Since we ignore the advice of those who have already suffered such errors in judgment, believing, of course, that their mistakes do not apply to us, we march blindly toward our self-serving goals, not recognizing the eternal wreckage we leave along the way.
3. In the end, life is about friendship. Loves come and go. Friends last. The reason they last is because we make a commitment to them regardless of their behavior. Of course, sometimes the behavior destroys the friendship, but that should never happen because we caused it. Since friendship is the real objective, making friends is the paramount goal of relationship management. It is an inevitable and unfortunate consequence of human behavior that sexual attraction often interferes with this goal, altering a friendship into an exchange for common self-serving benefit. But the bottom line is this: until you make a friend of the one you wish to love, and keep that friendship, you have nothing more than a series of self-seeking encounters. The end of the road of self-seeking is loneliness – a deep sense of never actually being loved for who you are, of being unacceptable as you are. This is almost never the result of the other person’s inability to love. It is almost always the result of our unwillingness to seek the best for the other person even at our own expense. In other words, if you have experienced loss in important relationships, there is a very good chance the cause is your own desire to make the relationship meet your needs rather than acting as if the relationship is an opportunity for you to serve and whatever way possible the needs of the other. Friendship is the solution, not romance. Where romance breeds pseudo-friendship, self-seeking brings broken hearts. In order to be loved, one must first be a friend – and a friend never gives up caring for the other person.
4. Friends are friends even if they don’t agree. Lovers become enemies when they don’t agree. You can measure the degree of your friendship with another person by your willingness to honor his or her life even when you disagree. Exchange relationships are built on the necessity to receive equal value. Friendship doesn’t care.
5. In the end, marriage should be the common union of two deeply committed friends. When it is not, it is simply a convenient barter agreement. If your marriage now has the characteristics, however subtle, of a barter exchange, then you must decide to make the other person your best friend – or face the inevitable consequences in #1 above. You can do this. It is not that much different than making any other person a friend. But to do this you must stop counting! If you find that you are acting in ways that would not promote friendship with anyone else, you must stop doing what you are doing no matter what the cost. In the end, all that you give up is seeking your own ends – and of what value is that if you end up alone?
6. Real marriage is commitment, not love. Love (not romance) comes as a result of a lifetime commitment. Love is the end of marriage, not the beginning. Love must be developed, nurtured, cultivated for a long, long time before one day you look around and say, “I guess I really do love her.” Love is longevity. Romance is fireworks. And fireworks explodes into nothing but the dark night.
Comments appreciated.
He that conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. Proverbs 28:13 NASB
Confesses - “Yada, yada, yada,” is a common Hebrew phrase that has made its way into English. We are familiar with its idiomatic meaning – “and more like that” or something similar. You know that the Hebrew verb, yada’, is the general verb for “to know” in all of its wide range on contexts. But you might not know that the phonetically similar verb, yada (spelled Yod-Daleth-Hey rather than Yod-Daleth-Ayin), is connected to confession. What you might find even more interesting is that this yada is also the word for “to praise, to give thanks, and to thank.” In one of its forms, toda, it is often found in the Hebrew expression for “thank you.” The emphasis of the word is agreement with the facts. Confession is really saying, “You’re right about me, God. Your assessment of who I really am is the truth.”
Today we have made confession of sins into a religious ritual. It might be a trip to the altar; it might be joining an elder for prayer; it might be taking our place in the booth. The truth is that none of these things are real confession. Confession is always an act of admission before God. The outward signs of confession can be mimicked, but the inward examination of our hearts cannot.
The amazing thing about confession before God is that He already knows all about us. Confession before God has a self-reflexive motive. It is for our own good, not His. Why does God require that we reveal our secrets to Him if He already knows them all? Because we need to see ourselves from His point of view if we are going to become what He designed us to be. Confession is for us. It clears our air. It focuses our sight. We can’t be released from the destructive power of a secret as long as we expend energy to keep it secret, even if God knows it anyway.
Confession is just like forgiveness. My refusal to forgive hurts me. So do those sins I have not confessed. Admitting my true condition before God clears the ground for change just like forgiving someone else’s sin against me repairs my inner damage. Confession and restoration go hand in hand.
This verse tells us that agreeing with God about my real moral state and turning away from practicing what doesn’t fit His design guarantees compassion. As long as I refuse to see myself from God’s perspective, I will hurt inside. When I face the truth, the pain of admission will be followed by mercy. That’s a promise!
Topical Index: confess, yada’, praise, acknowledgement, forgiveness, Proverbs 28:13
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