Genesis 1:1—2:3
In a recent on-line article, Timothy George writes these words,
In her book Mystery on the Desert, Maria Reiche describes a series of strange lines made by the Nazea in the plains of Peru, some of them covering many square miles. For years people assumed that these lines were the remnants of ancient irrigation ditches. Then, in 1939, Dr. Paul Kosok of Long Island University discovered that their true meaning could only be seen from high in the air. When viewed from an airplane, these seemingly random lines form enormous drawings of birds, insects, and animals.
In a similar way, people often think of the Bible as a series of individual, unconnected stories. But if we survey the Scriptures as a whole, we discover that they form one great story of redemption—from the opening scenes of Genesis to the final chapter of Revelation. Weaving through all the diverse strands of the Bible is a divine storyline, the overarching story of what God has been up to in the rescue and restoration of fallen human beings, from the first nanosecond of creation through the final cry of victory at the end of time.2
These two paragraphs sum up what we are attempting to accomplish in this new series that we have entitled, “From Creation to the Cross.” Others have done some very fine work in this same venture. We find these words in the introduction of J. Sidlow Baxter’s fine work, Explore the Book:
The method which we adopt in this present series is that which we may call interpretive. We shall study the books of the Bible interpretatively; that is, we shall seek to get hold of the controlling thought, the outstanding meaning and message of each book, and then see it in relation to the other books of Scripture.3
W. Graham Scroggie says virtually the same thing in his introduction:
It is not enough that we be familiar with great texts, or great chapters; we should know the Bible as a whole; for here is a Divine progressive revelation, in which every part is organically related to every other part; and, consequently, only by knowing the whole Bible can we worthily appreciate its greatness and experience its power.4
Scroggie goes on to contrast synthetic Bible study (the kind we are attempting here, and which he facilitates in his book) with analytical Bible study:
By synthetic Bible study is meant, that method whereby the various parts are viewed together, are seen in their relation to one another, and are regarded as constituting a whole. It is, as we have said, the opposite of the analytic method.
In analysis details are separately regarded, but in synthesis these details melt into the picture of the whole… . The analytic is the microscopic method; the synthetic is the telescopic method. Analysis concentrates on the infinitesimal, but synthesis concentrates on the infinite.5
While our study seeks to be synthetic, and to achieve the results sought by Baxter and Scroggie, we will employ a slightly different method. These authors study the Bible by dealing with each book in the order in which it is found in our Bibles.6 The books of the Bible are not arranged in chronological order; if we would study it chronologically, we must deal with each book of the Bible as it fits into a chronological scheme. Excellent study Bibles such as The Narrated Bible7 have sought to facilitate a chronological study by arranging the Scriptures in their chronological order.
Also unlike Baxter and Scroggie, we will not attempt to study every book of the Bible. I am strongly committed to a thorough and systematic exposition of the Word of God. This has been the thrust of most of my teaching for the past 30 years. (My study in the Gospel of Luke, for example, was 77 lessons long!)8 In this series, however, in order to get the big picture, we dare not go into as much detail.
You will note by the title to this series that we have restricted our study to the time from creation to the cross. It is my intention to follow up with a second series that will deal with the period from the cross to the consummation of history (Acts through Revelation). This later series will not, as I currently envision it, be as chronologically oriented, which is why I have chosen to end the first series with the gospel writers’ accounts of the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord.
Let me point out one final distinction of this series. One must have certain criteria for determining what to include and what to exclude in a selective series. We will endeavor to focus our attention on what might be called the “turning points” in the “unfolding drama of redemption”9 – those great watershed events by which God moved from one phase of His eternal plan to the next. This may not always be evident, but it is one of my guiding principles. With these things having been said, let me attempt to sum up the goal of this study:
We purpose to gain an overall understanding of the “unfolding drama of redemption” by focusing on the major turning points in the history of redemption, beginning with creation and culminating at the cross of Christ.
A friend once told me the story of a fellow who was hiking in the mountains and came to the realization that he was lost. Fortunately, this man had a cell phone with him. He was able to call for help, and they were able to pinpoint his position and tell him how he could arrive at his destination. This series is intended to help you navigate your way through the books of the Bible. Our primary text is the Word of God itself. It is our hope that this series will encourage and equip you to read through the Bible in a little more than a year. Even though our teaching will not cover every book or chapter of the Bible, your reading of the Bible will be greatly enhanced by a sense of knowing where you are in the “unfolding drama of redemption.”
There are a number of excellent resources available that we would encourage you to use. Ligonier Ministries has an excellent tape series (both audio and video) by R. C. Sproul10 entitled, “From Dust to Glory.” There are also a number of expositional Bible studies available on the Internet. Ray Stedman and other teachers at Peninsula Bible Church have some excellent studies on-line that can be found at www.pbc.org. The Biblical Studies Foundation Website is an excellent source of Bible studies11 and helps, which can be found at www.bible.org.
One very excellent book, which we highly recommend to you for your preparation, is Explore the Book, by J. Sidlow Baxter (see footnote 2). This book contains six volumes in one, and it has a wealth of information, including a very insightful overview of each book. We encourage you to buy this excellent reference book. It is one of my “must have” books, which I have kept near at hand for many years.
Thanks to the generosity of Irving Jensen’s family, our church has been granted permission to reprint 250 copies of Irving Jensen’s classic little book, Enjoy Your Bible. It is now out of print, but we are hoping that it will be soon be available on the Biblical Studies Foundation Website, along with some of Jensen’s other works (www.bible.org). It is an excellent book that gives you an orientation to the Bible as a whole.
We do not want this series to be one in which you approach this study unprepared, attend or listen to a sermon, and then go your way. We hope that you will use the preparatory study materials we have provided and the reference and resource materials we have recommended to facilitate your own study of the Bible. We hope that you will take the opportunity to discuss the biblical texts both before and after the teaching. We believe this will be of great benefit for family Bible study and personal devotions.
In our church, we have changed our curriculum and our schedule to facilitate this new series. I, along with others, teach the children and the adults for 45 minutes, and then we have our worship time, centered around the Lord’s Table. After a break, classes then assemble to further discuss the content of the study. Much of this teaching involves material that I have not attempted to cover in my instruction. These printed messages are an attempt to capture the essence of my teaching and the follow-up teaching.
A couple of days ago, a friend forwarded this e-mail request to me:
“Can you cite a biblical scripture that says that, to be a Christian, you have to believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God? I accept Jesus as my personal Savior, but I can’t accept things like the Genesis creation myth. Maybe if I had a quote from Jesus telling me to believe every word of the Bible (or even just Genesis), then I could bring myself to accept the events of Genesis.”
I sent this fellow an answer to his question and have already received an encouraging response. As I thought about this man’s question I realized that, once again, God had providentially orchestrated the events in my life to prepare me for this lesson. Is the biblical account of creation true? It most definitely is! Is the account of creation in the Bible important to us as Christians? It most certainly is! I would challenge you to sharpen your own thinking on this matter by attempting to formulate and articulate an answer to this fellow’s question. I think it would be a profitable exercise.
As we approach this text, we will work very hard to avoid being sidetracked by questions that were not the primary concern of the author. Much of current study in Genesis 1 and 2 seems to be dominated by the debate between creationists and evolutionists. One of the great dangers here is that Christians tend to view this text primarily in terms of what it says to others, rather than in terms of what it says to them. Let us remind ourselves that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), and that this is the first written revelation regarding the origins of the world, of mankind, and of the nation Israel. Much of my emphasis will fall on what the creation account was intended to teach its first readers. After considering the meaning of this account for the ancient Israelites, we will seek to discover its meaning for us.
The reader can see that there are really two creation accounts, not exactly represented by the chapter divisions. The first creation account is found in our text, Genesis 1:1—2:3. The second is found in Genesis 2:4-25. The first account begins at the first day of creation and ends with the seventh day. The second account commences in about the middle of the creation week. While the first account describes how God turned chaos into creation (days 1-4, verses 1-20), making it possible to create life (days 5-6, verses 21-31), the second account takes up at the point of God creating life. The first account describes creation by a formula, which is repeated through the account. The second account takes a more problem-solving approach; something is missing or needed that God supplies.
As I have studied this text, I have become convinced that Genesis 2:4-25 is written as a preface to the account of the fall of man, and so in our next lesson we shall study the second creation account in relation to the fall.
My intention is to gain an overview of the creation account by making a number of observations.
(1) The focus of Genesis 1:1—2:3 is not on the “ultimate beginning” of all things, but rather on the beginning of the world as we know it, and especially on man’s beginning – the origins of the human race. Scholars attempt to explain this in a variety of ways, but the end result is that Genesis doesn’t really start at the absolute beginning. For one thing, there is no absolute beginning for God, Who is eternal. For another, we know that certain beings were already in existence at the time God created the heavens and the earth. At the beginning of Genesis 3, Satan appears, and at the end, we find angels (3:24), yet Genesis 1 and 2 do not mention the creation of Satan, or of angels. I believe Genesis is the account of man’s beginnings, of Israel’s beginnings, and the beginning of God’s redemptive program for man. It would seem, then, that before the events of Genesis 1 and 2, the creation and the fall of Satan had already occurred, yet they are only alluded to later on in Scripture (Isaiah 14:12-14; Ezekiel 28:12-15). God does not wish for us to be overly intrigued with Satan’s origins or his fall (see Romans 16:19).
(2) The creation account does not describe the creation of the world in terms of being made out of nothing, but in terms of beauty and order being created out of a chaotic mess. Many scholars stress the fact that the Hebrew word that is used in Genesis 1:1 is one that means to create ex nihilo, that is to create something out of nothing. Now I don’t doubt that the original creation was brought into existence out of nothing, because that is what the writer to the Hebrews tells us:
1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see. 2 For by it the people of old received God’s commendation. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were set in order at God’s command, so that the visible has its origin in the invisible (Hebrews 11:1-3).12
Having said this, we must also take into account Peter’s words:
For they deliberately suppress this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water (2 Peter 3:5, emphasis mine).
Genesis 1 begins with something already in existence, which is formless, dark, watery, and chaotic. To say this is nothing seems to defy the language of the text. I believe this is a chaotic mess that was the result of the earlier fall of Satan (Isaiah 14:12-14; Ezekiel 28:12-15). The original creation was created out of nothing, but the creation of the world as we know it, and of life as we know it, came out of chaos.13
The best illustration I can think of is found a little too close to home – my garage. It is literally filled with automobile engines, transmissions, and parts (let’s not talk about my attic – I once had a car filed away up there). I have to confess that I have the essence of several cars tucked away in my garage. But wait, there’s more! In addition to automobile parts, there is an abundant supply of plumbing and electrical parts. And then there are the tools – lots of tools. In my garage (I have a shed also), you would find many mechanical tools (an engine hoist and stand, jacks, jack stands, compressor, welding equipment – both gas and electric, etc.), and also my table saw and woodworking tools.
The other day my granddaughter, Taylor, said it as nicely as I’ve ever heard. After having carefully negotiated her way through the chaos in the garage without getting greasy she said, “Grandpa, I think your garage needs a little tidying up.” It does. And so, the best illustration I can think of to compare with the “watery mess” that we read of in Genesis 1:2 is my garage, at night, with the lights out. And I must tell you that it would probably take more than six days to turn that chaos into cosmos (order).
Now someone might protest that if God created our world out of something that already existed (the leftovers of a previous creation that had fallen), this would have made creation a lesser miracle than one that creates something out of nothing. In the first place, there was an original creation, brought into existence out of nothing. But a creation out of a chaotic mess is not easy task, either. Think about it for a moment. Suppose that you wanted to prepare a gourmet dinner. You may choose between a refrigerator full of leftovers to work with, or the freedom to purchase whatever foods and spices you want. Which would you choose? Would you rather make a dress out of new material that you have selected especially for this dress, or from some old and tattered clothing left behind by someone in the closet? Creating order out of chaos is not as easy as it sounds.
(3) The creation account of Genesis 1 and 2 is the description of a process that took place over a period of time. Now don’t get nervous. I did not say that creation took place over a period of millions of years (though there are surely those who believe this); I said that creation took place through a process that occurred over a period of time – six days, according to Moses. I fear that Christians are so defensive about the subject of evolution (which speaks in terms of a process over millions of years) that they fail to recognize what the Bible says. God did transform chaos into cosmos by means of a process that lasted six days.
I suspect that many of us have a picture of creation in our minds that is not quite accurate. We may tend to think of the act of creation more as magic than as the divine work of a skilled Creator. God did not wrinkle his nose or wave a wand to create an instant world. God worked in a progressive, sequential way to turn chaos to beauty and order.
Could God have instantly created a beautiful world in a moment? Of course He could. Then why didn’t He do so? Why did God employ a process that took a week to accomplish? The first answer is that God, unlike man, is eternal, and He is not in any hurry. He has “all the time in the world.” More accurately, He is not bound by time at all.
The second answer is that I believe God took great pleasure in the work of creation. In know that in our church there are many wonderful cooks, both women and men. I have never been to the home of any excellent cook who served a T.V. dinner. Now I have nothing against T.V. dinners, but they are not and will never be a gourmet meal, no matter what the television commercials tell us. A gourmet cook not only cooks slowly because the flavor is better, but because they enjoy the process of cooking. If I could take a little poetic license, I believe that if you and I were observers at the creation we would see a master craftsman at work, with a smile of satisfaction on His face. I think this is part of what we are to conclude from the repeated expression, “God saw that it was good.”
(4) The process of creation involved separation and joining. Repeatedly the term “separate” occurs in Genesis 1 (see verses 3, 6-7, 14, 17). The waters in the heavens above are separated from the waters beneath (verses 6-7), and then God separated day from night (verses 1-15). God also caused things to assemble or join together. The waters on earth were gathered to one place (verse 9). This is the way my garage would have to be “tidied up.” First, I would have to gather like things together, and then put them in a separate place of their own. I would have to put my table saw out of the way, rather than to use it as a workbench when doing automotive repairs. Order comes when we gather like things together and when we separate them from things that are unlike.
(5) The creation account describes a work of God that comes about at the command of God. Creation results from the mere speaking of a word by God. The formula here, with slight variations14 is, “God said… and it was so” (see verses 6-7, 9, 11, 14-15).
By faith we understand that the worlds were set in order at God’s command, so that the visible has its origin in the invisible (Hebrews 11:3, emphasis mine).
For they deliberately suppress this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water (2 Peter 3:5, emphasis mine).
God is so powerful He need only speak a word, even to create a universe.
Notice this understated comment in verse 16:
He made the stars also.
In verses 14-16, we see the process by which God created the universe. God created the luminaries, the most prominent of which are the sun and the moon. After summarizing the creation of a mind-bending, seemingly infinite universe, Moses speaks of the creation of the stars as almost an afterthought. It is as though he said, “God created the entire expanse of the universe, along with the sun and moon; and, oh, by the way, He also created the stars.” What an amazing God He is!
(6) The creation account suggests to us that just as God was intimately involved in creating the world and mankind, He remains infinitely involved with them. I will admit that this is somewhat inferential, but I believe it is one that we are expected to see. Because God created the world through a process, He was much more involved with it. The Spirit of God hovered15 over the face of the waters, even before the first day of creation (verse 2). God did not create the world from a distance and then leave it to itself. God created man in His own image and then created a garden where He communed with the couple He created (Genesis 3:8). God is not distant from His creation but remains very much involved with it. He is both the Creator and the Sustainer of the world (see Colossians 1:15-17).
(7) The creation account informs us that God designed man to have a relationship with Him. Closely related to the last observation is the inference that God created man to live in relationship with Him. We must be very careful, however, as to how we view this. God did not create man to meet His own unmet needs. God is totally sufficient within Himself. The Bible does not say, “And God said, ‘It is not good for us to be alone; we will create man to fill our need.’” God created man for His own glory, but the glory of God is also for our good and our pleasure. If we see man’s origins as being rooted in God’s need for us, then we are on a long and very slippery slope indeed. God does not exist to serve us and to satisfy our needs; God created man to worship Him, and to glorify Him in the world, as those created in His image. Having said this, we should see that in His grace, God created us to enjoy and to worship Him. Man was no more intended to live alone spiritually than Adam was intended to live out his life alone, without a mate.
(8) The Genesis account describes the creation of man as the crowning event of the creation process. Man is not only the last living thing to be created; his creation is presented as the climactic conclusion of the entire process. God not only creates man last, He creates him in a very special way – He breathes into his nostrils the breath of life (2:7). The woman, too, was created in a very unique way, distinct from all other living creatures (3:18-25). Man alone was uniquely created in God’s image and was given the command to rule over the creation (Genesis 1:26-28). Far more space is devoted to the creation of man than of any other creature.
The fact that man is created last should teach us at least two lessons. The first is that God has bestowed upon man a great and marvelous privilege, to be created in His image, the crown of His creative work. No wonder the psalmist writes,
3 When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made,
and see the moon and the stars, which you set in place,
4 I think,
“Of what importance is the human race, that you should notice them?
Of what importance is mankind, that you should pay attention to them,
5 and make them almost like the heavenly beings?”
You grant mankind honor and majesty;
6 you allow them to rule over your creation;
you have placed everything under their authority,
7 including all the sheep and cattle,
as well as the wild animals,
8 the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea
and everything that moves through the channels of the seas.
9 O LORD, our sovereign Master,
how magnificent is your reputation throughout the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9)
There is a second, more humbling, lesson to be learned. The fact that man was created last of all should humble us. If man was created last, then he was not there at the beginning. Man had no part in the creation of the world. Creation was God’s work, without any help from man. I believe that this is the point God is driving home with Job in Job 38 and 39. Job never ceased to trust God, but he did begin to question God, as though He had some explaining to do regarding his suffering. God’s answer was very forceful. It can be roughly paraphrased in this way:
“Now let’s see, Job, as I hear what you are saying, you are questioning the way I am working in your life. That reminds me, where were you when I created the earth? Were you standing by, giving advice – “Why don’t you hang the sun just a little lower, and make it a little bigger…”? Creation shows that I am the Creator, and you are the creature. Creation shows My love, My wisdom, My power … so just why is it that you are now so bold to question Me?”
I might as well go ahead and paraphrase Job’s response: “Well, shut my mouth!” The world in which we live reveals His glory, His wisdom, His power. Let us never forget that. Being reminded of our role in creation (or rather the lack of it) should humble us before God.
(9) The creation account provides a pattern for man to imitate in the keeping of the Sabbath. In Genesis 2:1-3, we read that on the seventh day God rested and made it holy by doing so. Later on in the Pentateuch, keeping the Sabbath will become a sign of the Mosaic Covenant, which must be observed, under penalty of death.
(10) The creation account reveals God’s sovereignty over all creation. God named the things that He created. Later on, God gave Adam the task of naming the living creatures and his wife. The word “called” (see 1:5, 8, 10, 19) is the same word that is used for Adam’s naming of the creatures (2:19-20), and his wife (2:23; 3:20). It was (and still is) generally understood that the one who is named is subordinate to the one giving the names. By naming what He created, God declared His sovereignty. By having Adam name some of the creation, God declared Adam’s authority (not sovereignty) over nature. God delegated to man the responsibility of ruling over His creation.
(11) The creation account reveals the fact that God built morality into His creation. God’s creation was good because He made it, and because He pronounced it good. On the one hand, the declaration “good” may indicate God’s pleasure and satisfaction in creating the cosmos. On the other hand, I believe “good” is a moral assessment as well. Atheistic materialism does not see anything moral about material things; rather, it sees morality as external and imposed upon material things by men (particularly religion). It looks to me as though the creation account declares the material world God made to be morally good.
(12) There is a second moral element suggested in this account. When God created the living creatures, He blessed them and commanded them to be fruitful and to multiply, filling the earth (1:22, 28). God, the Giver of life, commanded the living creatures to reproduce, and thus to value and promote life. I wonder, therefore, if the creation account should not make those who perform, or who undergo, abortions very uneasy. God, the life-giver, commands that we extend life, not extinguish it. Incidentally, it is quite evident that both man and beast lived on plants initially (1:29-30). It was not until after the flood that meat eating was allowed (Genesis 9:3).
God also created life as male and female. This is the way that reproduction was to occur. If man was commanded to be fruitful and to multiply, and if God gave Adam a woman to be his wife, how is it that our society is willing to accept “same sex” marriages? I believe that at creation and before the fall, what was natural was moral and good. No wonder Paul calls homosexuality unnatural (Romans 1:26-27). When men depart from the way it was “in the beginning,” they depart from what is natural and good (see Mark 10:2-9).
Before we move on, let me suggest some implications and applications that flow from the observations above.
(1) We suggested that the “beginning” of Genesis 1 is not the ultimate beginning. Let’s think about the implications of this for a moment. Man would like to think that everything revolves around him, just as man once thought that the sun revolved about the earth. The point is that there is a much bigger picture, and man is but a small part of it, not the whole of it. Man was created by God, and for God’s glory. Man was not created before the angels. Man has a place of honor and responsibility in God’s creation, but man is still a creature.
(2) We noted that God brought cosmos (order) out of chaos at the creation. What a wonderful truth that is. God is able to take confusion and chaos and make something beautiful and useful of it. God is not a God of disorder, but of order (see 1 Corinthians 14:33, 40). Thus, when a Christian acts in a disorderly way, or when the church is chaotic, that is not the result of God’s work, but of our sin.
Let me ask you as kindly as I can, my friend, “Is your life in chaos?” If it is, then there is really only one solution: God. Only God can make a new creation of your life, turning your chaos into order. He does this through His Son, Jesus Christ. It is He who came to the earth, adding perfect humanity to His undiminished deity, to live a perfect life, to expose man’s sin, and to provide the payment for our sins by dying on the cross of Calvary. You can become a new creation by trusting in Him:
17 So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away—look, what is new has come! 18 And all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His plea through us. We plead with you on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God!” 21 God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).
(3) We pointed out that God created this world through a process, which took place over time (six days). God works by means of processes, and He does not do His work instantly. Think about Abraham for a moment. God promised Abraham that he would be a father of a multitude, through a son He would give to him and to Sarah. But this son was not born for 25 years.16 Think about the salvation of men. How many years passed between God’s promise of a Savior to Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15) and the coming of our Lord? God had a plan and a process, and He took His time bringing it to pass. Nicodemus came to our Lord in John 3, but it does not seem that he came to faith until some time later.17 It certainly took our Lord’s disciples some time to understand what the gospel was all about. They did not really grasp the gospel until after our Lord’s death and resurrection. How many times I have asked someone, “Tell me how you became a Christian.” Almost without exception, the response is something like this: “Well, its kind of a long story… .”
God also takes His time in accomplishing the process of sanctification. I think of Jacob and am amazed by the fact that it took this man almost his entire lifetime to forsake his scheming and simply trust God. And yet Christians today want to be instantly spiritual and mature. God even employs a time-consuming process in dealing with the wicked. Judgment is a process that often involves warnings, then attention-getting action, and then final judgment. We keep asking God, “How long?” because we don’t want to wait, but here, too, God works through a process which takes time
(4) We saw that the creation came into being by the Word of God. God merely spoke a word and whatever He commanded happened. We now have the written Word of God in our hands. I wonder how quick we are to respond to His commands. I wonder how much confidence we have in His Word.
7 The wicked need to abandon their lifestyle
and sinful people their plans.
They should return to the LORD, and he will show mercy to them,
and to their God, for he will freely forgive them.
8 “Indeed, my plans are not like your plans,
and my deeds are not like your deeds,
9 for just as the sky is higher than the earth,
so my deeds are superior to your deeds
and my plans superior to your plans.
10 The rain and snow fall from the sky
and do not return,
but instead water the earth
and make it produce and yield crops,
and provide seed for the planter and food for those who must eat.
11 In the same way, the promise that I make
does not return to me, having accomplished nothing.
No, it is realized as I desire and is fulfilled as I intend” (Isaiah 55:7-11).
1 This is what the LORD says:
“The heavens are my throne
and the earth is my footstool.
Where then is the house you will build for me?
Where is the place where I will rest?
2 My hand made them;
that is how they came to be,” says the LORD.
I show special favor to the humble and contrite,
who respect what I have to say (Isaiah 66:1-2).
(5) We saw that the process of creation was one that involved both separation and joining together. My friend, Joe Baird, pointed out to me that in chapter 2, God joined Adam and Eve together in marriage. Jesus later said that whatever God had joined together, man should not separate (Matthew 19:4-6). Moses indicates that when a man and woman marry, they are to leave their parents (separate) and to be joined together (Genesis 2:24-25). In the creation of a people, God worked to join together or unify the sons of Jacob (Israel), because their unity was essential. At the same time, God was separating them from the world. This He did by taking them to Egypt, where the Egyptians would not intermarry with them. The Law of Moses (especially the laws regarding clean and unclean) separated God’s people from the pagan world. Today, God joins believers together in the body of Christ. Former distinctions are set aside (Ephesians 2:11-22). We are no longer to maintain distinctions where God has removed them (Acts 10-11; Galatians 2:11-21).
(6) We have observed that God created a world with which He is intimately involved. God is no distant “watcher,” who is either disinterested or powerless to intervene in the affairs of this world. Indeed, the Scriptures speak of God as constantly superintending and caring for His creation, supplying rain and harvests and food for all His creatures.
(7) We have seen that God desires for man to live in relationship with Him. Can you image going on daily walks with God in the Garden of Eden? That’s what Adam and Eve seemed to do (see Genesis 3:8-10). God provided the Garden, not only as a place of residence and of service, but as a place of communion with Him. Later on, God will provide other places where men may encounter Him: (1) the land of Israel (see Genesis 28:16-17); (2) the tabernacle; and, (3) the temple. Last of all, it is the person of our Lord Jesus Christ who is the mediator between God and man, between heaven and earth (see John 1:49-51; 4:19-24; 1 Timothy 2:5). Man will never become who he was meant to be until he is rightly related to God, and has daily fellowship with Him.
(8) Finally, man was made in the image of God and commissioned by God to rule over all creation. Surely this has environmental implications. We are to care for the earth and not to abuse or pollute it. It is God’s creation, and we have been placed on earth as His stewards to care for it. The earth (nature) is not god, as some seem to think, but it is God’s creation. We dare not worship it, but we should take good care of it.
We look back, not only on creation, but also on the experiences of Israel during and after the exodus. Moses wrote the law before his death, so it had to be written before the second generation of Israelites had entered the Promised Land. I believe that the Pentateuch was initially written for the benefit of the second generation of Israelites who were about to enter and possess the land of Canaan. They needed to know who they were, where they came from, and what their destiny was. Most of all, they needed to know the God of Israel personally. The five books of the Pentateuch supply, in written form, Israel’s legacy, as well as her destiny.
Let’s pause for a moment, then, to see how the creation event shaped the thinking and the conduct of some of the saints of old. The first incident that relates to the creation account is the flood. God had created the world and all that was in it, and yet very quickly after the fall it became corrupt and God destroyed it. As the Creator, God owned all creation and could do with it as He pleased. As the one who transformed a formless watery mass into a beautiful cosmos, God was certainly able to “turn on the water” and bring about a worldwide flood. The flood testifies to the fact that God was the creator, who was both able and free to deal with His creation as He pleased.
The second informative incident is found in Genesis 14, where Abraham (Abram at this early point – see Genesis 17:5) encounters that very fascinating fellow Melchizedek, the king of Salem. Five kings in the area around Sodom and Gomorrah rebelled against Chedorlaomer and those with him. When Chedorlaomer and his allies attacked these five kings, they prevailed over them, taking much plunder and many people, among whom was Abram’s nephew Lot. Abram took his armed men and went in hot pursuit, defeating Chedorlaomer and his allies and retrieving Lot and all the other people and possessions. When Abram returned, the king of Sodom and his allies were overjoyed to get their families back. It would seem that the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah had planned a “welcome home” celebration, the ancient counterpart of a ticker tape parade. But before these kings could greet Abram, another king greeted him on the way – Melchizedek, the king of Salem. He brought bread and wine because he was a priest of God, and he blessed Abram with these words,
“Blessed be Abram by the Most High God,
Creator of heaven and earth.
20 Worthy of praise is the Most High God,
who delivered your enemies into your hand”(Genesis 14:19b-20a, emphasis mine).
Shortly after this, the king of Sodom greets Abram and offers to give him all the spoils he had won in battle withholding only his own people who had been kidnapped from Sodom. Abram’s response is most interesting:
22 But Abram replied to the king of Sodom, “I raise my hand to the LORD, the Most High God, Creator of heaven and earth, and vow 23 that I will take nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal. That way you can never say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’ 24 I will take nothing except compensation for what the young men have eaten. As for the share of the men who went with me—Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre—let them take their share” (Genesis 14:22-24, emphasis mine).
What a difference we see between Melchizedek, king of Salem, and the king of Sodom. Melchizedek reminds Abram of Whom it is he serves, the “Creator of heaven and earth.” In effect, the king of Sodom tells Abram that he’s the greatest and offers to give him all the spoils of war. Abram declines the king of Sodom’s offer, using the same words that Melchizedek had just spoken to him. He will honor God, “Creator of heaven and earth,” for it is He who gave Abram the victory. Abram will not take credit for God’s work, and Abram will not be enriched by a pagan king. God had promised to bless Abram, and Abram doesn’t believe that it will be through the gifts of a heathen king, the king of Sodom. If Abram’s God is the Creator, then God will give him victory in battle and material blessings as well.
It was not just Abram who understood that his God was the Creator of heaven and earth. Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, understood this as well. Listen to her words, spoken to the Israelite spies:
8 Now before the spies went to sleep, Rahab went up to the roof. 9 She said to the men, “I know the LORD is handing this land over to you. We are absolutely terrified of you, and all who live in the land are cringing before you. 10 For we heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt and how you annihilated the two Amorite kings, Sihon and Og, on the other side of the Jordan. 11 When we heard the news we lost our strength and no one could even breathe for fear of you. For the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on earth below! 12 So now, promise me this with an oath sworn in the LORD’s name. Because I have shown allegiance to you, show allegiance to my family. Give me a solemn pledge 13 that you will spare the lives of my father, mother, brothers, sisters, and all who belong to them, and rescue us from death” (Joshua 2:8-13, emphasis mine).
Rahab knew that the God of Israel was God alone, and that her gods were no-gods. She understood that as the Creator God was Lord over heaven and earth. Her faith in God included her firm belief that God had created the heavens and the earth.
The exodus of Israel from Egypt provided an excellent opportunity to dramatically demonstrate that God was the Creator of heaven and earth. When God commanded Moses to return to Egypt and to demand that Pharaoh let His people go, Moses protested in various ways. Finally, Moses sought to convince God that he was not qualified to go before Pharaoh because he was not a good speaker:
10 Then Moses said to the LORD, “O my Lord, I am not an eloquent man, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of mouth and slow of tongue.” 11 And the LORD said to him, “ Who gave a mouth to man, or who makes a person mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12 So now, go, and I will be with your mouth, and will teach you what you must say” (Exodus 4:10-12, emphasis mine).
Moses sought to excuse himself from his God-given duty by claiming to be unskilled in speaking. God reminded Moses that He had created his mouth. In a similar way, in Psalm 139, David spoke of God as his Creator in the womb:
13 Certainly you made my mind and heart;
you wove me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give you thanks, because your deeds are awesome and amazing.
You knew me thoroughly;
15 my bones were not hidden from you,
when I was made in secret
and sewed together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw me when I was an unborn fetus.
All the days ordained for me
were recorded in your scroll
before one of them came into existence (Psalm 139:13-16).
The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their imminent possession of Canaan brought the fact that God created the heavens and the earth into the spotlight. When Moses demanded that Pharaoh release the Israelites, it must have sounded almost comical to Pharaoh. The Israelites were a relatively insignificant people; they were enslaved in Egypt, the most powerful nation on the face of the earth at the time. Moses was a mere nomadic shepherd. How dare he demand anything? And who was his God, for whom he spoke so boldly? Pharaoh made his contempt for Israel’s God very clear:
1 And afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Release my people so that they may hold a pilgrim feast to me in the desert.’” 2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD that I should obey him by releasing Israel? I do not know the LORD, and I will not release Israel” (Exodus 5:1-2).
The plagues were God’s answer to Pharaoh’s question. The plagues had to do with nature (the Nile turned to blood, the frogs, the gnats, the flies, the death of the Egyptians’ livestock, boils, the storm, the locusts, the darkness, and the death of their firstborn sons). The Egyptian magicians were able to replicate the first plagues, but soon they had to admit that they were way over their heads, and that the plagues were the “finger of God” (Exodus 8:19). God demonstrated His control over nature by means of the plagues. And the Egyptian gods were mocked by the plagues, for they were thought to have control over certain aspects of nature, and some of the creatures involved in the plagues were symbols of their gods.18
Who is the God of Israel, that Pharaoh should obey His commands? He is the Creator of heaven and earth; He is the one who speaks and the forces of nature obey. The parting of the Red Sea is the icing on the cake. Who but God could have parted the sea, so that the Israelites could pass through on dry ground, only to have the sea come rushing down upon the Egyptian army?
This was a very important series of miracles because it was verification of the Creation account in Genesis 1 and 2. The first generation of Israelites to leave Egypt saw God’s hand in the plagues. They saw the sea parted and the Egyptians drowned. They saw God provide food, water, and clothing19 for this great multitude and their cattle, enabling them to survive in the wilderness. The Israelites needed to learn to trust God to provide for their needs. He would provide the rain for their crops, and He would give them prosperity, if they obeyed His commands and trusted in Him (see Deuteronomy 28:1-14). The Canaanites were a very corrupt and idolatrous people. They had their own nature gods, and the Israelites would be tempted to worship them. It was vital for the Israelites to know and to believe that God created the heavens and the earth, and that because of this, He could be trusted to provide for their every need.
There are many, many texts of Scripture that refer to God as the Creator. Let me list some of the significant texts I found:
Genesis 1-2; 14:19-22; 15:4-6; 24:2-4
Exodus 4:10-12; 20:8-11; 31:12-17
Deuteronomy 10:12-18; 11:11-17; 28:12, 23-24
Joshua 2:6-13
2 Samuel 22:6-18
2 Kings 19:14-19
1 Chronicles 16:26
Nehemiah 9:6
Job 38-39
Psalm 8; 19:1-6; 33:6-9; 89:11-12; 96:5; 102:23-28; 104:1-3520
107:23-31 (compare verse 29 with Matthew 8:26)
Psalm 121; 124:8; 134:3; 135:5-7; 136:1-9; 146:1-7; 147:7-9
Proverbs 3:19-20; 8:22-31; 30:1-4
Isaiah 37:14-20; 40:12-31; 42:5-9; 44:24-28; 45:8-12, 18; 48:12-16; 51:12-16; 54:5; 65:17-25
Jeremiah 4:23-28;21 10:6-16; 32:16-19; 51:14-17
Jonah 1:9
Zechariah 12:1
Acts 4:24; 14:14-18; 17:24
Romans 1:18-25; 9:20-21
1 Corinthians 8:4-6
Colossians 1:15-17
Hebrews 1:10; 11:3
Revelation 4:11; 10:6; 14:7
I have summarized the lessons emphasized in these texts by means of the following categories. This is far from complete, but it does demonstrate how important the truth that God created the heavens and the earth is in the entire Bible:
(1) The God of the Bible, the God of Israel, is the Creator who made the heavens and the earth.
Abraham confessed this: Genesis 14:19, 22; 24:2-4
Rahab confessed it as well: Joshua 2:9-13
Jonah confessed it also: Jonah 1:9
See Romans 1:18-25
(2) God is the center of all creation. As such, He alone is to be worshipped as the Creator. Because the God of Israel is the Creator, and He has created everything that has been created, there can be no other gods (for if there were, God would have created them, and God says there is no other God beside Him – Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:14, 21). Idols, then, are merely the creation of man’s hands. How tragic; God creates man, but heathen men think they can create their own gods.
1 Chronicles 16:26
Psalm 96:5
Isaiah 40:12-31
Jeremiah 23:6-16; 51:14-17
Acts 14:14-18; 17:24
Romans 1:18-25
1 Corinthians 8:4-6
(3) God, the Creator of heaven and earth, owns what He has created (Deuteronomy 10:14), and is therefore free to do with His creation as He pleases, which includes showing mercy or executing judgment (election).
The heavens and earth belong to God (Psalm 89:11-12).
He owns mankind and all living creatures – and thus the flood (Genesis 6-9).
He owns the land, Israel does not nor does anyone else (Leviticus 25:23; contrast Ezekiel 29:3, 9).
He is the Potter, and we are the clay (Isaiah 29:15-16; 64:8).
As the Potter, He can do as He wishes with the clay – specifically, show mercy or condemn (Jeremiah 18:1-12; Romans 9:18-26).
(4) Because God has revealed His infinite wisdom and power in His creation (Proverbs 3:19-20; Proverbs 8:22-31), and man is a mere creature, man should not question the wisdom of God in what He is doing.
Job 38-39
Isaiah 45:9-13
(5) Creation displays the attributes of God – He is powerful, all wise, eternal, glorious and majestic. Men should therefore fear and worship God.
Psalm 8; 19:1-6
Psalm 33:6-8
Psalm 102:23-28
Psalm 134:3
Psalm 135:5-7
Psalm 136:1-9
Isaiah 51:12-16
Romans 1:19-20
Revelation 4:11; 14:7
(6) As the Creator, God is in full and complete control over His creation.
He sends and withholds the rains (Deuteronomy 11:11-17; 28:12, 24; 1 Kings 17-18; James 5:17-18).
Psalm 96:5, 10
Zechariah 12:1
Colossians 1:15-17
(7) As the Creator, God employs nature to do His will, which includes delivering His people from their enemies.
In battle – 2 Samuel 22:6-18
At the exodus – Exodus 6-15
Hezekiah’s prayer to God for protection from Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:14-19)
Psalm 121; 124:8; 146:1-7
Isaiah 37:14-20
Acts 4:24
(8) As the Creator, God has revealed His infinite power, which serves as assurance that He will fulfill His future promises (some of which are described as a “new creation”).
Isaiah 42:5-9
Isaiah 44:24-28
Isaiah 45:8-19
Isaiah 48:12-16
(9) God’s method of Creation was intended as a pattern for man’s actions. Just as God rested on the seventh day, after creating the world, so man should rest on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11; 31:15-17). Observing the Sabbath is one of the ways Israel could identify with God as their Creator.
We have only begun to scratch the surface, but I believe we have shown that throughout the Bible it is demonstrated that God created the heavens and the earth. The Creator of this earth is God, and He alone is God. Those who reject nature’s testimony are guilty before God (Romans 1:18-27). If God is the Creator, then His claims must be true.
The New Testament makes a very amazing claim — that Jesus Christ was God, and that He existed in eternity past, and was the Creator of this world:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The Word was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. 5 And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it (John 1:1-5).
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, 16 for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him—all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers—all things were created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him (Colossians 1:15-17).
This is a remarkable claim, which Jesus demonstrated to be true in His earthly life and ministry, especially by His miracles. In John’s Gospel, the very first miracle that Jesus performed is recorded in chapter 2. Attending a wedding with his family and disciples, Jesus created wine from ceremonial cleansing water. Jesus did not even touch the water; He simply spoke a command to the servants (which His mother strongly urged them to obey), and the transformation took place as they obeyed. In Mark 4:35-41, we see the stilling of the storm, once again by His command. (Notice that in stilling the storm, our Lord seems to fulfill the words of Psalm 89:9. ) In John 11, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, proving He was the Giver of life.
It is Jesus alone who can bring those who are dead in their trespasses and sins to life (Ephesians 2:1-10). It is He alone who can make of us a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is He alone who can take this sin-torn world and replace it with an eternal kingdom, where sin and death are no more. It is in Him that you must place your trust for the forgiveness of sins and the assurance of eternal life. There will come a day when this heaven and this earth will pass away, and God will create a new heaven and a new earth. If you think that the first creation was great, you haven’t seen anything yet. The new creation is far superior (Revelation 21:1ff.). Are you ready for that day?
For those who have trusted in Jesus Christ, not only as their Creator, but also as their Savior, the fact that He is the Creator answers many questions and solves many problems. It should encourage us to be patient when we fear that God is not acting quickly enough. After all, He is eternal and is not in a hurry, and He works through time-consuming processes. When we face obstacles or opposition that cause us to fear, we need to remember that our Lord is both the Creator and the Sustainer of His universe. He can employ any and every part of His creation to come to our aid.22 When we are suffering in one form or another and we begin to doubt God’s wisdom, let us remember that our God is the all-wise Creator of heaven and earth. And when we wish to challenge God for His sovereign work of election, let us remember that He is the Potter, and we are the clay; He is the Creator, and we are the work of His hands. God can do as He wills with that which He has made (see Romans 9:19-22).
Is it any wonder that the creation account of Genesis is under attack? The implications of the fact that God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth are astounding. For the Christian, they are a source of comfort and joy. For the unbeliever, they are terrifying. What a wonderful truth it is that God is the Creator. And to think that we have been invited to enter into intimate fellowship with Him through His Son.
1 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on October 29, 2000. Anyone is at liberty to use this edited manuscript for educational purposes only, with or without credit. The Chapel believes the material presented herein to be true to the teaching of Scripture, and desires to further, not restrict, its potential use as an aid in the study of God’s Word. The publication of this material is a grace ministry of Community Bible Chapel. Copyright 2000 by Community Bible Chapel, 418 E. Main Street, Richardson, TX 75081.
2 Timothy George, “Big-Picture Faith,” ChristianityToday On Line. Posted October 19, 2000. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/current/press.html.
3 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), Six volumes in one, vol. 1, pp. 10-11.
4 W. Graham Scroggie, The Unfolding Drama of Redemption: The Bible as a Whole (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1972), Three volumes in one, vol. 1, p. 17.
5 W. Graham Scroggie, vol. 1, p. 21
6 We would be wrong if we assumed that the current order of the books of the Bible was precisely that of the early manuscripts, or even of later translations.
7 The Narrated Bible, Narration by F. LaGard Smith (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1984).
8 http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/luk/deffin/toc.htm
9 To borrow the wording from the title of Scroggie’s excellent book.
10 http://www.gospelcom.net/ligonier/
11 A number of the studies on books of the Bible are manuscripts of my sermons.
12 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
13 There are various attempts to explain this. Some hold to the so-called “gap theory,” which holds that verse 1 describes the original creation, and then in verses 2 and following we see the recreation of the world. In this gap between verse one and verse two, we are told, there may be a great period of time, that could explain certain geological phenomenon.
14 In verse 3 we read, “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” The sense of these words is the same as, “God said… and it was so.”
15 This word is used only three times in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 32:11, it is employed to describe an eagle, hovering over its young.
16 See Genesis 12:4; 16:16; 17:24; 21:5.
17 See John 3:1ff.; 7:45-52; 19:39-40.
18 For more details, you may wish to see my message on the plagues at: http://www.bible.org/docs/ot/books/exo/deffin/exo-05.htm.
19 Their clothing, you will recall, did not wear out (see Deuteronomy 8:4).
20 This psalm is a poetic description of the creation, and of God’s ongoing care for His creatures.
21 Here, the same Hebrew words found in Genesis 1:2 are employed in Jeremiah 4:23, a very clear allusion to the chaos which existed prior to the commencement of creation.
22 See Acts 4:23-31, noting especially verse 24.
Genesis 3:1—5:32
On July 20, 1969, our family arrived at my parents’ home in Washington State on our annual trek from Texas. We arrived just as the Lunar Module, the “Eagle,” landed on the moon. We heard those historic words, spoken by Neil Armstrong:
“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”
This was a moment in history that we shall not soon forget, but it cannot in any way compare with the event we are studying today. If I could paraphrase, I would describe the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden something like this:
“That’s one small slip for man; one giant downhill slope for mankind.”
I should begin by pointing out that the Bible consistently looks upon Adam and Eve as real people, the first humans to inhabit this earth. The account of their sin is not a fable, but a fact of history. Jesus spoke of Adam and Eve as real people (Matthew 19:3-6), just as He did of Noah (Matthew 12:38-41). Paul made much of Adam and Eve, and of his sin (Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 11:2-12; 2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:8-15). When we read Moses’ account of the fall, we are reading the story of two people, whose sin affected the whole human race. The account of the fall is foundational to the rest of the Bible and to the “unfolding drama of redemption.” Let us listen carefully, and heed the lessons that are here for us.
While our focus will be on Genesis 2:4—5:27, I must call your attention to the first chapter of Genesis. Here, Moses informs us that God called the creation into being through His own Word:
“God said24 … and it was so.”25
By faith we understand that the worlds were set in order at God’s command, so that the visible has its origin in the invisible (Hebrews 11:3, emphasis mine).
My friend, Randy Zeller, summed it up this way: “In Genesis 1, the Word of God is the means by which the world was called into existence; in chapter 2, it takes the form of God’s command to Adam, to rule and to refrain from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; in chapter 3, the Word of God is challenged by Satan and disobeyed by Adam and Eve.” If the Word of God could call creation into being, surely it could be trusted, and should be obeyed. Thus, chapter 1 sets the stage for the fall in chapter 3.
Genesis 2 takes up the theme of creation, but from a different point of view. In chapter 1, everything that God created was declared “good” or “very good.” Beginning at verse 4 of chapter 2, we find the creation account retold, but from a different perspective. This creation narrative does not begin at the beginning, on the first day, but on the third day, when plant life was created. In chapter 1, creation (or cosmos – order) came from chaos. In chapter 2, creation comes out of need. Notice the things that are lacking in chapter 2:
No shrubs or plants (verse 5)
No rain (verse 5)
No man (verse 5)
No mate for Adam (verses 18-25)
Genesis 2 describes how God provided for the needs of His creation. As I understand it, there could not be any plant life without water. At that time, it seems as though there was no such thing as rain. How, then, would plant life survive? God provided through the “mist” (some translations) or “springs” (NET Bible). Technically, we could not say, “a river ran through Eden;” we would have to say, “a river had its headwaters in Eden” (see Genesis 2:10). That river then divided into four branches (verses 10-14).26 If my understanding of this is correct, then there was a second need – there was the need for a man to irrigate the garden. A mist would function like a rain in that it would water the garden whether a man was there or not. But a spring would necessitate irrigation ditches and cultivation. Thus, there was the need for a man, as well as for water, if a garden were to exist. God met both of these needs; He provided the springs (which became the headwaters of the river in Eden), and He provided Adam (who would irrigate and cultivate the garden).
There was yet one great need, and that need was for a mate for Adam. When God created animal life, He created them male and female, so that they could reproduce and fill the earth (1:22, 24). The way I read Genesis 2, God very purposefully led Adam to an awareness of his need of a mate. To do this, God brought each of the living creatures to Adam to be named. This naming was an expression of Adam’s rule over creation, since he was made in God’s image and commanded to rule over creation. But the naming accomplished another purpose – it highlighted the fact that Adam was incomplete without a mate of his own.
I can imagine how it happened. God brought the various animals to Adam to name, two-by-two. Adam could see the male lion, with his larger body and impressive mane, and he could see the female lion with him. If they had already begun to “be fruitful and multiply,” Adam saw how it was that they reproduced. Sooner than later, Adam would have to realize that these creatures all came in two’s – a male and a female. The connection had to be made, and Adam must have realized that he was a male. He realized that he needed a female, if he was to be “fruitful and multiply.” And looking about him, he saw many “matched pairs,” but no single creature that corresponded to him. How would he be able to fulfill his mandate without a mate? The need was now evident.
In stark contrast to chapter 1, God said of Adam’s situation: “It is not good …” (2:18). Adam could not carry out his calling alone. He must have a mate that corresponded to him (physically and otherwise). God provided for man’s need in a most amazing way. He did not create a wife for Adam from the dust of the earth; God created a wife for Adam from his own flesh. He anesthetized Adam and took one of his ribs, making a woman from that flesh and bone. They were, at the outset, “one flesh.” It is for this reason that Moses goes on to say,
23 And the man said,
“This is now bone of my bones,
and flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”
24 For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Genesis 2:23-25 NASB).
In the original creation, Adam and Eve had no parents, and they shared the same flesh. They were truly “one flesh.” This was to serve as a pattern for all future marriages, just as God resting on the Sabbath was to be a pattern for mankind (see Genesis 2:1-3). When a man and a woman married, they would become “one flesh” by means of their physical union. But they were to exhibit a deeper unity as well, one that began with the first marriage. As Adam and Eve had no parents, and became one flesh, so each husband and wife are to become one flesh by leaving and by cleaving. They27 are to leave their parents, not by avoiding them, or by neglecting them (see Mark 7:9-13), but by not living under the authority of their parents as they once did. Since God joins a man and a woman together in marriage, no one should dare to contribute to the breakup of that union.
The point of chapter 2 is that God will provide for every true need of His creation. The shrubs and plants needed water, and God provided springs and a man to irrigate the garden. Adam needed a mate, and God wonderfully provided for his need. We should learn from chapter 2 that God provides for the needs of His creation, in His way, in His time, and in a manner that we would not have expected. Surely we can see that if man needed the “knowledge of good and evil,” God would also provide that. We also see that it was not to be obtained through eating the forbidden fruit.
Chapter 2 sets the stage for the account of the fall in chapter 3 in yet another way. It is in chapter 2 that God’s commandments concerning the trees of the garden are given. God created a garden, and in this garden He provided every good tree. In this garden was every tree that was “pleasing to look at and good for food.” This must mean that the forbidden tree was also pleasing to the sight and pleasant to the taste. It, too, would have been “pleasing to look at and good for food.” God did not forbid Adam to eat of the fruit of this tree because it was a bad tree, with bad fruit, but because He did not want him to obtain the knowledge of good and evil by eating from its fruit.
God’s instructions to Adam are concise and clear. Adam was to care for and maintain the garden. He could freely eat from any tree of the garden, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said that if he ate of the fruit of this tree, he would surely die the day he ate of it.28 The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was in the very center of the garden, in addition to the tree of life. Adam was therefore faced with a choice, the choice between life and death. We know that at the time this command was given, Adam was alone, because Eve had not yet been created. (This is further indicated by the fact that the “you” in verse 17 is singular, not plural.) This simply means that it will be Adam’s responsibility to communicate God’s commandment to Eve.
1 Now the serpent was more shrewd than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard; 3 but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’” 4 The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like divine beings who know good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
The thing that strikes me is that we are not fully three chapters into the Bible before we encounter the account of the fall, and the description of the actual fall is only seven verses long. More than this, Adam is held responsible for the fall, but most of the actual fall is described in terms of what Eve did. It happens so quickly and so easily, and seemingly without resistance or hesitation. How can this be? No one ever had it better than Adam and Eve. They have no sin nature, inclining them toward evil. They have everything they could possibly need, and they live in a perfect world. So how is it that Adam and Eve can be persuaded to disobey God and spoil it all?
There are several parts to the answer. We can see from our text that Satan is incredibly shrewd.29 We have not been introduced to Satan before this, but the serpent was certainly a created being, and thus Adam would have previously named him. Satan himself is a created being (Ezekiel 28:13, 15). Satan’s fall is described in Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-15. In our text, he reveals his shrewdness in several ways.
First, Satan determines to wage his attack against man through his “helper,” Eve. I believe he does this because he feels that if he can persuade Eve to disobey God, Adam will be inclined to follow her. He also may know that God did not give the commandment concerning the forbidden fruit to Eve directly, but rather to Adam. Her information was therefore second hand. Neither was Eve involved in naming the animals, which would have reinforced the fact that man was to rule over creation (and thus over the serpent). Adam would have been more sensitive to the insubordination of the serpent, who dared to deceive the woman and to promote disobedience to God’s command.
Furthermore, the serpent approaches Eve as though he were a seeker or learner. He came to her with what appeared to be an innocent question. He seemed willing to be corrected if he happened to be wrong. It was not a direct, frontal attack against God’s command, but a deceptive scheme.
In addition to this, the serpent appeared to come as a friend, who had Eve’s best interests at heart. Satan does not disclose his agenda. He does not come as a liar and a murderer, though he is just that (John 8:44). He comes as a friend, a disinterested third party who is merely looking out for Eve’s best interest, supplying her with knowledge she lacks.
His great shrewdness is seen by the way he is able to completely change Eve’s perspective, so that she chooses to disobey God rather than to obey Him. I think it is safe to say that Satan is so skillful in his deception that he persuaded Eve to place her faith in him, and in his word, rather than in God, and in His Word. Here, in brief, is how he did so:
Initially, Satan appears humble and “teachable,” but soon he takes on an air of confidence and authority. He seems like someone who knows what he’s talking about, someone she can trust.
Satan appeals to Eve’s sensual desires. She should have viewed the fruit of the tree as beautiful and tasty, but forbidden. She came to see it as desirable, period.
Satan subtly creates a distrust of God by minimizing His grace, and by encouraging Eve to view God as miserly, withholding from her something truly good.
Satan causes Eve to doubt God’s Word, while believing his assurances (“You shall surely not die!”).
Satan persuades Eve to seek her own interests first of all, and to act independently of her husband and God, in order to achieve what she perceives as her highest good.
Satan uses Eve to lead her husband into sin.
Adam’s actions are even more baffling than those of his wife. We know from Paul’s words in the New Testament that there was a fundamental difference between Adam’s sin and that of his wife: Eve was deceived, but Adam was not (2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:14). If Adam was not deceived, then why did he disobey God? And why does his eating the forbidden fruit appear as almost a footnote to the account of Eve’s sin?
We do know from Genesis 3:17 that God found Adam guilty for obeying Eve. Adam did not lead; he followed. He did what his wife urged him to do, rather than to do as God had commanded him to do. As distressing as it is to admit, it appears from verse 6 that Adam was with Eve all the time, as well as at the
time she offered him some of the forbidden fruit.
When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it (Genesis 3:6, emphasis mine).
No wonder Adam so quickly ate of the forbidden fruit! He was there all the time. Adam was to rule over creation. Adam was to lead his wife (whose authority over her was evident by his priority in being created, by his being the source of her life, and by his naming her),30 and with her, to rule over creation. And yet we see Adam standing silently by as this creature deceives his wife and blasphemes God. How could he do so? Was he so awe struck by her beauty that he obeyed her, thus knowingly disobeying God? We may not know why Adam obeyed his wife, but we do know that he obeyed her, and for this he was guilty of sin.
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” 11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 And the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 And the LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly shall you go,
And dust you shall eat
All the days of your life;
15 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Yet your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”
17 Then to Adam He said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten from the true about which
I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’,
Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you,
And you shall eat the plants of the field;
19 By the sweat of your face
You shall eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”31
Notice the order of God’s confrontation and of the curses pronounced. The chain-of-command was God – Adam – Eve – serpent. The order of the fall was serpent – Eve – Adam. When God confronted this sin, He first confronted Adam (3:9-12), then Eve (3:13). While God questioned Adam and Eve, He did not question the serpent. God was not in any way attempting to redeem the serpent. The order of the curses comes according to the order of the fall, so that the serpent is cursed first, then Eve, and finally Adam.
Notice also that Adam and his wife were not seeking God but were seeking to hide from Him. They covered their nakedness with fig leaves, and sought to hide themselves in the trees of the garden. It was God who sought out these first sinners. And so it has been ever since. No one seeks God; God seeks out sinners in order to save them:
“There is no one righteous, not even one,
11 there is no one who understands,
there is no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:10b-11).
9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, since he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:9-10).
The serpent’s curse was two-fold. In the first place, he was going to “bite the dust” as we would put it. The serpent must have originally carried himself in an upright position, because his curse is to crawl about in the dust as the most cursed32 of all creatures. The ultimate curse is the prophecy of his total destruction in verse 15b:
“He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”33
Christians have understood this to be the first prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, who was the last Adam (Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:45). The Messiah will be of the “seed of the woman:” He will be human (and, of course, divine). One of Eve’s descendants will “crush the head” of the serpent, while at the same time “bruising His heel.” The blow of Messiah’s heel to the serpent’s head will destroy the serpent, but it will also bruise the heel of the Savior. Here is the first prophecy of the cross of our Lord, where Satan’s defeat is accomplished (see John 12:31).
The curse of Eve and of Adam falls in the area of their primary focus or contribution.34 While it is not precisely stated in our text, we know that the curse on Adam fell upon all his male descendants, just as the curse on Eve fell upon all her female descendants. Both Eve and Adam will suffer painful labor. Eve will suffer pain in the labor of childbearing; Adam will suffer painful labor in raising food. In addition, Eve will have the desire to rule over her husband, but she must endure the leadership of her husband (3:16). The final words of Genesis 4:7 are strikingly similar to those of 3:16:35
“You will want to control your husband,
but he will dominate you” (3:16).
“It desires to dominate you,
but you must suppress it” (4:7).
There are those who interpret Genesis 3:16 differently, but it seems to me that God has made Eve’s curse appropriate to her sin, which was leading her husband, rather than following him.
Adam’s curse came in relation to the soil that he was instructed to cultivate. Because he obeyed the voice of his wife, Adam would find the soil less productive. Now, the growing of food would require hard labor. I think we could say that from this point on he had to contend with diseases, with insects, and with weeds – all of the things gardeners have to deal with today. In addition to this, Adam himself would return to the ground (as would Eve). This was part of the penalty of death, about which God had earlier spoken to Adam.
I sometimes hear men speak of their work in very idealistic terms. I think that they desire for their work to be, for them, as work was for Adam, before the fall. Is your job less than fulfilling? Does your work require some things of you that you don’t enjoy? Do you have to put in long hours and hard labor? That’s all part of the curse. That’s normal. To expect too much of one’s work is to hope that Adam’s curse might somehow bypass you. It doesn’t. This is not to say that there should be no measure of enjoyment in your work, but it does mean that work is much more “work” than it would have been before the fall of man.
The consequences of the fall quickly begin to appear. Some were “unseen” in the sense that God’s command to Adam in 2:16-17 did not spell out all of the repercussions of disobedience. Some of these were the direct outworking of the curses God pronounced, and some are not. For example, in Genesis 2:25 we were told that before the fall, Adam and Eve were both naked and yet they felt no sense of shame. After the fall, Adam and Eve are immediately aware of their nakedness and are quick to try to cover it. They sew fig leaves together for coverings (Genesis 3:7), and they attempt to hide from God among the trees of the garden (3:8). Their sin produced a sense of guilt and shame, which they could not cover.
In addition to their shame, Adam and Eve also experienced separation from God. They withdrew themselves, seeking to hide from God as we mentioned above. But in addition to this, God cast them out of the garden, stationing angels to guard the entrance, so that they would not be able to return to it to eat of the fruit of the tree of life (3:23-24).
God did warn Adam that death would result from eating the forbidden fruit, and we surely begin to see that in 3:19 – 5:27. God announces to Adam that he will die (3:19). Death will go far beyond Adam, however. Death has now entered the world for all living creatures.
19 For the creation eagerly waits for the revelation of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly but because of God who subjected it—in hope 21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. 23 Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:19-23).
The animals from which God made coverings of skin for Adam and Eve would have had to die (3:21). In Genesis 4, things go from bad to worse. Adam’s rebellion against God is reflected and amplified in Cain’s rebellion against God, and in the murder of his brother, Abel. Cain’s response to God’s gracious rebuke reveals insolence on Cain’s part. God did not find Cain or his sacrifice acceptable, but He told him what he could do to rectify the situation. Cain’s response is anger, and he takes that anger out on his righteous brother, killing him, and then denying any responsibility for his brother’s well being. Cain is therefore cursed to live the life of a wanderer.
The line of Cain’s descendants shows how the sin of Adam, and then of Cain, compounded itself. Moses briefly passes over Cain’s son Enoch, and his son Mehujael, and Mehujael’s son Methushael. The genealogy of the line of Cain ends at Genesis 4:18-24 with the account of Lamech, Methushael’s son. Notice that Lamech takes two wives, rather than just one (4:19), and that he boasts to them:
23 Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah! Listen to me!
You wives of Lamech, hear my words!
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for hurting me.
24 If Cain is to be avenged seven times as much,
then Lamech seventy-seven times” (Genesis 4:23-24)
Lamech does not look upon the sin of Cain as something evil, but as a kind of standard that he wishes to surpass. Did Cain kill his brother in anger? Lamech killed a man for wounding him, in fact, he was a young man who had in some way injured him (accidentally?). His reaction was out of proportion to the offense. Due to his fear of being harmed as a vagabond, God pronounced a curse upon anyone who harmed Cain. Lamech dared anyone to give him any trouble or he would do much more! The line of Cain went downhill very quickly.
In contrast to the line of Cain, we are introduced to another line – the line of Seth. Think about Adam and Eve for a moment. They had two sons, one of whom (Abel) was a godly fellow; the other (Cain) was not. Can’t you imagine Adam and Eve thinking to themselves, “This must be the ‘seed’ through whom God will accomplish our salvation, and the destruction of Satan?” How their hopes must have been dashed with the murder of Abel. Many years seem to have passed, because Adam is 130 years old when their son Seth was born (5:3). Adam and his wife must have felt that Seth was Abel’s replacement and hoped that he was the promised “seed” of the woman (Genesis 3:15). Seth had a son name Enosh, and Enosh had a son named Kenan. Kenan’s son was named Mahalalel. Mahalalel became the father of Jared, and Jared was the father of Enoch. Enoch later became the father of Methuselah. Methuselah became the father of Lamech, and Lamech was the father of Noah.
All these men lived very long lives by today’s standards. Adam lived 930 years, for example, and Methuselah 969 years. But Moses does not just wish for us to learn that these men lived long lives; Moses tells us that the fate of each man (save one) was the same – death. Over and over again we read, “And he died.” Surely Moses is repeating this to demonstrate that God’s words to Adam were true. The wages of sin is death. Not only did Adam die because of his sin, but all of his descendants died as well.
The bright light in all of this darkness is Enoch. Enoch “walked with God” we are told (Genesis 5:24). He did not die, but was somehow raptured up into heaven. Literally, “he was no more” – he just vanished one day. This is God’s way of informing us that He is faithful to save. The sin of Adam and Eve did bring death upon all, but God’s grace also brought about deliverance from death. Enoch is the firstfruits of those who will not taste death. He did not follow a system of rules, nor did he have the law to keep. He simply “walked with God” and “was no more.” Enoch is strategically placed in chapter 5 to remind us that while “the wages of sin is death,” the “gift of God is eternal life.” In the midst of man’s sin and God’s judgment, there is hope for our deliverance from the penalty of death.
The sin of Adam and Eve brought consequences and curses, not only upon Adam and his wife, but also upon all of their offspring. Is there any hope for Adam and his offspring? Is there any hope for us? There certainly is. Ironically, the cure is closely related to the curse. God cast Adam and Eve out of the garden, and while this is a punishment for their sin, it was also a gracious action on God’s part. Had God allowed them to live in the garden, they would have eaten of the fruit of the tree of life. The problem is that having done so they would have lived forever, as fallen creatures. What a terrible fate! God also pronounced death as a part of the curse, but this too was a part of the cure. The only way out of this life and the consequences of sin is death. The death of animal sacrifices was a way of putting off judgment, until God provided a permanent solution. Ultimately it would be the death of the Messiah that would deliver men from their sins. Further, His resurrection assures the believer of their deliverance from death. As part of the curse, Eve would experience great pain in bearing children, but the really good news was that it was through the birth of a child that the Savior would come, Who would bruise His own heel while crushing the head of Satan.
And so it is that in the midst of a text dealing with sin and its consequences, there is hope in these early chapters of Genesis. Adam expressed hope when he named his wife Eve, “because she was the mother of all the living” (3:20). It seems to me that Adam has already begun to find hope in the promise of Genesis 3:15. As the “mother of all the living” Eve was also the mother of the promised Savior. While Cain and his seed must have been a source of sorrow and disappointment to Adam and Eve, Seth was certainly a source of hope. It was through his offspring that the deliverer would come. This was underscored by the rapture of Enoch, who walked with God and “was no more.” Here was a godly man on whom death did not have a grip. He was a symbol of hope for all who would walk with God. And finally, there was Noah, concerning whom we read:
28 When Lamech had lived one hundred and eighty-two years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah, saying, “This one will bring us comfort from our labor and from the painful toil of our hands, because of the ground that the LORD has cursed” (Genesis 5:28-29).
He was a deliverer, but the deliverer had yet to come, and would not come for some time. God’s unfolding drama of redemption contains many more chapters. Nevertheless, the hope of a deliverer is here.
The first question we must ask is, “What were the first readers of this account to learn from it?” What was God saying to the second generation of Israelites who had left Egypt, and who were on the verge of entering the Promised Land?
First, the ancient Israelites would be reminded of the fact that they were “prone to wander” from the path of obedience. If unfallen Adam and Eve fell this quickly and easily into sin, those who now have inherited a fallen nature from them can all too easily fall into sin. God did not choose the Israelites because of their piety, but because of His grace. Let every Israelite be on guard, knowing how easy it is to fall into sin.
Second, the Israelites should be warned of the danger of being led astray by foreign women. God gave very strict orders concerning the Canaanites, whose sexual practices were exceedingly corrupt. You will recall that when the Moabites could not overcome the Israelites by hiring Balaam to pronounce a curse on them (see Numbers 22-24), they did succeed somewhat through seduction (Numbers 25). Solomon, wise as he was, had his heart turned away from God by his foreign wives (1 Kings 11:1ff.). Let the Israelite men learn that women can lead them astray, particularly those foreign women who worship other gods. If Adam could be led astray by his wife, who was created as his helper, think of what would happen if they married heathen women.
Third, the Israelites should learn that following God requires denying one’s sensual desires, rather than striving to satisfy them. When Paul writes to the Corinthian saints, he informs them that they need to learn self-control and self-denial. It was because of their determination to satisfy their fleshly appetites that they chose to eat meats offered to idols, even though this might cause a weaker brother to stumble (see
1 Corinthians 8:1-13). Paul cited his own self-denial as an example for the Corinthians to follow (see
1 Corinthians 9). Then, in the closing verses of chapter 9, he appeals to them to practice self-discipline. Following this, he reminds them that the failure of the Israelites in the wilderness was due to their preoccupation with satisfying their fleshly desires:
24 Do you not know that all the runners in a stadium compete, but only one receives the prize? So run to win. 25 Each competitor must exercise self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. 26 So I do not run uncertainly or box like one who hits only air.
27 Instead I subdue my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were cut down in the wilderness. 6 These things happened as examples for us, so that we will not crave evil things as they did. 7 So do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” 8 And let us not be immoral, as some of them were, and twenty-three thousand died in a single day. 9 And let us not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by snakes. 10 And do not complain, as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them as examples and were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 So let the one who thinks he is standing be careful that he does not fall. 13 No trial has overtaken you that is not faced by others. And God is faithful: he will not let you be tried too much, but with the trial will also provide a way through it so that you may be able to endure (1 Corinthians 10:1-13).
Eve was deceived into believing that seeking the satisfaction of her own desires was more important than obedience to God’s commands. I believe that Adam was not deceived, but that he, too, chose to satisfy his desires rather than to obey. The Israelites would be tempted in the same way, and the account of the fall served as a warning.
Fourth, the Israelites should be impressed with the importance of obeying God’s commands, and with the painful consequences of disobedience. God had essentially given Adam a single commandment, which he failed to obey. The Israelites were given much more extensive instruction in the Law of Moses. Let the Israelites learn from Adam and Eve that disobedience to God’s commands brings judgment.
Fifth, the Israelites, like Adam and Eve of old, were faced with one of two choices. In the center of that garden were two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Essentially, we could say that before Adam and Eve was the necessity to choose between life or death. Exactly the same choices faced the Israelites of Moses’ day:
1 “Now when all these things happen to you— the blessing and the curse I have set before you—and you remember them in all the nations where the Lord your God has exiled you, 2 if you turn to the Lord your God and listen to him just as I am commanding you today—you and your descendants—with your whole mind and being, 3 then the Lord your God will reverse your captivity and have pity on you. He will turn and gather you from all the peoples among whom he has scattered you. 4 Even if any of your dispersed are under the most distant skies, from there the Lord your God will gather and bring you back. 5 Then he will bring you to the land your ancestors possessed and you also will possess it; he will do better for you and multiply you more than he did your ancestors. 6 The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being, in order to live. 7 Then the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and persecute you. 8 You will return and pay attention to the Lord, keeping all his commandments I am giving you today. 9 The Lord your God will make the labor of your hands abundantly successful—in your offspring, the offspring of your cattle, and the crops of your fields. For the Lord your God will once more rejoice over you for good just as he rejoiced over your ancestors, 10 if you obey the Lord your God and keep his commandments and statutes that are written in this book of the law, that is, if you turn to him with your whole mind and being.
11 “For this commandment that I am giving you today is not too awesome for you, nor is it too remote. 12 It is not in heaven, as though one must say, “Who will go up to heaven to get it for us so that we may hear and obey it?” 13 And it is not across the sea, as though one must say, “Who will cross over to the other side of the sea and get it for us so that we may hear and keep it?” 14 For the thing is very near you—it is in your mouth and mind so that you can do it.
15 “Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other. 16 What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land where you are going to take possession of it. 17 However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, 18 I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan River to possess. 19 I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you today that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you may live—you and your descendants! 20 I also call on you to love the Lord your God, to obey him and cling to him, for he is your life and the means of your longevity as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 30:1-20, emphasis mine).
39 “See now that I, indeed I, am he!” says the Lord,
“and there is no other god besides me.
I am the one who kills and brings to life.
I smash and I heal,
and none can deliver from my power.
40 For I raise up my hand to heaven,
and say, ‘As I live forever,
41 I will sharpen my lightning-like sword,
and my hand will grasp hold of judgment;
I will execute vengeance on my foes,
and repay those who hate me!
42 I will satisfy my arrows fully with blood,
and my sword will eat flesh;
with the blood of the slaughtered and captured,
from the chief of the enemy’s leaders!’”
43 Cry out, O nations, with his people,
for he will avenge his servants’ blood;
he will direct vengeance against his enemies,
and make atonement for his land and people.
44 Then Moses went with Joshua son of Nun and recited all the words of this song to the people. 45 When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel 46 he said to them, “Instill in your mind all the things I am testifying to you today, things you must command your children to observe, all the words of this law. 47 For this is no idle word for you—it is your life! By this word you will live a long time in the land you are about to cross the Jordan River to possess” (Deuteronomy 32:39-47, emphasis mine).
Simply put, if the Israelites were to live, they must keep God’s commandment;37 If they disobey, they will die. It is just as simple as that. And so the Israelites of old had the same decision to make as did Adam and Eve. Would they choose life, or would they choose death?
There are many lessons for us to learn, and I will only be able to touch on these.
First, our text explains the reason for suffering, sorrow, and injustice in this world. There are some who foolishly say, “I refuse to believe in a God who is both good and all-powerful, but who allows suffering and injustice.” God did not create a world that was unjust, or filled with sorrow. He created a perfect world. He also created a world in which man was given the choice of whether to obey or disobey God’s command. It is man’s sin that has brought about sickness, suffering, death, and injustice. The fact that God punishes sin demonstrates that He is righteous, and it is we who are sinners, deserving His wrath. When you and I look around and see so much that is wrong, we should acknowledge that the cause of all this is sin – man’s disobedience to God’s Word. Sin and suffering tells us that there is something desperately wrong with us, not with God.
Second, the fall of man in the garden is the reason for some of God’s commands to us today. Why is it that women are commanded to keep silent in the churches or instructed that they must not lead men? Paul tells us that it is because of the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden:
9 Likewise the women are to dress in suitable apparel, with modesty and self-control. Their adornment must not be with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive clothing, 10 but with good deeds, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. 11 A woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man. She must remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first and then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But she will be delivered through childbearing, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control (1 Timothy 2:9-15).
As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says. 35 If they want to find out about something they should ask their husbands at home, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. 36 Did the word of God begin with you, or did it come to you alone? (1 Corinthians 14:33b-36).
I know that there are many non-Christians (and some Christians as well) who will say, “That’s just nonsense! Paul has no right to demand such conduct. It makes no sense to me, and I’m not going to do it!” Let me simply point out that this is precisely the same attitude and response that we see in Eve. The commands given to women are not based on any inferiority so far as women are concerned. These commands are rooted in the fall, and in the curse. Our response to them reveals either our submission to God or our disobedience. It is really as simple as that.
Third, we now know the cure for the curse. Someone may very well ask, “Why did God allow the consequences of Adam’s sin to fall on the entire human race?” “Why is it fair for me to suffer for what Adam did?” In the first place, I would say that most of my suffering is because of my sin, not Adam’s. But having said this, God was gracious to allow the action of this one man to affect me. It was gracious because He also purposed for the actions of another Man, a last Adam, to reverse the consequences of the first Adam’s sin:
12 So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned — 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed. 15 But the gracious gift is not like the transgression. For if the many died through the transgression of the one man, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ multiply to the many! 16 And the gift is not like the one who sinned. For judgment, resulting from the one transgression, led to condemnation, but the gracious gift from the many failures led to justification. 17 For if, by the transgression of the one man, death reigned through the one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ! 18 Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in so that the transgression may increase, but where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more, 21 so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:12-21).
42 It is the same with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living person; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” 46 However, the spiritual did not come first, but the natural, then the spiritual. 47 The first man is from the earth, made of dust, the second man is from heaven. 48 Like the one made of dust, so too are those made of dust, and like the one from heaven, so too those who are heavenly. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:42-49).
Adam was the first Adam, whose sin made all mankind sinners. Jesus Christ is the “last Adam.” He was tempted in every area, but unlike Adam, our Lord never failed (Hebrews 2:18; 4:15). His handling of Satan’s temptation (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-12) was the opposite of Adam, and it provides us with much insight concerning dealing with temptation. He was tempted, yet without sin. He who was without sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:22). Adam’s sin brought all those in him (all mankind) into condemnation; Christ’s righteousness makes all who are found in Him righteous. We have a choice before us: whether we will remain in Adam, and thus under divine condemnation, or whether we will be found in Christ by trusting in Him, resulting in eternal life.
The message of our text could probably be summarized by five terms:
Faith. The outcome of the temptation of Adam and Eve was determined on the basis of who they chose to trust. The things that they were dealing with were, to them, unseen. They had never seen death, and did not really know what life was. They did not know what “the knowledge of good and evil” was, either. When man fell in the garden, it was due to misplaced faith. Eve trusted Satan, rather than God.
The Word of God. It was God’s Word vs. Satan’s, and Eve chose to believe Satan. God’s Word was sufficient to call creation into existence. The question was whether or not it was sufficient for Adam and Eve to live by.
Obedience. The test that God gave Adam and Eve was one of obedience. Would they obey His command?
Grace. God was gracious to create the perfect world that He did, and to place man in the garden. God was gracious to forbid Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit. He was gracious to seek out Adam and Eve, and to point out their sin. He was gracious to promise the coming of a Savior, who would once and for all destroy the evil one. In the Old Testament, as the New, grace is to be found on every page.
Leadership. The fall took place because Adam failed to lead, as God had commanded him. He listened to his wife, rather than to lead her, and to exercise authority over the serpent.
In conclusion, I would like to point out what I feel is a vitally important lesson that we were intended to learn from the account of man’s fall. Adam and Eve fell because they did not trust God to meet their needs. They felt that they had to act independently of God, and in disobedience to His Word, in order to have their desires satisfied. Eve saw the forbidden fruit as desirable, and she was willing to disobey God (even though He threatened death) to satisfy her needs (as she defined them). Seemingly, Adam was willing to disobey God because he felt he needed Eve more than God. Why else would he knowingly disobey God to obey her?
I believe Genesis 2 was written to demonstrate that God is both willing and able to meet our legitimate needs, in His way, and in His time. The shrubs and plants needed water, and God provided it. They needed cultivation and irrigation, and God provided for that need. Adam needed a helpmate, and God wonderfully provided Eve. God provided for every true need in His creation.
When our Lord was tempted by Satan, He was led into the wilderness where he had no food or water (much as the Israelites were led into the desert by Moses). Satan sought to employ the same kind of temptation he used in the garden, seeking to entice Jesus to act independently of the Father in order to meet His own needs. Our Lord answered that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Father. He knew that obeying God was more important than eating a meal. He knew that His ultimate need was to obey the Father’s will. He knew that if He entrusted Himself to God, and obeyed His Word, God would supply His needs.
Satan tempted Eve, convincing her that she really needed the fruit of the forbidden tree. She needed it, she thought, because it was desirable to make her wise, to make her like God. She needed to know good and evil. I am inclined to think that God fully intended to meet this need, but in His own way, and in His own time. I wonder if God did not intend to teach Adam about good and evil as they took their daily walk together in the garden. I believe that they would have come to know good by knowing God, and realizing that anything other than that which pleased Him was evil. They would learn to be wise by knowing God more intimately. In this way, the knowledge of good and evil would be a blessed thing, the result of enjoying God. Disobeying God brought about a separation from God, rather than greater intimacy with God.
How many times do we find ourselves being tempted in the same manner? We sense that we have a need (at the least, we feel a desire) that God has not yet met. We should draw near to God, trusting Him to provide, or to withhold, what we desire, knowing that “every good and perfect gift comes from above” (James 1:17). God withholds only that which is detrimental to our good. But all too often we, like Eve, choose to satisfy our needs independently, acting apart from faith, and perhaps in direct disobedience to His Word. The results of such disobedience are always disastrous in the end.
Isn’t this what the Israelites of old needed to learn as well? They were led into the wilderness, where there was no food and little water. God promised to provide for all their needs. When they failed to trust and obey Him, there were always painful consequences. God purposely let them be in need, to test them and to increase their faith:
1 You must keep carefully the entire commandment I am giving you today so that you may live, multiply, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 2 Remember the whole way by which he has brought you these forty years through the desert so that he might, by humbling you, test to see whether deep within yourselves you would keep his commandments or not. 3 So he humbled you by making you hungry and feeding you with unfamiliar manna to make you understand that mankind cannot live by food alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord’s mouth (Deuteronomy 8:1-3).
When we have needs, it is often God’s way of teaching us to trust and obey. When we fail to do so, we simply repeat, once again, the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden.
23 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on November 5, 2000.
24 Ten times in Genesis 1.
25 “It was so” may not have been precisely said in each instance, but it is implied if not stated after every “and God said.”
26 I have always been perplexed as to why Moses would bother to mention that there was “good gold” in the land of Havilah (2:11-12). If I understand Sailhamer’s argument correctly, then Eden was the land of Canaan. This would then be equivalent to Moses pointing to the hills of Canaan and shouting, “There’s gold in them thar hills!” It would be an ancient version of the gold rush. I say this somewhat with tongue-in-cheek, but there must be a reason for mentioning the gold. See John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1996), pp. 70-73.
27 Specifically, the husband.
28 I understand this to mean that Adam would immediately die spiritually, and that he would begin to die physically as well. From the moment he ate of it, the aging process would begin.
29 It should probably be noted that “the serpent” is not actually called Satan here, but that becomes quite apparent in time. In 2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul refers to Eve being deceived by the serpent, but later in the same chapter he goes on to describe the deceptive work of Satan (11:13-15).
30 Much of this is Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 11:2-17.
31 NASB.
32 The inference of God’s words is that all earthly creatures fell under a curse because of the fall. The serpent is cursed “more than” the other creatures, which certainly appears to mean that they, too, are cursed, but not as much as the serpent. This squares with Romans 8:19-22.
33 NASB.
34 See also 1 Timothy 2:15; 5:14.
35 This is most evident in the original text.
36 Due to the length of this text, and some others in the future, I will not include lengthy texts in the message.
37 If time would permit, I would pursue the fact that “commandment” is singular, not plural. Moses is not saying that “law keeping” will produce eternal life. The one commandment we are to keep is to love the Lord our God. It is God who will circumcise our hearts, causing us to love Him and to obey His commandments. The one command, in essence, is to love God. This whole matter (along with Deuteronomy 30:12-14) is taken up in Romans 10:1-15.
Genesis 5:28—10:32
This past week, the election was held for the presidency of the United States. One week later, as I am finishing this manuscript, we still don’t know who has won the election. As the days pass, the margin between victory and defeat gets smaller and smaller, not only in the state of Florida, but in a few other states as well. This is due, in part, to the tremendous voter turnout for this election. We should have learned from this election that the actions of a very few people will affect the destiny of the candidates, not to mention the citizens of our great country.
In the Bible, we can see that the fate of many people often rests on the character and conduct of just one man. This was the case, for example, with Israel’s kings. It was also true of the period of the judges. We see the same principle at work in Genesis 3, where Adam’s disobedience brings sin, condemnation, and curses upon the entire human race. We see it with Cain and with Seth in Genesis 4 and 5, where the sin or righteousness of each impacts future generations. We see it once again in the account of the flood. The whole world is corrupt and fit only for destruction, and if it were not for one righteous man – Noah – the entire human race would have been wiped out forever. But because of Noah, a remnant was preserved, and so the human race had a new beginning.
In my earlier series on the Book of Genesis, four lessons were required to cover the same Scriptures that we shall deal with in but one lesson. Our purpose in this lesson is to look at the “big picture,” and thus I cannot allow myself the luxury of any rabbit trials. Among these is the question of the identity of the “sons of God” and the Nephilim in the first verses of Genesis 6. Good scholars differ over the interpretation of these terms. If knowing the precise meaning of these terms were crucial to the message of this passage, then I’m sure God would have spent more time on them and would have made the meaning very clear to us. I must conclude that the text is somewhat vague, which should caution us about being too dogmatic on such matters.
Further, I am not going to attempt to explain how the flood came about in scientific terms. This is partly because it is not my area of expertise, and partly because it is not the point of the passage. Neither will I try to explain all the differences between the pre-flood world and the post-flood world. These matters may be of interest to some, and I wish them well in their pursuit of them, so long as it does not prevent them from taking heed to the major thrust of this passage. In this lesson I will seek to heed the “law of proportion,” noting those parts of our passage which receive the most emphasis.
1 When mankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful. Thus they took wives for themselves from any they chose. 3 So the LORD said, “My spirit will not remain in mankind indefinitely, since they are mortal. They will remain for one hundred and twenty more years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after this), when the sons of God were having sexual relations with the daughters of mankind, who gave birth to their children. They were the mighty heroes of old, the famous men. 5 But the LORD saw that the wickedness of mankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD regretted that he had made mankind on the earth, and he felt highly offended. 7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth-everything from mankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.” … 11 The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence. 12 God saw the earth, and indeed it was ruined, for all living creatures on the earth were sinful.
I have a confession to make. I often run to the grocery store for my wife, or with her, to “pick up a few things.” The produce section has always fascinated me. Sometimes the produce manager will attach a sticker to fruit which reads, “ripe.” From time to time, I’ve seen a piece of really rotten fruit, and I must confess that I’ve attached a ripe sticker to that rotten fruit for all to see.
I think the civilization of Noah’s day needed one of those “ripe” stickers. It was rotten to the core. Initially, things may have appeared to be on course, but it didn’t take long for things to deteriorate. In the beginning, God had given man His blessing and commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply”:
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28).
Adam and Eve bore two sons; Cain killed Abel, and later on Seth, along with others. Then, some years later came Lamech, one of Adam and Eve’s descendants through Cain. Cain and Lamech were better at subtraction (by committing murder) than at multiplication, although Lamech made up for his reduction of mankind by having two wives, rather than just one (4:19-24). By the time we reach chapter 6, things have gone from bad to worse.
The way I understand verses 1-7, Moses is describing a progressive dissatisfaction with man, one that culminates with the necessity of worldwide judgment. The first two verses of chapter 6 describe the way in which mankind was multiplying. Men – the sons of God – were marrying women and together they were bearing children. All this might be seen as positive, except for the basis on which they chose their wives – they chose the ones that looked the best to them (6:2). Especially after the fall, one would have hoped that men and women would have sought mates who were godly, but this does not appear to be the case at all. Men and women were marrying and multiplying, but out of sheer fleshly desire. No wonder we find the words of God in verse 3, which indicate that His Spirit would not strive with men forever. It is as though God had said, “I created man, but he is so dominated by the flesh that his spirit is no longer in tune with my Spirit. I shall not put up with this for long. I will shorten man’s days to a mere 120 years.”39
The next problem arises in Genesis 6:4. As marrying and multiplying goes, on a race of giants known as Nephilim40 emerges. These men seem to be superior physical specimens, but from the following verses, we find that the moral condition of mankind was found wanting. As God looks down upon His creation, He finds that man’s wickedness is great; man’s thoughts are continually fixed on the promotion of evil (6:5). The time has finally come to deal with the mess man has made of creation.
In the past, I was involved in prison ministry. Teaching seminars inside a number of prisons was a great joy for me. The one thing I dreaded was that I might someday be asked to sit with a condemned inmate as he was being executed for his crimes. Fortunately, that never happened. If witnessing the death of a guilty criminal would be painful, think of the agony one might experience at seeing all creation put to death. One might wonder how the God who created all these living creatures could now destroy them. The answer, my friend, is to be found in the magnitude of the sin and corruption that man’s sin had brought about in creation.
Take just a moment to ponder the extent of the sin and corruption that had resulted from the fall of Adam and Eve, and the subsequent sins of their offspring. All mankind had been corrupted, as we can see from verse 5:
But the LORD saw that the wickedness of mankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time.
From morning till evening, man’s mind was filled with evil thoughts. They thought of nothing but sin. And it did not end with mere thoughts; the earth was corrupt and filled with violence (verse 11). When I looked at the use of the word “corrupt,” I found that it is the same verb often used with the meaning “to destroy” or “to render worthless” (see Genesis 9:11, 15; 13:13:10; 18:28, 32; 19:13, 14, 29; 38:9). That is what man’s sin did to the earth. Today, we might say, man “trashed” the whole earth. What this means is that God did not destroy something beautiful and useful (though He surely could have done so if He pleased); He destroyed something that was worthless and corrupt.
It has taken me some time to appreciate the fact that man’s sin really did corrupt or destroy the earth. Verse 11 tells us that the “earth” was corrupted. Man’s sin impacts everything. The land suffered corruption because of man’s sin (see Leviticus 18:25-28)41. Not only was the land corrupted, but even the living creatures:42
13 So God said to Noah, “I have decided that all living creatures43 must die, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. Now I am about to destroy them and the earth… 17 I am about to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under the sky all the living creatures that have the breath of life in them. Everything that is on the earth will die, …” (Genesis 6:13, 17, emphasis mine).
3 So the Lord said, “My spirit will not remain in mankind indefinitely, since they are mortal. They will remain for one hundred and twenty more years.” … 6 The Lord regretted that he had made mankind on the earth, and he felt highly offended. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—everything from mankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.”
Our text tells us that God was sorry that He had created man on earth and was grieved in His heart (6:6). As a result, He determined to blot out man, along with every breathing creature (6:7). Is this verse telling us that some unforeseen event caught God by surprise? Is Moses telling us that God realized that He had made a great mistake? Far from it! We see, once again, that God is intimately involved with His creation and that He cares about it passionately. God created all things, including mankind, knowing that man would fail the test in the garden. It was through the fall of man and the entrance of sin into this world that God was able to manifest His marvelous attributes:
5 And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there; and he made proclamation of the Lord by name. 6 And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, 7 keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression and sin. But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:5-7).
It is only in the context of sin that God’s grace can be seen for all that it is. It is in contrast to the wickedness of men that the righteousness of God stands out so sharply. The misconception that many seem to have is that if God is God, then He will not allow anything to happen which causes Him sorrow or pain. We can only imagine what kind of pain God experienced as He poured out His wrath upon His Son at Calvary, as He died in our place, bearing our punishment. And yet we also know that this was a part of God’s plan that was established in eternity past.
22 “Israelite men, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man clearly attested to you by God with powerful deeds, wonders, and miraculous signs that God performed through him among you, just as you yourselves know— 23 this man, who was handed over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you executed by nailing him to a cross at the hands of Gentiles. 24 But God raised him up, having released him from the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held in its power (Acts 2:22-24).
The point I am trying to make is that God purposes some things that He knows will cause Him pain. The fact that God experienced sorrow because He had created man does not mean that He did not know mankind would fail miserably, causing Him grief. Any married couple who decides to have children should do so knowing that there will be times of great sorrow, and not just for the woman in her time of labor. God was sorry that man had become so wicked, but being sorry does not mean that He did not know the outcome of His act of creation.
5:28 When Lamech had lived one hundred and eighty-two years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah, saying, “This one will bring us comfort from our labor and from the painful toil of our hands, because of the ground that the Lord has cursed.” … 6:9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a godly man; he was blameless among his contemporaries. He walked with God.
The line of Cain went from bad (Cain) to worse (Lamech). The line of Seth held some promise. It was in Seth’s days that men began to “call upon the name of the Lord” (4:26). Enoch, one of Seth’s descendants, was a man who “walked with God,” and he was taken up into heaven (5:24). With the birth of Noah, there was a sense of expectation; his father expressed the hope that this son would bring about the reversal of the curse (5:29). He was used of God as a deliverer, and as such, he foreshadowed the great “Deliverer,” the Lord Jesus Christ. We will talk about this later on. We are told that Noah was a godly man; in the midst of a corrupt society, Noah stood out, stood alone, as a man of God. He was “blameless among his contemporaries,” a man like Enoch, who “walked with God” (6:9).
This is not to say that Noah was a perfect man, a man that God spared because he was without any sin. Noah was a sinner, whose deliverance was a matter of divine grace, rather than of human merit:
But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord (Genesis 6:8).
It was God’s grace that saved Noah. And he, like all the saints – Old Testament or New – was saved by faith:
5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he did not see death, and he was not to be found because God took him up. For before his removal he had been commended as having pleased God. 6 Now without faith it is impossible to please him, for the one who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 7 By faith Noah, when he was warned about things not yet seen, reverently constructed an ark for the deliverance of his family. Through faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith (Hebrews 11:5-7, emphasis mine).
In contrast to Adam, who disobeyed God, Noah’s faith was evident in his obedience to the commands of God:
And Noah did all that God commanded him—he did indeed (6:22).
And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him (7:5).
While Adam’s disobedience took place in a moment of time, Noah’s obedience was demonstrated by countless years of constructing the ark.
13 So God said to Noah, “I have decided that all living creatures must die, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. Now I am about to destroy them and the earth. 14 Make for yourself an ark of cypress wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you should make it: the ark is to be four hundred fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. 16 Make a roof for the ark and finish it, leaving eighteen inches from the top. Put a door in the side of the ark, and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am about to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under the sky all the living creatures that have the breath of life in them. Everything that is on the earth will die, 18 but I will confirm my covenant with you. You will enter the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You must bring into the ark two of every kind of living creature from all flesh, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Of the birds after their kinds, and of the cattle after their kinds, and of every creeping thing of the ground after their kinds, two of every kind will come to you so you can keep them alive. 21 And you must take for yourself every kind of food that is eaten, and gather it together. It will be food for you and for them. 22 And Noah did all that God commanded him—he did indeed.
I can’t help but think of an older model of a Volvo automobile when I read these instructions concerning the construction of the ark. Someone has said of the Volvo, “It’s boxy, but it’s safe.” I think that if we’d have seen the ark we would have said, “It’s ugly (and probably boxy too), but it’s safe.” I suppose that men had learned to make boats by that time, but no one would have ever imagined the need for a craft the size of the ark. Think of it: the ark was to be 450 feet long, 75 feet in width, and 45 feet high. In our church, Mrs. Roberts’ Sunday school class measured our new building and found that it was approximately the same size, except that our church is not that tall. This was a huge craft, and from the pictures I’ve seen of its likeness, it was nothing for which Frank Lloyd Wright would want to take credit. It was, however, just what was needed.
Someone rightly remarked that the ark was a lot like our Lord Jesus. From outward appearances, our Lord was not someone whom we would have found physically attractive:
2 He sprouted up like a twig before God,
like a root out of parched soil;
he had no stately form or majesty that might catch our attention,
no special appearance that we should want to follow him.
3 He was despised and rejected by people,
one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness;
people hid their faces from him;
he was despised, and we considered him insignificant (Isaiah 53:2-3).
Can you imagine how the folks of Noah’s day reacted to the building of that ark! First, it was so big. Second, it was so ugly. Third, it seemed so useless. Fourth, it was offensive because of what it signified. It was an outward sign of God’s coming judgment upon the world. Noah was a most unusual “preacher.” Every day he spent working on that ark was another sermon, another warning of the coming wrath of God upon sinners. Who wanted a constant reminder of their sins and of God’s coming judgment?
That ark must have become a regular tourist site. Folks may have come from far and wide to look at it, and probably to laugh at it. They might even have come to hear this “crazy fellow,” Noah, who warned those who looked on that God was going to judge the earth. If Noah lived in our day, the city council would have tried to change the zoning laws so that the ark would have to be torn down. But bye and bye, people who lived nearby probably just began to ignore it. After all, who thought it would ever be completed? Who could imagine that it would ever be needed?
I don’t wish to say much about the ark and its appearance, but I do wish to mention that the ark was a very utilitarian vessel, and it didn’t possess some of the accessories that we might have wanted. For example, it had only one door. It seemed to have no lower windows, and perhaps an 18-inch opening at the top for ventilation (which one would need in a vessel full of animals). It seems to have had only one window,44 and from what I can tell, this window was so high that Noah could not look out from it and see the ground (or the waters) beneath the ark. You will remember that Noah had to send out a dove (from the window), to see if the waters had receded. He could not see outside for himself. And in the end, it was God who gave the instruction to leave the ark and go outside (8:15ff.).
I think all of these design features of the ark were very functional. For example, you would not want doors or windows in a vessel that needed to repel the torrential rains or which was to endure stormy waters. You would not want many places for leaks or for torrents of rain or waves to pour in. Thus, all the lower levels would have no openings, except for one door (and we’re not sure exactly where it was located). There was yet another reason for the design of the ark. Once the flood commenced and men realized that Noah had been right, they would have desperately sought to get on board the ship, but I’m convinced that its design made it impossible to do. Finally, there were no picture windows on board the ship because the sight of the storm would have been terrifying, and the sight of his neighbors perishing outside would have been too painful to witness. I believe God designed the ark so that Noah and his family would not see the destruction of all life outside the ark. I am inclined to think that this will be true in the future as well. I doubt that heaven will have a picture window, overlooking hell, so that all in heaven can watch the agony of the lost. It may be that hell has a picture window, looking toward heaven, however (see Luke 16:23).
Along with His instructions regarding the design and construction of the ark, God gave Noah a promise. The Noahic Covenant would be formalized with Noah after the flood, but God wanted to assure Noah of the outcome before the onslaught of the flood. How much easier it is to undergo trials and tests when we know the outcome ahead of time. God promised Noah that He would make a covenant with him and his family, and then instructed him to gather food and pairs of every breathing creature to put on board the ark. Of the clean animals, Noah was to take seven pairs (7:2-3); of the unclean animals, one pair each (6:19-20).
After many years of construction, the ark was finally completed. God commanded Noah to take the animals into the ark, and Noah did so (7:1-9). It was not until seven days had passed that the flood commenced. It would seem that it took a week to load all of the animals on board. Perhaps God was giving the animals time to settle down before the trauma of the flood came. The day that the floods did come was the day Noah and his family entered the ark, and God shut the door. The day of salvation abruptly ended for the people of the earth. For 40 days and nights, the heavens gushed with rain, and waters also emerged from beneath the earth (7:10-23). If the floodwaters came over a 40-day period, they prevailed for another 150 days (7:24).
More than six months after the flood began, God remembered those He had rescued in the ark and began the process of removing the waters. God caused a wind to pass over the earth, causing the waters to recede for a period of another 150 days (8:1-3). The ark then came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (8:4). Noah then sent out a raven, but it came back to him because the earth was not yet able to sustain life. A dove was sent out and it did not return (8:12). Noah removed the cover from the ark and looked out, but no one left the ark for almost two months (8:13-14). Finally, God gave the order to leave the ark for the ground was now dry (8:15-19).
Noah had spent years building the ark, and when he left the ark and returned to the earth, the first thing he did was to build an altar on which he sacrificed one of every clean bird and animal (8:20).45 So far as I can tell, this sacrificial offering was voluntary on the part of Noah. That is, we see no command from God that he do so. God’s response revealed His pleasure with the sacrifice. God promised never again to destroy the earth in this fashion, even though man’s sinful nature remained. The promise of uninterrupted seasons (8:22) seems to suggest that the year of the flood completely set aside all the normal characteristics of the various seasons.
1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. 2 Every living creature of the earth and every bird of the sky will be terrified of you. Everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea are under your authority. 3 You may eat any moving thing that lives. As I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. 4 But you must not eat meat with its life (that is, its blood) in it. 5 For your lifeblood I will surely exact punishment, from every living creature I will exact punishment. From each person I will exact punishment for the life of the individual, since the man was his relative.
6 “Whoever sheds human blood
by other humans
must his blood be shed;
for in God’s image
God has made mankind.”
7 But as for you, be fruitful and multiply; increase abundantly on the earth and multiply on it.”
8 God said to Noah and his sons, 9 “Look! I now confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that is with you, including the birds, the domestic animals, and every living creature of the earth with you, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature of the earth. 11 I confirm my covenant with you: Never again will all living things be wiped out by the waters of a flood; never again will a flood destroy the earth.”
12 And God said, “This is the guarantee of the covenant I am making with you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all subsequent generations: 13 I will place my rainbow in the clouds, and it will become a guarantee of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 then I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures of all kinds. Never again will the waters become a flood and destroy all living things. 16 When the rainbow is in the clouds, I will notice it and remember the perpetual covenant between God and all living creatures of all kinds that are on the earth.”
17 So God said to Noah, “This is the guarantee of the covenant that I am confirming between me and all living things that are on the earth.”
This is our introduction to biblical covenants as this is the first covenant in the Bible. The Abrahamic Covenant will soon follow (Genesis 12:1-3, etc.). This is what is known as an unconditional covenant. That is, God promised to keep this covenant, regardless of what men do. In fact, we might say that this covenant is made, knowing that men will continue to sin (see 8:21). The actual promise is given in Genesis 9:9-17. It is a covenant not only between God and Noah, but between God and every living creature (9:9-10, 16). It is an “everlasting covenant,” between God and Noah, and every generation after him (9:12). It is God’s promise that He will never again judge the earth by means of a flood (9:11). The sign of the covenant, the assurance that God will keep His covenant, is the rainbow. Whenever it rains, men can look up and see the rainbow, and be reminded that this rain will not be for their destruction (indeed, the rains are the means by which God provides for their crops).
While the Noahic Covenant is not conditional, there are certain commands laid down for Noah and his descendants to keep. Noah and his family are a new beginning for mankind. To mark this new beginning, God changes some of the previous rules. At the first creation, man and animals were only to eat vegetable life, but not animals (1:30); now God tells Noah and his family that they may eat whatever meat they desire (9:3). This change in dietary rules is one of the indicators that a new covenant has been established. Thus, when the Law of Moses is given, men can no longer eat whatever meat they desire; they must eat only clean animals. And when the New Covenant is established, men may once again eat any meat they desire, except for meats offered to idols (Mark 7:14-19; Acts 10-11; 15:29; 1 Corinthians 8-10).
There is a very special command given regarding blood, however. To curb the violence that characterized the pre-flood world, God not only condemns murder; He institutes the death penalty for those who are guilty of murder (9:6). To take a man’s life is to strike out against God, for man is created in the image of God (9:6). The value of human life is established by the consequence for taking human life. The life of the murder is required for his sin. Notice that while the law will undergird the institution of capital punishment, it is established long before the Law of Moses was given.
A profound significance is attached to blood in our text. Blood is viewed as the basis for life. To shed the blood of man or animal is to deprive it of its life. Man must not shed the blood of his fellow man, and he must not eat the blood of the animals that he eats. God here attaches great significance to blood, and time will reveal just how significant blood is. The shedding of blood by means of animal sacrifices will put off the punishment for sins, and the shedding of our Lord’s blood will be the ultimate payment for sin (see Hebrews chapter 9).
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Now Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the sons of Noah, and from them the whole earth was populated. 20 Noah, a man of the soil, began to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside. 23 Shem and Japheth took the garment and placed it on their shoulders. Then they walked in backwards and covered up their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so they did not see their father’s nakedness. 24 When Noah awoke from his drunken stupor he learned what his youngest son had done to him. 25 So he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
he will be to his brothers.”
26 He also said,
“Worthy of praise is the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem!
27 May God enlarge Japheth’s territory and numbers!
May he live in the tents of Shem
and may Canaan be his slave!”
28 After the flood Noah lived three hundred and fifty years. 29 The entire lifetime of Noah was nine hundred and fifty years, and then he died.
This incident in Noah’s life is of no small import to mankind. First of all, it is a reminder of the fact that, while Noah was a righteous man, he was not a perfect man. It is difficult, however, to determine the degree of his culpability. Had men learned to make wine before this time? I would be inclined to think so. Did Noah become drunk accidentally, or was he responsible? I think there is some measure of culpability here. Adam went into his garden, ate of forbidden fruit, and thereby sinned. Now we see Noah planting a vineyard, eating of its fruit, getting drunk, and lying naked in his tent.
Had it not been for Noah’s youngest son, Ham, Noah’s sin would not have been as public. It may have been obvious from the sounds within the tent that Noah was drunk, but his nakedness could only be seen by someone who violated the privacy of Noah’s tent. In Noah’s drunken state, his reputation and modesty rested in the hands of his sons. Ham found Noah’s sin amusing, and he took pleasure in it, and in making it known to his brothers. Ham’s brothers seem to exemplify the words of Scripture, “Love covers a multitude of sins” (Proverbs 10:12; 1 Peter 4:8). These men did not wish to see their father’s nakedness; they would not even look at his shameful state long enough to cover him. They took Noah’s garment (“the garment,” 9:23) and walking backwards, draped it over their father in such a way that they never saw his shame.
I have heard some pretty twisted interpretations of this text, and I believe it is my duty to tell you that they don’t stand up to scrutiny. You will notice that while Ham is the youngest son (9:24) who sinned against his father, it is his youngest son, Canaan (10:6), who is cursed. Noah’s youngest son enjoys his father’s shame and calls on his brothers to witness it as well. As a curse, Ham’s youngest son, Canaan, is cursed. This is the man from whom will come the Canaanites, that incredibly immoral people who will occupy the land of Canaan, and whom the Israelites are commanded to destroy. We can see from the patriarch of the Canaanites why these people were so immoral and corrupt, and why the Israelites were not to associate with them or intermarry with them.
There were many lessons for the Israelites to learn from this account of Noah and the flood. It was the first of the covenants that God made with mankind. This covenant was one that was totally bound up with the faithfulness of God and not with the faithlessness of men. This event gave some background to the Law that God gave Israel at Sinai. The basis for capital punishment is found here. The distinction between clean and unclean animals was already practiced at the time of the flood. It is yet another instance of sacrificial offerings being made to God, for His pleasure. The Noahic Covenant was the basis for Israel’s assurance that God would not wipe out the whole creation with a flood ever again.
The flood itself was an example of God’s power and His sovereignty over all creation as its Creator. God had the right and the power to destroy the earth and all that lived on it. The God who turned the chaotic watery mass into an orderly creation is the God who can reverse the process, and destroy all life on earth by means of a flood. This same God is the One who can part the waters of the Red Sea (Exodus 14), and of the Jordan River (Joshua 3), to let His people pass through. He is the God who can be trusted to supply the early and late rains, so that the Israelites’ crops will grow (Deuteronomy 11:14). God is able to make a desert in the midst of the sea, and can produce streams in the desert (Isaiah 43:19-20).
The account of the flood surely contained an important message for the Israelites concerning God’s judgment and His mercy. They were to see that God is a holy God, who will endure man’s sin for a season, to give sinners the opportunity to repent. But there will be a payday, someday. The Israelites should learn that while God is patient, He will judge sinners. This applied to the Canaanites:
12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep. Then great terror overwhelmed him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. 14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.” 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking firepot with a flaming torch passed between the animal parts. 18 That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites” (Genesis 15:12-21).
The Israelites were poised to possess the land of Canaan. They now understood the origin of the Canaanites, and they understood even more fully why these people must be destroyed. They must not allow them to remain in the land, and they dare not intermarry with them. The Israelites should also learn from the flood that God protects the righteous and delivers them from judgment. As in the case of Noah and his family, there may only be a remnant saved, but God will keep His promises through the preservation of a godly remnant. That He has always done:
27 And Isaiah cries out on behalf of Israel, “Though the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, 28 for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth completely and quickly.” 29 Just as Isaiah predicted,
“If the Lord of armies had not left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
and we would have resembled Gomorrah” (Romans 9:27-29).
It should go without saying that many of the lessons for the Israelites of old apply to the saints of today. But let us look back upon this text, both from our point in time and from the vantage point of the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption in Christ.
I believe this passage speaks to us about two very important and controversial issues: abortion and capital punishment. Both of these issues stem from the fact that man is created in God’s image:
“Whoever sheds human blood
by other humans
must his blood be shed;
for in God’s image
God has made mankind” (Genesis 9:6).
I have heard a lot of technical jargon used in discussing the matter of abortion. One issue often raised is the question of when life begins. I think our text may make the issue simpler than that. God says that murder is the shedding of blood. The way that man deals with blood – even the blood of slaughtered animals – is a matter of reverence for life and for God’s Word. To shed innocent blood is to strike out against God. If the life is in the blood as our text tells us (9:4),46 then life begins when there is blood. As I understand our text and its implications, any abortion that involves the shedding of the blood of the unborn child is murder, apart from extreme exceptional conditions (such as the unpleasant choice of saving the life of the baby or its mother).
Notice how our Lord later applies this principle (the life is in the blood) to man’s salvation:
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus began to argue with one another, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. 54 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me, and I in him” (John 6:51-56, emphasis mine).
The life is in the blood. Eternal life is in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is eternal. To eat His flesh and to drink His blood is analogous to trusting in His death on the cross of Calvary as the atonement for our sins.
How often the argument is raised: “You believe abortion is wrong, and yet you are in favor of capital punishment. Isn’t that inconsistent?” It most certainly is not. Taking the life of an innocent child by abortion is murder. Taking the life of a murderer is not. It is an act of obedience to God. It is the measure of the value we place on the innocent blood that the murderer has shed. Capital punishment is not my preference; it is God’s command.47 Capital punishment is the measure of how much God values life. And in the context of Genesis 4-9, it is one means by which God restrains the violence of men.
The story of Noah’s drunkenness and nakedness and of Ham’s sin and judgment, is instructive, if we will listen. It certainly instructs us as to how we should deal with the sins of others. Love should cover a multitude of sins, just as Noah’s two sons covered the nakedness of their father. Today, we are confronted with nakedness and encouraged to enjoy it. Pornography is but one sordid part of a much larger problem. We should seek to avoid seeing sin and nakedness with great effort. We should be much more like Noah’s two sons, and much less like Ham. And we, men and women alike, should remember that clothing was given to us to cover our nakedness, not to call attention to it. What Noah did in his drunken state, many people do with conscious intent. How often we are “naked and not ashamed,” and it is nothing like the pre-fallen state of Adam and Eve.
Peter uses the Old Testament account of Noah and of the flood to make an important statement to New Testament saints:
1 But false prophets arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. These false teachers will infiltrate your midst with destructive heresies, even to the point of denying the Master who bought them. As a result, they will bring swift destruction on themselves. 2 And many will follow their debauched lifestyles. Because of these false teachers, the way of truth will be slandered. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation pronounced long ago is not sitting idly by; their destruction is not asleep. 4 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell and locked them up in chains in utter darkness, to be kept until the judgment, 5 and if he did not spare the ancient world, but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on an ungodly world, 6 and if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he condemned them to destruction, having appointed them to serve as an example to future generations of the ungodly, 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man in anguish over the debauched lifestyle of lawless men, 8 (for while he lived among them day after day, that righteous man was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) 9 —if so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials, and to reserve the unrighteous for punishment at the day of judgment, 10 especially those who indulge their fleshly desires and who despise authority (2 Peter 2:1-10a).
Just a little later in his epistle, Peter tells us that wicked men will mock at God’s warnings of divine judgment:
3 Above all, understand this: in the last days blatant scoffers will come, being propelled by their own evil urges 4 and saying, “Where is his promised coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately suppress this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water. 6 Through these things the world existing at that time was destroyed when it was deluged with water. 7 But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, by being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly (2 Peter 3:3-7).
Our Lord likewise informs us that in the last days, men will be oblivious to the coming wrath of God:
22 Then he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 Then people will say to you, ‘Look, there he is!’ or ‘Look, here he is!’ Do not go out or chase after them. 24 For just like the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. 26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage—right up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, people were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; 29 but on the day Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 It will be the same on the day the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day, anyone who is on the roof, with his goods in the house, must not come down to take them away, and likewise the person in the field must not turn back. 32 Remember Lot’s wife! (Luke 17:22-32).
Jesus tells us that in Noah’s day, men had no sense of impending judgment. This was not because they had no warning. There was the ark in their sight, and Noah, whose works and words were a sermon. In spite of all the warnings, men went on with their lives as though there were no danger. It is as though Satan had said to them once again, “Thou shall surely not die!” The flood is a strong reminder that the promised judgment of God will most certainly come. God knows how to spare the righteous, but He also knows how to “reserve the unrighteous for punishment at the day of judgment.”
I love the fact that Peter calls Noah a “preacher (or herald) of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). I don’t believe that Noah had a pulpit, or that he went about the city with a sandwich board with words of condemnation on it. I believe Noah was a preacher of righteousness by the way he lived his life. Day after day, Noah lived in accordance with the Word of God. He believed that there would be a flood, even though he had never seen one. He believed that the ark was God’s means for saving him and his family. His lifestyle loudly proclaimed that he was living his life in the light of the future, as God had declared it. I wonder how many people would be indicted by our lifestyle. Do we live as though all of the material things of this life will be burned with fire? Do we live in a way that seeks to warn sinners about the coming judgment of God? Noah is a man we should imitate, not by building an ark, but by living as though biblical prophecy is true. There is a greater day of judgment coming upon the whole world. God will spare us from His wrath, but sinners will surely perish. Let us live as though this is true.
As I was preparing this lesson, it occurred to me that the Noahic Covenant is very relevant to saints today. We would not be here if it were not for this covenant. The Noahic Covenant was not just for the benefit of Noah, or even the Israelites of Moses’ day. The Noahic Covenant was the divine assurance that God would never again bring universal judgment upon sin by destroying the world until He did so in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is very clear in Genesis that man persisted in his sin after the flood. When God promised that He would not destroy the world with a flood, He knew that men were sinners from birth. But this covenant assured men that He would not bring universal judgment upon this world until He did so in the person of Jesus Christ. When our Lord died upon the cross of Calvary, He was bearing the wrath of God for sinners. How often this world should have been wiped out in divine judgment from the days of Noah until the time of the cross, but God patiently waited for the day when His Son would die on the cross of Calvary. Our Lord will return, and this time it will be to judge the world, but only after He has made atonement for man’s sin, and after men have rejected the offer of salvation.
As I was reading one of the better commentaries on our text in Genesis, the writer made a point of the fact (as he saw it) that all of Noah’s family was righteous – that they were the righteous remnant God spared. He went on to say that they all obeyed God’s commandments. But as I looked at the text, it did not say this:
The Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, for I consider you godly among this generation (Genesis 7:1, emphasis and comments mine).
The New American Standard Bible reads this way:
Then the LORD said to Noah, “Enter the ark, you and all your household; for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time.
The word alone is in italics because the translators supplied it. They included it because “you” is singular, not plural. Noah’s family is not saved because they are righteous, but because Noah, alone, is righteous. And if there is any question about this, Ezekiel makes it most clear:
12 The word of the Lord came to me: 13 “Son of man, when a country sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it, and break its staff of bread, cause it to experience famine, and kill both man and beast in it, 14 even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would save only their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign Lord. 15 “If I were to send wild animals through the land and they killed its children, and it became desolate so that no one traveled across it because of the animals, 16 as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, even if these three men were in it, they could not save their own sons or daughters; they would save only their own lives, and the land would be devastated. 17 “Or if I were to bring the sword of war against that land and say, ‘Let a sword pass through the land,’ and I kill both man and beast in it, 18 even though these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, they could not save their own sons or daughters, they would save only their own lives. 19 “Or if I should send a pestilence into that land, and poured out my furious anger on it with bloodshed, to kill both man and beast in it, 20 even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, they could not save their own sons or daughters; they would save only their own lives by their righteousness (Ezekiel 14:12-20, emphasis mine).
The point could hardly be made more plainly. Noah’s family was saved because Noah was righteous, not because they were righteous. The righteousness of this one man made him a righteous remnant of one. His family was a remnant, but because of his righteousness, not theirs. Think of it for a moment. In all the world of that day, there was only one man that God could call righteous. And that one man was the salvation of the human race. Because of Noah’s righteousness, his family was spared, and by means of his family, the earth was repopulated.
Is this not a picture of Christ? In all the history of mankind, there has never been one man who was truly and totally righteous, save One, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of His righteousness that any man can be saved. It was because He alone was righteous that His sacrifice on the cross of Calvary can pay the debt for our sins. He was the “spotless Lamb of God,” who takes away the sins of the world. When we observe communion, we use unleavened bread. This is to symbolize the fact that He was without sin. It is because He was without sin that He could die for our sins. Noah was a prototype of Christ because he showed us that men can be saved by One man, who is truly righteous.
The story of Noah in Genesis is about the judgment of God, but the emphasis falls on God’s salvation of Noah and his family. We are not given a graphic description of the cries of the wicked, as they pled for mercy, or their efforts to cling to the ark. We are taken inside the ark, and not outside. But having emphasized the salvation of God, we dare not overlook or minimize His judgment on the earth.
We have a miniature “Noah’s ark” in our house, and our little granddaughter, Lindsey Grace, loves it. She cannot play with it by herself, so she has to ask one of us to take it down for her, so that she can look at it. She loves that ark and can name all the animals whose heads protrude from it. But I have to tell you that the story of Noah and the ark is not really a “cute story.” It was not written so little children could look at animals, as though they were going to the zoo. It is the story of man’s sin, and of divine judgment, and the salvation of a few because of One man. Let us never forget the sobering message of this story.
38 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on November 12, 2000.
39 Some conclude from this that it took 120 years to build the ark. I think that’s possible, but I’m not certain that I hold to this dogmatically. I’m sure it did take a good while to build that ark, however.
40 I said earlier that I would not spend any time on the identity of the Nephilim. In my series on the Book of Genesis, I concluded that the Nephilim were a super race, the product of the union of the “daughters of men” and the “sons of God” (i.e., fallen angels). This may be the case, but when our Lord speaks of the days of Noah, he simply refers to the normal processes of life, including marriage, but makes no reference to angels (see Matthew 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27). This causes me to be somewhat less certain about the identity of the Nephilim. I am also troubled a bit by the fact that the Nephilim reappear in Numbers 13:33. If this super-race was the result of a union of angels and women, why did it reappear?
41 The Hebrew word is not the same here as in Genesis 6, but the concept is the same, in my opinion.
42 I would rather not pursue this matter thoroughly at this point in time. Suffice it to say that man’s sin corrupts everything it touches. This is why God commanded the Israelites to kill all the Canaanites and their animals (see Deuteronomy 20:16-18).
43 Literally, the expression is “all flesh.” We would err in assuming that “flesh” is limited to human beings, for it is also employed with reference to the animal kingdom (see 6:19; 7:15, 16, 21).
44 See Moses’ reference to “the window” in Genesis 8:6.
45 One cannot help but be fascinated with how much of the Law of Moses is anticipated early in the Book of Genesis. There are animal sacrifices made, both by Abel and now by Noah. There is the first observance of the Sabbath by God (Genesis 2:1-3). And now we find a distinction between “clean” and “unclean” animals. The Law of Moses did not introduce everything as something new. Some things were already in place and were merely ratified by the law.
46 See also Leviticus 17:11, 14; Deuteronomy 12:23.
47 This is not to say that every execution is just, and that condemned murderers have been given due process of law. I believe that there is inequity in the legal system, weighted in favor of those who are rich, and against the poor. But having said this, I must recognize and respect God’s command here that those who shed blood should suffer the shedding of their own blood.
Genesis 10:1—11:25
The genealogies have never been the best-read portions of the Word of God. Ray Stedman tells the story of an old Scots minister who was reading from the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.
He started reading, “Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac beget Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah,” and he looked on ahead and saw the list to follow and said, “and they kept on begetting one another all the way down this page and halfway into the next.”49
Genealogies may seem uninteresting (a nice word for boring), but they are very important. Suppose, for example, that you were to receive a phone call from a lawyer. He identifies himself and informs you that he is handling the estate of a very wealthy man who recently passed away, and who had only one living relative. If that lawyer were to ask you to give the names of your parents and grandparents, I’m sure that genealogies would suddenly become fascinating material.
The early chapters of the Book of Genesis seem to abound with genealogies. After the account of the fall of man, God pronounces curses upon Adam and Eve and their offspring, as well as upon Satan. But God also gives a very important prophecy of the coming of the Messiah – the seed of the woman – who would destroy Satan:
“And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15, NASB).
In Genesis 4, we read of Cain killing his brother Abel, which is followed by a genealogy of the descendants of Cain in 4:16-24. This genealogy takes us from Cain to Lamech, who married two wives and boasted of killing a boy. This ungodly line terminates at the flood.
Genesis 5 follows with the genealogy of Seth, God’s replacement for Abel. Moses follows the line of Seth through men like Enosh, Enoch, and Methuselah to Lamech, and finally to Noah. The account of Noah and the flood is recorded in Genesis 6-9, which is immediately followed by another genealogy in chapter 10. After the account of the confusion of languages in Genesis 11:1-9, Moses gives us yet another genealogy in Genesis 11:10-32. I think we would all have to agree that Moses believed these genealogies were important to our understanding of the origins of the human race. Most of all, some of these genealogies will trace the line through which the promised Messiah will come.
The contribution of the genealogies may become more evident when we compare the genealogy of Cain (Genesis 4:16-24) with that of Seth (Genesis 5:1-32):
The Genealogy of Cain |
The Genealogy of Seth |
No mention of death (it’s the last thing we talk about) |
Death is frequently mentioned |
From one murderer (Cain) to another (Lamech) |
From Seth to Noah |
Enoch, Cain’s son, after whom a city is named |
Enoch, walked with God and was no more |
Lamech – had tow wives and murdered a boy |
Lamech – saw his son as the key to removing the curse |
Emphasis on technological achievements |
Emphasis on faith, walking with God |
Ends at the flood |
Does not end at flood. Noah is deliverer. |
Both of these genealogies end with the flood, but in a very different manner. The flood will wipe out Cain’s line; Seth’s line will be preserved through Noah.
Time does not permit us to study this genealogy as much as we would like, but let me make several observations.
Genesis 10 and 11 are not in chronological order. The events described in Genesis 10 occur after the confusion of tongues at Babel. This is evident by the fact that in 10:20 and 10:31 we are told that the division of the sons of Shem, Ham, and Japheth are according to their languages. This division according to language could only occur after the confusion of tongues. The genealogy in chapter 10 is thus deliberately placed ahead of those events that brought it to pass.
The account of the confusion of tongues in 11:1-9 serves as a divider between two genealogies. The genealogy in Genesis 10 is deliberately out of chronological order because Moses wanted the account of the confusion of tongues to serve as a dividing line in the genealogy of Shem. Eber, a descendant of Shem, had two sons, Peleg and Joktam (10:25). In Genesis 10:21-31, the line of Shem is traced through Joktam. After the account of the confusion of languages at Babel, Moses traces the line of Shem through Eber’s other son, Peleg (11:10-26). It is through this line that Abraham’s genealogy is traced.
The genealogy of Genesis 10 includes some very significant historical notes. Moses pauses momentarily with Nimrod, one of the descendants of Ham. We are told that Nimrod was a mighty hunter, and that the beginning of his kingdom was Babel (10:8-12). Nimrod, in other words, was a city builder and the founder of the city of Babel. We have already been prepared for something evil, so far as this city of Babel is concerned. We are given the names of the sons of Canaan, and each of these sons becomes the patriarch of one of the Canaanite nations with whom the Israelites must later deal:
15 Canaan was the father of Sidon his firstborn, Heth, 16 the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, 17 Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, 18 Arvadites, Zemarites, and Hamathites. Eventually the families of the Canaanites were scattered (Genesis 10:15-18).
18 That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites” (Genesis 15:18-21).
The genealogy of Genesis 10 spells out many of the offspring of Noah, who then populate the world. The sons of Japheth are dealt with first and somewhat abruptly. This is because they will be the most distant peoples from the Israelites. They make up the Indo-Europeans, which is the ancestry of many Americans.50 The Greeks were a part of the line of Japheth. The descendants of Ham make up those peoples who are in closer proximity to the Israelites – the Babylonians, Assyrians, Ninevites, and Egyptians. Then, as we noted above, the sons of Canaan will become the Canaanites, who must be expelled from the Promised Land. The descendants of Shem will become known as the Semites. This is the line from which Abraham will come (11:10-26).
While we do not have the time to study the genealogies more carefully, I can assure you that they are a very rich topic for study. I would strongly recommend John Sailhamer’s book51 to assist you in your study of the genealogies of Genesis, and of the Pentateuch as a whole.
1 The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary. 2 When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. 6 And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why its name was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth.
Moses begins by informing the reader that at this time, there was but one language, with a single vocabulary.52 The ability to speak the same language enabled men to work together, for good or evil. When God first created the earth, He gave this command:
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28).
It would seem that men are actively working at populating the earth in the early verses of Genesis 6. The problem was that they were filling the earth with wicked people. As a result, God had to wipe out all life and begin again after the flood. After the flood, he repeated the command given in Genesis 1:28:
Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1).
When we come to Genesis 11, we find that men have moved eastward to the land of Shinar, the land to which Daniel would later be taken as a captive (Daniel 1:2). Here, they determined to settle down and to build a city. Building a city and settling down was not fulfilling the command of God to spread out and fill the earth. It was a willful act of disobedience to God’s command. The people condemn themselves with their own words:
3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens53 so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth” (Genesis 9:3-4, emphasis mine).
These folks feared the very thing that God commanded them to do. They dreaded being spread out over the earth. They wanted to live in close proximity to one another. They preferred city life to a more nomadic lifestyle. We are not told what these folks expected to gain from living together in a city, but it is not difficult to believe that one thing a well-built city would provide was protection. There was security in the city and danger in the more distant places. These folks were nothing like Christopher Columbus. They had no adventuresome inclinations. They wanted to build a strong city with a tower. They also wanted to make a name for themselves. In short, they wanted security and significance. God looked down on this tower and saw where mankind was headed. If men were allowed to collaborate with each other, they would only accelerate their downward plunge into sin.
At first glance, the language of 11:5 may seem to suggest that God was not aware of the building of Babel until it became quite obvious. It could look to an outsider as though God were out of touch with current events in His world, and that He didn’t take note of what was happening until things had gotten out of hand. Looking down, one could suppose, God noted what was going on. I used to agonize about this wording, until I began to view it from the point of view of Moses, the human author. These men of Babel thought they were doing something awesome, something remarkable. They were building an incredible city with a tower that reached into the heavens, making a great name for themselves. But Moses describes this event as though God hardly noticed it; not that He was unaware, but that it was so insignificant! Men thought their work was awesome. When God looked down upon it, it was almost as though He had said, “Oh, isn’t that a cute little city and tower. I’ll have to stoop way down to see it.” The words of Psalm 113 put Moses’ description into its proper perspective:
3 From east to west
the Lord’s name is deserving of praise.
4 The Lord is exalted over all the nations;
his splendor reaches beyond the sky.
5 Who can compare to the Lord our God,
who sits on a high throne?
6 He bends down to look
at the sky and the earth (Psalm 113:3-6).
Men were getting “too big for their britches,” and it was time for God to intervene. Left to themselves, they would go too far with their sin. In my opinion, God’s description of man’s potential is almost tongue-in-cheek:
And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them” (Genesis 11:6).
This is certainly the way we would like to think of ourselves, isn’t it? It is something like the attitude which some displayed after man first walked on the moon. We began to suppose that man could do anything he set his mind to, especially if the Russians and the Americans pooled their technological expertise.
But in this exaggeration of man’s potential (his potential for evil is exceedingly great), Moses is contrasting man’s great potential with the wisdom and power of the Almighty God. God hardly lifts a finger, so to speak. With one simple act, God abruptly “pulls the plug” on man’s great exhibition of his own greatness. God merely confuses their language, and it’s all over.
What a scene this must have been! Can’t you just imagine what it would have been like? The workers are busily building, talking with one another as they do. “Hey, Sam, hand me a few more bricks, will you?” The architects are putting their heads together to work out some engineering problem. Suddenly, one man is speaking one language, and the other cannot understand a word he is saying. It would have been mass confusion. Based on chapter 10, I am of the opinion that various languages may have been distributed according to family (genealogical) lines. The Canaanites, for example, would have spoken one language, the Semites (Shemites) another. I can imagine people walking about, looking for someone speaking their own language. And finally all those speaking one language (in my opinion, one family line) would finally go off on their own, leaving the other folks to themselves, and to their languages.
In the light of Genesis 11:1-9, chapter 10 takes on a whole new light. How did all these people get disbursed over the whole earth? Abandoning their project and spreading out over the earth wasn’t their conscious choice to obey the command of God; it was their only option, given their divinely-appointed circumstances. Moses deliberately sets verses 8 and 9 against verse 4. Did the people of Babel seek to prevent being “scattered across the face of the entire earth”? They would be anyway. Moses does not tell us this once; he repeats this statement twice: “So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth” (see verses 8 and 9). As the saying goes, “Man proposes; God disposes.” Those who seek to thwart the will of God will someday realize that they are “kicking against the goads” (Acts 26:14).
There are a number of themes that Moses has been developing in the Book of Genesis, and the incident at Babel contributes to them. There is the theme of blessing and cursing. God created the earth as something good, and it was on His good creation that He pronounced His blessing. In the Garden of Eden, God provided a test of man’s faith and obedience. If Adam and his wife trusted God’s Word and obeyed His command, then they would eat of the tree of life and avoid the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam chose to disregard and to disobey God’s command, and thus he experienced the curse, rather than the blessing of living forever in the garden. After Adam, those who walked with God experienced His blessings (e.g., Enoch), and those who disregarded God’s Word were cursed (e.g., Cain). Through Noah, God brought blessings to him, to his family, and to all mankind (the human race was saved through Noah). The wickedness of men in Noah’s day brought God’s curse upon them. The line of Canaan was cursed because of the sin of Ham. Had the descendants of Noah obeyed God by spreading out and filling the earth, they would have been blessed. But because they sought to thwart God’s command, the people of Babel were cursed with a confusion of languages. All of this prepares us for Abraham, through whom all the nations will be blessed, but those who curse him will be cursed (Genesis 12:1-3). The same can be said of the Mosaic Covenant. Those who obeyed God’s commands would be blessed (Deuteronomy 28:1-14); those who disregarded it would be cursed (see Deuteronomy 28:15-68; see also 30:1, 19). God wants us to see that blessing comes from obedience to God’s Word, and that curses come on those who disobey.
There is the theme of separation. God created the world by separating one thing from another: light from darkness; land from water; heaven from earth. God distinguished man from all other living creatures by creating him in His image. God instructed Adam and Eve to distinguish between the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam and Eve sinned, God separated them from the garden. God not only distinguished between male and female, He distinguished between clean and unclean (see Genesis 7:2-3). And now, God separates the human race into various language groups. Soon, Abraham will be set apart from all others. His offspring, the Israelites, will likewise be set apart from the world.
There is another subtle theme evident in the early chapters of Genesis. God commanded man to “spread out,” but man’s natural inclination was to do the opposite. Thus we see the “city builders” of old to be those of the ungodly line (Cain, 4:16-17; Nimrod, 10:8-12). Men tended to huddle together, rather than to spread out, as God had commanded. Men were inclined toward city life, rather than to deal with the challenges of rural life. It is fascinating to see that in the Pentateuch54 fallen men tended to move eastward. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden, it appears that they went east, since the angel was stationed at the east gate of the garden to prevent them from entering. When Cain fled, he fled eastward from the presence of the (Lord 4:16). The descendants of Ham migrated to the east also (10:30), as did those who came to settle in Babel (11:2). Thus, when we see movement eastward, we can expect that this move will not be for the better.
All of these things will reverse with Abraham. He will leave the land to the east and travel to the west to the Promised Land. He will not live in the city, but as a nomad. He will not even be allowed to remain in the safety and comfort of his family. He must go out, not seeking to make a name for himself (like those of Babel), but trusting in God, who promised to make his name great (Genesis 12:2). He well knew that God had not chosen him because of his impressive lineage. Abraham would find God to be faithful to His every promise. And Abraham would learn that trouble came from disobedience, while blessings came from obedience.
The city of Babel is introduced to the reader in chapter 10 (verses 8-10) and is further characterized in 11:1-9. This was a wicked city that would have much to do with Israel’s future. It is the place where Daniel will be taken as a captive. It will become a symbol of wickedness, to which later wicked governments will be likened. Cities, like men, tend to reflect and amplify their origins throughout the rest of their existence. The city of Babel was off to a very bad start, and things would only get worse.
The incident at Babel had some very practical ramifications. The spreading out of the citizens of Babel was not due to their obedience, but due to the confusion of their language. This prompted the people to spread out throughout the earth. The various nations that are named in chapters 10 and 11 will each have their own language and their own culture. As the Israelites deal with some of these nations in the years to come, they should remember their origin. And in so doing, they should appreciate the way that God chose to bring about the fulfillment of His promises and purposes.
The alliance of these citizens of Babel is for the purpose of opposing God and striving to make a name for themselves. This kind of unity is far from godly. It is like the temporary alliance of the Pharisees with the Sadducees, and even with Rome. It could not last for long, and it could accomplish no good. They united on the basis of one common factor – their hatred of Jesus. The Israelites will often be tempted to make unholy alliances with their surrounding neighbors and with larger nations like Egypt. Let them learn from the incident at Babel that unholy alliances only get them into trouble.
At the moment that I am writing this lesson, wars are taking place all around the world. A number of years ago I heard former President Jimmy Carter speak at Wheaton College. He said that at that moment, the Carter Center was monitoring over 70 wars worldwide. Any day we pick up our newspaper, we can read about conflict between nations. Much of this conflict is the result of nationalism, and this nationalism is the result of differing languages and cultures. The confusion of tongues at Babel resulted in conflict and strife and since that time, it has kept men from successfully uniting together in rebellion against God. This brief account in Genesis explains how the world is what it is today.
At Babel, men wanted to make a name for themselves, to build a monument to themselves. I think this was their very distorted way of seeking a kind of immortality. No longer were men living nearly a thousand years. Life was getting shorter all the time. When they were gone, who would remember them? How could they leave some kind of legacy, some monument, to be remembered by?55 This city and its tower was the answer, in their minds.
Ever since, men have been making similar efforts. The pharaohs constructed pyramids, and others have attempted to leave some other evidence of their existence and of their greatness. But all of this is futile. The solution to the penalty of death is eternal life, not leaving some monument behind. As I read this text, written by Moses, I could not help but be reminded of the psalm Moses wrote, which is included in the Psalms. In my opinion, Moses probably penned this psalm as the first generation of Israelites was dying off in the wilderness:
Psalm 90
A prayer of Moses, the man of God.
1 O sovereign Master, you have been our protector through all generations!
2 Even before the mountains came into existence,
or you brought the world into being,
you were the eternal God.
3 You make mankind return to the dust,
and say, “Return, O people!”
4 Yes, in your eyes a thousand years
are like yesterday that quickly passes,
or like one of the divisions of the nighttime.
5 You bring their lives to an end and they “fall asleep.”
In the morning they are like the grass that sprouts up;
6 in the morning it glistens and sprouts up;
at evening time it withers and dries up.
7 Yes, we are consumed by your anger;
we are terrified by your wrath.
8 You are aware of our sins;
you even know about our hidden sins.
9 Yes, throughout all our days we experience your raging fury;
the years of our lives pass quickly, like a sigh.
10 The days of our lives add up to seventy years,
or eighty, if one is especially strong.
But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression.
Yes, they pass quickly and we fly away.
11 Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger?
Your raging fury causes people to fear you.
12 So teach us to consider our mortality,
so that we might live wisely.
13 Turn back toward us, O Lord!
How long must this suffering last?
Have pity on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your loyal love!
Then we will shout for joy and be happy all our days!
15 Make us happy in proportion to the days you have afflicted us,
in proportion to the years we have experienced trouble!
16 May your servants see your work!
May their sons see your majesty!
17 May our sovereign God extend his favor to us!
Make our endeavors successful!
Yes, make them successful! (Psalm 90:1-17)
It is the words of the last verse that capture my attention: “Make our endeavors successful! Yes, make them successful!” More literally, “Confirm (or give permanence – note the margin of the NASB) the work of our hands.” How is it that our work, our efforts, can have permanence? Jesus told us:
19 “Do not accumulate for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But accumulate for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
Nothing that we attempt to store up on earth will last. Only that which is laid up for us in heaven will endure. Thus, we must be about God’s work, doing those things that are eternal. When we invest in God’s kingdom, we invest in something that will last forever. When we share the gospel and see men and women come to Christ, we have eternal fruit. In short, when we do what God says, we invest in the eternal. Our lives are short, and they will end, but what is done for our Lord will last for all eternity.
One of the things men put their confidence in today is technology. In the realm of technology, the world has come a very long way. But all too often the amazing advances in technology have been embraced as a means of sinning more swiftly and effectively. God has always found ways to show men that technology that rests in the hands of sinners is deadly. Our significance and our security will never be rightly based upon our technology; it can only be found in our identity, in being in Christ. Enoch walked with God, and bypassed death (Genesis 5:24). Noah found favor with God , and walked with God (Genesis 6:8-9). It is only when we forsake every effort to save ourselves, and cease striving to be God-like through our own efforts, that we can enter into the salvation He has accomplished for us.
Let’s be honest about the fact that God’s will sometimes appears foreboding and threatening. God’s command was for man to spread out and fill the earth. Unbelieving men saw this as their worst nightmare. What was pleasing to God was distasteful to the men and women of Babel. Those outside of the faith need to be warned that the path of sin and disobedience leads to death (see Proverbs 1; Romans 6:16f.). Those who have come to faith need to realign their desires and pleasures so that what is pleasing to God is our pleasure as well.56 When we view God’s will as contrary to our best interests, we will seek to find an unbiblical “way of escape,” such as the building of a city with a tower. Those who seek to avoid God’s clear commands will ultimately57 find their way troublesome, and this is because they have set themselves in opposition to the omnipotent God:
1 Why do the nations cause a commotion?
Why are the countries devising plots that will fail?
2 The kings of the earth form a united front;
the rulers collaborate
against the Lord and his chosen king.
3 They say, “Let’s tear off the shackles they’ve put on us!
Let’s free ourselves from their ropes!”
4 The one enthroned in heaven laughs in disgust;
the sovereign Master taunts them.
5 Then he angrily speaks to them
and terrifies them in his rage.
6 He says, “I myself have installed my king
on Zion, my holy hill.”
7 The king says, “I will tell you what the Lord decreed. He said to me:
‘You are my son! This very day I have become your father!
8 You have only to ask me,
and I will give you the nations as your inheritance,
the ends of the earth as your personal property.
9 You will break them with an iron scepter;
you will smash them as if they were a potter’s jar.’”
10 So now, you kings, do what is wise!
You rulers of the earth, submit to correction!
11 Serve the Lord in fear!
Repent in terror!
12 Give sincere homage!
Otherwise he will be angry,
and you will die because of your behavior,
when his anger quickly ignites.
How happy are all who take shelter in him! (Psalm 2:1-2)
The message of this psalm is simply to cease striving against God and to submit to Him. Trust in the salvation He has provided in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and be spared from His coming wrath on His enemies. Those who take shelter in Him will be blessed.
Our text in Genesis tells us that unity, in and of itself, is not necessarily good. It was a unity based upon uniformity. These folks spoke the same language and had the same vocabulary. They all wished to avoid being spread about the earth. Some churches seek to attain unity at the expense of the truth. There are those with whom Christians cannot be yoked (see 2 Corinthians 6:14-18). Some churches seek to attain a semblance of unity by the use of “homogeneous grouping.” It is based upon the human principle that “birds of a feather flock together.” If we can gather a group that is largely made up of one race, of one culture, of one segment of society, then we think we will have unity. True Christian unity is best demonstrated in the context of true diversity: diversity socially, diversity ethnically, diversity culturally, diversity economically, diversity in spiritual gifts, diversity in convictions, and diversity in ministry. This is one of the things I appreciate about our church. We do not have as much diversity as I would like to see, but we can look out into the congregation and see those of a different color, of nationality, of economic status, of spiritual gifts, of convictions, and of ministries. I pray that there will be more of this diversity, and that in this diversity we will demonstrate true unity.
If man’s collective disobedience brought about the confusion of languages, and ultimately strife among different people and language groups, it is the obedience of one person who can reverse it. Jesus Christ came to this earth at His incarnation, adding perfect humanity to His undiminished deity. In obedience to His Father’s will, He died on the cross of Calvary, making atonement once for all for sin. The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost and the phenomenon of tongues after our Lord’s resurrection was a kind of firstfruits of things to come. At Pentecost, men of many nations were gathered, and they heard God praised in their own languages (Acts 2:1-13). If the sin of men in opposition to God brought about the confusion of languages, the obedience of Christ in submission to the Father brought about the first signs of restoration, evidence of the future reversal of the incident at Babel.
The story of Babel sounds “long ago and far away,” but it is really not as distant and removed as we might think. We do not have the same mandate to spread out and fill the earth, because this has happened. But we do have a similar command:
18 Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).
We are command to go58 into all the world with the message of the gospel. I think that many of us seek to find ways to avoid going – perhaps not across the ocean, but at least across the street. I am not saying that every Christian needs to leave the place where they are and to go to some foreign land with the gospel. I am saying that we should all be willing to go, and we should encourage those who desire to go. We, too, like the security of the “nest” where we are. We do not huddle in a city, with a tower, but in a church (sometimes with a tower). We need to be careful to consistently gather for instruction, mutual edification, and worship (Hebrews 10:24-25), but we also need to go “outside the camp:”
10 We have an altar that those who serve in the tabernacle have no right to eat from. 11 For the bodies of those animals whose blood the high priest brings into the sanctuary as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. 12 Therefore, to sanctify the people by his own blood, Jesus also suffered outside the camp. 13 We must go out to him, then, outside the camp, bearing the abuse he experienced. 14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come (Hebrews 13:10-14, emphasis mine).
Those of us who are parents know the reluctance of sending our children into places of danger. Let us not be found guilty of the same sin as that of the people of Babel.
For now, the confusion of languages at Babel has many implications for those who do choose to go into the world with the good news of the gospel. It means that we must learn to understand and to appreciate the culture of other people groups. It means that we must learn the language of those to whom we are taking the gospel. It means that there are many obstacles to be overcome, such as nationalism and prejudice (theirs, and ours). I believe that when God gave His Spirit to the church, He gave Him so that we would be empowered to proclaim the gospel cross-culturally.
There is one final lesson from our text I would like to point out in closing: God is exceedingly gracious to hinder us from pursuing sin as rapidly and successfully as we are capable of doing. God’s covenant with Noah had some very profound implications. How quickly the whole world had deteriorated to the point that it had to be destroyed. We see that after the flood it would not have taken long for mankind to have returned to its former state of decay, which would have needed to be removed once again. But when God promised not to destroy the whole world again in this fashion, I believe it meant He would somehow restrain man’s sinful tendencies until the time when He would send the Savior, on whom God’s judgment would fall. (There will then be a future judgment for those who fail to accept the provision of salvation in Christ.)
Thank God for hindering man’s sinfulness. He did this in various ways. He “hindered” Adam and Eve from living in the garden after their fall, so that they would not eat of the tree of life and live forever in their sinful state. He reduced man’s lifespan, so that rather than living for nearly 1,000 years (as we see in Genesis 5), his lifespan would finally be reduced to 70 or 80 years (remember that it was Moses who wrote this in Psalm 90:10). In Genesis 9, God also instituted capital punishment for murder (which strongly suggests that this penalty does hinder violence). With the flood, God wiped out a race that had gone entirely bad (except for one man). Now, God has brought about the confusion of languages, so that men cannot so easily conspire together to resist God. The giving of the law will be another form of restraint on man’s sinful inclinations (see Galatians 3:15-29; note especially verse 19).
Have there ever been times in your life when you really wanted something and God seemed to be putting obstacles in your path, keeping you from what you desired? Did you feel as though God was against you, rather than for you? This text tells me that I should thank God for all those times when He has stood in my way, not unlike the way the “angel of the LORD” stood in the path of Balaam (Numbers 22:21-25). I wonder how many times God hindered me from sinning, in ways I never recognized as His hand? Thank God for standing in our way when we desire to do what is contrary to His will.
48 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on November 19, 2000.
49 Ray Stedman, The Beginnings (Waco: Word Books, 1978), p.47.
50 “The list begins with those nations that are considered the ‘islands of the nations’ (v. 5). They are the nations that make up the geographical horizon of the author, the outer fringe of the known world, a kind of third world over against the nations of Ham (Canaan) and Shem.” John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), p. 131.
51 John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative. See footnote above.
52 It is one thing to be able to speak English, but having the same vocabulary is essential as well. Some of you may overhear me speaking to a fellow computer nerd about “megs” and “ram” and “rom” and “dims” and have no idea what we are talking about. We have the same language, but not the same vocabulary. Every technical field has its own jargon, known only to an insider. The same is also true for our teenagers.
53 It may be that false worship was one of the goals of the people of Babel, but this is not clearly spelled out by Moses. To “reach into the heavens” was simply an expression meaning “tall.”
54 The first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
55 The Bible has little good to say about monuments. Memorials is quite a different matter (See, for example, Exodus 12:14; 17:14; 28:12; Joshua 4:7). Saul built a memorial to himself, at the time of his disobedience (1 Samuel 15:12). Absalom built one for himself (2 Samuel 18:18). Nebuchadnezzar had a golden image (of himself?) made, before which all were required to bow down (Daniel 3).
56 See 2 Corinthians 5:9; Ephesians 5:10; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; Hebrews 13:21; 1 John 3:22.
57 I say “ultimately” because it may appear that their way is smooth for a time, but in the end it will be troublesome (see Psalm 73).
58 I am well aware of the fact that this word “go” is a participle, and not a verb in the imperative mood. It should be remembered, however, that participles are not infrequently used with imperatival force. The necessity of “going” with the gospel should not be understated. See also Romans 10:13-15.
Genesis 11:26—17:27
A good many years ago, my good friend Bill McRae and I had just finished jogging. We were sitting on the steps outside our house catching our breath when another jogger paused to chat for a moment. He introduced himself as Ed Bloom. As usual, Bill was very warm and cordial and engaged “Ed” in conversation. In the midst of this conversation, Bill said something like this: “Tell me, Ed, is this your first year as a student at DTS?” I turned to Bill and said, “Bill, this is Dr. Ed Bloom, who is a professor here at the seminary.” Needless to say, Bill had not known that “Ed” had just joined the faculty, and he was very embarrassed.
Some people just don’t look like who they are. That is certainly the case with Abraham. When we first meet him in Genesis 12, he does not appear to be the hero of the faith we know from other passages in the Bible. Abraham is regarded as one of the giants of the faith, and one of the most prominent personalities in the Bible. A concordance search will indicate that the name “Abraham” occurs some 230 times in the Bible. Included in this number is the appearance of his name 67 times in the New Testament. “Abram” occurs in the Old Testament another 60 times. This man is a giant of the faith, but that is not necessarily evident in the early days of his life, as we shall attempt to show. Here was a man who came to trust in God, rather than in himself, but it took considerable time and trouble to reach that point in his life. We will devote two messages to Abraham, seeking to see what role he played in the “unfolding drama of redemption.”
From a reading of our text in Genesis, one would get the impression that Abraham received his “call” while he was living in Haran, but this is not the case when we look at the Scriptures more broadly. We are told that Abram was born in Ur (Genesis 11:28, 31). We are also told that God brought Abram from Ur of the Chaldeans to Canaan (Genesis 15:7; Nehemiah 9:7). It is the inspired words of Stephen, however, which indicate that Abram’s first call came to him while he was in Ur:
1 Then the high priest said, “Are these things true?” 2 So he replied, “Brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our forefather Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he settled in Haran, 3 and said to him, ‘Go out from your country and from your relatives, and come to the land I will show you.’ 4 Then he went out from the country of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After his father died, God made him move to this country where you now live” (Acts 7:1-4, emphasis mine).
Moses does not wish to emphasize this fact about Abram. He tells us only what he needs to do to develop his argument, and from that point on “love covers a multitude of sins.” We see, then, that Abram was first called to leave his family and his homeland while in Ur. From what Moses tells us in chapter 11, it was Terah, Abram’s father, who brought Abram (along with other members of the clan) out of Ur (11:31). Haran, Abram’s brother and Lot’s father, died while they were still in Ur (11:28). One other thing is clear from chapter 11: when Terah took his family to Haran, it was with the intent of going all the way to Canaan (11:31). Somehow, when they reached Haran, they settled there and never went on to Canaan in Terah’s lifetime.
Therefore we must say that the “call” of Abram in Genesis 12:1-3 is really his “second call,” something like Jonah’s second commission to go to Nineveh (Jonah 1:1-2; 3:1-2). The difference is that Jonah refused to go where God told him and went in the opposite direction. Abram was providentially brought part way to Canaan, though he seems passive in this, rather than acting out of obedience. One wonders if Abram was having some serious doubts as to what he should do after the death of Terah, his father. Should he return to Ur; should he remain in Haran; or, should he go on to Canaan, as God had commanded? God removed all doubt as to the proper course of action when He reiterated the call. Abram seems not to have left his family as much as they (Terah, at least) left him by death. Abram takes Lot with him, and one is left to wonder whether or not this was in full compliance with God’s command to leave his relatives. One thing we can say with confidence – Lot was more trouble to Abram than he was help.
The call of Abram was similar in its demands to that of marriage. Abram was, so to speak, to “leave and to cleave” – he was to leave his family and his homeland, and to cleave to God, by faith. You and I live in the Western world in a very mobile society, where family members live far apart. My brother lives 2200 miles away, in Washington State, as do our parents. One of my sisters lives in Singapore, and the other in Seoul, Korea. In Abram’s day, to leave one’s family and homeland was to leave one’s source of significance and security. You were known and dealt with in relationship to your parents and your family. The Canaanites had no regard for Abram’s ancestry or pedigree. To be among family was to have a “safety net” of protection. This is one reason why there is so little teenage rebellion in the third world. Children know that to be removed from their family would destine them to powerlessness and poverty. By commanding Abram to leave homeland and family, he was forcing him to depend solely upon Himself.
Genesis 12:1-3 is widely recognized as the Abrahamic Covenant, and so it is. But I would like to emphasize that the Bible demonstrates the principle of progressive revelation. Truth is seldom revealed all at one time and place (see Ephesians 2:8-10; 5:32). It is gradually unfolded, through time. For example, we are told that the seed of the woman would crush Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15). We expect that “seed” to be – or to come from – the line of Abel, but Abel is killed by his brother, Cain (Genesis 4). We are not surprised to see that the line of the seed passes down through Seth to Noah, and then from Noah to Abram. By the end of Genesis, we will be told that the “seed” will come through the line of Judah (Genesis 49:8-12). We will later learn that the “seed” will come from the line of David (2 Samuel 7:10-16). The identity of the line of the promised Savior continues to narrow, until the introduction of Jesus as the Messiah in the Gospels.
The principle of progressive revelation is very evident in the Book of Genesis, especially regarding the Abrahamic Covenant. This covenant is introduced in Genesis 12:1-3, but only in very general terms. There are personal promises made to Abram, as there are collective promises made concerning his offspring. In general terms, God promises Abram that He will give him many descendants, and that He will also give him the land of Canaan. Abraham will be the touchstone for the blessing or cursing of all mankind. Those who bless Abram will be blessed, and those who curse him (or esteem him lightly) will be cursed. Genesis is a very skeletal, introductory promise. The covenant will not be formally ratified until the sacrifice is offered in chapter 15, and Abraham does not receive the covenant sign of circumcision until chapter 17.
Abram is told that he will have many descendants in chapter 12, and we see in Genesis 15:2 that Abram assumes that his “seed” will have to be an adopted servant from his household. In Genesis 15:4, God assures Abram that the promised “seed” will come forth from his own body (15:4). It is not until after the birth of Ishmael that Abram is told he and Sarah will be the parents of the promised child (17:15-16). God progressively reveals His plans and purposes to Abram. Because of this, we should expect the details of the Abrahamic Covenant to be disclosed progressively, over some period of time. This is precisely what happens. And so it will suffice to say here that Abraham is the one whom God designates as the patriarch of the family from which the promised “seed” will come. As the story of Abraham unfolds, more and more details concerning the promised blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant will be disclosed.
I have previously indicated that in the beginning Abraham did not look much like “the father of the faith.” Nevertheless, this is what he will become. As we continue our study in Genesis, we see the process through which God led Abram, so that he became a man of faith. Let’s consider that process as we study chapters 12 through 17.
Once in Canaan, God assures Abram that this is the land He will give to him and to his descendants (Genesis 12:7). Abraham passed through the land of Canaan, from north to south, laying claim to it by building altars and worshipping God. When Abram reached the Negev, the southern part of Canaan, he encountered a severe famine (12:10). He concluded that he must leave the promised land, the place of blessing, and wait out the famine in Egypt. Given his attitude (fear) and his conduct (lying), it is hard to believe that going to Egypt was an act of faith. It would seem that he was to trust God and to remain in Canaan, where God had promised to prosper him. This seems even more certain when we look at Genesis 26:1-3:
1 There was a famine in the land, subsequent to the earlier famine that occurred in the days of Abraham. Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; settle down in the land that I will point out you. 3 Stay in this land. Then I will be with you and will bless you, for I will give all these lands to you and to your descendants, and I will fulfill the solemn promise I made to your father Abraham.”
Moses is gracious in what he does (and does not) say about Abram at this point in his life. As I look at this text, it is God’s way of letting us know the starting point from which Abram’s spiritual growth began. This is Abram’s spiritual low ground, and from here on, he is being stretched to live on higher ground.
Abram knows full well how beautiful his wife Sarai is. He knows that a woman this beautiful would be highly desired, and that all that anyone who wanted her would have to do would be to kill him and take her. And so Abram and Sarai agree to a scheme that they will consistently practice for a number of years – they lie about her identity as his wife, and claim the half-truth that she was his sister. This plan had a very serious flaw; it gave interested men the idea that Sarai was available for marriage. Abram was trusting in his deception, rather than in God, for life and prosperity. Abram was seeking to survive at his wife’s expense. He put his wife at risk to save his own neck. In his mind, he had to go to Egypt to save his life, and he had to pass off Sarai as his sister for the same reason.
When they arrived in Egypt, it did not take long for Pharaoh to be informed about Abram’s sister and her great beauty. Innocently, Pharaoh took Sarai into his harem and was soon to make her his wife. I can only imagine the sleepless nights that were in store for Abram. He must have sat up wide-eyed every night, wondering what was going on between Pharaoh and Sarai. All the while, presents arrived from Pharaoh, part of the dowry he was paying for taking Sarai as his wife!
God had plans for Abram and Sarai. They were to have a child, through whom many descendants would be born. It was through the union of Abram and Sarai that the line of the promised “seed” was to come. There was no way that God’s promise of a seed could be fulfilled if Sarai were to become Mrs. Pharaoh. God intervened by means of plagues that came upon Pharaoh and his house. (From chapter 20, we learn that every woman in the kingdom of Abimelech was made barren, thus assuring that no child would be born to Abimelech and Sarai.) Pharaoh got the message. He discovered that Sarai was Abram’s wife, and so he rebuked him and sent him away, laden down with gifts.
It used to bother me a great deal that Abram came away from Egypt more prosperous than when he arrived. How could God bless Abram when he was acting in fear, and not in faith? How could God bless Abram’s deception? The first thing we must emphatically say is that we never really merit any of the blessings that God may shower upon us. But the second thing we should see here is that this story was deliberately used as a prototype of Israel’s exodus from Egypt many years later. Joseph was brought down to Egypt from Canaan because of the sin of his brothers. Abram came from Canaan to Egypt out of fear and lack of faith. God sent plagues upon Pharaoh and his household, so that Pharaoh would release Abram and his household and would send them away with many gifts. In the same way, God would later bring plagues upon Pharaoh and all Egypt, so that he would release the Israelites, and so that they would go out with many gifts. In order for this story to foreshadow the exodus of Israel from Egypt, Abram had to prosper at the expense of Pharaoh, just as the Israelites would later prosper at the hand of the Egyptians.60
Clearly implied in the promise of Genesis 12:2 is that of prosperity. God promised to “bless” Abram, and to “make his name great.” This assures Abram of a large family, with many descendants, and it strongly implies material wealth. Chapters 13 and 14 put Abram’s faith to the test in the area of earthly prosperity. In chapter 13, Abram returns to Canaan from Egypt more prosperous than when he first arrived in Egypt. Lot prospered as well, and this led to conflict between his herdsmen and those of Abram (13:6-7).61 This would have been the perfect time for Abram to remind Lot who it was that God promised to give this land to, and who He promised to prosper in the land. Abram was instructed to leave his family and to come to Canaan. What Abram was not willing to do before – separate from Lot – he had the perfect excuse to do now. It would have been the perfect time for Abram to tell Lot it was time for him to move on and find a life for himself, somewhere else. Instead, Abram gives Lot the choice of which direction he will go, of which land he would prefer.
We know that Lot chose what seemed to be the best land. But before we get too critical of Lot, let’s remember that most all of us would have made the same choice. My wife and I have five daughters, and during the days they were living at home we found it necessary to divide their portions of food. No one agonized too much about who got the most potatoes, but when the apple pie was cut up, it was as though these girls worked for the Federal Bureau of Standards. They could instantly recognize a minute difference in size or quantity, and they always grabbed for the biggest piece. (Well, truthfully, it would have been the second biggest piece because Jeannette had already held out the biggest piece for me.)
Surely Lot walked away from that conversation with Abram with a broad smile on his face. But in so doing, he overlooked several important factors. First, he has chosen to go east (13:11). Second, he has chosen to dwell in the city of Sodom, a wicked place. Third, he has neglected to act consistently with the Abrahamic Covenant. God promised to bless all those who blessed Abram and to curse those who cursed him. To take advantage of Abram by choosing the best land was not blessing Abram. It was by Lot’s subordination to Abram that he would be blessed. Lot sought his own interests at Abram’s expense. What seemed to be a shrewd business decision will soon prove to be a great disaster for Lot and for his family.
Can you imagine the conversation that must have taken place between Abram and Sarai when Abram returned from his meeting with Lot? From what I read of Sarai in Genesis 16, this was a woman who could be really cranky. I can imagine that Abram came home and Sarai could not wait to ask how the dispute between their herdsmen was settled. When Abram told Sarai that he had given Lot the best land, I have no doubt that she exploded. How could he be so foolish? He could he let Lot take advantage of him? Did Abram not care about his family and their needs?
I know I’m reading between the lines, but it would help to explain verses 14-18 of 13. In these verses, God reaffirms His covenant with Abram and reassures him that he will be greatly blessed. Specifically, God assures Abram that this whole land – on which both he and Lot are dwelling as sojourners – will be his (not Lot’s). God tells Abram to look in all directions, and assures him that the land will all be his, as far as he can see. It will be given to Abram, and to his descendants, forever (verses 14-15). And since Abram is surely wondering about these “descendants,” God reassures him that his descendants will be without number (verse 16). Abram is told to walk throughout the land, to take a good look at all that will be his. As he travels to these places, he symbolically claims this land as his own. He will not possess it in his lifetime, but his descendants will. Abraham then moves his tents near to the oaks of Mamre, and there he builds yet another altar to the Lord (verse 18).
Lot found himself caught in the middle of a power struggle between the king of Sodom and his allies and an alliance of opposing kings. The king of Sodom suffered defeat, and the invading forces made off with many spoils of war, which included many of the people and possessions of Sodom, including Lot. When word reached Abram, he went after the victors with 318 of his servants (14:14) and his allies (14:24). They prevailed over the four kings and retrieved all the people and possessions that had been taken as spoils, including Lot. Abram seems to be viewed as the “commander” of these forces (see 14:15), and the king of Sodom is determined to honor him for his victory. He intends to meet Abram and the others in the king’s valley (verse 17), with what seems to be the counterpart of a tickertape parade. Before the king of Sodom reaches Abram, Melchizedek appears, as it were, out of nowhere. He is called a “priest of the Most High God” (verse 18). He arrives with bread and wine, and blesses Abram with these words,
“Blessed be Abram by the Most High God,
Creator of heaven and earth.
20 Worthy of praise is the Most High God,
who delivered your enemies into your hand” (Genesis 14:19b-20a).
Melchizedek is a most interesting fellow, whose only appearance is here but who is the topic of later revelation (Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:1-17). He plays an important role in Abram’s life at this moment in time. He informs Abram that the victory he has won was not his victory at all, but God’s. It was He who delivered Abram’s enemies into his hand (verse 20). And He is “the Creator of heaven and earth.” The NASB renders, “Possessor of heaven and earth.” To be the Creator is to be the owner, the possessor. Abram then paid a tithe to Melchizedek, and this king and priest disappears as quickly as he appears.
It would seem as though it were only moments later that the king of Sodom arrived. How empty this king’s words must have seemed to Abram, after hearing a word from God. The king of Sodom was probably filled with words of praise and admiration. He offered to allow Abram to keep all the spoils of his victory and requested only the return of his people. Abram refused any gifts from the king of Sodom, repeating some of the same words that Melchizedek had just spoken to him:
“I raise my hand to the Lord, the Most High God, Creator of heaven and earth, and vow 23 that I will take nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal. That way you can never say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’ 24 I will take nothing except compensation for what the young men have eaten. As for the share of the men who went with me—Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre—let them take their share” (Genesis 14:22b-24, emphasis mine).
Since the God of Abram was “Creator of heaven and earth,” and since God had promised to prosper him, Abram would not allow this pagan king to prosper him. His blessing must come from God. Abram gave tithes to the king of Salem, but took no gifts from the king of Sodom. We should learn from this that the giving and receiving of money is a very significant matter in the Bible.
It would seem that from a purely business point of view, Abram had made two very serious mistakes in chapters 13 and 14. First, he had failed to claim the better land and had given it instead to Lot. Second, he refused to accept gifts from the hand of a grateful king. But in so doing Abraham reveals that he has put his trust in God, and that he truly believes the promises of God expressed in the Abrahamic Covenant. No earthly king was going to take the credit for prospering Abram, thereby taking glory that belonged to God.
Chapter 15 begins with these words from God to Abram: “Fear not.” It may seem as though Abram was fearless, but God’s words indicate otherwise. What was it that Abram feared? For one thing, he may very well have feared retaliation from the kings he had defeated. In 1 Kings 20, we read how Israel defeated the armies of Ben Hadad, king of Syria. After their victory, God warned the king of Israel that Ben Hadad would return the next year to retaliate against him. Ben Hadad restaged the battle man for man, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot. He would not allow himself to think that he could be defeated. He wanted revenge. Abram may have expected the same retaliation from the kings he had defeated.
Abram’s fears seem to go beyond these heathen kings, however. He is painfully aware of the fact that he has not yet begotten a son, as God had promised. His only “heir” at that moment in time was the son of one of his servants, Eliezer of Damascus. God graciously and tenderly encourages Abram at this moment of fear. Had Abram confessed to the king of Sodom that his God was “Creator of heaven and earth” (verse 22)? That He was, and now the “Creator of heaven and earth,” Maker of the stars, tells Abram that his “heir” will come from his own body (verse 4), and that his descendants will be more numerous than the stars of the heavens. The One who could call stars without number into existence can surely call descendants for Abram into existence, without number.
Verse 6 describes Abram’s response – he believed God. He believed God’s promise of a son and of countless descendants through him. God reckoned his faith (not any works he had done) as righteousness. God did not stop here; He went on to reassure Abram concerning the land that He would give to him, for this too was a part of the Abrahamic Covenant. Abram wanted assurance from God that He would indeed give him this land. One would think that if Abram believed God for a son, he could also believe God for this land. God did not rebuke Abram; instead, God gave Him reassurance by formalizing his covenant. He had Abram kill a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon, dividing these in half, except for the birds (15:9-11). As I understand what took place here, this was not a sacrifice of worship; indeed, it was not a sacrifice at all. We do not even read of a fire, nor do we find the term “sacrifice” employed. Abram even had to shoo the birds away, because they wanted to eat on the carcasses. This was the ritual by which men entered into covenant with each other. The parties entering into the covenant would cut the animals in two, and then both would apparently pass between the parts, signifying that the covenant was conditional, that it was binding only if both parties kept their commitments. In this ritual, only God passed between the animal halves, signifying that this was an unconditional covenant, dependent only on His faithfulness.
As God passed between the halves of the animals, He put Abram into a deep sleep, and in this sleep, he had a vision of what the future held for his descendants. Abram had a deep sense of terror, not only due to his being in the presence of the Holy God, but perhaps also because of his vision of the suffering of his descendants. God assured Abram that his descendants would possess the land, but that this would not happen quickly. They would first endure slavery and oppression in an unnamed foreign land for 400 years, but afterward they would come out with many possessions. Abram was told that he would die before the promise of God was fulfilled, but his descendants would surely possess the land. The sins of the Amorites who presently occupied the land were not yet complete. God would give them time, but in this time, their sins would only increase. Then, when their sins had fully developed, God would bring about divine judgment through Abram’s descendants.
After the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between the animal parts. It was by means of this official ceremony that God’s covenant with Abram was ratified. Other than the covenant God made with Noah, this is the next time the word covenant is used. Technically, I suppose, we might call Genesis 12:1-3 a promise, and this a formal covenant. God now informs Abram as to which peoples and which lands He will give him. These lands were described more generally in 13:14-18, but now the peoples who are to be replaced are named (Genesis 15:18-21).
In addition to the added clarification and confirmation God has given in the events of Genesis 15, there is a new disclosure, which bears directly on Abram’s concerns. God is in no rush to fulfill His promises. He has just informed Abram that while the land of Canaan will become the possession of his descendants, it will not be for another 400 years or so. Abram is uneasy because God has not yet given him a son; God is making it clear that the eternal God is never in a hurry. Why should He be? After all, He has all the time in the world.
God had now made it clear that Abram’s promised “seed” would be the product of his own body, and not that of another (15:4). Abram is now challenged to produce a son, but not by means of Sarai. Amazing as it may seem this was not Abram’s idea, but Sarai’s. She wanted a son so badly she was willing to employ a known and accepted remedy of her culture. She could give Abram her maid, Hagar, and by this means, Sarai could have a son. As soon as the child was born, it would be Sarai’s son, not Hagar’s.
Sarai’s reasoning is far from godly. She is painfully aware that she has not been able to conceive. More than this, she knows that it is God who has prevented her from bearing a son to her husband. Her proposition to Abram seems like a pretty blatant attempt to circumvent God’s will. If God has kept her from having a son through her own conception, then she will have a son another way – but not really God’s way. She had an Egyptian maid named Hagar, Moses tells us. The fact that she was an Egyptian does not seem incidental, because Moses repeats this in verse 3. Was this one of the consequences of Abram’s sojourn in Egypt? Was Hagar part of the dowry gift from Pharaoh? Perhaps.
Sarai urged Abram to take Hagar, and to produce a son through her. Then Moses tells us “Abram did what Sarai told him.” Literally the text reads, “Abram listened to the voice of Sarai” (16:2). These words sound all too familiar:62
But to Adam he said,
“ Because you obeyed your wife63
and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
‘You must not eat from it,’
cursed is the ground thanks to you;
in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life” (Genesis 3:17, emphasis mine).
Verse 3 inclines me to think that Abram did not immediately do as Sarai asked. Moses tells us that after Abram and Sarai had lived in the land of Canaan ten years, Abram took Hagar as a wife. Does this mean that Sarai nagged Abram about this long enough that he finally “caved in” and did what she demanded? Perhaps so. It does seem quite clear that taking Hagar as a wife was not an act of faith. Abram did not listen to God, and wait patiently; he listened to Sarai, and took Hagar as a wife. It would seem that Abram finally convinced himself that God had not actually said that it was he and Sarai who would bear this promised son, but that the boy would come from Abram’s body.
Once Hagar knew that she was pregnant, her relationship with Sarai changed dramatically. Hagar now looked upon Sarai with disdain, and Sarai knew it. Sarai did not accept responsibility for insisting that Abram take Hagar; instead, she blamed him. Abram once again caves in to Sarai’s pressure, and tells his wife that she may deal with Hagar as she pleases (16:6). Sarai made Hagar’s life miserable, to the point that she finally ran away. The angel of the Lord sought her out, because it was not yet time for her to leave Abram and Sarai. The angel promised Hagar that her son would become great (and that he would live east of his brothers). He told Hagar that her son would be a constant thorn in the flesh of Abram’s other offspring, and this seemed to give her a measure of satisfaction. The angel also told Hagar that she must return home and submit to Sarai as her mistress. That was the hard part. Hagar came to see God in a different light, in a more personal way. He was the God who saw her sorrow, the God who cared.
Abraham was 86 years old at the time Ishmael was born (16:16). Thirteen years pass between the events of chapter 16 and the beginning of chapter 17. Ishmael is now a teenager. I have little doubt that over those 13 years Abram has become convinced that Ishmael is the promised “seed,” that he is the one through whom he and Sarai will have countless descendants. I am also certain that Abram has become deeply attached to Ishmael and loves him very much.
Abram is now 99 years old, and any hope of having another son by Sarai seems vain. The Lord appeared to Abram, to reiterate His covenant promises to him:
1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the Sovereign God. Walk before me and be blameless. 2 Then I will confirm my covenant between me and you, and I will give you a multitude of descendants.” 3 Abram bowed down with his face to the ground, and God spoke to him, saying, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer will your name be Abram. Instead, your name will be Abraham, because I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you extremely fruitful. I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from you. 7 I will confirm my covenant as a perpetual covenant between me and you. It will extend to your descendants after you throughout their generations. I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 I will give the whole land of Canaan—the land where you are residing—to you and your descendants after you as a permanent possession. I will be their God” (Genesis 17:1-8).
Though Abram doesn’t yet know it, the time for the birth of the promised child is drawing near. God once again reaffirms His covenant with Abram. He reveals Himself as El Shaddai. So far as I can tell, this is the first time this name for God is used in Genesis, though not the last (see Genesis 28:3; 35:11; 43:14; 48:3; 49:25; see also Exodus 6:3). He is the all-powerful, all sufficient, sovereign God. God commands Abram to “walk before me” and to be “blameless.” God promises to establish His covenant with Abram, and to multiply his descendants greatly. Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him. What a privilege Abram had to communicate directly with God in this manner, in a manner similar to the way God talked with Moses (see Exodus 33:11). Surely Moses could identify with Abram here.
To emphasize the fact that Abram would become the father of a multitude, God changed his name from Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of a multitude). The covenant that God had made with Abraham was an everlasting covenant, one that would be established with Abraham’s descendants. These descendants would possess the land as God had promised earlier in chapter 15. The sign of the covenant between God and Abraham was that of circumcision. This was to be observed by Abraham, and by his descendants. Hebrew boys were to be circumcised on their eighth day. The male organ of reproduction was to set the Israelites apart. As my former Hebrew professor, Dr. Bruce Waltke, used to say, “Every time an Israelite man had sex, he was reminded of his unique identity and calling.” Only those who were circumcised were regarded as being a part of the covenant community, and a participant in the covenant blessings.
God not only spoke concerning Abraham and his male descendants, He spoke also regarding Sarai. It was not just Abraham who would be the father of the promised child; Abraham and Sarah would be this child’s parents. And so God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah (princess). She and Abraham would become the parents of a kingly line. Abraham laughed because this promise of a child was so incredible. Surely God meant for Ishmael to be the promised seed … (verse 18). “No,” God said, “he and Sarah would have a son and his name would be Isaac” (verse 19). It is with Isaac that God would establish His covenant. Ishmael would be blessed, but he was not the son of promise. This promised child, Isaac, was to be born at the same time the following year (17:21). In obedience to God’s command, Abraham was circumcised at the age of 99, as was Ishmael and all Abraham’s household (17:22-27).
I have to smile to myself as I read the 17th chapter of Genesis. Moses must have been humbled by writing this account because it plainly requires every Israelite to be circumcised. Moses wrote that when God instructed Abraham to be circumcised, and to circumcise his sons and household, he did so immediately. It was not so with Moses, as he knew all to well:
24 Now on the way, at a place where they stopped for the night, the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off the foreskin of her son and touched it to Moses’ feet, and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.” 26 So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” referring to the circumcision.) (Exodus 4:24-26)
Abraham had always been a hero to the Israelites. I think this account is intended to put Abraham’s life into perspective. Abraham was not a perfect man, and initially he is not a giant in matters of faith. He did not immediately obey God’s command to leave Ur, but was brought out of Ur by his father. It was not until after the death of his father in Haran that Abraham finally acted upon God’s call. His early years were not marked by flawless faith, but betrayed times of fear and doubt. This is not to say that he had no faith, but only to say that his faith had a lot of room for growth and development.
It was not Abraham’s great faith that explains all the good things that happened in Abraham’s life, but God’s faithfulness to His covenant with Abraham. I believe it helps Christians to realize that there are no super heroes in the Bible, except for One, our Lord Himself. The rest were, as James puts it, “men of like passions,” men like ourselves (James 5:17). It was only through time and troubles that Abraham grew in his faith to become the man of faith that we see late in his life, and that we would like to emulate. Sanctification is never instant; it takes time, and troubles (see James 1:2-4).
The Israelites of Moses’ day were informed by chapter 15 that the time of their suffering in Egypt was by divine design. God had purposed their slavery and suffering, for their good, and for His glory. It was a time when the Israelites were becoming great in number (yet without being racially contaminated by intermarriage with the Canaanites). It was a time when God was allowing the sins of the Canaanites to fully ripen, to the point where judgment was required. I think that Moses wrote these chapters in a way that the Israelites would see the connection between Abram’s sojourn in Egypt and Israel’s later sojourn. Our times of suffering are no accident, but a matter of divine design.
There is a lesson for us here regarding the way to blessing. From the Garden of Eden onward, man has always been tempted to seek his own good his own way. Blessing comes from trusting God and obeying His commands. Abram sought to find safety and security in the land of Egypt, and it was only due to the divine intervention of God that he did not lose his life. Abram listened to the voice of his wife, rather than to the voice of God, and he suffered the painful consequences of having a son by Hagar. Lot felt that he was seeking his own best interests when he chose the better land, and left the rest to Abram. Lot, too, suffered for his folly, when the invading kings kidnapped him. He is to suffer even more in the coming chapters of Genesis.
Our text underscores the fact that God is in no hurry to achieve His purposes. He did not immediately give the land to Abraham, but it would be the possession of his descendants, after 400 years of slavery. He did not immediately give Abraham the son that He promised. He waited until it was “too late,” humanly speaking, so that it would be apparent this son was a gift of God. He did not give Abraham instant, fully developed faith. God called him and led him through various trials and tribulations, so that his faith would grow over time.
The corollary to the fact that God is in no hurry is that men must learn to wait patiently for God to fulfill His promises. Abraham had to wait for God’s judgment upon the Canaanites. Abraham had to wait for a son, and for the land to be his possession, through his descendants. Israel, too, needed to learn patience and endurance. That is what adversity will do for us, if we endure it in faith (James 1:2-4).
Abraham can teach us a great deal about humility. He did not put his own interests above those of Lot. He gave Lot the choice of which land in which he would settle. He risked his life to save Lot’s. Abraham was a man who learned to get ahead God’s way – not by seeking his own best interests at the expense of others, but by putting the interests of others ahead of his own.
We learn from Abraham that men ought to be the leaders in their homes and not to abdicate their responsibilities as leaders. Like Adam, Abraham listened to the voice of his wife, following her into the painful path of disobedience by taking Hagar as his wife. (From this, the Israelites were given an illustration of the danger of marrying foreign wives – see Deuteronomy 7:1-6). Men are not to be autocrats, who ignore the wisdom of their wives, but neither are they are not to allow themselves to be pressured by their wives into doing what they know to be wrong.
Abraham is an example of both faith and fear. In faith, he left Haran and moved to Canaan. In faith, Abraham believed God’s promises. But when Abraham acted out of fear, difficult times followed. It was out of fear, not faith, that Abraham went to Egypt. It was out of fear that Abraham (a prophet – see Genesis 20:7) deceived the Egyptians, including Pharaoh, about the true identity of his wife. It is often out of fear that we lie, because it takes faith to tell the truth.
Abraham is one of the early examples of the truth that God chooses the weak and foolish things of this world to amaze the wise:
26 Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers and sisters. Not many were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were members of the upper class. 27 But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, 29 so that no one can boast in his presence (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
As I read the story of Abraham, I see that God did not choose him for his courage, or his intelligence, or his standing in the community. God sovereignly chose Abraham out of his weaknesses, rather than his strengths. Abraham was a God-made man. He was a man who faced the same trials and temptations that we experience. The good news is that this man came to be a giant in faith. As he grew in his faith, so can we, by God’s grace.
One of the most encouraging truths we find in this passage is that sin never thwarts the purposes of God. There are some who think that God is dependent upon our faithfulness, and that when we fail, God’s purposes will fail as well. This simply is not true. God is able to accomplish His purposes through man’s disobedience and failures, as well as through man’s obedience. Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, but God had already purposed to bring about the redemption of fallen men. Because of man’s sin, God’s grace can now be seen in all its splendor. Abraham sought refuge in Egypt, where he and Sarah lied about their relationship. But God’s purposes were not frustrated. The nation Israel would fail many times in the wilderness, but God’s purposes and promises were fulfilled, in spite of their failures.
As I have thought about this comforting truth (that man’s sin cannot thwart God’s purposes), it occurred to me that it goes beyond this. God does not merely “fix” the things that men break; God makes them better than they were before. Think about the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, for example. Adam and Eve lived in a lovely garden, where sin was (as yet) unknown. They were created in God’s image. They were without sin in the beginning, but then fell into sin, with all its contamination and corruption. But when God finishes with man, he will live in a heavenly city, with a much better garden. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and this will be a better one. The sins of the saints will be forgiven and forgotten, and they will possess the righteousness of Christ. God turns our tragedies into triumph, our bungling into blessings. This is not an excuse for sloppiness or for sin, because sin has painful earthly consequences. But in the end, our failures don’t frustrate God’s purposes and promises; they are the occasion for His power and grace to be magnified.
Finally, our text provides us with an excellent example of progressive revelation. God did not disclose the totality of the Abrahamic Covenant in one revelation. God spread out this revelation over a number of years, adding details and content to it little by little. Abram was first promised many descendants (12:2), then a son born of his own body (15:4), and finally a son born of he and Sarah (17:15-19). It was 24 years before Abraham was finally made aware that the promised child would be born of both he and his wife Sarah. Initially, Abram was told that God would give him the land of Canaan (12:2, 7), but it was only later that he learned that his descendants would not possess it until they had been enslaved in a foreign land for 400 years (15:12-21).
In the Bible, God discloses His plans and purposes to mankind a portion at a time. This process is known as progressive revelation. Now that God has spoken finally and fully in His Son (Hebrews 1:1-4), we have the sum total of divine revelation in our hands – the Bible. I believe that while we possess all of God’s Word, we do not comprehend it all at once. In this sense, revelation is still being disclosed to us progressively. The Holy Spirit is the One who enlightens our hearts and minds, so that we may grasp the revelation of God (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16). He reveals certain truths to us as we have need for them. This is why we must constantly read and reread the Word of God. Almost every time we do so, we will see something new. It is not that this truth was not there before, but only that we did not see it before. We must come to the Word of God as the psalmist did in Psalm 119, with a prayer and the expectation that God will “open our eyes to behold wondrous things from His word” (see Psalm 119:18).
In our time of worship that will follow this message, we are going to celebrate our Lord’s death, as we do every week. Some people think that remembering our Lord in this way is needlessly repetitive and boring. It is our opportunity to reflect on the New Covenant of our Lord, brought about through the shedding of His precious blood, once for all. Just as it took Abraham a lifetime to begin to grasp the immensity of the Abrahamic Covenant, I believe that it takes us a lifetime (indeed, an eternity!) to grasp the magnitude of the New Covenant. Each time we do so, let us come to the Bible and to the Lord’s Table with a sense of expectation and wonder, seeking to see something more than we have seen before.
59 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on November 26, 2000.
60 It should be remembered that the wealth the Israelites took from the Egyptians was really only “back pay.”
61 The additional statement in verse 7 that the Canaanites and Perizzites were dwelling in the land has puzzled me. I think, however, that it makes a great deal of sense. Abram did not yet possess this land. When he arrived, the Canaanites were in the land (12:6). They were still there when Abram and Lot returned from Egypt (13:7). This means that Abram and Lot were living in Canaan at the generosity and favor of the Canaanites. The land not only needed to support the cattle of the Canaanites, but also of Abram and Lot. They were overcrowded, not just because the servants of Abram and Lot were competing for grazing lands for their livestock, but because the Canaanites who owned it were using it as well.
62 In Genesis 21:12, God told Abram to listen to Sarai regarding Ishmael. This implies that when Abram listened to Sarai earlier, it was not in obedience to God.
63 Literally, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife.”
Genesis 18:1—26:35
I received a letter from my friend, Frank, this past week, which he had written while he and his wife, Donna, were waiting for their plane at the airport. She was spending her time working on a Bible crossword puzzle. When Donna got up to purchase a snack, Frank decided to play a practical joke on her. He snatched up her crossword puzzle, found a place with five spaces, and wrote in his name, FRANK. When she returned, Frank tried hard to conceal his amusement. It took Donna a couple of minutes to see Frank’s work, and she giggled. Then, on second look, she began to laugh much harder, saying, “Yes … yes, that’s PERFECT, so PERFECT!!” She kept on laughing. Frank couldn’t stand it any longer and finally asked what was so funny. She handed Frank the crossword puzzle, telling him to look at number 46 across. Number 46 read: “GET THEE BEHIND ME _ _ _ _ _.”
Frank did not expect his name to be found where Satan’s name belonged. Let’s suppose there was a number 47 across, with 7 blanks, and it read, “THE FATHER OF THE FAITH.” I think Abraham would have been even more surprised to see his name written in those blanks. He was a great man of faith, in the end, but this would not be as readily apparent to us earlier in Abraham’s life. The title of this lesson is “Abraham’s Finest Hour.” There are some wonderful evidences of faith in chapters 18-25, but not all are examples of faith, as we shall see. Before we begin our study at chapter 18, let’s briefly review the events leading up to this point in Abraham’s life.
According to Stephen, Abram’s original call came to him while he was still in Ur (Acts 7:2-3). It is in Ur that Haran, the father of Lot, dies (Genesis 11:28). Abram does not immediately leave his family and go directly to Canaan; instead, it is his father, Terah, who leads Abram and others to Haran, where they settle down (11:31). There in Haran, Terah dies (11:32). It is only then that Abram goes on to Canaan, in obedience to God’s call. There, God announced His covenant with Abram and his descendants, whereby He would give Abram the land of Canaan. Here, He would make Abram a great nation, and He would bless the whole world through his seed (12:1-3). Abram went through the land, building altars and calling on the name of the Lord. When Abram was in the Negev, the southern end of Canaan, a severe drought occurred. Abram went to Egypt, intending to sojourn there until the drought ended. It is very doubtful that Abram should have gone to Egypt in the first place (see Genesis 26:1-5), but his deception was certainly not an act of faith. He and Sarai agreed to tell these Egyptians that Sarah was his sister, thus making her eligible for marriage, and thus (so they reasoned) saving Abram from death. It did not take Pharaoh long to hear about Sarah and to bring her into his harem. The dowry gifts began to pour in. It was the plagues God sent upon Egypt that caused Pharaoh to inquire more carefully about Sarai. Abram confessed to their deception, and soon they were on their way home, escorted by Pharaoh’s men, but not without many spoils from the land of Egypt. Pharaoh was of no mind to take on Abram’s God, who had brought such plagues upon him and his nation.
When Abram and Lot both prospered, the land could not support both of them and also the Canaanites who were dwelling in the land. Abram gave Lot his choice of where he would settle, and Lot chose what appeared to be the best land. Lot’s choice placed him in the city of Sodom, which brought with it many adverse consequences (13:1-13; 14:1ff.). God promised Abram that He would give him the land and instructed him to walk about the land (13:14-18). Before long, Lot is caught in the middle of a power struggle, and is taken captive by the kings who opposed and defeated the king of Sodom and four others (14:1-12). Abram and his allies rescue Lot, but before the king of Sodom greets Abram as the victor, Melchizedek meets him on the way, reminding him that it was God, the Creator of heaven and earth, who gave him the victory (14:17-24). God reaffirms His covenant with Abram in chapter 15, adding the detail that the promised son will be Abram’s child; he will come from Abram’s body (15:4). In the process of executing the covenant, God reveals to Abram that his descendants will suffer slavery for 400 years before they possess Canaan (15:12-21).
In chapter 16, Sarai confronts Abram with a test, a test that he seems to fail. Since God has withheld children from her, she proposes that Abram take Hagar, her handmaid, and produce a son through her. Abram consents, but when Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarai becomes bitter and angry. Sarai is so cruel to Hagar that she runs away, but the Lord seeks her out and convinces her to return and to submit to Sarai, assuring Hagar that He will bless her child.
By the time we reach chapter 17, we find Abram is 99 years old and still without an heir. God assured Abram that he and Sarai would have a son and told him the boy’s name would be Isaac. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham (“father of a multitude”) and Sarai’s name to Sarah (“princess”). He instituted the rite of circumcision as a sign of His covenant with Abraham and his descendants.
Abraham and Sarah lived in the mountains, overlooking the valley below where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were located some distance away. At noon, when the sun was its hottest, Abraham was having his “siesta” at the front door of his tent. As he looked up, he saw three “men” in the distance. Abraham got up and ran out to meet them and to urge them to come to his home and have a little refreshment. The men accepted this kind offer, and Abraham then saw to it that they had a fine meal of fresh-made bread, veal, curds and milk. In the course of the meal, the men asked Abraham where his wife Sarah was. (I would expect that Abraham’s mind was racing, wondering how they knew his wife’s name.) One of them (I believe it was the LORD) then informed Abraham that she would have a son at the same season the following year (verse 10).
Sarah was in the tent behind Abraham, listening to this conversation with great interest. When she heard the announcement that she would have a child, she laughed to herself, amused at the thought of her and Abraham65 having a child in their old age. This need not have been the scorning laughter of unbelief; I think hers was the laughter of total shock, something like my response to receiving the title, “best dressed man in Dallas.” There is a joyful laughter of surprise:
1 When the LORD restored the well-being of Zion,
we thought we were dreaming.
2 At that time we laughed loudly
and shouted for joy.
At that time the nations said,
“The LORD has accomplished great things for these people” (Psalm 126:1-2).
It was absolutely an incredible thing – a child at the age of 90, with a husband who would then be 100. The Lord knew exactly what Sarah’s silent response was for He could read her thoughts. He – not one of the angels66 – challenged Abraham concerning Sarah’s response. Sarah attempted to deny it, but the Lord knew better.
Abraham’s hospitality is impressive, but the high point of chapter 18 comes at the end of the chapter and not the beginning. There is a strong sense of intimacy between God and Abraham, beginning at verse 16. Abraham, in typical eastern hospitality, walked some distance with his departing guests. God then disclosed (to the angels?) that He would not withhold from Abraham what He was about to do. Other passages refer to Abraham as the “friend of God,”67 and I am inclined to believe that this “friendship”68 is evident here.
When God reveals that He is about to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham intercedes, not on behalf of the wicked, but for the righteous who might be dwelling in these cities. It may well be that Abraham’s primary concern is for his nephew Lot and his family, but his appeal is broader than that. His argument is that justice requires one to distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. Here is where Jonah missed the mark. His thinking was not like God’s. Jonah wanted to see the entire city of Nineveh incinerated, including the children and cattle. God would not punish the innocent along with the guilty (see Jonah 4).
Once there was agreement in principle, the only issue was: How many righteous folks would be required for God to withhold judgment from Sodom and Gomorrah? The negotiations started at 50 righteous and finally ended at 10. Either Abraham assumed that this number could be found, or he was fearful of seeking to reduce the number any farther. Abraham went his way. He was thinking like God, and surely God took pleasure in his intercession.69
It would seem that the Lord was interested only in dealing with Abraham face to face, since only the two angels arrived at the city gates of Sodom. Lot was on the spot to greet them, not knowing who they were or for what purpose they had come. He knew that strangers were not safe in this wicked city, as time will certainly show. He urged the men not to sleep in the city square and to stay in his home. He, too, fixed a feast for these men to eat. (I can just see the one angel saying to the other, “How do these humans manage to eat so much? I’m stuffed. A huge lunch at Abraham’s place, and now a feast for dinner. I can’t wait to get back to heaven.”)
They had not yet settled down for the evening when there was a loud pounding at the door. It was not just a handful of folks, not a small gang of bad boys; this was a very large segment of the male population of Sodom. The mob included young and old and men from every part of the city, so many in number that they surrounded Lot’s house (19:5). They were far from subtle in letting their intentions be known. They wanted to sexually abuse Lot’s guests.
Lot was deeply committed to the safety of his guests, and so he stepped outside the door to reason with the mob. He urged the men of the city to take his daughters instead and to do to them what they wished. As we read of Lot’s offer of his daughters, we are horrified, and rightly so. Attempts have been made to explain Lot’s actions: (1) This was the custom of the day; it was expected that once Lot took these men into his house, he had to protect them. (2) Because of the perversion of that city, Lot didn’t expect these men to be interested in his daughters. While I agree that the custom was to offer protection to those under your roof (or at your table), I would approach this matter differently. I think that there is no excuse for Lot’s actions. As my friend Don Grimm pointed out, this was a case of situational ethics. Lot would never have offered his virgin daughters to the men of the city under normal circumstances. But this was a crisis. Giving his daughters to the men of the city was the lesser of two evils, the greater evil being that his guests would have been maltreated. It was, in his mind, an emergency. He reasoned that desperate straits require desperate measures.
Now, lest we harshly condemn Lot alone, let me remind you that what Abraham did was no different, and perhaps even worse. Sarah was the woman through whom the promised seed would come (whether he knew this in chapter 12 may be debatable, but there is no question by the time we come to chapter 20). Sarah was Abraham’s wife, and yet in order to save his own life, he was willing to hand her off in marriage to another man. In both cases (Pharaoh in chapter 12 and Abimelech in chapter 20), it was not Abraham who stopped the wedding; it was God. One must therefore conclude that Abraham would have sat passively by as his wife became the wife of another man. In Abraham’s mind, there was no other solution, and it was better to lose his wife than to lose his life. This certainly falls short of God’s ideal for marriage as spelled out in Ephesians 5:22-33. 70
We know that Lot’s wife turned to salt, because she looked back, contrary to the angels’ warnings. It is my opinion that Mrs. Lot may well have grown up in Sodom. When Lot first came back to Canaan from Egypt, he split up with Abraham, going east to Sodom (chapter 13). We know that Abraham lived in the land of Canaan for almost 11 years before having Ishmael (see 16:3). Abraham was 75 when he left Haran (12:4). He was 86 when Ishmael was born (16:16). Abraham was 99 at the time that God announced the birth of Isaac the same season of the next year (17:15-16, 19, 21). This means that Lot would have been living in the land of Canaan for more than 20 years. While Moses is careful to tell us all who left Ur for Haran, and all who left Haran for Canaan (11:24-32), there is no mention of Lot’s wife there. His wife is not mentioned anywhere in the text until the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapter 19. We don’t read of Mrs. Lot helping to prepare the angels’ meal, as Sarah did. One is inclined to suspect that Mrs. Lot was a Sodomite girl, and that because of this, she was not really eager to leave Sodom at all. No wonder she looked back if her parents, friends, and family were all there in Sodom. But having said all of this, Lot was not excited about leaving Sodom, either. The angels had to grab him, his daughters, and (for a time) his wife, and literally drag him out of Sodom. Lot was half-hearted about leaving Sodom.
Initially, Lot succeeded in convincing God that he needed to stay in nearby Zoar. But something caused Lot to change his mind and to flee to the mountains, but not to the mountains where Abraham lived. The effect of this was that there was no one to marry Lot’s daughters, so that they could carry on his name. Lot’s two daughters decided to produce offspring for their father through their father. The story is a sordid one that we need not go into, except to point out one thing that was and is very important: Lot’s daughters were only doing what they had learned from their father, to employ situational ethics in an “emergency” situation, and thus to compromise God’s marital and sexual standards. Their father was ready and willing to hand them over to the mob at Sodom; why should they not be willing to compromise themselves to keep their father’s line going? The result was that both daughters became pregnant through their father, and this was the origin (the genesis) of the Moabites and the Ammonites (19:37-38).
From what we read about Lot in Genesis 12-19, we would not be very inclined to think highly of him. We must therefore continually remind ourselves of Peter’s assessment of Lot’s spiritual condition:
7 And if he rescued Lot, a righteous man in anguish over the debauched lifestyle of lawless men, 8 (for while he lived among them day after day, that righteous man was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) 9 —if so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials, and to reserve the unrighteous for punishment at the day of judgment (2 Peter 2:7-9, emphasis mine).
Being righteous is not the same as being perfect. Lot may have been righteous, but he failed in many ways.
In Genesis 20, Moses leaves Lot and returns to the centerpiece of our text – Abraham – who makes his way to Gerar. Abraham has just recently been informed that the promised child will be his and Sarah’s child. He has been told that the child would be born the same time the following year. That means that Sarah will become pregnant within three months of the promise. And what does Abraham do but leave Haran and go to Gerar in the land of the Philistines (26:1). And there Abraham and Sarah repeat the same sin they had committed in Egypt, years before. One would think that they had learned their lesson. One would hope that their faith was now great enough to trust God to care for them. And yet the Egypt scenario is replayed. Abimelech, king of Gerar, took Sarah as his wife. If I were one of the angels, looking down on this event, I would have been asking for some aspirin. How could Abraham be so foolish? How could he endanger Sarah and put at risk (humanly speaking) the promise of God?
If we think that God’s covenant purposes and promises are dependent upon our faithfulness, we are mistaken. It is not Abraham’s faithfulness that saves the day, but God’s. Moses is a prophet of God, as we are told in this very text (verse 7), and yet he is not speaking to Abimelech for God. It is God who speaks to Abimelech, and in a way that certainly got his attention:
But God appeared to Abimelech in a dream at night and said to him, “You are about to die because of the woman you have taken, for she is someone else’s wife” (Genesis 20:3).
Abimelech was “all ears.” He insisted that he had taken Sarah innocently, and that it was Abraham and Sarah who had been deceptive. God told Abimelech that He had kept the king from sinning, and thus from death. He was now to restore Sarah to her husband. He further indicated that Abraham was a prophet and that he would pray for the king and his people, so that they would be healed and not die. In verses 17 and 18, we are told that Abraham’s prayer for the king and his household enabled them to have children, because God had closed the wombs of every women in the king’s household. There was no chance of Sarah getting pregnant in that household, because there was no chance of anyone getting pregnant there, until Abraham prayed for healing on their behalf. God was making sure that His promise to Abraham would be fulfilled, in spite of Abraham’s sin.
The thing that catches my attention in chapter 20 is that God speaks to Abraham through Abimelech, and not the reverse, even though Abraham is a prophet. It is Abimelech, a pagan king, who rebukes Abraham, a prophet of God. What a contrast to chapter 18, where Abraham walks with God, and where God reveals His purposes to Abraham as a friend. What Abraham discloses to Abimelech is most disturbing. He confesses that he lied out of fear. He reveals that his view of God is inadequate, for he supposes that where there is no “fear of God,” God cannot protect him (verse 11). Even though God had promised to make a great nation of Abraham, he believed that the men of Gerar would kill him (verse 11). And perhaps most disturbing of all, Abraham admits that this is an established policy that he and Sarah had practiced for years, everywhere they went (verses 12-13). That leaves us to wonder whether these two instances of this sin that are recorded in Genesis 12 and 20 are the only times they did this, or whether these are merely two examples among others. Abraham got the message, but not in the way he would prefer, and this because of his sin.
The fears of Abraham were unfounded, and the faithfulness of God is undeniable. Twice in verse 1, we are told that God gave Sarah and Abraham a son “just as He said.” The child was born, and as instructed (17:19), they named him Isaac (verse 3). Can you imagine this? At a time when Abraham and Sarah should have been buying Geritol (a supplement for older folks), they were buying (so to speak) diapers and baby food. Abraham was 100 years old (verse 5), and Sarah was 90 (17:17). In obedience to God’s instruction, Abraham circumcised Isaac when he was eight days old.
When Isaac was weaned, they had a special celebration, at which the teenage Ishmael was mocking Isaac. For Sarah, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She exploded, demanding that Abraham send the lad and his mother away (verse 10). Abraham was greatly distressed by Sarah’s demand (verse 11). For nearly 13 years, Abraham had lived with the assumption that Ishmael would be his only son, and thus the heir to his covenant blessings. Beyond this, I believe that Abraham had come to love this lad. It would break his heart to send Hagar and Ishmael away. I believe that while Sarah was right in thinking the boy must go, she was wrong in her motivation. I fear that she wanted the right thing for the wrong reasons.
All of this was a part of God’s plan for Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac. He was preparing for Abraham’s great test of faith in chapter 22. There, God would say to Abraham,
“Take your son – your only son, whom you love, Isaac – and go to the land of Moriah! Offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will indicate to you” (Genesis 22:1b-2, emphasis mine).
If Ishmael were still living with Abraham, this statement could not have been made. The test was much more difficult after Abraham had sent Ishmael away, permanently.
God told Abraham to listen to his wife and to do as she said.71 He reiterated once again72 that Abraham’s descendants would be counted through Isaac, and not through Ishmael. In a different way than in chapter 22, Abraham was required to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. God promised that He would bless Ishmael, but not as Abraham’s promised seed. And so, “early in the morning,”73 Abraham gave provisions to Hagar, and sent her on her way. In the wilderness of Beersheba, God provided for Hagar and her son and promised to make a great nation of Ishmael. The lad grew up to be a great archer, and we are told that Hagar obtained a wife for him from Egypt, her native land (16:3). This may be indicated as a contrast to Abraham’s diligent efforts to obtain a wife for Isaac from Paddan Aram (see chapter 24).
The remainder of chapter 21 has to do with Abimelech. God had terrified Abimelech, so that he would not dare to harm Abraham, and so that he would return Sarah to her husband. But relations were not what they should have been between Abimelech and Abraham. Abimelech and his commander came to visit Abraham, acknowledging that God was surely with him. He wanted Abraham to swear to him that he would not deceive him again. What an interesting thing for a pagan to say to a prophet. Abraham would enter into a treaty with Abimelech, but not until after they had resolved a conflict over a certain well that Abimelech’s men claimed for themselves. Having settled these matters, Abimelech and Phicol, his commander, returned to, the land of the Philistines.74
It has been a long and difficult road for Abraham, but he is now to receive the ultimate test of his faith. He has been prepared by many tests over the years. Some tests he has handled well. He believed God and left Haran to come to the land of Canaan. He believed God’s promise that he would have a son, even in his old age (Genesis 15:6). He gave Lot his choice of the land (chapter 13), and he interceded for the righteous when God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah (chapter 18). Others he has not handled as well. During a famine, he left the promised land of Canaan and went to sojourn in Egypt (Genesis 12). On at least two occasions, he has feared for his life and lied about the identity of Sarah, his wife (Genesis 12, 20). He listened to his wife, Sarai, and took Hagar as his concubine, bearing Ishmael through her (Genesis 16). In most (if not all) of these tests, the issues were matters of life and death. Would God provide for Abram during a time of famine, and thus spare his life? Would God protect Abraham and Sarah, so that he would not have to lie about their relationship? Could Abraham and Sarah, though as good as dead so far as childbearing was concerned, still have a child in their old age?
In chapter 22, God commands Abraham to take his son Isaac to a mountain He will designate and to sacrifice him there. One can only imagine Abraham’s initial response. The reader is spared any insight into the private struggle that took place within the heart of Abraham. I am confident that there was a struggle, but equally assured that knowing his private agonies would not prove edifying to the reader. And so Moses simply tells us that Abraham did what God commanded.
Early in the morning,75 he saddled his donkey, two servants, firewood, fire, the knife and his beloved son, and set out for the place of sacrifice. How it must have pained Abraham to hear as his son began to grasp the uniqueness of this trip:
Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father?” “What is it, my son?” he replied. “Here is the fire and the wood,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” 8 “God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham replied. The two of them continued on together (Genesis 22:7b-8).
On the one hand Abraham’s answer was evasive; on the other hand, it seems to express faith in God, for when Abraham left his servants behind he told them, “You two stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go up there. We will worship and then return to you” (22:5b, emphasis mine).
We know much more about what went on in Abraham’s mind from the writers of Romans and Hebrews:
18 Against hope Abraham believed in hope with the result that he became the father of many nations according to the pronouncement, “so will your descendants be.” 19 Without being weak in faith, he considered his own body as dead (because he was about one hundred years old) and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. 20 He did not waver in unbelief about the promise of God but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. 21 He was fully convinced that what God promised he was also able to do. 22 So indeed it was credited to Abraham as righteousness (Romans 4:18-22).
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He had received the promises, yet he was ready to offer up his only son. 18 God had told him, “Through Isaac descendants will carry on your name,” 19 and he reasoned that God could even raise him from the dead, and in a sense he received him back from there (Hebrews 11:17-19, emphasis mine).
In both these texts, we are told that Abraham reasoned by faith. If I could paraphrase the sense of both these texts, Abraham’s reasoning went something like this:
“God promised me that I would have a son. Eventually, He made it clear that this son would be born of both Sarah and myself. God waited to give us this son until it seemed impossible, and humanly speaking, it was. Nevertheless, I have come to trust in God, no matter what He says, and He did it! We were as good as dead, so far as having children were concerned, and yet God gave us a new life – our precious son. God produced life out of death! Now, God has commanded me to take the life of my son. I know that this is the son through whom God’s covenant promises are to be fulfilled. And, I know that God can bring life out of death, because He has already done so in the birth of Isaac. Therefore, I must conclude that if I put my son to death, God will raise him from the dead.”
And so we read that Abraham bound his son, placed him on the altar, and prepared to plunge the knife into his chest. It was only then that God called out from heaven for Abraham to stop. By his actions, Abraham had demonstrated his faith and his willingness to obey God in the most costly of ways. It was only then that Abraham saw a ram, whose horns were caught in the bushes nearby. As Abraham had hoped (verse 8), God did provide the sacrifice (verse 13). And so Abraham offered the sacrifice, not with his son, but with the ram God provided. It is no wonder that Abraham named that place “The Lord provides.”
And now, for the last time76 in Abraham’s life (so far as the Scriptures record), the Abrahamic Covenant is reaffirmed:
15 The Lord’s angel called to Abraham a second time from heaven 16 and said, “‘I solemnly swear by my own name,’ decrees the Lord, ‘that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will indeed bless you, and I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be as countless as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the strongholds of their enemies. 18 Because you have obeyed me, all the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants’” (Genesis 22:15-18).
What a joyful return trip that must have been for Abraham and Isaac. I wonder what they talked about as they made their way home. I wonder whether Abraham told his servants – and especially Sarah – what took place on the mountain that day. In the New Testament we read,
“Your father Abraham was overjoyed to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).
I’m not really sure when this happened, but I am inclined to think that this event on Mount Moriah (the very place where the Temple would be built – 2 Chronicles 3:1) must have been one of those times when Abraham had a glimpse of Christ’s day.
The last verses of chapter 22 seem somewhat parenthetical, and they may be, but they are important for they tell us that Abraham learned that his brother Nahor’s wife had borne him children, one of which was Bethuel, who became the father of Rebekah. As we shall soon see (chapter 24), Abraham would send his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac, and that woman would be Rebekah.
Sarah lived to be 127 years old, and then she died in Hebron. This presented Abraham with yet another test. He must decide where home really was. Often, when people die in a distant place, we bring the body “home” for burial. With the death of Sarah came the decision as to where “home” was. He could have taken her body back to Haran, where Terah had died and (presumably) was buried (11:32). Abraham must bury his wife, and yet he did not own any land in Canaan. His descendants would possess the land, more than 400 years later (15:7-21). And so Abraham was forced to buy a burial place from Ephron the Hethite (23:3-18).
One must wonder why so much emphasis was spent describing this transaction. It is surely interesting to those of us living in the West, many centuries later. The story is not written merely to enrich us culturally; it is recorded to dramatically demonstrate that Abraham’s entire life was lived out by faith, without seeing the fulfillment of this promise of God (the promise of possessing the land of Canaan):
13 These all died in faith without receiving the things promised, but they saw them in the distance and welcomed them and acknowledged that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth. 14 For those who speak in such a way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 In fact, if they had been thinking of the land that they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they aspire to a better land, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:13-16).
We must remember that Abraham was a bit of a nomad. He was constantly moving about the land in order to find grazing land for his cattle and food. Buying this burial place was something like dropping anchor for Abraham. Buying this parcel of land and burying the body of his beloved wife was a great act of faith, and a declaration that this was home.
Chapter 24 records the last important matter of business that Abraham deals with before his death. Indeed, his great sense of urgency in this matter is due to the fact that he knows his death is near. Nowhere that I can see does God give Abraham instructions concerning a wife for his son. We do know that Abraham was very specific in the instructions he gave to his servant:
1 Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed him in everything. 2 Abraham said to his servant, the senior one in his household, who was in charge of everything he had, “Put you hand under my thigh, 3 so that I may make you solemnly promise by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth: You must not acquire a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living. 4 You must go instead to my country and to my relatives to find a wife for my son Isaac.” 5 The servant asked him, “What if the woman is not willing to come back with me to this land? Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?” 6 “ Be careful never to take my son back there!” Abraham told him. 7 “The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and the land of my relatives, promised me with a solemn oath, ‘To your descendants I will give this land.’ He will send his angel before you so that you may find a wife for my son from there. 8 But if the woman is not willing to come back with you, you will be free from this oath of mine. But you must not take my son back there!” 9 So the servant placed his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and gave his solemn promise he would carry out his wishes” (Genesis 24:1-9, emphasis mine).
Three things are apparent: (1) Abraham wants to obtain a wife for Isaac before he dies. Isaac needs to have a wife, so that he can continue the line of Abraham, and so that the Covenant will pass through his descendants. (2) This wife cannot be a Canaanite woman, but must be from one of Abraham’s relatives. (3) Under no circumstances is Isaac to return to the land from which Abraham came.
Nowhere that I can find does God give Abraham specific instructions regarding a wife for Isaac. While it is possible that God did instruct Abraham concerning this, and that Moses simply does not record it for us, I am inclined to think that Abraham came to this conclusion by the reasoning of faith, much the same way that he reasoned God would raise his son from the dead if he sacrificed him to the Lord (see above). Abraham knew that the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises to him would be fulfilled through Isaac and his descendants (17:19). Isaac would need a wife in order to carry on the line. Abraham also knew that God had called him to settle in Canaan and to leave his home and his family in Paddan Aram. He knew that he could not go back, and this meant that his son must not return either. God had promised to bless Abraham’s descendants in the land of Canaan.
The other piece of reasoning had to do with the necessity of getting a wife for Isaac from Abraham’s relatives in Paddan Aram. His servant was to get a wife for Isaac there in Paddan Aram, from one of his master’s relatives, but he was not to let Isaac go there. How did Abraham come to this conclusion? There are at least a couple of factors I can think of which may have contributed to Abraham’s strong convictions. First, Abraham knew that the Canaanites were a wicked people, and that God was going to drive them out, because of their sins. This would not occur for several hundred years, but it would come to pass (15:12-21). God was going to drive out the Canaanites and give the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants. How, then, could his son marry a Canaanite woman? Furthermore, Abraham witnessed the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In addition to this, he observed the effect that the Canaanites had on Lot and on his family. If Lot’s wife was a Canaanite, this was visible proof of the danger of intermarrying with the Canaanites. And so Abraham concluded that he must acquire a wife for his son from his own people. They may not all trust in the God of Israel, but they were not as corrupt as the Canaanites.
This chapter goes into great detail to describe how Abraham’s servant went about fulfilling his master’s desires. What a marvelous and faithful servant this fellow was. He seems to have shared his master’s faith, for he prays for guidance and praises God when his prayers are answered (24:12, 26). He is eager to return to Canaan with Isaac’s wife as soon as possible. In some ways, he goes beyond his master’s guidelines, as can be seen by the test he employed. He did not merely look for a woman with the right ancestry, nor only for a woman who was beautiful, though Rebekah was surely both of these. He wanted a woman of character, a true servant. He went to a well where a relative was likely to come, and he prayed that the woman of God’s choosing would show hospitality to him by giving him water, as well as his camels. Rebekah was the answer to his prayers, and it was only then that the servant learned she also was the daughter of Abraham’s brother Nahor’s son, Bethuel (22:20-24; 24:24). A wife for Isaac had been found, and soon the servant was on his way home with her. His mission was accomplished, and now Abraham is ready to die. We read of his death in chapter 25.
God had started with one man and one woman in the Garden of Eden. They sinned, plunging the whole creation into sin and chaos. God had promised Eve that her seed would destroy Satan and would provide a solution for sin (Genesis 3:15). It looked as though that “seed” would be Abel, but his brother Cain killed him (Genesis 4). God replaced Abel with Seth, and his line is traced in the genealogy of Genesis 5, ending with Noah. God destroyed the whole earth, but spared Noah and his family, so that the “seed” of the woman would be preserved. It was through Noah’s son Shem that the “seed” would come, for it is from the line of Shem that Abraham is born (Genesis 11). God confused man’s language at Babel (11:1-9), so that many nations came into being (chapter 10). From among these nations, God chose to create a new nation, through whom He would bless all the nations. This nation was to come from one man, Abraham. Through divine calling and guidance, God brought Abraham to the land of Canaan and made a covenant with him there. By means of various trials, God made of Abraham a man of faith. In Abraham’s greatest test of faith (the sacrifice of Isaac), God gave us a glimpse of how He would bring about the redemption of man. It was through the sacrifice of an only son of His choosing that the sins of men would be atoned for. It was a mystery that none understood fully at the time, but it is there nonetheless for us to look back upon and see that it was truly a prophetic moment. It was there on Mount Moriah (the temple mount in Jerusalem) that the Messiah was rejected of men and died at the hands of sinners on a Roman cross. In some way, Abraham saw that day by faith and rejoiced in it (John 8:56).
The lessons for the ancient Israelites (those of Moses’ day and later) were many. The Israelites of Moses’ day had just entered into a covenant with God – the Mosaic Covenant. With all of its commandments and instructions the Israelites could become legalistic. While the Jews of Jesus’ day proudly announced that they were Abraham’s descendants, they were not like him at all. This was because they made two false assumptions. First, that mere physical descent put one in the category of those who would be blessed. We can see that the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant were much more specifically applied. Secondly, Abraham was the “father of the faith,” not the “father of salvation by works.” His good works did not save Abraham. Abraham was saved by grace, and in spite of many sins. Let any who would mistakenly conclude that Abraham was saved by his works look again. He was declared righteous, based upon faith, not works (15:6). He was declared righteous before he was circumcised, and many years before the law was given. It is because of the Abrahamic Covenant that men are saved, not because men strive to keep the Mosaic Covenant. Paul will make this abundantly clear in Galatians 3 and elsewhere. The Mosaic Covenant was given after the Abrahamic Covenant, not to fulfill it, but to restrain sin until the coming of Christ and the New Covenant. The Mosaic Covenant cannot save; it can only reveal our sin, and our need for salvation. The Abrahamic Covenant looks forward to the cross of Calvary and to the salvation our Lord accomplished there.
The life of Abraham shows us that he was not saved because of his faithfulness to God, but because of God’s faithfulness to him. Over and over, Abraham failed. He trusted in God, but imperfectly. Over many years, God deepened and enriched his faith. But the life of Abraham should make it very clear to us that Abraham’s salvation was not earned; it was a gift from God. It was not based upon Abraham’s works, but upon God’s choosing and covenant promises.
The Israelites who would first hear Moses’ account of Abraham’s calling and life were those who were poised at the entrance of the land of Canaan. It is our text that informs the Israelites just why this land is about to be theirs. It is this generation that will actually experience the privilege of possessing the land of Canaan, at least partially. Moses has provided these Israelites with the basis for their possession of the land. He also informs them that their successful occupation of the land of Canaan has been prophesied many years earlier (Genesis 15:12-21). From time to time, the Israelites would threaten to go back to Egypt, rather than to press on to possess the land of Canaan. Our text makes it very plain that the land of Canaan is “home” for God’s people. What encouragement and incentive the story of Abraham must have given the Israelites who were about to occupy the land.
Our text also dramatically illustrates the truth that obedience to God’s commands brings blessing, while disobedience brings difficulty. Indeed, for the unbeliever, disobedience brings divine judgment. In the rescue of Lot and the destruction of Sodom we see both the goodness and the severity of God:
4 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell and locked them up in chains in utter darkness, to be kept until the judgment, 5 and if he did not spare the ancient world, but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on an ungodly world, 6 and if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he condemned them to destruction, having appointed them to serve as an example to future generations of the ungodly, 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man in anguish over the debauched lifestyle of lawless men, 8 (for while he lived among them day after day, that righteous man was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) 9 —if so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials, and to reserve the unrighteous for punishment at the day of judgment, 10 especially those who indulge their fleshly desires and who despise authority (2 Peter 2:4-10).
Righteousness brings blessing, and sin brings judgment.
Finally, our text provides us with some powerful instruction concerning inter-marriage. God has very clearly forbidden the Israelites from inter-marrying with the Canaanites:
1 When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you—Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—2 and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no covenant with them nor show them compassion! 3 You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the wrath of the Lord will erupt against you and he will soon destroy you. 5 Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred Asherah poles, and burn up their images. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be a people prized above all others on the face of the earth (Deuteronomy 7:1-6; see also Exodus 34:11-16; Joshua 23:9-13).
Lot may serve as a negative illustration of inter-marriage with the Canaanites, but the strong emphasis on Abraham’s search for a godly wife for his son stresses this from the positive perspective. Let the Israelites learn how important it is to marry a godly wife, who is not a Canaanite.
Our text has much to teach us about our family responsibilities. Both negatively (Lot) and positively (Abraham) we see how important it is to have a godly wife. Lot’s wife was too attached to her world. Abraham’s wife Sarah eventually becomes an example of humility and submission (1 Peter 3:6). Sarah assisted Abraham in showing hospitality (18:6); Rebekah was also a woman committed to showing hospitality (24:17-20). Lot’s wife (never named) is not even mentioned until the flight from Sodom, and then not in a favorable light. The length and detail of Abraham’s servant’s search for a wife for Isaac is an indication of how important it is to choose a godly mate.
Abraham initially was willing to sacrifice his wife to save his own life, just as Lot was willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect his guests. But Abraham comes to cherish his children and his wife. It is then that Abraham’s faith will be given the ultimate test, the sacrifice of his son, Isaac. How many of us as parents put our children ahead of God? The man who started poorly – Abraham – ended well. As much as he loved Isaac, Abraham was willing to obey God, even if it meant taking the life of his son. Please do not misinterpret what I am saying. Take note of the fact that God did not allow Abraham to follow through with the sacrifice of Isaac. But when it comes to loving God first, above family, how strong is our faith?
25 Now large crowds were accompanying Jesus, and turning to them he said, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25-27).
Many today are sacrificing their families, but it is not in obedience to God. They sacrifice their families on the altar of self-interest. In Luke 14:25-27 (above), Jesus not only requires His disciples to love Him more than their families, He insists that His disciples love Him more than themselves. His disciples must take up their own cross, they must die daily to self-interest, in order to follow Him. I believe that Abraham loved Isaac more than life itself and would have gladly taken the place of his son (or his wife). But when God put Abraham’s faith to the test, he chose God over everything else, and everyone else, including himself.
Abraham and Lot illustrate the folly of situational ethics. Situational ethics subordinate obedience to absolute commands to human judgment of difficult circumstances. Sometimes it is a choice between what would be called the “lesser of two evils.” Lot’s daughters knew it was wrong to have children by their father, but they felt that having no children at all was worse. They did not trust God to give them husbands; they assumed that their present circumstances were impossible to change. And this when God had just given their relatives (Abraham and Sarah) a son in their old age! But Lot’s daughters were only doing what they had seen and heard their own father do. To Lot, the insult and injury of his guests (who needed no defending) was worse than the rape of his two virgin daughters. This was another example of situational ethics. Abraham did exactly the same thing when he was willing to sacrifice the purity of his wife (and potentially the promised seed) in order to protect himself in a dangerous situation.
Situational ethics is wrong because of a fundamental premise. That premise is that God places us in circumstances where we must sin. The Scriptures say otherwise:
No trial has overtaken you that is not faced by others. And God is faithful: he will not let you be tried too much, but with the trial will also provide a way through it so that you may be able to endure (1 Corinthians 10:13).
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. 15 Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. 16 Do not be led astray, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change (James 1:13-17).
God never puts us in circumstances where sin is the only way out. Situational ethics says otherwise. God does place us in circumstances where it may appear that there is no way out. He brought the Israelites to the Red Sea, with the Egyptians behind them in hot pursuit. But God did so to show His love and power, separating the Red Sea, so that it made “a way of escape” for His people, while being the means of destruction for their enemies. Situational ethics refuses to trust God’s ability to save when the situation looks impossible. Situational ethics operates by sight, not by faith. But we are to walk by faith, and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
The life of Abraham should teach us that men and women of faith, even great faith, are not perfect. There are plenty of flaws in Abraham’s life, but he is a man who trusted God for his eternal salvation. He is a man who somehow grasped that his promised “seed” would include “the seed,” the one through whom the death grip of sin would be broken:
Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his descendant. Scripture does not say, “and to the descendants,” referring to many, but “and to your descendant,” referring to one, who is Christ (Galatians 3:16).
“Your father Abraham was overjoyed to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).
Abraham understood that he was a sinner, and that his salvation rested in God’s provision of “the seed,” the “seed” promised in Genesis 3:15, the “seed” who was the Lord Jesus Christ. It was His death on Calvary that paid the price for sin, that defeated Satan once and for all. It is in Him that we must place our faith for the forgiveness of sins and for eternal salvation.
Note, too, that Abraham’s faith was a “resurrection faith;” Abraham believed in a God who could raise the dead (Hebrews 11:19). God had given he and Sarah – who were as good as dead – the child He had promised. God would raise that child from the dead, if necessary. It was not necessary for Him to raise Isaac because God provided a substitute for Isaac. Immediately, God provided a ram, but ultimately God provided the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Isaiah 52:13—53:9). By raising our Lord from the dead, God vindicated His words and works, and demonstrated that He was pleased with our Lord’s eternal sacrifice (Romans 1:4).
Abraham’s faith was God-given faith, a faith that God initially gave to Abraham, and a faith that God caused to grow, through time and troubles. Like Abraham, saints grow in faith in the midst of trials and tribulations. These were not brought into our lives to break us, but to build us up in faith.
1. 1 Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory. 3 Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance, character, and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:1-5).
2. 2 My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything (James 1:2-4).
3. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he gave us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 that is, into an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It is reserved in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 This brings you great joy, although you may have to suffer for a short time in various trials. 7 Such trials show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold—gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away—and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Peter 1:3-7).
The life of Abraham not only describes the process of his growth in faith, but the fruits of it. Consider the marks of maturity that we can see in Abraham’s life, which should characterize us in our maturity as well.
1. Obedience. Abraham obeyed God in faith.
2. Hospitality. Abraham was marked by hospitality (chapter 18), as was Lot (chapter 19) and Rebekah (chapter 24). No wonder this is one of the qualifications for an elder (1 Timothy 3:2).
3. Intimacy with God. Abraham became the “friend of God” (James 2:23), a man to whom God revealed His promises and purposes.
4. Intercession. Abraham came to be less concerned with himself, and more concerned with others. His intercession with God in chapter 18 is one of the high water marks of spirituality in his life.
5. Influence. I believe that Abraham’s faith impacted others around him. I think this can be seen in Sarah’s faith and submission (1 Peter 3:6), and in the spiritual maturity of Abraham’s trusted servant (Genesis 24).
6. Less dependence upon the spectacular and more day-to-day dependence, obedience, and fellowship with God. At the outset of Abraham’s life, it seemed that Abraham required more external verification, more spectacular confirmation (see Genesis 15:8), but as time went on, God’s Word alone was sufficient basis for trust and obedience (Genesis 22).
I pray that each of you has come to trust in the God of Abraham for your eternal salvation, and that you and I, like Abraham, will grow in our faith, being faithful to the end.
64 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on December 3, 2000.
65 Peter refers to this incident in 1 Peter 3:6, where Sarah speaks of Abraham as her “lord” or “master.” Peter can surely see that this was evidence of her submission, because this was what she was thinking in her mind. If there were ever a time to think less of her husband, it would be in her private thoughts, unknown and unknowable to others (or at least that she assumed no one else could know). At the most unlikely moment, when an apparently impossible event was prophesied, Sarah thought of herself in terms of her submission to her husband. If Abraham’s finest hour is seen in Genesis 22, Sarah’s finest hour seems to be here.
66 I recently received an e-mail asking if I thought Satan could read our thoughts. I responded that I did not believe that Satan could read our minds because this would entail omniscience (knowing all), an attribute that belongs only to God. Further evidence for this conclusion can be seen in our text. While the three “men” speak with Abraham, it is only the Lord who exposes Sarah’s inner thoughts. This was something the angels did not know and could not know. If angels could not read Sarah’s mind, then Satan – a fallen angel – cannot read minds either.
67 See 2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23.
68 Compare John 15:15.
69 It should be noted that God’s grace extended beyond Abraham’s request. God agreed not to destroy the cities if but ten righteous could be found. Ten righteous people were not found, but God nevertheless removed the righteous from the city of Sodom before He destroyed it. God did not spare the city for the sake of the righteous, but He did spare the righteous from His wrath upon the wicked city.
70 The husband is to be like Christ, laying down his life for the good of his wife – Ephesians 5:25f.
71 Something He did not say in chapter 16. Abraham listened to Sarai when he should have refused to do so.
72 See 17:18-21.
73 Is this meant to reflect, and even anticipate, the words of 22:3? I am inclined to think so. This is a prototype of his greater sacrifice in chapter 22.
74 This seems to set the stage for Isaac’s later disputes with Abimelech’s servants over the possession of other wells that he or his father had dug (see chapter 26).
75 See 21:14. I am tempted to think that Abraham left early, not because he was eager to get an early start for this task, but in order to leave before Sarah awoke. He would never convince her that he should carry out this mission!
76 We find the Abrahamic Covenant earlier given and affirmed to Abraham in 12:1-3; 13:14-17; 15:1-21; 17:1-27.
Genesis 27:1—35:29
I have preached quite a few funerals in my life — for all kinds of people, who lived in many different kinds of circumstances. When I do a funeral, I always attempt to begin with a biographical sketch of the deceased. I try to focus on some of their positive qualities and to recall some fond memories. I then go on to proclaim the gospel, whether or not that person was saved. It is usually not too difficult to find something positive to say about the person who has died. I did have one occasion where I could think of almost nothing really positive to say, but I believe doing Jacob’s funeral would have proven even more challenging. I could probably follow the example of one of my relatives. She always found something positive to say about everyone. Even of the Devil, she would probably have said, “Well, at least he’s persistent!” I think I could say that about Jacob, or, “Well, at least he’s consistent!”
One of my friends told me not to be too hard on Jacob, because he found that he identified with him. I know just how my friend feels. I can easily identify with Jacob. He is a kind of Old Testament “Peter,” with all the polish rubbed off. And yet this man Jacob is one of the most important men in the Book of Genesis. Almost half of Genesis deals with Jacob and the time period in which he lived. In our text, God will rename Jacob, calling him “Israel.” Jacob is the forefather of the nation Israel. Very often in the Old Testament God refers to Israel as “Jacob,” and it isn’t really that difficult to see why.
As famous as Jacob is, his life was really a mess. Near the end of his life, Jacob is brought before Pharaoh, who asks how many years he has lived:
7 Then Joseph brought in his father Jacob and presented him before Pharaoh. Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 8 Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How long have you lived?” 9 Jacob said to Pharaoh, “All the years of my travels are one hundred and thirty. All the years of my life have been few and painful; the years of my travels are not as long as those of my ancestors.” 10 Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence (Genesis 47:7-10).
Why would Jacob say such a thing? He was a man who was promised the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant, patriarch of the nation Israel. We shall find the answer to this question as we study his life. As we consider Jacob, we will learn a great deal about God, and about ourselves as well.
As I’ve already indicated, the life and times of Jacob receives more attention in Genesis than any other person in the book. This lesson is titled, “Jacob,” and the next and final lesson in the Book of Genesis will be titled, “Joseph.” The truth of the matter is that Joseph’s life is important primarily because of its impact upon Jacob and his sons. Thus, our next lesson will be about Jacob, too.
Our study, “From Creation to the Cross,” is a survey of the turning points in the “unfolding drama of redemption” from Genesis through the Gospels. We cannot study any of our texts in depth, but we must limit ourselves to an overview. The same holds true for the life of Jacob. In this lesson I will limit my message to an overview of the major turning points in the life of Jacob.78
Jacob’s struggles began in his mother’s womb. Rebekah was not able to become pregnant until Isaac interceded with God on her behalf. Then she conceived, and it soon became obvious that something unusual was going on within her. When she inquired of the Lord about this, the Lord informed her that there were not just twins in her womb, but that there were two nations, and that the older of these twins would serve the younger. When the boys were born, Esau emerged first, followed by Jacob clinging to Esau’s heel. The birth of Jacob was an early indication of things to come.
When the boys grew up, Esau became a hunter and outdoorsman. He also had a taste for wild game, just like his father. Esau was Isaac’s favorite son. Jacob, on the other hand, was his mother’s boy. On one occasion, Esau came in from the field tired and hungry. Jacob had just cooked up a fine stew, and Esau asked for some. Jacob “sold” his stew to his older brother in exchange for his birthright, which Esau despised. It seems that while Esau was surely wrong to despise his birthright, Jacob is not heartily condemned for his actions. Esau was not deceived in this transaction. Jacob seems to have done something very shrewd, yet safely inside the line of what was legal. The acquisition of Isaac’s blessing was a very different matter.
This incident sets the course of Jacob’s life. It is a story filled with intrigue. There is a struggle between Isaac (who wants to bless his son Esau, rather than Jacob) and his wife Rebekah (who wants to be sure that Jacob is blessed). Both husband and wife seem willing to deceive (or at least underhandedly work against) their mate. When Abraham knew that his days were numbered, he sought to obtain a wife for his son, Isaac. But when Isaac felt death was not far away,79 he sought to pronounce his blessing upon Esau. It is almost inconceivable to think that Isaac was unaware of God’s words to his wife that “the older would serve the younger” (25:23). For one thing, I cannot imagine Rebekah not telling Isaac this time after time to buttress her efforts to help Jacob gain dominance over his “older” brother, Esau.
Isaac called his son Esau to him and announced his intention to bless him. He asked his son to go hunt some game, and then to prepare his favorite dish (this was, after all, their common bond – see 25:28), after which he would bless him. All of this seems intended to exclude both Rebekah and “her” son, Jacob. But like Sarah (see 18:10), Rebekah had been listening on the other side of the tent walls (27:5). She quickly called Jacob, told him what his father was about to do, and then proposed a plan to circumvent his efforts. Jacob was no more concerned about the morality of his actions than was his mother. His reservations revolved around the logistics of this scheme and the consequences for him if he were caught. His mother assured him that deceiving Isaac was possible and that she would bear the consequences if they were caught.
What a scene that must have been. Jacob was all decked out in his brother’s clothes, probably three3 sizes too large for him. And to top it all off, he had the skins of goats wrapped around his arms and neck. Isaac was not easily convinced. He sensed that the voice was that of Jacob, and not Esau, and yet Jacob assured his father that he was Esau. When Isaac was surprised that his son would find game so quickly, Jacob was quick to give the answer, “Because the Lord your God brought it to me” (27:20). At least twice Jacob assured his father than he was Esau, his oldest son (27:19, 24). Isaac was suspicious, but when he drew near and smelled the clothing of his son Esau, he was satisfied and pronounced this blessing on Jacob:
27 So Jacob went over and kissed him. When Isaac caught the scent of his clothing, he blessed him, saying,
“Yes, my son smells
like the scent of an open field
which the Lord has blessed.
28 May God give you
the dew of the sky
and the richness of the earth,
and plenty of grain and new wine.
29 May peoples serve you
and nations bow down to you.
You will be lord over your brothers,
and the sons of your mother will bow down to you.
May those who curse you be cursed,
and those who bless you be blessed” (Genesis 27:27-29).
Note especially the last two lines of verse 29. It comes as close as Isaac dares to a repetition of the last part of the covenant the God made with Abraham:
1 Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household
to the land that I will show you.
2 Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,
and I will make your name great,
in order that you might be a prime example of divine blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
but the one who treats you lightly I must curse,
and all the families of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using your name”
(Genesis 12:1-3, emphasis mine).
It would seem that Isaac is attempting to make Esau the heir of the Abrahamic Covenant, rather than Jacob. It would also seem that Isaac is seeking to reverse the words God had spoken to his wife Rebekah:
22 But the children struggled inside her, and she said, “If it is going to be like this, I’m not so sure I want to be pregnant!” So she asked the Lord 23 and the Lord said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples will be separated from within you.
One people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger” (Genesis 24:22-23, emphasis mine).
It is only after Isaac learns that he has been deceived, and that his blessing had been pronounced on Jacob that he gives these two blessings; the first to Esau, and the second to Jacob:
39 So his father Isaac said to him [Esau],
“Indeed, your home will be
away from the richness of the earth,
and away from the dew of the sky above.
40 You will live by your sword
but you will serve your brother.
When you grow restless,
you will tear off his yoke
from your neck” (Genesis 27:39-40).80
1 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him… . 3 May the Sovereign God bless you! May he make you fruitful and give you a multitude of descendants! Then you will become a large nation. 4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing he gave to Abraham, so that you may possess the land God gave to Abraham, the land where you have been living as a temporary resident” (Genesis 28:1a, 3-4).
I believe that it is these last two blessings to which the writer to the Hebrews refers:
By faith also Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning the future (Hebrews 11:20).
I do not think that we can say Isaac gave the first blessing (to Jacob) in faith. Isaac was attempting to undermine God’s choice of Jacob. That can hardly be an act of faith. I think Isaac’s faith is evident when his devious plan is exposed and providentially overruled. It is then that Isaac pronounces the “blessing” on Esau in 27:39-40, which subjects Esau to his younger brother. It is only then that Isaac blesses Jacob by pronouncing upon him the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant. By faith Isaac finally pronounces blessings in accord with God’s revealed word.
1 There was a famine in the land, subsequent to the earlier famine that occurred in the days of Abraham. Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar. 2 The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; settle down in the land that I will point out you. 3 Stay in this land. Then I will be with you and will bless you, for I will give all these lands to you and to your descendants, and I will fulfill the solemn promise I made to your father Abraham. 4 I will multiply your descendants so they will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give them all these lands. All the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants. 5 All this will come to pass because Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” 6 So Isaac settled in Gerar (Genesis 26:1-5).
What I wish to emphasize here is the purpose for which Moses gives us such a detailed account of the deception of Isaac by his son Jacob. I would like to suggest to you that the purpose is set out for the reader, by the words that immediately precede this account (Genesis 26:34-35) as well as those that follow it (Genesis 27:41—28:10):
34 When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, as well as Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 They caused Isaac and Rebekah great anxiety (Genesis 26:34-35).
41 So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing his father had given to his brother. Esau said privately, “The time of mourning for my father is near; then I will kill my brother Jacob!” 42 When Rebekah heard what her older son Esau had said, she quickly summoned her younger son Jacob and told him, “Look, your brother Esau is planning to get revenge by killing you. 43 Now then, my son, do what I say. Run away immediately to my brother Laban in Haran. Live with him for a little while until your brother’s rage subsides. 45 Stay there until your brother’s anger against you subsides and he forgets what you did to him. Then I’ll send someone to bring you back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?” 46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am deeply depressed because of these daughters of Heth. If Jacob were to marry one of these daughters of Heth who live in this land, I would want to die!” 1 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman! 2 Leave immediately for Paddan Aram! Go to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and find yourself a wife there, among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. 3 May the Sovereign God bless you! May he make you fruitful and give you a multitude of descendants! Then you will become a large nation. 4 May he give you and your descendants the blessing he gave to Abraham, so that you may possess the land God gave to Abraham, the land where you have been living as a temporary resident.” 5 So Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean and brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau. 6 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him off to Paddan Aram to find a wife there. As he blessed him, Isaac commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.” 7 Jacob obeyed his father and mother and left for Paddan Aram. 8 Then Esau realized that the Canaanite women were displeasing to his father Isaac. 9 So Esau went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, along with the wives he already had (Genesis 27:42—28:10).
I find that the story of Jacob’s deception of Isaac is placed within the larger context of marriage. The last two verses of chapter 26 inform us that Esau was 40 years old when he had married two Hittite women, and that this caused Isaac and Rebekah great grief. You will recall that Isaac was also 40 years old when he married Rebekah (25:20). If Esau is 40, then Jacob also is 40, yet he has no wife. It is through him that the covenant blessings to Abraham and his descendants will pass. Where, then, will Jacob obtain a wife? Genesis 24 is a rather detailed description of how Abraham obtained a wife for Isaac from among his own relatives, rather than from among the Canaanites. Abraham also strongly emphasized that under no circumstances was Isaac to return to Paddan Aram.
After Jacob has deceived his father and stolen his brother’s blessing, Esau becomes so angry that he intends to kill Jacob. He is only waiting for his father’s death (a somewhat more distant event than either Esau or Isaac supposed). Rebekah hears of Esau’s intentions and sets out to save her son’s life. When she speaks to Jacob in 27:42-45, she says nothing to him about marriage. She only warns Jacob of Esau’s plan to kill him. She urges her son Jacob to flee to her brother Laban in Paddan Aram, where he is to stay for “a few days” until Esau’s anger subsides.
The marriage of Jacob is the pretext for sending him away from his brother Esau in order to spare his life. When Rebekah speaks to her husband Isaac, she says nothing of Esau’s plan to kill Jacob. She points out that Esau has married the daughters of Heth, and that she could not live if this were to happen to her son Jacob. In response, Isaac calls Jacob and sends him to Paddan Aram to acquire a wife from the daughters of his uncle Laban. Isaac does not seek to keep Jacob from going to Paddan Aram, as Abraham kept him from going there. He does not warn him not to stay there. He simply sends him on his way.
The point of all this is that neither Isaac nor Rebekah took this marriage matter as seriously as they should have. It was more of a pretext than a matter of primary importance. Granted, Isaac and Rebekah wrung their hands when Esau married two Hittite women, but they did not seem to have given him any instruction on this matter. They left him to figure it out for himself (28:6-9). Now, Esau is married, but Jacob is not. Still, his parents do nothing to secure a wife for him. It is only after Rebekah learns that Esau plans to kill Jacob that she and Isaac send Jacob away. The deceiving of Isaac and the theft of Isaac’s blessing is the reason why Jacob went to Paddan Aram. Jacob did not go about getting a wife in a godly manner. His circumstances forced him into a situation in which he providentially obtained his wives from his mother’s family. What a contrast this is to chapter 24, where Abraham so purposefully sought to obtain a wife for his son. It was circumstances, not faith, nor obedience, which caused Jacob to obtain his wife in Paddan Aram. It is my feeling that if God had not compelled Jacob to return to Canaan, he would have stayed on in Paddan Aram indefinitely, away from the land of blessing.
Jacob hastily leaves Canaan for Paddan Aram, eager to be away from his brother’s anger. On his way, he came to Bethel,81 where he spent the night. During the night, Jacob received a most important vision:
11 He reached a certain place, where he decided to camp because the sun had gone down. He took one of the stones and placed it near his head. Then he fell asleep in that place 12 and had a dream. He saw a stairway erected on the earth with its top reaching to the heavens. The angels of God were going up and coming down it 13 and the Lord stood at its top. He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the ground you are lying on. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. All the families of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using your name and that of your descendants. 15 I am with you! I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you!” 16 Then Jacob woke up and thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, but I did not realize it!” 17 He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! This is nothing else than the house of God! This is the gate of heaven!” 18 Early in the morning Jacob took the stone he had placed near his head and set it up as a sacred stone. Then he poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, although the former name of the town was Luz. 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God is with me and protects me on this journey I am taking and gives me food to eat and clothing to wear, 21 and I return safely to my father’s home, then the Lord will become my God. 22 Then this stone that I have set up as a sacred stone will be the house of God, and I will surely give you back a tenth of everything you give me” (Genesis 28:11-22).82
Jacob’s vision served several important purposes. On the one hand, it was a direct divine announcement to Jacob that he was the heir of the Abrahamic Covenant (28:13-15). In addition, it contained a promise from God that although he was leaving Canaan, God would protect him outside the land and would bring him safely home. It was also a declaration not only of God’s choice of Abraham, Isaac, and now Jacob, but of His choice of this land as the place where God would meet man. This was a message Jacob seized upon. God was in this place in a special way, and Jacob had not realized it until now. This was the “gate of heaven” (28:17).
The inference should be clear. There was no place else on earth like this land, the land of Canaan. God was there in a special way. This was the land that God now promised to give to Jacob and to his descendants. This was also the land that Jacob was about to leave. There was only one logical conclusion to reach from this dream: If God was somehow uniquely present in this place, then Jacob would most certainly need to return here. He may have needed to leave this place for a while, but God would protect him and would bring him safely back. Nowhere else should become Jacob’s permanent home.
Jacob’s response to this dream was somewhat less than satisfactory. He did not praise God for the blessing He just pronounced on him. He did not vow to return to this place, no matter what. The best he can do is to make a promise, based upon a number of “if’s:”
If God would go with him,
If God would protect him on his journey,
If God would provide for his needs, and
If God would bring him back to Canaan safely,
Then Jacob would make the Lord his God (verses 20-21).
Then Jacob would give a tenth (or a tithe) to Him (verse 22).
Having said this, Jacob set up a stone as a memorial and made his way to Paddan Aram.
Like Abraham’s servant, Jacob finds his wife at a well near Laban’s home. Moses tells us about an incident that took place at this well, which gives us much insight into Jacob’s character. Jacob arrives at a well in the field. It may have been the very same well that Abraham’s servant came to years before. Three flocks of sheep were lying down beside the well. The well was covered by a large stone, and no one seemed to be doing anything to uncover the well so that the flocks could be watered. Jacob watched for some time, and then he could not help but ask why they didn’t uncover the well, water their flocks, and then put them out to graze. It looked like they were wasting time.
The shepherds had a very reasonable answer. They were waiting for others who would come and remove the stone; then they would water their flocks. Afterwards, those who uncovered the well would cover it again. I understand this explanation this way:
“This is not our well. It belongs to another. We have to purchase water from him. Every day we line up by the well with our flocks, and then the owner sends his servants to uncover the well. When they uncover the well, then we water our flocks. When we are done, they cover the well again and leave. This we do day after day.”
This was not a “self-service” well. You had to purchase its water. Shepherds had no right to uncover the well and to help themselves. They had to wait for the owner or his servants to give them access to the water. They had to pay for what they used. It was perfectly logical, but it made no sense to Jacob. When Rachel arrived with her father’s flock, Jacob decided to wait no longer. He removed the stone and watered her flocks. (What an interesting reversal from the previous visit by Abraham’s servant. On this occasion, Jacob’s mother gave water to the servant, and then she watered his camels.)
This story tells us a great deal about Jacob. This fellow didn’t care about “the rules.” He did not care how things were done. If something did not make sense to him – or if it was inconvenient – then Jacob would willfully bypass the rules. Jacob could well have written the lyrics to a contemporary song, “I did it my way.” So he did, and he usually paid a high price for doing so.
I believe that Moses intends for us to compare and contrast Jacob’s conduct at this well with the conduct of Abraham’s servant at the well in chapter 24. In chapter 24, it was not Isaac who was at the well, but Abraham’s servant. The servant prayed that God would lead him to the right wife for Isaac, and then he praised God for doing so. Abraham’s servant sought for a woman who was a relative of Abraham, but also for a woman of character. Jacob, on the other hand, immediately falls in love with Rachel, based on her looks and personality, and not on her character. He does not pray before he meets Rachel, just as he does not pray after he finds her. Instead, Isaac weeps and kisses Rachel.
Jacob gets more than he bargains for when he negotiates with Laban for a wife. He intends to marry Rachel, and when he bargains with Laban, that is what he thinks he is going to get. When Jacob asks for Rachel’s hand in marriage, Laban’s words are carefully chosen: “I’d rather give her to you than to another man. Stay with me” (29:19b). I chuckle every time I read the rest of Jacob’s wedding story. Jacob takes his new wife into his tent, where his marriage is consummated. In the morning, Jacob wakes up and beholds his new bride in the light of day, only to find out he has married Leah. He is incensed; he is filled with righteous indignation, and he expresses this to Laban:
25 In the morning Jacob discovered it was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, “What in the world have you done to me! Didn’t I work for you in exchange for Rachel? Why have you tricked me?” 26 “It is not our custom here,” Laban replied, “to give the younger daughter in marriage before the firstborn. 27 Complete my older daughter’s bridal week. Then we will give you the younger one too, in exchange for seven more years of work” (Genesis 29:25-27).
Laban was one shrewd fellow. He probably knew Jacob loved Rachel so much that he would work yet another seven years for her. He makes no apologies for his actions, pointing out what I believe Jacob already knew to be the custom: the oldest daughter was married off first, and then the younger daughter(s). Once again, Jacob was not interested in following the rules, but only in getting what he wanted. Perhaps, too, Jacob could not avoid seeing the poetic justice in what had happened.83 He had deceived his father in order to obtain his blessing, and by so doing, he substituted himself (the younger) for Esau (the older). Now, God allowed Laban to substitute the older (Leah) for the younger (Rachel). Jacob was getting a dose of his own medicine.
It is important to see that Jacob’s choice of Rachel over Leah was much like Isaac’s choice of Esau over Jacob. God’s blessings were in accord with neither Isaac’s nor Jacob’s preferences. God blessed Jacob over Esau, even as He blessed Leah over Rachel. Leah bore six sons and one daughter, and her handmaid bore Jacob two more sons, while Rachel bore only two sons, and her maid another two (Genesis 35:22-27). Compared individually, Leah had three times as many children as Rachel (six to two). Collectively, Leah and her handmaid produced twice as many sons for Jacob as did Rachel and her handmaid (8 to 4).
There is more to it than this, however. Rachel died earlier than Leah and was buried along the road (Genesis 35:19), while Leah lived longer and was buried in the family burial place (49:29-32). To me, Leah had more spiritual perception than Rachel (compare 29:32, 33, 35; 30:8). For example, it was Rachel who stole her father’s household idols (31:19). She also seemed to be very much like her husband (see 30:8). You will note that Rachel’s two sons Joseph and Benjamin do not play a major role in the spiritual leadership of the nation Israel, while Levi and Judah (both Leah’s sons) do.
Through a very complicated and competitive process, Jacob acquired two wives and two concubines while in Paddan Aram. These four women bore Jacob the twelve sons who would become the patriarchs of the nation Israel.84 During his 20-year sojourn in Paddan Aram, Jacob became a wealthy man, largely at the expense of Laban and his sons. His prosperity came in a different way than he originally thought. For the first 14 years of his stay with Laban, Jacob worked for Laban as payment for his two wives. But when Jacob was ready to leave with his wives, Laban urged him to stay and to name his wages, for Jacob had made him a wealthy man (30:26-30). Jacob offered Laban a deal he could hardly refuse. Laban was not to pay him anything, but simply to give him the speckled and spotted sheep and goats, and the black lambs. Since these were the rare offspring, Laban thought he could hardly lose, and so he agreed.85
Jacob was not content to leave his prosperity to God, and so he devised a clever scheme by which he thought he would gain at Laban’s expense. He assumed that he could influence the offspring of Laban’s cattle by manipulating their environment. And so he took freshly cut branches and peeled them, so that they would be striped, and then he placed them in close proximity to the strongest and best of Laban’s flocks (30:37-43). From all appearances, his scheme seemed to be working:
37 But Jacob took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond, and plane trees. He made white streaks by peeling them, making the white inner wood in the branches visible. 38 Then he set up the peeled branches in all the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink. He set up the branches in front of the flocks when they were in heat and came to drink. 39 When the sheep mated in front of the branches, they gave birth to young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. 40 Jacob removed these lambs, but he made the rest of the flock face the streaked and completely dark-colored animals in Laban’s flock. So he made separate flocks for himself and did not mix them with Laban’s flocks. 41 When the stronger females were in heat, Jacob would set up the branches in the troughs in front of the flock, so they would mate near the branches. 42 But if the animals were weaker, he did not set the branches there. So the weaker animals ended up belonging to Laban and the stronger animals to Jacob. 43 In this way Jacob became extremely prosperous. He owned large flocks, male and female servants, camels, and donkeys (Genesis 30:37-43).
In my mind’s eye, I can see Jacob peeling pole after pole, smiling to himself as he thought of how clever he was. He was finally getting even with Laban; in fact, he was gaining the upper hand. Day and night Jacob must have worked at this scheme, willing to put out the extra effort because he was making himself prosperous. And then one day God let him know the true cause of his prosperity:
10 “Once during breeding season I saw in a dream that the male goats mating with the flock were streaked, speckled, and spotted. 11 In the dream the angel of God said to me, ‘Jacob!’ ‘Here I am!’ I replied. 12 Then he said, ‘Observe that all the male goats mating with the flock are streaked, speckled, or spotted, for I have observed all that Laban has done to you. 13 I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the sacred stone and made a vow to me. Now leave this land immediately and return to your native land’” (Genesis 31:10-13).
What a shocking revelation this was! His prosperity had absolutely nothing to do with all those branches he had peeled and strategically placed among the flocks. In his dream, God pointed out that only the “streaked, speckled, and spotted” goats were mating. The offspring were streaked, speckled, or spotted because only the streaked, speckled, or spotted males were mating. It had nothing at all to do with being around those peeled branches. God caused this to happen because of His covenant promise to Jacob, and because Laban had dealt in an unfair manner with Jacob. All of Jacob’s efforts were wasted efforts. They counted for nothing at all. His “works” counted for nothing so far as his blessings were concerned, just as our works count for nothing so far as our salvation is concerned (see Titus 3:3-7).
Once again in Genesis prosperity brings about a separation (see Genesis 13:6-13; 26:12-17; see also 36:6-8). Laban’s wealth, acquired largely due to Jacob’s presence for those first 14 years, was now largely transferred from Laban and his sons to Jacob. Laban’s sons were all too aware of this and were very bitter toward Jacob (31:1-2). It was at this time that God spoke to Jacob, instructing him to return to the land of Canaan (31:3). I don’t believe Jacob would have been willing to leave Paddan Aram if his relationship with Laban and his sons had not become so strained. But now he was more than ready. He gathered his wives, children, and cattle and left without saying a word to Laban.
When Laban learned that Jacob and his family and flocks had fled, he was incensed that Jacob would deceive him in this way. He was even more distressed to discover that Jacob’s absence corresponded with the absence of his family idols (31:19, 30). I believe Laban may have seriously considered killing Jacob, thereby retrieving his daughters, grandchildren, and cattle. God put a quick end to any such thoughts by warning Laban in a dream not to even speak harshly to Jacob (31:24, 29). Because of this warning, Laban gently rebuked Jacob, and then sought to recover his lost idols. Due to Rachel’s cunning, Laban did not find them. After getting an earful of Jacob’s outpouring of “righteous indignation,” Laban pressed Jacob to make a covenant – a sort of non-aggression treaty – with him, and then the two went their separate ways.
Jacob’s return to Canaan was not all that the reader would wish it to be. God had instructed Jacob to return to his homeland and to his relatives:
The Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your relatives. I will be with you” (Genesis 31:3).
We would have expected Jacob to return to Bethel, the place of his dream (28:10-22), but Jacob seems to be in no hurry to get there. Along the way the “angels of God” meet Jacob and his family (32:1-2). Jacob’s main concern is his brother Esau, who had determined to kill him before he fled to Paddan Aram. Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to notify Esau that he was soon to arrive. His messengers returned to inform Jacob that Esau was on his way to meet him, with 400 armed men. Surely Jacob assumed that his brother was about to attack.
Jacob was frightened and divided his entourage into two groups, thinking that if one group were attacked, the other might escape and survive. He then prayed for God’s protection:
9 Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, you said to me, ‘Return to your land and to your relatives and I will make you prosper.’ 10 I am not worthy of all the faithful love you have shown your servant. With only my walking stick I crossed the Jordan, but now I have become two camps. 11 Rescue me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, as well as the mothers with their children. 12 But you said, ‘I will certainly make you prosper, and will make your descendants like the sand on the seashore, too numerous to count’” (Genesis 32:9-12).
Having prayed, Jacob arranged a gift for his brother, composed of several groups or “waves” of cattle. All of this Jacob hoped would appease his brother’s anger and result in his brother’s acceptance.
That night Jacob had a most unusual wrestling match with God (Genesis 32:22-32). I must confess that it is a difficult incident to understand. It is not hard to think of Jacob wrestling. He did this in the womb (25:22-23), and in much of his life, he struggled to gain the advantage over someone. His wife, Rachel, was much the same way (see 29:8). Two things have puzzled me about this wrestling match. The first is that there was any contest at all. Couldn’t God overcome Jacob in a wrestling match? Of course He could, and He did. With a mere touch, He dislocated Jacob’s hip joint. I believe God wanted to give Jacob the impression that he had prevailed and that he had the upper hand, just to see what he would ask for when he seemed to have the advantage. Jacob is not willing to let go until God had blessed him. This is certainly progress from the Jacob we saw earlier, decked out in his brother’s clothing, neck and arms covered with animal skins. He was right to understand that blessings come from God.
The other thing that has always troubled me about this account is that God said, “What is your name?” He answered, “Jacob.” “No longer will your name be Jacob,” the man told him, “but Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:27b-28). How can anyone fight with God and prevail over Him? One possibility is that God is not speaking with reference to the past, but with reference to the future. This “blessing” that God pronounces upon Jacob is that he, the one who had characteristically wrestled with both God and man, would now prevail with God and man. It was not his struggling that earned him God’s blessing, but rather God’s grace. Jacob should now see that his struggle was not with others, but with God. We should hardly chalk this incident up as a victory over God for Jacob, in the sense that this man successfully opposed God, and won. Jacob rightly grasped the significance of that moment: he had seen God and had lived to tell about it.
The sad thing about this wrestling match with God is that it seems to have had very little permanent impact on Jacob. The Jacob we see after this amazing incident is largely the same old Jacob we have seen all along. After this wrestling match was over, Jacob did seem to change his course in one positive way: when his family set out to meet Esau, Jacob moved to the front, rather than to hide out at the back (see 23:3).
The meeting with Esau went amazingly well. Jacob found a brother who welcomed him with open arms, even though he had deceived him and stolen his blessing. The armed men who accompanied Esau seem to be those he brought with him to protect Jacob, not to kill him. Jacob strongly resisted Esau’s kind offer to accompany him, urging his brother to go on ahead, and assuring him that he would catch up. It is my personal opinion that Jacob still feared his brother and did not wish to be close to him for any period of time. Jacob argued that his pace would only hold his brother up and that he would prefer to drive his flocks at a slower pace, for their benefit. And with this, Esau mounts up and rides off to his home in Seir.
What follows is not very encouraging. It seems very much like Jacob lied to Esau when he promised to come to him soon (33:14):
16 So that same day Esau made his way back to Seir. 17 But Jacob traveled to Succoth, where he built himself a house and made shelters for his livestock. That is why the place was called Succoth.18 After he left Paddan Aram, Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem in the land of Canaan, and he camped near the city. 19 Then he purchased the portion of the field where he had pitched his tent; he bought it from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for a hundred pieces of money. 20 There he set up an altar and called it “The God of Israel is God” (Genesis 33:18-20, emphasis mine).
Why would Jacob have “built himself a house” and “made shelters for his livestock” at Succoth (33:17) if he was planning to go directly to Seir where Esau lived? We are then told that Jacob arrived at the city of Shechem, and from what we read in chapter 34, it would seem as though Jacob intended to stay there indefinitely. I think it is reasonable to conclude that Jacob didn’t intend to go anywhere close to where Esau lived because he was afraid of him. Had it not been for a very ugly incident at Shechem, I doubt that Joseph would have ever returned to his father.
Leah’s daughter, Dinah, went into the city of Shechem to visit with some of the young women there (34:1). While she was in the city, Shechem, the mayor’s son, saw Dinah, took her, and raped her (34:2). Jacob heard about this incident when his sons were out in the field, but he did nothing about it. Shechem was very attracted to Dinah and wanted to marry her. He had his father meet with Jacob to see if a marriage could be arranged. Jacob was willing to do so, but this would have meant the end of the nation Israel before it really got started. If they had remained in Shechem, intermarrying with the Canaanites, the nation Israel would have been absorbed by the Canaanites, which is exactly what Haman, Shechem’s father, promised his fellow-citizens (34:20-24).
Leah’s brothers were deeply incensed by the crime that Shechem had committed against their sister, and they were not about to let him get away with it. Deceitfully, Simeon and Levi insisted that they could not allow their sister to marry anyone who was not circumcised. The same would hold true for any other Israelite woman. And so the men of Shechem consented to be circumcised. By the third day after their circumcision the men of Shechem were in great agony, and definitely not in any condition to fight. Simeon and Levi went into the city of Shechem and slaughtered all the men, taking their wives, children, and possessions as spoil. They began by killing Haman and his son Shechem and retrieving their sister Dinah (34:16).
Jacob was greatly angered by the action taken by his sons. He feared reprisals from “friends and family” of those who his sons had killed. Jacob was primarily concerned with the repercussions of this slaughter, and not with the moral issues involved. His sons put it very well, “Should he treat our sister like a common prostitute?” (34:31b).
If Jacob had intended to live near Shechem, this was no longer possible. They must flee from that place before any relatives attempted to seek revenge for this slaughter. God once again spoke to Jacob, telling him to leave:
Then God said to Jacob, “Go up at once to Bethel and live there. Make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau” (35:1).
And so Jacob and his family quickly departed for Bethel. Once again, Jacob is driven my by a crisis rather than by principle.
More than twenty years after his flight from Canaan and his brother Esau, Jacob finally returns to Bethel, the place where God had first appeared to him. Here Jacob built an altar. It was also here that Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried beneath the oak tree (35:8). God once again appeared to Jacob, reaffirming His covenant:
9 God appeared to Jacob again after he returned from Paddan Aram and blessed him 10 God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but your name will no longer be called Jacob; Israel will be your name.” So God named him Israel. 11 Then God said to him, “I am the Sovereign God. Be fruitful and multiply! A nation—even a company of nations—will descend from you; kings will be among your descendants! 12 The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you. To your descendants I will also give this land.” 13 Then God went up from the place where he spoke with him. 14 So Jacob set up a sacred stone pillar in the place where God spoke with him. He poured out a drink offering on it and then he poured oil on it. 15 Jacob named the place where God spoke with him Bethel (Genesis 35:9-15).
As Jacob went on from Bethel, Rachel went into labor and delivered her second son, whom she named “Ben-oni” (son of my sorrow), but Jacob changed his name to Benjamin (son of my right hand). Rachel died and was buried along the way (35:19-20). We know that Leah died later and was buried in the family burial plot (49:29-32). We are not told how the reunion with Isaac went, but only that Jacob and Esau jointly buried him after his death at the ripe old age of 180 (35:28-29).
The story of Jacob is far from over. Moses will continue to describe God’s working in his life until the last chapter of Genesis. There are some lessons to be learned from Jacob, which can be seen from our text. Let me close this message by pointing out some of these lessons.
There is a correspondence between Jacob’s sojourn in Paddan Aram and his later sojourn in Egypt, along with his family. Several details strike me about Jacob’s departure and later return to Bethel. First, Jacob went to Paddan Aram as a penniless individual; he returned with great wealth, wives, and children. Similarly, Jacob and his family went to Egypt during a famine, with little wealth, but when the nation Israel left Egypt, they came away with considerable wealth. Second, Jacob returned to Canaan with much of Laban’s wealth, because Laban sought to mistreat him (31:1, 11-12). Much of the wealth the Israelites brought out of Egypt was given them by the Egyptians, who were eager to see them leave. The wealth they were given was really “back pay” for all their labors. Third, Jacob was met by the angels of God (32:1-2). The Israelites were likewise cared for by angels (Exodus 14:19; 23:20, 23; 32:34; 33:2; Numbers 20:16; Psalm 78:25, 49). Fourth, Jacob left Canaan because of the anger and hostility of his brother (chapters 27-28; 35:1). Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt because of his brothers’ hatred (Genesis 37). When he returned, his brother and he were reconciled (chapter 33). Joseph and his brothers were likewise reconciled (Genesis 45). Fifth, Jacob had his family put off all their foreign gods (35:2-4). The Israelites were likewise instructed to put away the
gods their fathers had worshipped in Egypt (Joshua 24:14; see also Amos 5:25-26). Sixth, God brought terror upon all those who might have opposed Jacob’s return (35:5). So, too, the nations heard of God’s triumph over Egypt at the exodus and were terrified (Exodus 15:14-16; Numbers 22:3-4; Joshua 2:10-11).
Jacob’s sojourn in Paddan Aram was a prelude to, and a prototype of, Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. It was intended to demonstrate how God kept His covenant promises, protecting and providing for His people. As God cared for Jacob (Israel), so He would care for the nation Israel.
In our Lord’s day, the Jews took great pride in their identification with Abraham. They boasted in the fact that they were Abraham’s offspring (see Matthew 3:9; John 8:33, 39). Nowhere that I can think of does anyone boast in the fact that they are Jacob’s offspring. God chose to name Jacob “Israel” because the Israelites would be like their forefather. In many ways, Israel’s history is a rerun of Jacob’s life. How many times God’s purposes and promises for Israel are fulfilled providentially, and not by the obedience of faith. The life of Jacob is not a life of faith, but a life of wrestling and struggling, with God and man. Jacob does not provide us with an example of a man of faith, but his life surely illustrates the faithfulness of God, in spite of man’s unfaithfulness:
If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:12).
Jacob teaches us a great deal about “getting ahead in life.” Jacob was a man who knew all about asserting himself, about “looking out for number one.” He was more than willing to get ahead at the expense of others. Up to this point in his life, I see no humility, and no servanthood. He grasped every opportunity to further his own personal interests, at the expense of others. His life is a vivid contrast to what we are taught in the Book of Philippians:
3 Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself. 4 Each of you should be concerned not only about your own interests, but about the interests of others as well. 5 You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had,
6 who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
8 He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross!
9 As a result God exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow
—in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess
to the glory of God the Father
that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:3-11).
What a contrast Jacob is to our Lord (above), and to men like Timothy and Epaphroditus:86
19 Now I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you quickly, so that I too may be encouraged by hearing news about you. 20 For there is no one here like him who will readily demonstrate his deep concern for you. 21 Others are busy with their own concerns, not those of Jesus Christ. 22 But you know his qualifications, that like a son working with his father, he served with me in advancing the gospel. 23 So I hope to send him as soon as I know more about my situation, 24 though I am confident in the Lord that I too will be coming soon (Philippians 2:19-24, emphasis mine).
Jacob has not yet learned the Christian paradox that one saves his life by giving it up, and he gains most by giving. Unfortunately, Jacob is typical of many successful people today – he sought to succeed by outwitting others. And the irony of it all is that Jacob’s deception and scheming contributed nothing to his success, which was all of God, and all of grace. The only thing his scheming brought him was broken relationships and adversity.
There is surely a lesson in our text concerning marriage and the family. We learn from Esau the dangers of intermarriage. This was a significant threat to the nation Israel, because it was through the Jews that the promised Messiah would come. It was also dangerous because foreign wives would turn the hearts of the Israelites to worship their gods. Who we choose for our life’s mate is very important today as well. To marry outside the faith is not only wrong (see 1 Corinthians 7:39; see also 2 Corinthians 6:14-18), it has very painful consequences. Let us learn from Jacob that we should not choose a wife on the basis of appearances, but rather on the basis of godly character.
I think we can also see that polygamy creates all kinds of problems. We read of how Jacob loved Rachel, but not Leah, and our hearts go out to Leah, the unloved wife. On the other hand, we must ask ourselves, “What do we expect?” Marriage was never designed to be anything other than a “one man, one woman” relationship. I am to love my wife, which means I must value and treasure her above all others. How can any man have two wives and love them equally? The choice to marry a woman includes a determination to value her above anyone else. This can only happen with one woman. Polygamy always has its problems.
We certainly can learn something about parenting from the bad example of Isaac and Rebekah. The first mistake is that both Isaac and Rebekah favored one of their children, so much so that one must wonder if the child isn’t more loved than their mate. Rebekah is certainly not submissive to her husband, but Isaac is being underhanded in his dealings with his wife. Neither Isaac nor Rebekah seemed to teach their children about walking with God and about choosing a godly wife. They agonized over the consequences of bad parenting, but did nothing to correct it. Much of their sorrow was of their own doing, because their sins were amplified in the lives of their sons.
Jacob seems to live out what I would call “crisis Christianity.” In his day-to-day life, he lives very much like the pagans, giving little attention to the things of God. He employs fleshly means to get ahead, rather than faith, exercised through humility and servanthood. It is only when his back is to the wall and he has no other choice that he seems to call on God to rescue him. There is no hint of a daily walk in fellowship with God. There are several very significant spiritual high points in his life (such as his dream at Bethel), but these produce no permanent change.
How many of us live much the same kind of life? We go our merry way, employing our own devices, seeking to further our interests. Only when our plans collapse, or when real danger looms on the horizon, do we turn to God. Only then do we pray and read His Word. From time to time, we may have a “mountain top” spiritual experience or encounter with God, but no permanent fruit results. Let us not be like Jacob, turning to God only in times of crisis. Let us abide in Him, walking by faith, and not by sight, placing the interests of others above our own.
77 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on December 10, 2000.
78 A more detailed exposition of Genesis by this author is available at the Biblical Studies Foundation Website, to be found at www.bible.org.
79 Isaac seriously miscalculated the time of his death. He was right at 100 years old when he thought he was dying and blessed Jacob (He was 60 when Rebekah had the twins, 25:26; and the boys were about 40 when Jacob fled, 26:34). Isaac was 180 years old when he died (35:29).
80 While much of the “blessing” pronounced upon Esau is more of a curse, there is the promise of verse 40 that Esau will someday “tear off the yoke” that is around his neck. This is consistent with the Abrahamic Covenant, which promised blessing through Abraham’s offspring to all the nations. It also seems consistent with the words of Amos 9:11-12; see also Acts 15:16-18.
81 This is where Abraham worshipped the Lord; see 12:8; 13:3.
82 The reader should recognize that Jesus referred to this dream as a prophecy concerning Himself (John 1:50-51). There, our Lord speaks of Himself as the stairway, the Mediator between heaven and earth, between men and God. If Jacob was greatly impressed with where the stairway was placed, he would really have been impressed with what the stairway symbolized.
83 Joseph’s brothers realized that their circumstances were the result of their previous sin (see Genesis 42:18-22).
84 Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, give him a double portion, as though he were the firstborn.
85 Jacob later accuses Laban of changing his wages ten times (Genesis 31:41).
86 See Philippians 2:25-30.
Genesis 37:1—50:26
For several years, I was actively involved in prison ministry, teaching in-prison seminars for Prison Fellowship in a few prisons around the country. I knew that in some prisons a number of the inmates had lower than average reading skills; some did not even speak English.88 I was told that because of this the attention span of some inmates was limited to just a few minutes, and thus I would need to continually interject activities to hold the attention of those who attended. It occurred to me that the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis might be a better way to communicate with the seminar participants, and so I would work my way from Genesis 37 to Genesis 45, all in one weekend. What I found was amazing. This story so captured their interest and attention that they listened intently for more than an hour at a time, if necessary.
I also noticed a marked change that took place during the course of the seminar. In the beginning, everyone tended to identify with Joseph, the innocent victim who was betrayed by his brothers. Even those who were guilty of their crimes tended to identify someone who was responsible for their incarceration and to focus their anger towards them. When Joseph’s brothers arrived in Egypt and Joseph dealt harshly with them, there was a sense of enjoyment and satisfaction: “Yes, Joseph was getting even with them, and they deserved it!” But as the story of Joseph approached its conclusion, my audience came to see that Joseph’s dealings with his brothers were not motivated by revenge, but by love. They began to grasp the key role that Judah played in this drama, and some began to identify more with him than with Joseph. As the men witnessed Joseph’s attitude toward his incarceration, they were intrigued. As they observed his recognition of the sovereignty of God, they were fascinated. As they read of his forgiveness of his brothers, who had unjustly sold him into bondage, they were amazed. This story has a powerful message that speaks not only to prisoners, but also to every single one of us.
The story of Joseph is one of the great dramas of the Bible. A young man is favored by his father and is consequently hated by his brothers. The brothers conspire to rid themselves of Joseph, and sell him as a slave to a caravan of Ishmaelites, headed for Egypt. Doing right by his Egyptian master wins Joseph Potiphar’s favor, which makes Joseph the most powerful man under his authority. Remaining faithful to his master by rejecting his wife’s advances angers her, and causes Joseph to be imprisoned on false charges. Eventually, Joseph is elevated to the second highest position in the land, and then God uses a famine to bring his brothers to Egypt. He has the perfect opportunity to get revenge, but he does not do so. Joseph’s dealings with his brothers will eventually bring them to repentance, and thus they will be reconciled as a family. Joseph plays a very key role in the history of the nation Israel, and his example has much to teach us as well.
Actually, the story of Joseph begins before Genesis 37. The twelve sons of Jacob were the offspring of four mothers. The rivalry between Jacob’s two wives and two concubines caused much dissention within the family. Joseph, along with his younger brother Benjamin, were the only children of Rachel, Jacob’s favored wife. Eight of Joseph’s siblings were the sons of Jacob’s unloved wife, Leah, and her handmaid, Zilpah (see Genesis 34:22b-26). It was all too apparent to these older brothers that Jacob loved Joseph — the “son of his old age” — more than all of them combined (37:3, 4), and for this reason they hated Joseph.
There were other contributing factors, which fueled the hatred of these older brothers for Joseph. Jacob (Israel) unwisely used this 17-year-old boy to spy on his other sons and had Joseph report to him privately (37:2. 13-14). His father also gave Joseph a multi-colored tunic, which was a symbol of his power and precedence over his brothers (37:3). In addition to this, Joseph was unwise in the way he related to his brothers. This may have been due to the naivety of youth, but his brothers were greatly angered by his reports of his two dreams, both of which symbolized his authority over them, and even over their parents. Eventually, Joseph’s brothers could not speak to him in a civil manner (37:4).
For some reason, Joseph was kept at home when his brothers took their father’s flock to graze near Shechem. Israel became somewhat uneasy about how things were going in Shechem, and his fears were not ill-founded. This is where Jacob had purchased some land (33:19). It is also the place where Jacob’s two sons, Simeon and Levi, killed Shechem (who had raped their sister, Dinah) and the men of the city, taking the women, children, and cattle of Shechem as spoil (Genesis 34). It could certainly be a dangerous place for these sons of Jacob to remain, and so Israel sent Joseph to Shechem to check on his brothers.
As it turns out, Joseph’s brothers had moved on to Dothan, nearly 20 miles further to the north and thus that much more distant from Jacob’s watchful eye.89 Providentially, a man saw Joseph wandering about in the fields around Shechem. He just happened to overhear Joseph’s brothers saying that they were moving on to Dothan, so Joseph set out to find them. When his brothers looked up and saw someone approaching from a distance, there was no question who it was. That distinctive multi-colored tunic, with sleeves, gave Joseph away. They had plenty of time to agree among themselves that this was their golden opportunity to be rid of him. At least some of the brothers wanted to kill Joseph and end it then and there.
Reuben did not agree with this plan. He wanted to spare Joseph’s life, but it would seem that his motives were self-serving. He, after all, was the eldest of Israel’s sons, and he would be held responsible for not looking after Joseph. Because of this, he sought to spare Joseph’s life. He convinced his brothers to throw Joseph into a nearby cistern, thinking that he would return and free the lad later on. Providentially, the cistern was dry so that Joseph did not drown.
Reuben was gone – perhaps taking his turn watching the flock – when his brothers sat down to eat, somewhere near the cistern, probably well within hearing distance, so that as they ate they could hear his cries for help.90 Dothan was on the trading route to Egypt, and it “just so happened” that as they were eating, they looked up to see a caravan of Ishmaelites drawing near. Their camels were carrying spices, balm, and myrrh, a detail that will be taken up later.
It was at this point Judah proposed a more profitable solution to their problem. Rather than killing Joseph, why not sell him as a slave? They would be rid of him, yet they would not be guilty of shedding his blood. And, to make this an even more tempting opportunity, they could make a little money for themselves at the same time. This seemed to accomplish all of their objectives better than killing Joseph. Since Reuben was not there to object, Judah’s suggestion was adopted. They pulled Joseph out of the cistern and handed him over to the Ishmaelites, who paid them twenty pieces of silver (37:28). Some time later, Reuben returned to the cistern to release Joseph, only to find that he was gone. Reuben reported this to his brothers, and we are not told that they confessed what they had done. They all tore up Joseph’s tunic and dipped it in goat’s blood, to make it look as though Joseph had been killed and eaten by a wild animal.
Coldly, the brothers thrust the blood-drenched tunic into their father’s hands, asking him if it was Joseph’s garment. They let their father draw his own false conclusion – that Joseph had been killed and devoured by a wild animal. I wonder if there was a certain satisfaction for these sons of Israel when they saw their father mourning the loss of his favorite son. They attempted to console him, but he was unwilling to be comforted.
Genesis 38 may seem somewhat out of place at first glance, but this is far from the case. Why does Moses change the focus from Joseph in chapter 37 to Judah in chapter 38, only to return once again to Joseph in chapters 39 and following? First, we must bear in mind that Jacob will soon announce that the promised Messiah will come through the line of Judah (Genesis 49:8-12). Second, we should recall that it was Judah who proposed that the brothers sell Joseph into slavery, rather than to kill him (37:26-27). Third, Judah’s immorality in chapter 38 will serve as a backdrop, against which the moral purity of Joseph will be contrasted in Genesis 39. Fourth, chapter 38 sets the scene for Joseph’s reunion with his brothers in chapters 42 and following. It is approximately 22 years from the time Joseph is sold into slavery to the time his brothers arrive in Egypt, seeking grain.91 Chapter 38 covers this same period of time, but focuses on Judah and his conduct in the land of Canaan. During this same time frame of 22 years (approximately), Judah leaves home, marries a Canaanite woman, and has three sons, two of whom are old enough to marry, and are so wicked that God takes their lives.
It’s not hard to understand why Judah would leave home. It must have been pure misery to watch Jacob pining away in sorrow, refusing to be comforted (37:35). Abraham was very careful to obtain a non-Canaanite wife for his son, Isaac (chapter 24). Isaac and Rebekah were not as careful, but God providentially provided two wives for Jacob from Rebekah’s brother Laban, in Paddan Aram (Genesis 29). Judah promptly leaves home and marries a Canaanite woman (38:1-2).92 She has three sons. When the firstborn son was old enough, Judah acquired a Canaanite wife for him named Tamar. Judah’s first son, Er, was evil in God’s sight and the Lord took his life (38:7). Judah instructed his second son, Onan, to take Tamar and raise up a descendant for his deceased brother, but he prevented Tamar from producing a child. Judah was afraid of losing his youngest son Shelah, so he asked Tamar to live at home until this boy was older.
After the passing of a considerable period of time, Judah’s wife died and Tamar realized that Judah would never give her to Shelah, his only surviving son. She seems to have known Judah all too well, because she disguised herself as a prostitute and stationed herself along the route she knew Judah would be taking to Timnah, along with his friend Hirah. Tamar’s expectations were fulfilled by Judah, who hired her as a prostitute, and left some of his possessions as a guarantee of payment. Tamar had concealed her identity by the use of a veil, and so Judah never knew the identity of his companion that night. Some time later Judah was told that his daughter-in-law had become pregnant, and Judah was indignant. He insisted that she be put to death for her immorality. It was then that Tamar produced Judah’s cylinder seal (the ancient counterpart of a driver’s license or Social Security card today), his cord, and his staff – all items that were as good as fingerprints. Judah confessed that Tamar was more righteous than he. She was the one who sought to preserve his line. She bore twins to Judah, and Perez would be the one through whom the Messianic line would be continued, no thanks to Judah (see Genesis 46:12; Ruth 4:12).
Why would Moses include this rather sordid story here in the midst of the account of Joseph’s betrayal? The reason is both clear and compelling: If Israel had remained in the land of Canaan, and if they had behaved like Judah, there would have been no distinct nation of Israel left to possess the Promised Land. The Israelites would very shortly have been completely assimilated into the Canaanite culture and race. This is why God took the Israelites down to Egypt. The Egyptians loathed the Hebrews and wanted nothing to do with them. With but one rare exception (Mrs. Potiphar), they were not willing to engage in intimate relationships with the Hebrews. Even if Judah and his brothers were willing to be immoral, the Egyptians were not willing – to be immoral with Hebrews, at least. The story of Judah and Tamar explains why God quarantined the Israelites in Egypt for 400 years.
Genesis 39 is a refreshing example of sexual purity. Joseph was purchased from the Ishmaelites by Potiphar, a powerful and prosperous man. Potiphar was a servant of Pharaoh. He owned what appears to be a large and lucrative ranch. Initially, Joseph was probably acquired to work with the flocks. Over a period of time, it became apparent to Potiphar that God’s hand was on Joseph – everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. Before long, Potiphar had put everything under Joseph’s authority. The only decisions Potiphar made concerned what he would have for dinner (39:6).
The problem was that Mrs. Potiphar (a woman whose name is never given – she is only referred to as Potiphar’s wife) began to take note of Joseph. She tried in various ways to seduce him, but Joseph purposed to avoid her. One day she managed to trap Joseph in the house alone, where she once again sought to seduce him. He found it necessary to flee, leaving his outer garment in her grasp (notice how Joseph’s coats always seemed to get him into trouble). She then accused Joseph of attacking her, and Potiphar, her husband, had Joseph thrown into prison.93 Joseph did not have far to go from the “executive suite” to the prison, because they were all in the same house. In those days prisons were really dungeons, under the house of an official like Potiphar. Potiphar was, in fact, the “captain of the guard” (39:1; 40:3). In prison, as in the executive suite, God’s hand of blessing continued to be upon Joseph.
In prison, it would have been very easy for Joseph to wallow in self-pity. He could well have said to himself, “What’s the good of trusting God and doing what is right? So far, it has only gotten me into trouble.” Instead, Joseph set out to minister to others, and before long, the hand of God was once again evident in Joseph’s life. The warden gave Joseph a free hand, putting him in charge of all the prisoners. He virtually ran the prison (39:21-23). It was during this time that two prisoners were added to those under Joseph’s care. One was Pharaoh’s butler (literally, his cup bearer), and the other his baker. Both were paying the price for offending their master. Moses makes a very interesting comment about Joseph’s relationship to these men:
The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be their attendant and he served them (Genesis 40:4, emphasis mine).
The NASB renders, “And the captain of the bodyguard put Joseph in charge of them, and he took care of them.” The important thing to see here is that Joseph really did “serve” or “minister to” these two men, who were under his authority. I believe this is where Joseph had earlier failed in his relationship with his brothers. His father had given him authority over his brothers, but he did not use his leadership role as an occasion to serve them.
How easy it is in prison to overlook the suffering of others, especially if you are suffering. Joseph noted that both the butler and the baker were despondent one morning, and he asked them what was troubling them. They informed Joseph they both had different dreams in the night, but no one could tell them what they meant. Joseph reminded them that interpretations belong to God, and encouraged them to tell him their dreams. (Surely this suggests that they were well aware of Joseph’s relationship with God.) The butler went first, and Joseph told him that God was about to restore him to favor with Pharaoh. Joseph then asked the butler to remember his unjust treatment and to speak kindly for him with Pharaoh, but the butler forgot all about him for two full years. The baker’s dream was different, as was its outcome. His dream indicated that Pharaoh would execute him. Needless to say, Joseph didn’t ask this fellow to remember him before Pharaoh.
It was a full two years before the butler brought Joseph’s name before Pharaoh. The Pharaoh had two dreams that troubled him greatly. The first dream was of seven fat cows, which were eaten by seven very skinny and ugly cows. The second dream was of seven healthy heads of grain that were swallowed up by seven thin heads of grain. None of Pharaoh’s diviners were able to interpret the meaning of these dreams, but the butler remembered the young Hebrew who had interpreted his dream, along with that of the baker,94 while both were in prison. Pharaoh called for Joseph, who made it clear it was God who gave the interpretation of dreams.
Joseph’s words were of great comfort and encouragement to Pharaoh, who must have sensed something ominous about his dreams. The dreams referred to the same events. There would be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of severe famine. The years of famine would consume the abundance of the years of plenty. The fact that there were two dreams confirmed that this would most surely come to pass.95 Joseph now goes beyond the interpretation of these dreams to recommend a solution to the problem they predicted. Here we can see Joseph’s administrative gifts in action. The king should appoint someone to prepare for this disaster, before the years of famine came upon the land of Egypt. Let this person store up grain from the bountiful years, and then distribute it during the lean years.
I do not believe Joseph submitted this plan to Pharaoh, along with his business card, hoping to be hired for this task. I don’t think Joseph ever imagined he would be chosen for such a task. Once again, Joseph was simply trying to serve his king. Neither did Joseph seek to bargain with Pharaoh for his release: “Well, Pharaoh, I know that I can interpret your dreams, but you’re going to have to help me out as well… .” Joseph sought to represent His God by the way he served those in authority over him. Pharaoh could see that Joseph was right and that his wisdom was divine in origin:
37 This advice made sense to Pharaoh and all his officials. 38 So Pharaoh asked his officials, “Can we find a man like Joseph, one in whom the Spirit of God is present?” 39 So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Because God has enabled you to know all this, there is no one as wise and discerning as you are! 40 You will oversee my household and all my people will submit to your commands. Only I, the king, will be greater than you” (Genesis 41:37-40).
These verses toward the end of chapter 41 are very important to our understanding of what will happen when Joseph’s brothers arrive in Egypt, seeking grain for their families:
50 Two sons were born to Joseph before the famine came. Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, was their mother. 51 Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh, saying, “Certainly God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s house.” 52 He named the second child Ephraim, saying, “Certainly God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering” (Genesis 41:50-52).
Joseph named his oldest son Manasseh, which means, “making to forget.” God had caused Joseph to forget all his sufferings at the hand of his brothers (verse 51). The younger son Joseph named Ephraim, which means “fruitfulness.” God had caused Joseph to be fruitful in the land of his affliction. Joseph had no anger toward God or toward his brothers. This meant that when they arrived in Egypt, he could deal with them in love, and not in revenge.
When the famine struck, Egypt was ready for it, thanks to Joseph. Not only did the Egyptians come to Joseph for grain, but also those from other lands, including Canaan. One morning, when the last of the grain was gone, Jacob speaks harshly to his sons:
1 When Jacob heard there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why are you looking at each other?” 2 He then said, “Look, I hear that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy grain for us, so that we may live and not die” (Genesis 42:1-2).
Jacob seems to display irritation and impatience toward his sons. Was this because they also knew that there was grain in Egypt, but were unwilling to go there? Was their guilt and fear due to the way they had treated their brother? I would be inclined to think so.
All the sons of Jacob make their way to Egypt, minus Benjamin. Jacob had lost one of Rachel’s sons while he was out of his sight and in the care of his brothers; he is not willing to run the risk of losing another. When the ten sons of Jacob come before Joseph, the “ruler of the country” (42:6), they fall down before him, unwittingly fulfilling the prophecy of Joseph’s earlier dreams (37:5-11).
Many are tempted to see Joseph’s response as pure revenge. His harshness is thought to be his way of making his brothers pay for their previous sins against them. This view simply cannot be accepted, because the text is just too clear on this matter. First, if Joseph really wanted to make his brothers suffer, he would have immediately made his identity known to them. If Joseph had wanted to terrify his brothers, he would have let them know that it was he who was the ruler of Egypt, and then he would have made them suffer. Second, we are told that while his brothers did not recognize Joseph, he recognized them, and he remembered his dreams (42:7, 9). I understand this to mean Joseph not only realized God had made him the leader of his family, but that this leadership should seek the best interests of the family. It was not revenge Joseph sought, but repentance. Third, we are told his harsh treatment of his brothers was a disguise:
When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them; but he pretended96 to be a stranger to them and spoke to them harshly. He asked, “Where do you come from?” They answered, “From the land of Canaan to buy grain for food” (Genesis 42:7).
Fourth, on several occasions, we find Joseph’s true feelings toward his brothers revealed. Twice Joseph had to go aside to weep privately (42:24; 43:30). Fifth, Joseph’s actions toward his brothers were not vindictive, but gracious. Twice he sent them home with the grain they purchased and with their money refunded in their sacks. The meal he prepared for them was another gift of grace. Even the suffering he caused his brothers was benevolent in its goal of bringing his brothers to repentance, so they could be reconciled.
Joseph’s actions toward his brothers, in their first and second visits to Egypt, are very carefully planned and orchestrated to bring about his intended result. When Joseph accused his brothers of being spies, they were terrified and blurted out information about Joseph’s father and younger brother he yearned to know, yet without his brothers realizing who he really was. Joseph could carefully interrogate his brothers about “family” matters, under the guise of protecting the land of Egypt from spies.
Having learned that both Jacob and Benjamin were alive, Joseph set out to accomplish the next phase of his plan – bringing Benjamin down to Egypt. The purpose for this will soon be evident. Joseph’s brothers had insisted they were ten brothers, and not spies, and they had yet another brother at home. Joseph caused it to appear he was merely putting the truthfulness of their words to the test. They said they had a younger brother, so let them prove it by bringing him with them the next time they came. And to assure they did return, he would keep one brother prisoner. Initially, Joseph threatened to keep all of the brothers in prison and to send back just one brother. He knew this would not allow them to transport a sufficient quantity of grain, and so he eventually reduced the number of prisoners held to one – Simeon (42:24).97
The response of Joseph’s brothers to their incarceration and to Joseph’s words is most important to the story:
21 They said to one other, “Surely we’re being punished because of our brother, because we saw how distressed he was when he cried to us for mercy, but we refused to listen. That is why this distress has come on us!” 22 Reuben said to them, “Didn’t I say to you, ‘Don’t sin against the boy’, but you wouldn’t listen? So now we must pay for shedding his blood” (Genesis 42:21-22).
More than 20 years after they had sinned against their brother Joseph, the events of that day were vivid in their minds. They recalled his pleading with them and their total lack of mercy. They understood this was a kind of “day of reckoning” for their sin. I would submit they were genuinely sorry for what they had done, but they were not yet fully repentant. This would come in time.
Joseph was standing nearby and heard their words, but they had no idea that he could understand what they were saying. He was deeply touched by their words and had to leave their presence so that he could cry (42:23-24). Joseph bound Simeon before their eyes to impress them with his resolve about seeing Benjamin when they returned. He then ordered for their sacks to be filled with grain and for provisions to be supplied for their journey.
The brothers then set out on their journey, no doubt discussing what they would tell their father. One of the brothers opened his sack of grain when they stopped for the evening and was shocked to find his money in his sack of grain. You would think that any son of Jacob would have rejoiced. It would be like putting money into a vending machine, getting what you had selected, and then finding your money in the coin return. But the brothers were greatly dismayed. Looking at one another, they said, “What in the world has God done to us?” (42:28). They completely failed to see the kindness of Joseph in this and saw only the judgmental hand of God. God had not done something for them; He had done something terrible to them.
They returned home and told their father all that had happened to them in Egypt. Jacob had certainly noticed that Simeon was not with them, and they explained why the ruler of Egypt had kept him prisoner. This discussion took place as the bags of grain were being unloaded. When the bags were opened, the brothers discover that every one of them had their money in their sacks, and they were most distressed. Jacob could only think of himself:
Their father Jacob said to them, “You are making me childless! Joseph is gone. Simeon is gone. And now you want to take Benjamin! Everything is against me” (Genesis 42:36).
Jacob could not have been more mistaken. His appraisal of the situation was precisely the opposite of reality. He was not concerned about Simeon as much as he was himself. He blames his sons for his loss of Joseph, and now, of Simeon, and he blames them for also wanting to take away his youngest son, Benjamin. His sons were “causing all things to work together against him,” or so he supposed.
Ruben now comes through with these comforting words of assurance:
“You may put my two sons to death if I do not bring him back to you. Put him in my care and I will bring him back to you” (42:37).
There was nothing more to be said regarding this matter at the moment, because Jacob flatly refused to allow them to take Benjamin with them. In Jacob’s mind, there would be no more discussion of this matter.
The famine lingered on, and the supply of grain continued to diminish. Finally, the grain they had purchased in Egypt ran out. Jacob’s response to this crisis revealed his complete failure as a spiritual leader. I am going to borrow something from my earlier series on Genesis here, because it shows what a poor leader Jacob was at this point in his life.
Procrastinate: Whatever problems arise today are best dealt with tomorrow. Jacob delayed acting decisively on the issue of sending Benjamin to Egypt until the situation reached crisis proportions.
Minimize: No problem can possibly be as bad as it seems. If the first principle betrays a “manana mentality,” the second attempts to minimize the problem to the point where it is hardly worth thinking about. If a problem is not serious, then it can be put off indefinitely.
Lie: In a crisis, honesty is often not the best policy. Jacob still had a lot of the old deceiver in him. He believed that good communication only causes problems. He thought that the less others knew about him, the better off he and his family would be. Jacob’s sons were thus rebuked for telling Joseph any facts about the family.
Always look out for number one. Jacob’s leadership was focused on seeking his own interests. It was Judah who urged his father to think of others rather than himself (cf. verse 3).
Pass the buck: As much as is possible, see to it that others receive the blame for your mistakes. Jacob sought to place the responsibility for his troubles on Judah and his brothers, because they told the truth (43:6). A good leader is one who is willing to accept responsibility for his mistakes.
Bribe: If our efforts to solve a problem fail, add money. Jacob hoped that his presents, along with a double payment, would help achieve his desired ends.
Get religion: Call on God for help, but don’t get your hopes up. It is no accident that Jacob mentions God last. It never seemed to occur to him (as it did to Joseph) that God was actively involved in all of his troubles. His wish that God would be with his sons is only a last ditch effort, when it should have been his first line of defense. “Foxhole religion” is not new, nor is it a thing of the past. Jacob’s words, “As for me, if I lose my children I lose them” (43:14), is not an expression of great faith, but sounds much more like fatalism.
Jacob’s response to this family crisis is pathetic. He does everything possible to avoid facing the problem. He attempts to send his sons to do an impossible task, therefore putting them at great risk. His great concern is for himself and his own well-being. He has to be forced to act. Jacob is no hero in these chapters. Joseph certainly is, exemplifying godly leadership. But there is another leader who begins to emerge in chapter 43 – Judah, the brother who earlier suggested they sell Joseph into slavery, the man who married a Canaanite wife, and unwittingly fathered his own grandson (as it were) through Tamar.
Jacob is pathetic as he whines about the way his sons have mistreated him by telling “the ruler of Egypt” about Benjamin. Judah now stands tall, taking charge of the situation and gently rebuking his father:
3 But Judah said to him, “The man solemnly warned us, ‘You will not see my face unless your brother is with you.’ 4 If you send our brother with us, we’ll go down and buy food for you. 5 But if you will not send him, we won’t go down there, because the man said to us, ‘You will not see my face unless your brother is with you.’” 6 Israel said, “Why did you bring this trouble on me by telling the man you had one more brother?” 7 They replied, “The man questioned us thoroughly about ourselves and our family, saying, ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ So we answered him in this way. How could we possibly know that he would say, ‘Bring your brother down’?” 8 Then Judah said to his father Israel, “Send the boy with me and we will go immediately. Then we will live and not die—we and you and our little ones. 9 I myself pledge security for him; you may hold me liable. If I do not bring him back to you and place him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life. 10 But if we had not delayed, we could have traveled there and back twice by now” (Genesis 43:3-10).
Judah and his brothers had certainly sinned in selling Joseph into slavery, but they were not the ones putting their families at risk at the moment. They had only told “the ruler of Egypt” the truth when he pressed them hard about specific details concerning their family. It was Jacob who had refused to face up to the situation, and who refused to release his youngest son. He had waited far too long to act. And now he wanted his sons to face “the ruler of Egypt” without complying with his demand to bring their youngest brother with them. This was nonsense, and Judah made it clear that they were not going back to Egypt without Benjamin. Judah himself became surety for Benjamin’s safe return.
Jacob had no other choice than to do as Judah said. If he did not send Benjamin with the others when they returned to Egypt, they would all die. This was a sacrifice Jacob was forced to make. And so he instructed his sons to take double their money with them, along with the finest gifts they had at hand: a little balm and honey, spices and myrrh, pistachios and almonds (43:11-12). Off the sons of Jacob went, to Egypt, including Benjamin.
Joseph saw them coming, this time with Benjamin. He instructed his servant to bring the men to his home and to prepare a fine meal for them to eat. The brothers could only imagine the worst possible outcome:
But the men were afraid when they were brought to Joseph’s house. They said, “We are being brought in because of the money that was returned in our sacks last time. He wants to capture us, make us slaves, and take our donkeys!” (43:18).
Their sense of guilt overwhelmed them. They could not imagine this “ruler of Egypt” doing anything benevolent for them. They feared they would be punished by the same fate they had brought upon their brother Joseph.
The brothers were quick to explain about the money they had found in their sacks, and the servant carefully chose his words to speak the truth, yet without disclosing Joseph’s identity or his plans for them:
19 So they approached the man who was in charge of Joseph’s household and spoke to him at the entrance to the house. 20 They said, “My lord, we did indeed come down the first time to buy food. 21 But when we came to the place where we spent the night, we opened our sacks and each of us found his money—the full amount—in the mouth of his sack. So we have returned it. 22 We have brought additional money with us to buy food. We do not know who put the money in our sacks.” 23 “Everything is fine,” the man in charge of Joseph’s household told them. “Don’t be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has given you treasure in your sacks. I had98 your money.” Then he brought Simeon out to them (Genesis 43:19-23).
The servant did everything he could to extend hospitality to Joseph’s brothers. First, he brought Simeon out to them, and then he brought them all into Joseph’s house, where they were given water to drink, and their feet were washed. Their donkeys were also fed (43:24). The brothers braced themselves for the appearance of the “ruler of Egypt.” They must have given great attention to the presentation of the “gift” their father had sent with them. I can see them laying all of these things out very carefully, as one would arrange a display in the window of large department store. They wanted everything to be perfect. They hoped that Joseph would look at their gift and say something like this: “Oh, pistachio nuts! You shouldn’t have. Why I haven’t tasted a pistachio nut for years. And smell those spices! You men are just too kind.”
Here is something that they completely missed. The gifts that they brought did not serve their purpose at all. Joseph was not pleased by their gift; their gift was, in fact, a reminder of their sins against him.
They got their gifts ready for Joseph’s arrival at noon, for they had heard that they were to have a meal there (43:25, emphasis mine).
Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be so, then do this: take some of the best products of the land in your bags, and take a gift down to the man—a little balm and a little honey, spices and myrrh, pistachios and almonds (43:11, emphasis mine).
When they sat down to eat their food, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were carrying spices, balm, and myrrh down to Egypt (37:25, emphasis mine).
It has taken me a long time to see this, but when you look carefully at the three passages above you realize that the “gifts” they brought to impress Joseph with their kindness were actually reminders of their cruelty to them. Several of the items that Joseph’s brothers brought him from the land of Canaan were the same things the Ishmaelite traders carried with them down to Egypt, along with Joseph. The smell of those spices that accompanied him to Egypt must have been burned into Joseph’s memory. The very odors that Joseph may have come to despise, because of the associations they had with his slavery, were now the odors that greeted Joseph as he walked into his house. Did his brothers think their gift would win this ruler over? This scheme was very true to the character of Jacob, who suggested it, but in reality, it would have been counter-productive had Joseph allowed it to sway his emotions.
When Joseph arrived, his brothers bowed before him, once again fulfilling the dreams he had years earlier (Genesis 37:5-11). Joseph seems not to have even noticed their gift, so carefully arranged to capture his attention and win his approval. Joseph only had eyes for his younger brother, Benjamin. Joseph was so touched by the sight of his brother, he had to leave the room to weep in private. He then washed his face and returned, giving the order, “Set out the food” (43:31). The servants set out three separate tables: One for Joseph, one for his brothers, and one for the Egyptians who ate with Joseph. Joseph seated his brothers according to their birth order, which must have both amazed and puzzled them: “How could he know?” It was a royal feast, and I’m sure that Joseph’s brothers (who had run out of grain some time earlier) would have appreciated it. I’m also certain they had all they could eat. But Joseph did something that was most
unusual – he made Benjamin’s portions five times greater than those of his other brothers. In preparation for the test ahead, Joseph was not going to minimize the fact that Benjamin was the favorite son of Jacob; indeed, he wanted to emphasize this fact. By the time the meal was over, they had their fill of both food and drink. I have a feeling this was to give his brothers an artificial sense of confidence and to dull their senses for the moment.99
Joseph then gave very careful instructions to his servant. He had him fill his brothers’ sacks with grain, once again placing their money in each man’s sack. This time, however, one more item was included – Joseph’s “silver cup.” This cup was to be placed in Benjamin’s sack, along with his money. After the men were sent on their way, Joseph’s servant was to pursue and overtake the brothers as they were leaving Egypt. They were to be accused of stealing Joseph’s cup, the one that he “used for divination” (44:4-5).
There is no need to be distressed over what we read here. Joseph did not actually use this cup for divination. This was part of the servant’s “script,” which Joseph instructed him to say. It was a part of Joseph’s disguise. When Joseph instructed his servant to hide this cup in Benjamin’s sack, he simply referred to it as “his silver cup” (44:2). But for the sake of his brothers, his servant was to call it the cup that his master used for divination. Joseph wanted to continue the masquerade a little while longer, and this line helped maintain his disguise.
When Joseph’s servant overtook the brothers, he did just as his master had instructed him – he accused these men of returning evil for good by stealing his master’s divining cup. The brothers were shocked that they would be accused of such a crime. They were confident that none of them had stolen this cup, and so they overreacted to these charges. They prescribed the punishment for themselves, should any one of them have stolen this cup:
“If one of us has it, he will die, and the rest of us will become my lord’s slaves” (44:9).
Joseph’s servant then responded to this statement, prescribing what the punishment would be for stealing the cup:
He replied, “You have suggested your own punishment. The one who has it will become my slave, but the rest of you will go free” (44:10).
I’m sure that each of these men was extremely confident as he lowered his sack to the ground and opened it. What a shock it must have been for each man to find his money in the mouth of his sack, just as they had before. It would be something like being pulled over by a policeman, and having him search your trunk for money that was stolen in a bank robbery. Confident you did not have the money in your car, you pop open the trunk, to see it filled with automatic weapons. I would imagine fear began to grip the heart of each of these men as they discovered their money in their sacks.
The worst was yet to come. When Benjamin’s sack was opened, not only was his money found, but also Joseph’s silver cup. These brothers tore their clothes in anguish, loaded their animals, and made their way back to face the music before “the ruler of Egypt.” When they arrived, Joseph continued his disguise:
“What did you think you were doing? Don’t you know that a man like me can find out things like this by divination?” (44:15).
Joseph wanted these men to think that there was nothing about them he did not know, or could not find out. (After all, he had already arranged their seating according to their birth order.) And now he had a silver divining cup, by which he could discern the truth (or so he claimed). The message was clear: It would do them no good to lie.
Judah assumes the leadership, and speaks on his brothers’ behalf:
16 Judah replied, “What can we say to my lord? What can we speak? How can we clear ourselves? God has exposed the sin of your servants. We are now my lord’s slaves, we and the one in whose possession the cup was found.” 17 But Joseph said, “Far be it from me to do this! The man in whose hand the cup was found will become my slave, but the rest of you may go back to your father in peace” (44:16-17).
Judah’s answer is most interesting and most encouraging. I am convinced that Judah knew that Benjamin had not stolen this cup, just as each of them had not stolen the money they had paid for their grain. Judah rightly discerned that this was God’s way of dealing with them. Thus he says, “God has exposed the sin of your servants” (verse 16). I don’t think Judah meant to say, “We stole the money, and we stole the silver cup; God knows it, and He has exposed our sin.” I think Judah’s words really mean: “We sold our brother into slavery (something you would not know about or appreciate, ruler of Egypt, so I won’t go into this in detail), and God is now bringing about our punishment for that sin. We didn’t do what you are accusing us of doing, but we did something far worse, and so we will plead guilty.” Thus, Judah both confesses for all of his brothers and submits to the penalty of slavery for all.
This is real progress for Joseph’s brothers, but they have not yet fully manifested true repentance. And so Joseph declines Judah’s offer. Joseph’s response can be roughly paraphrased in this way: “Oh no, it would not be fair to punish all of you for the crime one of you has committed. The punishment must be that the one in whose sack the cup was found shall be my slave, and the rest of you are free to go home to your families.”
Here was the greatest test of their lives. They could seize upon Joseph’s words, denounce Benjamin for stealing, and go home to Canaan free men, leaving Benjamin as one of Pharaoh’s slaves. In effect, they could do to Benjamin exactly what they had done to Joseph. How easy it would have been to simply walk away and leave Benjamin, just as they had forsaken Joseph.
This is truly Judah’s finest hour. He is the one who made himself surety for Benjamin (42:9). Now, he fulfills his promise to his aged father. Judah steps forward and asks to speak to the “ruler of Egypt.” Judah explained how it had come about that they had told him about their younger brother, Benjamin. Since his older brother is dead, Benjamin is now the only remaining son of their father’s wife, Rachel. Because he insisted that they bring this younger brother to Egypt, they did so, but in spite of their father’s strong protests. The boy’s father is now elderly, and if this son does not return, it will kill their father. Judah told “the ruler of Egypt” that he had become surety for the lad with his father, and thus he begged him to allow the boy to return to his father, and to take him as his slave. Judah begged to take the place of Benjamin, in order to spare his brother’s life, as well as the life of their father. Judah, the one who cast the blood-drenched tunic at his father’s feet so many years ago,100 now pleads with Joseph to have compassion on their father, as he does.
It was too much for Joseph. He could restrain himself no longer. Indeed, he need not restrain himself any longer. He could reveal his true identity because his brothers had finally demonstrated true repentance. Joseph ordered everyone to leave the room, except for his brothers. He wept loudly and told them he was Joseph, their brother. He asked if his father was still alive. The brothers were in shock. They could not believe what he was telling them. He asked them to come closer, and they did. He repeated that he was the brother they had sold into slavery in Egypt. He quickly encouraged them not to be upset or angry with themselves, because God had used their sin to bring about good, not only for Joseph, but for all of Jacob’s family. This was God’s way of providing for the children of Israel during this time of famine.
Joseph then sent his brothers back home to bring their father and their families down to Egypt, informing them that there were yet five more years of famine ahead. The story goes on to describe the arrival of Jacob and his family in Egypt. God provided for them to have a place of their own in the land of Egypt – the land of Goshen – where they could keep their flocks. Eventually, they would purchase property there and prosper. In this way, God brought Israel (all 70 of them) to Egypt.
In his final days, Jacob begins to manifest the fruits of faith.101 When standing before Pharaoh, Jacob admitted that his life had been shorter and more unpleasant than that of his predecessors:
7 Then Joseph brought in his father Jacob and presented him before Pharaoh. Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 8 Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How long have you lived?” 9 Jacob said to Pharaoh, “All the years of my travels are one hundred and thirty. All the years of my life have been few and painful; the years of my travels are not as long as those of my ancestors.” 10 Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence (Genesis 47:7-10).
I believe that by saying this, Jacob admitted to having lived out most of his life in the flesh, striving with God and with men. It took him all this time to see that his striving was not a life of faith, and it did not produce peace.
The second thing Jacob did in his last days was to bless Joseph’s two sons:
1 After these things Joseph was told, “Your father is weakening.” So he took his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim with him. 2 When Jacob was told, “Your son Joseph has just come to you,” Israel regained strength and sat up on his bed. 3 Jacob said to Joseph, “The Sovereign God appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. 4 He said to me, ‘I am going to make you fruitful and will multiply you. I will make you into a group of nations and I will give this land to your descendants as an everlasting possession.’ 5 “Now, as for your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, they will be mine. Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine just as Reuben and Simeon are. 6 Any children that you father after them will be yours; they will be listed under the names of their brothers in their inheritance. 7 But as for me, when I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died—to my sorrow—in the land of Canaan. It happened along the way, some distance from Ephrath. So I buried her there on the way to Ephrath” (that is, Bethlehem). 8 When Israel saw Joseph’s sons, he asked, “Who are these?” 9 Joseph said to his father, “They are the sons God has given me in this place.” His father said, “Bring them to me so I may bless them.” 10 Now Israel’s eyes were failing because of his age; he was not able to see well. So Joseph brought his sons near to him, and his father kissed them and embraced them. 11 Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see you again, but now God has allowed me to see your children too.” 12 So Joseph moved them from Israel’s knees and bowed down with his face to the ground. 13 Joseph positioned them; he put Ephraim on his right hand across from Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh on his left hand across from Israel’s right hand. Then Joseph brought them closer to his father. 14 Israel stretched out his right hand and placed it on Ephraim’s head, although he was the younger. Crossing his hands, he put his left hand on Manasseh’s head, for Manasseh was the firstborn.
15 Then he blessed Joseph and said,
“May the God before whom my fathers
Abraham and Isaac walked—
the God who has been my shepherd
all my life long to this day—
16 the Angel who has protected me
from all harm—
bless these boys.
May my name be named in them,
and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac.
May they grow into a multitude on the earth.”
17 When Joseph saw that his father placed his right hand on Ephraim’s head, it displeased him. So he took his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head. 18 Joseph said to his father, “Not so, my father, for this is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head.” 19 But his father refused and said, “I know, my son, I know. He too will become a nation and he too will become great. In spite of this, his younger brother will be even greater and his descendants will become a multitude of nations.” 20 So he blessed them that day, saying,
“By you will Israel bless, saying,
‘May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.’”
So he put Ephraim before Manasseh.
21 Then Israel said to Joseph, “I am about to die; but God will be with you and will bring you back to the land of your fathers. 22 As one who is above your brothers, I give to you the mountain slope, which I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow” (Genesis 48:1-22).
One can hardly miss the similarity of this blessing of Joseph’s two sons to Isaac’s blessings of his sons in his old age. Both Isaac and Jacob were old, and their sight was poor. In the case of Isaac, Jacob sought to obtain his father’s blessing under false pretenses, just as Isaac wished to bless the oldest son, in spite of God’s indication to the contrary. In this case, Joseph places his two sons before his father in such a way that he will not be confused as to which is the older son. Knowing that his oldest grandson was placed under his right hand, Jacob removed his hands and crossed them, purposely giving the younger of the two lads the rights of the firstborn. Joseph was initially irritated and tried to correct his father, until he realized that this was a very deliberate action. By this act, Jacob seems to have symbolized the truth that is stated in Romans 9:
6 It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all those who are descended from Israel are truly Israel, 7 nor are all the children Abraham’s true descendants; rather “through Isaac will your descendants be traced.” 8 This means it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God; rather, the children of promise are counted as descendants. 9 For this is what the promise declared: “About a year from now I will return and Sarah will have a son.” 10 Not only that, but when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our ancestor Isaac— 11 even before they were born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose in election would stand, not by works but by his calling) — 12 it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger,” 13 just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Romans 9:6-13).
Jacob has thereby acknowledged that the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant are passed on to the one of God’s choosing. It is a matter of election, based upon sovereign grace; it is not determined by good works (present or future), and it is not determined by scheming or manipulation. It was God’s choice of him, rather than Esau, that made him the heir of the Abrahamic Covenant. It was God who had watched over him and blessed him throughout his life, not due to his merit or schemes, but because God had chosen him to be the heir of the promised blessings to Abraham.
Jacob was not just blessing these two sons of Joseph; he was adopting them (48:5-6). His oldest son, Reuben, had sinned against his father by sleeping with one of his concubines (35:22; 49:3-4), and thus was deprived of his rights as the firstborn. By adopting Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob was giving the right of the firstborn to Joseph, because he would now receive a double inheritance through his two sons.
The third and final act of Jacob (so far as the biblical account is concerned) was the blessing he pronounced on each of his sons, as recorded in Genesis 49. These “blessings” are really prophecies concerning the future of each of his sons and their offspring. The most significant of these blessings was that of Judah:
8 “Judah, your brothers will praise you.
your hand will be on the neck of your enemies,
your father’s sons will bow down before you.
9 You are a lion’s cub, Judah,
from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He crouches and lies down like a lion;
like a lioness—who will rouse him?
10 The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until he comes to whom it belongs;
the nations will obey him.
11 Binding his foal to the vine,
and his colt to the choicest vine,
he will wash his garments in wine,
his robes in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes will be dark from wine,
and his teeth white from milk” (Genesis 49:8-12).
This blessing upon Judah reveals the fact that the covenant promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and himself would now be passed on through Judah. Abraham and Sarah had been told that a line of kings would proceed from them (Genesis 17:6, 16). We now see that these kings will come through the tribe of Judah. In the future, God will reveal that this line of kings will come through the seed of David (2 Samuel 7:14). What we see here in Genesis 29:10-12 is that the “King of Kings” will come from the line of Judah. The traditional rendering “until Shiloh comes” (49:10) is probably better understood to mean, “until he comes to whom it belongs,” as can be seen in the translation of the NET Bible above. David’s descendants will rule until the final and ultimate “Lion of the tribe of Judah,” the “Son of David” comes:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, a descendant of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled by his words and began to wonder about the meaning of this greeting. 30 So the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 Listen: you will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:26-33, emphasis mine).
The lives of Jacob, Judah, and Joseph teach us many important truths and also have much to say to us by way of application. I shall conclude by pointing out some of the things we can learn from our text.
Nearly everything we learn from Jacob is negative. Jacob would now tell us, if he could, “Don’t do as I did.” Jacob was a man who wrestled with God and man most all of his life, and for this, he paid a high price. As he told Pharaoh, his life was shorter and more painful than that of his forefathers (Genesis 47:9). Abraham willingly obeyed God, to the point of sacrificing his son, if necessary (Genesis 22), but Jacob clung to his favored sons (first Joseph, and then Benjamin), who had to be snatched from his grasp. Almost every good thing that God did in Jacob’s life was in spite of him. It did not happen through his active obedience, but providentially, in spite of his resistance. Because of this, he did not experience the joy of walking in obedience to God.
There is both good news and bad news to be discerned from the life of Jacob. On the one hand we can be encouraged by the fact that God’s purposes and promises will be fulfilled, even if it is in spite of our sins. The bad news is that resisting God comes at a very high price. Jacob’s relationships were pathetic. His wives battled for his affections. Laban and his sons came to resent Jacob because he sought to gain at their expense. Jacob’s sons not only disliked each other, they resented their father’s preferential affections. It seemed they almost enjoyed leading him to the conclusion that Joseph had been torn to pieces by a wild animal. For a number of years, Jacob lived with the false assumption that his son Joseph was dead. He faced the trials of life with fear, and not with faith. He cared far too much about himself and far too little about others. His was not the “good life.”
In all of this, Jacob (Israel) was the perfect prototype of the nation Israel. Like their forefather, the Israelites often relied upon fleshly effort. Much of the time they opposed God and trusted in their own devices. Many were the times when God spared them from destruction and brought about their good providentially – in spite of their sins. Jacob did not begin to comprehend or to enjoy the grace of God until very late in his life; the nation Israel has yet to fully enjoy it. It will only be after great trials and tribulation that they will submit to Jesus Christ, the promised “seed of Abraham” (see Galatians 3:15-16), as Savior and Lord.
We see the providential hand in Judah’s life as well. Judah abandoned his family and began to live among the Canaanites, taking a Canaanite wife for himself, and for his sons. It was not due to Judah’s faithfulness that his line was preserved, but in spite of his disobedience. It was Judah who proposed selling his brother Joseph as a slave. But unlike Jacob, Judah came to see his sin and to repent of it. He admitted that his Gentile daughter-in-law, Tamar, was more righteous than he (Genesis 38:26). When his father Jacob refused to assume the spiritual leadership of his family, Judah stepped forward. He took personal responsibility for Benjamin’s well being. And when Joseph orchestrated a virtual replay of Dothan, it was Judah who offered himself in Benjamin’s place. From one who cared little about his father (Genesis 37:29-35), he had compassion on his aging father, knowing that the loss of Benjamin would destroy him (Genesis 44:14-34). This all took place before Judah had any knowledge that God would pass on the Abrahamic Covenant blessings through him (49:8-12).
From Judah especially, but also from his other brothers, we learn the difference between mere sorrow for sin and genuine repentance. When Joseph’s brothers were incarcerated in an Egyptian prison, they expressed sorrow for the way they had treated their brother (42:21-22). But true repentance is more than mere sorrow – being sorry you did the wrong thing – it is a complete change of heart and mind, so that when given the opportunity to repeat the sin, we will turn from it.
This kind of repentance is what Joseph was working to accomplish in the lives of his brothers when they came to Egypt for grain. He had already come to terms with any bitterness and anger toward his brothers, as we see in the naming of his sons (Genesis 41:46-52). Also, he had come to understand the meaning of his dreams, given early in his life. It was not just to announce that he had power over his brothers, but that he was to exercise spiritual leadership for the benefit of his brothers. Contrary to first appearances, Joseph was not seeking to make his brothers pay for their sin against him, but was seeking to bring them to repentance. That involved suffering, just as it did much later when Paul found it necessary to correct the Corinthians:
8 For even if I made you sad by my letter, I do not regret having written it (even though I did regret it, for I see that my letter made you sad, though only for a short time). 9 Now I rejoice, not because you were made sad, but because you were made sad to the point of repentance. For you were made sad as God intended, so that you were not harmed in any way by us. 10 For sadness as intended by God produces a repentance that leads to salvation, leaving no regret, but worldly sadness brings about death. 11 For see what this very thing, this sadness as God intended, has produced in you: what eagerness, what defense of yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what deep concern, what punishment! In everything you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter (2 Corinthians 7:8-11).
Joseph did cause his brothers pain, but not for the sake of revenge. It is clear that causing his brothers to suffer was also painful to Joseph. Even in the midst of Joseph’s severity, there was a depth of mercy. He sent them subtle hints that should have proven encouraging. For example, he told them that he, too, feared God (42:18). In the midst of apparent severity, there was kindness. Both times they returned home with grain from Egypt, Joseph had their money placed in their sacks. He also treated his brothers to a magnificent meal. The irony of all this is that the guilt his brothers bore was so great, they were incapable of recognizing grace, let alone enjoy it. Our sin dims our eyes to the grace of God. Like Jacob, we think that our circumstances are destroying us, when they have been skillfully woven together by God to save us.
If Jacob is an example of impotent spiritual leadership, Joseph is a model of spiritual leadership. Some years ago, J. Oswald Sanders spoke on spiritual leadership at a conference in Fort Worth. I attended and was greatly blessed by the teaching and example of this godly old man. As I recall, he had three major points on the subject of spiritual leadership: suffering, servanthood, and the sovereignty of God. He believed that suffering shapes spiritual leaders, and that true leaders are those who practice true servanthood. He also shared that when God placed him in a position of spiritual leadership, it was clearly His sovereignly determined place of ministry.
As I look at the life of Joseph, I see all three of Sanders’ main points illustrated, plus a couple more (which, coincidentally, begin with the letter “s”):
God prepared Joseph for leadership by the suffering he endured. None of Joseph’s suffering was wasted time or energy. During the time of Joseph’s slavery and imprisonment, he learned the language and the culture of Egypt, something he would need in the years to come, but this was not apparent at the time of his suffering. God allowed Joseph to be falsely accused by Mrs. Potiphar, and thus to be cast into prison. But this was a prison for political prisoners. Therefore, men like the king’s “butler” and the “baker” were placed under Joseph’s care. This was the perfect opportunity for Joseph to learn the proper protocol for a high level government official, as he was soon to be. No suffering of Joseph (or of any saint) is ever wasted.
The second element of leadership is servanthood. I fear that in his youth Joseph was not the servant to his brothers he should have been. He seems to have been unwise in the way he used his authority. I don’t think that one could say Joseph was truly serving his brothers at this point in his life. Joseph must have reflected on the anger his brothers displayed toward him. He must have perceived it was the way he exercised his authority over them that enraged them. The first thing they did was to strip his robe from him. They must have taunted him about his dreams.102 Joseph came to understand that a position of power and authority is a place of service, not of status. Thus, having learned the lesson of servanthood,103 when Joseph was put in charge of the butler and the baker in prison he used his position to minister to them, not to lord it over them.
The third element of spiritual leadership is that of sovereignty. Through his suffering, Joseph came to a much fuller understanding of the sovereignty of God. Even before his brothers arrived in Egypt, he recognized that God had sovereignty employed his adversity to bring him blessing (41:51-52). He told his brothers this when they feared that he would retaliate for all the evils that had been done to him:
7 “God sent me ahead of you to preserve you on the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 8 So now, it is not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me an adviser to Pharaoh, lord over all his household, and ruler over all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 45:7-8).
20 “As for you, you meant to harm me, but God intended it for a good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people, as you can see this day. 21 So now, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your little children.” Then he consoled them and spoke kindly to them (Genesis 50:20-21).
God had sovereignly appointed Joseph over his brothers. God gave Joseph the gifts and skills that commended him to Potiphar and to Pharaoh. Joseph could not take pride in what God had sovereignly given him,104 and now he knew it.
The fourth element of spiritual leadership is that of stewardship.105 A steward does not own the things that are under his control. The clearest expression of his “steward” mindset is found in Joseph’s response to Mrs. Potiphar, who urged Joseph to “possess” her:
8 But he refused, saying to his master’s wife, “Look, my master does not give any thought to his household with me here, and everything that he owns he has put into my care. 9 There is no one greater in this household than I am. He has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. So how could I do such a great evil, and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:8-9)
Joseph did not own what he controlled. I wonder, however, if his brothers felt as though he acted that way towards them in his youth. But when in Potiphar’s house, even though Joseph was in control of everything (except Mrs. Potiphar), he did not own any of it. The same was true in the prison and when serving Pharaoh. Joseph was a steward. He did not lay claim to that which he did not own.106
The fifth element of spiritual leadership is what I wish to call “secular savy.” Often there is a false distinction drawn between spiritual and secular leadership. Joseph was a skilled spiritual leader in whatever situation he was placed. He was a “spiritual leader” in the home of Potiphar, because Potiphar saw that the hand of God was upon him:
2 The Lord was with Joseph. He was successful and lived in the household of his Egyptian master. 3 His master observed that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made everything he was doing successful (Genesis 39:2-3).
When Joseph declined the proposition of Mrs. Potiphar, he explained his actions in spiritual terms (39:9). When Joseph ministered to the butler and the baker in the prison, he did so in spiritual terms:
7 So he asked Pharaoh’s officials, who were with him in custody in his master’s house, “Why do you look so sad today?” 8 They told him, “We both had dreams, but there is no one to interpret them.” Joseph responded, “Don’t interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me” (Genesis 40:7-8).
The same was true in his ministry to Pharaoh. The butler very carefully avoided any spiritual reference to Joseph’s ministry to him (41:9-13), but when Joseph ministered to Pharaoh, he repeatedly gave all the glory to God:
Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “It is not within my power, but God will speak concerning the welfare of Pharaoh” (Genesis 41:16).
Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “Both dreams of Pharaoh have the same meaning. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do” (Genesis 41:25).
“This is just what I told Pharaoh: God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do” (41:28).
Joseph was a spiritual leader, doing a secular task. All too often Christians suppose that spiritual leadership requires a spiritual environment. They feel that “full-time Christian work” is superior to “mere secular work.” I think this text (and many others) prove this thinking to be wrong. Joseph had a great spiritual impact on those with whom he came in contact through his secular employment. Think also of men like Daniel.
This leads me to conclude that unless one can demonstrate spiritual leadership in the secular world of employment, I seriously doubt that he can exercise spiritual leadership in the church. Is this not what Paul was saying when he set down the qualifications for elders?
2 The overseer then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, 3 not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not contentious, free from the love of money. 4 He must manage his own household well and keep his children in control without losing his dignity. 5 But if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for the church of God? 6 He must not be a recent convert or he may become arrogant and fall into the punishment that the devil will exact. 7 And he must be well thought of by those outside the faith, so that he may not fall into disgrace and be caught by the devil’s trap (1 Timothy 3:2-7).
If I had my way, no one would go into full-time Christian ministry until they had obtained secular employment skills, and then proven themselves to be wise in some form of “secular” employment. The Book of Proverbs, as I understand it, is written to those who would rule, those who would exercise spiritual leadership in the nation Israel. As you read through this great book, notice how often these proverbs deal with the real world of work, family, friends, and so on. Joseph was a man who knew how to work in a way that benefited his master, and that glorified his God. He was a spiritual leader whose ministry was in the secular world of work.
Our text has a great deal to say about sexual purity. Some years ago, my friend Craig Nelson and I were ministering in Asia. We were team-teaching from the Book of Genesis, starting at chapter 37. One of the men in the church objected that there was “too much talk of sex” in our teaching. We pointed out that while we sought to be tasteful in what we taught, these chapters in Genesis had a lot to say about sexual purity. It is safe to say that sexual purity is a very important thing, especially for leaders. Many Americans seem willing to look the other way when those in positions of political power rather openly engage in sexual immorality. Judah jeopardized his own leadership, and the well being of his family, by his immorality. Joseph was a model of sexual purity and integrity. We need many more Joseph’s today.
Joseph is a prototype of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was the object of his father’s affections, just as our Lord Jesus was the beloved Son of God the Father. As Joseph’s brothers resented his authority and sought to be rid of him, so the Jewish religious leaders resented Jesus’ authority and sought to put him to death on a cruel cross. It was through much suffering at the hands of his brothers – who rejected him as their leader – that Joseph became their deliverer. It was through the suffering of our Lord Jesus, at the hand of His “brethren,” that He became the way of salvation for all who believe in Him.
I would be remiss if I did not point out something that my friend, Marvin Ball, reminded me of this past week. Our text is a dramatic illustration of the truth of Romans 8:28:
28 And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, 29 because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified (Romans 8:28-30).
God always fulfills His purposes and His promises. He is not limited to using the willing acts of obedience of His saints. He is able to employ the rebellious acts of unbelievers and the sins of the saints to accomplish His purposes. To be sovereign is to be in full control. God is fully in control, in spite of the sin and rebellion that is rampant in His world.
Our text illustrates how God sovereignly orchestrated and overruled in the affairs of men, so that his promises would be fulfilled. Through his dreams, God revealed to Joseph that he would rule over his family. It certainly appeared that the sin of his brothers nullified the prophecy of those dreams, but in truth, their actions merely set the stage for their fulfillment. It looked as though the sins of Judah would jeopardize the promise of God regarding the promised “seed” of Abraham, but God sovereignly caused “all things” to work together for the fulfillment of His promise. Both Jacob and his sons looked at their circumstances and concluded that God had brought about their destruction, but by the end of Genesis, we see that God used all these things to bring about their deliverance.
Nearly 25 years ago, my friend Bill McRae and his family left Dallas to commence a fruitful ministry in Canada. Virtually the first week he served as a teacher and elder in a local church, a tragic accident took the lives of several members of one family in the church. I shall never forget the message Bill preached at that funeral.107 He used our text to show how, at one point in time, Jacob mistakenly assumed that all of his circumstances were meant for his destruction, only to see from hindsight that God had intended this tragedy in his life for ultimate triumph.
I wonder, my friend, if your life looks something like Jacob’s life, when he was forced to give up his beloved son, Benjamin? Do you think “all these things are against me” (Genesis 42:36)? If you are a part of God’s family, they are not for your destruction, but for your deliverance; they are not meant to be a tragedy, but to be triumph. I pray that each of you who read this can experience the assurance, through faith in Christ, that God is working for your good, and His glory:
31 What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is the one who will condemn? Christ is the one who died (and more than that, he was raised), who is at the right hand of God, and who also is interceding for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we encounter death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us! 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:31-39).
87 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on December 17, 2000.
88 In such cases, someone nearby would often whisper a translation to such folks as I spoke.
89 If Israel is still living in Hebron (35:27), Shechem would have been approximately 50 miles away. Add to this another 20 miles to Dothan, and you have the sons of Jacob some 70 miles from their father – far enough, they supposed, to get away with murder.
90 This may not be altogether hypothetical, as can be seen when we look at 42:21.
91 Joseph is 17 when he is sold into slavery (37:2), and he is 30 at the time he stood before Pharaoh (41:46). Then the 7 years of plenty pass, and they are 2 years into the famine (see 45:6). This adds up to approximately 22 years.
92 It is interesting to note (from the NASB) that just as Shechem “saw” Dinah, “took her,” and “lay with her” (34:2), Judah “saw” a Canaanite woman, “took her,” and “went in to her” (38:2). In both passages, the first two verbs are the same; only the third is different.
93 One cannot know whether or not Potiphar had his doubts about the charges his wife brought against Joseph. It is interesting that he did not execute Joseph, and that he was promoted within the prison system.
94 I would imagine that hearing of these two, very different, interpretations would have impressed Pharaoh. It is one thing to predict “good things” that will happen to someone; it is quite another to predict disaster. Joseph must have been a man who would “tell it like it is.”
95 This must have backhandedly comforted and encouraged Joseph, as he recalled that he had two dreams regarding his gaining authority over his brothers.
96 The NASB renders, “When Joseph saw his brothers he recognized them, but he disguised himself to them and spoke to them harshly.” His feigned severity was a disguise.
97 It is interesting that Simeon was chosen to stay behind in Egypt. Ruben was the firstborn son, but he was not present when the brothers chose to sell Joseph into slavery (see chapter 37). Simeon was the second-born son, and he would have been the ranking brother at the time Joseph was sold. It was Judah who suggested that they sell Joseph, but Simeon would have been the one in charge, it would seem.
98 Joseph’s servant could not say, “I have your money, because he had given it back to them.” But he was completely correct in saying, “I had your money.” This subtlety passed over their heads unnoticed.
99 My guess is that, after their experience on their first trip to Egypt and back, Joseph’s brothers would have checked their sacks before they left for home. Having drunk their fill of wine, I don’t think this came to mind, thus setting the scene for their great test.
100 We don’t really know who handed the bloody tunic to Jacob, but we do know that this plot was proposed by Judah.
101 One should note that while the writer to the Hebrews speaks of Abraham’s faith in terms of incidents early in his life (see Hebrews 11:8), he does not speak of Jacob’s faith until the final days of his life, when he is literally on his death bed (see Hebrews 11:21).
102 See 37:19-20. These verses record the conversation that Joseph’s brothers had among themselves, before Joseph arrived, but these same words could have been repeated to Joseph as a taunt.
103 Based upon Philippians 2:1-11, I believe that humility is foundational to servanthood. Surely Joseph had been placed in the most humbling of circumstances in Egypt.
104 See 1 Corinthians 4:7.
105 To be perfectly honest, I cannot recall whether J. Oswald Sanders included this point or not, but I think it should be included. The fifth element was not included by Sanders.
106 The antithesis to this is Satan, who claims to own everything (Luke 4:5-6). His fall is the supreme example of the abuse of a stewardship (see Isaiah 14:13-14).
107 I did not actually attend that funeral, but I did read the message, which was entitled, “From Tragedy to Triumph.”
Exodus 1-15
In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey writes:
Richard Nixon got carried away with excitement in 1969 when Apollo astronauts first landed on the moon. “It’s the greatest day since Creation!” crowed the president, until Billy Graham solemnly reminded him of Christmas and Easter. By any measure of history, Graham was right.109
From our vantage point as New Testament Christians, we would surely agree with Billy Graham. The coming of our Lord is truly the greatest event since Creation. But from the perspective of the Old Testament believer, there is one great event after Creation that overshadows all others – the exodus of the nation Israel from Egypt. This is a great turning point in the “unfolding drama of redemption.”
This Sunday is the last day of 2000. Tomorrow we mark the beginning of a new year. The exodus also marked a new beginning:
1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month is to be the beginning of months for you; it is to be for you the first month of the year (Exodus 12:1-2).
The exodus is the subject of our study in this lesson, and it is vitally important to our understanding of the Bible. The theme of the exodus occurs repeatedly in the Old Testament, as well as in the New. Let us give careful consideration to this great turning point in the history of Israel.
More than 400 years separate the life of Joseph from the birth of the nation Israel at the exodus. Moses passes over these events with very little comment. This silence may be due to the fact that Moses wishes to stress the continuity between the events recorded in the Book of Genesis with those of the Book of Exodus.
The exodus of Israel from Egypt is the convergence of several important elements. Let us briefly consider these elements. The first element is that of the promises and prophecies of Genesis. After man’s fall in the Garden of Eden, God promised Eve that her “seed” would “crush the head of the serpent” (Genesis 3:15). That seed was to come through Seth (Genesis 5), Noah (Genesis 6-9), and then Abraham and his offspring (Genesis 12-50). God’s covenant with Abraham was first articulated in Genesis 12:1-3, and then later reiterated and further clarified (Genesis 13:14-17; 15, 17, etc.). God indicated to Abram that it would be several hundred years before his offspring would possess the land of Canaan:
12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep. Then great terror overwhelmed him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. 14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit” (Genesis 15:12-16).
Events in Genesis give evidence that this promise will most certainly be fulfilled. Abraham’s sojourn in Egypt is the first such evidence. In Genesis 12, a famine prompts Abram to go down to Egypt with Sarai and his nephew Lot. This does not appear to be an act of faith, but rather the manifestation of Abram’s doubt and fear. The deception of Abram and Sarai concerning their true relationship is further indication of their lack of faith. Nevertheless, God preserves Sarai’s purity and protects the lives of Abram and his family while in Egypt. More than this, God greatly prospers Abram in Egypt, so that he leaves Egypt with great wealth (Genesis 13:2). Joseph will later go down to Egypt, betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery. In spite of this, God exalts Joseph and greatly prospers him in the land of his sufferings (Genesis 41:52). The experiences of Abram and Joseph in Egypt prepare the reader for the marvelous things that are yet to happen in Egypt. The day of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Genesis 15:12-16 draws near as the Book of Exodus begins.
The second element is that of persecution of the Israelites in Egypt. During the remainder of Joseph’s lifetime (approximately 70 years), Jacob’s family prospered greatly, thanks to Joseph. They purchased property in the land of Goshen and became very fruitful (Genesis 47:27). Eventually, Joseph died, as did the Pharaoh he served, and then things began to change. I do not believe that these years the Israelites spent in Egypt were particularly prosperous, spiritually speaking. It would seem that they became attached to the land of Egypt, to its foods, to its king (they depended upon him), and even to its false religion (see Joshua 24:14-15; Amos 5:25-26). The changes of administration in Egypt eventually brought about a very significant change of status.
Pharaoh and the Egyptians began to feel threatened by the presence and the prosperity of the Israelites. The Israelites were numerous and they were strong, more so than the Egyptians. The Egyptians feared that if a war broke out with one of their neighbors the Israelites would side with their enemies, bringing about their downfall (Exodus 1:9-10). On the other hand, since the Israelites had become the work force of the land, the Egyptians did not want to see them leave.
As I read of the Egyptians’ fears, I could not help but think of this Proverb:
What the wicked fears will come on him;
What the righteous desire will be granted (Proverbs 10:24).
What the Egyptians feared did come upon them, no matter how hard they tried to prevent it. The presence of the Israelites in Egypt brought about the complete defeat of the Egyptians at the hand of God. In addition to this, the Israelites escaped. The Egyptians set into motion a sequence of futile attempts to suppress the Israelites, ignorant of the warning of the Abrahamic Covenant:
“I will bless those who bless you,
but the one who treats you lightly I must curse” (Genesis 12:3a).
Initially, the Egyptians sought to deal so harshly with the Israelites that they would have no spirit left to resist their oppressors:
11 So they installed captains of work forces over them to oppress them with hard labor. As a result they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread. As a result the Egyptians loathed the Israelites, 13 and they made the Israelites serve rigorously. 14 So they made their lives bitter by hard service in mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous (Exodus 1:11-14).
This approach failed miserably. The harder the Egyptians worked the Israelites, the stronger they became. This intensified the Egyptians’ animosity toward the Israelites and prompted them to deal even more harshly with God’s people.
The Israelites actually thrived in the midst of their adversity, prompting the Egyptians to devise another scheme:
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah, and the other Puah, 16 “When you assist the Hebrew women in childbirth, observe at the delivery: if it is a boy, kill him, but if it is a girl, then she may live.” 17 But the midwives feared God, and they did not do what the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the boys live?” 19 And the midwives replied to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women—for the Hebrew women are vigorous; they give birth before the midwives come to them!” 20 So God treated the midwives well, and the people multiplied and became exceedingly strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he made households for them (Exodus 1:15-21).
You might say that when the Egyptians failed to work the Israelites to death, they changed their approach, ordering the Hebrew midwives to carry out “partial birth abortions.” While in the process of assisting the Hebrew women give birth, the midwives were to kill the male infants. Eventually, this would leave only female Israelites, who would be taken as wives or concubines by the Egyptians. Had this scheme succeeded, the nation Israel would have been exterminated, and the promised seed would be no more. The plan did not succeed, however, because the midwives feared God more than Pharaoh, and thus they refused to kill the boy babies. As a result, God prospered these women and gave them families of their own. One could only wish that health care professionals had the same concern for the unborn today. The slaughter of the innocent today must mean that judgment is near.
The Egyptians were not willing to allow their plans to be thwarted and so they devised yet another devious plan of genocide:
Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “All sons that are born you must throw into the river, but all daughters you may let live” (Exodus 1:22).
This was a far more aggressive plan because it was out and out genocide. This did not depend upon the compliance of the Israelites, but on the actions of the Egyptians. Every Egyptian was told to drown any and every boy baby born to the Israelites. It must certainly have appeared that this plan was destined to succeed. Who could possibly prevent it?
The third element is that of the preservation and preparation of Moses as Israel’s deliverer. God overturned the Egyptians’ final scheme in a most unusual way – through the birth and divine deliverance of a particular Hebrew baby boy (Exodus 2:1-10). A man and a woman from the tribe of Levi had a baby boy. They defied Pharaoh’s decree, hiding their son for three months. But when it became impossible to hide him any longer, they “cast him into the Nile River.” In technical compliance with the edict of Pharaoh, they put their child into an ark woven of reeds, and then placed him in the Nile. His sister stationed herself nearby to see what would happen. She was not there to save the child, for there was nothing she could do to save him.110
What a wonderful privilege God gave Miriam, Moses’ older sister. As she looked on from a distance, she saw the daughter of Pharaoh come to the edge of the Nile to wash herself. The daughter of Pharaoh spotted the basket floating in the reeds, and sent one of her attendants to fetch it. When she opened the basket, she saw this Hebrew baby, and his cries melted her heart. She had compassion on this baby, even though she knew that it was a Hebrew boy. She defied the order of her own father, taking the baby out of the water and adopting it as her own. Not without significance, she named the baby “Moses,” which means something like “to draw out.” In her own words, she tells us the meaning of his name: “Because I drew him from the water” (Exodus 2:10).
Most often, we look at this wonderful story as the deliverance of one Hebrew baby, but it is far more than that – it is the deliverance of every Hebrew boy. Had Moses not been taken “out of the water” by Pharaoh’s daughter, there would have been no nation for him to deliver more than 75 years later.111 Pharaoh had given a decree, and his own daughter defied it. She adopted this Hebrew baby, and she was not about to let her father or anyone else harm him. How many Hebrew babies do you think were thrown into the Nile after this? Every time his mother (or anyone else) called his name, “Moses,” it was a reminder that Pharaoh’s edict had been nullified.
As he grew up, he became a very powerful man in Egypt.112 Moses apparently never forgot his roots. One day he came upon an Egyptian who was abusing one of the Hebrew slaves. Moses killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand (2:12). Moses thought the Hebrews would understand that he was their deliverer, but he was wrong. The next day Moses encountered a Hebrew slave abusing another Hebrew. When he attempted to correct the offending Israelite, he was arrogantly rebuked:
13 When he went out the next day, there were two Hebrew men fighting. So he said to the one who was in the wrong, “Why are you striking your fellow Hebrew?” 14 And the man replied, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you planning to kill me just as you killed that Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, thinking, “Surely what I did has become known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard about this event, he sought to kill Moses. So Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian; he settled by a certain well (Exodus 2:13-15).113
Knowing that Pharaoh had been informed of his crime, Moses fled to Midian. It was there that he, like his ancestors before him,114 found his wife at a well (Exodus 2:14-22). For nearly 40 years115 he tended flocks in this wilderness before God called him to deliver the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt. God had taken notice of the mistreatment of His people, and He had remembered (as though He could forget) His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
God communicated with Moses from the midst of a burning bush. This burning bush was such an incredible sight that Moses had come closer to investigate. God called Moses from the bush, revealing that He was going to liberate His people, and that Moses was the man He was going to use to confront Pharaoh:
7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. 8 I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a land that is both good and large, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the territory of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 9 And now, indeed, the cry of the Israelites has come to me, and I have also seen how severely the Egyptians oppress them. 10 So now, go, and I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:8-10).
Moses was not so easily convinced. He was overly confident 40 years earlier, when he attempted to deliver his fellow-Israelites, but his complete failure had drained him of all self-confidence. It would do us well to briefly review Moses’ objections and God’s response.
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, or that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 And God said, “Surely I will be with you; and this will be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you bring the people out of Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain” (Exodus 3:11-12).
It was not a bad question. What man would dare to stand before Pharaoh, ruler of one of the most powerful nations on the face of the earth, and demand that he release the Israelites? Many years before, Moses was the (adopted) son of Pharaoh. He was a man of great power. On his own initiative, he sought to deliver his kinsmen. And he failed, miserably. Moses was now a felon and a fugitive from justice. How could he possibly return to Egypt to face Pharaoh?
God’s answer might be paraphrased this way:
“It really doesn’t matter who you are, Moses. What matters is that I have sent you, and I will be with you as you go and stand before Pharaoh. Your success in this mission does not depend upon your greatness or power, but on mine. I am like this bush, which burns, but does not burn up. Like this bush appears to be, I am eternal. Therefore, when I say I will be with you, you can be assured that I will, for I am eternal. Your reward for obeying Me will be to serve Me on this mountain.”
It wasn’t the identity of the messenger that mattered; it was the identity of Him who sent the messenger.
God – the Creator of heaven and earth – was the One who was sending Moses to carry out this task. If God was with Moses, then Moses would surely carry out his mission.
13 But Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is his name?’—what should I say to them?” 14 So God said to Moses, “I AM that I AM.” And he said, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation’” (Exodus 3:13-15).
We know that Moses exercised faith when he made the decision to identify with God’s people, rather than with Egypt, and more specifically with Pharaoh and his daughter (Hebrews 11:24-25). But the question Moses raises in Exodus 3:13 should also inform us that his knowledge of God was limited at this point. Whatever Moses knew about God, the Israelites knew even less (Joshua 24:14-15). By what name, Moses inquired, should he identify God? How would the Israelites know Him? I love the contrast between Moses’ earlier words, “Who am I?”, and God’s response to Moses here, “I AM that I AM” (3:14). If Moses’ words revealed his utter lack of confidence, God’s words were intended to inspire confidence, in Him. He is the ever-present, ever-existing One. He is the One who is constantly present, with Moses and with His people, Israel. He is not just the God of the present and of the future; He is the God of the past, the God who made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (3:15).
1 Moses answered again, “And if they do not believe me or pay attention to me, but say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you’?” 2 And the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He replied, “A rod.” 3 And the Lord said, “Throw it to the ground.” So he threw it to the ground, and it became a snake, and Moses fled from it. 4 But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and grab it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6 And the Lord also said to him, “Put your hand into your robe.” So he put his hand into his robe; and when he brought it out—it was leprous as snow! 7 And he said, “Put your hand back into your robe.” So he put his hand back into his robe; and when he brought it out from his robe—it was restored like the rest of his skin. 8 “And if they do not believe you or pay attention to the former sign, then they may believe the latter sign. 9 And if they do not believe even these two signs or listen to you, then take some water from the Nile and pour it out on the dry ground. The water that you take out of the Nile will become blood on the dry ground” (Exodus 4:1-9).
Moses is beginning to tread on thin ice at this point. He asks what he will do if the people don’t believe him, but this is after God has already said,
18 “And the elders will listen to you; and then you and the elders of Israel must go to the king of Egypt, and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. And now, let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may offer sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go, unless compelled to do so by overwhelming force. 20 So I will extend my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders that I will do among them; and after that he will let you go. 21 “And I will give this people favor with the Egyptians, so that when you depart you will not go out empty-handed. 22 Every woman will ask her neighbor and the one who happens to be staying in her house for gold items, silver items, and clothing. And you will put these articles on your sons and on your daughters—thus you will plunder the Egyptians!” (Exodus 3:18-22, emphasis mine).
Moses doubts God’s promises, but God graciously responds by giving Moses several signs, which will prove that he speaks with God’s authority and power. The signs are: (1) the staff that becomes a snake; (2) the hand that becomes leprous; and, (3) the water that becomes blood. These signs will cause the Israelites to take Moses seriously.
It is easy for us to sit back and be critical of Moses and his lack of faith, isn’t it? But let me remind you that while Moses’ experience at the burning bush must have made a great impression on him, it would hardly have been compelling proof to the Israelites, or to Pharaoh. I can’t remember who it was who first commented on this, but it is surely true. Can you imagine being Moses and standing before Pharaoh, insisting that he release the Israelites? Pharaoh responds, “Why should I believe you and do what you say?” Moses then replies, “Well, you see, I was talking to this bush… .” No wonder Moses was worried about the Israelites believing him. His story was almost too incredible to believe.
10 Then Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not an eloquent man, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of mouth and slow of tongue.”11 And the Lord said to him, “Who gave a mouth to man, or who makes a person mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 So now, go, and I will be with your mouth, and will teach you what you must say” (Exodus 4:10-12).
Moses’ words here seem a bit too humble when compared to Stephen’s words in Acts 7:
“So Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds” (Acts 7:22).
It should be remembered, however, that Stephen says this of Moses concerning his abilities while he was at the height of his power and popularity in Egypt. After 40 years out in the desert, not speaking Egyptian, one can understand how Moses might question his rhetorical skills. Nevertheless, his reticence does not seem to be founded upon humility as much as on fear, and because of this, God is angered (4:14). God appoints Aaron as Moses’ mouthpiece and sends him on his way to Egypt. God later informs Moses that all those who once sought him in Egypt are dead, so that it is safe for him to return (4:19).
The exodus is much more than a face-to-face confrontation with Pharaoh; it is a confrontation between the “gods” of Egypt and the one true God, the God of Israel:
1 And afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Release my people so that they may hold a pilgrim feast to me in the desert.’” 2 But Pharaoh said, “ Who is the Lord that I should obey him by releasing Israel? I do not know the Lord, and I will not release Israel” (Exodus 5:1-2, emphasis mine).
“And I will pass through the land of Egypt in the same night, and I will kill all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord” (Exodus 12:12, emphasis mine).
Egypt had many “gods,” and Pharaoh was angered by Moses’ claim that his God demanded the release of the Israelites. To Pharaoh, the God of the Hebrews was in the minor leagues, and he felt no obligation to surrender to His demands. The plagues are not only proof of the sovereignty of the God of Israel, but of the powerlessness of the “gods” of Egypt.
It is not just the Egyptians who need to be convinced that God of Israel is God alone, or that the “gods” of Egypt are really no-gods; the Israelites needed to learn this also, because many of the Israelites had worshipped Egyptian gods in Egypt. Notice Joshua’s words to the Israelites, just before his death, along with those of the prophet Amos:
“Now obey the Lord and worship him with integrity and loyalty. Put aside the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt and worship the Lord” (Joshua 24:24).
25 “Did you present Me with sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel? 26 You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves” (Amos 5:25-26, NASB).
Chapters 5 and 6 of Exodus are really a prelude to the plagues. Before God does some great and mighty work in the Bible, He often prefaces it with events that underscore the difficulty (perhaps better, the impossibility) of what He is about to do. God promises a son to Abram and Sarai, but He waits 25 years to provide this son, so that by the time He does enable Sarah to conceive, it is a “Class A” miracle. Joseph’s situation looks absolutely hopeless as he finds himself in an Egyptian prison, but God provides a miraculous deliverance, so that Joseph does not merely find himself a man who is released from prison, but one who has become the second most powerful man in Egypt. God will purposely lead the Israelites so that they are trapped between the Red Sea, mountains, and the pursuing Egyptians.
In chapter 4, Moses returned to Egypt and met with the elders of Israel. He performed the signs God had given him, and they all believed (4:31). No doubt elated by his early success with the Israelites, Moses confronts Pharaoh for the first time. He does not demand that Pharaoh permanently release the Israelites; he only requests a three-day vacation, so that the Israelites can go into the wilderness to worship their God (5:1). He does not threaten Pharaoh and Egypt, promising that God will bring plagues upon them if the request is denied. He indicates that if the Israelites do not obey God by worshipping Him, God may bring a plague on them (5:3). Pharaoh bristles, stating that he does not even know this “God” whom they want to worship, accusing the Israelites of merely being lazy. He not only refuses to release the Israelites, he greatly increases their workload (5:6-11). The Egyptians beat the foremen, and they came to Moses to protest that Moses had not made things better for them; they were worse off than ever! When Moses went to the Lord, he wasn’t happy, either:
22 Moses returned to the Lord, and said, “Lord, why have you brought trouble to this people? Why did you ever send me? 23 From the time I went to speak to Pharaoh in your name, he has caused trouble for this people, and you have certainly not rescued your people!” (Exodus 5:22-23).
God was not ruffled by the indignation of Moses. He once again outlines the process that He will use to manifest His power over Pharaoh and Egypt (6:1-2). He reminds Moses of the covenant He had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (6:3-4). He reminds Moses of His compassion toward His people and His awareness of their affliction (6:5). He reassures Moses that He will deliver the Israelites from their affliction and bring them into the Promised Land, just as He promised (6:6-8). But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to him. When God told Moses to return to Pharaoh, Moses protested. If the Israelites would not believe him, why would Pharaoh take him seriously? Moses once again reminded God that he was not a forceful speaker (6:9-12). God responded by repeating Moses’ orders: Let Moses and Aaron go back to confront Pharaoh once again (6:13).
After a somewhat parenthetical genealogy of the line of Levi (focusing particularly on Moses and Aaron – 6:14-27), Moses takes up the matter of his difficulty with speech (6:28-30). God repeats Moses’ orders, with the assurance that Aaron will be the spokesman for Moses (7:1-2). He repeats the process by which Pharaoh and all Egypt will be subdued:
3 “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart. And although I will multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt, 4 Pharaoh will not listen to you. And I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring out my regiments, my people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment. 5 Then the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord, when I extend my hand over Egypt and bring out the Israelites from among them” (Exodus 7:3-5).
God instructs Moses and Aaron to return to Pharaoh. Moses is told that Pharaoh will request a miracle, and when he does, Moses is to instruct Aaron to throw down his staff, which will become a snake (7:8-9). Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh. No demands are reported, but Pharaoh does ask for a miracle, as proof of God’s power and Moses’ authority as His spokesman. Moses instructs Aaron to throw down his staff, which becomes a snake. Pharaoh summons his magicians, and they appear to reproduce the miracle, except for the fact that Aaron’s snake swallows up all their staffs. The heart of Pharaoh is hardened, and he refuses to take heed to the word of the Lord (7:13).
The “prelude to the plagues” plays a very important role in the story of the exodus. It sets the stage for the drama that is about to take place when God brings the series of ten plagues upon Pharaoh and Egypt. Even before the first plague, the heart of Pharaoh is already hardened. He is determined not to obey the God of the Israelites. He has no intention of letting the Israelites go. He has a false sense of confidence because his servants have been able to imitate the miracle of the serpents. The Israelites have changed their tune as well. Initially, the elders and the people believed the words Moses spoke (through Aaron), probably due to the signs he performed (Exodus 4:29-31). But when Pharaoh punished the Israelites with harder labor, their leaders complained to Moses, and Moses himself complained to God as well (5:6-22). The people ceased to listen to Moses:
Moses told this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor (Exodus 6:9, emphasis mine; cf. also v. 12).
The Israelites were no longer supportive of Moses by the time the plagues commenced. Moses was pretty much on his own so far as taking a stand against Pharaoh was concerned. He did not have widespread support from those he was sent to liberate. In my opinion, many of the Israelites may have wished that Moses would just go away and leave them alone. Up to this point, his “ministry” had only caused them further pain. Moses kept facing off with Pharaoh because God commanded him to do so, not because the people urged him to go. And when the people are set free, they are virtually forced out of Egypt by Pharaoh. They had no choice but to leave. Pharaoh and the Egyptians were so stricken by the loss of the firstborn that they don’t ever want to see an Israelite again. All of this is to say that the exodus was the result of God’s faithfulness, rather than the result of Israel’s faith and obedience. Salvation is truly of the Lord, and not of man.
Before the plagues have even begun, the reader has a very strong sense of the difficulty of the task ahead. Pharaoh is adamantly opposed to letting the Israelites go, and it will take a miracle for Pharaoh’s will to be broken. Indeed, it will take a sequence of miracles before Pharaoh will finally let God’s people go. The victory will not be due to the confident leadership of Moses or of Aaron, nor will it be due to the faith of the Israelites. It will not be due to the kindness of Pharaoh, nor even out of the fear of divine judgment. The victory over Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt will be that of God alone.
There is a distinct pattern to the plagues that God brings upon the Egyptians. First we see that God employs the forces of nature against the Egyptians. God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1 and 2), will once again demonstrate His power over nature by employing it as His judgment rod against Egypt. Second, the plagues are the instrument of God to mock the gods of Egypt. It is very likely that each plague is designed to mock one or more of the Egyptian “gods,” showing that God is in control over the aspects of nature that the Egyptians thought one of their gods controlled.116 Third, there is a gradual increase in the level of difficulty of the plagues as God’s battle with the gods of Egypt intensifies. The magicians of Egypt initially imitate the miracles of the first plagues, but eventually these same magicians must acknowledge their inability to duplicate the work of God, let alone to reverse it. As the plagues become more severe, Pharaoh begins to bargain with Moses, but once the plague is removed, Pharaoh once again refuses to let the Israelites go.
The first three plagues produce discomfort; the next three plagues produce destruction. The Nile is turned to blood, which is an irritation and inconvenience for the Egyptians. The Egyptian magicians simulate the miracle, and Pharaoh is not impressed with the sign that God has given through Moses and Aaron. The second plague occurs one week after the first. Frogs appear throughout the kingdom. Pharaoh’s magicians imitate this miracle as well, but Pharaoh is forced to bargain with Moses. He promises to release Israel if Moses will call off the plague, but once the frogs are gone, Pharaoh retracts his promise. The third plague comes with no warning. Gnats are sent upon the land of Egypt, and this time the magicians are unable to simulate the miracle. They confess, “this is the finger of God” (8:19). Nevertheless, because Pharaoh’s heart has been hardened, he refuses to release the Israelites as he promised.
The second series of three plagues is more than just irritating; it is personally painful and destructive. Each of the successive plagues strikes closer and closer to home, especially for Pharaoh. They also become more specific and discriminative. The fourth plague is promised at a specific time (see 8:23; 9:5). From the fourth plague on, God distinguishes between the Egyptians and the Israelites (see 8:22; 9:4). The Egyptians suffer, but the Israelites are exempted from the judgment. Death comes to the livestock of the Israelites, a foretaste of what is yet to come on the Egyptians. Pharaoh begins to bargain with Moses, seeking to reduce his losses, but whenever the plague is removed, he revokes his promise. The third of each series of plagues reveals Pharaoh as one whose heart is hardened and unwilling to admit defeat.
The third series of plagues produces selective destruction and a growing sense of dread on the part of the Egyptians (but not Pharaoh). The destruction is selective because the Israelites are exempted. God tells the Egyptians that He could have destroyed all of them by now, if He had chosen to do so. He also warns that this series of plagues will prove to be utterly devastating. He will now commence unleashing all His plagues on them, impacting them in a very personal way (9:14). The first plague of the series (the seventh plague in the series) is a great storm which will produce lightning and hail. God reveals the time the storm will come, and for the first time, appeals to the people of Egypt to spare themselves from this judgment by bringing men and cattle in from the fields. Those who believed brought their servants and cattle inside, sparing them; those who did not believe and respond as Moses instructed suffered the consequences. This is the first instance of some Egyptians acting on the word of Moses with some measure of faith (at least they believe that judgment was coming, and they did what Moses said to avoid it). In the seventh plague, the hail destroyed the crops except for the wheat and spelt, which were later crops. The eighth plague destroyed all remaining vegetation. Pharaoh twice confesses his sin, but then revokes his promise once the plagues are stopped. The ninth plague was that of a terrifying darkness, which lasted for three days. It was a terrifying kind of darkness, and yet Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. After failing to persuade Moses to leave the cattle behind, Pharaoh sends Moses and Aaron away and tells them not to come back.
The tenth and final plague is introduced in chapter 11, although it seems clear that Moses announced this plague to Pharaoh just before he departed from the presence of Pharaoh for the last time (which was recorded in the final verses of chapter 10). God begins by telling Moses that this is the final plague, and that after this judgment falls upon Pharaoh and all Egypt, Pharaoh will release the Israelites (11:1). God then gives specific instruction as to how the Israelites are to ask their Egyptian neighbors for gifts of silver and gold (11:2). The firstborn of every Egyptian was to be slain, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of the Egyptian slave girl, and even including the cattle. Pharaoh’s servants would then come to Moses and request that he and the Israelites leave Egypt.
In Exodus 12 and 13, we are told about the judgment of God upon Egypt, and how the firstborn son of every Egyptian was slain. We are told that Pharaoh finally released the Israelites and how the Egyptians voluntarily gave the Israelites their items of silver and gold (12:29-36). We are told how the Israelites had no time to make leavened bread, so that they ate unleavened bread instead (12:34). Moses tells us that God led the Israelites out of Egypt by an unusual route, which took them “around by the way of the wilderness to the Red Sea” (13:18).
But interspersed within chapters 12 and 13 are God’s very precise instructions regarding the celebration of the first Passover meal, which was the means by which He would spare the firstborn sons of the Israelites. In addition to this, God gave instructions regarding the perpetual observance of the Passover as a memorial. The exodus of Israel from Egypt was to be marked by becoming the first month of the year from that point on (12:1-2). The Passover Celebration was to be an annual reminder of the great deliverance that God accomplished for His people at the exodus.
The Passover celebration was to be followed up with the “Feast of unleavened bread” (12:14-20). All leaven was to be removed from their houses, and no leavened bread was to be eaten for seven days after Passover. Since God spared the firstborn sons of the Israelites, they belonged to God, and thus the Israelites were to redeem their firstborn sons and cattle (13:1-16).
Angered by Moses’ refusal to negotiate regarding the release of Israel (the Israelites could go, but the flocks and herds must remain in Egypt), the heart of Pharaoh was further hardened, resulting in his command that Moses was never again to come into his presence (10:24-29). At midnight, the Lord struck all the firstborn males in Egypt dead, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of the lowest servant girl in society. No household in Egypt was untouched by death (12:30). Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and informed them that all Israel could leave Egypt, with no conditions – all the Israelites and all their cattle. He added one more request, “But bless me also” (12:32b). What an interesting footnote. Now, at last, Pharaoh finally admits defeat at the hand of the God of Israel, and he asks Moses to bless him. Pharaoh sees that Moses, the shepherd, is greater than he, and thus it is Moses who can bless Pharaoh, and not Pharaoh who can pronounce a blessing on Moses. It would seem to me that Pharaoh is seeking a blessing from Moses, a kind of backhanded commitment that he would bring no further plagues upon Egypt.
The Israelites were to have eaten the Passover meal “in haste,” and “dressed to travel” (12:11), so it did not take that long for the Israelites to begin to make their way out of Egypt. Before they left, they asked their neighbors for gifts of silver and gold, gifts their neighbors gladly gave, if only the Israelites would leave and never return. The Israelites left Egypt after 430 years117 in that land. Moses makes certain to inform his readers that they left “to the very day” (“on the same day,” NET Bible) – the very day that God had purposed and promised that they would leave (see Genesis 15:13-16; Exodus 3:20-22; 6:1-8; 7:1-5; 11:1-2). God’s plans are always on time.
God led the Israelites in a manner that appeared somewhat less than direct. He did not lead them by the most direct route, because they would have faced the Philistines, and they were not yet ready for war. Had they faced war early on, they might have sought to desert and return to Egypt (13:17-18). It wasn’t long before Pharaoh had second thoughts about letting the Israelites go, and he set out in hot pursuit (14:1-9). God led the Israelites in a way that made them appear to be lost, in a way that actually encouraged Pharaoh to pursue them. When Pharaoh and his army caught up with the Israelites, the Israelites were terrified. From a purely human point of view, they had good reason to be scared. They were trapped between the Red Sea, the mountains, and the Egyptian soldiers.
The Israelites cried out to God. From the words they spoke to Moses, it would seem this was not a crying out in prayer so much as it was an outcry of protest:
10 When Pharaoh got closer, the Israelites looked up and saw that the Egyptians were marching after them. They were terrified. Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord. 11 And they said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt you took us away to die in the desert? What in the world have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Was this not what we told you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians?’ For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Exodus 14:10-12).
Just hours from slavery, the Israelites are already eager to return. Moses was doing a little “crying out” as well (14:15), but God instructed him to lift up his rod, extending it toward the Red Sea, so that the Israelites could pass through on dry ground. God informed Moses that He would harden the heart of Pharaoh so that the army would pursue the Israelites into the sea and thus be destroyed (14:15-18).
We all think we know the story of the Israelites’ passing through the Red Sea, thanks to our text, and to Cecil B. DeMille whose film, “The Exodus,” has created for us a mental picture of this event. The Red Sea parted, not heaped up on one side, as a strong wind might normally do, and as some have suggested it happened. The seawaters heaped up on both sides, staying in place something like Jello. And the path through the sea was dry ground (until the chariots of the Egyptians arrived). Once the Israelites were safely on the other side, the waters returned to their place, drowning all the Egyptian soldiers, and thus ending the danger for the Israelites.
While the bodies of the Egyptian soldiers washed up on shore, the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:
1 Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:
“I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously,
the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation.
This is my God and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
3 The Lord is a man of war,
the Lord is his name.
4 The chariots of Pharaoh and his army he has thrown into the sea,
and his chosen officers were drowned in the Sea of Reeds.
5 The depths have covered over them,
they went down to the bottom like a stone.
6 Your right hand, O Lord, was majestic in power,
your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy.
7 And in the greatness of your majesty you have overthrown
those who rise up against you.
You sent forth your wrath;
it consumed them like stubble.
8 And by the blast of your nostrils the waters were piled up,
the waters stood upright like a heap,
and the deep waters were congealed in the heart of the sea.
9 The enemy said, “I will chase, I will overtake,
I will divide the spoil;
my desire will be satisfied on them.
I will draw my sword, my hand will destroy them.”
10 But you blew with your breath, and the sea covered them.
They sank like lead in the mighty waters.
11 Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you?—majestic in holiness,
fearful in praises, working wonders?
12 You stretched out your right hand,
the earth swallowed them.
13 By your loyal love you will lead the people
whom you have redeemed;
you will guide them by your strength to your holy habitation.
14 The people will hear and be afraid;
anguish will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia.
15 Then the chiefs of Edom will be terrified,
the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling,
and the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away.
16 Fear and dread will fall on them;
by the greatness of your arm they will be as still as stone
until your people pass over, O Lord,
until the people pass over, which you have bought.
17 You will bring them in
and plant them in the mountain of your inheritance,
in the place, O Lord, you made for your residence,
the sanctuary, O Lord, your hands have established.
18 The Lord will reign for ever and ever!
19 For the horses of Pharaoh went
with his chariots and his footmen into the seas,
and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea on them,
but the Israelites went on dry land in the midst of the sea.”
20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a hand-drum in her hand, and all the women went out after her with hand-drums and with dances. 21 And Miriam sang antiphonally to them, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15:1-21).
Rightly, the Israelites saw the exodus as the work of God. Just as the plagues displayed the sovereignty of God to the Egyptians, they also were compelling proof to the Israelites that the God of Israel is God alone. To my knowledge this “Song of the Sea” is the first poetry found in the Old Testament. In very dramatic terms, it describes the victory of God over the “gods” of Egypt and over Pharaoh and his army. The terms that are used here do not describe a nation wading across a shallow body of water, as some would wish us to believe. The waters are piled high and Israel’s enemies sink into the depths of the sea. Not only did the crossing of the Red Sea demonstrate the majesty and power of God, it also gave the Israelites assurance that they would indeed possess the land God had promised. The exodus and the victory of God over Egypt were but the firstfruits of many other great victories over the enemies of God. What God had promised Abram over 400 years before, He had now begun to fulfill.
The exodus of Israel from Egypt is a landmark event in the history of Israel and in the “unfolding drama of redemption.” It was important to the Israelites who were enslaved to the Egyptians, because it meant they would no longer suffer the cruelty and oppression of their Egyptian slavery. It was also important because it was the event that enabled the Israelites to return to the land of Canaan, which they were soon to possess. The exodus was, in many ways, the birth of the nation Israel. This is why God sometimes spoke of Himself as Israel’s “Creator” (Isaiah 27:11; 43:1, 7; etc.).
The exodus marks a number of other important changes. It is at the exodus that God begins to work with the nation Israel corporately. Up till this time, the focus has been on the work of God in the life of a particular person (first Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, and finally Joseph); now God deals with Israel corporately (as well as through individuals like Moses). In the past, God was providentially involved in the affairs of His covenant people, but His hand was not so readily apparent. God providentially provided the right wife for Jacob, when his inclinations were not godly at all. He used his flight to Paddan Aram, where his mother’s relatives were to be found, as the occasion for Jacob to obtain a wife. And God providentially provided Leah as Jacob’s wife, when Jacob was only interested in Rachel. The account of Joseph in Genesis is the story of God’s providential care, not only of Joseph, but also of Jacob’s family. Israel’s bondage in Egypt providentially preserved them as a distinct people, because otherwise they would have been assimilated into the Canaanite culture had they remained in Canaan (see Genesis 38). But now we see God intervening directly into human history, to rescue His people, Israel. The contest between the God of Israel and the “gods” of Egypt could not be more public.
The plagues God brought upon the Egyptians served several purposes:
They were a punishment on Pharaoh and upon the Egyptian for abusing God’s chosen people. God blessed Pharaoh and the Egyptians on account of Joseph, but God punished Pharaoh and the Egyptians for enslaving and abusing the Israelites. This was the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.
The plagues were a demonstration of the existence and the power of the God of Israel, that they might believe He is God alone.
The plagues were a manifestation of God’s nature and His glory (Exodus 14:18). God glorified Himself by Pharaoh’s rebellion and resistance (see Romans 9:17).
The plagues were also a warning to the Israelites, a demonstration of the consequences they would face for disobeying God’s commands (see Deuteronomy 28:60).
The exodus is the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises, in a very precise way. In addition to paving the way for the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12:1-3, etc.), the exodus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:
12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep. Then great terror overwhelmed him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. 14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.”17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking firepot with a flaming torch passed between the animal parts. 18 That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites” (Genesis 15:12-21).
Moses tells us that the departure of Israel from Egypt took place on “the very day” God had promised (see Exodus 12:41, NASB). In addition, the exodus was the precise fulfillment of several more recent prophecies (Exodus 3:18-22; 4:21-23; 6:1-8; 7:1-5; 11:1-2). The Israelites should see from this that God is a God who keeps His promises.
As mentioned earlier, the exodus was the second great act of creation in the Pentateuch. It was the time when God “created” the nation Israel. God’s power as the Creator of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) can be seen by each of the plagues He brought upon the Egyptians and their “gods.” We can also see His power as the Creator in the crossing of the Red Sea. God made a path in the midst of the sea, causing the waters to stand on both sides. He then sent these waters thundering down upon the Egyptian soldiers, destroying Pharaoh’s military might.
The exodus will become the basis for Israel’s identity and practices as a nation. It is because God delivered the nation Israel from their bondage that they become God’s slaves (Leviticus 25:55). The Law of Moses is the treaty, the constitution of the nation Israel, which God gives His redeemed people. Israel’s religious calendar began with the exodus. You might say that the exodus was the beginning of time for Israel. The Passover became an annual celebration, the religious high point of the year. The feast of unleavened bread was also established on the basis of the exodus experience.
The exodus proved the folly of idolatry. The Israelites had already embraced some of the idolatry of the Canaanites (see Genesis 31:19; 35:1-3; Joshua 24:14-15; Amos 5:25-26). At the exodus, God pronounced judgment on the “gods” of Egypt:
“And I will pass through the land of Egypt in the same night, and I will kill all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord” (Exodus 12:12).
What folly it would be to worship the very gods that God had judged in Egypt.
The exodus was a deliverance brought about by God’s grace, and not as the result of Israel’s good works or law-keeping. God does not give the Law of Moses to the Israelites until after He has saved them at the exodus. They were not rescued because they faithfully kept the law. Indeed, they were idolatrous and wayward in Egypt. They did not faithfully follow Moses, who spoke for God. Although they initially believed Moses, their trust in him (and in the God of Israel) quickly eroded (compare Exodus 4:30-31 with 5:20-21; 6:9; 14:10-12; Psalm 106:7-8). In part, the Israelites left Egypt because Pharaoh drove them out (Exodus 6:1; 11:1). In short, the exodus was God’s work, and God’s work alone.
God’s great act of delivering His people at the exodus was a dramatic demonstration of His power and the assurance that God would accomplish all that He had promised. This is what the Israelites sang as they stood on the other side of the Red Sea (Exodus 15:1-21). It is also a theme that is taken up throughout the rest of the Old Testament. The vocabulary of the exodus is frequently employed as an assurance of God’s future work:
1 Now, this is what the Lord says,
the one who created you, O Jacob,
and formed you, O Israel:
“Don’t be afraid, for I will protect you.
I call you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I am with you;
when you pass through the streams, they will not overwhelm you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
the flames will not harm you.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the sovereign king of Israel, your deliverer (Isaiah 43:1-3a, emphasis mine).
14 This is what the Lord says,
your protector, the sovereign king of Israel:
“For your sake I send to Babylon
and make them all fugitives,
turning the Babylonians’ joyful shouts into mourning songs.
15 I am the Lord, your sovereign ruler,
the one who created Israel, your king.”
16 This is what the Lord says,
the one who made a road through the sea,
a pathway through the surging waters,
17 the one who led chariots and horses to destruction,
together with a mighty army.
They fell down, never to rise again;
they were extinguished, put out like a burning wick:
18 “Don’t remember these earlier events;
don’t recall these former events.
19 “Look, I am about to do something new.
Now it begins to happen! Do you not recognize it?
Yes, I will make a road in the desert
and paths in the wilderness.
20 The wild animals of the desert honor me,
the jackals and ostriches,
because I put water in the desert
and streams in the wilderness,
to quench the thirst of my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself,
so they might praise me” (Isaiah 43:14-21, emphasis mine).
The work of our Lord Jesus Christ is also described in “exodus terminology”:
13 After they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph saying, “Get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to look for the child to kill him.” 14 Then he got up, took the child and his mother at night, and went to Egypt. 15 He stayed there until Herod died. In this way what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet was fulfilled: “I called my Son out of Egypt” (Matthew 2:13-15).
28 Now about eight days after these sayings, Jesus took with him Peter, John, and James, and went up the mountain to pray. 29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face was transformed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Then two men, Moses and Elijah, began talking with him. 31 They appeared in glorious splendor and spoke about his departure118 that he was about to carry out at Jerusalem (Luke 9:28-31, emphasis mine).
The “departure” of which our Lord, Moses, and Elijah spoke was literally our Lord’s “exodus.” It is the second and greater exodus, the greatest saving act of all time. As Israel came up out of Egypt at their exodus, so the Messiah, the Son of God, came out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15). As God saved Israel at the exodus, so He accomplished a far greater act of salvation by our Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension – His “exodus.” In Him, it is our exodus as well. Thus, Christian baptism is likened to passing through the Red Sea:
1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4).
The work of our Lord is likened to that of the Passover lamb:
13 “Look, my servant will succeed!
He will be elevated, lifted high, and greatly exalted.
14 Just as many were horrified by the sight of you—
he was so disfigured he no longer looked like a man;
15 his form was so marred he no longer looked human—
so now he will startle many nations.
Kings will be shocked by his exaltation,
for they will witness something unannounced to them,
and they will understand something they had not heard about.
53:1 Who would have believed what we just heard?
When was the LORD’s power revealed through him?
He sprouted up like a twig before God,
like a root out of parched soil;
he had no stately form or majesty that might catch our attention,
no special appearance that we should want to follow him.
3 He was despised and rejected by people,
one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness;
people hid their faces from him;
he was despised, and we considered him insignificant.
4 But he lifted up our illnesses
he carried our pain;
even though we thought he was being punished,
attacked by God, and afflicted for something he had done.
5 He was wounded because of our rebellious deeds,
crushed because of our sins;
he endured punishment that made us well;
because of his wounds we have been healed.
6 All of us had wandered off like sheep;
each of us had strayed off on his own path,
but the LORD caused the sin of all of us to attack him.
7 He was treated harshly and afflicted,
but he did not even open his mouth.
Like a lamb led to the slaughtering block,
like a sheep silent before her shearers,
he did not even open his mouth.
8 He was led away after an unjust trial—
but who even cared?
Indeed, he was cut off from the land of the living;
because of the rebellion of his own people he was wounded.
9 They intended to bury him with criminals,
but he ended up in a rich man’s tomb,
because he had committed no violent deeds,
nor had he spoken deceitfully.
10 Though the LORD desired to crush him and make him ill,
once restitution is made,
he will see descendants and enjoy long life,
and the LORD’s purpose will be accomplished through him.
11 Having suffered, he will reflect on his work,
he will be satisfied when he understands what he has done.
“My servant will acquit many, for he carried their sins.
12 So I will assign him a portion with the mighty,
he will divide the spoils of victory with the powerful,
because he willingly submitted to death
and was numbered with the rebels,
when he lifted up the sin of many
and intervened on behalf of the rebels (Isaiah 52:13—53:12, emphasis mine).
29 On the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “ Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” 30 This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is greater than I am, because he existed before me.’ 31 I did not recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he could be revealed to Israel (John 1:29-31, emphasis mine).”
6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast affects the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough, since you are, in fact, without yeast. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 So then, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of vice and evil, but with the bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:6-8, emphasis mine).
The greatest deliverance of all time was not the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt, but the deliverance of men and women from the bondage of sin:
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), 15 and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Our Lord is the One greater than Moses, of whom Moses spoke:
15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—from your fellow Israelites; you must listen to him 16 in line with everything you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb in the day of the convocation: “Do not let us hear the voice of the Lord our God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die.” 17 The Lord then said to me, “What they have asked is good. 18 I will raise up a prophet like you for them from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I want. 19 I myself with hold responsible anyone who then pays no attention to the words that prophet will speak in my name.
The Lord Jesus Christ is that “prophet” to whom we must listen:
1 After God spoke long ago in various portions and in various ways to our ancestors through the prophets, 2 in these last days he has spoken to us in a son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he created the world. 3 The Son is the radiance of his glory and the representation of his essence, and he sustains all things by his powerful word, and so when he had accomplished cleansing for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 4 Thus he became so far better than the angels as he has inherited a name superior to theirs (Hebrews 1:1-4).
1 Therefore we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2 For if the message spoken through angels proved to be so firm that every violation or disobedience received its just penalty, 3 how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was first communicated through the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard him, 4 while God confirmed their witness with signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will (Hebrews 2:1-4).
He is the One who came to bear the penalty for our sins. He is the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He is the Passover Lamb, who delivers us from death. To receive Him is to know true freedom (John 8:32). Have you recognized your bondage to sin and death? Have you trusted in Jesus Christ as God’s only provision for the forgiveness of your sins and the hope of eternal life? If not, I urge you to do so this very moment.
When I read the account of the exodus, I am reminded of the fact that God is in no hurry. Though He promised to deliver His people Israel from bondage, God waited over 400 years to do so. Mortal men look for God to fulfill His promises in their lifetime, but the way of faith often requires us to live our entire lives without seeing that which God has promised:
13 These all died in faith without receiving the things promised, but they saw them in the distance and welcomed them and acknowledged that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth. 14 For those who speak in such a way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 In fact, if they had been thinking of the land that they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they aspire to a better land, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them… . 39 And these all were commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. 40 For God had provided something better for us, so that they would be made perfect together with us (Hebrews 11:13-16, 39-40).
God is in no great hurry to carry out His plans and purposes. He is eternal. He has all the time in the world; indeed, He is above and beyond time. But what He promises will come to pass. Faith is living out our lives, based upon the promises of God. We are to believe His Word, and to live by His Word, looking for that day when He will accomplish all that He has promised.
If the exodus teaches us anything about God, it is that He is sovereign. He is in control. He is bigger than Pharaoh and the great nation of Egypt. He is able to fulfill His promises, to the very letter. He is the One who can harden and soften hearts. He is the One who is able to use man’s opposition to bring glory to Himself and to achieve His purposes. Pharaoh asked, “Who is the Lord that I should obey Him…?” The exodus of Israel from Egypt answers that question. Another Gentile king perhaps put it best:
34 But at the end of the appointed time I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up toward heaven, and my sanity returned to me.
I blessed the Most High,
and I praised and glorified the one who lives forever.
For his rule is an everlasting rule,
and his kingdom extends from one generation to the next.
35 All the inhabitants of the earth are regarded as nothing.
He does as he wishes with the army of heaven
and with those who inhabit the earth.
No one slaps his hand and says to him, `What have you done?’
36 At that time my sanity returned to me. I was restored to the honor of my kingdom, and my splendor returned to me. My ministers and my magistrates were seeking me out, and I was reinstated over my kingdom. Tremendous greatness was restored to me, greater than before. 37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, for all his deeds are right and his ways are just. He is able to bring low those who live in pride” (Daniel 4:34-37).
Encounter |
Text |
Request |
Threat |
Response |
Consequence |
Response / Outcome |
||
A |
5:1ff. |
Have a feast for 3 days in the wilderness. |
None Lest God strike us with sword or plague. |
That’s just a vacation. No more straw, foremen punished. |
Foremen protested to Moses. Moses protested to God. |
God reassures Moses of release, based on His covenant with Abraham. Further instructions given. |
||
B |
7:8ff. |
Request apparently repeated. |
None |
Pharaoh requests a miracle. Magicians imitate miracle. |
Aaron’s staff becomes serpent. Aaron’s staff devours theirs. |
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. He did not listen to Moses and Aaron. |
||
Level of Pain: Irritation |
||||||||
1 |
7:14ff. |
In the morning Release My People |
Nile turned to blood |
Magicians imitate. Pharaoh did not take it to heart. |
Egyptians dug around Nile for water to drink. |
Pharaoh did not take this to heart. |
||
2 |
7:25ff. |
One week later “Go to Pharaoh” “Release My People.” |
If not, frogs. |
None recorded, but Pharaoh surely refused – magicians imitate miracle. |
Frogs sent |
Pharaoh bargains — Requests frogs to be removed, but when removed Pharaoh hardens his heart. |
||
3 |
8:16ff. |
No request: “Extend your hand… .” |
No threat made |
Gnats sent |
Magicians could not reproduce this miracle: “This is the finger of God.” |
Pharaoh’s heart is hardened – did not listen to his magicians. |
||
Level of Pain: Discriminative Pain and Destruction |
||||||||
4 |
8:20ff. |
“Get up early …and say: ‘“Release My people.” Time: tomorrow. |
Swarms of flies to be sent on Egyptians. God distinguishes between Egyptians and Israelites. |
Flies sent |
Pharaoh: “Sacrifice, but stay in this land.” “O.K. but don’t go far.” |
“I will release, but don’t go far.” Moses prays; flies removed; Pharaoh hardens his heart and refuses to release Israel. |
||
5 |
9:1ff. |
“Go to Pharaoh and tell him: ‘Release My people.’” |
Plague sent on Egyptian livestock & animals, but not Israelite animals. At appointed time. |
Egyptian livestock dies. Pharaoh investigates, but his heart hardened, so that he does not release Israelites. |
||||
6 |
9:8-12 |
No request. “Throw soot into air.” |
No warning. |
Aaron casts soot, boils come on Egyptians. |
Magicians cannot stand before Moses because of their boils. |
Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart; he does not listen nor release the Israelites. |
||
Level of Pain: Discriminative Devastation and Dread |
||||||||
7 |
9:13-35 |
“Get up early in the morning and say, ‘Release My people.’” “I could have destroyed you all by now.” “This time tomorrow” |
I will send all My plagues on you, your servants, your people. Hail to come the next day – people warned to bring people, livestock under cover. |
Those who feared brought in man and beast from the hail as Moses commanded. Those who disbelieved left servants and livestock outside. |
Hail destroyed everything, but land of Goshen was not affected. Flax and barley destroyed; wheat and spelt not destroyed. |
Pharaoh confesses his sin, requests Moses to pray and to stop the hail. Promises to release Israelites. Moses indicated that he knew better than to believe Pharaoh. Pharaoh hardens his heart; won’t release Israelites. |
||
8 |
10:1-20 |
“Go to Pharaoh.” “I have hardened his heart.” “Release My people.” |
Locusts will destroy remaining crops. |
Pharaoh’s servants strongly urge him to release the Israelites, lest Egypt be completely destroyed. Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron – “Men only may go” – drives out Moses and Aaron. |
Locusts released, and destroy everything that is left, that hail didn’t destroy, like wheat and spelt. |
Pharaoh confesses his sin, asks Moses to stop the locusts. Locusts removed. Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart; he refused to release Israelites. |
||
9 |
10:21-29 |
None “Extend your hand” |
Darkness came across the land of Egypt for 3 days. Israelites had light. |
Pharaoh: “Go, but leave your cattle.” Moses: “Not without our cattle.” Pharaoh: “Get out, and don’t come back.” Moses: “We won’t.” |
||||
DEATH |
||||||||
10 |
11:1—12:42 |
None |
No threat made. |
Israelites instructed to ask Egyptians for gifts. They give generously, |
God distinguishes between Israel and Egypt. Feasts established Instructions given for spoiling the Egyptians. |
108 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on December 31, 2000.
109 Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), p. 16.
110 We dare not overlook Stephen’s words on this subject, which indicate that the child was “abandoned” by his parents (Acts 7:21, NET Bible). The NASB includes the marginal reading, which indicates that they “put him out to die.”
111 See Acts 7:23, 30.
112 See Acts 7:22.
113 See Acts 7:23-29.
114 Genesis, chapters 24 and 29.
115 Acts 7:30.
116 Kitchen writes, “In Ex. xii. 12 God speaks of executing judgments against all the gods of Egypt. In some measure He had already done so in the plagues, as Egypt’s gods were much bound up with the forces of nature. Ha`pi, the Nile-god of inundation, had brought not prosperity but ruin; the frogs, symbol of Heqit, a goddess of fruitfulness, had brought only disease and wasting; the hail, rain, and storm were the heralds of awesome events (as in the Pyramid Tests); and the light of the sun-god Re` was blotted out, to mention but of few of the deities affected.” K. A. Kitchen, “Plagues of Egypt,” The New Bible Dictionary, J. D. Douglas, ed., (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962), p. 1003.
117 “The time of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt is calculated ‘to the very day,’ that is, 430 years. Genesis 15:13 gave the time in the round number four hundred years. First Kings 6:1 calculates the time from the Exodus to the building of the temple to be 480 years. This figure gives the broad chronological boundaries for the historical books.” John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), p. 265.
118 The footnote in the NET Bible reads: “Grk “his exodus,” which refers to Jesus’ death in Jerusalem and journey back to glory. Here is the first lesson that the disciples must learn. The wondrous rule comes only after suffering.
My father-in-law, Larry Oubre, is easily one of the most devoted students of the Word of God that I’ve had the privilege to know, and I’ve learned to listen carefully when he talks about rightly handling the Scriptures. On Christmas day, I was talking to him about this message and about the quandary I was in trying to figure out how to take the topic of the “Giving of the Law,” which I had previously taught in about 20 lessons, and boiling it down to just a couple of “big picture”-type messages. He told me to start at the end – with the New Testament’s declaration regarding the purpose of the Old Testament Law – then to go back to the Old Testament and show that the purpose of the Law has always been the same. Following his wise counsel, that’s exactly the approach I’m going to take.
In the first three chapters of the Book of Romans, Paul presents a carefully crafted argument addressing the question, “How do men become righteous in the eyes of God?” The first part of his argument is to explain how men have NOT become righteous in the eyes of God.
He explains that in spite of the knowledge of God made known through nature, through conscience and through the revealed Law, all men, both Jews and Gentiles, have failed to accomplish the requirement of God.
In chapter 3, Paul takes his argument to its logical conclusion. In verse 9, he declares flat out “that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.” He then defends this forceful accusation against all men by going back to the Old Testament Scriptures. The words he uses here could not be any simpler, any clearer, or any more forceful!
10 as it is written,
There is none righteous, not even one;
11 There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.
Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,
The poison of asps is under their lips;
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness;
Their feet are swift to shed blood,
Destruction and misery are in their paths,
And the path of peace have they not known.
|There is no fear of God before their eyes (Romans 3:10-18)120.
In Romans 2, verse 6, Paul said that God …
will render to every man according to his deeds; to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.
There are two categories of people spoken of here: (1) “those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality” (those get eternal life), and (2) “those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness” (those get God’s wrath and indignation). According to Paul’s own argument, how many people are there in the first category?
NONE, NOT ONE!!!
Look again at Romans 3:10-18. Except for Jesus Christ, Himself, how many people have there been in history who were righteous enough to fulfill the requirement of God’s Law? None! Not one! Not ever!
How many people have genuinely taken the initiative to seek after God?
“There is NONE who understands, There is NONE who seeks for God; ALL have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is NONE who does good, There is NOT EVEN ONE” (emphasis mine).
The propositions here are clear, simple, and forceful, and leave no room for interpretation.
When men try to create a loophole in this argument so they can say that some people are good enough for God, they are throwing out the clear and precise revelation of Almighty God, and they are replacing it with their own foolishness. The world is full of man-made religions which have done this very thing – many of which call themselves Christian.
Men do a lot of things that are good in their outward appearance, but God knows the hearts of men. He knows our motives, and His Word declares that, left to our own devices, we are useless sinners, consumed with ourselves. We don’t even know how to begin being truly righteous.
The culmination of everything Paul has said in the first three chapters is found in Romans 3:19-20. And the truth of these two verses is absolutely foundational to a proper understanding of the true purpose of the Law of Moses:
19 Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God;
20 because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin (emphasis mine).
The Law was never intended to make men righteous. It was intended to prove man’s unrighteousness – to cast the light of God’s holiness on man’s unholiness so that there would be no question about what all men have merited.
If Israel had been able to achieve a righteous standing before God through the keeping of the Law, then there would have been no need of a Savior.
In Galatians 3:21-22, Paul says,
21 For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. 22 But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
So, the New Testament is clear and forceful about the fact that the Law could not make one righteous. That’s great. Hindsight is always 20-20. We’ve seen a few Old Testament quotations from Paul’s writings, but were these few Old Testament passages enough to make it clear to men living in Old Testament times that they ultimately could not keep the Law – that the Law was given to prove them to be unholy?
We will see that the Old Testament was just as forceful and consistent as the New Testament about this matter.
The fact of the matter is this: Judaism – true Old Testament Judaism - does NOT, and NEVER DID, make man the author of his own righteousness or of his own salvation.
After God’s miraculous deliverance of Israel from Egypt, He led them through the desert toward the Mountain of God, Mount Sinai. Along the way, Israel grumbled because they were afraid they were going to die of hunger and thirst in the desert. In spite of their grumbling, God gave them a miraculous provision of manna – daily bread right out of heaven. He made water to spring forth out of rocks in the middle of the desert so that they would not thirst. In the third month after they departed from Egypt, He brought them to the foot of the mountain. Exodus 19 presents the preface to the Ten Commandments and to all the rest of the Law of Moses. The passages immediately preceding and following the Ten Commandments present a fearsome description of God’s manifestation of His Presence on the mountain as the context to the giving of the Law.121
10 The Lord also said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments; 11 and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. 12 “And you shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, ‘Beware that you do not go up on the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. 13 ‘No hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through; whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the ram’s horn sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.’” 14 So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people, and they washed their garments. 15 And he said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.” 16 So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17 And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. 19 When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. 21 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “Go down, warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. 22 “And also let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them.” 23 And Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for Thou didst warn us, saying, ‘Set bounds about the mountain and consecrate it.’ “ 24 Then the Lord said to him, “Go down and come up again, you and Aaron with you; but do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord lest He break forth upon them.” 25 So Moses went down to the people and told them (Exodus 19:10-25).
18 And all the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. 19 Then they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.” 20 And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.” 21 So the people stood at a distance, while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was (Exodus 20:18-21).
The Israelites were terrified of God on that day! They couldn’t bear to hear the voice of God directly, so they requested that He speak to them through Moses, which is exactly what God had intended in the first place. God made it perfectly clear that He could annihilate Israel at will. There should have been no question for Israel that God was nothing like they were! And He was nothing like anything in creation that they could see or hear or taste or touch.
As for idolatry, how could God be represented in the form of a created being when it was so clear that He transcended His creation? How could He be represented in the form of anything that came from the mind of men when men couldn’t look upon Him, couldn’t begin to comprehend Him, and couldn’t even stand to hear His voice?
All that God had done to deliver Israel from Egypt, and all the miraculous signs they were beholding from their vantage point at the base of the mountain, served to drive home the fact that their God is entirely other than they are. This was the setting, the context for the beginning of the Law, and for the Law’s testimony to man’s separation from God.
After giving the revelation of the commandments and ordinances and the instructions for the tabernacle and priesthood, God called Moses to come up to the mountain to receive the two tablets with the Ten Commandments engraved by the finger of God.
12 Now the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction.” 13 So Moses arose with Joshua his servant, and Moses went up to the mountain of God. 14 But to the elders he said, “Wait here for us until we return to you. And, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a legal matter, let him approach them.” 15 Then Moses went up to the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 And the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; and on the seventh day He called to Moses from the midst of the cloud. 17 And to the eyes of the sons of Israel the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the mountain top. 18 And Moses entered the midst of the cloud as he went up to the mountain; and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights (Exodus 24:12-18).
What were the Israelites doing during the 40 days Moses was on the top of the mountain? They were blatantly violating the first two commandments!
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth (Exodus 20:2-4).
Could this be any clearer than it is?
Now, let me see – does a calf bear any likeness to anything Israel might have run across in God’s creation? Like, maybe, a calf ?!
God had just given Israel His commandments – and Israel couldn’t wait to break them!
God made it very clear that Israel deserved to be wiped out on that day. He threatened to destroy them and to start over again with Moses. Moses interceded before God and appealed to God’s reputation among the nations (32:12) and to God’s unconditional covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (32:13) as the basis for asking God to forbear with Israel and to continue to go up in their midst. God relented, and, while He executed a painful judgment against Israel that day, He did not destroy them.
Did Israel get better after this? Let’s take a look.
In the second month of the second year after the Exodus, God led Israel to journey from Mount Sinai through the wilderness toward Kadesh Barnea. From Kadesh, He commanded Israel to go up into the land and take possession of it. God swore that He would fight their battles for them and would, Himself, dispossess the nations who inhabited the land so that Israel could dwell there in peace – if they would only trust Him and go into the land. We all know the story. The spies saw the giants in the land. Ten of the twelve spies said, “Can’t do it!” And Israel refused to go up.
Once again, God was angry with Israel because of their faithlessness and rebellion, and He threatened again to destroy them and to start all over with Moses. And, once again, Moses interceded for Israel and pleaded with God, NOT based on anything about Israel that merited His forbearance, but based on God’s reputation among the nations (14:13-16), God’s covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give them the land (14:16), and God’s own character (14:17-19). God pardoned Israel (14:20). He said that He would not destroy them, but He would punish them, and that those who had sinned would not get to enter the promised land.
God led Israel through their wanderings in the wilderness for 40 years, until that entire generation that had refused to enter the land had perished except for Joshua and Caleb, Moses, and a few of the sons of Aaron.
In the Book of Deuteronomy, we find the new generation of Israelites camped at the eastern shore of the Jordan river, having conquered the pagan nations on the east side of the river, and poised to cross over to the west side to take possession of land. At this point, God says this to them,
4 Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you.
5 It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
6 Know then, it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.
7 Remember, do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD (Deuteronomy 9:4-7, emphasis mine).
(Guess which Ones Israel Gets!)
Near the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, God laid out before Israel the blessings of obedience and the curses of disobedience of the Law, and then He made it clear to them in chapter 30 that they would experience the curses. And only after that would they turn to God and He would circumcise their hearts and the hearts of their descendants to love Him and to serve Him. That has not happened yet!
Lest you think that the curses of the Mosaic Covenant were idle threats, read the Books of Jeremiah and Lamentations, and you will see that the curses were fulfilled to the last painful detail during Nebuchadnezzar’s second siege of Jerusalem!
In the final chapters of Deuteronomy, we find the narrative of the end of Moses’ life and the passing of the mantle of leadership to Joshua. At the commissioning of Joshua, the LORD says this to Moses,
16 … “Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers; and this people will arise and play the harlot with the strange gods of the land, into the midst of which they are going, and will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them. 17 “Then My anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide My face from them, and they shall be consumed, and many evils and troubles shall come upon them; so that they will say in that day, ‘Is it not because our God is not among us that these evils have come upon us?’ 18 “But I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil which they will do, for they will turn to other gods. 19 “Now therefore write this song for yourselves, and teach it to the sons of Israel; put it on their lips, in order that this song may be a witness for Me against the sons of Israel. 20 “For when I bring them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to their fathers, and they have eaten and are satisfied and become prosperous, then they will turn to other gods and serve them, and spurn Me and break My covenant. 21 “Then it shall come about, when many evils and troubles have come upon them, that this song will testify before them as a witness (for it shall not be forgotten from the lips of their descendants); for I know their intent which they are developing today, before I have brought them into the land which I swore (Deuteronomy 31:16-21).
According to verse 21, God knew before they entered the land that the Israelites were already cultivating in their hearts an attitude of faithlessness and disloyalty toward their Deliverer. He knew that once He brought them into the land, they would embrace the false gods of the Canaanites and would forsake their God.
Moses died without entering the land, and Joshua took the mantle of leadership.
Through His servant Joshua, God led Israel across the Jordan river and into the land of promise.
After the conquest of the land, after God had fought all of Israel’s battles and had destroyed 60 cities fortified to the heavens, after the territory of the promised land had been divided up among the tribes and clans of Israel, Joshua gave Israel his farewell address in Joshua 24. He reviewed God’s mighty deeds throughout Israel’s history, and he called the people in verse 14 to: “fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.”
The people declared that they would, indeed, forsake other gods and would serve the LORD, and they acknowledged His gracious deeds on their behalf (24:16-18). But look at Joshua’s words to them:
19 You will not be able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. 20 If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you (Joshua 24:19-20 – emphasis mine).
God is Holy and Israel was not, and they would NOT be able to obey Him. He would not turn a blind eye to their sin – they would be held accountable.
The people once again swore that they would serve God and would obey His voice. Joshua erected a large stone at that place to memorialize their covenant to obey God, and he said,
“… Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD which He spoke to us; thus it shall be for a witness against you, lest you deny your God” (Joshua 24:27).
6 When Joshua had dismissed the people, the sons of Israel went each to his inheritance to possess the land. 7 And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord which He had done for Israel. 8 Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten. 9 And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.
Following the death of Joshua, the very next thing that is recorded about Israel is this:
And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel (Judges 2:10).122
Without skipping a beat, the writer of the Book of Judges presents us with verses 11-23, in which we see a spiral of spiritual decline in Israel during the period of the Judges. God repeatedly smote Israel by the hand of their enemies because of their abominations. Each time, they cried out to Him, and He raised up a judge to deliver them. Then, as soon as they had been delivered from one enemy, they went into an even more corrupt episode of infidelity toward God, and the cycle started again.
11 Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals, 12 and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger. 13 So they forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. 14 And the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. 15 Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed. 16 Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. 17 And yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers. 18 And when the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. 19 But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. 20 So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not listened to My voice, 21 I also will not longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, 22 in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not.” 23 So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua (Judges 2:11-23).
At the end of the period of the Judges, in 1 Samuel 8:5, the people said to Samuel, “Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.” God permitted them to have their human king, but He made it clear what was in Israel’s heart when they made this demand: “… they have rejected Me from being king over them” (8:7). They had the God Who created the universe as their King, but they didn’t want to trust Him. They wanted to trust in a man – just like all the other nations.
Israel got her kings, and so began a long series of episodes involving kings who were occasionally men of faith, but mostly men of faithlessness and idolatrous disloyalty to YAHWEH; the nation continued in a spiritual trend that was generally downward, until their sinfulness had persisted so long that God banished both the northern and southern tribes into exile to Assyria and Babylon, respectively.
During and after the period of the kings, we find the writings of the prophets. And these writings are filled with God’s accusations against Israel – accusations of chronic faithlessness, spiritual adultery in the form of idolatry, hardened hearts, hypocritical adherence to ceremony while their hearts were filled with violence, injustice and callousness toward the widows, orphans and aliens – the downtrodden among them. No compassion, no mercy, no justice, no righteousness.
Israel had been chosen by God to be the instrument of blessing to all the nations (Genesis 12:3-4). But where the Law is concerned, that marvelous blessing did not come through Israel’s obedience – rather it came through Israel’s disobedience!
4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have turned astray, each of us has turned to his own way,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him (Isaiah 53:4-6).
Okay, so what does all of this mean?
It means that there was never any basis in Scripture for Israel to see themselves as righteous! On the contrary, there was every basis in Scripture for Israel to see themselves as unrighteous, as unholy and desperately in need of God’s provision of forgiveness and righteousness!
Man’s absolute and continual failure to meet the standard of holiness required by God is not an idea that was first introduced in the New Testament. It was introduced in Genesis 3, and it has been driven home at every juncture of man’s dealings with God and God’s dealings with man. It was clear after the Fall, it was clear after the flood, it was clear after the scattering at Babel. It was clear in every generation after God called out Abraham from among all the people of the world to be the father of a people for His own possession. In every age and in every point of history at which man has been the recipient of God’s grace and forbearance, man has ultimately responded with a high hand, a stiff neck, and a rebellious heart.
The fact is that by the time Christ came in the form of a man, it should have been blatantly obvious to Israel that the Law could not justify them – not because the Law was evil, but because THEY were evil – they and every other nation as well! This is the universal testimony of Scripture ever since the fall of Adam. And it was this testimony to which Paul is pointing in Romans 3. That’s where we started.
The Law in all of its particulars purposed to show the true character of man in the light of God’s character. And man failed that standard utterly and completely. That’s okay, because that’s what was supposed to happen. That’s why the Law was given in the first place – that every mouth might be closed and every man held accountable to God for his sin!
Law keeping and good works will not make you righteous in the eyes of God. It never did. It never will!
In verse 20 of Matthew 5, Jesus makes this stinging statement:
“For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
So the question then becomes, “What kind of righteousness does God require?”
Jesus goes directly to the Law.
21 You have heard that the ancients were told, “You shall not commit murder” and “Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.” 22 “But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever shall say to his brother, ‘Raca,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever shall say, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go in the hell of fire ( Matthew 5:21-22).
He then goes from the level of a man’s words to the level of a man’s innermost thoughts,
27 You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery;” 28 but I say to you, that every one who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28).
Jesus caps off His teaching about God’s standard of righteousness in verse 48 – one of the clearest and simplest statements in all of Scripture: “therefore you must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” The only kind of righteousness that passes muster with a holy God is His righteousness! Period! I’ve heard preachers and seminary professors try to water that verse down and make it mean something less than it says. But the question on the table in this passage is, “What kind of righteousness is acceptable to God,” and the answer is, “HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS!” The man who makes this declaration of our Lord any less simple or any less forceful than it is does so at the expense of the gospel and at the peril of his soul!
I am convinced that much of Jesus’ teaching during His earthly ministry was intended to bring the Law into sharp focus as God’s perfect and unwavering standard – to show that the true standard of the Law was an infinitely higher standard than the Jews had construed it to be. In short, to prepare men to accept Him as Savior, Jesus worked to show men that the standard of the Law was a standard that men cannot possibly meet in themselves because it was, and still is, the standard of God’s own Holy character!
What Israel did with the true standard of the Law is an approach that is common to man and to man’s religions. My dear friend Bruce Beaty puts it this way:
“A religion that makes law-keeping the basis for righteousness must make law-keeping achievable. To do so, it must lower the bar – lower the standard required by the law.”
That is precisely what Israel did with the Law of Moses. They treated the Law as a matter of external, outward behavior so they could convince themselves that they were meeting its standard. And because there were not enough rules to cover every aspect of their daily lives, they added over 600 additional laws to cover all the bases. This was all nonsense in the eyes of God because the Law was always a matter of the heart, not the outward performance, and the standard of the Law was always the Holy character of God, Himself!
Those who lower the standard of the Law to make it achievable have cast aside the clear and forceful testimony of God’s own Word and have replaced it with the most lethal of all lies! The gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to cast aside our own foolish self-glorification – to agree with God that we are dead in our sins and utterly helpless to make ourselves acceptable in the sight of a Holy God. Only then are we made ready to accept God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life!
And to believers, I must say this. If you think you are beyond the point where you need to be concerned about the tendency to revert to law keeping, you’d better take another look. Even the Apostle Peter stumbled on this issue. He had walked with Jesus during His entire earthly ministry. He had seen the miraculous signs, the crucifixion, and the resurrected Christ. He had been filled with the Holy Spirit and had been powerfully used by Christ to minister the gospel to others, yet he stumbled over the Law and had to be harshly rebuked by none other than the Apostle Paul as recorded in Galatians 2:11-21. If it could happen to Peter, it could happen to you.
My friends, be vigilant. Legalism by any other name is still legalism, and it is NOT and never will be the basis of righteousness before God. If you are making rules that focus on outward behavior, and you are presuming to be able to judge other men on the basis of those rules, you are guilty of legalism. It happens often in the church.
And to believers I also say this: If you add works to the gospel, you will have stumbled over the grace of God, and your gospel will not be the one revealed in God’s Scripture. The gospel is not a bargain! The gospel is not a promise of obedience made by men to God! The gospel is the gift of eternal life given to people who are dead in their sins until God plucks them from the domain of darkness and plants them in the kingdom of His beloved Son, through faith in Jesus Christ!
And that brings us to the Good News.
In Romans 3:21 and following, there is a dramatic shift in Paul’s argument – a shift from the bad news to the good news. A shift from the universal condemnation of all men to the free gift of God which saves men from that condemnation through faith in Jesus Christ.
21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. 27 Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also— 30 if indeed God is one—and He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. 31 Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law (Romans 3:21-31).
The bottom line is this – until you are a child of God through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ – your efforts to comply with God’s righteous standard cannot possibly result in anything other than the proof of your lostness and condemnation!
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
It’s His righteousness, not ours! Believers, when you have been in heaven 10,000 years, it will STILL be the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not your own righteousness that allows you to stand holy and blameless in His Presence!
If you have never taken God at His Word – if you have never trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ as the sole provision for your sin and the only way to be righteous in the eyes of God, I invite you to do so today – right now – right where you are.
119 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Tom Wright, teacher at Community Bible Chapel, on January 7, 2001.
120 All Scripture References are cited in this lesson are from the New American Standard Bible.
121 This is a common device in the Old Testament that is typically referred to as an inclusio. It is a sort of verbal parenthesis by which a critical passage is marked off by the repetition of a phrase or idea immediately before and after the passage. The content of the parenthesis itself serves to emphasize some important point concerning the text that lies in between. In this case, the fearsome manifestation of God’s Presence serves as both the context and the persuasive basis for His people to forsake false gods and man-made idols and to obey His Law.
122 Consider this failure in light of the powerful exhortation in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 for Israel to diligently teach the Law to their children. The sacred responsibility of God’s people to pass the knowledge of Him to their children is one of the most pervasive aspects of the Law and especially of the memorial observances in the Law (cf. Exodus 12:24-27; 13:8-10, 14-16). The vivid appeal of these memorials to the sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch of a child was to prompt them to ask their significance so that their parents could diligently explain the mighty and faithful acts of God in calling out a people for His own possession.
Principles From the Law
In our previous lesson of this series, The Evangelistic Purpose of the Law, we saw that the Law cannot make a man righteous in the eyes of God – that one of the most critical functions of the Law in the plan of God was to cast the light of God’s holy character on man’s unholiness and unrighteousness so that all men would be without excuse before Him. Until God has closed your mouth and shown you your helpless condition – your desperate need for a means of forgiveness and righteousness that can come only from Him – you are not ready to receive the gift of forgiveness, righteousness, and eternal life that the shed blood of Jesus Christ has purchased for you.
Paul was speaking of this evangelistic purpose of the Law in Galatians 3:24, when he wrote, “… the Law has become our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.”124
But what is the role of the Law in the lives of those of us who have already trusted Jesus Christ as our Savior? Paul writes in Galatians 5:18, “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.” Christ declared Himself to be the fulfillment of the Law (Matthew 5:17). So, what value is there for Christians in studying the Law?
Let’s look at what a couple of the Psalmists said about the Law and consider whether these things still apply:
Psalm 19:7-14 and Psalm 119:97-104
In Psalm 19, David declares that the Law in all its parts is perfect, sure, right and pure, true and righteous altogether. It is more desirable than much fine gold and sweeter than honey.
7 The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
9 The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether.
10 They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
11 Moreover, by them Thy servant is warned;
In keeping them there is great reward.
12 Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.
13 Also keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me;
Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be acquitted of great transgression.
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Thy sight,
O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer
(Psalm 19:7-14).
Look at the things that David says the Law does for the one who makes it his delight: it restores the soul; it makes wise the simple; it rejoices the heart; it enlightens the eyes. By the Law of God His servant is warned and in keeping it he finds great reward.
Are these things still desirable for us who are no longer under the Law? Let’s look at Psalm 119:97-104:
97 Oh how I love Thy law!
It is my meditation all the day.
98 Thy commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
For they are ever mine.
99 I have more insight than all my teachers,
For Thy testimonies are my meditation.
100 I understand more than the aged,
Because I have observed Thy precepts.
101 I have restrained my feet from every evil way,
That I may keep Thy word.
102 I have not turned aside from Thine ordinances,
For Thou Thyself hast taught me.
103 How sweet are Thy words to my taste!
Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 From Thy precepts I get understanding;
Therefore, I hate every false way.
The Psalmist declares, “O how I love Thy law! It is my meditation all the day” (verse 97).
And again in these verses, look at the benefit he declares that he has derived from making the Law his meditation and observing its instruction:
Thy commandments make me wiser than my enemies, …,
I have more insight than all my teachers, …
I understand more than the aged, …
From Thy precepts I get understanding;
Therefore I hate every false way.
Like David, he says in verse 103, “How sweet are Thy words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
Wisdom, insight, understanding, hatred of every false way … rejoicing, restoration. Are these things that belong only in the Old Testament system? No, these are blessings and benefits of the Scriptures that are precious to every believer. And all of these blessings and benefits come from the Law of Moses.
Why is it so hard for us to derive that sort of benefit from meditating on the Law? I think that in large measure it is because we don’t meditate on the Law in the first place!
The reality is that nobody ever got to hidden treasure by standing around waiting for it to fall on their head! To get to the good stuff, you have to do a lot of digging and sifting and searching.
Proverbs 2 tells us the way to get godly wisdom, where we read:
If you seek her as silver,
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will discern the fear of the Lord,
And discover the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom;
From His mouth come knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 2:4-6).
We who are in Christ have been assigned a marvelous treasure hunt – a lifelong treasure hunt – and it is to include the whole of God’s revelation, not just the parts we find easiest to understand.
For us who have been forgiven and sealed for the day of redemption, the Law still has a grand
purpose – because the Law was always a reflection of the character of God. If we are beholding God through the Law as through all of Scripture, we will be transformed through that beholding.
So, what does the Law tell us about the character of God that should affect our worship, our relationship with God, and our relationship with our fellow man? The answer is, “A lot!” There is much more than we can address in one lesson. It is up to you individually to consider the additional aspects of the Law that we can’t cover in this lesson – and that leaves a lot to consider.
For the remainder of this lesson, we will look at only a couple of the major categories of the Law to drive home the point that there are many profound and timeless principles in the Law. My hope is that this will stir up our interest in pursuing this further in our individual study.
Exodus 20-23
We should first note the difference between the general commandments and the detailed ordinances, statutes, and precepts of the Law.
The Ten Commandments are really the summary declarations of God’s Law which encompass all the detailed ordinances and statutes that follow. There are many other declarations in the Law that take the form of direct commandments, but the Ten Commandments are the overriding principles of law, which the ordinances and statutes flesh out.
1 Then God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath of in the water under the earth. 5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. 7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. 12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16”You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:1-17).
The Ten Commandments, as many of you know, address two essential aspects of man’s experience. The first four commandments focus directly on man’s relationship with God, and the remaining six focus on man’s relationships with man. This is parallel to Jesus’ own statement about the essence of the Law in Mark 12:28-31, in which one of the Jewish scribes asked Jesus,
“What commandment is the foremost of all?”
Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord; And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
“The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Ultimately, all of the commandments and ordinances are found to be outworkings of these two overriding commandments. Genuinely loving God and our fellow man is the fulfillment of the Law, and this godly love is the goal of God’s work of sanctification in the life of the believer.
Exodus 21-23
In Exodus 21-23, many of the Laws are worded in the form of “if, … then” statements. For example, in 22:1:
“If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.”
These and many of the other laws address fairly specific scenarios that might arise in the lives of Israelites. These laws, or ordinances, are not to be taken as comprehensive, but rather are to been seen as examples to guide the Israelites in the application of the Law to their daily lives. One of the great errors of Israel was to treat the Law as a set of rules that addressed every area of their lives, like a big box they could live in to be sure they were pleasing to God. But in God’s design, the Law was always a matter of the heart. There is no difference here between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, the key Hebrew term for wisdom is chokmah. It is a very common word throughout the Old Testament. It means moral skill, or put another way, the wisdom to make godly decisions. It is not the same as knowledge. People love to have knowledge – we want to know exactly what is expected of us and to know when we’ve achieved it. We want things to be predictable and easy. God, on the other hand, wants to teach us wisdom. Knowledge is simply a stepping stone to wisdom. God has already told us all we need to know (in His Word), but we’re not familiar enough with what He has already revealed to have a good sensibility about how to deal with the things He has not specifically addressed. A knowledge of God’s Word, combined with faith, produces wisdom to live well – to live with a clarity that comes from truly knowing God as He intends for us to know Him. I like the phrase popular with our youth – WWJD – “What would Jesus do?” When you know the answer to that question in a given situation, with no further revelation than that which God has already supplied, and you do what God would have you to do, then you have discovered chokmah – godly wisdom.
In our congregation, younger children also hear the messages as they are delivered, so I shall address them here. Children, when you are young, sometimes you find it very hard to understand why your parents make you do certain things. Sometimes when they can’t explain something to you, they just say, “Do it because I said to do it!” But as you grow up, you begin to understand that there is a reason for the rule. There is a principle behind the rule that starts to make sense, and pretty soon, you obey the rule because you believe in the reason for it.
How many of you children have been to the library? Has your mommy or daddy ever said to you when you walk into the library, “Be very quiet – people are trying to read!” Well, when you’re little, and you can’t read, your parents get books and they go home and read them to you. But then you learn how to read for yourself. Let’s say, one day, you are sitting in the library with a good book, and you are trying to read while your mother is looking for another book. Some little child comes in being very noisy, and his mother says to him, “Don’t be noisy in the library – people are trying to read!” Then, you understand!
You see, the rules your parents make you follow have a good reason, a principle behind them. When you are young, you may not understand the principle. All you have is the rule, and you have to follow it because your parents tell you to. It was the same way with your parents when they were little. As time goes by and you learn more, the reason becomes clearer. Hopefully, your parents are making every effort to explain the reasons for the rules, even when you’re still too young to fully understand them. It’s that way with God’s rules, too. Every law that God set before Israel had a reason, a principle behind it. The more we know about God, the more we learn about His eternal way of looking at things, and the more His law becomes written on our hearts, so we don’t have to think about the rule any more in order to act in keeping with God’s character. That’s the spirit of the Law. That’s wisdom.
We have now seen the two big categories of law in the Old Testament – the fundamental Law in the Ten Commandments, and then lots of examples to instruct God’s people about how the spirit of the Law plays out in their day-to-day experience.
In the remainder of this message, let’s look at just a couple of major areas addressed in the Law of Moses and talk about the timeless principles we can glean from them.
One of the areas in the Law of Moses that Christians find hardest to understand is the distinction between that which is ceremonially clean and that which is ceremonially unclean. I will touch just the tip of that particular iceberg, hopefully enough to communicate the big principle behind those statutes.
First, the dietary restrictions in Leviticus 11. There were certain foods that were forbidden for an Israelite to eat. If an Israelite even touched any of these forbidden animals when it was dead, he became unclean until the evening of that day, and according to chapter 5, he was required to bring a sin offering for atonement.
There have been numerous interpretations of the reasons or principles behind these dietary restrictions. Some say they have to do with respecting the distinction in kinds and that animals that don’t fit well into their categories are to be avoided, like sea creatures without scales. But there are many cases that don’t fit this approach.
Others have made a lot out of the health considerations of these restrictions, saying the animals that were clean are more healthful to eat than those that were not. While there may be something to this on a pragmatic level, there is a lot of disagreement about which animals are more healthful to eat. After all, eating a bunch of beef is not considered a wise thing to do based on medical knowledge we now have. There is nothing in the text itself to support this view.
The one interpretation of the dietary laws that I believe makes the most sense, and that I am convinced is best supported by the whole context of Scripture, is that these restrictions were given to separate Israel from the other nations and to make anyone who wanted to dwell in the camp of God separate from those who didn’t. In ancient times, as in some cultures today, dining was fellowship. You couldn’t have fellowship with someone if you couldn’t eat with them. God used these distinctions as one of many instruments for preserving the national identity of Israel. But more to the point, He used them to set apart His people from all others with the design of preserving the purity of their worship.
44 For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth.
45 For I am the Lord, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; thus you shall be holy for I am holy (Leviticus 11:44-45).
While we are no longer under the Law, and God has declared all things to be clean, there is a sense in which the principle of these restrictions still applies.
Paul exhorts Christians in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 to separate from unbelievers in certain ways. This passage is directly pertinent to our discussion because it touches on the idea of avoiding that which is unclean and on the idea of separateness:
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?
Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God and they shall be My people.
Therefore come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord. And do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you. And I will be a Father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty (2 Corinthians 6:14-18 – emphasis mine).
The rest of the clean/unclean distinctions are found in Leviticus 12-15. The basic categories of clean/unclean distinctions are these:
Uncleanness related to Childbearing
Uncleanness due to Skin Disorders
Uncleanness due to Mildews
Uncleanness due to Bodily Discharges.
There were certain things that might happen to an Israelite that would render him or her ceremonially unclean. What it meant for the person to be ceremonially unclean is that the person was temporarily barred from drawing near to the Presence of the LORD at the tabernacle (or later at the temple) to worship with the congregation. Typically, the unclean condition required that the person wait for a period of purification to pass; then he was to bring a sin offering to the tabernacle to make atonement so that he could be restored to a condition of fellowship. After that, he could regularly draw near to the Lord to worship at the tabernacle. In the case of leprosies or skin diseases, the person was in an unclean condition until the illness was cured. In the case of mildews, the house or fabric that was affected, if not “cured” after a period of time, was to be destroyed.
At first glance, it is hard to see the point of these restrictions. But if we look a little harder, it starts to make very good sense. What common element is involved in conditions associated with childbearing, skin disorders, mildews, and bodily discharges? With what are all of these things associated? The simplest answer is: They are all associated with the fall of Adam and Eve. The curse of the Fall was death – spiritual death and physical death (Genesis 2:16-17). Illness, disease, decay, corruption, pain and death were all part of the curse (Genesis 3). It was not only man who was affected in the curse. All of creation was affected.
Romans 8:19-22 says,
For the anxious longing of creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God, For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
The whole of God’s creation was subjected to an inevitable movement toward corruption and decay once sin entered into the world.
Mildew and rot and decay are part of the curse just as are the infirmities of man.
But what about childbirth? Childbirth isn’t a bad thing, is it? Certainly not! Psalm 127:3-5 declares that children are a blessed heritage from God. But childbirth was a part of mankind’s earthly experience that was explicitly affected by the curse. In Genesis 3:16, God told the woman, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, In pain you shall bring forth children.” Childbirth involves pain and the shedding of blood. It is a marvelous blessing, but it is also a vivid reminder of man’s cursed and mortal condition – just ask any woman who has been through it. I think it was Carol Burnett who used to say that childbearing is about as much fun as grabbing your lower lip and pulling it up over the top of your head.
So the conditions that constituted ceremonial uncleanness were all associated with the curse of the Fall. Which brings us to the next question:
With what are these th ings NOT associated?
Let’s look at Revelation 21:3-4:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be among them,
And He shall wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
The conditions that constituted uncleanness are conditions that will not be a part of our experience before the presence of God in heaven. All the effects of the Fall will be left behind when we receive our resurrection bodies and we enter fully into His glorious Presence!
The Tabernacle worship presented an earthly picture of the heavenly reality of drawing near to the Presence of God. And the distinctions between clean and unclean served as a memorial, a vivid reminder for Israel of the fact that God is holy and completely unaffected by the fall of man. Drawing near to His Presence is not a common thing. It is not like the other things that surround us in our day-to-day, mortal experience. The Presence of God is holy, set apart from all the things that constitute man’s cursed condition – sin, illness, decay, impurity, corruption, death. His presence is associated with health, wholeness, purity, integrity, well-being – in a word, with life.
The clean/unclean distinction in the Law of Moses is not just mindless minutiae. These detailed requirements are memorials to cause God’s people in every age to appreciate the transcendent experience of drawing near to a holy God. These laws remind us, as they were to remind Israel, that the worship of God is a most sacred privilege; indeed, it is the most sacred privilege of all.
I believe there is a strong forward-looking aspect to these ordinances as well. They point to the hope of glory which belongs to those who are rightly related to God through faith – the promise of the restoration of all things to the blessed condition that existed before man sinned and was cursed.
It is exceedingly valuable for us to study these things and to meditate on the principle inherent in them. Next time you get out the X-14 mildew remover or you feel arthritis pain in your wrist, remember that our mortal condition is not the end of the story – Jesus Christ has overcome the curse. “Surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows [infirmities] He carried” (Isaiah 53:4). He has overcome illness, decay, corruption, and death itself. One day, if we have believed in His Son, He will take these mortal bodies and transform them into immortal (1 Corinthians 15) – He will wipe every tear from our eyes, and He will make us to dwell forever in His glorious Presence.125
The second major area of the Law I would like to consider is the sabbaths, and the principle behind the sabbaths.
The word “sabbath” means “to cease” or “to rest.” The first idea that pops into our minds when we hear the word “sabbath” is “worship.” But the word means “to cease.”
The commandment related to the sabbath day (the last day of the week) is the fourth of the Ten Commandments. God said in the fourth commandment,
Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy, But on the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy {set apart} (Exodus 20:8-11).
So the pattern of resting on the seventh day is based on the fact that God ceased from His creative labor on the seventh day. Keeping the sabbath day holy meant setting it apart from the other days of the week. It was set apart as a day of worship, but it was also set apart as a day of rest from labor, and it is the ceasing from labor, and not the worship, that is the explicit focus of virtually every passage that talks about the sabbath.
It is important to note that the term “sabbath” is not limited to the observance of the last day of each week. There were other sabbath days as well, including sabbaths associated with nearly all of the festivals. There were also Sabbatical Years and Jubilee Years. Each of these observances involved the idea of Sabbath, or cessation from work.
Exodus 16
In addition to the pattern of God’s creation, there is another crucial historical event that serves as a basis for all the sabbaths. That event was the giving of the manna in Exodus 16. Even before the Ten Commandments were given, Israel had already been taught by God to treat the last day of the week as set apart from the other six days.
God promised to provide the manna, the bread that miraculously appeared each morning like dew on the ground. Each family of Israel was to arise every morning except on the seventh day of the week, and they were to gather just enough manna for that day’s needs – not more, not less. If they gathered more than was needed for that day and attempted to keep some for the next day, it would spoil and be useless. If they came out to gather any on the seventh day, there would be none to gather.
To understand the spirit, or principle of the sabbath, we must consider what action and what attitude constituted violation of the sabbath. What tendency in man nudges man to violate this law? I would submit that it is NOT that we love to work and hate to rest. How many of you dread the thought of having some time away from work? Instead, I would say that it is that we love to be in control over provision for our own
well-being. We obsessively seek to control the means of provision for our needs and to store up provision for the future. In a word, we look to ourselves as our providers. The sabbaths required God’s people to deliberately and regularly set aside their efforts to provide for their own needs so that they would deliberately and regularly acknowledge their ultimate dependence upon God alone for every good thing.
Let’s carry this to the next level. In addition to the weekly sabbath, there were the festivals, the holy days. Three times a year, Israel was to gather together at the central sanctuary and they were to bring their sacrifices before the Lord.
Leviticus 23
Time does not permit us to examine each of the festivals, but a study of the calendar for the Jewish year reveals that if the people had observed all of the festivals, those who had to travel to get to the temple would have to leave their land and their flocks and herds behind and come before the Lord for nearly THREE MONTHS of every year!
And what might happen to their land and their herds while they were gone? Well, you may have heard of the Midianites. They were big believers in forced redistribution of wealth. The Midianites were one of several nomadic peoples who loved to benefit from other people’s labors. They excelled in wandering around taking possession of the crops and the herds of other nations, and then moving on to find other easy pickings. For Israel to leave their land unattended to observe the festivals at the central sanctuary would be like us putting a big sign at the entrance to our subdivision saying, “We’re all out of town for Christmas.” There was no question that this required Israel to leave their prized possessions vulnerable to any who might want to take them. To observe these memorials, Israel had to trust solely in God to protect their possessions.
God promised to do just that. In Exodus 34, when Moses went up the mountain to receive the tablets for the second time, God told him,
Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel. For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders, and no man shall covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the LORD your God (Exodus 34:23-24 emphasis mine).
The festivals required God’s people to very deliberately LET GO of their dependence on their own efforts to provide for themselves and protect what they had, and to trust God to be their faithful Provider and Protector.
This same principle – of relinquishing to God the whole issue of provision – applied in all of the sabbath observances under the Law.
Leviticus 25
The Sabbatical Years scaled this principle up yet another level. In one year out of every seven, the people were not to sow their seed. They were not to do any work to produce crops in that year. Whatever sprang up on its own during the seventh year was available for anyone to glean (the poor, the servants, aliens, landowners – everyone), but there was to be no systematic harvest or selling of the produce from that year. God promised that if they would observe this law, He would provide enough harvest in the sixth year to get them through the eighth.
The Jubilee ratcheted this principle up yet another notch. After every seventh sabbatical year came the Jubilee year, and again in that year, Israel was to cease from all agricultural activity. That meant when the Jubilee came around, there would be two years in a row – the forty-ninth year as a sabbatical year and the fiftieth year as a Jubilee year – in which they were to cease from all effort to systematically cultivate the land.
Their crops were not the only thing they had to let go of in those special years. Every Sabbatical year, they had to release all their Hebrew slaves to go back to their families, and they had to forgive any debt owed to them by a fellow Hebrew. Furthermore, in the Jubilee year, any land that had been sold by one Israelite to another was to revert back to its original owner.
The reason God gave for these provisions in Leviticus 25:23 and 25:55 is that the land and the people belong to God Himself! God is the owner and the Source of every good thing, and He defines the terms on which He gives us stewardship over those things.
There is no evidence that Israel ever kept the Sabbatical or Jubilee Years after they got into the land. Indeed, the duration of the exile of Judah in Babylon was based on the number of sabbaths that Israel had denied the land.126
Now, let’s recap what we’ve seen in the sabbath observances: The sabbaths were to be a continual memorial to these fundamental principles:
God’s people are not to rely on their own efforts to provide for themselves or to protect themselves because:
God is the possessor of all things.
God is the sole provider of every good thing.
God’s provision must be received on His terms, not ours.
By deliberately setting aside their efforts at the times appointed by Yahweh, the Israelites were to acknowledge and demonstrate their utter dependence on Him for every good thing.
Are these time-bound principles that applied only to ancient Israel, or are they timeless principles? The answer should be obvious. As with ALL of the Law, the principles we find in it are principles that derive from the very character of God, and His character never changes.
We need to think hard about ways that these principles can and should be worked out in our own lives. With regard to the principles contained in the sabbath observances, it is exceedingly valuable for us to deliberately set aside times to cease from our efforts to provide for our own needs, especially in the culture in which we find ourselves today. We need that spiritual exercise to keep our priorities straight and to focus our attention on the call to trust God for all things!
The relevance of these principles is pervasive. Whom we trust for provision and security directly affects what we do with our money; it affects the relative time priority we give to work versus family and ministry to one another; it directly affects the level of anxiety we associate with lack of control over our finances or over our job security – and it affects a myriad of other aspects of our daily lives.
We have talked about the purpose of the commandments and the ordinances to those who have been justified before God by grace through faith – that purpose being to impart godly wisdom. We’ve talked about some of the lessons to be learned from the Sabbaths, the Festivals, the Sabbatical Years, and the Jubilee. We have talked about the principle found in the distinction between clean and unclean. There is so much more that can be said about the principles that we should find in the Law of Moses.
The more we dig into the Scriptures, the more we come to know God’s whole plan of redemption, and the more we come to know God Himself. The personal knowledge of God is that which produces wisdom and makes our sojourn on this earth a blessed opportunity to live as vessels of honor in the hands of our marvelous God.
In Romans 7:12, Paul wrote that “the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” My exhortation to you and to me is that we do not neglect to study and meditate on the perfect Law of God, and that we faithfully put into practice the marvelous principles found in it. Then we will say with the Psalmist,
O how I love Thy law!
It is my meditation all the day.
Thy commandments make me wiser than my enemies,
For they are ever mine (Psalm 119:97-98 emphasis mine).
123 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Tom Wright, teacher at Community Bible Chapel, on January 14, 2001.
124 All Scripture references are cited from the New American Standard Bible.
125 In His High Priestly Prayer that Jesus presented to God on the night before He was crucified, Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Life is relationship to God!
126 C. Leviticus 26:34; 2 Chronicles 36:21; Jeremiah 29:10. Based on 2 Chronicles 36:21, some understand the 70 years of exile to mean that Israel denied the land 70 sabbatical years, in which case they failed to observe the sabbatical years for 490 years of their history. It is also possible that this number, 70 times 7, is simply a figurative way to present the idea that Israel NEVER kept the sabbatical years. Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:21-22 seem to support the idea that “seventy times seven” is a figure of speech denoting an absolute number; i.e., surely Jesus didn’t mean that we should stop forgiving someone the 491st time he sins against us!
Numbers 10:11—14:45
Imagine what excitement there must have been in the Israelite camp as the time arrived for the entire nation to leave Mount Sinai, where they had been camped for nearly a year, and to finally set out to possess the Promised Land! This is a land that none of the Israelites had ever seen, although they were told that it was a “land of milk and honey,”128 Over the past year, the Israelites had been given the Law of Moses, and they had constructed the tabernacle. They were now ready to move out and to enter the land of Canaan.
Can you imagine the logistics that would have been required to get over two million people organized (along with their cattle) to break camp and travel in the wilderness, and then to set up camp once again? As J. Sidlow Baxter writes,
It is well to keep in mind that here, in this quadrangular formation of the camp of Israel, some two million people were mobilized, and that the quadrangle was about twelve miles square!129
A Boy Scout troop meets in our church building, and I must tell you that from what I’ve seen, there are a lot of logistics that go into a camping trip for this troop. What would it have been like to move the Israelites in an orderly fashion? The Book of Numbers gives us some insight into how God made provision for the orderly march of the Israelites into the land of Canaan. The Israelites who were able to fight were numbered by tribe; the total was more than 600,000 men (1:46). A detailed procedure for breaking and setting up camp was given in the early chapters of Numbers, including the trumpet blasts which signaled the nation that they were to assemble (10:1-11). Finally, in chapter 10, the Israelites set out from the shadow of Mount Sinai for Canaan:
11 And on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle of the testimony. 12 So the Israelites set out on their journeys from the Wilderness of Sinai; and the cloud settled in the Wilderness of Paran (Numbers 10:11-12).130
By the time we come to our text, they have traveled three days’ journey:
33 So they traveled from the mountain of the Lord three days’ journey; and the ark of the covenant of the Lord was traveling before them in the three days’ journey, to find a resting place for them.
34 And the cloud of the Lord was on them by day, when they journeyed from the camp. 35 And when the ark journeyed, Moses would say, “Rise up, Lord, and may your enemies be scattered and those who hate you flee before you.” 36 And when it came to rest he would say, “Return, O Lord, to the many thousands of Israel” (Numbers 10:33-36).
We must pause here momentarily to reflect on what this generation of Israelites had seen with their own eyes in the past two years. They looked on as Moses confronted Pharaoh and witnessed the plagues that God brought upon the gods of Egypt, eventually bringing Pharaoh to his knees. They stood before the Red Sea, trapped by the sea before them, the mountains at their side, and the army of Pharaoh behind. They saw God part the Red Sea before them, and then send it crashing down upon Pharaoh’s army. They saw and heard the evidences of God’s majestic presence at Mount Sinai:
16 And on the third day in the morning there were thunders and lightning and a dense cloud on the mountain, and the sound of a very loud horn; and all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17 And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their place at the lower end of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was completely covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire; and its smoke went up like the smoke of a great furnace, and the whole mountain shook greatly. 19 When the sound of the horn grew louder and louder, Moses was speaking and God was answering him with a voice (Exodus 20:16-19).
The Israelites lived in the Sinai wilderness for a year, where God provided food and water for a multitude and for their cattle. They experienced God’s guidance and protection. They also witnessed God’s wrath when they chose to worship the golden calf (Exodus 32-34). God literally performed miracles daily to care for His chosen people.
1 When the people complained it displeased the Lord. When the Lord heard it, his anger burned, and so the fire of the Lord burned among them, and consumed some of the outer parts of the camp. 2 Then the people cried to Moses; and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died out. 3 And he called the name of that place Taberah, because the fire of the Lord burned among them (Numbers 11:1-3).
After only three days, the people are already complaining against God, and the reasons seem to be so petty that they are not even mentioned (as they are elsewhere). I cannot help but think that the mention of being three days into their journey (10:33) was very deliberate. I suspect Moses is trying to cause the reader to remember that Israel began to grumble just three days after they had crossed the Red Sea:
22 Then Moses caused Israel to journey from Yam Suph, and they went out into the desert of Shur. They went three days into the desert, and they found no water. 23 Then they came to Marah, but they were not able to drink the waters of Marah, because they were bitter. (That is why its name was called Marah.) 24 So the people murmured against Moses, saying, “What can we drink?” (Exodus 15:22-24, emphasis mine)
It does not take much time or much trouble to get some folks to grumble. We certainly see this with the Israelites of old, and we can see it today. The emphasis in verses 1-3 is not so much on the displeasure of the Israelites as it is on the displeasure of God with the Israelites. God was angry because His people complained. God responds in a manner that I would liken to “firing a shot over the bow.”132 The “fire of the Lord” (lightning?) came down from heaven, consuming some of the outer portions of the camp. It is difficult to determine whether or not any people were destroyed. Since this “fire” struck the outer portions of the camp, it may have been that some of the Israelites’ animals were consumed. The warning should have been very clear. God was greatly displeased with their grumbling, and He would not tolerate it.
One would expect that God’s response to Israel’s grumbling in verses 1-3 would have silenced any future protest, but this was hardly the case. The “mixed multitude” (some translations say “rabble”) who accompanied the Israelites when they left Egypt (Exodus 12:38) began to complain. Was it due to some very unpleasant or dangerous circumstance? Hardly. These folks complained that their food wasn’t as spicy as the food they had eaten in Egypt:
4 Now the mixed multitude who were among them craved more desirable foods, and so the Israelites wept again, and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we used to eat freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. 6 But now we are dried up, and there is nothing at all before us except the manna.” 7 Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color like the color of bdellium. 8 And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it with mills, or pounded it in mortars; they baked it in pans, and made cakes of it. Its taste was like the taste of fresh olive oil. 9 And when the dew came down on the camp in the night, the manna fell with it (Numbers 11:4-9).
Isn’t it amazing that the mixed multitude grumbled because they could not eat the very things that the doctor tells some folks to avoid – things that make you burp! I must confess that I’m a bit of an expert on grumbling about food. When I was a student in college, one of the items the cafeteria served for breakfast was “oatmeal.” As I recall, that “oatmeal” tasted about like I think manna did. Well, anyway, one day as I was waiting in line, I wrote in a “g” in front of the “oatmeal” sign: = “goatmeal.” When I was teaching in a medium security prison, we ate in the prison cafeteria, and it was better (more expensive) food that my wife and I ate at home. I can still remember going to class after lunch and hearing one of the inmates complain about how his steak was cooked. We’re all grumblers when it comes to food.
It must have been the mixed multitude who grumbled because I find it difficult to imagine that the Israelite slaves ate as the grumblers claimed to have eaten in Egypt. Nevertheless, the complaining that began with the mixed multitude spread to the rest (11:10-14). If this is not bad enough, the grumbling of the Israelites prompted Moses to grumble as well:
10 And Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and when the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly, Moses was also displeased. 11 And Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you afflicted your servant? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? 12 Did I conceive all this people? Did I produce them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a foster father bears a nursing child,’ to the land which you swore to their fathers? 13 From where shall I get meat to give to all this people, for they cry to me, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat!’ 14 I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me! 15 But if you are going to deal with me like this, then kill me immediately. If I have found favor in your sight then do not let me see my trouble” (11:10-15).
God first responded to the complaint of Moses:
16 And the Lord said to Moses, “Gather to me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know are elders of the people, and officials over them; and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their position there with you. 17 Then I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take part of the Spirit that is on you, and will put it on them, and they will bear some of the burden of the people with you, so that you do not bear it by yourself” (11:16-17).
I get the distinct impression that the actions taken here in Numbers are those that Jethro had suggested earlier, and that Moses just didn’t get around to – until this crisis forced him to do so:
17 Then Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing you are doing is not good. 18 You will surely wear out, both you and this people who are with you, for this is too heavy for you; you are not able to do it by yourself. 19 Now listen to me, I will give you some advice, and may God be with you: You be for the people a representative to God, and bring their disputes to God. 20 And warn them of the statutes and the laws, and make known to them the way in which they must walk, and the work that they must do. 21 But choose from the people capable men, God-fearers, men of truth, those who hate bribes, and put them over the people as rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, and rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. 22 And they will judge the people all the time, and every great issue they will bring to you, but every small issue they themselves will judge, so that you may make it easier for yourself, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this thing, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all these people will be able to go to their place satisfied.” 24 So Moses listened to his father-in-law and did all that he had said (Exodus 18:17-24).
Although the last verse (24) states that Moses did all that Jethro had suggested, we do not have any account as to how or when this was implemented – not until the crisis of Numbers 11. Isn’t that the way many of us operate? We know that we need to make certain changes, but it takes a crisis to force us to change. By giving each of the 70 men a portion of the Spirit (Numbers 11:16-30), God visibly demonstrated to the nation that these men were divinely empowered to carry out the task that Moses once tried to handle by himself.
Having dealt with Moses, God now turns to the grumbling Israelites. They had the gall to claim that their life was better in Egypt under Pharaoh than it was in the desert, under God’s rule. They wanted more tasty food, so God assured Moses that they would get it, till it literally ran out their noses (11:20):
14 In the wilderness they had an insatiable craving for meat;
they challenged God in the desert.
15 He granted their request,
then struck them with a disease (Psalm 106:14-15).
It would almost appear that the mixed multitude was removed (or at least greatly reduced), because the plague came upon those who craved the food of Egypt:
So the name of that place was called Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people that craved different food (Numbers 11:34, emphasis mine).
One would like to think the Israelites had learned their lesson in regard to grumbling, but this was not the case. Numbers 12 is yet another account of grumbling against Moses and his leadership, but this time the grumbling did not originate from the masses, but from the very top, from Miriam and Aaron:
1 Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married (for he had married an Ethiopian woman.) 2 And they said, “Has the Lord only spoken by Moses? Has he not also spoken by us?” And the Lord heard it. 3 Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:1-3).
Notice the precipitating event – Moses had entered into an interracial marriage with a Cushite woman. There is not so much as a word of rebuke from God for Moses, regarding his marriage or anything else. God does have a strong rebuke for Miriam and Aaron. They argued for equality in leadership, refusing to submit to Moses as a higher authority. They reasoned that because they were prophets like Moses, they were Moses’ equals. They sound a great deal like Satan, who refused to accept his subordinate position, striving to be “like God” (Isaiah 14:13-14; compare Genesis 3:5).
What a wonderful compliment is paid to Moses in verse 3. (I am inclined to think that Moses did not write this, but some later editor, who added this under inspiration.) Moses was humble, the most humble man on the face of the earth. Here was a leader whose ego did not come in the giant economy size. In practical terms, I take this to mean that Moses refused to defend himself, as most leaders would be inclined to do. Moses did not need to defend himself, because he left his cause with God. And God certainly defended him!
The Lord promptly ordered, “The three of you come out to the tent of meeting” (verse 4). When the Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud, He emphatically endorsed Moses as the main leader, superior in rank to Miriam and Aaron:
6 And the Lord said, “Hear now my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream. 7 My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my house. 8 With him I will speak face to face, openly, and not in riddles; and he will see the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” 9 And the anger of the Lord burned against them, and he departed (Numbers 12:6-9).
Did Miriam and Aaron consider themselves to be prophets? So they were, but how they received their revelations from God showed that they were subordinate to Moses. It is one thing for an employee to receive a memo from the president of the company; it is quite another to be taken to breakfast by the president, to be personally briefed by him in advance as to his plans for the company. God reminded Miriam and Aaron that He communicated with Moses “face to face,” but to them, He spoke only through visions and dreams.
To underscore the severity of their offense, God struck Miriam with leprosy. This would seem to suggest that it was she, rather than Aaron, who first complained. Moses pled with God to heal Miriam immediately, and God did so, but He also required her to remain outside the camp (as the law required – Leviticus 14:8) for a week, until she was pronounced clean. The whole multitude of Israelites waited an entire week for Miriam to be pronounced clean. (Let husbands who grumble because they must wait for their wives consider Miriam the world record holder for most man-hours lost in waiting.)
It seems apparent that Moses included chapters 10-12 as his introduction to Israel’s great failure at Kadesh, as recorded in chapters 13 and 14. The way the book is structured, the failure at Kadesh is the climax of a long sequence of failures on the part of the nation.
The Lord instructed Moses to send spies into the land of Canaan, to determine its desirability and its defenses:
1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 2 “Send out men that they may investigate the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. You are to send one man from each ancestral tribe, each one a leader among them.” 3 So Moses sent them from the Wilderness of Paran at the command of the Lord. All of them were leaders of the Israelites… 17 When Moses sent them to investigate the land of Canaan, he told them, “Go up through the Negev, and then go up into the hill country 18 and see what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, few or many, 19 and whether the land they live in is good or bad, and whether the cities they inhabit are like camps or fortified cities, 20 and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether or not there are forests in it. And be brave, and bring back some of the fruit of the land.” Now it was the time of the year for the first ripe grapes (Numbers 13:1-3, 17-20).
This description of how the spies were sent out differs somewhat from the account Moses gives in the first chapter of Deuteronomy:
19 “Then we struck out from Horeb and passed through all that immense, forbidding wilderness that you saw on the way to the Amorite hill country as the Lord our God had commanded us to do, finally arriving at Kadesh Barnea. 20 Then I said to you, “You have come to the Amorite hill country which the Lord our God is about to give us. 21 Look, he has set the land before you. Go up, take possession of it just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, said to do. Don’t be afraid or discouraged.” 22 So all of you approached me and said, ‘Let’s send some people ahead of us to scout out the land and bring us back word as to how we should go up and what the cities are like there.’ 23 I thought this was a good idea so I sent twelve men from among you, one from each tribe” (Deuteronomy 1:19-23, emphasis mine).
The difference is not really that difficult to explain. The most likely explanation is that the people did suggest that they send spies into the land. This idea appealed to Moses, who then consulted God. God then instructed the Israelites to do what they had proposed. I think there are three reasons why Moses omitted mentioning that the Israelites first suggested sending the spies in his account in Numbers (though he purposed to give “the rest of the story” in Deuteronomy). First, I believe that in Numbers the emphasis is upon God, and His leading. In the final analysis, the spies were sent to Canaan because God commanded it. Who first suggested the idea is not as important. Second, I believe that God wanted the Israelites to know that this land was a good land, a land worth fighting for. None of the Israelites had ever seen the Promised Land. The report of the spies (and the sight of the cluster of grapes they brought back) would assure the Israelites that the land was as good as God had said it would be. Third, I am convinced that God wanted the Israelites to understand the magnitude of the task. God did not want there to be any fine print in His dealings with the Israelites. He did not want the Israelites to be surprised when they met the enemy on the field of battle. God very specifically instructed the spies to assess the difficulty of the task of taking the land. In brief, He wanted the Israelites to grasp the impossibility of the task. He wanted them to understand that the taking of the land would be a miracle, that it would be His doing, and not theirs.
The spies were sent out, and they went about the entire land over a period of 40 days (13:21-25). When the spies returned, they were unanimous in their assessment that the land was a good land, a land “of milk and honey” (13:26-27). They differed little in their assessment of the strength of the Canaanites (13:28-29). It seems as though Caleb becomes uncomfortable with the emphasis that is placed on the strength of the Canaanites, and that he interrupts the ten in the midst of their report:
27 And they told Moses, “We went to the land where you sent us. It is indeed flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 But the inhabitants are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.” 30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses, saying, “Let us go up and occupy it, for we are well able to conquer it.” 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “ We are not able to go up against these people, because they are stronger than we are.” 32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through to investigate is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw there are of great stature. 33 We even saw the Nephilim (the descendants of the Anak came from the Nephilim), and we seemed liked grasshoppers both to ourselves and to them” (Numbers 13:27-33, emphasis mine).
The real difference between the two spies – Joshua and Caleb – and the ten was in their perspective. The two faithful spies looked at the task ahead from the perspective of who their God was. Their God was the one who triumphed over Egypt, over Pharaoh, and over the gods of Egypt. Their God was the God of the impossible, the God who parted the Red Sea. The ten spies looked only at the task at hand, and their own ability to accomplish it. The giants of the land were just too much for them to tackle. Their “God” was too small.
The response of the Israelites to the spies’ report is tragic:
1 Then all the community raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. 2 And all the Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had perished in this wilderness! 3 Why has the Lord brought us into this land only to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should become plunder? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?” 4 So they said to one another, “Let’s appoint a leader and return to Egypt” (Numbers 14:1-4).
They wept because of the strength of their opposition, rather than to rejoice in the goodness of the land and the greatness of their God. They spoke of Egypt as a better place to live than Canaan. They conspired together to replace Moses with a leader who would take them back to Egypt.
I see only four leaders standing on the Lord’s side in this catastrophic failure of faith: Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb (14:5-10). I’m not saying that there were not others who stood with Moses, but I do suspect that many of Israel’s leaders failed at this moment in time. Joshua and Caleb made every effort to convince the people to trust and obey:
5 Then Moses and Aaron fell down with their faces to the ground before all the assembly of the community of the Israelites. 6 And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, part of those who investigated the land, tore their garments. 7 They said to all the community of the Israelites, “The land we passed through to investigate is an exceedingly good land. 8 If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land that is flowing with milk and honey. 9 Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of the land; for they are bread for us. Their protection has turned aside from them; but the Lord is with us. Do not fear them!” (Numbers 14:5-9)
Israel’s unbelief was far from passive. Had it not been for direct divine intervention, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb would have been stoned:
However, all the community threatened to stone them. But the glory of the Lord appeared to all the Israelites at the tent of the meeting (14:10).
God’s words to Moses and his response are a strikingly similar to the earlier conversation between God and Moses in Exodus, which took place as a result of Israel’s worship of the golden calf:
Numbers 14 11 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me, and how long will they not believe in me, in spite of the signs that I have done among them? 12 I will strike them with the pestilence, and I will disinherit them; I will make you into a nation that is greater and mightier than they!” 13 And Moses said to the Lord, “When the Egyptians hear it—for you brought up this people in your might from among them— 14 then they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, Lord, are among this people, that you, Lord, are seen face to face, that your cloud stands over them, and that you go before them by day in a pillar of a cloud and in a pillar of fire by night. 15 If you kill all this people at once, then the nations that have heard of your fame will say, 16 ‘Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to them, he killed them in the wilderness’ (Numbers 14:11-16, emphasis mine). |
Exodus 32 7 And the Lord spoke to Moses: “Go, descend, because your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have acted corruptly. 8 They have turned aside quickly from the way that I commanded them—they have made for themselves a molten calf, and have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.’” 9 Then the Lord said to Moses: “I have seen this people, that they are a stiff-necked people. 10 So now, leave me alone so that my anger can burn against them and that I may consume them; and I will make from you a great nation.” 11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. And he said, “O Lord, why does your anger burn against your people, whom you have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘For evil he led them out to kill them in the mountains, and to destroy them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger, and relent of this evil against your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel your servants, to whom you swore by yourself, and spoke to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of the heavens, and all this land that I have spoken about I will give to your descendants, and they will inherit it forever’” (Exodus 32:7-13, emphasis mine). |
Numbers 17 So now, let the power of my Lord be great, just as you have said, 18 ‘ The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in loyal love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children until the third and fourth generations.’ 19 Please forgive the iniquity of this people according to your great loyal love, just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt even until now.” |
Exodus 5 And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there; and he made proclamation of the Lord by name. 6 And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed: “ The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, 7 keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression and sin. But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:5-7, emphasis mine). Then the Lord relented over the evil that he had said he was going to do to His people (Exodus 32:14, emphasis mine). |
It is my opinion that God deliberately repeated the threat He made at Sinai, knowing that Moses would recognize it as such, and that he would once again appeal to Him in accordance with His character and His covenant. God is predictable in terms of His character, for He does not change. He is also predictable in regard to His covenants, because He keeps His covenants. As expected, God did forgive the Israelites, as Moses had requested. Forgiveness meant that God would not instantly destroy the Israelites on the spot, as threatened; it did not mean that Israel would escape all of the consequences of their sin:
21 “But truly, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. 22 Because all the men have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not obeyed me, 23 they will by no means see the land that I swore to their fathers, nor will any of them who despised me see it. 24 Only my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit and has followed me fully—I will bring him into the land where he had gone, and his descendants will possess it” (Numbers 14:21-24).
The Israelites would not experience the physical blessings God had promised. They would not enter the land of Canaan. They must continue to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until all the first generation (except for Joshua and Caleb) died. The younger generation – the ones they said would become plunder for the Canaanites (14:3) – would certainly possess the land, just as God promised.
The judgment the Israelites must endure was based upon two main facts. First, this generation that refused to trust God and to go up into Canaan to possess the land was a generation that had personally witnessed the mighty hand of God in Egypt and in the wilderness (14:22). They failed to trust God to defeat their enemies, yet He had already defeated Pharaoh and the Egyptian army. Second, this generation was guilty of habitual unbelief and rebellion. Moses indicates that the failure of Israel at Kadesh is the tenth and climactic offense against God. The three rebellions of chapters 11-12 were but the “tip of the iceberg.” The fact is that the Israelites constantly refused to trust and obey God. This rebellion at Kadesh was “the last straw” so far as god was concerned; He had put up with enough from this stiff-necked generation. The Israelites must wander about in the wilderness 40 years — 1 year for every day the spies spent in the land of Canaan (14:33-34). A special judgment was pronounced upon the 10 spies who returned with a bad report. God sent a plague that brought about the death of these spies (14:37).
40 And early in the morning they went up to the crest of the hill country, saying, “Here we are, and we will go up to the place that the Lord commanded, for we have sinned.” 41 But Moses said, “Why are you now transgressing the commandment of the Lord? But it will not prosper. 42 Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, and you will be defeated before your enemies. 43 For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you will fall by the sword. Because you have turned away from the Lord, the Lord will not be with you.” 44 But they presumed to go up to the crest of the hill, although neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed out of the camp. 45 So the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country swooped down and attacked them as far as Hormah.
I have observed what seems to be a very human trait over the years, particularly in recent years. I have noted that those who sin, often come to regret their decision to disobey. While some may genuinely repent, many seem only to regret their actions, and more particularly, the consequences of their actions. What they really want is to turn the clock back, to make things just as they were before they sinned. This appears to be the case with the Israelites. Realizing that God was not going to allow them to enter the land, they came to regret their refusal to enter the land of Canaan, as God had initially commanded. Now they are suddenly determined to go up against the Canaanites, as though this will reverse the consequences God had declared.
The Israelites assembled for battle, early in the morning, ready to attack the Canaanites and to possess the land. It was too late, however, as Moses made very clear. Now, attempting to take the land would be disobedience, just as refusing to do so earlier was also sin. They must suffer the consequences for their actions, even though God had forgiven them. (Had God not forgiven them, I assume He would have wiped the entire nation out immediately, as He threatened to do.) The Israelites once again refused to heed God’s word, spoken through Moses. They went to battle without Moses, without the ark of the covenant, and without God. When they engaged the Canaanites in battle, they suffered a terrible defeat. And now they must wander about the wilderness, until the whole generation has died.
It can easily be seen that Kadesh was a major turning point for the first generation of Israelites. They failed to “trust and obey” one time too many, and the consequence was being denied the blessing of possessing the land of Canaan. Did this generation loathe manna and prefer Egypt to Canaan? They would eat manna for nearly 40 years, and they would wander about the wilderness. Even though God had delivered this generation from their bondage in Egypt with a powerful hand, they would not trust God to give them the victory over the Canaanites. It was a great failure of faith.
We should note that this sin is neither sudden nor unexpected in the Book of Numbers. Israel’s grumbling and complaining began shortly after they safely passed through the Red Sea. Moses informs the Israelites (and the reader) that this failure at Kadesh was the tenth such act of rebellion (14:22). Sin is not nearly as sudden and unexpected as it may at first appear. Israel had developed a pattern of grumbling and rebellion. This event was “the last straw” so far as God was concerned. He is gracious and longsuffering, but there finally comes a “point of no return.” Israel reached that point at Kadesh. Even though they expressed sorrow and a willingness to confront the Canaanites, it was too late.
Let us be very careful about grumbling. Our grumbling, like that of ancient Israel, is often directed toward our circumstances. How often God has provided for our needs, and how often we think that He should have done better. We are frequently not content with His blessings, and complain about our lot in life. Our grumbling, like that of the Israelites, is often directed at our leaders. We fail to grasp the fact that when we grumble against our leaders, we ultimately grumble against God (Exodus 16:7; Numbers 17:5, 10).
Sadly, Israel’s leaders did fail – not Moses or Aaron, Joshua or Caleb, but many of its other leaders. The ten spies who returned with a bad report were leaders of their tribes (Numbers 13:2). I cannot help but wonder about the 70 leaders that were appointed in Numbers 11. They seem to have been silent, so far as encouraging the Israelites to trust and obey. I wonder if they did not side with the 10. It seems almost certain that many, indeed most, of Israel’s leaders failed to lead the people in a godly way at Kadesh. Israel’s unbelief began from the top (the 10 spies) down. I think we sometimes fail to grasp the impact we can have on others for good or evil:
If I had publicized these thoughts,
I would have betrayed your loyal followers (Psalm 73:15).
Both unbelief and faith are contagious. Our grumbling and doubting can influence others, just as our faith and obedience can inspire and encourage others. This is one of the reasons why the Israelites later worshipped at the temple. There they could proclaim the mercies of the Lord and challenge others to walk by faith (Psalm 52:9; 116:14, 18; Jeremiah 33:11). Surely this is one of the reasons why New Testament saints are exhorted to assemble together as a church:
23 And let us hold unwaveringly to the hope that we confess, for the one who made the promise is trustworthy. 24 And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, 25 not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and even more so because you see the day drawing near (Hebrews 10:23-25).
After teaching this lesson on Kadesh, one of the members of our church wrote this poem, which I have been given permission to share with you, anonymously:
Giants in Them Hills
We’ve bin starved an’ we’ve bin thirsty
Ain’t got cukes or onions still;
Now you tell us even worsty
There are giants in them hills.
We aren’t a goin’ forward yet
Them giants will kill us all.
We’ll cry and cry, our eyes all wet
‘ Cause we ain’t so strong and tall.
O why did we leave Pharaoh?
Nor die in the wilderness?
Them giants have spear and arrow
An’ they’ll make a mess of us.
We all want another lead man
It’s too hard to follow you
Those giants are of Anak’s clan
From the Nephilim they grew.
We won’t believe, we can’t believe
So jest leave us all alone!
We’ll weep and weep until we grieve
Then we’ll set off on our own.
And so, the lesson at Kadesh
a generation defiled.
Would I have acted in the flesh
Or behaved as His beloved child?
Now these things happened to them as an example,
and they were written for our instruction …
I wonder what our Kadesh will be? Each of us, I suspect, will experience some kind of “Kadesh” at least once in our lives, and probably more often than that. It will be a time when God will place a challenge before us, one that looks humanly impossible (and, indeed, is). It will be a matter of faith and obedience. Either we will trust in God’s promises and power, and obey, or we will be overcome by doubts and fears, and disobey. I also wonder if there will be a Kadesh for us corporately, as a church. Let us not develop a pattern of doubt and fear and grumbling, but let us walk by faith and encourage others to do likewise, so that when our “Kadesh” comes along, we shall not fail the test (see Revelation 3:7-12).
I should also point out that while unbelief kept this generation from possessing the land of Canaan, it did not frustrate God’s purposes or promises. This generation did not enter into the blessings that God had prepared for them, but the next generation would. Our unfaithfulness does not negate or frustrate the faithfulness of God:
For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29).
If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful,
Since he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13).
Have you ever wondered why God fed Israel with manna and water in the wilderness, rather than steak and ale? God could have provided meat, as He did on occasion. He could have provided a much finer menu that He did. Why, then, did He feed the Israelites with such plain food? I think that there are several reasons. First, it was all that they needed. Had they eaten too well, they would not have been in any shape to endure the rigors of the wilderness. Second, He fed them as He did so that they would have to trust Him for their daily bread. Their food came from heaven each day, and they could not store it up. They had to trust God daily for their needs. Third, if they ate too well, there would be less incentive for them to press on to the land of Canaan. It is the trials and difficulties of this life that cause us to hunger for heaven. Fourth, it was to test the Israelites and to train them for life in Canaan (Deuteronomy 8:1-10). The Israelites needed to learn to trust God and to be content with His provisions. If they could learn to be content with little, they could more easily appreciate the bounty that God had for them in Canaan. Finally, God was teaching the Israelites that their full satisfaction could not come from any food, no matter how good it tasted; their full satisfaction was to come from knowing and serving God. That is the point of our Lord’s response to Satan’s temptation:
1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After he fasted forty days and forty nights he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, `Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’“ (Matthew 4:1-4).
The Scriptures make much of the failure of the Israelites at Kadesh. It is the central theme of Psalm 95. That Psalm begins with a call to worship, and ends up with a warning, a warning not to be like the Israelites at Kadesh (and elsewhere where they grumbled). Praise is the preventative and the cure for grumbling. It focuses on God and urges others to do likewise. It thinks on the greatness of God and on His wondrous deeds. It inspires faith and obedience. Remembrance of our Lord’s work at Calvary and praise for the gift of His salvation is a central theme in our time of worship at the Lord’s Table every week. It is something we should eagerly anticipate.
It just so happens that while I have been preparing this lesson in the Old Testament Book of Numbers, I have also been preparing for teaching in the Book of Hebrews, chapter 3. I am more and more convinced that properly understanding the failure of Israel at Kadesh is the key to understanding the message of the Book of Hebrews. I would urge you to continue to study this text in Numbers, as well as the Book of Hebrews. It is an endeavor well worth your finest efforts.
127 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on February 4, 2001.
128 See Exodus 3:8, 17; 13:5; 33:3; Leviticus 20:24.
129 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), Six volumes in one, vol. 1, p. 164.
130 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
131 I confess that this is a takeoff from the once popular television commercial where a little old lady bought a hamburger, but could hardly find the beef, and so she asked, “Where’s the Beef?”
132 On the high seas, a military vessel may send a warning by firing a shot from a canon over the bow of the offending ship, giving notice that if further action is required, they are prepared to shoot again, and this time lower.
The Book of Deuteronomy134
Our Lord resisted and refuted Satan’s temptations by citing the truths of Deuteronomy (see Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-12). In many ways, his testing in the wilderness paralleled Israel’s testing in the wilderness for 40 years. Our Lord, however, came through His testing without failing, as He entrusted Himself to the faithful care of the Father.
The Book of Deuteronomy records several important transitions. It records the transition from the first generation of Israelites, who died in the wilderness (the Book of Numbers), to the second generation of Israelites, who would possess the land of Canaan (the Book of Joshua). It marks the transition of Israel from a nation that dwelt in tents to one that possessed land and houses, from a people who ate manna and water to a people who ate “milk and honey.”
Deuteronomy marks the end of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament written by Moses). In this book, Moses hands the torch of leading the nation Israel to Joshua. Moses knows that he cannot enter the land and that he is soon to die. These are the last words of Moses, written to the Israelites who are on the verge of entering the Promised Land. It is almost as though Moses were preaching his own funeral. Kenneth Boa and Bruce Wilkinson appropriately call this book “Moses’ Upper Desert Discourse.”136
Deuteronomy is the account of this generation of Israelites embracing the covenant of God with their fathers as their own, of their entering into a covenant relationship with God. This is the renewal of the covenant:
16 Today the Lord your God is commanding you to keep these statutes and ordinances, something you must do with all your heart and being. 17 Today you have declared the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in his ways, keep his statutes, commandments, ordinances, and obey him. 18 And today the Lord has declared you to be his special people (as he already promised you) so that you may keep all his commandments, 19 so that he may elevate you above all the nations he has made as a cause of praise, as a name, and as an honor, and so that you may be a holy people to the Lord your God, as he has said (Deuteronomy 26:16-19, emphasis mine).
9 “Therefore, keep the terms of this covenant and obey them so that you may be successful in everything you do. 10 You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God—the heads of your tribes, your elders, your officials, every Israelite, 11 your infants, your wives, and the foreigners living in your encampment, those who chop wood and those who carry water—12 so that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God and into the benefits of the oath that the Lord is making with you today, 13 to affirm you today as his people and himself as your God just as he said to you and already swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 14 And it is not with you alone that I am making this covenant and oath, 15 but with whoever stands with us here today before the Lord your God as well as those not with us here today” (Deuteronomy 29:2-15, emphasis mine).
None of this generation has been circumcised, which was the sign of the covenant God made with Abraham (see Genesis 17:9-14, 23-27; compare Exodus 4:24-26). In only a few days, this whole generation will undergo circumcision and observe the Passover before they attack Jericho (Joshua 5:2-12). This is further confirmation that they have now entered into covenant with the God of their fathers.
At the age of 120, Moses made his way to the top of Mount Nebo, where God allowed him to look across the Jordan Valley and into the Promised Land. It was as close as he would ever get to entering the land. Deuteronomy is certainly the high ground of the Pentateuch. It is one of those high points in the Bible from which we may look back in time, and by means of which we can look far ahead in Israel’s history. Several times in this book, God lays out the broad scheme of Israel’s future. An early indication of Israel’s future is found as early as chapter 4, in this brief statement of blessings and cursings:
25 After you have produced children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, if you become corrupted and make an image of any kind and do other evil things before the Lord your God that enrage him, 26 I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will surely and swiftly be destroyed from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not last long there because you will be totally devastated. 27 Then the Lord will scatter you among the peoples and there will be very few of you in the nations where the Lord will drive you. 28 There you will worship gods made by human hands—wood and stone that can neither see, hear, eat, nor smell. 29 But if you seek the Lord your God from there, you will find him, if, indeed, you seek him with all your heart and soul. 30 In your distress when all these things happen to you in the latter days, if you return to the Lord your God and listen to him 31 (for he is a merciful God), he will not let you down or destroy you, for he cannot forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them (Deuteronomy 4:25-31).
At the end of the book, very clear statements are made regarding Israel’s future, both by God and by Moses:
15 The Lord appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud that stood above the door of the tent. 16 And the Lord said to Moses, “You are about to die, and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they are going. They will leave me and break my covenant that I have made with them. 17 On that day my anger will flare up against them and I will leave them and hide myself from them until they are devoured. Many hurts and distresses will overcome them so that they will say at that time, ‘Have not these difficulties overcome us because God is not among us?’ 18 But I will certainly hide myself on that day because of all the wickedness they will have done by turning to other gods. 19 Now compose for yourselves the following song and teach it to the Israelites—put it into their very mouths!—so that this song may serve me as a witness against the Israelites. 20 For after I have brought them to the land I promised to their ancestors—one flowing with milk and honey—and they eat and become satisfied and fat, then they will turn to other gods to worship them and will reject me and break my covenant. 21 Then when many hurts and distresses overcome them this song will become a witness against them, for their descendants will not forget it. I know the intentions they have in mind today, even before I bring them to the land I have promised.” 22 Therefore on that day Moses wrote this song and taught it to the Israelites, 23 and the Lord commissioned Joshua son of Nun, “Be strong and courageous, for you will take the Israelites to the land I have promised them, and I will be with you.” 24 When Moses finished writing on a scroll the words of this law in their entirety, 25 he commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the Lord’s covenant, 26 “Take this scroll of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. It will be there as a witness against you, 27 for I know about your rebellion and stubbornness. Indeed, even while I have been alive among you, you have been rebellious against the Lord; how much more will you be so after my death? 28 Gather to me all your tribal elders and officials so I can speak to them directly of these things and call the heavens and the earth to witness against them. 29 For I know that after I die you will totally corrupt yourselves and turn away from the path I have commanded you to walk. Disaster will confront you in the days to come because you will act wickedly before the Lord, inciting him to wrath because of your works.” 30 Then Moses recited the words of this song from start to finish in the hearing of the whole assembly of Israel (Deuteronomy 31:15-23).
A fuller description of Israel’s sins and their consequences is given in Deuteronomy 28:15-68. It is not all bad news, as we shall point out later in the lesson. What we should recognize at the beginning of this study is that Deuteronomy is a crucial book because it does lay out in broad terms the history of Israel. The Old Testament prophets will frequently return to Deuteronomy as their point of reference. Deuteronomy provides the major outline of the history of Israel, and as such, it is foundational to God’s “unfolding plan of redemption.” Let us listen well to the words of this book. Not only do I say this, but Moses does also:
8 Now pay attention to the whole commandment I am giving you today, so that you may be strong enough to enter and possess the land where you are headed, 9 and that you may enjoy long life in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey (Deuteronomy 11:8-9).
26 Take note—I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing if you take to heart the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, 28 and the curse if you pay no attention to his commandments and turn from the way I am setting before you today to pursue other gods you have not known (Deuteronomy 11:26-28).
You must be careful to do everything I am commanding you. Do not add to it or subtract from it! (Deuteronomy 12:32)
15 “Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other. 16 What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land where you are going to take possession of it. 17 However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, 18 I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan River to possess” (Deuteronomy 30:15-18).
It is generally accepted that Moses’ sermons in the Book of Deuteronomy were delivered over a period of about a week and that they fall into three major divisions. These divisions are essentially chronological: the first chapters look back in time; the middle chapters look to the near future; and the final chapters look into Israel’s more distant future. The more I have studied this book, however, the more intertwined I see the past, present, and future. Consequently, I will focus on some of the issues that Moses raises because Israel is very soon going to be entering the Promised Land. I will attempt to show how Moses draws upon the past to buttress his instructions regarding the near future. Then we shall address the subject of the later chapters, which speak of Israel’s more distant future long after this generation of Israelites has died.
THE FIRST ISSUE: HOW WILL THIS NEW GENERATION OF ISRAELITES RESPOND TO THE DIFFICULTY OF TAKING THE PROMISED LAND FROM THE CANAANITES? This issue was the turning point for the first generation of Israelites, who were terrified by the strength and size of their adversaries (Numbers 13:26—14:35). Moses knows full well that the difficulty of their task will be an issue the second generation must deal with as well:
17 If you think, “These nations are more numerous than I—how can I dispossess them?,” 18 you must not fear them (Deuteronomy 7:17-18a, emphasis mine).
1 Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan River so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you, large cities with extremely high fortifications, 2 the Anakites, a numerous and tall people whom you know about and of whom it is said, “Who is able to withstand the Anakites?” (Deuteronomy 9:1-2, emphasis mine)
Moses turns to the history of God’s previous dealings with Israel to show that He will fulfill His promise to give them the land of Canaan.
First, Moses reminds this generation that their fathers refused to possess the land and rebelled against Moses in the wilderness, consequently losing their opportunity to enter into God’s blessings (Deuteronomy 1:18-46).
Second, Moses commands the Israelites not to fear by reiterating God’s promise that He will most certainly give them the land He promised their fathers under the leadership of Joshua:
18 I instructed you at that time as follows, “The Lord your God has given you this land for your possession. You are to cross over before your fellow Israelites, all the warriors, equipped for battle. 19 But your wives, children, and livestock (of which I know you have many) must remain in the cities I have given you 20 until the Lord helps your fellow countrymen prevail as you have, and allows them to possess the land that he is giving them on the other side of the Jordan River. Then each of you may return to his own territory which I have given you.” 21 I also commanded Joshua at the same time, “You have seen everything the Lord your God did to these two kings; he will do the same to the kingdoms where you are going. 22 Do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God will personally fight for you” (Deuteronomy 3:18-22, emphasis mine).
Third, Moses reminds the Israelites of what God had already done for the Israelites while they were slaves in Egypt, and while they were in the wilderness:
32 Indeed, ask about earlier days that have preceded you, from the day God created mankind on the earth and from one end of heaven to the other, whether there has ever been such a great thing as this, or even a rumor of it. 33 Have a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from fire, as you yourselves have, and lived to tell about it? 34 Or has God ever before tried to deliver a nation to himself from the middle of another nation, accompanied by testings, signs, wonders, war, strength, power, and other very terrifying things like the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 35 You have been made to understand that the Lord alone is God—there is no other besides him. 36 From heaven he spoke to you in order to teach you, and on earth showed you his great fire from which you also heard him. 37 Moreover, because he loved your ancestors he chose their descendants who followed them, and personally brought you out of Egypt with great power 38 to dispossess nations greater and more powerful than you and brought you in to give you their land as an inheritance—just as it has taken place today. 39 May you understand today and take it to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth below—there is no other! 40 And may you keep his statutes and commandments that I am setting forth today so that it may go well with you and your descendants and that you might enjoy longevity in the land that the Lord your God is about to give you forever” (Deuteronomy 4:32-40, emphasis mine).
You must carefully recall what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt, 19 the great afflictions you saw, the signs and wonders, the strong hand and extended arm by which he brought you out—thus the Lord your God will do to all the people you fear. 20 Furthermore, he will release the hornet among them until the very last ones who hide from you perish. 21 You must not tremble in their presence, for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a great and awesome God. 22 He, the God who leads you, will expel the nations little by little. You must not overcome them all at once lest the wild animals overrun you. 23 The Lord your God will give them over to you; he will trouble them with great difficulty until they are destroyed. 24 He will hand over their kings to you and you will erase their very names from memory. Nobody will be able to stand before you until you annihilate them” (Deuteronomy 7:18b-24, emphasis mine)
1 Therefore, love the Lord your God and keep his obligations, that is, his statutes, ordinances, and commandments forever. 2 Bear in mind today that I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen the instruction of the Lord your God, his greatness, strength, and power, 3 or his signs and works that he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh king of Egypt and his whole land; 4 what he did to the army of Egypt, their horses and chariots, when he made the waters of the Red Sea overwhelm them when they were pursuing you, and how he destroyed them to this very day; 5 what he did to you in the desert until you reached this place, 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, their children, their tents, and everything that followed them, in the middle of all Israel— 7 but it is your very eyes that saw all the great deeds of the Lord! (Deuteronomy 11:1-7, emphasis mine)
Fourth, Moses reminds the Israelites of God’s intervention in the more recent past:
2:24 Get up, make your way across Wadi Arnon. Look! I have already delivered over to you Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Go ahead! Take it! Engage him in war! 25 This very day I will begin to fill all the people of the earth with dread and to terrify them when they hear about you. They will shiver and shake in anticipation of your coming.” 26 Then I sent messengers from the Kedemoth Desert to King Sihon of Heshbon with words of peace, 27 “Let me pass through your land; I will keep strictly to the roadway. I will not turn aside to the right or the left. 28 Sell me food for cash so that I can eat and give me water to drink. Just allow me to go through on foot, 29 just as the descendants of Esau at Seir and the Moabites of Ar did for me until I cross the Jordan to the land the Lord our God is giving us.” 30 But King Sihon of Heshbon was unwilling to allow us to pass over near him because the Lord our God had given him a resistant spirit and stubborn determination so that he might deliver him over to you this very day. 31 Surely enough, the Lord said to me, “Look! I have already begun to give over Sihon and his land to you. Start right now to take his land as your possession.” 32 When Sihon and all his troops emerged to encounter us in battle at Jahaz, 33 the Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, along with his son and everyone else. 34 At that time we seized all his cities and put every one of them that was inhabited under the divine curse, even the women and children; there was not a single survivor. 35 Only the livestock and plunder from the cities did we keep for ourselves. 36 From Aroer, which is at the edge of Wadi Arnon, and the city in the wadi, all the way to Gilead there was not a city too inaccessible to us—the Lord our God gave them all to us. 37 However, you did not approach the land of the Ammonites, the Wadi Jabbok valley, the cities of the hill country, or any place else forbidden by the Lord our God.
3:1 Next we set out on the route to Bashan, but King Og of Bashan and his whole army came out to meet us in battle at Edrei. 2 The Lord, however, said to me, “Don’t be afraid of him because I have already given him, his army, and his land to you. You will do to him exactly what you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon.” 3 So the Lord our God did indeed give over King Og of Bashan and all his people to us and we rained blows on him until not a single survivor was left. 4 We took all his cities at that time—there was not a one we did not capture from them—sixty cities, all the region of Argob, the dominion of Og in Bashan. 5 All of these cities were fortified by high walls, gates, and bars; in addition there were a great many open villages. 6 We put all of these under the divine curse just as we had done to King Sihon of Heshbon—every occupied city, including women and children. 7 But all the livestock and urban plunder we appropriated to ourselves. 8 Thus at that time we took the land of the two Amorite kings in the Transjordan from Wadi Arnon to Mount Hermon 9 (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion and the Amorites call it Senir), 10 all the cities of the plateau, all of Gilead and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 11 Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaites. (It is noteworthy that his sarcophagus was made of iron. Does it not, indeed, still remain in Rabbath of the Ammonites? It is thirteen and a half feet long and six feet wide according to standard measure.) (Deuteronomy 2:24—3:11)
Based upon God’s faithfulness to Israel in the past, God assures the Israelites of victory in the future, as they obey Him:
18 I instructed you at that time as follows, “The Lord your God has given you this land for your possession. You are to cross over before your fellow Israelites, all the warriors, equipped for battle. 19 But your wives, children, and livestock (of which I know you have many) must remain in the cities I have given you 20 until the Lord helps your fellow countrymen prevail as you have, and allows them to possess the land that he is giving them on the other side of the Jordan River. Then each of you may return to his own territory which I have given you.” 21 I also commanded Joshua at the same time, “You have seen everything the Lord your God did to these two kings; he will do the same to the kingdoms where you are going. 22 Do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God will personally fight for you” (Deuteronomy 3:18-22, emphasis mine).
THE SECOND ISSUE: THE DANGERS OF CANAANITE IDOLATRY AND IMMORALITY. The second issue facing the Israelites as they are preparing to enter the Promised Land is the temptation posed by the Canaanites’ immorality and idolatry.
We should recall that it was the danger posed by Canaanite idolatry and immorality that necessitated Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. In Genesis 38, we read that Judah separated from his kinsmen and married a Canaanite woman. After his wife died, he had a sexual relationship with a woman whom he thought was a Canaanite cult prostitute (Genesis 38:21-22), though this woman turned out to be his own daughter-in-law. God ordained Israel’s sojourn in Egypt for two reasons: (1) Because the sin of the Canaanite people had not reached maturity, and thus the time for divine judgment (Genesis 15:12-16); and (2) because the Egyptians loathed the Hebrews and would, generally speaking,138 The Canaanites worshipped fertility gods, and so it is little wonder that sexual immorality would be involved in their “worship.”
Israel is repeatedly warned against the evils of idolatry in the Book of Deuteronomy (4:25-26; 5:8-10; 11:16-17; 29:17-20). They are informed that they will turn to idolatry in the future (31:16, 20; 32:15-23). The cure is to take drastic preventative action with regard to the temptations of idolatry and immorality in the land of Canaan.
1 “When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you—Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—2 and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no covenant with them nor show them compassion! 3 You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the wrath of the Lord will erupt against you and he will soon destroy you. 5 Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred Asherah poles, and burn up their images. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be a people prized above all others on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:1-6).
25 “You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God. 26 You must not bring any detestable thing into your house and thereby become an object of divine annihilation like it is. You must absolutely abhor and detest it, for it is an object of divine annihilation” (Deuteronomy 7:25-26).
12 “If it should come to your attention in one of your cities that the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live that 13 some evil people have departed from among you to entice the inhabitants of their cities, saying, “Let’s go and serve other gods whom you have not known before,” 14 you must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is true and certain that this abomination is being done among you, 15 you must by all means slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; put under the divine curse everyone in it, even the livestock, by the sword. 16 You must collect all of its spoil into the middle of the plaza and burn the city and all its spoil as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin forever—it must never be rebuilt again. 17 You must not take for yourself anything of that which has been cursed, so that the Lord might relent of his intense wrath and show you compassion, that he might have mercy on you and multiply you as he promised your ancestors. 18 Thus you must obey the voice of the Lord your God, keeping all his commandments that I am presenting you today and doing the thing that is right before him” (Deuteronomy 13:12-18).
These texts were crucial to Israel’s well being in the land of Canaan, where the temptations for idolatry and immorality were many. They were commanded to completely annihilate the Canaanites, destroying every living thing. They were to show no pity or fear (7:16). When they defeated the Canaanites, they were not to keep any of the spoils (7:25-26). This is where Achan would soon go wrong (Joshua 7). God clearly spelled out the consequences for failing to obey His commands concerning Israel’s separation from the pagan practices of the Canaanites (11:16-17). Any Israelite who sought to lead the Israelites away from God to follow other gods was to be put to death (13:1-18).
Let Israel give heed to the lessons of the past and to God’s warnings regarding the future so far as idolatry and immorality are concerned. This is a time when sin must be dealt with decisively. I am reminded of our Lord’s words in the New Testament:
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into hell. 30 If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into hell” (Matthew 5:27-30).
THE THIRD ISSUE: THE DANGERS OF APATHY, PRIDE, AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY. There is yet another serious danger for the Israelites as they prepare to possess the Promised Land of Canaan – that they become smug, arrogant, and self-sufficient. In other words, in their prosperity they will be tempted to forget that God is the source of their blessings and begin to take credit themselves:
10 Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—to give you large, excellent cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with choice things you did not provide, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—and you eat to your satisfaction, 12 be careful lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, the place of slavery” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12).
11 “Be very careful lest you forget the Lord your God, not keeping his commandments, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today. 12 When you eat to your satisfaction, when you build and occupy good houses, 13 when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything, 14 be careful lest you feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, 15 and who brought you through the great, fearful desert of venomous serpents and scorpions, a thirsty place of no water, bringing forth for you water from flint rock and 16 feeding you in the desert with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might test you and eventually bring good to you. 17 Be careful lest you say, “My own ability has gotten me this wealth.” 18 You must remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives ability to get wealth; if you do this he will confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, even as he has to this day. 19 Now it will come about that if you forget the Lord your God at all and run after other gods, worshiping and prostrating yourselves before them, I testify to you today that you will be utterly destroyed. 20 Just like the nations the Lord is about to decimate from your sight, so he will do to you because you would not pay attention to him” (Deuteronomy 8:11-20).
Up to this point in time, the Israelites had not experienced what we might call “the good life.” They had come out of slavery in Egypt. They had to live in tents in the desert. They were dependent upon God for their food and water. Their “menu” was almost always the same – manna. They could not settle down to plant crops but were always on the move. They were often threatened by other nations who opposed them. But soon the Israelites would enter the land of Canaan and possess it. They would enjoy vineyards and orchards they did not plant. They would experience God’s material blessings in many new ways. The very real danger was that they would begin to take the credit for these blessings, rather than to be grateful to God, who gave them.
God graciously built in some protective elements. He did not make farming so easy for His people that they would not have to trust and obey Him. God put the Israelites in a land that was dependent upon Him for its rains:
8 Now pay attention to the whole commandment I am giving you today, so that you may be strong enough to enter and possess the land where you are headed, 9 and that you may enjoy long life in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 For the land where you are headed as your possession is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, a land where you sowed seed and which you irrigated by hand like a vegetable garden. 11 Rather, the land where you are going as your possession is one of hills and valleys, a land that drinks water from the rains, 12 one the Lord your God looks after. He is constantly attentive to it from the beginning to the end of the year. 13 Now, if you conscientiously attend to my commandment that I am giving you today, that is, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your mind and being, 14 then, he says, “I will send the rain of your land in its season, the autumn and the spring rains, so that you may gather in your wheat, new wine, and olive oil. 15 I will provide pasturage for your livestock and you yourself will eat until you are satisfied.” 16 Watch yourselves lest you become deceived and turn to serve and worship other gods! 17 Then the anger of the Lord will boil up against you and he will close up the sky so that it does not rain, the land will not yield its produce, and you will soon die off from the good land that he is about to give you” (Deuteronomy 11:8-17).
Israel was to learn from its past as it looked toward the future. They were reminded that God did not choose them because of their greatness, but because of His sovereign grace:
7 It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord considered and chose you—for in fact you were the smallest of all peoples— 8 but because of his love for you and his faithfulness to the oath he swore to your ancestors the Lord brought you out with great power, redeeming you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Therefore, take note that it is the Lord your God who is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:7-9).
The Israelites were reminded of the humble circumstances from (and through) which God brought them to the Promised Land:
20 “When your children ask you later on, ‘What are the stipulations, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God commanded you?,’ 21 you must say to them, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt in a powerful way. 22 And he brought signs and great, devastating wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on his whole family before our very eyes. 23 He delivered us from there so that he could enable us to have the land he had promised our ancestors’” (Deuteronomy 6:20-23).
1 “When the time comes for you to enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you occupy it and live in it, 2 you must take the first of all the ground’s produce you harvest from the land the Lord your God is giving you, place it in a basket, and go to the place where he has chosen to locate his name. 3 You must go to the priest in office at that time and say to him, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” 4 The priest will then take the basket from you and set it before the altar of the Lord your God. 5 And you must affirm before the Lord, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor, and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number; but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people. 6 But the Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, assigning us burdensome labor” (Deuteronomy 26:1-6).
The Israelites were to remember how God brought them through adversity and need, in order to teach them to trust and obey:
1 “You must keep carefully the entire commandment I am giving you today so that you may live, multiply, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 2 Remember the whole way by which he has brought you these forty years through the desert so that he might, by humbling you, test to see whether deep within yourselves you would keep his commandments or not. 3 So he humbled you by making you hungry and feeding you with unfamiliar manna to make you understand that mankind cannot live by food alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord’s mouth. 4 Your clothing did not wear out nor did your feet swell all these forty years. 5 Be keenly aware that just as a human being disciplines his child, the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 Thus, you must keep his commandments, that is, walk according to his ways and revere him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of brooks, springs, and fountains flowing forth in valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, 9 a land where you may eat food in plenty and find no lack of anything, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper. 10 You will eat and drink and then bless the Lord your God because of the good land he will have given you” (Deuteronomy 8:1-10).
Israel’s blessings were not the result of her faithfulness to God, but the result of God’s faithfulness to His people, as He kept His covenant promises:
4 “Do not think to yourself after the Lord your God has run them out before you, ‘Because of my own righteousness the Lord has enabled me to possess this land, and because of the wickedness of these nations he is dispossessing them from before me.’ 5 It is not because of your righteousness, or even your inner uprightness, that you have come to possess their land. Instead, because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is expelling them before you in order to confirm the promise he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 6 Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn people!” (Deuteronomy 9:4-6)
To help the Israelites remember their past and the wondrous ways that God blessed them, God gave them a number of memorials. The annual celebration of the Passover reminded the Israelites of the way God had delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. The Feast of Booths (or Temporary Shelters) reminded the Israelites of the years they (or their forefathers) spent in the wilderness, dependent on God for their every need (16:13-17; 31:10-13). They were never to forget their humble beginnings and the true source of their blessings and prosperity.
It is true to say that the blessings the Israelites experienced from the hand of God were in spite of Israel’s sins. Time after time the Israelites provoked the Lord to anger:
6 Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn people! 7 Remember—don’t ever forget—how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him” (Deuteronomy 9:6-7; see also 9:8—10:11).
In spite of all these lessons from the past, the Israelites will disregard them and become smugly self-sufficient and arrogant. Through Moses, God warns the Israelites about the future, assuring them that they will fail to heed these words of warning and instruction, spelling out the consequences for their sin. The first warning is found in Leviticus 26. The first warning about the future in Deuteronomy is found in chapter 4:
25 “After you have produced children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, if you become corrupted and make an image of any kind and do other evil things before the Lord your God that enrage him, 26 I invoke heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will surely and swiftly be destroyed from the very land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not last long there because you will be totally devastated. 27 Then the Lord will scatter you among the peoples and there will be very few of you in the nations where the Lord will drive you. 28 There you will worship gods made by human hands—wood and stone that can neither see, hear, eat, nor smell. 29 But if you seek the Lord your God from there, you will find him, if, indeed, you seek him with all your heart and soul. 30 In your distress when all these things happen to you in the latter days, if you return to the Lord your God and listen to him 31 (for he is a merciful God), he will not let you down or destroy you, for he cannot forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them” (Deuteronomy 4:25-31).
There is a lengthy pronouncement of blessings and cursings in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy. In chapter 27, the Israelites erect stones on which the law was inscribed. Half of the people gathered on Mount Gerizim, where they proclaimed God’s covenant blessings. The other half gathered on Mount Ebal, where the curses of the covenant were proclaimed by the Levites, and all must acknowledge them by saying, “Amen.” (Notice that in 27:14-26 only the cursings are enumerated specifically.)
In chapter 28, the first 14 verses outline the blessings that God will shower upon His people if they obey the Lord by keeping His commandments. The remaining verses (54 of them) describe the curses which will come upon the Israelites for disobeying God’s commandments. The proportions certainly reflect the fact that the Israelites will not obey God’s commandments and will experience these curses. Israel’s disobedience is a certainty, as is its outcome:
47 “Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, 48 instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and lack of everything you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. 49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or consideration for the young. 51 They will devour the offspring of your cattle and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with grain, new wine, olive oil, increased herds, or larger flocks until they have demolished you. 52 They will besiege all of your villages until all of your high and fortified walls collapse—those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will put under siege all your gates in all parts of the land the Lord your God has given you. 53 You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the stressful siege in which your enemies will constrict you… . 64 The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. 65 Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. 66 Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next. 67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘I wish it were morning!’ because of the things you will fear and the things you will see. 68 Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you” (Deuteronomy 28:47-53, 64-68).
Chapters 28-30 of Deuteronomy are the key to understanding the history of Israel from the time they enter the land of Canaan. It outlines the consequences for disregarding God and His commandments. It also prescribes the cure for these curses:
1 “Now when all these things happen to you—the blessing and the curse I have set before you—and you remember them in all the nations where the Lord your God has exiled you, 2 if you turn to the Lord your God and listen to him just as I am commanding you today—you and your descendants—with your whole mind and being, 3 then the Lord your God will reverse your captivity and have pity on you. He will turn and gather you from all the peoples among whom he has scattered you. 4 Even if any of your dispersed are under the most distant skies, from there the Lord your God will gather and bring you back. 5 Then he will bring you to the land your ancestors possessed and you also will possess it; he will do better for you and multiply you more than he did your ancestors. 6 The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being, in order to live. 7 Then the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and persecute you. 8 You will return and pay attention to the Lord, keeping all his commandments I am giving you today. 9 The Lord your God will make the labor of your hands abundantly successful—in your offspring, the offspring of your cattle, and the crops of your fields. For the Lord your God will once more rejoice over you for good just as he rejoiced over your ancestors, 10 if you obey the Lord your God and keep his commandments and statutes that are written in this book of the law, that is, if you turn to him with your whole mind and being” (Deuteronomy 30:1-10).
Moses concludes by presenting the Israelites with a choice, urging them to choose to trust and obey God:
11 “For this commandment that I am giving you today is not too awesome for you, nor is it too remote. 12 It is not in heaven, as though one must say, “Who will go up to heaven to get it for us so that we may hear and obey it?” 13 And it is not across the sea, as though one must say, “Who will cross over to the other side of the sea and get it for us so that we may hear and keep it?” 14 For the thing is very near you—it is in your mouth and mind so that you can do it. 15 “Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other. 16 What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land where you are going to take possession of it. 17 However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, 18 I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan River to possess. 19 I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you today that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you may live—you and your descendants! 20 I also call on you to love the Lord your God, to obey him and cling to him, for he is your life and the means of your longevity as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 30:11-20).
The Book of Deuteronomy concludes with the “song of Moses” in chapter 32, a blessing pronounced by Moses (chapter 33), and a description of the death of Moses (chapter 34). One might conclude that the Book of Deuteronomy ends in a very depressing way. Even before the Israelites have set foot in the Promised Land, they are told that they will fail and that they will be cast out of the land. Where is the “good news” in all of this? Consider the following truths that we find in the Book of Deuteronomy.
First, God has given man a choice to serve God and live, or to disobey and die:
15 “Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other. 16 What I am commanding you today is to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land where you are going to take possession of it. 17 However, if you turn aside and do not obey, but are lured away to worship and serve other gods, 18 I declare to you this very day that you will certainly perish! You will not extend your time in the land you are crossing the Jordan River to possess. 19 I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you today that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you may live—you and your descendants! 20 I also call on you to love the Lord your God, to obey him and cling to him, for he is your life and the means of your longevity as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).
Second, the Book of Deuteronomy makes it clear that, left to himself, man can never merit God’s blessings on the basis of law-keeping. The problem with man is that he is fallen and he does not have a heart to serve God:
28 “When the Lord heard you speaking to me he said to me, ‘I have heard all that these people have said to you—they have spoken well. 29 If only it would really be their desire to fear me and keep all my commandments forever, so that it may go well with them and their descendants eternally’” (Deuteronomy 5:28-29).
But to this very day the Lord has not given you an understanding mind, perceptive eyes, or discerning ears! (Deuteronomy 29:4)
Third, the Israelites, left to themselves, will only bring divine judgment upon themselves.
16 And the Lord said to Moses, “You are about to die, and then these people will begin to prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land into which they are going. They will leave me and break my covenant that I have made with them. 17 On that day my anger will flare up against them and I will leave them and hide myself from them until they are devoured. Many hurts and distresses will overcome them so that they will say at that time, ‘Have not these difficulties overcome us because God is not among us?’ 18 But I will certainly hide myself on that day because of all the wickedness they will have done by turning to other gods. 18 But I will certainly hide myself on that day because of all the wickedness they will have done by turning to other gods. 19 Now compose for yourselves the following song and teach it to the Israelites—put it into their very mouths!—so that this song may serve me as a witness against the Israelites. 20 For after I have brought them to the land I promised to their ancestors—one flowing with milk and honey—and they eat and become satisfied and fat, then they will turn to other gods to worship them and will reject me and break my covenant… . 29 For I know that after I die you will totally corrupt yourselves and turn away from the path I have commanded you to walk. Disaster will confront you in the days to come because you will act wickedly before the Lord, inciting him to wrath because of your works” (Deuteronomy 31:16-20, 29).
Fourth, Israel’s blessings will only come to pass on the basis of God’s grace and His faithfulness to His covenant promises:
6 The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being, in order to live. 7 Then the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and persecute you. 8 You will return and pay attention to the Lord, keeping all his commandments I am giving you today” (Deuteronomy 30:6-8).
39 “See now that I, indeed I, am he!” says the Lord,
“and there is no other god besides me.
I am the one who kills and brings to life.
I smash and I heal,
and none can deliver from my power.
40 For I raise up my hand to heaven,
and say, ‘As I live forever,
41 I will sharpen my lightning-like sword,
and my hand will grasp hold of judgment;
I will execute vengeance on my foes,
and repay those who hate me!
42 I will satisfy my arrows fully with blood,
and my sword will eat flesh;
with the blood of the slaughtered and captured,
from the chief of the enemy’s leaders!’”
43 Cry out, O nations, with his people,
for he will avenge his servants’ blood;
he will direct vengeance against his enemies,
and make atonement for his land and people (Deuteronomy 32:39-43, emphasis mine).
26 There is no one like God, O Jeshurun,
riding the heavens to help you,
and in his lofty clouds.
27 The everlasting God is a dwelling place,
and underneath are eternal arms;
he has driven out enemies before you,
and he has said, “Destroy!”
28 Israel lives in safety,
the fountain of Jacob quite secure,
in a land of grain and new wine;
indeed, its heavens rain down dew.
29 Most happy are you, Israel—who is like you?
A people delivered by the Lord,
your helpful shield
and your exalted sword;
may your enemies cringe before you,
but may you trample on their backs (Deuteronomy 33:26-29).
At this point in time, the warnings that are so clear and emphatic in Deuteronomy are not taken seriously enough, in spite of Moses’ best efforts. This moment in time is very much like a wedding ceremony. Everyone is happy, and the couple feels so much in love. As a preacher and an elder of a local church, I know all too well that time will present these newlyweds with many challenges. I know that some of the weddings at which I officiate will end up in failed marriages. I also know what it is that will destroy them. I instruct, I warn, and I encourage those being married to carry out God’s instructions, yet I know that many marriages will not survive because of sin and disobedience.
How much easier it is to understand Moses’ words in Deuteronomy from our vantage point. We understand that the Law of Moses was not given to save men, but as a standard of holiness that no man can meet:
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For no one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:19-20).
Only one person has ever fulfilled the Law completely – the Lord Jesus Christ:
15 For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin… . 26 For it is indeed fitting for us to have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, and exalted above the heavens (Hebrews 4:15; 7:26; see also Matthew 5:17-18; 27:4; Luke 23:4, 14, 22; 23:47; John 7:19; 8:46; 1 Peter 1:18-29).
It was His death in the sinner’s place that made salvation possible. He bore the penalty we deserve as sinners; His righteousness is imputed to all those who trust in Him. It is in Christ and Christ alone that the requirements of the Law have been satisfied.
3 For God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:3-4).
This is what the prophet Jeremiah foretold:
31 “Indeed, a time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 It will not be like the old agreement that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. For they violated that agreement, even though I was a faithful husband to them,” says the Lord. 33 “But I will make a new agreement with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land,” says the Lord. “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. And I will be their God and they will be my people. 34 “People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. That is because all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me,” says the Lord. “All of this is based on the fact that I will forgive their sin and will no longer call to mind the wrong they have done” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
It is also what the Apostle Paul proclaimed as the gospel in the Book of Romans. Taking up the words of Deuteronomy 30, Paul writes:
4 For Christ is the end of the law, with the result that there is righteousness for everyone who believes. 5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is by the law: “The one who does these things will live by them.” 6 But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we preach), 9 because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and thus has righteousness and with the mouth one confesses and thus has salvation. 11 For the scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, who richly blesses all who call on him. 13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:4-13).
No wonder the Book of Deuteronomy is so often quoted in the New Testament. It foretells the history of the nation Israel. It lays the foundation for the gospel message. It calls upon men and women to trust in God and to obey His Word. It points to the salvation which Jesus Christ, Israel’s Messiah, will bring.
Moses called upon the second generation of Israelites to enter into a covenant relationship with God, just as the first generation had done. New Testament saints do not live under the old covenant, but rather under the new, but we must embrace the New Covenant in order to enter into its blessings. This we do by faith in Jesus Christ. In our church, we celebrate and remember the New Covenant each week by the celebration of the Lord’s Table (communion).
To many, the Book of Deuteronomy is a book of duty and obligation. While this is true, I want to remind you that “love” is emphasized in this book as well. It is not a teeth-gritting kind of obedience that God desires, but an obedience prompted by love:
12 Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you except to fear him, to walk in all his ways, to love him, and to serve him with all your mind and being? 13 Keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord that I am commanding you today for your own good. 14 The heavens, indeed the highest heavens, belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it. 15 However, only your ancestors did he decide to select, and he chose you, their descendants after them, from all peoples—as is apparent today. 16 Therefore, cleanse your heart and stop being so stubborn! 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God and awesome warrior who is unbiased and takes no bribe, 18 who acts justly toward orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing. 19 You, therefore, love the resident foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 20 Revere the Lord your God, serve him, cleave to him and take oaths only in his name. 21 He is the object of your praise and your God, the one who has done these great and awesome things for you that you have seen. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt as only seventy people but now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky” (Deuteronomy 10:12-22).
The Book of Deuteronomy reminds us that every generation must enter into a covenant relationship with God. It is not enough that your mother or father trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation; you must personally embrace Christ’s work on the cross of Calvary for the forgiveness of your sins, and for the gift of eternal life. If you have not done so, I urge you to do it this very moment. Simply acknowledge your sins, and that Jesus Christ bore the penalty for your sins on the cross of Calvary. Believe that God raised Him from the dead, and that in Him, and Him alone, you have eternal life. This choice is a simple one, but it is a matter of life and death.
134 Henrietta C. Mears, What the Bible Is All About (Ventura, California: Regal Books, revised edition, 1983), p. 75.
136 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
138 There was a very great difference between the “worship” of the people before the golden calf and that of the elders on the mountain. The people not only ate and drank, they “rose up to play” (32:6). This term “play” refers to illicit and immoral sex play. The same expression is used in Genesis 26:8, where Abimelech “looked out through a window, and saw, and behold, Isaac was caressing his wife Rebekah” (emphasis mine). Thus, this “worship” had turned into an orgy. /docs/ot/books/exo/deffin/exo-25.htm
The Book of Joshua139
There is a picture in my parents’ family collection that will always stand out in my mind. It was taken during a family vacation that included a few days in Glacier National Park. We had borrowed a tent and other outdoor equipment from a relative and were about to experience our first camping adventure. We found a hollow spot where the ground was smooth and free from large rocks, and so it was here that we pitched our tent. At the time, we knew nothing of mountain storms or of pitching tents on high ground. We had no idea from what direction the winds and rains might come, but we learned all about this before the night was over!
Our family picture was taken late in the afternoon, posing cheerfully in front of our tent. The sky was blue and virtually cloudless. It looked like the perfect family vacation. It was after we were all inside the tent for the evening, curled up in our sleeping bags, that the unexpected occurred. A summer storm suddenly engulfed us. There were torrential rains, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The rains blew in the door of our tent, which faced the storm. The waters collected in the hollow, where we had pitched our tent. Soon, there were at least of couple of inches of rainwater inside the tent. Our sleeping bags were soaking wet, and my younger brother was singing “Jesus Loves Me” as loudly as possible. We hurriedly wadded up our tent, sleeping bags and all, stuffed them into the truck of our car, and drove to a motel where we could dry out.
Some things that start very well end up in a very different manner. This part of our family vacation reminds me of the relationship of the Book of Joshua to the following book, the Book of Judges. Joshua is the “high water mark” of success in Israel’s history. Things could hardly have been better. How could anyone help but be optimistic regarding the future? But when we come to the very next book, the Book of Judges, things are at an all-time low. Here, it could hardly get worse.
How could this be? How could Israel so quickly plummet from its successes in the days of Joshua to its failures in the days of the judges? Some of this must wait until our next lesson, but we should approach the Book of Joshua with our eyes wide open, knowing what the future holds. Let us savor the “good times” of Joshua, but let us also be prepared for the bad times that are soon to come.
The structure of the Book of Joshua is quite transparent:
Chapters 1-12 |
Occupying the Land and Overcoming the Canaanites |
Chapters 13-21 |
Dividing the Land |
Chapters 22-24 |
Concluding Events and Joshua’s Words of Exhortation and Warning |
In this study, we shall give our attention to the first and final sections of the book. The first section is filled with exciting events describing the crossing of the Jordan and the taking of the land. The final section is very similar to the final words of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy. Joshua urges the people to embrace God’s covenant as their own, and then warns that they will never be able to keep their promise.
The first chapter of Joshua is filled with words of instruction and encouragement. God directs Joshua to lead the Israelites across the Jordan River and to possess the land. As He does so, God gives these promises:
3 “I am handing over to you every place you set foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the wilderness in the south to Lebanon in the north. It will extend all the way to the great River Euphrates in the east (including all of Syria) and all the way to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 5 No one will be able to resist you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not abandon you or leave you alone. 6 Be strong and brave! You must lead these people in the conquest of this land that I solemnly promised their ancestors I would hand over to them. 7 Make sure you are very strong and brave! Carefully obey all the law my servant Moses charged you to keep! Do not swerve from it to the right or the left, so you may be successful in all you do. 8 This law scroll must not leave your lips! You must memorize it day and night so you can carefully obey all that is written in it. Then you will prosper and be successful. 9 I repeat, be strong and brave! Don’t be afraid and don’t panic, for I, the Lord your God, am with you in all you do” (Joshua 1:3-9, emphasis mine).140
Along with God’s assurances, there were exhortations and commands. Joshua was to be strong and brave (1:6, 7); he was not to be afraid (1:9). He was to lead the people across the Jordan River and possess the land God had promised to their ancestors (1:6). He was to give heed to the Law God had given through Moses. He was to memorize it and to heed it carefully, not violating any of its commands (1:7-8).
Joshua then gave instructions to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh – those tribes that had chosen to dwell on the eastern side of the Jordan – reminding them that they must help their brethren possess the land on the western side of the Jordan before they could join their families on their own land east of the Jordan. The response of these Israelites to the words of Joshua is amazing:
16 They told Joshua, “We will do everything you say. We will go wherever you send us. 17 Just as we obeyed Moses, so we will obey you. But may the Lord your God be with you as he was with Moses. 18 Any man who rebels against what you say and does not obey all your commands will be executed. But be strong and brave!” (Joshua 1:16-18)
Moses had commanded their fathers to occupy the land of Canaan, and they had refused, threatening to kill him and appoint a new leader who would take them back to Egypt (Numbers 14:1-4, 10). In contrast, this generation promises to follow Joshua, and even encourages him to be strong and brave! They threaten to execute anyone who would dare to oppose Joshua.
This time Joshua sends out only two spies (2:1), which is surely linked to the failure of the first generation at Kadesh when only 2 of the 12 spies had a “good report.” Joshua’s actions made it clear what kind of report he expected from these two spies. God intervened in such a way that it was certain to be a “good report.” The two spies made their way to Jericho, on the western side of the Jordan. The only place to stay in the city was the home of Rahab, the prostitute. (Who would be suspicious of strangers staying at her house?)
The spies found a woman of faith in Rahab. The king of Jericho had learned of the arrival of the two spies, and he knew they had gone to Rahab’s house. The king demanded that Rahab turn the two men over to him. Rahab chose to protect these two men, rather than to turn them over to the king. She knew that the Israelites were going to prevail over Jericho and the Canaanites:
9 She said to the men, “I know the Lord is handing this land over to you. We are absolutely terrified of you, and all who live in the land are cringing before you. 10 For we heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt and how you annihilated the two Amorite kings, Sihon and Og, on the other side of the Jordan. 11 When we heard the news we lost our strength and no one could even breathe for fear of you. For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below!” (Joshua 2:9-11)
Rahab bargained with the spies to spare her and her family, if she would protect them. They agreed, and the spies escaped from the city, lowered down the wall by a rope from Rahab’s window (2:15). The spies fled to the hills and then made their way back to the Israelites’ camp. They came to Joshua bearing good news:
They told Joshua, “Surely the Lord is handing over all the land to us! All who live in the land are cringing before us!” (Joshua 2:24)141
Rahab’s report was not only the means of her own deliverance; it also played a significant role in giving the Israelites the courage to attack Jericho.
This was to be a great day in Israel’s history, a day when God would honor Joshua, demonstrating to the Israelites that His hand was upon their new leader, just as it was on Moses:
The Lord told Joshua, “This very day I will begin to honor you before all Israel so they will know that I am with you just as I was with Moses” (Joshua 3:7, emphasis mine).
As they were preparing to cross the Jordan Joshua spoke these words to the people:
9 Joshua told the Israelites, “Come here and listen to the words of the Lord your God!” 10 Joshua continued, “This is how you will know the living God is among you and that he will truly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. 11 Look! The ark of the covenant of the Ruler of the whole earth is ready to enter the Jordan ahead of you… . 13 When the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the LORD, the Ruler of the whole earth, touch the water of the Jordan, the water coming downstream toward you will stop flowing and pile up” (Joshua 3:9-11, 13).
When the priests stepped into the waters of the Jordan, the water stopped flowing, piling up some distance upstream. It was surely intended to trigger the minds of the people to recall the earlier miracle when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, on dry ground. The priests carrying the ark stood in the middle of the Jordan, as the people passed by.
God commanded Joshua to build a memorial, a reminder to this and future generations of what a great thing God had done for His people. Twelve men (one from each tribe) were to go to the riverbed and remove a stone. These stones were to be carried to their campsite on the western side of the Jordan, and there these stones were to be piled as a memorial. It would seem that a second memorial was made in the middle of the Jordan River. Twelve stones from dry land were carried to the place where the ark of the covenant was still stationed, in the middle of the river (4:9). The author informs his readers that this pile of stones was still standing (underwater) at the time of his writing (4:9).
That day a mighty miracle was performed, one that was intended to encourage the Israelites that God was going before them to enable them to defeat the Canaanites and possess the land (see 3:9-13). It was also God’s means of honoring Joshua, so that the people would respect and follow him, as they had Moses:
That day the Lord brought honor to Joshua before all Israel. They respected him his whole lifetime, just as they had respected Moses (Joshua 4:14).
It was also God’s way of encouraging the Israelites to obey Him and of terrorizing the Canaanites who would oppose His people:
4:24 He has done this so all the nations of the earth might recognize the Lord’s power and so you might always obey the Lord your God.” 1 When all the Amorite kings on the west side of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the seacoast heard how the Lord had dried up the water of the Jordan before the Israelites while they crossed, they lost their strength and could not even breathe for fear of the Israelites (Joshua 4:24-5:1).
Once they were on the other side of the Jordan, God commanded the Israelites to be circumcised. While the first generation to leave Egypt had been circumcised, they had not circumcised their children (5:5-7). This was the way that this new generation would publicly embrace the covenant God had made with their forefathers and was now making with them. This verse is very informative and should not be overlooked:
When all the men had been circumcised, they stayed there in the camp until they had healed (Joshua 5:8).
It reminds us of an earlier incident, recorded in the Book of Genesis:
24 All the men who assembled at the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem. Every male who assembled at the city gate was circumcised. 25 In three days, when they were still in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword and went to the unsuspecting city and slaughtered every male. 26 They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, took Dinah from Shechem’s house, and left. 27 Jacob’s sons killed them and looted the city because their sister had been violated. 28 They took their flocks, herds, and donkeys, as well as everything in the city and in the surrounding fields. 29 They captured as plunder all their wealth, all their little ones, and their wives, including everything in the houses (Genesis 34:24-29, emphasis mine).
When Shechem forced himself on Dinah, the sister of Simeon and Levi, these angry brothers deceitfully entered into a treaty with the men of Shechem, on the condition that all the Shechemite men submit to the rite of circumcision. In that three-day healing period, when the Shechemites were greatly in pain and in a weakened condition, the sons of Jacob slaughtered the men and took their wives, children, and cattle as spoils of war.
This informs us that, when the Israelites submitted to circumcision immediately after crossing the Jordan, this was not only an act of obedience but also an act of faith. Crossing the Jordan would be interpreted by the inhabitants of Canaan as an act of aggression, an act of war. The people of Jericho (not to mention others) would have every reason to make a preemptive strike against the Israelites, before they came any closer. The possibility of an enemy attack after crossing the Jordan was very real, and thus to submit to circumcision was to become vulnerable to attack for several days. Had the Canaanites attacked Israel at this time, they would have been at their weakest point as a nation. In spite of the risks and the pain involved, the Israelites obeyed the command of God.142
Following their circumcision, the Israelites observed Passover on the plains of Jericho (5:10). More than this, they ate unleavened bread for the first time (5:11). The menu changed from this point in time onward. Never again would this generation eat manna (5:12). What a delight that first meal must have been.
A very strange thing now happens. As Joshua approaches Jericho, a man appears before him, holding up his drawn sword. Joshua drew near and asked this fellow if he was for Israel or against them. It was a reasonable question, and no doubt Joshua felt safe asking it. After all, this was but one man, and behind him was a very impressive army. Nevertheless, Joshua was not prepared for the answer this fellow gave him:
14 He answered, “Truly I am the commander of the Lord’s army. Now I have arrived!” Joshua bowed down with his face to the ground and asked, “What does my master want to say to his servant?” 15 The commander of the Lord’s army answered Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, because the place where you stand is holy.” Joshua did so (Joshua 5:14-15, emphasis mine).
Many people feel this is a manifestation of the pre-incarnate Christ, and I am very much inclined to agree. No wonder Joshua was quick to remove his sandals and to fall on his face before this “Commander-in-chief.” Once again, we are reminded of an earlier incident in the Pentateuch:
3 So Moses thought, “I will turn aside to see this amazing sight, why the bush does not burn up.” 4 And when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from within the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” 5 And God said, “Do not come near here. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He also said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God (Exodus 3:3-6, emphasis mine).
And so Joshua has his own version of the “burning bush;” he has a direct encounter with God. He receives his battle instructions from none other than the “Commander-in-chief” of Israel’s armed forces. The plan that He reveals is one that no military leader would have ever imagined, as we shall soon see.
I love this story. The chapter begins with a description of a real military problem:
Now Jericho was shut tightly because of the Israelites. No one was allowed to leave or enter (Joshua 6:1).
How would the Israelites deal with the fact that Jericho was a fortified city, with great walls and impenetrable gates? Alarmed by the presence of the Israelite army, these gates were securely shut; no one entered or left the city. If the Israelites sought to scale the walls, many lives would be lost. If they attempted to ram the city gates, the same thing would happen. How could they possibly overcome these massive walls?
God had the perfect solution, one that no one would have considered, because it was a miracle. The divine messenger never actually told Joshua how the Israelites would enter the city or how the people of Jericho would be defeated. That was because the Israelites were required to act in faith:
By faith the walls of Jericho fell after the people marched around them for seven days (Hebrews 11:30).
The Commander-in-chief told Joshua that the Israelites were to march around the city once each day for six days. Armed men were to go first, blowing horns. The priests were to follow, carrying the ark of the covenant and blowing horns. Then the rest of the troops followed behind, blowing their horns. The people, however, were to remain quiet. What an amazing sight this would have been! You can imagine that the people of Jericho lined the top of the city walls, looking with a mixture of fear and amazement at the Israelites marching around their city. The horns were blowing, but the people remained silent. Finally, on the seventh day,143 the Israelites marched around the city seven times, and when the horns were blown, the people gave out a great battle cry, unaware (in my opinion) of what would happen next.
To the amazement of all (those marching outside the city, and those standing on the walls looking out) the walls of the city collapsed. It is my opinion that many (if not most) of the armed soldiers of Jericho were either standing on top of the wall or close to it, ready to fend off the Israelites if they stormed the city. When the walls collapsed, this must have killed a great many of the soldiers of Jericho. And those who survived must have been completely unnerved. Their defense system had been completely destroyed. That in which they found such confidence and security was the instrument of their own destruction. Israel’s impenetrable barrier (the city walls and gates) had crumbled before them. All the Israelites had to do was to “finish the job,” and that they did. They completely annihilated the people and the city, leaving no survivors.
There was yet another miracle, at least as I read the account. God destroyed the city by causing the walls to fall down, and yet He spared Rahab and her family whose home was in (or on) a part of the wall. Surely this one section of the wall did not collapse, as did the rest. And so the two spies were sent into Rahab’s house to bring she and her family out safely, under Israel’s protection. Because Rahab gave sanctuary to the two spies, God gave Rahab and her family sanctuary in Israel. Better than this, Rahab’s name was recorded in the book of life, and she is found in the hall of faith (Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25).
There was one problem with the victory of Israel over the people of Jericho, and the writer spells it out in verse 1:
But the Israelites disobeyed the command about the city’s riches. Achan son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, from the tribe of Judah, stole some of the riches. The Lord was furious with the Israelites (Joshua 7:1).
Achan had disobeyed the instructions Moses had given earlier:
22 He, the God who leads you, will expel the nations little by little. You must not overcome them all at once lest the wild animals overrun you. 23 The Lord your God will give them over to you; he will trouble them with great difficulty until they are destroyed. 24 He will hand over their kings to you and you will erase their very names from memory. Nobody will be able to stand before you until you annihilate them. 25 You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God. 26 You must not bring any detestable thing into your house and thereby become an object of divine annihilation like it is. You must absolutely abhor and detest it, for it is an object of divine annihilation (Deuteronomy 7:22-26, emphasis mine).
More than this, Achan disobeyed Joshua’s very specific instructions, given just before the Israelites captured Jericho:
17 The city and all that is in it must be set apart for the Lord, except for Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house, because she hid the spies we sent. 18 But be careful when you are setting apart the riches for the Lord. If you take any of it, you will make the Israelite camp subject to annihilation and cause a disaster. 19 All the silver and gold, as well as bronze and iron items, belong to the Lord. They must go into the Lord’s treasury” (Joshua 6:17-19, emphasis mine).
Achan’s sin brought great calamity, not just upon himself and his family, but also upon the whole Israelite nation. This would soon be apparent. The next city that the Israelites must deal with is the city of Ai. When spies were sent to assess the military strength of the city, they seem almost over-confident:
They returned and reported to Joshua, “Don’t send the whole army. About two or three thousand men are adequate to defeat Ai. Don’t tire out the whole army, for Ai is small” (Joshua 7:3).
It may have been that two or three thousand men could have taken the city, particularly with God’s help. But it was not to be, not this time. When the Israelites engaged the people of Ai in battle, their adversaries gained the upper hand and sent the Israelite forces running for their lives. Thirty-six men were lost in this battle. Joshua and all Israel were horrified and perplexed at their defeat. What could possibly have gone wrong? God told Joshua:
10 The Lord responded to Joshua, “Get up! Why are you lying there face down? 11 Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenantal commandment! They have taken some of the riches; they have stolen them and deceitfully put them among their own possessions. 12 The Israelites are unable to stand before their enemies; they retreat because they have become subject to annihilation. I will no longer be with you, unless you destroy what has contaminated you” (Joshua 7:10-12).
Joshua then put the Israelites through a process of elimination, until it was revealed that Achan was the guilty party. Joshua urged Achan to come clean with his sin, and he did:
20 Achan told Joshua, “It is true. I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel in this way: 21 I saw among the loot a nice robe from Babylon, two hundred silver pieces, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels. I wanted them, so I took them. They are hidden in the ground right in the middle of my tent with the silver underneath” (Joshua 7:20-21).
You have to give Achan credit for openly admitting his sin, without making any excuses. But his sin was serious; it had cost Israel a defeat at the hand of their enemies, and it had cost 36 men their lives. And so, at God’s direction, Achan and his family were stoned to death and their bodies burned. The anger of the LORD was appeased.
God encouraged Joshua not to fear and to be of good courage. He instructed him to take the whole army and attack the city of Ai. The battle plan would take advantage of Israel’s earlier defeat at the hand of the warriors at Ai. Thirty thousand of Joshua’s men hid in ambush behind the city of Ai. Joshua and his troops then attacked the city from the front. Joshua and his army feigned defeat and begin to retreat. Many of the troops of Ai then took out after Joshua and his army. When those who remained on guard inside Ai saw what was happening, they wanted to get in on the “kill,” so they left the city in hasty pursuit of Joshua and his men. Those lying in ambush then slipped into the city and burned it to the ground. When the people of Ai looked back and saw their city in flames, they knew they had nowhere to go. They were now trapped between those who had hidden in ambush behind them and those who feigned defeat before them.
The LORD then instructed Joshua to hold out his sword toward Ai, because He was giving him the city (8:18). He held out his sword until the victory was complete (8:26). Once again, we are reminded of an earlier incident in the Pentateuch involving Moses and Joshua:
8 Amalek came and attacked Israel in Rephidim. 9 So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out, fight against Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.” 10 So Joshua fought against Amalek just as Moses had instructed him; and Moses and Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill. 11 And whenever Moses would raise his hands, then Israel prevailed; but whenever he would rest his hands, then Amalek prevailed. 12 When the hands of Moses became heavy, they took a stone and put it under him, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and one on the other, and so his hands were steady until the sun went down. 13 So Joshua destroyed Amalek and his army with the edge of the sword. 14 And the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in the book, and rehearse it in Joshua’s hearing; for I will surely wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens. 15 And Moses built an altar; and he called it “The Lord is my Banner,” 16 for he said, “For a hand was lifted up to the throne of the Lord—that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:8-16, emphasis mine).
Just as Moses had instructed (Deuteronomy 27), Joshua built an altar to the LORD on Mount Ebal. Here they offered sacrifices and inscribed the Law on stone. Half of the Israelites stood in front of Mount Gerizim and the other half in front of Mount Ebal. Joshua read aloud all the blessings and the cursings of the Law as the people listened.
In chapter 9, we read of one of the failures of Joshua and the leaders of Israel. It was not intentional, but it was the result of their carelessly entering into a treaty with the people of Gibeon. Word of Israel’s victories over Jericho and Ai had reached the ears of the kings who lived west of the Jordan, who formed an alliance to fight the Israelites. The residents of Gibeon took a different approach. They, like Rahab, were convinced that the Israelites would prevail, and so they set out on a plan of deception.144
The Gibeonites must have cleaned out every Salvation Army and Goodwill store in the area, finding old worn-out garments and sandals. They also acquired old, dried-out bread. These things were used to convince the Israelites that the Gibeonites had come a long distance, from a far away place. It would seem that these people had some knowledge of the law, or at least of Israel’s dealings with the various nations. The guiding principles for the Israelites’ foreign policy are found in Deuteronomy:
10 When you approach a city to wage war against it, offer it terms of peace. 11 If it accepts them and submits to you, all the people found in it will become compulsory servants to you. 12 But if they do not accept terms of peace but make war with you, then you are to lay siege against their city. 13 The Lord your God will deliver it over to you and you must kill every single male by the sword. 14 However, the women, little children, cattle, and anything else in the city—all its plunder—you may take as your booty. You may appropriate the spoils of your enemies that the Lord your God has given you. 15 This is how you are to deal with all those cities very distant from you, those that do not belong to nearby nations. 16 As for the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive. 17 Instead you must put them under the divine curse—the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite, —just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 so that they cannot teach you to do the detestable things they do to their gods and you thereby sin against the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 20:10-18).
Counting on the fact that the Israelites would live by God’s laws, the Gibeonites passed themselves off as those “very distant” from Israel, rather than as those living in the land God had given to Israel. Without carefully inquiring into this matter (certainly without inquiring about God’s will), the leaders of Israel took the Gibeonites at their word and made a treaty with them, as though they were a distant nation. Only after the covenant was made did the Israelites learn that they had been deceived. Because they had given their oath, they would not go back on their word. The Gibeonites were subjected to hard labor, however.
The Gibeonite saga is not over. The alliance of Amorite kings mentioned first in Joshua 9:1-2 is now dealt with in greater detail in chapter 10. These kings were greatly distressed to learn that the Gibeonites had entered into a treaty with the Israelites because Gibeon was a great city, and these were powerful warriors (10:2). Instead of having Gibeon as an ally, these people were now their enemies. The alliance of kings felt they must attack Gibeon and neutralize them. When the Gibeonites realized that they were being attacked, they sent word to their allies, the Israelites, who were now obliged to come to their aid.
Joshua assembled his whole army and set out for Gibeon. God encouraged Joshua and the Israelites not to be afraid, assuring them that He was going to give them the victory over their enemies (10:8). An
all-night march (an uphill climb of nearly 25 miles, and from sea level to about 4,000 feet) brought them to Gibeon early in the morning, catching the kings by surprise. The Lord gave Israel a great victory at Gibeon. As the Amorite warriors fled, God rained down hailstones upon them, killing more than those slain by the sword (10:11). The battle was going well, but continued victory was threatened by coming darkness. And so Joshua made a most unusual request, and his prayer was answered:
12 The day the Lord delivered the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua prayed to Lord before Israel:
“O sun, stand still over Gibeon!
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon!”
13 The sun stood still and the moon stood motionless while the nation took vengeance on its enemies. The event is recorded in the Scroll of the Upright One. The sun stood motionless in the middle of the sky and did not set for about a full day (Joshua 10:12-13).
The LORD fought for Israel that day. Never before or since has there been a day like that one, when the LORD answered such a request from a human being (Joshua 10:14, NLT).
Did God employ the forces of nature to part the Red Sea when Moses led the Israelites? God is no less involved in caring for His people under the leadership of Joshua. God is mighty to save. He employs all of nature to protect His people.
Israel’s great victory over the Amorite kings broke the back of the opposition in central Palestine. Heartened by their success and the assurance of God’s powerful presence among them, the Israelites waged a campaign against the southern part of Palestine (10:28-39). Their victory in the south was stunning:
40 Joshua defeated the whole land, including the hill country, the Negev, the lowlands, the slopes, and all their kings. He left no survivors. He annihilated everything that breathed, just as the Lord God of Israel had commanded. 41 Joshua conquered the area between Kadesh Barnea and Gaza and the whole region of Goshen, all the way to Gibeon. 42 Joshua captured in one campaign all these kings and their lands, for the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. 43 Then Joshua and all Israel returned to the camp at Gilgal (Joshua 10:40-43).
All that was left for Joshua and the combined army of the Israelites was to defeat the kings to the north. From that point on, defeating the Canaanites would be the task of each individual tribe. (This is a task that they will fail to accomplish, as we see in the Book of Judges.) An alliance of northern kings was established, but it did not spare them from defeat at the hand of Joshua and the Israelites. Joshua’s victory is summed up in a way that links his obedience to God’s commands with his victory over Israel’s enemies:
15 Moses the Lord’s servant passed on the Lord’s commands to Joshua, and Joshua did as he was told. He did not ignore any of the commands the Lord had given Moses.
16 Joshua conquered the whole land, including the hill country, all the Negev, all the land of Goshen, the lowlands, the Arabah, the hill country of Israel and its lowlands, 17 from Mount Halak on up to Seir, as far as Baal Gad in the Lebanon Valley below Mount Hermon. He captured all their kings and executed them. 18 Joshua campaigned against these kings for quite some time. 19 No city made peace with the Israelites (except the Hivites living in Gibeon); they had to conquer all of them, 20 for the Lord determined to make them obstinate so they would attack Israel. He wanted Israel to annihilate them without mercy, as he had instructed Moses.
21 At that time Joshua attacked and eliminated the Anakites from the hill country—from Hebron, Debir, Anab, and all the hill country of Judah and Israel. Joshua annihilated them and their cities. 22 No Anakites were left in Israelite territory, though some remained in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. 23 Joshua conquered the whole land, just as the Lord had promised Moses, and he assigned Israel their tribal portions. Then the land was free of war (Joshua 11:15-23).
Chapters 13-21 of Joshua concern the distribution of the land. The great powers of the Promised Land had been defeated, but much remained to be conquered (13:1-6). This would be the task of the individual tribes and not the duty of the combined forces of Israel. At the command of God, Joshua then divided up the land, with each tribe being responsible to fully possess their inheritance.
In chapter 13, we find a very brief, but significant, anecdote:
The Israelites killed Balaam son of Beor, the omen-reader, along with the others (Joshua 13:22).
Balaam’s payday finally arrived. This brief remark must, in some way, undergird the comment we find in Joshua 22:17, to which we will refer shortly.
Joshua is now very old (13:1; 23:1). The time of his departure is drawing near. Now that the major powers of Canaan have been defeated, it is time to send the Israelite tribes to their inheritance. In chapter 22, Joshua sends the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh back to their wives and children on the eastern side of the Jordan with these words of exhortation and warning:145
1 Then Joshua summoned the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh 2 and told them: “You have carried out all the instructions of Moses the Lord’s servant, and you have obeyed all I have told you. 3 You have not abandoned your fellow Israelites this entire time right up to this very day. You have completed the task given you by the Lord your God. 4 Now the Lord your God has made your fellow Israelites secure, just as he promised them. So now you may turn around and go to your homes in your own land which Moses the Lord’s servant assigned to you east of the Jordan. 5 But carefully obey the commands and instructions Moses the Lord’s servant gave you. Love the Lord your God, follow all his instructions, obey his commands, be loyal to him, and serve him with all your heart and being!” (Joshua 22:1-5)
When they returned, these tribes built an altar near the Jordan River (22:10). Word of this reached the ears of their brethren west of the Jordan. It was feared that those beyond the river had already begun to depart from the faith, and those on the western side of the Jordan were determined to deal with it:
12 When the Israelites heard this, the entire Israelite community assembled at Shiloh to launch an attack against them. 13 The Israelites sent Phinehas, son of Eleazar, the priest, to the land of Gilead to the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. 14 He was accompanied by ten leaders, one from each of the Israelite tribes, each one a family leader among the Israelite clans. 15 They went to the land of Gilead to the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and said to them: 16 “The entire community of the Lord says, ‘Why have you disobeyed the God of Israel by turning back today from following the Lord? You built an altar for yourselves and have rebelled today against the Lord. 17 The sin we committed at Peor was bad enough. To this very day we have not purified ourselves; it even brought a plague on the community of the Lord. 18 Now today you dare to turn back from following the Lord! You are rebelling today against the Lord; tomorrow he may break out in anger against the entire community of Israel. 19 But if your own land is impure, cross over to the Lord’s own land, where the Lord himself lives, and settle down among us. But don’t rebel against the Lord or us by building for yourselves an altar aside from the altar of the Lord our God. 20 When Achan son of Zerah disobeyed the command about the city’s riches, the entire Israelite community was judged, though only one man had sinned. He most certainly died for his sin!’” (Joshua 22:12-20, emphasis mine)
We soon learn that the concerns of the western tribes were unfounded, and that this altar was merely a memorial to keep their hearts and minds turned toward their God. The encouraging thing about this incident is that God’s people were fully committed to obeying God, and thus they were willing to fight their fellow-Israelites, if need be, to keep from sinning against God. The words above demonstrate that the Israelites had learned not only from God’s commands, but also from history. They were alert to any signs of disobedience to God’s commands. They remembered the way that Balaam had corrupted them (verse 17), and they remembered the consequences of the sin of Achan (verse 20). They were determined to obey God and to deal with those who rebelled against Him according to the Law. What an encouraging incident this is.
The words of Joshua in the final two chapters of the Book of Joshua are similar to the words of Moses in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy. Like Moses, Joshua was very old (23:1), and the time of his death was near (23:14). Joshua assembled the Israelites to deliver one last message. Joshua reminded the Israelites of all that God had done – things that they had seen with their own eyes (23:3). Like Moses, Joshua urged the Israelites to carefully obey the law of God and not to depart from it in any way (23:6). They must be careful not to associate with the Canaanites, nor to embrace any of their idolatry (23:7-8, 11-13). Joshua reminded the people that not one of God’s promises had been unfulfilled (23:14-15a). They must also remember that every one of God’s promised judgments would come upon them if they failed to obey God’s commands (23:15b-16).
In chapter 24, Joshua reminded the Israelites of their roots, roots that predisposed them toward idolatry. He reminded them that Abraham’s roots were idolatrous:
Joshua told all the people, “Here is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘In the distant past your ancestors lived beyond the Euphrates River, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor. They worshiped other gods (Joshua 24:2).
God judged the Egyptians and their gods at the exodus, and yet it is apparent that at least some of the Israelites embraced the worship of Egypt’s gods:
“Now obey the Lord and worship him with integrity and loyalty. Put aside the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt and worship the Lord” (Joshua 24:14, emphasis mine).
Joshua challenges the new generation of Israelites to embrace God’s covenant as their own. They must choose to follow Him:
If you have no desire to worship the Lord, choose today whom you will worship, whether it be the gods whom your ancestors worshiped beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my family will worship the Lord!” (Joshua 24:15)
The people responded by assuring Joshua that they fully intended to follow God:
16 The people responded, “Far be it from us to abandon the Lord so we can worship other gods! 17 For the Lord our God took us and our fathers out of slavery in the land of Egypt and performed these awesome miracles before our very eyes. He continually protected us as we traveled and when we passed through nations. 18 The Lord drove out from before us all the nations, including the Amorites who lived in the land. So we too will worship the Lord, for he is our God!” (Joshua 24:16-18)
One would think that Joshua would have been overjoyed at their response, and that he would have praised and encouraged them. Instead, Joshua warned them that they could not possibly keep their promise:
19 Joshua warned the people, “You won’t keep worshiping the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God who will not forgive your rebellion or your sins. 20 If you abandon the Lord and worship foreign gods, he will turn against you; he will bring disaster on you and destroy you, though he once treated you well” (Joshua 24:19-20, emphasis mine).
The Israelites were not willing to accept Joshua’s words. Even though Joshua cautioned them, they insisted that they would remain faithful to God:
21 The people said to Joshua, “No! We really will worship the Lord!” 22 Joshua said to the people, “Do you agree to be witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to worship the Lord?” They replied, “We are witnesses.” 23 Joshua said, “Now put aside the foreign gods that are among you and submit to the Lord God of Israel.” 24 The people said to Joshua, “We will worship the Lord our God and obey him” (Joshua 24:21-24).
Joshua drew up an agreement between the people and their God, but his words of warning were clear. Their agreement would serve as a witness against them (24:27). Just as Moses had warned of Israel’s disobedience in the future, so did Joshua. Shortly after this, Joshua died and was buried in the hill country of Ephraim. Joseph’s bones, brought from Egypt by the Israelites, were buried at Shechem at his family burial plot. Aaron’s son, Eleazar, also died and was buried. I believe the author is making it clear that this generation of faithful Israelites was dying off.
There is much significance to the death of the Joshua generation, because things would never be the same again:
Israel worshiped the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime and as long as the elderly men who outlived him remained alive. These men had experienced firsthand everything the Lord had done for Israel (Joshua 24:31).
The Book of Joshua is a great success story. In stark contrast to the first generation of Israelites, who refused to engage the Canaanites in battle, and who threatened to kill Moses and return to Egypt, this generation boldly attacked the enemy. They went to war “in faith” (Hebrews 11:30). The only defeat this generation suffered on the battlefield was that one small defeat (36 killed) at Ai, due to the sin of Achan.
This was a generation marked by their obedience. They faithfully followed Joshua’s orders, and they obeyed God’s commands (see 4:10; 8:27, 30-31; 11:15; 22:2). They did not rebel against God or against Joshua. They even encouraged Joshua to be bold and courageous (1:16-18). They complained but once, and in this case, their complaint was valid (9:18). They took a situation that appeared to be the beginnings of idolatry very seriously (22:10-34).
God caused even the failures of the Israelites to “work together for good” (Romans 8:28). When Achan sinned, the men of Ai won an initial victory over the Israelites. But it was this failure that set the stage for Israel’s next encounter with them, in a way that ended in great victory for Israel. In the second confrontation between Israel and Ai, the warriors who were with Joshua pretended to retreat in fear, just as they had the first time. Because of their first “victory,” the people of Ai deserted the city to pursue the Israelites, thus allowing the hidden Israelite soldiers to enter the city and burn it to the ground. Thus, Israel’s first defeat set the stage for her second encounter at Ai, which ended in victory.
The foolish decision to make a treaty with the Gibeonites was also used of God for good. Because of this treaty, the five Amorite kings formed an alliance and attacked Gibeon. This required Israel to come to their aid, in accordance with the treaty they had made with the Gibeonites. The resulting battle was a great victory for Israel and broke the back of the Canaanite opposition in central Palestine.
The question we should ask ourselves is this: “How do we explain Israel’s success?” Was it because of the leadership of Joshua? Surely Joshua was a great man and a fine leader, but was he so much better than Moses? I think not. Was it because this generation was better than the first? I don’t think so. “There is none righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). I think there is only one explanation: It was necessary for this generation to trust and obey God, so that the promises of God could be fulfilled.
3 I am handing over to you every place you set foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the wilderness in the south to Lebanon in the north. It will extend all the way to the great River Euphrates in the east (including all of Syria) and all the way to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 5 No one will be able to resist you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not abandon you or leave you alone (Joshua 1:3-9, emphasis mine).
43 So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had solemnly promised to their ancestors, and they conquered it and lived in it. 44 The Lord made them secure, in fulfillment of all he had solemnly promised their ancestors. None of their enemies could resist them. 45 Not one of the Lord’s faithful promises to the family of Israel was left unfulfilled; every one was realized (Joshua 21:43-45, emphasis mine).
14 “Look, today I am about to die. You know with all your heart and being that not even one of all the faithful promises the Lord your God made to you is left unfulfilled; every one was realized, not one promise is unfulfilled! (Joshua 23:14, emphasis mine)
I am reminded of the words of Moses, recorded for us in the Book of Deuteronomy:
“But to this very day the Lord has not given you an understanding mind, perceptive eyes, or discerning ears!” (Deuteronomy 29:4)
I believe, therefore, that God gave this generation of Israelites hearts to believe and the will to obey, so that He could bless them with this land, as He promised, and in accordance with His covenant. The key to Israel’s success is not to be found with men, but it is to be found in the faithfulness of God. The hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” certainly captures the amazing truth of God’s great faithfulness to this generation of Israelites.
If this generation was so successful, then why does Joshua come across in such a negative manner in the final chapter of Joshua? I believe the answer is consistent with what we have just observed. It is not man’s faithfulness to God that brings about God’s blessings, but it is God’s faithfulness to men that is the cause of all our blessings. Joshua urged a new generation to follow God, and rightly so. But their confidence was in themselves, in their own faithfulness. And it was because of their self-confidence that Joshua sounded a strong word of warning. They would never be able to live up to their promise, and Joshua knew it, as did Moses. The Israelites would forget all that God had done for them, things that their own eyes had seen. They would forsake God and turn to idols. And because of their rebellion, God would bring judgment upon the nation.
There are many lessons for us to learn from this text. First, let us learn never to take credit for our apparent successes in life. If our “successes” truly are successes, then these have come from the hand of God. They are nothing for which we dare to take credit:
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36)
For who concedes you any superiority? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not? (1 Corinthians 4:7)
We need to be very careful that we do not presume that we will remain faithful. The Scriptures are clear in their warnings about overconfidence:
12 So let the one who thinks he is standing be careful that he does not fall. 13 No trial has overtaken you that is not faced by others. And God is faithful: he will not let you be tried too much, but with the trial will also provide a way through it so that you may be able to endure. 14 So then, my dear friends, flee from idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:12-14, emphasis mine).
We should strive to be faithful. But we dare not presume that we will be faithful. It is God alone who is completely faithful, and we must place our trust in His faithfulness, not our own.
God is not only faithful, He is also exceedingly powerful. The Book of Joshua is filled with examples of the power of God. He who is faithful is also the One who is all-powerful. In the Book of Joshua, we see God stopping the flow of the Jordan River, so that His people could cross over into the Promised Land. We see God providentially providing deliverance for the spies through a prostitute – Rahab. We read of God destroying His enemies with a hailstorm, and then causing the sun to stand still. What an awesome God we serve. Is there anything we should fear other than Him?
We are reminded by the Book of Joshua that national failure is always a generation away (and sometimes sooner!). Each generation has to choose whether or not it will serve God (see Deuteronomy 29:9-15; 30:15-20; Joshua 24:15). The Israelites were emphatically told that they must be diligent to teach their children the ways of the Lord (Deuteronomy 4:5-6, 10, 40; 31:12-13; Joshua 4:6, 21-22; 14:9). We, too, must be careful to teach our children the ways of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Each generation must be encouraged to follow God. Each generation must choose whether or not it will do so.
Another matter for thought and discussion is that of deception, or to put the matter more bluntly, lying. In the Book of Joshua (and in the New Testament), we find that Rahab, the prostitute, is listed in the hall of faith (Hebrews 11:31; see James 2:25) and even in the genealogy of our Lord (Matthew 1:5). How do we explain the fact that she lied to her own people about the spies? And then there is the deception of the Gibeonites. It is not surprising to read of a Canaanite lying, but the basis for the lies of each is the truth that God will give Israel the victory. Here is some food for thought. And lest you think that God is soft on lying, remember Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).
The Book of Joshua reminds us of the devastating consequences of “sin in the camp.” The sin of Achan may seem trivial to some, but not to God. In the first place, it was disobedience to very clear and emphatic instructions (see Deuteronomy 7:25-26; Joshua 6:17-19). Sin not only corrupts the sinner, it also corrupts the church of God. There is a corporate consequence of sin, and this is why sin cannot be taken lightly in the church.
1 It is actually reported that sexual immorality exists among you, the kind of immorality that is not permitted even among the Gentiles, so that someone is cohabiting with his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you have been deeply sorrowful instead and removed the one who did this from among you? 3 For even though I am absent physically, I am present in spirit. And I have already judged the one who did this, just as though I were present. 4 When you gather together in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 turn this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. 6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast affects the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough, since you are, in fact, without yeast. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 So then, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of vice and evil, but with the bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. 9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 In no way did I mean the immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters, since you would then have to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian who is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or verbally abusive, or a drunkard, or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12 For what do I have to do with judging those outside? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 But God will judge those outside. Remove the evil person from among you (1 Corinthians 5:1-13).
Joshua is surely a prototype of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was he who led the people of God into the Promised Land. It was he who never suffered defeat. It was to him that God promised not one word he spoke would fail (Joshua 23:14). Is it any wonder that the name given to our Lord – Jesus – was but the name “Joshua”:
The name Joshua, a contracted form of Jehoshua (yehoshua`), which also appears in the form Jeshua (yeshua`, Neh. 8:17), signifies “Yahweh is deliverance” or “salvation, … .”146
In Joshua 24:31, we are told,
Israel worshiped the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime and as long as the elderly men who outlived him remained alive. These men had experienced firsthand everything the Lord had done for Israel.
God’s people were secure so long as Joshua remained alive. Are you and I not eternally secure since our “Joshua” is alive forevermore?
15 And this is even clearer if another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, 16 who has become a priest not by a legal regulation about physical descent but by the power of an indestructible life. 17 For here is the testimony about him: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” 18 On the one hand a former command is set aside because it is weak and useless, 19 for the law made nothing perfect. On the other hand a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God. 20 And since this was not done without a sworn affirmation—for the others have become priests without a sworn affirmation, 21 but Jesus did so with a sworn affirmation by the one who said to him, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever’”— 22 accordingly Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. 23 And the others who became priests were numerous, because death prevented them from continuing in office, 24 but he holds his priesthood permanently since he lives forever. 25 So he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them (Hebrews 7:15-25, emphasis mine).
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever! (Hebrews 13:8)
Finally, I note that Israel’s finest hour came at the time of their greatest challenges, in the face of incredible opposition and danger. So often we are tempted to think that God’s presence is to be found in times of peace and prosperity. The reality is that we cling most closely to God when life is pressing hard upon us. So it was for that generation. Think of it, Israel had just lost the greatest leader of all time (Moses), and they had suffered the consequence of a whole generation dying off in the wilderness. Forces larger and greater in power threatened them. It was during the hardest of times that Israel experienced the best of times.
I could not help but think of this in relation to our own church. In the past several years, we have lost several key leaders to death. It will not be too many years before the first generation of leaders are all gone. What will become of our church then? We need not fear, for God will provide for us, just as He did for Israel. God had a Joshua waiting in the wings. God’s work went on without a hitch; in fact, it went on better than under the leadership of Moses. Days of challenge may lay ahead of us, my friend, but God is as faithful today as He was in the days of Joshua. And so I conclude by reminding you of the words of our text, “I repeat, be strong and brave! Don’t be afraid and don’t panic, for I, the LORD your God, am with you in all you do” (Joshua 1:9).
139 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on February 18, 2001
140 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
141 I am reminded of God’s encouragement of Gideon in a similar fashion (see Judges 7:9-14).
142 We should also be reminded of the passage in Exodus 4:24-26, when God nearly killed Moses because he had not circumcised his son. To fail to obey God was therefore more dangerous than to obey.
143 One can hardly believe that the number seven had no significance here.
144 It is interesting to ponder the basis for the Gibeonites’ actions. First, they had to believe that the Israelites would possess the land, so that they were willing to become slaves to them in order to live. Second, they must have believed that the Israelites were people of integrity. Otherwise, how could they have trusted the Israelites to keep their covenant once they learned they had been deceived?
145 It is interesting to note that Joshua begins with Joshua’s words spoken to the eastern tribes, Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, just as the historical events of the book end with words to these tribes.
146 “Joshua,” The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, electronic edition.
The Book of Judges147
A number of years ago I was preaching through the Book of Judges. Our custom was to have one of the men in the church read the Scripture text and then pray before I would preach. The text was Judges 19. This text is so distressing that something happened for the first time in my preaching ministry – my request to read the biblical text and to pray was declined. Mind you, this did not happen just once; it happened two or three times, until one man finally agreed to read it. On Sunday morning, when it was time for him to read the passage, he said something like this: “I know it is customary for one to read the text and then pray, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to pray before I read.”
The Book of Judges is a very troubling book, and it is not just this one incident, either. The whole book is distressing. Just recently, I received an e-mail from someone about another passage. It went something like this:
I read something in my Bible that really disturbed me and shook the very foundation of my faith. I never thought I would read where God accepted a human sacrifice. I kept expecting God to stop Jephthah and tell him not to sacrifice his daughter. Is there anywhere else in the Bible where this is mentioned? Did God condone this? How could God allow this?
The writer was referring to yet another story from the Book of Judges, where Jephthah made a very foolish vow:
30 Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, saying, “If you really do hand the Ammonites over to me, 31 then whoever is the first to come through the doors of my house to meet me when I return safely from fighting the Ammonites—he will belong to the Lord and I will offer him up as a burnt sacrifice” (Judges 11:30-31).148
A little later in the story, we read that Jephthah’s daughter came out to meet him, and that he fulfilled his vow, as foolish as it was (Judges 11:39-40).
The Book of Judges depicts a very dark hour in the history of Israel, and yet the events of this book come so very soon after the “golden years” of the “Joshua generation.” It is not the kind of reading we do for pure enjoyment, but it is an important era in the history of Israel, an era that we need to understand, and from which we should learn important lessons. Sad to say, it is an era that is very similar to the days in which we live, making it a message all the more pertinent to us. Let us listen well, and heed the message God has for us in these difficult pages.
The structure of the Book of Judges is very simple:
Chapters 1-3:6 |
Introduction to the period of the judges |
Chapters 3:7—16:31 |
Description of the reign of the judges |
Chapters 17-21 |
Prologue: Two stories that characterize the period of the judges |
When we come to a study of the Book of Judges it is important that we understand what a judge is, and is not. At that time in Israel, a “judge” was almost never a person who passed judgment on certain cases, or who settled disputes, though there was such a role in Israel (see Exodus 18; Numbers 11). Deborah did have a kind of judicial function (Judges 4:4-5), but this seems more related to her role as a prophetess than as one of Israel’s “judges.” None of the other “judges” in the Book of Judges actually “judged” in the most common sense of the word.
Judges were not an early prototype of Israel’s kings, either. Judges were primarily “deliverers” from the oppression of Israel’s enemies. They sometimes acted independently, as did Samson, who was a kind of “Lone Ranger judge”. Some of the judges led the military forces of one or more tribes against their foes. These judges did not lead the military forces of the entire nation, but only certain segments of it. As a rule, they did not have any administrative function, as a king would. God raised these judges up spontaneously, because of Israel’s oppression by their enemies. There was no succession and no dynasty. Usually, the Israelites were free from oppression as long as the judge lived.
The key to understanding the Book of Judges is the mosaic covenant that God made with His people, the Israelites. The blessings and cursings of the Mosaic covenant are first spelled out in Leviticus 26. They are then repeated in greater detail in Deuteronomy 28. These blessings are summarized in verses
1 and 2:
1 “And if you indeed obey the Lord your God and are careful to observe all his commandments I am giving you today, the Lord your God will elevate you above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings will come to you in abundance if you obey the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 28:1-2).
But just as God promised His blessings for those who obeyed His commandments, there were also curses for those who disobeyed:
15 “But if you pay no attention to the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am relating to you today, then all these curses will come and overtake you: 16 You be cursed in the city and cursed in the field. 17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. 18 Your children will be cursed, as well as the offspring of your livestock, the calves of your cattle, and the lambs of your flock. 19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out” (Deuteronomy 28:15-19, see also verses 20-68).
Joshua’s final words to the Israelites repeated the warnings earlier conveyed to Israel by Moses:
9 “The Lord drove out from before you great and mighty nations; no one has been able to resist you to this very day. 10 One of you makes a thousand run away, for the Lord your God fights for you as he promised you he would. 11 Watch yourselves carefully! Love the Lord your God! 12 But if you ever turn away and make alliances with these nations that remain near you, and intermarry with them and establish friendly relations with them, 13 know for certain that the Lord our God will no longer drive out these nations from before you. They will trap and ensnare you; they will be a whip that tears your sides and thorns that blind your eyes until you disappear from this good land the Lord your God gave you. 14 “Look, today I am about to die. You know with all your heart and being that not even one of all the faithful promises the Lord your God made to you is left unfulfilled; every one was realized, not one promise is unfulfilled! 15 But in the same way every faithful promise the Lord your God made to you has been realized, it is just as certain, if you disobey, that the Lord will bring on you every judgment until he destroys you from this good land which the Lord your God gave you. 16 If you violate the covenantal laws of the Lord your God which he commanded you to keep, and follow, worship, and bow down to other gods, the Lord will be very angry with you and you will disappear quickly from the good land which he gave to you” (Joshua 23:9-16, emphasis mine).
In Judges 1 and 2, we find an explanation for the spiritual decline of the Israelites. The downfall of Israel begins shortly after the death of Joshua. As the Book of Joshua ends, Joshua’s generation is passing away, and so he calls upon the next generation of Israelites to embrace the covenant God made with their forefathers as their own. He calls upon them to decide whom they will serve:
14 Now obey the Lord and worship him with integrity and loyalty. Put aside the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt and worship the Lord. 15 If you have no desire to worship the Lord, choose today whom you will worship, whether it be the gods whom your ancestors worshiped beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my family will worship the Lord!” (Joshua 24:14-15, emphasis mine)
In spite of their expressed determination to serve God, Joshua warned that they would not be able to fulfill their commitment. They simply could not live up to the standards of a Holy God:
Joshua warned the people, “You won’t keep worshiping the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God who will not forgive your rebellion or your sins” (Joshua 24:19).
It does not take long for us to see the truth of Joshua’s words. The fulfillment begins early in the Book of Judges, in chapter 1. While the strength of the Canaanite kings had been crushed under Joshua, it remained for the individual Israelite tribes to completely annihilate the remaining Canaanites from the land. In chapters 1 and 2, the author supplies the reader with an explanation for the downfall of the nation, as well as the reason why God left the Canaanites in the land. In these two chapters, we observe the following sequence.
The tribes of Judah and Simeon enjoyed moderate success (1:17), but they were not completely successful (1:19). The Benjamites did not completely drive out the Jebusites living in Jerusalem:
19 The Lord was with the men of Judah. They conquered the hill country, but they could not conquer the people living in the coastal plain, because they had chariots with iron-rimmed wheels. 20 Caleb received Hebron, just as Moses had promised. He drove out the three Anakites. 21 The men of Benjamin, however, did not conquer the Jebusites living in Jerusalem. The Jebusites live with the people of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this very day (Judges 1:19-21, emphasis mine).
The men of Judah were not able to overcome the people living on the coastal plain, who had the latest in military technology (chariots with iron-rimmed wheels). The men of Joseph did reasonably well (1:22-26). But the remainder of Judges chapter 1 is the story of incomplete victory. The men of Manasseh (1:27-28), Ephraim (1:29), Zebulun (1:30), Asher (1:31-32), Naphtali (1:33), and Dan (1:34-35) did not completely conquer and destroy the Canaanites in their land. Partial victory over the Canaanites meant living with the Canaanites, the next sequence in Israel’s downward spiral.
Because the Israelites did not completely wipe out the Canaanites, they had to co-exist in the land with them. In some cases, the Canaanites were made slaves, but they were not exterminated:
33 The men of Naphtali did not conquer the people living in Beth Shemesh or Beth Anath. They live among the Canaanites residing in the land. The Canaanites living in Beth Shemesh and Beth Anath were forced to do hard labor for them. 34 The Amorites forced the people of Dan to live in the hill country. They did not allow them to live in the coastal plain (Judges 1:33-34, emphasis mine).
When one lives among another people, it becomes “necessary” to enter into agreements and formal associations with them. For example, we find that Heber the Kenite (a descendant of Moses’ father-in-law) became an ally with King Jabin of Canaan (1:16; 4:11, 17). This kind of cooperation brought about a divine rebuke:
1 The Lord’s angelic messenger went up from Gilgal to Bokim. He said, “I brought you up from Egypt and led you into the land I had solemnly promised to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my agreement with you, 2 but you must not make an agreement with the people who live in this land. You should tear down the altars where they worship.’ But you have disobeyed me. Why would you do such a thing? 3 At that time I also warned you, ‘If you disobey, I will not drive out the Canaanites before you. They will ensnare you and their gods will lure you away’” (Judges 2:1-3, emphasis mine).
To formalize agreements with the Canaanites was to legitimize them; it was to acknowledge their right to exist when God had commanded the Israelites to exterminate them.
6 When Joshua dismissed the people, the Israelites went to their allotted portions of property, intending to take possession of the land. 7 The people worshiped the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime and as long as the elderly men who outlived him remained alive. These men had witnessed all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. 8 Joshua son of Nun, the Lord’s servant, died at the age of one hundred and ten. 9 The people buried him in his allotted land in Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. 10 That entire generation passed away; a new generation came along that had not personally experienced the Lord’s presence or seen what he had done for Israel. 11 The Israelites did evil before the Lord by worshiping the Baals. 12 They abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors who brought them out of the land of Egypt. They followed other gods—the gods of the nations who lived around them. They worshiped them and made the Lord angry. 13 They abandoned the Lord and worshiped Baal and the Ashtars (Judges 2:6-13, emphasis mine).
The very thing God had warned the Israelites about so frequently and fervently, the Israelites did. From merely tolerating the Canaanites, the Israelites came to imitate them. They began intermarrying with them and worshipping their gods. The nation that was to be holy and to remain separate from the sinful ways of the Canaanites now embraced the very sins that had brought God’s wrath upon them.
14 The Lord was furious with Israel and handed them over to robbers who plundered them. He turned them over to their enemies who lived around them. They could not withstand their enemies’ attacks. 15 Whenever they went out to fight, the Lord did them harm, just as he had warned and solemnly vowed he would do. They suffered greatly (Judges 2:14-15).
The curses of the Mosaic Covenant were now implemented against the nation Israel. The Israelites would now suffer military defeat at the hand (or sword) of their enemies. God would cease to send the rains for their crops, and their cattle would no longer thrive and reproduce. What God had warned He would do, He now began to bring to pass.
16 The Lord raised up leaders who delivered them from these robbers. 17 But they did not obey their leaders. Instead they prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned aside from the path their ancestors had walked. Their ancestors had obeyed the Lord’s commands, but they did not. 18 When the Lord raised up leaders for them, the Lord was with each leader and delivered the people from their enemies while the leader remained alive. The Lord felt sorry for them when they cried out in agony because of what their harsh oppressors did to them (Judges 2:16-18, emphasis mine).
In response to their suffering, the Israelites cried out to God for relief. God, in His grace, would raise up a deliverer, a judge, who would deliver the Israelites from the oppression of their enemies. That deliverance normally lasted the length of the deliverer’s life.
19 When a leader died, the next generation would again act more wickedly than the previous one. They would follow after other gods, worshiping them and bowing down to them. They did not give up their practices or their stubborn ways (Judges 2:14-19, emphasis mine).
One would certainly hope that after a painful cycle of sin, judgment, and relief, the Israelites would have learned their lesson and would live according to God’s commands. This was not the case at all. After the death of the deliverer, the Israelites went back to their sinful ways. They did not merely take up where they left off; they became even more wicked than before. Their sins compounded. Things went from bad to worse.
20 The Lord was furious with Israel. He said, “This nation has violated the terms of the agreement I made with their ancestors by disobeying me. 21 So I will no longer remove before them any of the nations that Joshua left unconquered when he died. 22 Joshua left those nations to test Israel. I wanted to see whether or not the people would carefully walk in the path marked out by the Lord, as their ancestors were careful to do.” 23 This is why the Lord permitted these nations to remain and did not conquer them immediately; he did not hand them over to Joshua.
1 These were the nations the Lord permitted to remain so he could use them to test Israel—he wanted to test all those who had not experienced battle against the Canaanites. 2 He left those nations simply because he wanted to teach the subsequent generations of Israelites, who had not experienced the earlier battles, how to conduct holy war. 3 These were the nations: the five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites living in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal Hermon to Lebo-Hamath. 4 They were left to test Israel, so the Lord would know if his people would obey the commands he gave their ancestors through Moses.
5 The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 6 They took the Canaanites’ daughters as wives and gave their daughters to the Canaanites; they worshiped their gods as well (Judges 2:20-3:6).
We would be wrong to think Joshua totally broke the back of the Canaanite opposition, and then left the “clean-up” operations to the individual tribes. As we see from the verses above and from the text below, God had a purpose for leaving the Canaanites in the land:
20 Furthermore, he will release the hornet among them until the very last ones who hide from you perish. 21 You must not tremble in their presence, for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a great and awesome God. 22 He, the God who leads you, will expel the nations little by little. You must not overcome them all at once lest the wild animals overrun you. 23 The Lord your God will give them over to you; he will trouble them with great difficulty until they are destroyed. 24 He will hand over their kings to you and you will erase their very names from memory. Nobody will be able to stand before you until you annihilate them (Deuteronomy 7:20-24, emphasis mine).
Moses told the Israelites that God would remove the Canaanites little by little, because otherwise wild animals would overrun the land. I take this to mean that the population would not have been sufficient to “rule over” this land, and thus it would overrun with wild animals. As the population grew, the Israelites would expel the Canaanites and thus control the entire land. Until then, the Canaanites would be allowed to remain.
In Judges 2, we are given yet another reason why God left the Canaanites in the land for a time. It was to test and to teach Israel. The Canaanites would test Israel’s commitment to carefully carry out all the requirements of God’s law. Would the Israelites finish the job that Joshua had started so well? Would they drive out the Canaanites? And would the Israelites remain separate from the Canaanites by not embracing their women in marriage or their gods in worship? The Canaanites were also left behind to teach subsequent generations of Israelites how to conduct holy war (3:2). God did not want the Israelites to become “soft.” They needed to be strong, so that they could defend their borders from the surrounding nations. The Canaanites were a part of God’s training and testing program.
The first generation of Israelites had been tested by God in the wilderness, as Moses reminded them:
1 You must keep carefully the entire commandment I am giving you today so that you may live, multiply, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 2 Remember the whole way by which he has brought you these forty years through the desert so that he might, by humbling you, test to see whether deep within yourselves you would keep his commandments or not. 3 So he humbled you by making you hungry and feeding you with unfamiliar manna to make you understand that mankind cannot live by food alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord’s mouth. 4 Your clothing did not wear out nor did your feet swell all these forty years (Deuteronomy 8:1-4, emphasis mine).
The Israelites failed these tests. They constantly grumbled and complained whenever they lacked anything that they needed, or just wanted (like meat). They were driven by their fleshly appetites and not by a commitment to trust and obey God by keeping His commandments (see 1 Corinthians 10:1-13).
This generation also failed the test of the Canaanites who were “left behind.” Instead of remaining separate from them and removing them from the land altogether, they began to intermarry with them and to worship their gods (3:5-6). And because of this, God left these nations in the land to discipline the Israelites for their disobedience.
The author of Judges writes of the deliverance of Israel through more than a dozen people. We know almost nothing about six judges: Shamgar (3:31), Tola (10:1-2), Jair (10:3-5), Ibzan (12:8-10), Elon (12:11-12), and Abdon (12:13-15). The most prominent judges in the book are Deborah (and Barak – chapters 4 and 5), Gideon (chapters 6-8), Jephthah (10:6—12:7), and Samson (chapters 13-16). I will focus on these four judges, because they received the greatest prominence in this book.
Israel was being oppressed by King Jabin of Canaan, assisted by Sisera, the commander of his armed forces. When the Israelites cried for help, God raised up Deborah, the prophetess (Judges 4:4). Deborah’s words to Barak are most interesting and instructive:
She summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali. She said to him, “Is it not true that the Lord God of Israel is commanding you? Go, march to Mount Tabor! Take with you ten thousand men from Naphtali and Zebulun! (Judges 4:6)
The NET Bible renders the first part of this verse as a question, as does the KJV and the NKJV, and some others. It is possible, of course, that this is simply a command, “Behold, the LORD, the God of Israel, has commanded, ‘Go and march to Mount Tabor, and take with you ten thousand men from the sons of Naphtali and from the sons of Zebulun’” (NASB). But a marginal note in the New American Standard Bible indicates that this may, in fact, be a question. If it is to be understood as the NET Bible has rendered it, then the reader gets the impression that Deborah’s words of instruction are not the first that Barak has heard. The reader could easily get the impression that God had already commanded Barak to do as Deborah has instructed him. This would underscore Barak’s fear and insecurity, a fear that caused him to refuse to attack Sisera and his army unless Deborah accompanied him.
In one sense, Barak had good cause for concern. King Jabin’s army, under the command of Sisera, had 900 chariots with iron-rimmed wheels (Judges 4:13; see also 1:19). Barak was certainly weak in faith. Even though commanded to attack Sisera’s forces by a prophetess, Barak would not do so alone. It wasn’t because he lacked respect for Deborah, because he insisted that he would only go to war if Deborah were with him. Here was a woman, not a warrior, a wife and mother, not a military mastermind. Deborah consented to go with him, but indicated that the victory would not bring him fame:
8 Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go. But if you do not go with me, I will not go.” 9 She said, “I will indeed go with you. But you will not gain fame on the expedition you are taking, for the Lord will turn Sisera over to a woman.” Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh (Judges 4:8-9).
Barak and his forces overcame the enemy, and all were slaughtered, except for Sisera, who fled on foot. Sisera ran until he was completely exhausted, and then he sought sanctuary at the home of Heber the Kenite, who had made a treaty with King Jabin whom Sisera served. Heber was not home, however, but his wife, Jael, was. Her allegiance was rightly with the people of God and not with this Canaanite king and his commander-in-chief.
Jael welcomed the terrified and exhausted Sisera into her tent. He asked for water, but she gave him warm milk. She reassured him that he was safe, and then covered him with a blanket so that he could get some needed rest. When he was deep in sleep, Jael knelt beside Sisera with a tent peg and hammer, driving the peg through his skull, killing him instantly. When Barak arrived, Jael showed him her trophy lying dead in her tent. King Jabin was humiliated that day, but so was Barak, because the victory was really due to two women: Deborah and Jael.
The song in Judges 5 speaks of Deborah, Barak, and Jael and the part they played in this victory. It also honors God, who was the real source of the victory. We are told in poetic fashion that God employed all of nature to bring about the defeat of Israel’s enemies:
4 O Lord, when you departed from Seir,
when you marched from Edom’s plains,
the earth shook, the heavens poured down,
the clouds poured down rain.
5 The mountains trembled before the Lord, the God of Sinai;
before the Lord God of Israel (Judges 5:4-5).
20 From the sky the stars fought,
from their paths in the heavens they fought against Sisera.
21 The Kishon River carried them off;
the river confronted them—the Kishon River.
Step on the necks of the strong! (Judges 5:20-21)
What is of great interest is that this song emphasizes who did and who did not participate in this battle:
14 They came from Ephraim, who uprooted Amalek,
they follow after you, Benjamin, with your soldiers.
From Makir leaders came down,
from Zebulun came the ones who march carrying an officer’s staff.
15 Issachar’s leaders were with Deborah,
the men of Issachar supported Barak,
into the valley they were sent under Barak’s command.
Among the clans of Reuben there was intense heart searching.
16 Why do you remain among the sheepfolds,
listening to the shepherds playing their pipes for their flocks?
As for the clans of Reuben—there was intense heart searching.
17 Gilead stayed put beyond the Jordan River.
As for Dan—why did he seek temporary employment in the shipyards?
Asher remained on the seacoast,
he stayed put by his harbors.
18 The men of Zebulun were not concerned about their lives;
Naphtali charged on to the battlefields (Judges 5:14-18).
23 ‘Call judgment down on Meroz,’ says the Lord’s angelic messenger;
‘Be sure to call judgment down on those who live there,
because they did not come to help in the Lord’s battle,
to help in the Lord’s battle against the warriors’ (Judges 5:23).
Having said that Deborah, Barak, and Jael are referred to in this song, it is not Barak who is the great hero of this battle, but rather Jael. She is the one whose actions are most emphasized. The honor goes to Deborah and to Jael when it could (and should) have gone to Barak. Nevertheless, God gave the land rest for 40 years.
Here is a victory that is less than complete victory. It is a victory over Israel’s oppressors, a victory that God gave Israel over a powerful enemy. It is a victory that is both sweet and sour. While some tribes rose to the challenge and fought with and for their brethren, others simply looked the other way to their shame. This is about as good as it is going to get in the Book of Judges, and it will soon get a whole lot worse.
Once again the Israelites are guilty of practicing what is evil in the sight of God. This time God uses the Midianites as His chastening rod. Then, the Israelites cry out to God for deliverance, and God raises up a man named Gideon. An angelic messenger comes to Gideon while he is threshing wheat in a winepress (6:11). Normally one would thresh wheat on high ground, where the wind could blow away the chaff. Gideon cannot do this because he would then be in open view to the Midianites, who could be expected to come and steal his grain.
I see a very fearful fellow threshing his wheat, looking to and fro for any sign of the Midianites. It is certainly sounds ironic when the angelic messenger comes to Gideon with the words, “The LORD is with you, courageous warrior!” (6:12). I used to think the angel must have had difficulty keeping a straight face without bursting out in laughter. I now see these words as prophetic. The angel spoke to Gideon, not as he was at the moment, but according to what he would be in the future. And lest we find this difficult to grasp, it is something like the Word of God calling us “saints.” That we may be (indeed, we are), but not due to any “saintliness” on our own part.
Gideon’s first response was to ask God where He has been in the midst of His people’s suffering:
13 Gideon said to him, “Pardon me, but if the Lord is with us, why has such disaster overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about? They said, ‘Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian” (Judges 6:13).
God’s answer was not the one that Gideon expected or wanted! God informed Gideon that He was now bringing deliverance to His people, through him.
Then the Lord himself turned to him and said, “You have the strength. Deliver Israel from the power of the Midianites! Have I not sent you?” (Judges 6:14).
Gideon wants assurance that it is really God speaking to him. Gideon asks for a sign (6:17) and gets it – the angelic messenger ignites Gideon’s offering. In response, Gideon builds an altar there to the Lord.
It seems that God gave Gideon a few hours to ponder what he had experienced before the angelic messenger returned with another challenge to his faith. (Up till now, God has only disclosed in a general way that Gideon is to deliver his people.)
Building that first altar was Gideon’s “baby steps” of faith, but now God calls for greater faith and obedience. That same night the Lord instructed Gideon to tear down the Baal altar and the Asherah pole that his father had erected. He was then to build an altar to the Lord in its place and offer a sacrifice there. Gideon obeyed, but late at night in the cover of darkness. It was not until morning that the men of the city discovered what had happened that night and who had done it. They demanded that Gideon’s father put his son to death, but his father refused, insisting that Baal ought to be powerful enough to protect his own interests. Great logic!
It is a most amazing thing, is it not, that the people of that city were eager to see Gideon put to death for his worship of Israel’s God, and for blaspheming (as it were) Baal? They should have put Gideon’s father to death for building an altar for a pagan god. How quickly these Israelites have fallen from the “golden days” of the Joshua generation.
Next, God commanded Gideon to engage the eastern nations in battle (6:33). Empowered by God’s Spirit, Gideon blew a trumpet, summoning the surrounding tribes to follow him (6:34-35). Gideon feels the need for further confirmation, and so he requests a two-fold sign. This is the famous sign of Gideon’s fleece. First, the fleece was to be wet, but the ground was to remain dry. Next, the fleece was to be dry, but the surrounding ground was to be wet. God fulfilled both requests and Gideon was now willing to go to war.
God was not yet ready, however. Thirty-two thousand Israelite men showed up for battle, and this was to face an army of well over 100,000 men (see 8:10). God knew that an army of Israel’s size would be tempted to take the credit for the victory. And so He had Gideon send away all those who were fearful, two-thirds of his men. Even the 10,000 men who remained was still too large a number for God, and so He finally thinned the Israelite soldiers down to a mere 300. God knew that Gideon would need another sign, and so He invited him to go down to the Midianite camp. There, Gideon overheard one soldier talking with another, disclosing the Midianites’ fear of Gideon and his army. This was as encouraging to Gideon as Rahab’s were to the two spies, and to the Israelites (see Joshua 2:8-11, 23-24).
The initial victory of Gideon and his 300 men is a most amazing story. He divided his 300 men into 3 units of 100 men. He gave each man a trumpet and a jar with a torch inside. The 3 units surrounded the enemy camp. The text gives us a very specific detail at this point:
Gideon took a hundred men to the edge of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after they had changed the guards. They blew their trumpets and broke the jars they were carrying (Judges 7:19, emphasis mine).
Why would we be told that this happened in the middle of the night and at the beginning of the middle watch? This was apparently 10:00 p.m. Since the guards had just changed, the new guards would have just come on duty, and the other guards would still be returning to their tents. In other words, this was the precise moment during the night hours when the greatest number of Midianite warriors would be awake and about. It is my theory150 that if the Israelite soldiers had swords, they did not have them in hand. How could they, holding a jar in one hand and a trumpet in the other? After they blew their trumpets, they broke the jars, exposing the torches. The Midianites then panicked and began killing each other. How could this happen? It is my opinion that the trumpets completely startled the already frightened army (7:13-14) and that the light then blinded them. Their eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and these lights blinded them, like a deer in the headlights. They believed they were under attack, and not being able to see clearly, they began to thrash about with their swords. The only ones standing nearby were their fellow-Midianites. The 300 Israelite soldiers were standing around the outside of the camp, safely away from this thrashing. The more the Midianites thrashed about (and were cut by their fellow-soldiers), the harder they fought – one another. The end result was that the Midianites killed themselves off while the Israelites looked in wonderment in the light their torches provided. Realizing that they were being destroyed (though not aware that they were killing themselves), the Midianites sought to escape into the night. This meant that they did not have all of their weapons or supplies, leaving these behind for Gideon and his men. It may not have happened precisely this way, but I would venture a guess that it was something like this.
Now was the time for their fellow-Israelites to join in and finish this battle:
Israelites from Naphtali, Asher, and Manasseh answered the call and chased the Midianites (Judges 7:23).
The Ephraimites, however, were indignant. They protested that they had been summoned so late in the conflict (7:24—8:1). It was Gideon’s prudent and calm response that calmed them down (8:2-3). This is but the first of the hostile responses of the Ephraimites. There were others, however, who would not cooperate at all:
4 Now Gideon and his three hundred men had crossed over the Jordan River and, though exhausted, were still chasing the Midianites. 5 He said to the men of Succoth, “Give some loaves of bread to the men who are following me, because they are exhausted. I am chasing Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian.” 6 The officials of Succoth said, “You have not yet overpowered Zebah and Zalmunna. So why should we give bread to your army?” 7 Gideon said, “Since you will not help, after the Lord hands Zebah and Zalmunna over to me, I will thresh your skin with desert thorns and briers.” 8 He went up from there to Penuel and made the same request. The men of Penuel responded the same way the men of Succoth had. 9 He also threatened the men of Penuel, warning, “When I return victoriously, I will tear down this tower” (Judges 8:4-9).
Succoth and Penuel were two Israelite cities in the territory of Gad on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Thus, once again, some fellow-Israelites were unwilling to come to the aid of their brethren who were in need. The unity between the tribes of Israel that we witnessed in the Book of Joshua is rapidly eroding in the Book of Judges.
After Gideon defeated his fleeing foes, he returned to Succoth and Penuel, where he punished their leaders and then executed them. He also tore down the tower of Penuel. Gideon then killed the two enemy kings, Zebah and Zalmunna, and took the ornaments that were on the necks of their camels.
The men of Israel were so pleased with Gideon’s leadership that they wanted to make him their king, an offer that Gideon wisely refused. The sad news is that Gideon did take advantage of their gratitude. He asked them for a portion of the spoils of war they had taken from the Midianites. They gladly gave this to Gideon, but from these spoils Gideon made an ephod that he kept in his hometown, and this ephod became an object of worship. In this way, Israel’s great deliverer became a stumbling block to his fellow-Israelites, causing them to fall back into the idolatry that would bring on the next cycle of divine discipline.
Passing over a number of judges, we come to Jephthah, one of the great enigmas of the Book of Judges. Unlike Gideon in his early days, Jephthah was a mighty warrior. He was also the son of a prostitute (11:1). When Jephthah’s half-brothers grew up, they forced him to leave the family, but when the Ammonites began to oppress them, the people of Gilead urged him to return as their leader (11:15-16). Jephthah agreed, on the condition that they would address his grievances with his family and others in Gilead. Jephthah then began to negotiate with the Ammonite king. Time will not permit us to draft an exposition of this text, but the interchange between Jephthah and the Ammonite king is an excellent summation of the struggle for the land of the Israel as it stands today (see 11:12-28).
When negotiations finally broke down, Jephthah led the Israelites against the Ammonites. Before he went to battle, Jephthah made a very foolish vow:
30 Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, saying, “If you really do hand the Ammonites over to me, 31 then whoever is the first to come through the doors of my house to meet me when I return safely from fighting the Ammonites—he will belong to the Lord and I will offer him up as a burnt sacrifice” (Judges 11:30-31).
Jephthah and his forces defeated the Ammonites, and when he returned home, his daughter ran to greet him. As a result, Jephthah fulfilled his foolish vow concerning his daughter. Because it is so difficult to believe that this father would sacrifice his daughter, other explanations have been suggested, but no explanation leaves one with a good felling about this father or his vow.
Once again we read of conflict with the Ephraimites (see 8:1-3). They seem to have had a chip on their shoulder. They disputed with Jephthah because he had not summoned them to the battle (so they could share in the glory?). The end result of this conflict was war between Jephthah’s forces and the Ephraimites (12:1-7). Things have gone from bad to worse. Initially, the Israelites were fighting together, against their common enemies. Now, the Israelites are fighting among themselves.
As with Gideon, much attention is devoted to Samson in the Book of Judges. He is an especially significant figure. First of all, Samson is the final judge of the Book of Judges. Second, Samson is a tragic figure, a man totally enslaved to the flesh. Third, Samson is a picture of the nation Israel. I am particularly indebted to the comments of Albert H. Baylis, in his fine book, From Creation to the Cross:151
While Jephthah delivers Israel east of the Jordan, Samson becomes a judge in the west (chaps. 13-16). The writer gives more space to Samson than to any other judge. He was chosen to be judge before birth, so his beginnings rival those of Samuel, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist. Certainly much should be expected from this man. But he is woefully disappointing. He regularly disregards the law, intermarries with the Philistines, and uses his delivering power to carry out acts of incidental violence.
Why spend so much time on Samson’s failure? Because he climaxes the message of Judges. His life matches that of the nation itself. Samson, like Israel, had a special calling but deserted it to pursue his own desires. His power, though great and bestowed by Yahweh, did not deliver because his life was marked by unfaithfulness to Yahweh and intermarriage with the nations of the land.
I differ with some of Baylis’ comments,152 but I certainly concur with his main thoughts here. Samson was the “bottom of the barrel” so far as Israel’s deliverers were concerned, and one had to be really corrupt to win this distinction. While other deliverers overcame their beginnings, Samson could not have had it better. His birth and ministry was announced beforehand in a way that does rank him with John the Baptist. His parents were faithful and committed followers of God. They were diligent to seek God’s counsel as to how they should raise this boy, and they followed it as best they could. They raised Samson as a Nazarite, and yet he seemed to despise his spiritual birthright. The only hint of any repentance and obedience on his part comes in the final hours of his life. He is a tragic figure indeed.
The weaknesses in Samson’s character are apparent in his first romance with a Philistine woman in chapter 14. Here was a woman whose only quality was her appearance, and that was enough for Samson. Samson erred at every turn, from eating honey from a dead lion’s carcass to disregarding his parents’ counsel about choosing a wife. His bride-to-be tricked Samson into revealing his secret to her (the answer to his riddle), because she was fearful of those who threatened her if she did not disclose this information to them (14:15-17). When Samson realized he had been tricked, he struck out at the Philistines in anger. He did not destroy them for the sake of his fellow-Israelites, but rather to bolster his injured pride. When this woman was given to his best man for a bride, Samson again struck out in anger. He was completely self-occupied and self-serving. What a terrible thing it is to see one so empowered by the Spirit of God, and yet so dominated by the flesh.
One might hope that Samson learned his lesson from his first disaster at acquiring a wife from the Philistines, but when he meets Delilah, he repeats his folly to the degree that he once again is coaxed into telling a foreign woman his inner secrets (the source of his power). This leads to Samson’s captivity and blindness. It is only after his hair has grown back and he calls to God for enablement that he is able to avenge himself by collapsing the temple where he was on display.
The final chapters of Judges are an epilogue. Instead of focusing on the sins of the people, or of the judges who delivered them, the final five chapters look closely at the lives of two Levites. What is happening to the religious leadership of the nation? We shall see that the religious leadership was not holding the nation accountable for its sin, but was, instead, blazing its own trails of sinful conduct. The spiritual vacuum to which I am alluding has been implied in the earlier chapters of Judges. In Judges 2:1-4, it is an “angelic messenger” who rebukes the nation for its sin. Once again in 2:20-21 God speaks. Only the prophetess Deborah (4:4ff.) and one unnamed prophet (6:7-10) seems to have spoken for God in the Book of Judges. Where are the priests or the prophets? Is there no man who will stand up for God? Apparently not! As Paul would later write,
19 Now I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you quickly, so that I too may be encouraged by hearing news about you. 20 For there is no one here like him who will readily demonstrate his deep concern for you. 21 Others are busy with their own concerns, not those of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:19-21).
The two Levites in our text are men who are not seeking God’s interests, or the interests of others, but only their own.
What an amazing story. The young priest, a Levite from Bethlehem, is never named, but his employer – Micah – is. Micah was from the hill country of Ephraim. He had stolen silver from his mother and had heard her pronounce a curse on the thief. It seems to be his fear of the curse that prompted him to confess. In response, his mother pronounces a blessing on him, and then dedicates a portion of the money “to the
LORD” for her son’s benefit. She then commissions a silversmith to make an idol. A shrine for the idol is made in Micah’s house. Micah then creates a collection of idols, including an ephod, and hires one of his sons as a priest.
There was a young Levite who had been living temporarily in Bethlehem, among the people of Judah. I get the impression that he was unemployed. (With the spiritual collapse of the nation, what would a priest do? He would be like an undertaker in a world that had no death.) The young Levite moved on in search of another place to live, ending up in the hill country of Ephraim. There, he came upon the house of Micah, who quickly offered him employment as his personal priest (What better than to have a Levite as your priest?). It was an offer the young Levite could not refuse. Micah was now assured, in his mind, that God would bless him:
Micah said, “Now I know God will make me rich, because I have this Levite as my priest” (Judges 17:13).
The Danite tribe was looking for a place to settle, and so they sent out five men to spy out the land. In their journey, they came across the house of Micah, where they spent the night. When they heard the young priest speaking, they recognized his accent and knew he was not from this part of the country. He told them how Micah had employed him as his personal priest. Learning that he was a priest, they requested that he seek divine revelation concerning their quest for a dwelling place. The young priest assured them of success (What priest for hire doesn’t do this?), and they went their way.
When these spies returned home, they had good news about Laish, a peaceful place of abundance that was remote and defenseless. The Danites then made their way toward Laish, stopping at the home of Micah on their way. As they approached Micah’s house, the five spies informed the others about the idols and ephod, and the young Levite priest. If they were about to steal Laish, surely they might as well steal Micah’s idols too (Was the ephod not the instrument by which they learned of their success?). They engaged the young priest in conversation while they stole the idols. When the priest realized what they were doing, he challenged them, but was quickly silenced. Besides, they offered him a better job, serving with these same idols as their priest. It was a chance for a promotion, and he quickly accepted the offer. Micah, who had been like a father to the young priest (17:11), protested, but he was completely outnumbered and gave up. The Danites, accompanied by the young Levite priest, then went on to Laish, destroying the city and possessing this place for themselves. There, they worshiped Micah’s carved image, even though Israel’s proper place of worship was Shiloh (18:31).
The story of the Levite is a window into the moral and religious character of the nation Israel and of its spiritual leaders. This priest was not engaged in his official duties, probably because the nation had ceased to worship God according to the Law. Instead, “every man was doing what was right in his own eyes.” Being unemployed, this Levite seemed not to care what “god” he served, so long as the pay was right. And if a better offer came along, as it did, then he would forsake his previous commitments and do what was best for him, in his own eyes. Israel’s spiritual leadership is rotten to the core.
For the third time in this epilogue, we read the words:
In those days Israel had no king… . (Judges 19:1a, emphasis mine).
The story of a second Levite is then told. This fellow was living temporarily in the hill country of Ephraim. He, too, seems to be unemployed or displaced. He is not at Israel’s legitimate place of worship – Shiloh (see 18:31). He had acquired a concubine from Bethlehem, but she was displeased with him and ran home to her father in Bethlehem. The Levite pursued her, hoping to convince her to return with him. When he reached her father’s home, he was warmly welcomed, and his mission proved successful. She was willing to return home with him. They would have left sooner, except for her father’s hospitality. Day after day, he persuaded his son-in-law to stay just a little longer, and his hospitality made it well worth the stay.
Finally, the Levite and his concubine were able to tear themselves away from this woman’s father and set out for home. They did not get away until late in the day, and darkness was threatening to close in on them while they were still on their journey. As they approached Jebus (Jerusalem), the Levite’s servant wanted to spend the night there. Since this was not an Israelite town at the moment, the Levite wanted to press on till they were in Israelite territory. And so on they went until they arrived at Gibeah, a town in Benjamite territory just a few miles further. They arrived at Gibeah in the darkness and came into the town square, where they expected to be greeted and invited to stay at one of the Benjamite homes. Finally, an elderly fellow passed by who was returning from the fields. He was not a Benjamite; his home was in the hill country of Ephraim, but he was living temporarily in Gibeah. When he saw the traveler, he engaged him in conversation. The Levite explained that he had plenty of supplies; he only needed a roof over his head for the night. The old man invited him to his house for the night, insisting that he provide food for him. They had just finished eating when the men of the city came to the door and insisted that the old man send out the Levite, so that they could sexually assault him. It was Sodom relived (compare Genesis 19:1-13).
The old man offered his virgin daughter to the mob, along with the Levite’s concubine. The men of the city refused this offer, but the Levite seized his concubine and forced her outside, where the men of the city abused her all night. In the morning, the Levite was ready to set out on his way. When he opened the door, he found his concubine lying on the ground, her hands on the threshold. Without a note of compassion, the Levite ordered his concubine to get up so they could leave. He did not yet realize that she was dead. When he did, he loaded her body on his donkey and took her home, where he cut her body into 12 pieces, sending a piece and a message to each tribe of Israel. It was obviously a shocking message:
Everyone who saw the sight said, “Nothing like this has happened or been witnessed during the entire time since the Israelites left the land of Egypt. Take careful note of it! Discuss it and speak!” (Judges 19:30)
The Benjamites refused to deal with their wayward brothers in Gibeah, and thus the rest of the Israelites found it necessary to go to war with the entire tribe. At the Lord’s instruction, Judah led the charge against the 26,000 Benjamite warriors. The Benjamites managed to kill 22,000 Israelites the first day of battle. The Israelites wept before the Lord because of their loss and questioned whether they should continue their attack. The Lord instructed them to attack, but the Gibeonites killed 18,000 Israelites that day. The whole Israelite army went up to Bethel where they fasted and wept before the Lord. They offered sacrifices to the Lord and inquired once again if they should continue to attack. The Lord instructed them to attack once again, but this time He assured them of victory (20:28). The Israelites set an ambush and then feigned defeat,153 so that the Benjamites pressed their attack, leaving the safety of the city. The retreating forces then turned around and went on the attack. The battle was fierce, but when the day was over 25,100 Benjamite warriors had been slain in battle. The Benjamite army was decimated. Only 600 soldiers survived and fled to the wilderness. The Israelites then completely destroyed the Benjamite cities, just as they had annihilated the Canaanites (20:48).
The Israelites also took an oath that day not to allow any of their daughters to marry one of the Benjamite men (21:1). It was not long before the magnitude of this tragedy began to sink in and the Israelites regretted the fact that one of their tribes was almost complete wiped out. The next day the Israelites offered up sacrifices to the Lord, and then sought to find some way to save this tribe from extinction. They inquired as to who had not gone to war against the Benjamites, and who thus had not sworn to keep their daughters from marrying a Benjamite man. In short, the Israelites repented of their zeal in dealing with the wickedness of the Benjamites.
The people of Jabesh Gilead had not gathered to fight with their fellow-Israelites against the Benjamites (21:8-9). Consequently, 12,000 Israelite warriors were sent to exterminate the men, women, and children of Jabesh Gilead for not participating in the conflict with the Benjamites. Any virgin women were to be left alive, as wives for the surviving Benjamites. Four hundred young women were spared, and they were taken to Shiloh. Messengers were sent to the 600 surviving Benjamites to assure them that they would not be harmed. The 400 young women were given to them as wives. They also devised a scheme to put on a festival at Shiloh, so that the Benjamites would be given the opportunity to kidnap some of the young women of Shiloh and make them their wives (21:19-24). In some ways, it is a fitting end to this record of such a tragic period in Israel’s history. In the end, the Israelites are no better than the Canaanites whom they were to dispossess.
Time will not permit an extensive effort to show all of the practical ramifications and applications of this incredible book. I will, however, make some general comments and suggest some crucial themes for further thought and study.
First, we should recognize the unique contribution of the Book of Judges to the canon of Scripture. Here is a book that describes a tragic period in Israel’s history, a transitional period between the possession of the land under Joshua’s leadership and the institution of the monarchy in 1 Samuel 8 and following. The repetition of the phrase, “There was no king in Israel…” (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25), implies that if Israel only had a king, things might be different. Israel enjoyed peace only during the lifetime of their judge or deliverer. If there were a king, with sons to succeed him, then there should be no lack of a leader. Perhaps this was the key to peace. Of course we shall learn otherwise, but the Book of Judges does help prepare the reader to welcome a king. Without a king, Israel did very poorly in the days of the judges.
Second, I find it necessary to emphasize the fact that the Book of Judges is not the place to find men and women whose example we should follow. As a general rule, Israel’s deliverers are not people that we should seek to imitate. Samson is neither a model son nor a model leader. He is most certainly not a model for “How to Find a Godly Wife.” We are not encouraged to follow Gideon’s example and to constantly seek for signs. While I have great respect for Deborah, I would recommend that you exercise great caution if you seek to use the story of Deborah and Barak as a proof text for women asserting themselves as leaders in place of men. It is clear in this book that Deborah’s leadership role (which I do not deny, and whose character I admire and respect) in Judges is meant as a rebuke to those men who failed to lead. I would also point out that Deborah refused to lead the army, and in the end, it was the men who assumed leadership.
There are several themes that prevail in the Book of Judges. Let me mention a few of these and make some suggestions for further consideration.
UNITY. I find in the Book of Judges that the longer the Israelites dwell among the Canaanites, the more intimate their association with the Canaanites becomes. The Israelites become more and more like the Canaanites and more and more united with them. They began to intermarry with the Canaanites, and they embraced their idol worship. In certain ways (as in the perversion of the Gibeonites – chapter 19), they even surpass the Canaanites in impurity. I am reminded of the words of Paul to the Corinthians regarding the sins that are found in the Corinthian church:
1 It is actually reported that sexual immorality exists among you, the kind of immorality that is not permitted even among the Gentiles, so that someone is cohabiting with his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you have been deeply sorrowful instead and removed the one who did this from among you? (1 Corinthians 5:1-2)
The unity of the Israelite forces, under Joshua’s leadership, quickly disintegrates in the Book of Judges. While the Israelites pursue unity with the Canaanites (e.g., Heber’s154 treaty with King Jabin), their unity with one another dissolves. At the beginning of the book, Judah teams up with Simeon, and they are victorious (1:3). When we come to Deborah and Barak, and the song of victory (Judges 5), we see certain tribes honored for joining in the battle and others rebuked for not doing so (5:14-18, 23). When Gideon fights the Midianites, the Ephraimites complain that they were excluded (8:1). The Israelites of Succoth (8:5-7) and Penuel (8:8-9) refused to provide Gideon’s men with food and water. In chapter 9, Abimelech kills his brothers, and in chapter 12, the Israelites under Jephthah’s leadership must fight with the Ephraimites. Finally, the entire nation of Israel is compelled to go to war with the tribe of Benjamin.
DISREGARD FOR THE WORD OF GOD. This is a period of time when men disregard and disobey the Word of God. To “do what is right in their own eyes” is synonymous with disregarding God’s law:
1 These are the statutes and commandments that you must be careful to obey in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess for as long as you live in the land. 2 You must by all means destroy all the places there where the nations you are about to dispossess worship their gods—on the high mountains and hills and under every leafy tree. 3 You must tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars to pieces, burn up their sacred Asherah poles, and hack up the images of their gods; you must eliminate their very memory from that place. 4 You must not worship the Lord your God they way they worship. 5 But you must seek only the place that he has chosen to establish his name, his place of residence, and you must go there. 6 And there you must take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. 7 Both you and your children must feast there before the Lord your God and rejoice in all the output of your labor with which he has blessed you. 8 You must not do like we are doing here today, with everyone doing what seems best to him” (Deuteronomy 12:1-8, emphasis mine).
The men of Gideon’s city are about to execute him for obeying God, while they seek to protect and preserve the worship of Baal.
The spirit of that age was a spirit of personal autonomy and a strong rebellion against God’s laws. It is almost frightening to realize how much like the people of that day our culture has become. For example, it is now the cherished “right” of a woman to be sovereign over her body. This applies to her sexual conduct (as it does to men – homosexual or heterosexual). This also applies to the killing of her unborn child. The Roe v. Wade ruling of the Supreme Court was based upon the principle of privacy, which I would prefer to call the principle of personal autonomy. “There is no authority (of law) in our day, and every man and woman does what is right in their own eyes, including the killing of their innocent, unborn children.”
VIOLENCE. This book is filled with violence of all kinds. I don’t doubt that some parents would be uneasy about their young children reading some portions of the Book of Judges. Perhaps the most ugly violence in the book is found in chapter 19, where the Levite throws his concubine out to the men of the city of Gibeah to be gang raped, and then he hacks up her dead body and sends it to his fellow Israelites. Does this not seem almost inconceivable? And yet this happens virtually every day in our nation, with very little protest. It is called “partial birth abortion.” The body of a living child is dismembered in the womb and extracted in pieces. I ask you, my friend, are we any better than the Israelites of old, at their worst? I think not. Does this not serve to warn us that the time for divine judgment is near?
LEADERSHIP. The theme of leadership seems to pervade this book. There seems to be a persistent deterioration of Israel’s leaders in Judges, from reasonably good leaders like Othniel, Ehud, Deborah and Barak to men like Jephthah and Samson (not to mention the two Levites at the end of the book). Bad leadership corrupts the nation (as Gideon did when he caused Israel to worship his ephod). Good leadership encourages men to do what is right before God (e.g., Joshua).
I think it is also legitimate to infer that God gave Israel the kind of leaders they deserved. Samson was a man who very closely paralleled the attitudes and conduct of the nation Israel. They, like Samson, were dominated by their fleshly appetites and not by their desire to trust and obey God.
We may not like to admit it, but I believe the Book of Judges informs us (as we find elsewhere) that God is not restricted to “good leaders” in order to achieve His purposes. God used hard-hearted Pharaoh (Romans 9:17) just as He used Moses. God is not restricted to using only pious, godly people. It is certainly to our advantage to live godly lives, but God can use ungodly people to accomplish His purposes, too. Believe it or not, God used Jephthah, Samson, and other undesirable characters to bring about His purposes.
THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE BOOK OF JUDGES. One of my friends, Hampton Keathley IV, has written an excellent article on the subject of the “Role of Women in the Book of Judges.”155 I would highly recommend it to the reader. The Canaanites certainly were a corrupt culture, and this manifested itself in their attitudes and actions toward women. But when we come to the Book of Judges, we find that a decadent nation like Israel was as bad or worse. A father makes a vow that requires him to sacrifice his daughter (Jephthah). A Benjamite casts his concubine “to the wolves” of Gibeah, to save himself, and then gruffly summons her to get up from the ground. When he discovers that she is dead, he cuts her into pieces. Women seem to have more power in the Book of Judges. Deborah and Jael are rightly honored. A woman throws a millstone down upon the head of Abimelech, killing him (9:53). And women seduce Samson and coax him to tell his innermost secrets. But while women seem to have more power, they certainly lack honor (except for the few exceptions). This period of time was not one in which women were cherished and honored. They were used and abused. A society may well be judged by its treatment of women, and if so, the period of the judges and our own day will be found wanting.
May God grant that we learn those lessons from the Book of Judges that the Israelites of long ago did not learn.
147 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on February 25, 2001.
148 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
149 Sorry for the pun. I couldn’t resist.
150 I confess this is speculative, but it would help to explain how the next events took place.
151 Albert H. Baylis, From Creation to the Cross: Understanding the First Half of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), p. 175. I must also say to the reader that I was not familiar with this book or its author until after I had entitled this series, “From Creation to the Cross.” I apologize for any confusion I have created by using the same title.
152 I think Samson did deliver Israel.
153 Much as they did at Ai; see Joshua 8.
154 Strictly speaking, Heber may not be a Jew, biologically, but his ancestor was the father-in-law of Moses, who did join himself to Israel (Judges 1:16).
The Book of Ruth156
Several years ago, I found myself in the middle of a theological dispute regarding tithing. A church many miles away was seeking to discern just how much its leaders should be required to tithe. Should a leader be required to tithe? How much? Should the tithe be of his “net” or “gross” income? When invited to give my opinion, I jumped right into the debate, fully convinced that I had the biblical answer. I thought I did have the right answer from a technical point of view, but then my attention was directed to the Book of Ruth. After considering the message of this great little book, and especially the example of Boaz, I realized that my whole approach to this debate was fundamentally flawed. I had to write one of the men with whom I had been communicating and tell him about my change of heart and mind.
Ruth is a most amazing book. It is a mere four chapters in length, but it tells a most heart-warming story about a Jewish widow, her Gentile daughter-in-law, and an older Jewish gentleman with a very big heart. Short though it may be, this is a very important story. It had implications for the Jews of old, and it continues to have a great deal to say to saints today as well. We should listen well to this book, asking the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and minds to its message for us.
The story of Ruth takes place during the dark days of the judges (1:1). The Book of Judges is a most disturbing book, for it describes the days when Israel had no king, and when men and women acted autonomously – they “did what was right in their own eyes.” They did not live according to the law, but according to their own impulses and inclinations. We read of an on-going cycle of sin, divine judgment, petitioning God for help, divine deliverance, and then a return to even greater sin. We read of weak men and strong women, of a Levite priest for hire to the highest bidder, and another who cuts his concubine into 12 pieces, which he sends to the tribes of Israel. In this dark hour in Israel’s history, there lived a Jewish widow, a Gentile woman named Ruth, and a gracious and godly Jew named Boaz. They have much to teach us.
Before we go any farther, I must say a word about the Moabites. Ruth, the heroine of our story, is a Moabite woman. The Moabites were the race that resulted from the union of Lot and his oldest daughter, as described in Genesis 19:30-38. The Moabites were not Canaanites. While the Moabites were forbidden from entering into the assembly of the Lord to the tenth generation (Deuteronomy 23:3), the Israelites were not commanded to annihilate them, and they were not forbidden to marry them (Deuteronomy 20:10-15; 21:10-14; contrast 7:1-6; 20:16-20). You will recall that when David was being pursued by Saul, he took his parents to the king of Moab for protection (1 Samuel 22:3). At least some of the Moabites were David’s relatives.
My approach in this lesson will be to give a brief overview of the story of the Book of Ruth, and then to consider each of the three main characters. Finally, we shall seek to find the contribution of this book to the Bible, and explore its relevance and application to men and women today.
The Book of Ruth begins with a famine in the land of Israel. This famine prompted Elimelech to leave Israel with his family and to sojourn temporarily in Moab. Elimelech seems to have died relatively soon after they came to Moab. Elimelech and his wife, Naomi, had two sons. Each son married a Moabite woman, and eventually, both sons died without having any children.
Naomi was left with only her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah. She heard that God had visited His people and that there was once again grain in Israel. Naomi purposed to return, but she urged her daughters-in-law to remain in Moab. She managed to persuade Orpah to return to her parents, but Ruth was determined to remain with Naomi, no matter what. She would not be persuaded otherwise, and so Naomi, along with Ruth, returned to Israel.
When they arrived in Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem, the people immediately recognized her and were excited that she had returned. Naomi was quick to tell them her woes, blaming her troubles on God, who seemed to have it out for her, or so she implied (1:20-22).
Ruth immediately set out to provide for Naomi’s needs. She began to glean in the nearby field of a man who “just happened” to be a near relative of Elimelech (2:3). Ruth quickly caught the eye of those laboring in the field because she worked diligently, hardly stopping to rest (2:7). Boaz noticed her as well and made sure that Ruth was protected and provided with grain to glean as she sought to care for her mother-in-law.
Naomi realized that Boaz was showing great kindness to Ruth, and so she acted as a matchmaker, seeking to arrange the marriage of Ruth and Boaz. Naomi devised a plan whereby Ruth could indicate her need for a husband and her desire to marry Boaz. The plan worked, and Boaz indicated that he would be delighted to marry Ruth, except that he was not the nearest kin. Boaz met with the nearest relative in the city gate, giving him the opportunity to purchase Elimelech’s land, and to acquire Ruth as a wife. The nearest kin was willing to purchase Elimelech’s land but did not want Ruth’s hand in marriage, and so Boaz acquired both the land and Ruth. They married, and the child Ruth bore to Boaz was named Obed. Obed was the grandfather of David.
I might as well confess to my readers that Naomi is not one of my favorite Bible characters. She is certainly not a heroine, like Ruth. I think of her as a kind of blend of Jacob, Job, Jonah, and Esther. Naomi could easily have merited the title as one of the “Bad Girls of the Bible.” I fear that many Christians have been misled by some of the popular propaganda that seeks to “sanctify” Naomi. Let me point out some of my concerns about Naomi.
In chapter 1, we are told that Naomi’s husband died, leaving Naomi and her two sons alone (1:3). I get the impression that Elimelech died fairly soon after they arrived in Moab. The boys seem to marry later on, after the death of their father. We are told that they married Moabite wives. I have concluded that they married after their father’s death, and at a time when Naomi would have functioned as the head of the family. Naomi either orchestrated these marriages to Moabite women, or she passively permitted and accepted them. Naomi and her sons lived in Moab about ten years (Ruth 1:4). In all this time, Naomi apparently made no effort to return to the land of Israel even though her husband’s intent was to merely sojourn in Moab until the famine ended.
When Naomi does finally decide to return to Israel, it is because she has heard that God has once again provided grain for His people. No mention is made that this famine was God’s discipline for Israel’s sin and idolatry. There is no apparent sense that leaving Israel was to leave the special place of God’s presence and blessing. There is no apparent eagerness to return to Israel. The only stated reason for Naomi’s return is that the land is now producing grain. Her reasons for returning to the land seem more pragmatic than noble.
What is distressing is that Naomi insists that her daughters remain in Moab, and that they find husbands there. Worse yet is the clear inference that they should stay in Moab as Moabites, worshipping the god(s) of Moab:
Then Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and to her god. Follow your sister-in-law back home!” (Ruth 1:15)157
One cannot know what Naomi’s motives were here, but if she understood the evils of idolatry, she would realize that urging her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab and worship Moabite gods was damning.
Finally in chapter 1 Naomi blames God for her suffering:
“Would you wait until they were grown? Would you remain unmarried all that time? No, my daughters, you must not come with me. For you should not have to experience my intense suffering. After all, the Lord has attacked me” (1:13, emphasis mine).
20 Naomi replied to them, “Don’t call me ‘Naomi’! Call me ‘Mara’ because the Sovereign One has treated me very harshly. 21 I left here full, but the Lord has caused me to return empty-handed. Why do you call me ‘Naomi,’ seeing that the Lord has opposed me and the Sovereign One has made me suffer?” (1:20-21, emphasis mine).
When Naomi returns to her hometown of Bethlehem, she is immediately recognized and joyfully welcomed back home. There is a mood of joyful celebration, but Naomi quickly “rains on their parade.” Naomi confesses no sin. She speaks of God as One who is all-powerful, but also One who is cruel and capricious. God is the source of her suffering, which has nothing to do with her sin, or with the sins of her people.
In chapter 2, we see Ruth working hard to provide for her mother-in-law and for herself, but we do not read of Naomi going out into the fields to glean. One has the impression that Elimelech and Naomi were fairly well to do before the famine (they “went out full” – 1:21). Did Naomi not work because she was elderly in infirmed? Perhaps. But is it not also possible that she did not do as Ruth did because she felt this was beneath her, because she was too proud? Many times in Taiwan and elsewhere I have marveled at how hard the elderly work to help support their families.
In chapter 3, Naomi’s actions raise a number of concerns. Naomi takes it upon herself to see to it that Ruth has a husband and a home. In and of itself, this doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. But her method of bringing this to pass is questionable, at best. First, while some have sought to show that the method Naomi proposed was a familiar custom of that day, I don’t believe this is the case at all. Consider the words of Leon Morris:
“We have very little knowledge of the customs prevalent in Israel in antiquity and the arrangements for marriage here outlined are not elsewhere attested.”158
“The context makes it clear that this describes a way whereby Ruth signified to Boaz her desire to marry him. Ordinary methods of approach were no doubt difficult and this provided a suitable medium. But why it should be done in this way we do not know. Nor do we know whether this was a widely practiced custom or not. It is not attested other than here.”159
Second, Boaz was not the nearest kin to Elimelech. I doubt very much that Ruth knew this until Boaz informed her of the fact (3:12); but surely Naomi knew. Why, then, did Naomi seek to arrange Ruth’s marriage to Boaz, rather than the nearest kin?
Third, it seems unusual that Ruth would have to be the one proposing marriage. Why didn’t Naomi ask Boaz if he would take Ruth as his wife?
Fourth, Naomi chose a time, place, and method of approach that appealed to sensual desires, rather than to a reasoned commitment. Naomi instructed Ruth to go to Boaz while they were threshing, a joyous time of celebration. It was at a similar occasion that Judah had a liaison with a woman that he thought was a cult prostitute, but who turned out to be his daughter-in-law (Genesis 38:11-30). Naomi told Ruth to go to Boaz at night, after he had eaten and drunk – in other words, to come to him after he had drunk enough for his “heart to become merry.”
“Wash and perfume yourself, and put on your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking” (Ruth 3:3, NIV, emphasis mine).
When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down (Ruth 3:7, NIV, emphasis mine).
Someone might suppose that I am reading too much between the lines. Not at all! You can see virtually the same expression (literally, “to have a good heart” – to be merry) in Judges 19:6, 9, where the concubine’s father extends great hospitality to his son-in-law. It is used of Nabal, when he became drunk (1 Samuel 25:36). We find it in 2 Samuel 22:11, 13, where David attempts to get Uriah drunk, so that he will go home and sleep with his wife, thereby coving David’s sin of adultery. Then there is 2 Samuel 13:28 where Absalom instructs his servants to get Amnon drunk and then to kill him. The expression is also found in Esther 1:10 where the king of Persia, in his drunken state, demands that the queen appear before him and his leaders.
Fifth, Naomi intended Ruth’s approach to Boaz to be one that would appeal to him on a physical level:
3 So bathe yourself, rub on some perfumed oil, and get dressed up. Then go down to the threshing floor. But don’t let the man know you’re there until he finishes his meal. 4 When he gets ready to go to sleep, take careful notice of the place where he lies down. Then go, uncover his legs, and lie down beside him. He will tell you what you should do” (Ruth 3:3-4).
Stop and think about this. Boaz has been working hard in the harvest, and it is a time of eating and drinking. His heart is merry, not only because of the festive occasion, but because of the wine he has been drinking. A beautiful young woman comes and lies near him, wearing perfume and her finest dress. Would you not agree that this is far from a platonic setting?
Sixth, Naomi tells Ruth that whatever Boaz tells her to do, she should do it (3:4).
Now if anyone finds my suspicions a bit overreaching, let me point out how Boaz responded. He tells Ruth no one must know that she has been to the threshing floor that night (3:14). If this were a standard method of proposing marriage, then why wouldn’t everyone understand Ruth’s presence and her actions? Why would Ruth’s being there threaten the reputation of Boaz, or of Ruth? No wonder Morris points out the dangers of the approach Naomi proposed:
The narrator uses the utmost delicacy, but it is clear that Naomi’s plan was not without its dangers. The fact that she was prepared to urge this course on Ruth is the measure of her trust in both the participants. All the more is this the case since in the Ancient Near East immoral practices at harvest-times were by no means uncommon, and indeed, appear to have been encouraged by the fertility rites practised by in some regions.160
I must conclude from all these facts that Naomi was seeking to bring about Ruth’s marriage in a provocative and manipulative way, rather than in a principled way. In my opinion, this does not speak well for Naomi.
I’m sure that when we read about the “wife of noble character” in Proverbs 31 that we tend to think of a Jewish woman. As I read the Book of Ruth, I think of her as a “wife of noble character,” as a “Proverbs 31 kind of woman.” Ruth is surely a woman of noble character, as we shall see.
In chapter 1, Ruth attaches herself to Naomi, in spite of the fact that her mother-in-law strongly urges her to return home to her parents, her homeland, and her pagan god(s):
15 Then Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and to her god. Follow your sister-in-law back home!” 16 But Ruth replied, “Stop urging me to abandon you and to leave you! For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. 17 Wherever you die, I will die and I will be buried there. The Lord will punish me severely if I do not keep my promise! Nothing but death will separate you and me” (Ruth 1:15-17).
Naomi is a bitter old woman, who thinks that her God has treated her harshly. She urges Ruth to return to her own land of Moab, to her parents, and to her god. One would think that it would have been very tempting for Ruth to “obey” her mother-in-law and go home. Ruth’s commitment to Naomi is greater than some folks’ commitment to marriage. Indeed, Ruth’s words are sometimes used as marriage vows. By her oath Ruth binds herself to Naomi, to the land of Israel, and to the God of Israel. Her commitment is not short-term, until Naomi’s death. Ruth’s attachment to Israel and Israel’s God is life-long. Ruth tells Naomi that she will remain in Israel after her mother-in-law’s death. In fact, Ruth tells Naomi that she too will be buried with her mother-in-law in Israel. As I understand Ruth’s words, she is expressing her conversion and her lifelong commitment to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel. From these words of Boaz, I believe that he understood Ruth in the same way:
11 … “I have been given a full report of all that you have done for your mother-in-law following the death of your husband—how you left your father, your mother, and your homeland and came to live among people you did not know before. 12 May the Lord reward your efforts! May your wages be paid in full by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to find shelter!” (Ruth 2:11-12, emphasis mine)
In chapter 2, it is Ruth who takes the initiative in seeking to support Naomi by gleaning in the fields. This is not only an evidence of the fact that she was a hard worker; it is also evidence of her faith. What she proposed to do was dangerous. A young, beautiful, single, foreign woman was vulnerable. There were those who would not hesitate to take advantage of her (remember the men of the city of Gibeah in Judges 19). The danger is evident by the way Boaz sought to protect her:
8 So Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen carefully, my daughter. Don’t leave to gather grain in another field. You need not go beyond the limits of this field. You may go along beside my female workers. 9 Take note of the field where the men are harvesting and follow along after the female workers. I will tell the servants to leave you alone. When you get thirsty, you may go to the water jars and drink some of the water the servants draw” (Ruth 2:8-9; see comments of Naomi in 2:22).
Boaz warned Ruth that she should work only in his field, and that she should work only alongside his female workers. In addition, Boaz warned his servants not to bother her; indeed, they were not even to raise their voice to her (2:16). In spite of the risks involved, Ruth was willing to work in the fields, so that she might provide for Naomi and herself.
When Ruth went into the field of Boaz to glean, she worked hard the entire day, hardly stopping to rest. The workers inform Boaz:
“She asked, ‘May I go behind the harvesters and gather grain among the bundles?’ She has stayed here since she arrived. From this morning until right now, she has taken only a brief rest” (2:7).
When she was invited to sit at the table with the Boaz and his servants, she kept some of the roasted grain for her mother-in-law, rather than eating it all herself (2:14, 18).
Although Ruth was an attractive young woman, she did not use her looks in a seductive way, but was humble and unassuming:
10 Ruth knelt before him with her forehead to the ground and said to him, “Why are you so kind to me and so attentive, even though I am a foreigner?” … 13 She said, “You really are being kind to me, my master, for you have reassured me and encouraged your servant, though I could never be equal to one of your servants” (Ruth 2:10, 13).
When we come to chapter 3, we see Ruth obediently following the instructions that Naomi had given her, acting in faith and with modesty and humility. She was no seductress. The response of Boaz is one that focuses on her godly character:
He said, “May you be rewarded by the Lord, my daughter! This latter act of devotion is greater than what you did before. You have not pursued one of the young men, whether poor or rich” (Ruth 3:10).
Overall, Ruth was regarded as a noble and worthy woman:
“Now, my daughter, don’t worry! I intend to do for you everything you propose, for everyone in town knows that you are a worthy woman” (Ruth 3:11, emphasis mine).
14 The women said to Naomi, “May the Lord be praised because he has not left you without a guardian today! May he be famous in Israel! 15 He will encourage you and provide for you when you are old, for your daughter-in-law, who loves you, has given him birth. She is better to you than seven sons!” (Ruth 4:14-15, emphasis mine)
Boaz is a most remarkable man. It would seem fairly self-evident that he was an older man (3:10), and that he was a man of considerable means. He was also a man of integrity and great character. There are some who would be inclined to think that Boaz showed favoritism toward Ruth primarily because of her beauty. I strongly disagree. In my opinion, Boaz was kind and gracious to everyone, and not just to Ruth. We can see that there is a mutual respect between Boaz and his workers:
Now Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “May the Lord be with you!” They replied, “May the Lord bless you!” (Ruth 2:4)
When he first takes note of Ruth, Boaz views her not as someone who is “available,” but as someone who is already taken:
Boaz asked his servant, the one in charge of the harvesters, “To whom does this young woman belong?” (Ruth 2:5)
His concern for Ruth is a “fatherly” concern. At least twice (2:8; 3:10) Boaz refers to Ruth as “my daughter,” as opposed to “honey,” “sweet thing,” “dear,” and the like. Boaz recognizes that Ruth is a woman of character, and that she is seeking to provide for Naomi. Consequently, Boaz deals with Ruth generously. He lets her sit at his table and drink the water that was provided for his servants (2:9, 14). He takes extra measures to see to it that no one harms Ruth (2:8-9, 16). He instructs his servants to leave extra grain for her to glean (2:15-16). He delights in her godly character, her faithfulness to Naomi, and in the fact that she has entrusted herself to the God of Israel. He invokes God’s blessings upon her (2:11-12).
The godly character of Boaz is particularly evident in chapters 3 and 4. Boaz acts honorably toward Ruth when he discovers that she is lying near to him, symbolically asking him to marry her. He does not take advantage of her. He tells Ruth that he is not the nearest kinsman, so that he cannot take her as his wife until he has publicly resolved this matter. He protects her honor by sending her away before anyone sees her. In chapter 4, Boaz settles this matter publicly at the city gates. He does not in any way attempt to slant or distort the proceedings, so as to dissuade the nearest kinsman from purchasing Elimelech’s property and taking Ruth as his wife. Everything he does is honest and above board.
What a wonderful, heart-warming story the Book of Ruth is. It is not just a romantic story, however; it is a story with lessons for Israel and for us. As we conclude, let’s consider the meaning and message of this book.
First, the Book of Ruth provides us with a genealogy of David, one of the most famous Israelite kings of all time. Leon Morris writes:
It is an interesting fact that though David is the greatest king spoken of in the historical books, and though he is looked on by subsequent generations as the ideal king, there is no genealogy of him in I Samuel. There he is simply ‘the son of Jesse’. The book of Ruth closes with a genealogy running back to Pharez, the son of Judah. It is suggested that the book was written to supply the missing genealogy.161
Second, we see that no matter how dark the days may be, God always preserves a righteous remnant. Some years later, Elijah only thought “he alone was left” (1 Kings 19:10, 14). The fact was that God had preserved 7,000 who had not “bowed the knee to Baal” (1 Kings 19:18). It is in times of great darkness that the “light” of the gospel shines most brightly through the lives and testimonies of the saints:
You must actively help the hungry
and feed the oppressed.
Then your light will dispel the darkness,
and your darkness will be transformed into noonday (Isaiah 58:10).
The night has advanced toward dawn; the day is near. So then we must lay aside the works of darkness, and put on the weapons of light (Romans 13:12).
For you were at one time darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light (Ephesians 5:8).
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without blemish though you live in a crooked and perverse society, in which you shine as lights in the world 16 by holding on to the word of life so that on the day of Christ I will have a reason to boast that I did not run in vain nor labor in vain (Philippians 2:15-16).
Third, we are reminded by our text that our actions can impact future generations. The godly lives of Ruth and Boaz not only were a blessing to Naomi, they were a blessing to all subsequent generations. The child born to Ruth and Boaz would become the grandfather of King David (Ruth 4:18-22). Little do we realize how much our decisions and actions may impact those who come after us.
Fourth, Boaz is a wonderful illustration of “true religion.”
9 “‘When you gather in the harvest of your land, you must not completely harvest the corner of your field, and you must not gather up the gleanings of your harvest. 10 You must not pick your vineyard bare, and you must not gather up the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You must leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God’” (Leviticus 19:9-10).
17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God and awesome warrior who is unbiased and takes no bribe, 18 who acts justly toward orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing. 19 You, therefore, love the resident foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).
Whenever you reap your harvest in the field and leave some unraked grain there, you must not return to get it; it should go to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow so that the Lord your God may bless every work you do (Deuteronomy 24:19).
Learn to do what is right!
Promote justice!
Give the oppressed reason to celebrate!
Take up the cause of the orphan!
Defend the rights of the widow! (Isaiah 1:17)
He has told you, O man, what is proper,
and what the Lord really wants from you:
He wants you to promote justice, to be faithful,
and to live obediently before your God (Micah 6:8).
What a remarkable man Boaz is. The Law of Moses required him to leave the corners of his field uncut, and not to pick up any bundles of grain that fell by the wayside. Boaz instructed his servants to deliberately leave grain behind for Ruth to find. Boaz also provided Ruth with water and food. He treated her as one of his employees. He sought to protect her from those who would harm or abuse her. Boaz was not a brother to Ruth’s deceased husband, and thus as I see it, he was not legally obligated to take Ruth as his wife. Nevertheless, he did so, going the extra mile in almost every instance to care for Naomi, and for Ruth.
My point in all of this is that Boaz did not look at the law as a requirement that he must begrudgingly meet, somewhat the way we look at paying our income taxes (we don’t intend to give the government one penny more than the law requires). Boaz looked upon the law as the minimum standard. He looked upon even greater compassion and generosity as his privilege, and his pleasure. Here was a man who truly loved God’s law, and who lived his life in a spirit that delighted in serving God and others.
Fifth, the Book of Ruth is an excellent commentary on Christian charity. What a contrast the charity of Boaz is to the welfare of our own day. All too often, welfare programs actually discourage (or even penalize) hard work. Welfare programs also degrade people, rather than to provide them with an honorable means of providing for their own needs and the needs of their families. Ruth was not just given a handout; she was given the opportunity to work, and she gladly seized the opportunity. Her hard work earned her the respect of the entire community. That is the kind of charity we should strive to practice in our own time.
The question that I am personally wrestling with is this: “In this technological age, what constitutes the ‘corner of my fields’?” I am not a farmer, and neither are most of you. How, then, do we practice the principle of charity in a way that provides for the needs of the poor, yet in a way that maintains (and even promotes) their dignity? This is a real challenge, and the answer for each of us may be a little different. I realize that not everyone is capable of working, but these are the minority. For those who are able to work, we should facilitate their doing so. There are no quick and easy answers here, but the principles are clear, and I believe that the answers are there for those who would sincerely seek them.
Sixth, the Book of Ruth provides us with tremendous insight into the role of the Gentiles in God’s “unfolding drama of redemption.” Boaz was perceptive enough to realize that a Gentile woman who embraced the God of Israel by faith could enter into the blessings of the Jews. This is implied in the blessing he pronounced on Ruth in 2:11-12. It was for this reason that Boaz had no reservations about marrying Ruth and bearing children with her. Thanks to the insight and maturity of Boaz, the elevation of a Gentile saint is grasped, in some measure, by the people of the city:
11 All the people who were at the gate and the elders replied, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is entering your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built up the house of Israel! Then you will accomplish great things in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. 12 May your family, the descendants the Lord gives you through this young woman, be like the family of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah!” (Ruth 4:11-12, emphasis mine)
It took me a while to see this, but it is really quite obvious once you see it. In blessing Ruth, the people of Bethlehem referred to three women, all of whom were “foreigners” from an Israelite’s point of view. Rachel and Leah were relatives, but in order to obtain these women as his wives, Jacob had to leave Canaan and go to Paddan Aram, where he acquired Leah and her younger sister Rachel. Judah unknowingly fulfilled the duties of a levirate marriage when he had sexual relations with Tamar, his daughter-in-law (Genesis 38). The people of Bethlehem realized that God had blessed Israel through these “foreign” women, and thus it was not so difficult for them to believe that God would bless Israel through Ruth. And this God did, in a way that surpassed their wildest imaginations. Ruth would become the great grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:18-22).
We have now seen God “integrate” a number of Gentiles into the line of the promised “Messiah.” First of all, we saw Rahab embraced by Israel, because of her faith (Joshua 2:1ff.; 6:17-25). Indeed, Rahab was the wife of Salmon, and the mother of Boaz. Is this part of the reason why Boaz could so easily embrace Ruth as a member of the household of faith? If his mother were a Gentile, why not his wife as well? Besides Rahab and Ruth, there was also Tamar, Leah, and Rachel. God did not exclude Gentiles from His plan of redemption, but “integrated” them with the Jews as a part of His plan.
Seventh, Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz each symbolize a particular person or group. Naomi personifies Israel in a less than flattering way. She portrays an attitude of entitlement, and she is bitter toward God for not pouring out His blessings on her. She does not seem to grasp God’s grace, and she certainly does not acknowledge any sin on her part. She seems oblivious to the wickedness of that period of time, and to the fact of God’s judgment. She left Israel with her husband, but did not return until years later, after her sons had married Moabite wives. Her reason for returning to Israel was that there was food there once again. Naomi had little regard for the spiritual well being of her daughters-in-law. She attempted to send them back to their families and to their heathen religion. In this regard, she seems to manifest some of Jonah’s spirit. She is also somewhat manipulative, as can be seen in the way she attempted to bring about Ruth’s marriage to Boaz. In this way, she seems to have some of Jacob in her blood. Even if my assessment of Naomi is unduly harsh, there is little to say in her favor. It was in spite of her failures and bitterness that God graciously poured out his blessings on her, and to a great degree, through a Gentile. Does Paul not speak of the salvation of the Gentiles as a part of God’s plan to save the Jews (see Romans 11:11-32)?
Ruth is a picture of those believing Gentiles that God grafts into the “vine” of His covenant blessings (John 10:16; Romans 11:17ff.). She makes no claim to these blessings, as though she deserved of them, but humbly accepts them as a manifestation of God’s grace. She is an example of one who is a true Israelite, not by virtue of her ancestry, but by virtue of her faith:
26 For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:26-29; see also 3:7; 6:16; Romans 9:6; Philippians 3:3).
As God united Ruth (a Gentile) and Boaz (a Jew) in marriage, so God has united Jews and Gentiles in Christ:
11 Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh—who are called “uncircumcision” by the so-called “circumcision” that is performed in the body by hands—12 that you were at that time without the Messiah, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who used to be far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace, the one who turned both groups into one and who destroyed the middle wall of partition, the hostility, in his flesh, 15 when he nullified the law of commandments in decrees. He did this to create in himself one new man out of two, thus making peace, 16 and to reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by which the hostility has been killed. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, 18 so that through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer foreigners and non-citizens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, 20 because you have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:11-22).
Boaz is a picture of God, and more particularly of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is he who, like Christ, welcomed Gentiles into the family of faith (see, for example, Luke 4:16-30, especially verses 23-27). He is the kinsman redeemer, who “saves” Naomi and Ruth in their time of need. As Boaz became “one flesh” with Ruth, continuing the line of the promised Messiah, so our Lord Jesus took on human flesh, becoming one with us in our humanity, so that we might become one with Him by faith, and thus be saved. Boaz set aside his own self-interest (unlike the nearest kin), so that he might be a blessing to those in need.
Eighth, Ruth and Boaz exemplify the kind of loyal love that we should show toward the unlovely. I have made it quite clear that I view Naomi as a bitter old woman, who finds God to blame for her difficulties in life. This is not the kind of person that you or I would care to be around. The cheerful comments of Naomi’s friends and neighbors are “put down” by Naomi’s very negative response (1:19-21). If I were Ruth, I would have been tempted to obey her instructions to leave her and go to my own family. But Ruth persevered, not because Naomi was so lovely (as her name would normally suggest) or loveable, but because of her love for the unlovely. Ruth’s love for Naomi was not in response to Naomi’s loveliness, but in spite of her bitterness. Her love was prompted by Naomi’s need.
Ruth’s endurance and persistence is absolutely amazing, not only in her time, but in ours. How many husbands and wives have parted ways because of some irritation with their mate? Ruth had no legal obligation to Naomi, only the obligation of love. Because Ruth remained loyal and faithful to her mother-in-law, she was greatly admired and greatly rewarded by God.
I wonder if you, my reader friend, have been considering parting ways when you should be persevering? Who is your Naomi? It may be a friend, or a relative (a mother-in-law?), or even your spouse. What does the Book of Ruth have to say to you about persevering? I think it rebukes us for our selfish attitudes and our lack of servanthood and commitment to those around us. Let us learn to endure in our relations with others, just as God has persisted in His faithfulness to us, even when we are faithless (see 2 Timothy 2:13).
Ninth, we see that Naomi’s sins did not keep Ruth from trusting in the God of Israel. I know that many people have excused their unbelief by pointing to a professing Christian and accusing them of hypocrisy. Naomi was an example of an Israelite at their worst, but there were others, like Boaz, who were wonderful saints. None of us will be excused for being Naomi’s, but no unbeliever will be spared the eternal wrath of God because some saints were hypocrites. Naomi’s failures did not keep Ruth from faith. Don’t let a hypocrite become your excuse for going to hell. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s only provision for your eternal salvation. His sinless life, sacrificial death, and supernatural resurrection are God’s provision for your salvation. Lesson 19 — Israel Gets A King162
156 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on March 4, 2001.
157 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
158 Arthur E. Cundall, Judges, and Leon Morris, Ruth (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973 [reprint]), p. 284.
159 IBID, p. 287
160 Leon Morris, Ruth, p. 287.
161 Leon Morris, Ruth: An Introduction and Commentary; Judges Ruth (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973 [reprint]), p. 241.
162 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on March 11, 2001.
1 Samuel 1:1–16:23163
Years ago, our family went to an amusement park, along with another family from church. It was a beautiful day, and so many other families had chosen to do likewise. There were lines waiting for the “good” rides. After spending several hours at this, I turned to our friends and said, “You know, this is an excellent illustration of sin – the ride is short, and the price is high!” I have since thought of another dimension: “If the ride is any good, it will scare you to death.” As we come to the reign of King Saul, I find the above words to be an apt description. The ride was short, and the price was high, and frightening.
When we come to the Book of 1 Samuel, we move from the period of the judges (Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel 1-7) to the monarchy (1 Samuel 8ff.). At Israel’s insistence, they will have a king, and Saul will be the first. The ride will be short, for Israel and for Saul (40 years really isn’t such a long time). His sons will not reign after his death. A new king, David, will reign in his place. The price for Saul is high. He loses his dynasty, his son Jonathan, and his own life. It is also high for Israel, as Samuel will clearly explain (1 Samuel 8:10-18). The ride is also frightening. If the Israelites thought that a king would give them security and uninterrupted peace, they were wrong. Under Saul’s leadership, there were many terrifying moments (see
1 Samuel 13:7; 14:15).
As I have indicated, our text takes us from the period of the judges to the monarchy – the reign of Israel’s kings, beginning with Saul. The structure of our text is very simple. Chapters 1-7 describe the end of the period of the judges. Eli and his sons will be removed from the priesthood and from judging Israel, and they will be replaced by Samuel and his sons. Chapters 8-15 tell the story of how Israel obtained her first king. While Saul will not die until the end of the book, the sins that cost him his kingdom will be documented in chapters 13 and 15. His positive contribution is illustrated by his victory over Nahash and the Ammonites in chapter 11. His weaknesses in character are illustrated in chapters 13-15. His reign is less than ideal, and his final days are nothing short of tragic.
The Book of 1 Samuel describes a number of “turning points,” for individuals like Saul, and for the nation Israel. This book contains some of the most popular and well-loved Bible stories of all time, but it is important that we understand them in the context of God’s “unfolding drama of redemption.” Let us listen carefully, then, to what God says to us through this portion of His inspired Word.
Originally Samuel was but one book, not two, and it immediately followed the Book of Judges. This means that the words that immediately precede 1 Samuel would be:
In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right (Judges 21:25).164
In those days, men and women did not live according to the Law of Moses, the revealed Word of God; they lived in accord with their own standards, their own sense of right and wrong – and it was a disaster. Consequently, God was silent for a time:
Now the boy Samuel continued serving the Lord under Eli’s supervision. Word from the Lord was rare in those days; revelatory visions were infrequent (1 Samuel 3:1).
The birth of Samuel, much like the birth of John the Baptist, was a divine initiative whereby God’s silence was broken. Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Hannah was the most beloved wife, but she was childless, and Peninnah took full advantage of this, deeply wounding Hannah’s spirit by flaunting the fact that she could bear children, while Hannah could not. (It is apparent that Peninnah had no grasp of the fact that God had purposely prevented Hannah from conceiving children, up to this point in time – see 1:6, 19-20. ) Although Elkanah sought to comfort his wife, she suffered much.
It was out of the agony of her heart that she cried out to the Lord, petitioning Him for a child. She promised that if God would give her a male child she would dedicate him to the LORD, and that (like Samson – see Judges 13) he would be a Nazarite (1 Samuel 1:11). Eli saw this distraught woman and mistook her demeanor for that of someone who was drunk. When he rebuked her, she quickly explained her circumstances, and in response, Eli blessed her with the assurance that she would have a son. Not long after this, Hannah became pregnant, and when her son, Samuel, was weaned, she took him to the Lord’s house at Shiloh, leaving her son in the care of Eli.
The author then includes this psalm of praise, composed by Hannah:
1 Hannah prayed,
“My heart rejoices in the Lord;
my horn is exalted high because of the Lord.
I loudly denounce my enemies,
for I am happy that you delivered me.
2 No one is holy like the Lord!
There is no one other than you!
There is no rock like our God!
3 Don’t keep speaking so arrogantly,
letting proud talk come out of your mouth.
For the Lord is a God who knows;
he evaluates what people do.
4 The bows of warriors are shattered,
but those who stumble find their strength reinforced.
Those who are well-fed hire themselves out to earn food,
but the hungry no longer lack.
Even the barren woman gives birth to seven,
but the one with lots of children withers away.
6 The Lord both kills and gives life;
he brings down to the grave and raises up.
7 The Lord impoverishes and makes wealthy;
he humbles and exalts.
8 He lifts the weak from the dust;
he raises the poor from the ash heap
to seat them with princes
and to bestow on them an honored position.
The foundations of the earth belong to the Lord,
and he has placed the world on them.
9 He watches over his holy ones,
but the wicked are made speechless in the darkness,
for it is not by one’s own strength that one prevails.
10 The Lord shatters his adversaries;
he thunders against them from the heavens.
The Lord executes judgment to the ends of the earth.
He will strengthen his king
and exalt the power of his anointed one” (1 Samuel 2:1-10).
We cannot attempt to expound this wonderful psalm in a survey like this, but I do wish to make a few observations, which should serve to enhance our appreciation of this psalm of praise, and as a result enhance our own worship.165
First, this is a prayer.
Second, this prayer is poetry, a psalm of praise to God.
Third, it is a divinely-inspired psalm. It has become a part of Scripture, and so we are assured of its divine inspiration (2 Timothy 3:16). As such, we know that God has included it in Scripture for our edification and instruction (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
Fourth, this psalm is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving, prompted by God’s answer to Hannah’s prayers for a son.
Fifth, it is a psalm that is God-centered. Unlike Jonah’s “psalm” in Jonah 2:2-9, Hannah does not dwell on her experiences; she dwells upon God, His sovereignty, His power, and His grace. Here is a lesson we could all take to heart in our worship. How much of our testimonies and worship are self-centered?
Sixth, it is a psalm that is quite similar to Mary’s magnificat in Luke 1:46-55. It would certainly seem that Mary’s words were influenced by Hannah’s psalm.
Seventh, this psalm of praise looks beyond Hannah’s personal experience to Israel’s hope and assurance; indeed, it looks forward to the coming of the Messiah (see 2:10).
Hannah was barren, and greatly distressed. Peninnah was Hannah’s enemy, who would harass her constantly about her inability to bear children. God heard Hannah’s prayer, giving her not just one child, but several. From her experience, Hannah could see and rejoice in the sovereignty of God. She could see that God is a God who elevates the humble and the broken, and who humbles the powerful and the proud. What God had done for her, she knew God would do for others. God will humble Israel’s enemies, exalt the weak, and bring judgment and justice. Ultimately this will take place when God raises up his “anointed one,” his Messiah (2:10).
What faith Hannah had, as she penned this psalm. She saw God’s hand in her life, and knew that it was but a sample of God’s work among His people. While the Book of Judges ends with, “In those days Israel had no king” (Judges 21:25a), Hannah’s psalm looks forward to the day when God will send His anointed One to reign. At this time, the truths of her psalm will be totally and permanently fulfilled.
I wonder if Hannah lived long enough to see the reason for her suffering? In her childless days, with Peninnah constantly “rubbing salt in her wounds,” Hannah could only trust that God would somehow cause her circumstances to turn out for good. And so they did, in time. Hannah was so eager for a son that she vowed she would dedicate this boy to God, that she would give him up. It must have been difficult for her to place Samuel into the hands of Eli, knowing how he had failed to deal with his own sons. Little did she know that God had purposed for Samuel to be raised by Eli and to grow up in the house of the Lord, so that he might be Eli’s replacement. It is only as we look back that we can see how God used Hannah’s suffering for her good, and for His glory.
Eli’s sons were exceedingly wicked. They refused to wait and eat the boiled beef that was rightfully theirs, and instead forcibly took the meat before it was cooked, even before the fat was offered to God. Our author sums it all up when he tells us that they “treated the LORD’s offering with contempt” (2:17). Not only did they sin in regard to the offerings, they also sinned by having sexual relations with the young women who worked at the entrance of the tent of meeting (2:22). Samuel verbally chastised his sons, but he never followed through. At the very least Samuel should have dismissed his sons from their duties, and by law he should have stoned them (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).
Parents today would do well to consider Eli’s foolishness in raising his sons. There is a time when mere words are not sufficient, and when more aggressive action is required. Some parents are so committed to “reasoning” with their children that they never move beyond mere talk. If words do the job, then words are sufficient. When words fail to accomplish the task, something more than words is required. This most certainly does not justify abuse. Our generation is characterized by children who don’t know the meaning of the word “No,” and who are convinced that if they disobey, their parents will merely throw up their hands and give up. That was Eli’s problem: a little talk and no action.
God’s Word was rare in those days (3:1), and so Eli should have been duly impressed when a “man of God” visited him (2:27ff.). This prophet reminded Eli of how God had appointed his family to serve as His priests forever (2:28, 30). Now, that would come to an abrupt end, due to their sin. It is important to see that God held Eli guilty as an accomplice:
“‘Why are you scorning my sacrifice and my offering that I commanded for my dwelling place? You have honored your sons more than you have me in that you have made yourselves fat from the best parts of all the offerings of my people Israel’” (1 Samuel 2:29).
The man of God makes it clear that Eli actually reaped the fruits of his sons’ sinful behavior. We know that he was a very large man (4:18), and God informs him that he and his sons had “made themselves fat” by eating the meat that they did. Eli knew what he was eating. He knew how that meat was cooked, and how it was obtained. Nevertheless, he partook of it, along with his sons. No wonder he did not take any further action to than merely rebuke them. He enjoyed the fruits of his sons’ sins. The time for judgment on Eli and his sons had come. God would destroy the house of Eli, and his two sons would die on the same day and God would raise up another to take Eli’s place (2:33-35).
It is at this point that we are informed that revelations (like that given by the man of God in chapter 2) were extremely rare (3:1). Suddenly, in these dark days, God once again begins to speak – to, and through, young Samuel. We all know the story about how God calls out to Samuel three times in the night. God confirms the word of the earlier prophet concerning Eli and his sons (3:11-14). Encouraged by Eli to be completely honest, Samuel told Eli everything that God had revealed to him. Eli’s response is not really very encouraging:
So Samuel told him everything. He did not hold back anything from him. Eli said, “The Lord will do what he pleases” (1 Samuel 3:18).
There is a kind of fatalism to Eli’s words that I find distressing. Moses would have interceded, I believe, and not have given up until God either granted his petition or emphatically denied it. Eli just seems to passively accept God’s verdict, without any repentance, and without taking any corrective action.
At least Eli acknowledged that Samuel’s words were a divine revelation. The author informs us that this was not an isolated prophecy on Samuel’s part; it was the first of many other prophecies. Samuel was recognized as a prophet, and rightly so, for God did not allow any of his prophetic utterances to fail. Even before Eli’s death, all Israel came to recognize that Samuel was a prophet, through whom God spoke.
Chapters 4-7 describe the final episodes of the period of the judges. These chapters revolve around two related themes: (a) the ark of the covenant, its loss and its recovery; and (b) Israel’s on-going conflict with the Philistines. When the Israelites waged war with the Philistines, the Israelites suffered a humiliating defeat, and the loss of 4,000 men (4:1-2). The elders were puzzled as to why God would allow them to suffer this defeat. They determined to return to the battlefield, but this time, with the ark of the covenant. Surely this would guarantee the presence and the power of God with them. And so it seemed. When the ark was brought into the Israelites’ camp, the warriors let out a great shout that could be heard by the Philistines. They were terrified by it and were certain they would suffer defeat at the hand of the Israelites. Nevertheless, they determined to fight – and to die – like men. To the amazement of all, the Philistines won the battle. They killed 30,000 foot soldiers, and also Hophni and Phineas, the two sons of Eli (4:10-11), thus fulfilling one aspect of the prophecy given earlier. When word of this tragedy was brought to Eli, he fell from his chair, breaking his neck from the fall (4:18). In all, Eli judged Israel for 40 years. Hearing the news, Eli’s daughter-in-law, the wife of Phineas, went into labor. The child lived, but the woman did not. Before she died, she named the baby boy Ichabod, which means, “Gone is the glory.”
The account of the ark’s brief (seven months – see 6:1) sojourn in the land of the Philistines is both amusing and enlightening. The ark of the covenant was the symbol of God’s presence and power. When the Philistines defeated the Israelites and captured the ark, they wrongly concluded that their god, Dagon, had prevailed over Israel’s God. And so they took the ark as a trophy of war and placed it in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod (5:1-2). Early the next day, the idol of Dagon was lying on the ground before the ark. The Philistines propped it back up, only to find it the next day lying before the ark once again – but this time with its head and arms broken off. Dagon was quite obviously bowing before the God of Israel, broken and powerless to save himself.
That was only the beginning of Ashdod’s troubles. A plague broke out in the city, causing painful sores or tumors. An infestation of rodents seemed to accompany this outbreak as well (see 6:3-5). The people of the city suspected that the presence of the ark was the source of their affliction and so they sent the ark on to the Philistine city of Gath, where the same plague followed. The ark was then sent on to Ekron, but the people of that city were not about to endure the same suffering; they insisted that the ark be sent back to Israel, where it came from.
It was concluded that the ark must be returned, and with a guilt offering (five “gold sores” and five “gold mice”). It is most interesting to see the logic of those who realized that they must honor the God of Israel:
5 You should make images of the sores and images of the mice that are destroying the land. You should honor the God of Israel. Perhaps he will release his grip on you, your gods, and your land. 6 Why harden your hearts like the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? When God treated them harshly, didn’t the Egyptians send the Israelites on their way? (1 Samuel 6:5-6, emphasis mine)
These pagans not only heard about the Israelites’ exodus; they learned from it. They did not wish to be like Pharaoh and the Egyptians. They did not wish to be destroyed by the wrath of God. If the Egyptians had to be persuaded to release the Israelites the “hard way” (via the plagues), the Philistines did not wish to be so hard-hearted. They would release the ark and send it on its way, with gifts, just as the Egyptians had done with the Israelites.
They also wanted to assure themselves that these plagues came from the hand of the God of Israel, and so they designed a very clever test. They would place the ark on a new cart and would use two milk cows to draw it. These cows would be separated from their calves, so that their natural instinct would be to turn back toward the land of the Philistines (where their calves were tied up, bawling for their mothers). If these two cows pulled the cart directly to Israel, without turning back, then the Philistines would know that this had all been the work of God. The cows headed directly for the Israelite town of Beth Shemesh, as the Philistines looked on in wonder, greatly relieved to see the ark gone from their land.
There is certainly a lesson to be learned from the ark. The Israelites learned that the ark was not magic; its presence did not necessarily guarantee God’s presence and power, as we can see in chapter 4. On the other hand, God was closely associated with the ark, so that He was able to bring the Philistines (and their god) to their knees. The army of Israel, with the ark, was powerless without God’s presence among them. The ark of God, without the Israelite army, was powerful against the Philistines when God was present. God did not need the Israelites to prevail over the Philistines, but the Israelites surely needed God to prevail.
When the ark returned to Israel, the Israelites also needed to be reminded of the terror of the Lord. The people foolishly looked into the ark and on that day, 50,070 were stuck down. The people of Beth Shemesh asked a very important question, “Who is able to stand before the LORD, this holy God?” (6:20). The answer is, “No one.” God always provided some form of shield or barrier between His holy presence and the sinful people among whom He chose to dwell. In a spirit similar to that of the people of Ashdod (5:6-7), the ark was now passed along to the people of Kiriath Jearim. Abinadab’s son, Eleazar, was tasked with the job of guarding the ark of the LORD. The ark remained in Abinadab’s home for 20 years (7:2).
The final incident of the days of the judges is recorded in 1 Samuel 7. It is a most appropriate conclusion to the period of the judges. The Israelites longed for the Lord, and Samuel called the nation to repentance:
3 Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are really turning to the Lord with all your hearts, remove from among you the foreign gods and the images of Ashtoreth. Give your hearts to the Lord and serve only him. Then he will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” 4 So the people of Israel removed the Baals and images of Ashtoreth. They served only the Lord (1 Samuel 7:3-4).
Samuel then called the whole nation to gather at Mizpah, where he would pray for them. The people fasted and prayed, as Samuel led them. Mizpah was a few miles north of Jerusalem and was located on some of the highest ground in that area. The name “Mizpah” means “watchtower” or “place for watching.” It was a kind of lookout, over the surrounding country. The Philistines heard that the Israelites had assembled there, and seem to have mistaken their gathering as a military maneuver. It was, after all, the perfect place to defend yourself against an attack. The Philistines gathered their forces and converged on the Israelites, who were engaged in worship. When the Israelites realized that the Philistines were attacking them, they were terrified. They had few weapons as it was, because the Philistines had confiscated all iron weapons and all the tools required to manufacture iron products:
19 A metalworker could not be found in all the land of Israel, for the Philistines had said, “This will prevent the Hebrews from making swords and spears.” 20 So all Israel had to go down to the Philistines in order to get their plowshares, cutting instruments, axes, and sickles sharpened. 21 They charged two-thirds of a shekel to sharpen plowshares and cutting instruments, and a third of shekel to sharpen picks and axes, and to set oxgoads. 22 So on the day of the battle no sword or spear was to be found in the hand of anyone in the army that was with Saul and Jonathan. No one but Saul and his son Jonathan had them (1 Samuel 13:19-22).
The Israelites seemed to be in a terrible fix, something similar to the Israelites who left Egypt, who found themselves trapped between the Red Sea, the mountains, and the Egyptian army. Since the people could not really fight, they were forced to petition God for help (7:8-9). God saved the Israelites in a most incredible way – He employed the Philistines’ advanced military technology against them. Their technological edge was their iron weapons – their swords and shields, and also their chariots with iron wheels (Joshua 17:16, 18; Judges 1:19; 4:3, 13). I can see it now, in my mind’s eye. The Philistines approach the high ground, closing in on the Israelites who are huddled together. They raise their swords into the air, waiting for their commander to yell, “Charge!” Just then, God sends an electrical storm, and the world’s most advanced weapons become lightening rods. The Philistines, decked out in their iron-clad armor, holding their iron swords high in the air and standing in iron-wheeled chariots, are like magnets, attracting the lightning bolts to themselves. This was the beginning of a great victory for Israel, and a devastating defeat for the Philistines (7:13). And because of the way the Philistines were destroyed, it was very obvious that this was all of God. I would think that the Philistines would have quickly shed their iron weapons and fled, so that the Israelites would only need to pick up these weapons (once they cooled) and pursue the Philistines.
In the very next chapter of 1 Samuel, the people will insist on having a king who will go before them and fight their battles. Saul did not prove to be that kind of military leader. Why would the Israelites want a king like Saul, when they could have a deliverer like God, who single-handedly rescued Israel from their foes? The failure of the era of the judges was not God’s failure, but man’s. Would it be any different in the monarchy, when kings ruled? The next few chapters will certainly give us the answer.
Even before the death of Eli, it was known to all Israelites that Samuel was a prophet, through whom God spoke. Samuel was, in fact, the last (and the greatest) judge in Israel (1 Samuel 7, especially verse 17). As a prophet, it would also be Samuel’s duty to designate Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David. But in so doing, Samuel would be turning in his resignation as Israel’s judge (or deliverer).
If we were living in the latter days of Samuel, we would surely be concerned about the future, as the Israelites were:
1 In his old age Samuel appointed his sons as judges over Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second son was Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. 3 But his sons did not follow his ways. Instead, they made money dishonestly, accepted bribes, and perverted justice (1 Samuel 8:1-3).
The future did not look particularly bright with Samuel’s sons serving as judges. They were not at all like their father. One must wonder why Samuel would appoint his sons as judges. Did he think that they would carry on in his place when he was gone? Were they already corrupt before he made them judges, or did their positions of power corrupt them? Was Samuel following in the footsteps of Eli, overlooking the sins of his own sons? Whatever Samuel’s reasons might be, the people were not eager to have his sons as judges. Even if some of the concerns of the people were valid, the solution they demanded did not please Samuel or God.
4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and approached Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons don’t follow your ways. So now appoint over us a king to lead us, just like all the nations have.” 6 But this request displeased Samuel, for they said, “Give us a king to lead us.” So Samuel prayed to the Lord. 7 The Lord said to Samuel, “Do everything the people request of you. For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king. 8 Just as they have done from the day that I brought them up from Egypt until this very day, they have rejected me and have served other gods. This is what they are also doing to you” (1 Samuel 8:4-8).
How true to life this incident is. I have seen it work this way many, many times in my ministry. People have a certain sinful course of action they wish to pursue, and they seize upon any and every excuse that appears to justify their doing it. It is, in the words of the Book of Proverbs, finding “a lion in the
road”166 – that compelling excuse for doing or not doing what we desire. The sluggard refuses to go outside his house and work, because “there’s a lion in the road.” If, indeed, there were a lion in the road, one would be foolish to go outside one’s house. But it is often merely an excuse.
The Israelites surely remembered God’s words of instruction in the Law of Moses:
14 When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will appoint a king over me like all the nations surrounding me,” 15 you must without fail select over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king—you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. 16 Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the Lord has said you must never again return that way. 17 Furthermore, he must not marry many wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold. 18 When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this instruction on a scroll given to him by the levitical priests. 19 It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this instruction and these statutes in order to carry them out, 20 so that he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens and turn from the commandment right or left, and so that he and his descendants may enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).
The Israelites of Samuel’s day read this text as a permission slip for what they wanted to do. They saw it as God’s seal of approval on their plan to have a king. Their attitude was very similar to that of the Jews in Jesus’ day regarding divorce:
3 Then some Pharisees came to him in order to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful to divorce a wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” 8 Jesus said to them, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hard hearts, but from the beginning it was not this way. 9 Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another commits adultery.” 10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the case of a husband with a wife, it is better not to marry!” 11 He said to them, “Not everyone can accept this statement, except those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are some eunuchs who were that way from birth, and some who were made eunuchs by others, and some who became eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who is able to accept this should accept it” (Matthew 19:3-12).
Divorce was God’s provision for men, due to their hardness of heart. It was not pleasing to God. Our Lord made it clear that it would be far better for a person not to marry at all, than to marry with a view to the possibility of getting a divorce. God’s ideal – that which was pleasing in His sight – was for a man to marry a woman for a lifetime.
So it was with Israel having a king. In Deuteronomy 17, God gives clear instructions to the Israelites regarding who could become their king (only an Israelite) and how he was to be selected (God’s designation). He also set down regulations regarding the conduct and practices of the king. But having noted this, let us not fail to sense the note of disapproval in Deuteronomy 17:14:
When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “ I will appoint a king over me like all the nations surrounding me” (emphasis mine).
These words of Moses were both a warning and a prophecy. Compare the words of Moses with the words of the people to Samuel in 1 Samuel 8:5:
They said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons don’t follow your ways. So now appoint over us a king to lead us, just like all the nations have” (emphasis mine).
In both texts, it is the people who demand a king, just as in both their motivation is to be “just like the nations.” If the Israelites cannot imitate the other nations by immorality and idolatry, they will imitate them by having a king. What the Israelites failed to grasp was that their desire to have a king was idolatry:
7 The Lord said to Samuel, “Do everything the people request of you. For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king. 8 Just as they have done from the day that I brought them up from Egypt until this very day, they have rejected me and have served other gods. This is what they are also doing to you” (1 Samuel 8:7-8, emphasis mine).
Here, we see that idols are not always man-made objects of metal, word, or stone; idols may also be men. The reason why men make idols is because they want to see who or what they worship. Idols assure the “worshipper” of success, whether that be victory in battle, bountiful reproduction, or rain for his crops. A strong and powerful king may appear to be the key to success. And remember, some kings actually were worshipped as gods (see Daniel 3; Acts 12:20-24). Since God is invisible, there can be no representation of Him in the form of an idol (Deuteronomy 4:15-19). The Israelites wanted a leader they could see, someone they could trust to save them. They wanted a king, like the other nations.
Idols can therefore be men, and it is not merely kings who are “worshipped” (whether literally or functionally). Many of the youth of our country virtually worship certain celebrities, especially musicians, actors, and actresses. Some Christians idolize prominent Christian leaders while others (unfortunately some may be Christians) blindly follow persuasive cult leaders. Let us be careful to show proper respect to those in authority, but let us also beware that we do not become worshippers of men. Never look to men for what only God can do; never give to men what only God deserves.
Samuel responds to the Israelites as God has instructed him. At this point in time, he does not accuse them of rejecting God, though they have. Instead, he points out the very high cost of kings:
10 So Samuel spoke all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “Here are the policies of the king who will rule over you: he will conscript your sons and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they will run in front of his chariot. 12 He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment. 13 He will take your daughters to be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers. 14 He will take your best fields and vineyards and give them to his own servants. 15 He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his servants. 16 He will take both your male and female servants, as well as your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own use. 17 He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will be his servants. 18 In that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t answer you in that day” (1 Samuel 8:10-18).
The Israelites were already required to give tithes and offerings for the care of the poor and for the support of those who ministered as priests. Having a king would virtually double their expenses. Having a king would not only cost them money, it would also restrict their freedom. The king they so desperately desire will forcibly take their property and use it, or give it to his friends, as he will take their children as his servants. What the Israelites are demanding not only offends God, it is not in their own best interest. While sinners think they are enhancing their own interests, they are actually doing the opposite. Sin is self-defeating and self-destructive. This is probably a good thing to remember when seeking to turn another from their sin. Let the sinner understand that the price of sin is high, and the ride is short (and often frightening).
I should point out something that is very important concerning Samuel’s words of warning about the high cost of kings. Samuel is not merely warning the Israelites that their first king (whom we know will be Saul) won’t be worth the price. God is making it clear that every king – even the best – will come at a very high cost. One would only have to ask Uriah about this, for King David was able to take his wife, and this faithful soldier’s life. Later on, Solomon would oppress the people of Israel with his taxes (see 1 Kings 4:7-22-25; 9:1f; 12:4).
I’m going to go on to say something that will be recognized as somewhat political, but needs to be said because I believe it is true. All too many people today look to government as though it were their god. They look to government for prosperity and peace. They look to government for “the good life.” And this is why, for some, the bigger that government becomes, the better. Samuel’s words apply not only to kings, but to any government, and especially “big government.” It is interesting that inscribed on the money our government prints are the words, “In God We Trust.” I wonder how many people today trust their government more than they trust in God? Perhaps we should read our money and take these words to heart. We most certainly should take Samuel’s words to heart.
The people will not be dissuaded. They insist on having their king. And so God instructs Samuel to send the people away with the assurance that He will give them the king that they have demanded. As the people return to their homes, they do not know who their king will be, and so all eyes are on Samuel to see who he will designate as their king.
Chapters 9 and 10 describe the process by which God revealed the identity of Israel’s king. In 9:1–10:16, the author relates the way God privately revealed to Saul that he was to become Israel’s king. Chapter 10:17-27 records the process by which God publicly identified Saul to the Israelites as their king.
Saul was just the kind of man the Israelites were looking for. He came from a prominent family, he was a very attractive fellow, and he was Israel’s Goliath:
1 There was a Benjamites man named Kish son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the son of Aphiah of Benjamin. He was a prominent person. 2 He had a son named Saul, an attractive young man. There was no one among the Israelites more attractive; he stood head and shoulders above all the people (1 Samuel 9:1-2).
It all started with a few runaway donkeys that Kish sent his son Saul to find. Saul, accompanied by one of the young servants, pursued them for several days. As they were running out of food, Saul was ready to give up and return home. His servant recognized that they had come to the city where a prophet lived. (Saul does not seem to be aware of this, which may give us a clue to his spiritual state.) The servant believed that the prophet (or seer) could tell them where to find their lost donkeys and was willing to provide the money to pay him for his services. Saul took the servant’s advice, and they came to the city and asked where the prophet could be found. (God had already revealed to Samuel that Israel’s king would be arriving, and that he would be a Benjamite – see 9:15-16. )
Samuel made Saul his guest of honor, and later he privately anointed Saul as Israel’s king. Saul also gave Samuel several signs to convince him that this was God’s doing. Samuel told Saul that the donkeys had already been found – before Saul had the opportunity to mention that they were looking for them. Samuel told Saul that he would meet two men, that they would assure him that his father’s donkeys had been found, and that his father was now concerned about him (10:2). This, by the way, was pretty much what Saul had said earlier in 9:5. Saul would then meet three men who were going up to Bethel. One man would be carrying three young goats, another would have three loaves of bread, and the third a container of wine. The man with the bread would give Saul two loaves, Samuel told him. He also told Saul that he would encounter a band of prophets, and that he would prophesy. All these things happened, just as Samuel had indicated.
Samuel also gave Saul a very specific instruction:
“You will go down to Gilgal before me. I am about to come down to you to offer burnt offerings and to make peace offerings. You should wait for seven days, until I come to you and tell you what to do” (1 Samuel 10:8).
Unfortunately, this instruction would not be obeyed, as we shall soon see. When Saul arrived home, his uncle (Abner? – see 14:50) was most interested in what Samuel had to say to his nephew, once he learned that Saul had spoken with the prophet. No wonder. Everyone knew that Samuel would soon anoint a new king. Anyone who had dealings with Samuel would be considered a possible candidate for king.
Samuel now calls the nation to assemble before the Lord at Mizpah (remember the last time this happened, in chapter 7). Samuel begins with a word of rebuke:
18 He said to the Israelites, “This is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘I brought Israel up from Egypt and I delivered you from the power of the Egyptians and from the power of all the kingdoms that oppressed you. 19 But today you have rejected your God who saves you from all your trouble and distress. You have said, “No! Appoint a king over us.” Now take your positions before the Lord by your tribes and by your clans’” (1 Samuel 10:18-19).
Samuel’s case against Israel is a very simple one. From the days of their exodus from Egypt, God had delivered His people from the hand of their enemies. All of this God accomplished without a king. Now Samuel rebukes the people for rejecting God as their King and Deliverer. They now are demanding a king in God’s place. Samuel’s words of rebuke preface his designation of Saul as their king. Samuel knows, of course, who that king will be, but he does not simply name Saul. Samuel goes through a process of elimination by the casting of lots. First the tribe of Benjamin was chosen by lot, then the family of Matri, and finally Saul. Saul was not to be found, and so they had to inquire of God. He informed them that Saul was hiding himself among the baggage. He certainly did not seem to be acting like a king. Some were quick to take note of this, questioning how such a fellow could save Israel (10:27). Others noted that he stood head and shoulders above any other Israelite (10:23; see 9:2). Those who accepted Saul as their king brought him gifts. Those who despised him did not.
I must say, somewhat parenthetically, that I took note of this matter of gifts during our offering this Sunday. I called attention to the way the wise men from the East brought gifts to the one whom they sought as “the King of the Jews” (Matthew 2:1-12). If we acknowledge one as king by giving them gifts, what does it say when we come to church week after week, and yet give nothing to Him whom we profess to be the King of Kings? It is sadly true that in virtually every church there are a significant number of people who never give. This text should give them pause for thought. And lest those of us who do give are feeling a bit too smug, I should also say that the size of our gift says something about our regard for our King as well.
It is in chapters 11 and 12 that Saul’s right to reign is established in a very public way. Did some wonder how this one who hid among the baggage could lead the Israelites in war? God demonstrated how in chapter 11, when Nahash the Ammonite marched against the city of Jabesh Gilead. The inhabitants of that city knew they were outnumbered and were willing to surrender under the usual terms. Nahash was not willing for these people merely to submit; he wanted to utterly humiliate them. If they were to submit to him, they would have to allow him to gouge out their right eyes. The leaders of the city asked for a week to give their decision, in which time they would seek to learn whether any of their brethren would come to their aid. (It would seem that Nahash felt quite confident that they would not be rescued, which meant that he had the upper hand with the other cities as well, since the Israelites would thus demonstrate their lack of unity.)
When Saul heard of the dilemma the people of Jabesh Gilead were in, the Spirit of God came upon him powerfully. He took his oxen and slaughtered them, cutting them into pieces, which he sent throughout the land (not unlike the way the Levite sent pieces of his concubine around the land in Judges 19:29-30). He threatened to slaughter the oxen of anyone who would not come and join their brethren in battle against the Ammonites. This motivated the entire nation to gather for war: 300,000 Israelites and 30,000 men from Judah (11:8). Saul and this army defeated the Ammonites and rescued the city. Now it was clear to all that Saul was capable of leading the nation in battle against their enemies. Some even wanted to punish those who questioned Saul’s right to rule, but Saul forbade them to do so (11:12-13).
The people were jubilant, and so Samuel summoned them to gather at Gilgal, where they were to renew the kingship (11:13ff.). Saul was then unanimously proclaimed as king, and peace offerings were being made. It was a time of celebration, but it was also the time for Samuel to make it clear to Israel how serious their sin was in demanding a king. Samuel began by challenging anyone to bring a charge against him. All acknowledged that he had dealt fairly and justly with him (12:1-5). This gave Samuel the moral authority he needed to rebuke the Israelites for their sin.
6 Samuel said to the people, “The Lord is the one who chose Moses and Aaron and who brought your ancestors up from the land of Egypt. 7 Now take your positions, so I may confront you before the Lord regarding all the Lord’s just actions toward you and your ancestors. 8 When Jacob entered Egypt, your ancestors cried out to the Lord. The Lord sent Moses and Aaron, and they led your ancestors out of Egypt and settled them in this place. 9 “But they forgot the Lord their God, so he gave them into the hand of Sisera, the general of the army of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought with them. 10 Then they cried out to the Lord saying, “We have sinned, for we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the images of Ashtoreth. Now deliver us from the hand of our enemies so that we may serve you. 11 So the Lord sent Jerub-Baal, Barak, Jephthah, and Samuel, and he delivered you from the hand of the enemies all around you, and you were able to live securely. 12 “[But]167 When you saw that King Nahash of the Ammonites was advancing against you, you said to me, ‘No! A king will rule over us’—even though the Lord your God is your king! 13 Now look! Here is the king you have chosen—the one that you asked for. Look, the Lord has given you a king. 14 If you fear the Lord, serving him and obeying him and not rebelling against what he says, and if both you and the king who rules over you follow the Lord your God, all will be well. 15 But if you don’t obey the Lord and rebel against what the Lord says, the hand of the Lord will be against both you and your king” (1 Samuel 12:6-15).
Here is the most comprehensive rebuke Samuel has given for the Israelites’ demand to have a king. He cites instance after instance of God’s care and protection of His people, as their King. He emphasized that their more recent difficulties with foreign nations was the result of their own sin, and that in response to their petitions for help, God sent them a deliverer. Samuel seems to stress the fact that something “snapped” (we might say) when Nahash and the Ammonites attacked Israel. Somehow he managed to terrorize them, so that they felt a king was necessary. Well, Israel has their king, but God’s people must know that their demands for a king constituted a most serious sin. It was a failure to trust God. It was putting their trust in a man, rather than in God.
Even so, God was willing to grant their request and give them a king, and to continue to keep His covenant with them. The change to a monarchy, however, did not set aside the Mosaic Covenant and its requirements. God would continue to bless Israel if they and their king obeyed His commandments. If they or their king rebelled against His commandments, then God would bring judgment on them.
To underscore the magnitude of Israel’s sins and the words of rebuke Samuel had just spoken, God sent a storm that destroyed some of their crops and got Israel’s attention. The people feared both Samuel and the Lord:
All the people said to Samuel, “Pray to the Lord your God on behalf of your servants so we won’t die, for we have added to all our sins by asking for a king” (1 Samuel 12:19).
Samuel’s response was sobering, and yet comforting:
20 Then Samuel said to the people, “Don’t fear. You have indeed sinned. However, don’t turn aside from the Lord. Serve the Lord with all your heart. 21 You should not turn aside after empty things that can’t profit and can’t deliver, since they are empty. 22 The Lord will not abandon his people because he wants to uphold his great reputation. The Lord was pleased to make you his own people. 23 As far as I am concerned, far be it from me to sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. I will instruct you in the way that is good and upright. 24 However, fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart. Just look at the great things he has done for you! 25 But if you continue to do evil, both you and your king will be swept away” (1 Samuel 12:20-25, emphasis mine).
I am especially impressed with the words of verse 21. These words sound very much like a warning against idolatry, do they not? In fact, the NIV renders verse 21 this way:
Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless (emphasis mine).
While this word, rendered “empty things” is a most fascinating word, worthy of further study, it will suffice for this study to simply indicate that “kings” are “empty things” and “useless idols” when we look to them to save us, rather than to God. It is not the greatness and power of human kings, but the power, sovereignty, and loyal (covenant) love of God that assures us of our earthly and eternal safety and security.
All who form idols are nothing;
the things in which they delight are worthless.
Their witnesses cannot see;
they recognize nothing, so they are put to shame (Isaiah 44:9).
22 He is the one who sits on the earth’s horizon;
its inhabitants are like grasshoppers before him.
He is the one who stretches out the sky like a thin curtain,
and spreads it out like a pitched tent.
23 He is the one who reduces rulers to nothing;
he makes the earth’s leaders insignificant (Isaiah 40:22-23).
While Saul’s reign has just commenced, and he will reign over Israel for 40 years, the next chapters (13-15) depict Saul’s character flaws (chapters 13 and 14) and describe the two failures which cost Saul an everlasting dynasty and even his own kingdom (chapters 13:1-14 and 15).
Let’s begin with Saul’s character flaws. Our first clear indication of Saul’s lack of courage comes at the time of Saul’s public introduction as Israel’s king, when he was found hiding among the equipment (10:22). In the first verses of chapter 13, I believe we see another warning sign:
Jonathan attacked the Philistine outpost that was at Geba and the Philistines heard about it. Then Saul alerted all the land saying, “Let the Hebrews pay attention!” (1 Samuel 13:3, emphasis mine)
As we can see, Israel is still occupied by the Philistines. Geba is a town in the territory of Benjamin, just a few miles north of Jerusalem. The Philistines maintained an outpost there, a symbol of their dominance and control over Israel, and a means of enforcement.168 Saul was made king over Israel to “fight their battles” (8:20). Why, then, did he hesitate to attack the Philistines, who still maintained outposts in Israel? I fear that it was due to a lack of courage and faith. Saul maintained a kind of “skeleton army,” which would not be large enough to provoke the Philistines. They seemed to be a kind of police force for the nation, and more than anything, protection for Saul. Unlike his father, Jonathan was not intimidated by the Philistines. He attacked the Philistine outpost at Geba, and only then did Saul summon the Israelites for war. What else could he do? Saul’s army had attacked the Philistines, and he knew they were sure to retaliate in force, as they in fact did:
5 For the battle with Israel the Philistines had amassed three thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and an army as numerous as the sand on the seashore. They went up and camped at Micmash, east of Beth Aven. 6 The men of Israel realized they had a problem because their army was hard pressed. So the army hid in caves, thickets, cliffs, strongholds, and cisterns. 7 Some of the Hebrews crossed over the Jordan River to the land of Gad and Gilead. But Saul stayed at Gilgal; the entire army that was with him was terrified (1 Samuel 13:5-7).
The Israelites did not seem to turn out in the same numbers as before, at Jabesh Gilead. Saul seemed unwilling or unable to take the offensive. As a result, his soldiers were terrified and hid out wherever they could. One cannot help feeling that the fear of Saul’s soldiers was but a reflection of Saul’s own fears. It would be Jonathan, along with his servant, who would attack the Philistine garrison at the pass of Micmash (13:23ff.), with Saul only acting when it appeared that the Philistines were already in retreat. Saul did not seek divine guidance, as he should have (14:3, 16-19), only doing so when under great duress, or when urged to do so (14:36-37). When Saul foolishly made his men take an oath to fast (an oath that reminds one of Jephthah in Judges 11), Jonathan was unaware of this foolish act and unwittingly violated it (1 Samuel 14:24-30). Jonathan could easily see the folly of this decision. And when it was found that Jonathan was the one who had violated Saul’s oath, his father was going to put Jonathan to death. It was only the people who saved Jonathan from death. Saul was a man with serious character flaws, and these will only become more apparent when David becomes popular with the Israelites.
Saul was guilty of two specific sins that cost him his kingdom. The first is recorded in 1 Samuel 13:
8 He waited for seven days, the time period indicated by Samuel. But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the army began to abandon Saul. 9 So Saul said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the peace offerings.” Then he offered a burnt offering. 10 When he had finished offering the burnt offering, Samuel appeared on the scene. Saul went out to meet him and to greet him. 11 But Samuel said, “What have you done?” Saul replied, “When I saw that the army had started to abandon me and that you didn’t come at the appointed time and that the Philistines had assembled at Micmash, 12 I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down on me at Gilgal and I have not sought the Lord’s favor.’ So I was compelled to offer the burnt offering” (1 Samuel 13:8-12).
Saul was definitely under pressure. The Philistines seemed to have the upper hand, and his army was vaporizing before his eyes. Though some distance removed, it would certainly seem that the instructions given by God at the time of Saul’s private designation as king were the command that Saul disobeyed:
7 “When these signs have taken place, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God will be with you. 8 You will go down to Gilgal before me. I am about to come down to you to offer burnt offerings and to make peace offerings. You should wait for seven days, until I come to you and tell you what to do” (1 Samuel 10:7-8).
Given all that we are told about Saul, my impression is that once God notified Saul he was to be king, God gave him a certain amount of discretionary power. From verse 7, it would seem that God has informed Saul that once the confirming signs had taken place, he was free to begin acting as Israel’s king. In other words, he was free to commence war with the Philistines, as, in fact, his son Jonathan did. God promised to be with Saul as he did so. But what did Saul do? Virtually nothing, until prodded to do so. His most decisive action occurred when the Ammonites threatened the people of Jabesh Gilead,169 on the eastern side of the Jordan, but Saul did not take any initiative to attack the Philistines, who threatened Israel from the west.
I am inclined to conclude that while God had given Saul the “go ahead” to attack the Philistines, he had not done so, out of fear and passivity. But before he was to wage this assault, Saul was instructed to go to Gilgal, where Samuel would offer peace offerings and burnt offerings. It was at this time that Samuel would give him more specific instructions concerning the battle. Saul was told to wait for Samuel seven days. Saul had procrastinated so long to attack that his men were now deserting him. Now, due to his passivity, Saul felt he could not wait any longer for Samuel, and so he offered the sacrifices himself. It occurs to me that in so doing, Saul committed two sins. First, he clearly disobeyed God’s instructions. Second, he did not honor the “separation of powers” God had established. The king was not to usurp the function of the priests, and he was to be guided by prophetic revelation. He acted unilaterally, setting aside God’s division of power.
This foolish and sinful act on Saul’s part would cost him dearly:
13 Then Samuel said to Saul, “You have made a foolish choice! You have not obeyed the commandment that the Lord your God gave you. Had you done that, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. 14 But now your kingdom will not continue. The Lord has sought out for himself a man who is loyal to him and the Lord has appointed him to be leader over his people, for you have not obeyed what the Lord commanded you” (1 Samuel 13:13-14).
Saul’s kingdom would not last beyond his own reign as king. He would have no lasting dynasty – his sons would not rule as king after him. God sought a king who would obey His commands (remember Deuteronomy 17:14-20; 1 Samuel 12:14-15, 24-25), but Saul had disobeyed. Implied in Samuel’s words in 13:14 is the fact that God would replace Saul as king. This matter will be dealt with decisively at the time of Saul’s second great act of disobedience as king. Most distressing of all is that even when Samuel rebukes Saul for his sin, there is not so much as a hint of repentance. Saul does not confess that he has sinned. He and Samuel simply part ways.
Saul’s second great act of rebellion is described in chapter 15. God instructs Saul through Samuel to go to war with the Amalekites:
1 Then Samuel said to Saul, “I was the one the Lord sent to anoint you as king over his people Israel. Now listen to what the Lord says. 2 Here is what the Lord of hosts says: ‘I carefully observed how the Amalekites opposed Israel along the way when Israel came up from Egypt. 3 So go now and strike down the Amalekites. Destroy everything that they have. Don’t spare them. Put them to death—man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike’” (1 Samuel 15:1-3, emphasis mine).
Nothing could be clearer than these instructions. The Amalekites were all to be annihilated – men, women, children, and cattle. Nothing was to be left alive. Saul assembled the army of 210,000 and waged war with the Amalekites at Amalek. He defeated them, but failed to annihilate everyone and every living thing:
8 He captured King Agag of the Amalekites alive, but he executed all his people with the sword. 9 However, Saul and the army spared Agag, and the best of the flock, the cattle, the fatlings, and the lambs, as well as everything else that was of value. They were not willing to slaughter them. But they did slaughter everything that was despised and worthless (1 Samuel 15:8-9).
It would appear that Saul kept Agag alive as a kind of trophy, or for some other self-serving reason. Saul did kill everything that was worthless, but kept the things with the greatest value. Saul was another Achan (Joshua 6:17-19; 7:19-21), only on a much larger scale, and it was done publicly. It was a great mistake, one that was to cost Saul his kingdom. Unlike Achan, Saul did not repent. He initially denied his sin, and then attempted to excuse it. When Samuel came to him, Saul was busy making a monument for himself:
12 Then Samuel got up early to meet Saul the next morning. But Samuel was informed, “Saul has gone to Carmel where he is setting up a monument for himself. Then Samuel left and went down to Gilgal.” 13 When Samuel came to him, Saul said to him, “May the Lord bless you! I have done what the Lord said.” 14 Samuel replied, “If that is the case, what then is this sound of sheep in my ears and the sound of cattle that I hear?” 15 Saul said, “They were brought from the Amalekites ; the army spared the best of the flocks and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord our God. But everything else we slaughtered.” 16 Then Samuel said to Saul, “Wait a minute! Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.” He said to him, “Tell me.” 17 Samuel said, “Is it not true that when you were insignificant in your own eyes, you became head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord chose you as king over Israel. 18 The Lord sent you on a campaign saying, ‘Go and exterminate those sinful Amalekites! Fight against them until you have destroyed them.’ 19 Why haven’t you obeyed the Lord? Instead you have greedily rushed on the plunder. You have done what is wrong in the Lord’s estimation.” 20 Then Saul said to Samuel, “ But I have obeyed the Lord! I went on the campaign the Lord sent me on. I brought back King Agag of the Amalekites, after exterminating the Amalekites. 21 But the army took from the plunder some of the sheep and cattle—the best of what was to be slaughtered—to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal” (1 Samuel 15:12-21, emphasis mine).
Saul attempted to excuse his actions, claiming that the animals that had been kept alive were saved as sacrificial animals. That prompts Samuel’s response, which distinguishes between mere ritual observances and the obedience of faith:
22 Then Samuel said,
“Does the Lord take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as he does in obedience?
Certainly, obedience is better than sacrifice;
paying attention is better than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and presumption is like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king” (1 Samuel 15:22-23).
Saul’s sin of disobedience was the sin of rebellion and was thus as wicked as the sins of divination and idolatry. God is not pleased by ritual sacrifices as much He is by the obedience of faith. Finally, Saul admits his guilt, but claims that he did so in fear of his army:
24 Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have disobeyed what the Lord commanded and what you said as well. For I was afraid of the army, and I followed their wishes. 25 Now please forgive my sin. Go back with me so I can worship the Lord” (1 Samuel 15:24-25).
This leader claims to have been led astray. He maintains that it was not really his fault at all. His sin was excusable because of his circumstances. Saul still did not repent; he only sought to reverse the consequences of his sin. How familiar this sounds. I have seen it many times in my ministry. Saul was now rejected by God as Israel’s king. As much as Saul sought to save his kingship, or at least his dignity, God had spoken, and He would not change His mind:
27 When Samuel turned to leave, Saul grabbed the edge of his robe and it tore. 28 Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to one of your colleagues who is better than you! 29 The Preeminent One of Israel does not go back on his word or change his mind, for he is not a human being who changes his mind.” 30 Saul again replied, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel. Go back with me so I may worship the Lord your God.” 31 So Samuel followed Saul back, and Saul worshiped the Lord (1 Samuel 15:27-31).
It was Samuel who personally executed Agag, king of the Amalekites (15:32-33). When Saul and Samuel separated that day, it was for the last time. They would never again see each other face to face. Samuel had his regrets over Saul’s punishment, but God did not:
34 Then Samuel went to Ramah, while Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul. 35 Until the day he died Samuel did not see Saul again. Samuel did, however, mourn for Saul, but the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel (1 Samuel 15:34-35).
Years would pass before this sentence upon Saul was carried out, but his destiny was now irreversibly determined. In the very next chapter, Samuel will anoint David as Saul’s replacement.
There is a very sobering lesson to be learned from Saul’s disobedience, one that we should all heed:
Saul was content to only partially obey the Lord’s commands, supposing that God would find that acceptable. God’s standards are unbending. If we do not fully obey God’s commands, then we have disobeyed them. This kind of sin is so common, and so commonly accepted, that we must stop to realize how frequently and flagrantly it is practiced today, even by professing Christians. We excuse ourselves by saying things like, “Well, I’m only human… .” Sometimes folks will say something like, “Well, even David sinned.” So he did, and he suffered the sobering consequences of his disobedience.
We often pick and choose among the commandments of the Bible, and even the commandments of our Lord. Jesus told His disciples,
18 Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).
He also said:
“If you love me, you will obey my commandments” (John 14:15).
“If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commandments and remain in his love” (John 15:10).
How many of our Lord’s commands do we actually practice? We have found countless excuses for not doing what He commanded. That should deeply disturb and convict us. But does it? We are told to submit to human authorities, but how many of us ignore the speed limit?
This is just about the point where someone might object, “But that’s legalism!” No, it is not! Obedience to all of God’s commands is not legalism. The New Testament has much to say about legalism, but we can’t enter into that discussion here. Jesus fully obeyed His Father’s commands. Was that legalism? I think not.
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until everything takes place. 19 So anyone who breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do this will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches others to do so will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness goes beyond that of the experts in the law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-20).
41 He went away from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:41-42).
“Who among you can prove me guilty of any sin? If I am telling you the truth, why don’t you believe me? (John 8:46)
He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death–even
death on a cross! (Philippians 2:8)
7 During his earthly life Christ offered both requests and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his devotion. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered. 9 And by being perfected in this way, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him (Hebrews 5:7-9).
5 So when he came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.
6 “Whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you took no delight in.
7 “Then I said, ‘Here I am: I have come—it is written of me in the scroll of the book—to do your will, O God’” (Hebrews 10:5-7).
Children, I want to speak to you about obeying your parents. It is not obedience when you obey only those instructions you like or agree with. Obedience is really proven when we obey those commands that we would rather disobey. True obedience is costly; it requires sacrifice – doing without some things we desire. True obedience is full obedience, not just doing what we are told that we find acceptable.
I want to say just one more thing on the subject of partial obedience. Saul sought to excuse his disobedience by viewing his circumstances as exceptional. He excused his refusal to wait for Samuel because it was an emergency situation (an emergency that he created). His failure to annihilate all of the Amalekites and their cattle was also due to exceptional circumstances. I’ve heard this argument countless times. “I know that God is against divorce (in general), but my husband (or wife) … .” “I know that it is wrong to marry this person, but I just know that God wants me to be happy.” “I know that the Bible tells me I should confront the one who is sinning this way, but he is my boss and he might fire me.” Emergencies don’t set aside God’s commandments, or excuse our disobedience.
What we have seen thus far (and will continue to see throughout the remainder of the Old Testament) is that no human system of government will work as it should so long as men are involved. Individual saints like Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and even Moses will fail. The period of the judges failed because of “human failure.” No system of government will ultimately succeed if mere men carry it out. The problem is not with these systems as much as it is with man himself. We soon come to see that the only perfect world will come about when it is governed by God and when sin ceases to exist. If we supposed that having a king would change things, we are wrong. The Kingdom of God will come when the King Himself returns to this world to rule over it. Until that day, we can only pray,
“May your kingdom come,
may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
163 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on March 11, 2001.
164 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
165 For a more thorough look at this psalm, see my exposition of 1 Samuel on the Biblical Studies Foundation Website at /docs/ot/books/1sa/deffin/1sam-02.htm.
166 See Proverbs 26:13.
167 It seems to me that the conjunction here must be translated as adversative, “but.” This is consistent with the flow of thought of the passage, and it is the way several other translations (e.g., the NIV) have rendered it.
168 As we can see from 1 Samuel 13:19-22, the Philistines would not allow the Israelites to manufacture or maintain any iron products. The garrison at Geba (and perhaps other garrisons elsewhere) would see to it that this technology embargo was observed. This would be something like the U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq (although I suspect that the Philistines were more successful).
169 It is interesting to recall that the people of Jabesh Gilead did not go to battle with the Benjamites in Judges 21:9. Did this in any way predispose Saul, a Benjamite, to come to their aid?
1 Samuel 16 - 2 Samuel 10170
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, … .” So begins Charles Dickens’ The Tale of Two Cities. That’s the way my wife and I look back on the days when I was a student in seminary. In those first two years, we often did not know where the money would come from for food or tuition or hospital bills. They were hard times in many regards, but they were also the best of times as well. Over and over, we saw God’s hand of provision and protection. We experienced God’s grace and care through many generous and supportive friends, and through unexpected answers to prayer.
I think David would say the same thing of his early years, before he came to power as Israel’s king. He had some difficult times. He was the youngest son, and it seemed as though he got all the dirty work. His brothers did not look up to him, but treated him with a measure of disrespect (1 Samuel 17:28). He wasn’t even present for selection as Israel’s king (1 Samuel 16:10-11). After he was anointed as Israel’s next king and had defeated Goliath, he had to flee from Saul, who sought to perpetuate his reign by killing his replacement.
These were difficult days for David, but they were also the “best of times.” David learned to deal with danger, and he also learned to fight (see 1 Samuel 16:18). He came to rely upon God and to love His Word. He learned obedience and submission, even when his life was endangered. He developed close, enduring friendships and alliances.
It is the early portion of David’s life that will be the subject of our study in this lesson. We will begin with the anointing of David in 1 Samuel 16, and we will end at the period in time when David has been appointed as king of both Israel and Judah (2 Samuel 10). There are many exciting stories in our text with many important lessons for us to learn, so let us listen well to what God has to say to us through the life of David, his friends, and his enemies.
God rebukes Samuel for continuing to mourn for Saul. He was not to be pitied. God had dealt with him justly. Samuel is then commanded to go to a man named Jesse in Bethlehem and to anoint one of his sons as Israel’s next king. First, the thing that arrests my attention in this text is the fear expressed by Samuel and by the elders of Bethlehem:
2 Samuel replied, “How can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me!” But the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ 3 Then invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you should do. You will anoint for me the one that I point out to you.” 4 Samuel did what the Lord told him. When he arrived in Bethlehem, the elders of the city were afraid to meet him. They said, “Do you come in peace?” (1 Samuel 16:2-4, emphasis mine)
We need to remember that up to this point in time David has not been designated as the next king. Goliath has not yet been slain by David. David is an unknown shepherd boy. In other words, Saul is not threatened by David; he is threatened by anyone who might play a role in the designation of his replacement. Saul is a man who reminds me a great deal of Herod, who would kill all the young boys living in and around Bethlehem, just to prevent one of them from becoming the “king of Israel” (see Matthew 2:16-18). Samuel even feared that Saul would kill him, as he was the logical one to anoint the next king. Saul was a very dangerous man.
Second, the thing that stands out in these verses is the one whom God chooses to be king. Like most of us, Samuel looked at the oldest son and assumed he was the one God had chosen. He was wrong. Saul was the kind of man Israel wanted for its king. The oldest son of Jesse was probably something like Saul in terms of age, height, and strength. Saul was a man who was physically dominating – he stood head and shoulders above his countrymen (1 Samuel 9:2), but his heart was not inclined toward the Lord. This time God would appoint a man whose heart was rightly inclined toward him. David was a good-looking young man (16:12), and he was regarded as a “brave warrior,” even before he killed Goliath (16:18). We know that Saul’s armor was too large and cumbersome for him, so David had to be a smaller man, at least a lot smaller than Saul; and, it would be safe to say, he was youthful (17:33, 43).
There is a great deal of concern these days about “racial profiling,” but I would suggest to you we should also be concerned about “leadership profiling.” It is a well-known and commonly accepted fact that a disproportionate number of leaders in America are men who are “tall, dark, and handsome,” so to speak. In the Christian community, we have our own version of “leadership profiling.” The governing boards of church and parachurch organizations are most often white-collar, successful businessmen. When we look for leaders, we give a disproportionate emphasis to education, intelligence, self-confidence, assertiveness, and most of all, success. We might do well to give further thought to God’s choice of David as Israel’s king, and let us not forget the words of the Apostle Paul on this matter:
26 Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers and sisters. Not many were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were members of the upper class. 27 But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, 29 so that no one can boast in his presence. 30 He is the reason you have a relationship with Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).171
Let us remember, the disciples were not men whom we would have chosen to be our Lord’s apostles either:
When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and discovered that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized these men had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).
Let us take heed to our text and to the words of the Apostle Paul. Let us beware of the Saul’s, and be on the lookout for the David’s.
The anointing of David by Samuel marked him out as God’s choice for Israel’s next king. It may well be that David’s brothers breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Saul would try to kill anyone who appeared to threaten his continuation as king. But beyond designating David as God’s choice for king, David’s anointing was accompanied by the “anointing” of the Holy Spirit:
So Samuel took the horn full of olive oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day onwards. Then Samuel got up and went to Ramah (1 Samuel 16:13).
As with Saul’s anointing (10:1-11), the Spirit of God was given to empower God’s king to carry out his task. When the Spirit abandons Saul and comes upon David, it is a sure sign of things to come. From this point on, things will never be the same for either Saul or David.
This is indeed one of the more perplexing texts in 1 Samuel. It is not really surprising to read that the Spirit of God “turned away from Saul,” but it is puzzling to read that “an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him” (1 Samuel 16:14). If God is taking the kingdom away from Saul and giving it to David, we can understand why the Spirit would depart from Saul (verse 14) at the same time that it is given to David (verse 13). But why would God send “an evil spirit” to torment Saul?
Surely we must ask ourselves, “Why would God send an evil spirit to torment anyone?” We would expect Satan to be doing this, would we not? The answer is probably to be found in the first two chapters of the Book of Job. There we read that Satan had to ask God’s permission before he could bring about great suffering for this saint. While Satan is the immediate cause of Job’s suffering, Satan can do nothing without God’s permission. Job suffered at the hand of Satan, only because God allowed it. I assume that the same is true in our text and, thus, the author could speak of this as “an evil spirit from the Lord.” God is not the immediate cause of Saul’s troubles, but He is the One who is ultimately in control of all things. This may not be all that different from what we find in the New Testament:
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, that he should betray Jesus (John 13:2).
And after Judas took the piece of bread Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are about to do, do quickly” (John 13:27).
Turn this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord (1 Corinthians 5:5)
The bottom line is that God is sovereign, and nothing takes place that is contrary to His divine purpose and plan. An evil spirit can torment a man only because God allows it, and in that sense, it could be said that it is “an evil spirit from the Lord.” I must also point out that by Saul’s jealousy and uncontrolled rage, he has opened himself up for satanic activity.
We should not fail to see the providential hand of God in all of this. Saul was now subject to fits of demonic tormenting. His servants recognized this was demonic in nature, and they seemed to know that music could sometimes soothe a tormented soul like Saul’s. So they recruited David, who was a skilled musician, to play his lyre and thus calm Saul’s troubled spirit. The end result of this – David was introduced to the protocol of royalty, on-the-job training for the days when he would become king.
One might assume that all of Saul’s sinful actions were the result of this “exchange of spirit,” but I don’t believe this is the case at all. Let us remember, Saul’s two great “kingdom-depriving” sins172 were committed before the arrival of the “evil spirit,” and were done before the Holy Spirit had been removed! Further, the “evil spirit” was not constantly tormenting Saul, but rather came and went. The evil spirit prompted Saul to thrust his spear at David (18:10-11; 19:9-10), but other acts of Saul seem to have come from Saul himself (20:30-33).
It is important for us to note that Saul’s jealousy and uncontrolled rage did not suddenly surface when Saul realized David was his replacement. Saul was demonized and subject to fits of rage, before he knew David was to replace him. David did not make Saul what he was; Saul was that way, even before the time the Spirit of God left him. Before David was anointed, both Samuel and the elders of Bethlehem greatly feared Saul (16:2, 4). I think one could make a case for the position that Saul’s sin opened the door to satanic involvement. Sometimes we are quick to blame Satan for our sins, when we are the source. In my opinion, the “evil spirit” merely enhanced Saul’s sin.173
Israel’s king was to be a man who would lead the nation in war:
We will be like all the nations. Our king will judge us and lead us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:20).
Then Samuel took a container of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s head. Samuel kissed him and said, “The Lord has chosen you to lead his people Israel! You will rule over the Lord’s people and you will deliver them from the power of the enemies who surround them. This will be your sign that the Lord has chosen you as leader over his inheritance” (1 Samuel 10:1).
Both of Saul’s major sins were related to his being commander-in-chief of Israel’s army. In chapter 17, we will see how Saul failed to live up to his duty as king, and how David fulfilled his responsibilities as God’s newly-anointed king.
1 The Philistines gathered their troops for battle. They assembled at Socoh in Judah. They camped in Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah. 2 Saul and the men of Israel assembled and camped in the valley of Elah, where they arranged their battle lines to fight against the Philistines. 3 The Philistines were standing on one hill, and the Israelites on another hill, with the valley between them. 4 Then a champion from the camp of the Philistines came out. His name was Goliath; he was from Gath. He was close to seven feet tall. 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and was wearing scale body armor. The weight of his bronze body armor was five thousand shekels. 6 He had bronze shin guards on his legs, and a bronze javelin was slung over his shoulders. 7 The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and the iron point of his spear weighed six hundred shekels. The shield bearer was going before him. 8 He stood and called to Israel’s troops, “Why do you come out to prepare for battle? Am I not the Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose for yourselves a man so he may come down to me! 9 If he is able to fight with me and strike me down, we will become your servants. But if I prevail against him and strike him down, you will become our servants and will serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “I defy Israel’s troops this day! Give me a man so we can fight each other!” 11 When Saul and all the Israelites heard these words of the Philistine, they were upset and very afraid (1 Samuel 17:1-11).
Saul was the one who was to lead his soldiers in battle. He was also the “Goliath” of Israel, for he stood head and shoulders above the rest of the people (1 Samuel (9:2; 10:23). Saul was the champion of the Israelite soldiers, yet he was not to be found on the front lines of battle, but looking on from a safe distance. At the time when his soldiers needed Saul the most, he was filled with fear. It is no wonder that his men were fearful as well (17:11, 24).
The Israelites and the Philistines faced off with each other, each on a hillside, separated by a valley with a stream flowing through it (17:1-3, 40). For forty days, these two armies had faced each other. The Israelites seemed fearful that they could not defeat the Philistines. I suspect the Philistines were trying to lure the Israelites down from the hillside, so that they could employ their chariots in the valley (compare 2 Samuel 18:8; 1 Kings 20:23). The Israelites seem to have been silent, but Goliath was arrogant and profane.
Goliath was certainly a giant, but any Israelite, who was familiar with history and with God’s Word, should not have been intimidated. In Genesis 12:3, God made it clear He would deal with anyone who cursed His people. The incident at Kadesh, recorded in Numbers 13, was all about the Israelites’ fear of the giants in the land of Canaan. But God promised to deliver these giants into their hands, and He did. Hannah’s prayer in chapter 2 also addressed this issue:
9 He watches over his holy ones,
but the wicked are made speechless in the darkness,
for it is not by one’s own strength that one prevails.
10 The Lord shatters his adversaries;
he thunders against them from the heavens.
The Lord executes judgment to the ends of the earth.
He will strengthen his king
and exalt the power of his anointed one” (1 Samuel 2:9-10).
In chapter 14, Jonathan had faced a similar situation, but he would not allow the odds against him to keep him from fighting the Philistines:
4 Now there was a steep cliff on each side of the pass through which Jonathan intended to go to reach the Philistine garrison. One cliff was named Bozez, the other Seneh. 5 The cliff to the north was closer to Micmash, the one to the south closer to Geba. 6 Jonathan said to his servant who was carrying his equipment, “Come on, let’s go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised men. Perhaps the Lord will intervene for us. Nothing can prevent the Lord from delivering, whether by many or by a few” (1 Samuel 14:4-6).
This was a situation that required faith in the God of Israel, and Saul lacked that faith. It would require another, who had greater faith, to stand up to Goliath and the Philistines. God divinely orchestrated events so that David would see and hear the blasphemies of Goliath first hand. His father sent him to check on the welfare of his three older brothers, who were fighting the Philistines under Saul’s leadership:
22 After David had entrusted his cargo to the care of the supply officer, he ran to the battle front. When he arrived, he asked his brothers how they were doing. 23 As he was speaking with them, the champion named Goliath, the Philistine from Gath, was coming up from the battle lines of the Philistines. He spoke the way he usually did, and David heard it. 24 When all the men of Israel saw this man, they retreated from his presence and were very afraid (1 Samuel 17:22-24).
The Israelites had grown accustomed to Goliath’s ranting, but David recognized it for what it was. He knew that Goliath must be opposed and silenced:
26 David asked the men who were standing near him, “What will be done for the man who strikes down this Philistine and frees Israel from this humiliation? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he defies the armies of the living God?” 27 The soldiers told him what had been promised saying, “This is what will be done for the man who can strike him down” (1 Samuel 17:26-27).
David’s older brother was greatly incensed by David’s words. No doubt they struck home. Why wasn’t someone standing up to this loudmouth Philistine? So Eliab hotly retorted:
When his oldest brother Eliab heard him speaking to the men, he became angry with David and said, “Why have you come down here? To whom did you entrust those few sheep in the desert? I am familiar with your pride and deceit. You have come down here to watch the battle!” (1 Samuel 17:28)
What complete and utter disdain Eliab had for David. Others could recommend David to Saul as a “brave warrior” (16:18), but not Eliab. We should not forget that Eliab was passed over by Samuel (and ultimately by God), who anointed David as Israel’s next king (1 Samuel 16:6-7). All Eliab could hear in David’s words was childish curiosity and even foolishness. Perhaps we see now why God quickly passed over Eliab.
Saul responded in a very different manner. Someone brought word to the king that there was someone willing to stand up against Goliath. Saul seemed to seize upon this in desperation – anybody but him could go take on Goliath. Saul did not overlook David’s youth, and he even sought to discourage him from fighting Goliath:
32 David said to Saul, “Don’t let anyone be discouraged. Your servant will go and fight this Philistine!” 33 But Saul replied to David, “You aren’t able to go against this Philistine and fight him! You’re just a boy! He has been a warrior from his youth!” (1 Samuel 17:32-33)
David informed Saul that he had been prepared for this day, as he had stood up to other daunting foes, while keeping his father’s sheep (such a simple and meaningless task, so far as Eliab was concerned, (see 17:28). God had given David victory over a lion and a bear. God would do the same with Goliath, especially since His reputation was at stake:
36 Your servant has struck down both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine will be just like one of them. For he has defied the armies of the living God!” 37 David went on to say, “The Lord who delivered me from the lion and the bear will also deliver me from the hand of this Philistine!” Then Saul said to David, “Go. The Lord will be with you” (1 Samuel 17:36-37).
Saul was convinced. This is rather amazing, since David’s actions might very well precipitate a major confrontation. For whatever reasons, Saul let David go with his blessings. He offered David his armor as well, but it was much too large for him. What a rebuke it must have been to Saul to look at David, wearing his armor, eager to carry out the task that should have been his and, then, to see this “lad” with a suit of armor emphasizing Saul’s stature, as a reminder he was Israel’s giant who should have opposed Goliath.
David was determined to fight Goliath with the weapons he had employed before. David hastened to the front lines to confront Goliath. He had no armor, no sword, only his staff, his sling and his shepherd’s bag, filled with five smooth stones. When Goliath realized only a young lad faced him, he was offended and angered. What an insult, to send a young lad to take on the champion of the Philistines. The author makes it very clear this is a spiritual matter:
43 The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you are coming to me with sticks?” The Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, so I can give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the field.” 45 But David replied to the Philistine, “You are coming against me with sword and spear and javelin. But I am coming against you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel’s armies, whom you have defied. 46 This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand. I will strike you down and cut off your head. I will give the corpses of the camp of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the land. Then all the land will realize that Israel has a God 47 and all this assembly will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will deliver you into our hand”
(1 Samuel 17:43-47).
David runs toward Goliath, sling twirling in the air. Years of practice (not to mention God’s hand) had prepared David for this moment. We know that some Israelites were very skilled with the sling (Judges 20:16). The stone is very precisely aimed and strikes its target – the forehead of the giant. The stone sinks deep enough to stun Goliath. This gave David time to rush to the giant, “borrow” his sword, and cut off his head, before he could defend himself. The Israelites began to hotly pursue the Philistines. David brought the head of Goliath to Saul, who looked on from a safe distance, and then inquired about the identity of David’s father.174
David’s victory over Saul propelled him into instant prominence, something like the faith and courageous death of Cassie Bernall, the 17-year-old girl who was shot at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. But as David gains more and more fame, Saul comes to fear him. David was greatly loved, both by Saul’s son Jonathan (1-4), and by his daughter Michal (18:20). Saul, still unwilling to lead the army of Israel in battle, put David in charge of his men of war. This was well received by warriors and also by Saul’s administrative staff. Finally, things came to a head when Saul overheard some women singing David’s praises after a victory in battle:
6 When the men arrived after David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women from all the cities of Israel came out singing and dancing to meet King Saul. They were happy as they played their tambourines and three-stringed instruments. 7 The women who were playing the music sang,
“Saul has struck down his thousands,
but David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18:6-7).
That was the final straw for Saul, who now looked upon David as a challenger for the throne:
8 This made Saul very angry. The statement displeased him and he thought, “They have attributed to David tens of thousands, but to me they have attributed only thousands. What does he lack, except the kingdom?” 9 So Saul was keeping an eye on David from that day onward (1 Samuel 18:8-9).
In one sense, Saul was absolutely right – David was the one who would become the king of Israel in his place. But he was wrong to distrust David, as though he was seeking to unseat him from his throne. Jealousy seized Saul, and he sought to kill him with a spear as he played the lyre for him in his house.
From this time on, Saul set out to bring about David’s death. At first, he tried the indirect method. He encouraged David to go to war with Israel’s enemies, hoping that David would be killed in battle. Saul even offered his daughters as a wife for David, if he would but show himself courageous in battle. Instead of dying in battle, David racked up one success after another, and became even more popular with the people. Saul’s plan was backfiring. When David killed 200 Philistines as a dowry gift, Saul had to give him Michal, his daughter, in marriage. Saul’s fears were only multiplied.
Finally, Saul decided he must take the direct approach. He ordered his servants to kill David (19:1). Jonathan cared greatly for his friend David, and he warned him that his father was seeking to kill him. Jonathan also spoke with his father and temporarily persuaded him that David was a faithful servant. Saul vowed not to harm David. This lasted until David once again went to war and had great success. Saul’s jealousy, fueled by an evil spirit, prompted him to attempt to put David to death with his spear for a second time. Saul then sent his servants to David’s house to seize him and put him to death. With Michal’s help, David was able to escape. David fled to Samuel and told him all that had happened. Saul learned that David and Samuel were at Ramah and dispatched an armed squad to capture David. But each time a squad arrived, they would prophesy. Who, under the control of God’s Spirit, could seize God’s anointed? Finally, after unsuccessfully sending armed messengers for a third time, Saul went himself, only to be overcome by the Spirit and prophesy himself (19:23-24). Don’t you wonder what Saul prophesied? I wonder if he prophesied that David would indeed become Israel’s next king?
Knowing that Saul will once again seek to kill him, David flees to Naioth in Ramah. Here David secretly meets with Jonathan, who assures him that he will not allow his father to harm him. He promises David that he will seek to discover his father’s intentions so far as David is concerned. Saul becomes so angry with Jonathan that he seeks to kill him:
30 Saul became angry with Jonathan and said to him, “You stupid traitor! Don’t I realize that to your own disgrace and to the disgrace of your mother’s nakedness you have chosen this son of Jesse? 31 For as long as this son of Jesse is alive on the earth, you and your kingdom will not be established. Now, send some men and bring him to me. For he is as good as dead!” 32 Jonathan responded to his father Saul, “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” 33 Then Saul threw his spear at Jonathan in order to strike him down. So Jonathan was convinced that his father had decided to kill David (1 Samuel 20:30-33).
David and Jonathan then meet again secretly. Jonathan informs David of Saul’s intentions and urges him to leave, but with a treaty of peace between them:
Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for the two of us have sworn together in the name of the Lord saying, ‘The Lord will be between me and you and between my descendants and your descendants forever’” (1 Samuel 20:42).
From this point on, David is a full-fledged fugitive. He flees from place to place, just a few steps ahead of Saul. This is where we come to “the best of times” and the “worst of times.” It was not always a good time for David, because he was sometimes fearful and made choices that would hardly seem wise or godly. One of his mistakes cost a number of people their lives. In chapter 21, David fled to Ahimelech, the priest at Nob. David did not speak truthfully to Ahimelech. He told the priest that Saul had sent him on a secret mission. David asked for a sword and was given the sword of Goliath, which he had taken from the Philistine when he killed him. He also asked for bread and was given some of the holy bread usually reserved for the priests and their families. Doeg, the Edomite, happened to be there and to see David. When Doeg later made this known to Saul, he had the priests and their families killed, even though they had knowingly done nothing wrong.
Twice David fled to the land of the Philistines, and both times this would appear to have been a mistake. In chapter 21, David went to Gath and sought sanctuary with Achish, king of Gath. It was this song that once again got David into trouble:
10 So on that day David arose and fled from Saul. He went to King Achish of Gath. 11 The servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one that they sing about when they dance, saying,
“Saul struck down his thousands,
But David his tens of thousands.”
12 David thought about what they said and was very fearful of King Achish of Gath. 13 He altered his behavior in their presence. Since he was in their power, he pretended to be insane, making marks on the doors of the gate and making his saliva run down his beard. 14 Achish said to his servants, “Look at this insane man! Why did you bring him to me? 15 Am I lacking in fools, that you have brought me this man to display his insanity in front of me? Should this man enter my house?” (1 Samuel 21:10-15)
Later, David fled a second time to the king of Gath, along with 600 of his men (1 Samuel 27:1-12; 29:1-11; 30:1-31). David told Achish that he did not want to be a burden to him and asked for a place where he, his men, and their families could live. The king gave him the city of Ziklag. By skillful deception, David convinced Achish that he and his men were raiding Israelite towns, thus furthering Philistine interests. David’s scheme eventually backfired in a couple of ways. First, the town of Ziklag was raided by a band of Amalekites, and all the families and possessions of David and his men were captured and taken as spoils of war. Second, when the Philistines went to war against Israel, David and his men barely escaped from having to go with them.
David had some very dark moments in the years he was fleeing from Saul, but there were also some bright spots. When David was a fugitive, David’s true friends endangered their own lives to stand with him. Jonathan sought out David on more than one occasion to encourage him:
16 Then Jonathan son of Saul left and went to David at Horesh. He encouraged him through God. 17 He said to him, “Don’t fear. For the hand of my father Saul cannot find you. You will rule over Israel, and I will be your second in command. Even my father Saul realizes this.” 18 When the two of them had made a covenant before the Lord, David stayed on at Horesh, but Jonathan went to his house (1 Samuel 23:16-18).
Abigail also encouraged David and gave him some very good counsel:
28 Please forgive the sin of your servant, for the Lord will certainly establish the house of my lord, because my lord fights the battles of the Lord. May no evil be found in you all your days. 29 When someone sets out to chase you and to take your life, the life of my lord will be wrapped securely in the bag of the living by the Lord your God. But he will sling away the lives of your enemies from the sling’s pocket. 30 The Lord will do for my lord everything that he promised you, and he will make you a leader over Israel. 31 Your conscience will not be overwhelmed with guilt for having poured out innocent blood and for having taken matters into your own hands. When the Lord has granted my lord success, please remember your servant” (1 Samuel 25:28-31).
Abigail’s husband, Nabal, was truly a fool. When David asked for a token of appreciation, he spurned David and his request. This was not an innocent mistake, because Nabal was aware of who David was:
10 But Nabal responded to David’s servants, “Who is David, and who is this son of Jesse? This is a time when many servants are breaking away from their masters. 11 Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers and give them to these men? I don’t even know where they came from!” (1 Samuel 25:10-11)
Nabal’s folly is even more apparent when his words in verses 10 and 11 are compared with Abigail’s words in verses 28-31. She knew that David was going to be Israel’s next king, and she treated him accordingly. Nabal rejected David as Israel’s next king, and he responded accordingly. When Abigail intercepted David, on his way to kill all the males in the household of Nabal, she proved to be a great encouragement to him.
Even Saul was an encouragement to David. When David risked his life to appeal to Saul, he responded with these words:
20 Now look, I realize that you will in fact be king and that the kingdom of Israel will be established in your hand. 21 So now swear to me in the Lord’s name that you will not kill my descendants after me or destroy my name from the house of my father” (1 Samuel 24:20-21).
What an encouragement to hear these words from the lips of Saul. Saul knew that David would, indeed, be king someday, taking his place. Hearing this from Saul was an encouragement to David in his darkest hours.
David did have his moments of doubt and despair:
David thought to himself, “One of these days I’m going to be swept away by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of searching for me through all the territory of Israel and I will escape from his hand” (1 Samuel 27:1).
But these moments passed. It was during the days when Saul sought to kill David that David rose to the occasion. These were some of David’s finest moments. David showed his true colors when his circumstances provided him with the opportunity to kill Saul and when his men urged him to seize the moment.
The first instance is recorded in 1 Samuel 24. David and his men were hiding from Saul in the inner recesses of a cave. Of all things, Saul stopped at this very spot to relieve himself privately. You can imagine how it must have felt to see the king so close and to know his men were just outside. If Saul had known they were there, they would have been trapped. David’s men told him that the Lord had given him this opportunity to kill Saul, but David refused:
6 He said to his men, “May the Lord keep me far away from doing such a thing to my lord, who is the Lord’s chosen one, by extending my hand against him. After all, he is the Lord’s chosen one.” 7 David restrained his men with these words and did not allow them to rise up against Saul. Then Saul left the cave and started down the road (1 Samuel 24:6-7).
David did get close enough to Saul to cut off a portion of his robe, and then after Saul left the cave, David was conscience-stricken. He called out to Saul and let him know that he had been given the opportunity to kill him but had not done so. He wanted Saul to know that he was still his faithful servant, and that those who told him David sought his life were wrong. Saul was deeply touched by David’s actions and asked David to promise that he would not destroy his whole house after he became king. David did promise this to Saul, and they parted. Unfortunately, Saul’s change of heart was temporary.
The second opportunity for David to kill Saul is recorded in 1 Samuel 26. The Ziphites have betrayed David to Saul by indicating where he was hiding out. When Saul arrived, David had his scouts locate Saul’s camp. David, along with Abishai, Joab’s brother, made their way into Saul’s camp while all were fast asleep. They threaded their way among the soldiers and managed to get by Saul’s bodyguards. Abishai was more than willing to end Saul’s life:
Abishai said to David, “Today God has delivered your enemy into your hands. Now let me drive the spear right through him into the ground with one swift jab! A second jab won’t be necessary!” (1 Samuel 26:8)
David once again refused to lift a hand against Saul, the Lord’s anointed. If Saul were to be removed, God would be the One to do it:
9 But David said to Abishai, “Don’t kill him! Who can extend his hand against the Lord’s chosen one and remain guiltless?” 10 David went on to say, “As the Lord lives, the Lord himself will strike him down. Either his day will come and he will die, or he will go down into battle and be swept away. 11 But may the Lord prevent me from extending my hand against the Lord’s chosen one. Now, take the spear by Saul’s head, his jug of water and let’s get out of here!” (1 Samuel 26:9-11)
David then took Saul’s spear and jug of water, as proof he had stood beside the king while he and his bodyguards slept. He cried out to the king, calling attention to the fact that when he had an opportunity to kill him, he did not take it. Once again, Saul admitted he was wrong:
21 Saul replied, “I have sinned. Come back, my son David. I won’t harm you, for you treated my life with value this day. I have behaved foolishly and have made a very terrible mistake.” 22 David replied, “Here is the king’s spear.” Let one of the servants cross over and get it. 23 The Lord rewards each man for his integrity and loyalty. Even though today the Lord delivered you into my hand, I was not willing to extend my hand against the Lord’s chosen one. 24 In the same way that I valued your life this day, may the Lord value my life and deliver me from all danger.” 25 Saul replied to David, “May you be rewarded, my son David. You will without question be successful.” So David went his way, and Saul returned to his place (1 Samuel 26:21-25).
The story of Saul’s death is a tragic one. When the Philistines gathered to fight Israel, David and his men came all too close to being a part of this (28:1-2; 29:1-11). Saul is terrified, and Samuel is dead. This is one of the few occasions when Saul seeks divine guidance, but it is too late. In desperation, Saul seeks guidance from the grave. Saul does not seek guidance from heathen deities, but from Samuel, the deceased prophet. In order to do so, he must employ a medium. This, of course, is clearly forbidden. Saul himself had removed the mediums and magicians from the land (28:3). He instructed his servants to find a medium, the witch of Endor. Disguising himself, Saul went to her and asked her to conjure up Samuel. The woman was terrified when Samuel appeared. Every indication is that this was really Samuel. His message to Saul was certainly consistent. At least this time, he didn’t have to worry that Saul would kill him! Samuel informed Saul that God had turned against him and that he was to die in battle. Tomorrow, God would hand him over to the Philistines. He and his sons would die, and God’s prophecy through Samuel would be fulfilled.
The following day, the Philistines prevailed over Saul and the Israelites. Saul’s three sons, including Jonathan, were killed (31:2). Saul’s death did not come so easily or quickly. An archer’s arrow found Saul and seriously wounded him. Knowing that he would die, Saul pled with his armor bearer to kill him quickly, rather than to let him fall into the hands of his enemies and be tortured. His armor bearer could not kill the king, and so Saul fell on his own sword. This does not appear to have done the job either, if we are to believe the words of the young Amalekite:
6 The young man who was telling him this said, “I just happened to be on Mount Gilboa and came across Saul leaning on his spear for support. The chariots and leaders of the horsemen were in hot pursuit of him. 7 When he turned around and saw me, he called out to me. I answered, ‘Here I am!’ 8 He asked me, ‘Who are you?’ I told him, ‘I’m an Amalekite.’ 9 He said to me, ‘Stand over me and put me to death. I’m very dizzy, even though I’m still alive.’ 10 So I stood over him and put him to death, since I knew that he couldn’t live in such a condition. Then I took the crown, which was on his head and the bracelet which was on his arm. I have brought them here to my lord” (2 Samuel 1:6-10).
Saul could hardly have died a more miserable death, but the humiliation did not end:
8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip loot from the corpses, they discovered Saul and his three sons lying dead on Mount Gilboa. 9 They cut off Saul’s head and stripped him of his armor. They sent messengers to announce the news in the temple of their idols and among their people throughout the surrounding land of the Philistines. 10 They placed his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his corpse on the city wall of Beth Shan (1 Samuel 31:8-10).
When David heard of the death of his king and of his beloved friend Jonathan, he was deeply touched. His mourning for Saul, as well as for Jonathan, was strong and sincere. David’s tribute to Saul in
2 Samuel 1 honored Saul for all of his accomplishments and omitted his many sins (“love covers a multitude of sins”). David executed the young Amalekite for his role in taking the life of the king. It was the end of an era.
Now that Saul is dead, David will quickly – and almost automatically – become Israel’s king. This is not the case at all. It will be more than seven years after Saul’s death that David becomes king of all Israel. David sought God’s guidance and returned to Hebron, where he was anointed king over Judah (2 Samuel 2:1-4). David’s first kingly act was to reward the people of Jabesh Gilead for courageously removing Saul’s body from public display and giving him a proper burial (2:5-7).
Abner, Saul’s uncle and general of Saul’s army, took Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, and installed him as king over Israel. Israel thus had two kings: David was king over Judah, and Ish-bosheth was king over the remaining tribes of Israel. The seeds for a future division in Israel were being planted during the years Israel had two kings. A very senseless confrontation occurred between Israel and Judah, due largely to the egos of Joab and Abner. A contest erupted into a brief war in which a number of men died. Abner killed Joab’s brother, Asahel, before the fighting ended.
As the conflict between the house of Saul and the house of David continued, Abner took one of Saul’s concubines, an action that appeared to signal a claim to the throne (see 1 Kings 2:13-25). Ish-bosheth was rightly concerned, but when he challenged Abner, his general (who better to orchestrate a military coup?), Abner reacted strongly. It was this challenge that prompted Abner to shift his support to David as the legitimate king of Israel, rather than Saul’s descendant, Ish-bosheth. Abner negotiated an arrangement with David, but when Joab learned of it, he killed Abner, avenging the blood of his brother, Asahel.
David’s response to Joab’s vengeance played a crucial role in the healing of the nation. David publicly mourned Abner’s death and strongly reprimanded Joab for his actions. The Israelites recognized that none of this intrigue was of David’s doing and that he did not approve of it (2 Samuel 3:36). Shortly thereafter, two of Ish-bosheth’s servants killed him and brought his head to David in Hebron. They had seriously miscalculated David’s response, for David had them executed for their deed. He, who would not become king by taking Saul’s life, would not reward those who took the life of his son. Finally, after seven- and-a-half years of conflict, David becomes king of all Israel:
1 All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron saying, “Look, we are your very flesh and blood! 2 In the past, when Saul was our king, you were Israel’s general. The Lord said to you, ‘You will shepherd my people Israel; you will rule over Israel.’” 3 When all the leaders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, King David made an agreement with them in Hebron before the Lord. They designated David as king over Israel. 4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign and he reigned for forty years. 5 In Hebron he reigned over Judah for seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned for thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah (2 Samuel 5:1-5).
At this moment in time, Jerusalem (then known as Jebus) was controlled by the Jebusites. David captured the city and occupied it as his capital. No doubt, its strong defensive position, which made it difficult to conquer, made Jerusalem appealing to David as a city that would be easier to defend as his capital:
9 So David lived in the fortress and called it the City of David. David built all around it, from the terrace inwards. 10 David’s power steadily grew, for the Lord God who leads armies was with him (2 Samuel 5:9-10).
One can imagine why the Philistines might have strongly reacted to the news that David had become king over all Israel. When the Philistines came in force, seeking to find David, David and his armies were divinely instructed to attack, and God gave David a decisive victory over Israel’s enemies. As they fled, the Philistines cast their idols aside as dead and useless weight (5:21).
David then sought to bring the ark of God to Jerusalem. The problem was he was not careful to transport the ark in the way God had prescribed. Instead, it was transported as the Philistines had done, on an oxcart. When one of the oxen stumbled, it appeared that the ark might be overturned, so Uzzah reached out to stabilize it and was struck dead for his irreverence. David was angry because it appeared that God had “rained on his parade.” The ceremony abruptly ended, and the ark was stored in the home of Obed-Edom.
There must have been some serious soul-searching after Uzzah’s death, but then David realized why this tragedy had happened. They then brought the ark to Jerusalem:
11 David summoned the priests Zadok and Abiathar, along with the Levites Uriel, Asaiah, Joel, Shemaiah, Eliel, and Amminadab. 12 He told them: “You are the leaders of the Levites’ families. You and your relatives must consecrate yourselves and bring the ark of the Lord God of Israel up to the place I have prepared for it. 13 The first time you did not carry it; that is why the Lord God attacked us, because we did not ask him about the proper way to carry it.” 14 The priests and Levites consecrated themselves so they could bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel. 15 The descendants of Levi carried the ark of God on their shoulders with poles, just as Moses had ordered according to the divine command (1 Chronicles 15:11-15).
13 Those who carried the ark of the Lord took six steps and then David sacrificed an ox and a fatling calf. 14 Now David, wearing a linen ephod, was dancing with all his strength before the Lord. 15 David and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord, shouting and blowing trumpets (2 Samuel 6:13-15).
1 The king settled into his palace, for the Lord gave him relief from all his enemies on all sides. 2 The king said to Nathan the prophet, “Look! I am living in a palace made from cedar, while the ark of God sits in the middle of a tent.” 3 Nathan replied to the king, “You should go and do whatever you have in mind, for the Lord is with you.” 4 That night the Lord told Nathan, 5 “Go, tell my servant David: ‘This is what the Lord says: Do you really intend to build a house for me to live in? 6 I have not lived in a house from the time I brought the Israelites up from Egypt to the present day. Instead, I was traveling with them and living in a tent. 7 Wherever I moved among all the Israelites, I did not say to any of the leaders whom I appointed to care for my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house made from cedar?”‘ 8 “So now, say this to my servant David: This is what the Lord of hosts says: “I took you from the pasture and from your work as a shepherd to make you a leader of my people Israel. 9 I was with you wherever you went, and I defeated all your enemies before you. Now I will make you as famous as the great men of the earth. 10 I will establish a place for my people Israel and settle them there; they will live there and not be disturbed any more. Violent men will not oppress them again, as they did in the beginning 11 and during the time when I appointed judges to lead my people Israel. Instead, I will give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that he himself will build a house for you. 12 When the time comes for you to die, I will raise up your descendant, one of your own sons, to succeed you, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He will build a house for my name, and I will make his dynasty permanent. 14 I will become his father and he will become my son. When he sins, I will correct him with the rod of men and with wounds inflicted by human beings. 15 But my loyal love will not be removed from him as I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 Your house and your kingdom will stand before me permanently; your dynasty will be permanent.” 17 Nathan told all these words that were revealed to him (2 Samuel 7:1-17).
David had gotten settled in Jerusalem. He had built a palace for himself, but it seemed inappropriate for the ark to be kept in a tent. David conceived the idea of building a temple in Jerusalem, and he proposed the idea to Nathan, the prophet. Nathan responded positively but without consulting God. It seemed like a great idea, but it would be Solomon who would build the temple, and not David.
God’s response to Nathan – which he conveyed to David – put the matter of a temple into its proper perspective. God made it clear that He did not ask for a “house” to dwell in. Since He had brought the Israelites out of Egypt, God had chosen to dwell in a tent, and He was very content with these accommodations. The fact of the matter was that God could not be confined to such quarters. This is precisely the argument that Stephen takes up in the Book of Acts:
46 “He [David] found favor with God and asked that he could find a dwelling place for the house of Jacob. 47 But Solomon built a house for him. 48 Yet the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands, as the prophet says,
49 ‘Heaven is my throne,
and earth is the footstool for my feet.
What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
Or what is my resting place?
50 Did my hand not make all these things?’” (Acts 7:46-50)
God turns the tables on David. Would David build a house for God? No. God will not allow David to do this, though Solomon will. But God is going to build a “house” (a dynasty, that is) for David. God will raise up David’s descendants to sit on the throne of their father. This will be a perpetual dynasty. This covenant will most certainly be fulfilled; it will be fulfilled once and for all when Jesus, the “Son of David” sits on the throne:
30 So the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 Listen: you will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:30-33).
At last, Israel has a king, a king who delights in God’s law, and whose heart seeks after God. One might ask why God did not immediately appoint David king, rather than to bother with Saul. I think there are several reasons why God gave Saul to Israel as her first king. First, the Israelites asked wrongly. They had rejected God as their king and Samuel as their prophet and judge. To give them a godly king would have been to reward Israel for their sin. Second, Saul was precisely the kind of king the Israelites thought they wanted. He was tall, perhaps dark, and surely handsome. He was a man who had all the physical earmarks of a great leader, or so they thought. Third, God gave them Saul, so that the Israelites would appreciate David for who and what he was, in stark contrast to Saul. Finally, God gave Israel Saul as a king, so that he might help to equip David for his role as king. Saul’s persecution of David was used of God to make a godly man of David.
Our text is incredible, with many lessons for those who would learn from it. Let me suggest several areas of application.
First, it teaches us some very valuable lessons regarding submission. What a model of submission David is in his relationship to Saul. Even when Saul is seeking to kill David, he will not raise his hand against God’s anointed. When David has the opportunity to take Saul’s life, he will not do so. He looks to God to remove Saul. Submission is not always a simple matter, as some seem to think. Sometimes, submission becomes complicated, as our text indicates. Jonathan was faced with a number of hard choices regarding submission. He, as a son, and as a subject of the king, was to submit to his father. But Jonathan must obey God rather than men. Thus, he cannot and will not kill David, even when his father issues the order to do so. Since David is to be Israel’s next king, Jonathan must also submit to him. Jonathan must have a clear hierarchy of authority, so that he can properly submit himself to others who have more authority than he.
The same is true of Abigail. Her foolish husband, Nabal, rejects David as Israel’s next king. He will not give David any of the gifts he has requested. Abigail has an obligation to submit to Nabal, as her husband, but she also is obliged to submit to David as the future king of Israel. She, like Jonathan, must walk the very fine line of obedience and submission by seeking to be submissive to two different men. It is my contention that Abigail was being truly submissive to Nabal, when she did what he would have forbidden.175 Let us remember, she risked her life to save her husband. She was not seeking her own interests, but his.
Second, our text has something to teach us about spirituality in the spirit world. Saul’s visit to the witch at Endor is indeed bizarre. It does not appear to be normative either. Even the witch is surprised and terrified by what happens. I believe in this instance God did something most unusual, as part of the divine discipline Saul deserved. Saul reached out, as it were, for this forbidden fruit, and God gave him a taste of the underworld – one that scared him to death.
There appears to be a deliberate contrast between Saul and David when it comes to the presence of God’s Spirit with each of them. In 1 Samuel, we see the visible manifestation of the Spirit in the life of Saul on several occasions. The Spirit first came upon Saul shortly after he was anointed by Samuel (1 Samuel 10:10). The Spirit again “rushed upon Saul” when he heard how the Ammonites had threatened Jabesh Gilead (1 Samuel 11:6). The Spirit of God also came upon Saul at Naioth in Ramah, preventing him from killing David (1 Samuel 19:23-24).
Then, there were also the occasions when the evil spirit came upon Saul, prompting him to oppose David. Twice this happened (18:10-11; 19:9-10), resulting in Saul hurling his spear at David. Notice that these evil spirit enabled attempts on David’s life failed. This “evil spirit from the Lord” was the evil spirit the Lord allowed to energize Saul, but whom He also prevented from being successful.
As I see Saul in 1 Samuel, a spirit overcomes him on a number of occasions. Sometimes, he is overcome by the Spirit of God; more often an evil spirit possesses him. When God’s Spirit comes upon Saul, it is a sovereign act of enablement, one not prompted by Saul himself. When an evil spirit comes upon Saul, it seems to be because his own sins have almost invited satanic involvement.
Saul, a very unspiritual man, is frequently empowered by a spirit, good or evil. David, on the other hand, is a very spiritual man, and yet we read only once of God’s Spirit coming upon him:
So Samuel took the horn full of olive oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day onwards. Then Samuel got up and went to Ramah (1 Samuel 16:13, emphasis mine)
I am reminded of a text in the Gospels:
30 “This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is greater than I am, because he existed before me.’ 31 I did not recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he could be revealed to Israel.” 32 Then John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. 33 And I did not recognize him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining, this is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit’” (John 1:30-33, emphasis mine).
The Spirit of God came upon David once, and it remained on him. The Spirit of God came upon Saul on several occasions, but it is obvious that He did not remain with Saul. We are clearly told that the Spirit of God abandoned Saul. Then, an evil spirit came and went. Saul was not a spiritual man at all. David was. The Spirit of God came upon David and remained on him. The one time David feared that God’s Spirit might forsake him was when he sinned (Psalm 51:10-11).
There are those who would equate spirituality with spectacular manifestations of the Spirit. I do not doubt or question that God is free to manifest Himself in many ways, some of which may be spectacular. I do question the assumption that a spectacular manifestation of the Spirit proves that the individual involved is truly spiritual. Let us not forget that by these kinds of outward appearances, Saul would seem more spiritual than David. Let us remember that this kind of “spirituality” is often seen in the Book of Judges, when the Spirit of God comes upon men like Samson. Even Balaam’s donkey could impress us by these standards, but these men were not willing instruments in the hands of God; they were not spiritual.
David is an example of the man who is “full of the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit comes upon him once, and abides in him, just as the Spirit came upon our Lord and remained on Him. The manifestations of the Spirit were often not spectacular. In David’s case, as with our Lord, their spirituality was evident in their love for God and in their desire to do His will. Over and over, we find David seeking God’s will. Seldom do we see this with Saul. Whenever God will not reveal Himself to Saul, Saul will attempt to hear from one who has died (via the witch at Endor). Let us be careful not to judge spirituality by outward appearances
(1 Samuel 16:7). The presence of the Spirit is more certainly known by one’s character than by one’s charisma. Paul has much to say about this in 1 Corinthians.
Third, our text has much to teach us about suffering. Suffering was God’s means of preparing David for the throne. (Saul experienced no such suffering.) Those years of being looked down upon by his brothers, of caring for a small flock of sheep, of being hated and sought as a criminal by Saul, were all a part of God’s process of preparing David to reign. It was during his time of suffering that David was tempted to kill Saul, but he refused. It was during his times of suffering that David wrote some of his most beautiful psalms. Suffering prepared David to reign:
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them” (Matthew 5:10).
16 The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ)—if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him (Romans 8:16-17).
10 So I endure all things for the sake of those chosen by God,
that they too may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus and its eternal glory.
11 This saying is trustworthy:
If we died with him, we will also live with him.
12 If we endure, we will also reign with him.
If we deny him, he will also deny us (2 Timothy 2:10-12).
7 During his earthly life Christ offered both requests and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his devotion. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered. 9 And by being perfected in this way, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 and he was designated by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:7-10).
David’s suffering also served to test the faithfulness of David’s friends. It was David’s true friends who endured with him in the times of his adversity. Jonathan proved himself to be David’s true friend when Saul sought to kill him. Repeatedly, we find Jonathan encouraging David in the midst of his trials. Later on in David’s life, when Absalom temporarily seizes the kingdom, suffering will prove who David’s true friends are.
Suffering also made it clear who David’s enemies were. There were the Ziphites, who betrayed David’s whereabouts to King Saul (1 Samuel 23:19). There was Doeg, who informed Saul that David had been to Nob, where he obtained food and his sword. It was his betrayal that cost many priests and their families their lives (1 Samuel 22:9ff.). Nabal showed his true colors, as well by his rejection of David as Israel’s next king (1 Samuel 25).
We, too, may either be a Nabal, or an Abigail, a Doeg or a Jonathan. We have been called to identify ourselves with Christ, who was rejected by men and crucified on the cross of Calvary:
17 This I command you—to love one another. 18 “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you do not belong to the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they obeyed my word, they will obey yours too. 21 But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me” (John 15:17-21).
10 My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:10-11).
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you and I fill up–for the sake of his body, the church–what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (Colossians 1:24).
12 Dear friends, do not be astonished that a trial by fire is occurring among you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice in the degree that you have shared in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice and be glad. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory, who is the Spirit of God, rests on you (1 Peter 4:12-14; see also 2:18-25).
In addition to identifying ourselves with Christ in His sufferings, we are called to identify with those who are suffering for Christ:
32 But remember the former days when you endured a harsh conflict of suffering after you were enlightened. 33 At times you were publicly exposed to abuse and afflictions, and at other times you came to share with others who were treated in that way. 34 For in fact you shared the sufferings of those in prison, and you accepted the confiscation of your belongings with joy, because you knew that you certainly had a better and lasting possession (Hebrews 10:32-34).
Suffering for the sake of righteousness – innocent suffering – is a test of our faith and endurance, as well as a test for others who must choose whether they will identify with the sufferer or not. Every week, we observe the Lord’s Supper (communion). We celebrate our Lord’s suffering and death on our behalf. Let us remember that we are not only called to identify with His sufferings in church, but we are called to identify with His sufferings as Christ lives out His life in us during the week. Though we would prefer to bypass this time of suffering and rejection, it plays a vital role in our lives and in God’s unfolding program of redemption.
Fourth, as I read of David’s experiences in this text, I am struck with the similarities between his kingdom and our Lord’s kingdom. David was seemingly a person of no standing or prominence when he was designated as Israel’s king. Our Lord came to earth as a child born into a poor family; His birthplace was a stable. David was scorned and rejected by his brothers; so was our Lord. David’s life was sought by a king who was terrified and intensely jealous of any other king who might challenge his kingdom. King Herod, who perceived Him as a threat to his kingdom, sought our Lord’s life. David was introduced as Israel’s king long before he actually became king. Our Lord was introduced as Israel’s King, and He is yet to return to claim the throne. Those who were the outcasts of society surrounded David. Many of those who follow Christ are those who are the outcasts of society (see Acts 4:13; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31). When David came to rule as king, he had to unite those of Judah with the other tribes of Israel who were in conflict. Our Lord’s kingdom unites rich and poor, Jews and Gentiles, slave and free.
As we reflect on our text and on the ascent of David as Israel’s king, let us look beyond and behind him, to see the One whom his kingdom anticipates – our Lord Jesus Christ. My friend, John Maurer, led one of the discussion groups in our church that discussed this lesson. He reminded us of the statement of another. In essence, John said, “Let us not forget that while David was a hero, he was an imperfect hero. The real hero of all history is God and God alone.” To Him be the glory.
Those who rejected David were all destroyed. Saul did not succeed in killing David; God saw to it that Saul lost his life. Those who rejected David became his enemies. More than that, they became God’s enemies, and for this they paid an eternal price. Jesus is God’s King, God’s Savior. To embrace Him as King of Kings and the Savior of sinners is to choose eternal life. To reject Him, is to choose eternal torment. I pray that He is your King.
170 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on March 18, 2001.
171 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
172 These would be: (a) His failure to wait for Samuel in chapter 13; and, (b) his failure to totally annihilate the Amalekites in chapter 15.
173 In my opinion, this is the case with Judas in the New Testament. His greed seemed to open the door to satanic involvement.
174 There are certainly questions that arise from Saul’s question. How could this man not know who David was, if David had worked so closely with Saul as a musician and as his armor-bearer? We do not have time to attempt a full response to this question, but I shall make a couple of comments. First, Saul did not ask who David was, but who his father was. Saul had promised to release David’s family from their obligation to pay taxes (17:25), and so knowing David’s father was important. Second, a king has many servants who attend to him, and so Saul might have considered it beneath him to know much about any of those who were near him. Surely the author was aware of the apparent discrepancy and expected the reader to figure it out. It may well be that he deliberately included this question, seeking to show the reader that Saul was so self-absorbed that he didn’t remember David, though he should have.
175 For a more complete explanation, see my sermon on 1 Samuel 25:
2 Samuel 11-24176
Some years ago I read a story in the newspaper that I found amusing. A man and his wife decided to go to a drive-in movie. The husband had the bright idea of trying to save the price of one admission. Just outside of the theater entrance, they stopped the car and the husband slipped into the trunk. The wife then paid for her admission, parked inside, and went back to let her husband out of the trunk. There was only one problem – he had the trunk keys in his pocket! After their efforts failed, the wife had to call for help. I don’t know how many rescue people showed up, but by the time it was all over everyone knew that they had tried to cheat the theater out of the price of a ticket. The rescue people had to force the trunk open, which resulted in a good deal of damage. When it was all over, neither the husband nor the wife saw the movie, they suffered considerable humiliation, and they had to pay for the repairs to their trunk.
This story reminds me of the account of David’s sin with Bathsheba in our text. To David, his actions on that fateful spring night seemed trivial, just a momentary pause in an otherwise pious life. The consequences, however, were devastating, not just for David, or for Uriah, but also for David’s family and the entire nation. The whole nation paid a high price for David’s immorality.
When we study the Old Testament (or even the New), we must overcome the mindset that these biblical events were the “long ago and the far away” – events far removed from us, not only in space and time, but also in relevance. That is not the case with our text, however. In the light of recent events in American politics, our problem is almost the opposite. A man’s abuse of his political power, followed by his futile attempts to cover up his sin, are common knowledge today. Reports of such things have dominated the news for several years. We are so accustomed to this kind of sin that we have become desensitized to it. We ought to be shocked and horrified, but these things are just too common. Our text should help us to put these things back into their proper perspective and to view sin as God does.
As we study the declining and most difficult years of David’s life, let us all be acutely aware that we are fully capable of committing the sins David committed, or ones just as evil. Some may already have walked in David’s footsteps. Others may be on the verge of doing so. Let us listen well to the words of our text and to the promptings and conviction of the Holy Spirit, so that we need not learn David’s lessons the hard way as he did.
If you build a new house, you must construct a guard rail around your roof to avoid bringing culpability to yourself in the event someone should fall from it (Deuteronomy 22:8).177
28 If a bull gores a man or a woman so that either dies, then the ox must surely be stoned and its flesh must not be eaten; but the owner of the bull will be acquitted. 29 But if the bull had the habit of goring, and its owner was warned, and he did not take the necessary precautions, and then it killed a man or a woman, the bull must be stoned and the man must be put to death (Exodus 21:28-29).
There are certain conditions that predispose us to problems in the future. If one is building a house with a roof which is used as we might use a balcony (which was common in the biblical world — see Acts 10:ff.), then to fail to put guard rails around the perimeter of the roof would make it too easy for someone to fall off, and the owner would be liable. If a man owned an ox that had previously gored someone, he was guilty of murder if that ox ever gored anyone again. If you fail to fasten your child in his or her seatbelt, you may be held liable for any injury to your child if an accident occurs. We can also get a ticket for failing to fasten our own seatbelt. Neglecting important matters can lead to serious trouble, for us and for others.
As I read the story of David’s fall in 2 Samuel 11, I am reminded of these words in the Book of Proverbs:
6 For at the window of my house
through my window-lattice I looked out
7 and I saw among the naive,
I discerned among the youths,
a young man who lacked wisdom.
8 He was passing by the street near her corner,
making his way along the road to her house
9 in the twilight, the evening,
in the dark of the night.
10 All of a sudden a woman came out to meet him!
She was dressed like a prostitute and with secret intent.
11 (She is loud and rebellious,
she does not remain at home—
12 at one time outside, at another in the wide plazas,
and by every corner she lies in wait.)
13 So she grabbed him and kissed him,
and with a bold expression she said to him,
14 “I have fresh meat at home;
today I have fulfilled my vows!
15 That is why I came out to meet you,
to look for you, and I found you!
16 I have spread my bed with elegant coverings,
with richly colored fabric from Egypt.
17 I have perfumed my bed
with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
18 Come, let’s drink deeply of lovemaking until morning,
let’s delight ourselves with sexual intercourse.
19 For my husband is not at home;
he has gone on a journey of some distance.
20 He has taken a bag of money with him;
he will not return until the end of the month.”
21 She persuaded him with persuasive words;
with her smooth speech she compelled him.
22 Suddenly he went after her
like an ox that goes to the slaughter,
like a stag prancing into a trapper’s snare
23 till an arrow pierces his liver—
like a bird hurrying into a trap;
and he does not know that it will cost him his life (Proverbs 7:6-23).
Let me begin by saying that I am in no way comparing this harlot with Bathsheba, so as to imply that Bathsheba somehow lured David into sin as this woman lures this nave young man into sin. Proverbs 7:22-23 describes the young man’s actions as sudden and impulsive, and so they are. But his sudden impulse to sin comes at the end of a sequence of wrong choices on his part. The young man is out at night, wandering the streets. He seems to be lingering at a place where he should not be. The woman finds this young man and tells him what she knows he wants to hear. He listens to her seductive words and then suddenly decides to partake of her offer.
The point of this proverb is to teach young men to beware of such women and of such circumstances. The proverb may be summed up: “Don’t go there!” As I read the story of David’s downfall, I see his sudden impulse to sin as the outcome of a sequence of failures on David’s part. Let me briefly call attention to a couple of very serious errors on David’s part.
First, David chose not to be engaged in Israel’s battle with the Ammonites. Second Samuel 11 begins with these words:
In the spring of the year, at the time when kings normally conduct wars, David sent out Joab with his soldiers and the entire Israelite army. They defeated the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 11:1, emphasis mine).
David should have been on the battlefield and not in the bedroom.
Second, in a time of war, a soldier was not to indulge himself in the normal comforts of life, including sexual relations with his wife (let alone anyone else’s wife). When David and his men fled from Saul to Ahimelech the priest at Nob, he requested bread from Ahimelech. Note very carefully the priest’s words and David’s response:
4 The priest replied to David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread at my disposal. Only holy bread is available, and then only if the soldiers have abstained from women.” 5 David said to the priest, “Certainly women have been kept away from us, just as on previous occasions when I have gone out. The soldiers’ equipment is holy, even on an ordinary journey. How much more so will they be holy today, along with their equipment!” (1 Samuel 21:4-5)
David’s words to Ahimelech reflect his awareness of the fact that men who are at war don’t “make love.” The tragedy is that when David ceased to behave as a warrior should, he also sought to persuade Uriah to do likewise. David must have felt the sting of Nathan’s response:
7 When Uriah came to him, David asked about how Joab and the army were doing and how the campaign was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your home and relax.” When Uriah left the palace, the king sent a gift to him. 9 But Uriah stayed at the door of the palace with all the servants of his lord. He did not go down to his house. 10 So they informed David, “Uriah has not gone down to his house.” So David said to Uriah, “Haven’t you just arrived from a journey? Why haven’t you gone down to your house?” 11 Uriah replied to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah reside in huts, and my lord Joab and my lord’s soldiers are camping in the field. Should I go to my house to eat and drink and have marital relations with my wife? As surely as you are alive, I will not do this thing!” (2 Samuel 11:7-11, emphasis mine)
Third, Joab will soon gently rebuke David for not being present and not participating in Israel’s conflict with the Ammonites:
26 So Joab fought in Rabbah of the Ammonites and captured the royal city. 27 Then Joab sent messengers to David saying, “I have fought in Rabbah and have captured the water supply of the city. 28 So now assemble the rest of the army and besiege the city and capture it. Otherwise I will capture the city and it will be named for me.” 29 So David assembled all the army and went to Rabbah and fought against it and captured it. 30 He took the crown of their king from his head—it was gold, weighed about seventy-five pounds, and held a precious stone—and it was placed on David’s head. He also took from the city a great deal of plunder (2 Samuel 12:26-30).
This was certainly a hollow victory for David, but at least he finally made an appearance at Rabbah. All of this is to say that while David’s sin appears to be sudden, and certainly out of character, it is one that results from David’s neglect of duty and his misuse of power. We shall see this as we consider the sequence of events at his downfall.
David arises from his bed in the evening and strolls about on his roof. Does this mean that he has spent the day in bed? He certainly did not stay home to catch up on his work there. David’s roof would have been the “penthouse apartment” of that day. His palace no doubt had a commanding view of Jerusalem, and the view would have been even better from the roof.178 As he looked out, he beheld a woman bathing. This is not necessarily unusual. I have seen many poor people bathing themselves on the streets of India. (In such circumstances, they don’t do so completely unclothed, either.) The poor do not have the privilege of complete privacy.
When David caught sight of this woman, he was not a gentleman. He did not look away; instead his eyes fixed on her as he contemplated her beauty. He was, at this moment, no better than a peeping tom. I must pause here for a moment to say that what David did was not possible for most men, because they did not live in a palace that allowed them to look down on the world below. But the same sin has become even easier for men and women today. I am speaking of pornography. We may, by only a few clicks of a mouse, look at all the nakedness and perversion we wish on the internet. We can, by merely pushing a certain button on the remote control, see more nudity than David saw on the screen of our television while watching a network broadcast. Countless lives have been destroyed by looking at things we should not see.
Had David not been the king of Israel, this matter would have gone no further. But he was the most powerful man in Israel. What David wanted, he could get, and without as much as a word of protest. David first sent his servants to inquire about this woman’s identity. When he was told that she was married, this was another checkpoint that should have terminated his pursuit. But it was not a barrier for David. He sent and had this woman brought to him, and he slept with her.
It is my opinion that the author makes no attempt to place any of the blame on Bathsheba. We are not told that she acted in a provocative manner. Every step was taken at the initiative of David. Nathan’s rebuke places the entire blame on David, and not on Bathsheba. She was but a young woman, the wife of a foreigner; David was the king. When he summoned someone to come, they came. It was not David’s charms that brought Bathsheba. The two had never met before that night. It was David’s power that brought this event to pass.
When Bathsheba learned that she was pregnant, she sent word to David. David now reached another checkpoint in his life. He could own up to his sin and accept the consequences, or he could attempt a cover-up. David chose the latter. David once again abuses his power. He summons Uriah from the field of battle on the pretext of obtaining a first-hand report on how the war was going. His plan is to bring Uriah home, assuming that Uriah will do what he himself did – sleep with Bathsheba. Then, it would appear as though this child David fathered was Uriah’s child.
It would have worked, too, if Uriah had acted as David did. How tempting it was for Uriah to do as David suggested – to go to his house and to spend the night with his wife. Uriah was a soldier, but he was much more than that; Uriah was a military hero (see 2 Samuel 23:39).179 He was a man who understood duty, and he would not forsake his duties, even to be with his wife and even after David got him drunk (2 Samuel 11:13).
David’s plan to get Uriah to sleep with his wife failed. Uriah would know that the child was not his. David was faced with another decision. Would he finally confess his sin, or would he move to another level of evil? Sad to say, David chose not to confess. It is at this point that David enters into an uncharacteristic partnership with Joab. David considered Joab to be a murderer:
“You know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me—how he murdered two commanders of the Israelite armies, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. During peacetime he struck them down like he would in battle; when he shed their blood as if in battle, he stained his own belt and the sandals on his feet” (1 Kings 2:5).
Sin makes strange bedfellows of men. This alliance between David and Joab would never have happened had David not, for the moment, become like Joab, a man whose violence David despised.
Realizing that Uriah has too much integrity to sleep with his wife during war, David changes his plans. David sends orders to Joab, placing Uriah’s death warrant in this valiant warrior’s hand. This man could be trusted to carry these orders and not even to look at them. What an incredible man Uriah was!
While Uriah is at his best, David has now reached an all-time low. When you stop to think about it, David has now become very much like Saul. Uriah is a loyal servant of David, who would not harm his king, yet the king (David) seeks his life through the same means Saul employed when he sought to kill David:
Then Saul said to David, “Here’s my oldest daughter, Merab. I want to give her to you in marriage. Only be a brave warrior for me and fight the battles of the Lord.” For Saul thought, “There’s no need for me to raise my hand against him. Let it be the hand of the Philistines!” (1 Samuel 18:17, emphasis mine)
David’s orders show his actions to be even more evil than those of Saul in the passage above. Saul hoped that David would die in war; he did not command that David be placed in the heat of the battle and then have his support removed. Saul’s plan hoped for David’s death. David’s plan brought about Uriah’s death at the cost of other innocent lives. David was willing to suffer losses at the hand of the enemy in order to be rid of Uriah. David’s plan gave the enemy the advantage and a momentary victory. What a far cry away David is at this moment from the valiant warrior he once had been.
Joab carried out David’s orders precisely, bringing about Uriah’s death along with other Israelite warriors. When Joab’s report of Uriah’s death reached David, his response is incredibly calloused:
David said to the messenger, “Tell Joab, ‘Don’t let this thing upset you. There is no way to anticipate whom the sword will cut down. Press the battle against the city and conquer it.’ Encourage him with these words” (2 Samuel 11:25).
What a contrast this is to David’s response to the report of the defeat of the Israelites and the deaths of Saul and his sons (see 2 Samuel 1). What a contrast to David’s response to the death of Abner (2 Samuel 3:28-39). When David was told that Uriah was dead, it is as though David had said, “Well, you win a few, and you lose a few.”
I have to wonder if Bathsheba had any idea (at least initially) that it was David who issued the order that Uriah be killed. I seriously doubt that David would ever have told her; nevertheless, it became a matter of public knowledge. David’s plan was to have Uriah killed and then to do the magnanimous thing of taking his wife into his harem. His plan was to accomplish Uriah’s death with only one other person knowing about it – Joab. It did not turn out as David had hoped.
2 “Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing is secret that will not be made known. 3 So then whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms will be proclaimed from the housetops” (Luke 12:2-3; see also Numbers 32:23; 1 Timothy 5:24-25).
When I was a student in seminary, one of the courses I was required to take was homiletics (how to preach). I was very much convinced of the importance of the original languages and theology, but I had little time for methods courses. If I had been Nathan and I knew that I would have to confront David for his sin, I would have taken as many homiletics courses as I could get. It matters, of course, that what you say is true, but it also matters a great deal how you speak the truth.
Nathan confronted David with the truth very carefully. I don’t know how long Nathan took to prepare this message, but his approach was masterful, and it accomplished his task. He confronted David with his sin, brought him to repentance, and stayed alive in the process. David had grown up as a shepherd. I think he loved sheep. When he kept his father’s flock, David may very well have had a pet lamb. Nathan tells David about a poor man who owned only one lamb, a pet lamb. The lamb was like a daughter to him, like a member of the household. The man would carry this lamb in his arms and feed it at the table. A rich man who had a large flock of sheep had a visitor come and stay for dinner. Rather than killing one of his sheep, the rich man took the poor man’s pet lamb, killed it, and fed it to his guest.
Nathan had chosen his words well, not to mention the fact that God’s Spirit was piercing David’s heart. David was furious. This fellow should die! David was probably saying that he’d like to get his hands on the fellow. By law, the man could only be required to pay back the poor man four-fold, but that would never replace what he had lost.
It is only now that Nathan drives his message home. The real villain was David. It was not a little lamb that had been stolen from a poor man, but one young wife, who had been taken from a man under David’s authority. As the rich man in the story had many sheep, David had many wives. As the rich man took what wasn’t his, David took Uriah’s wife. If David felt the rich thief deserved to die, how much more did David deserve to die for what he had done to Uriah?
One thing has troubled me about Nathan’s rebuke. Why was it so late in coming? Why didn’t God confront David before he sinned with Bathsheba? Why didn’t God rebuke David before he had Uriah killed? Why did God wait so long to act? I think we have some hints in the Bible. In 2 Peter 3, we read:
8 Now, dear friends, do not let this one thing escape your notice, that a single day is like a thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years are like a single day. 9 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:8-9).
From this we learn that God delays bringing judgment upon men as a manifestation of His grace. God delays judgment (He is longsuffering) in order to give men the opportunity to repent.
We find another reason in Genesis 15:
13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. 14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit” (Genesis 15:13-16, emphasis mine).
Rather than “nipping sin in the bud,” God sometimes delays His judgment in order to allow sin to come to full bloom. In Proverbs, we find many warnings. The young man or woman (“my son”) is encouraged to avoid sin by being told where that wrong path will lead. For example, in Proverbs 7, we are told a story about a nave young man and an adulterous woman. At the conclusion, the nave person is told:
24 So now, sons, listen to me;
and pay attention to the words I speak.
25 Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways;
do not wander into her pathways;
26 for she has brought down many fatally wounded;
and all those she has slain are many.
27 Her house is the way to the grave,
going down to the chambers of death (Proverbs 7:24-27, emphasis mine).
Some of us don’t learn things the easy way – by being warned in advance; instead, we have to learn the hard way. It is at these times that God allows our sin to play itself out to its fully developed form. Then we can see for ourselves where such sin leads. God allowed David’s sin to grow, unchecked, until his uncontrolled lust brought about the death of several Israelites and devastating consequences for David’s family and the nation. No wonder the Bible tells us,
The payoff [i.e., end result or consequence] of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
There is yet another reason, I believe, for God’s delay in sending Nathan to confront David. It is not that God waited to begin dealing with David. God waited to send Nathan to confront David until He had sufficiently prepared David for repentance. David himself tells us this in Psalm 32:
3 When I refused to confess my sin,
my whole body wasted away,
while I groaned in pain all day long.
4 For day and night you tormented me;
you tried to destroy me in the intense heat of summer. (Selah)
5 Then I confessed my sin;
I no longer covered up my wrongdoing.
I said, “I will confess my rebellious acts to the Lord.”
And then you forgave my sins. (Selah) (Psalm 32:3-5)
God waited to directly rebuke David until his spirit had been adequately tenderized and sensitized to his sin. David’s heart had been condemning him long before Nathan spoke his words of rebuke. I believe Nathan’s rebuke was almost a relief to David. Now, at last, his sin was out in the open and could be confessed and forgiven.
Sometimes I am asked to define what real repentance looks like. I usually tell folks that while repentance may be difficult to describe in advance, it is easy to recognize. You will know true repentance when you see it. There is no mistaking repentance in David’s words and actions:
Then David exclaimed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord!” Nathan replied to David, “Yes, and the Lord has forgiven your sin. You are not going to die” (2 Samuel 12:13).
David truly was a “man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22). In spite of his terrible sins, David loved God, and he listened to Nathan’s rebuke. His response is only one short sentence. There are no excuses and no qualifications. David admitted he was guilty of the charges Nathan spelled out. David will elaborate on this in Psalms 32 and 51, but it all comes down to a very simple admission of guilt.
David was forgiven (12:13). He should have died for his sins, and he did not. But there were going to be painful consequences for his sin.
Nonetheless, because you have treated the Lord with such contempt in this matter, the son who will be born to you will certainly die” (2 Samuel 12:14).
Not only would David’s son die, but David’s family and his kingdom would suffer as well. The consequences were closely linked to David’s sins:
9 “‘Why have you shown contempt for the word of the Lord by doing evil in my sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and you have taken his wife as your own. You have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 So now the sword will never depart from your house. For you have despised me by taking the wife of Uriah the Hittite as your own.’ 11 This is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to bring disaster on you from inside your own house. Right before your eyes I will take your wives and hand them over to your companion. He will have sexual relations with your wives in broad daylight. Although you have acted in secret, I will do this thing before all Israel, and in broad daylight’” (2 Samuel 12:9-12).
The consequences for David’s sins were spelled out and fulfilled precisely. Because David used the sword to strike down Uriah the Hittite, God said the sword would not depart from David’s dynasty. The sword was often employed in David’s dynasty. His son, Absalom, would kill another son, Amnon. Absalom would seek to overthrow David, and thus David would have to fight against Absalom and his forces to defend his kingdom. Joab would kill Absalom. Adonijah would seek to establish himself as king in David’s place, and Solomon would eventually have him executed (1 Kings 1 and 2).
Because David took another man’s wife privately, God said that another man would take David’s wives publicly. And so it happened:
20 Then Absalom said to Ahithophel, “Give us your advice. What should we do?” 21 Ahithophel replied to Absalom, “Have sex with your father’s concubines whom he left to care for the palace. All Israel will hear that you have made yourself repulsive to your father. Then your followers will be motivated.” 22 So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and Absalom had sex with his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel (2 Samuel 16:20-22, emphasis mine).
Because David regarded the Lord with contempt, the son Bathsheba had conceived by David would die. And while this son did die, David set a very positive example for all of us in the way he handled it. From the time the child took ill until the moment he died, David fasted and prayed, if perchance God might relent concerning his death. When the boy died, the servants were afraid to tell David, for fear he might harm himself. If he was so distraught when the infant was sick, how might he react when he learned the boy had died? David noticed the servants were whispering and discerned that the boy had died. When he asked them directly if the boy was dead, they answered that he was.
David’s servants were shocked to see the king get up from the ground, bathe, change his clothes, eat, and then go to the house of the Lord to worship. They asked him why he had responded as he had. David told them that he knew God might take pity on the child when He observed his repentance. But now that the child was dead, David accepted this as from the Lord, confident that though the child could not come to him, he would someday join this child in heaven.180
It is not long before the promised consequences of David’s sin begin to unfold. The first incident is the rape of David’s daughter, Tamar,181 by her half-brother, Amnon. Amnon “fell in love”182 with Tamar, and thanks to the counsel of his “friend,” Jonadab, Amnon persuaded David that he was ill and that having his sister serve him a meal would be therapeutic. Why David could not sense the potential risk in this is a wonder to me, but I suspect that his dullness in this area was related to his own moral collapse. (David may well have been suspicious and then dismissed it as a thought originating from his own guilt-stricken conscience.)
I think it is significant that Tamar was forcibly assaulted. I am convinced that it was an abuse of David’s power that brought about his sexual union with Bathsheba. The woman was not “invited” to David’s home; David sent messengers who brought her to him. And now, it is David’s son – his oldest son – who violated David’s daughter and his half-sister. It was David who ordered Tamar to go to Amnon’s house. Amnon, too, used his power to accomplish his sin – not just his physical power, but his authority. Amnon ordered all the servants out of his room. What was Tamar to do? David now came to appreciate what it felt like to have a loved one misused by one in authority. Unwittingly, David was a participant in this wicked scheme, which only added to his suffering.
Jonadab’s plan worked. Granted, he does not spell out all of the details, but Amnon seems to have no difficulty grasping what Jonadab meant. The pleas of Tamar are ignored, but after Amnon has succeeded in humbling his half-sister, he comes to despise her. Unlike David, he has no sense of honor at all. He will not marry her, as Tamar believed he could, and as she begged him to do. He has Tamar thrown out of his house and locked out. His cruelty is beyond description.
When David learned of this incident, he was fuming with anger. Originally, I thought that David did nothing at all. But verses 21 and 22 seem to imply otherwise:
21 Now king David heard about all these things and was very angry. 22 But Absalom said nothing to Amnon, either bad or good, for Absalom hated Amnon because he had humiliated his sister Tamar (2 Samuel 13:21-22).
Both David and Absalom were furious, but Absalom kept it all inside. He said nothing whatever to Amnon, bad or good. I take it that David’s response was different. I think David had much to say to Amnon. But in spite of his words, David seems to have done nothing about it. At the very least, he could have sent Amnon away, or he could have insisted that Amnon take Tamar as his wife. He could have at least made his disapproval very public, as he had done when Joab murdered Abner (2 Samuel 3:27-39).
Absalom waited two years to avenge the wrong Amnon had committed against his sister. He persuaded David to send Amnon, along with his other sons, to a celebration he was holding at his ranch at sheep shearing time. Once again, David seems to have some doubts about this, but he finally gives in, thereby becoming an unwitting participant in this killing. From the initial reports David received, he feared that all of his sons had been killed by Absalom, but this was not the case. Jonadab knew full well this was not the case, and he tells David so. Just as he facilitated the rape of Tamar, Jonadab seems to have been aware of Absalom’s plan to kill Amnon, and yet he did nothing to stop either crime. Jonadab is the kind of “friend” no one needs.
After Absalom had Amnon killed, he fled to his grandfather, King Talmai of Geshur (2 Samuel 3:3; 13:37). Even though David was consoled over the death of Amnon and yearned to go to Absalom, he did not do so. Absalom remained in Geshur for three years. Finally, Joab orchestrated events so that David agreed to allow Absalom to return to Israel, but still David would not see his son face to face. By the time David was willing to meet with Absalom, their relationship was already badly damaged.
Absalom was certainly a logical candidate for king, if matters of the heart were not considered. He was good looking, bright, and he had a charming way of dealing with people. Somewhere along the way Absalom set his mind on taking the kingdom from his father. Just as Absalom had quietly waited to kill Amnon, he was also patient and deliberate in his plan to snatch the kingdom from the hand of his father, David:
2 Now Absalom used to get up early and stand beside the road that led to the city gate. Whenever anyone came by who had a complaint to bring to the king for arbitration, Absalom would call out to him, “What city are you from?” He would answer, “I am from one of the tribes of Israel.” 3 Absalom would then say to him, “Look, your claims are legitimate and appropriate. But there is no representative of the king who will listen to you.” 4 Absalom would then say, “If only they would make me a judge in the land! Then everyone who had a judicial complaint could come to me and I would make sure he receives a just settlement.” 5 When someone approached to bow before him, Absalom would extend his hand and embrace him and kiss him. 6 Absalom acted this way toward everyone in Israel who would come to the king for justice. In this way Absalom won the loyalty of the citizens of Israel (2 Samuel 15:2-6).
It isn’t difficult to understand what had happened and how Absalom capitalized on it. The people would bring their disputes or concerns to the king (1 Kings 3:16-28), or his representative, for a judgment. David may have become “too busy” (or too important) for such matters, and a bureaucracy may have been established to handle these matters. Those who have waited in line to transfer a car title or to renew their driver’s license know how frustrating this can become. A shrewd man like Absalom saw this as his opportunity to gain favor from those who were discontented with David’s government.
It can hardly be summed up better than to say that Absalom became the typical politician. He spent time among the people, promising them that he would give them what they wanted, if he were only king. He endeared others to himself by giving the appearance that he was a humble servant of the people and not an arrogant king who had no time for the little people. The people loved it; they loved him. And so it was that Absalom managed to turn the hearts of the people away from David to himself.
Absalom also gathered leaders about him who would strengthen his position. He recruited Ahithophel the Gilonite, who was formerly David’s trusted advisor. David realized too late what was going on. It was through the word of a messenger that David was informed that a full-scale revolt was going on, under the leadership of Absalom. The only thing left to do was to flee from Jerusalem with the hope of escaping long enough to regroup, so that Absalom’s forces might be defeated and his plot foiled.
Leaving only a skeleton crew behind, David fled from Jerusalem, along with his family and those loyal to him. Here is another time in David’s life when his true friends show their colors. Ittai the Gittite refused to leave the side of David, even though David encouraged him to do so (15:19-22). Hushai the Arkite served David by going back to Jerusalem and claiming to be a loyal follower of Absalom, thereby affording him the opportunity to frustrate the counsel of Ahithophel (15:31-37). Ziba, the servant of Mephibosheth, met David with donkeys and a supply of food for the king and those with him (16:1-4).
Shimei was a Benjamite who resented the fact that David had replaced the dynasty of Saul. He falsely accused David of shedding the blood of those in Saul’s household. Abishai, the son of Zeruiah and the brother of Joab and Asahel, wanted to kill Shimei on the spot, but David would not allow it. David wanted to be certain that God was not speaking through Shimei.
Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, Absalom arrived with his men and took the throne. His first decision was what to do about David. The advice of Ahithophel was directly contradicted by that of Hushai (David’s supporter). The conflicting counsel of these two advisors can be summarized as follows:
Ahithophel’s Advice |
Hushai’s Counsel |
Pursue David immediately |
Wait to attack |
Use a select force of men |
Assemble the entire army |
Ahithophel will lead the pursuit |
Absalom should lead the attack |
Kill only David |
Kill David and his army |
Even though Ahithophel’s counsel was valued almost as much as prophecy (16:23), God superintended these events so that Hushai’s counsel prevailed. This gave David and his followers the time they needed to make their escape and to prepare for battle. Ahithophel realized that Absalom would never prevail over David once he embraced the plan Hushai proposed, so he went to his home, put his affairs in order, and took his own life.
David divided his men into three forces, led by Joab, Abishai, and Ittai the Gittite. David intended to march with his army but was persuaded that this time it would be best for all if he remained behind. David’s instruction to his commanders was the worst order he ever gave in war:
The king gave this order to Joab, Abishai, and Ittai: “For my sake deal gently with the young man Absalom.” Now the entire army was listening when the king gave all the leaders this order concerning Absalom (2 Samuel 18:5).
The folly of this order is staggering. It was sending his men to their own death. They are to risk their lives fighting an enemy that is seeking to kill them, yet they are ordered not to harm the one who is behind it all. Anyone knows that the commander of the enemy’s forces is the primary target in battle:
2 David then sent out the army—a third under the leadership of Joab, a third under the leadership of Joab’s brother Abishai son of Zeruiah, and a third under the leadership of Ittai the Gittite. The king said to the army, “I too will indeed march out with you.” 3 But the army said, “You should not do this. For if we should have to make a rapid retreat, they won’t be too concerned about us. Even if half of us should die, they won’t be too concerned about us. But you are like ten thousand of us! So it is better if you remain in the city for support.” 4 Then the king said to them, “I will do whatever seems best to you.” So the king stayed beside the gate, while all the army marched out by hundreds and by thousands (2 Samuel 18:2-4; see also 1 Kings 22:29-33).
Our own history should teach us that an army should never be sent to fight a war it is commanded not to win. Fortunately for David, this is an order that Joab will ignore.
The battle took place in the forest of Ephraim, and David’s army prevailed over the army of Absalom. God used the terrain as an ally. We are told that “the forest consumed more soldiers than the sword devoured that day” (18:8). Providentially, Absalom encountered David’s men, but as he was riding his mule, his head caught in the limbs of an oak tree, plucking him from his mount and leaving him hanging from the tree. David’s men saw him hanging there but would not strike him because of David’s orders. Joab realized the foolishness of this order183 and killed Absalom himself. When messengers came to David to report their victory, it became obvious that David cared more about Absalom than his own warriors. When David continued to grieve over Absalom, his warriors were ashamed and began to leave quietly, as though they had done wrong. Joab rebuked David and told him that if he wanted to keep his army and his throne, he had better make himself accessible to his soldiers and show some appreciation. To David’s credit, he took Joab’s advice, and David’s men were encouraged.
David’s return to Jerusalem created a very awkward situation for those who had previously rejected him as their king. David took the initiative to send word to Zadok and Abiathar the priests, urging them to tell the elders not to delay any longer in welcoming him back to the throne. He also made Amasa (who had been the commander of Absalom’s army, but who was also a relative) the commander of his army, in place of Joab.
The men of Judah were quick to welcome David back, but the remaining tribes of Israel were much more reluctant. As David and those with him crossed the Jordan, Ziba, the servant of Saul’s house, came to assist the king. Shimei, who had cursed David as he was fleeing from Jerusalem, was profuse with his apologies. Abishai wanted to execute him (again), but David showed mercy to Shimei, assuring him that he would not die for what he had done. Others came to greet David as well. The men of Israel then complained because David’s welcoming party was made up primarily of men from his own tribe – Judah. There were strong words of contention between the men of Judah and the men of Israel, widening the gap in their relationship and setting the stage for the divided kingdom.
Sheba, a Benjamite, took advantage of the strife between Judah and the other tribes of Israel and announced a rebellion against David and Judah. David returned to his palace and ordered Amasa to gather the men of Judah so that they could squelch the rebellion of Sheba. For some reason, Amasa took longer than the appointed three days David had set. David therefore sent Abishai (Joab’s brother) after Sheba, along with Joab and the forces of Judah. When they came upon Amasa, Joab stepped forward to greet him. Joab caught Amasa off guard and stabbed him with his dagger. Joab was once again the commander of the army. Sheba was put to death, and the battle between Judah and Israel ended. David once again was king, as Joab was once again commander of his army. But David’s kingdom was never the same as it had been before his sin.
In chapter 21 of 2 Samuel, we come across a very interesting (and somewhat puzzling) event. After David had resumed his reign over Israel, the nation suffered a three-year famine. It was obvious that God was seeking to get David’s attention. When David inquired of the Lord, he was informed that the famine was due to Saul’s slaughter of the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites should have been annihilated by the Israelites, but they were deceived and foolishly entered into a covenant with them that guaranteed their safety. Apparently, Saul sought to cast this covenant aside by killing some of the Gibeonites. The solution to this injustice required the death of seven of Saul’s descendants. When these seven were put to death and their bones – along with the bones of Saul and Jonathan – were buried in the grave of Kish, the famine ended.
Next we read of David’s final battles. David’s physical strength was waning, and others had to step up to fill the gap. David fought his Goliath years before, and now it became the task of some of his faithful men to carry on as David had. While Saul could only infect his soldiers with his own fears, David’s men became mighty men of war. The courage of his men was a tribute to David, their leader (21:15-22).
The psalm that is recorded in 2 Samuel 22 is also recorded in the Old Testament as Psalm 18. I believe it is repeated here because its message is particularly pertinent to the context. As one looks back on David’s life, and on his many military victories, this psalm helps us to see David’s success in its proper perspective. The thrust of the psalm is to give God the glory for David’s victories:
35 He trains my hands for battle;
my arms can bend even the strongest bow.
36 You give me your protective shield;
your willingness to help enables me to prevail.
37 You widen my path;
my feet do not slip.
38 I chase my enemies and destroy them;
I do not turn back until I wipe them out.
39 I wipe them out and beat them to death;
they cannot get up;
they fall at my feet.
40 You give me strength for battle;
you make my foes kneel before me.
41 You make my enemies retreat;
I destroy those who hate me.
42 They cry out, but there is no one to help them;
they cry out to the Lord, but he does not answer them.
43 I grind them as fine as the dust of the ground;
I crush them and stomp on them like clay in the streets.
44 You rescue me from a hostile army;
you preserve me as a leader of nations;
people over whom I had no authority are now my subjects.
45 Foreigners are powerless before me;
when they hear of my exploits, they submit to me.
46 Foreigners lose their courage;
they shake with fear as they leave their strongholds.
47 The Lord is alive!
My protector is praiseworthy!
The God who delivers me is exalted as king!
48 The one true God completely vindicates me;
he makes nations submit to me;
49 He delivers me from my enemies;
you snatch me away from those who attack me;
you rescue me from violent men.
50 So I will give you thanks, O Lord, before the nations!
I will sing praises to you.
51 He gives his chosen king magnificent victories;
he is faithful to his chosen ruler,
to David and to his descendants forever” (2 Samuel 22:35-51, emphasis mine).
The author of 2 Samuel wants to make it very clear that it is God who is the hero and that David is only God’s chosen instrument.
The first seven verses of chapter 23 are some of David’s final words. Here, David does not speak as a warrior, but as a writer and singer of songs. He is assured that God’s Spirit has spoken through him in the things he has spoken and written:
2 The Lord’s spirit spoke through me;
his word was on my tongue.
3 The God of Israel spoke,
the protector of Israel spoke to me.
The one who rules fairly among men,
the one who rules in the fear of God (2 Samuel 23:2-3).
It is because of God’s covenant with David that he has been so successful. Those who are evil face an entirely different fate. They will experience the judgment of God (23:6-7).
The remainder of chapter 23 is the “hall of fame” of those warriors who fought valiantly for David and for Israel. The point of this seems to be that David’s victories, though significant, were not solely David’s doings. In chapter 22, we are reminded that it is really God who is Israel’s king, and it is He who wins their battles. Now, we are reminded that David’s victories were also a team effort. These mighty men who are listed are a part of the reason why David was so successful in battle. Numbered last among these mighty men of war is Uriah the Hittite, the soldier whose wife David took for himself, the soldier whose life David took in an attempt to cover his sin.
The final incident in 2 Samuel is a very important event for David and for Israel. It is David’s second major sin. In some ways, this is even more willful than David’s sin with Bathsheba:
1 The Lord’s anger again raged against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go count Israel and Judah.” 2 The king told Joab, the general of his army, “Go through all the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and muster the army, so I may know the size of the army.” 3 Joab replied to the king, “May the Lord your God make the army a hundred times larger right before the eyes of my lord the king! But why does my master the king want to do this?” 4 But the king’s edict stood, despite the objections of Joab and the leaders of the army. So Joab and the leaders of the army left the king’s presence in order to muster the Israelite army (2 Samuel 24:1-4).
1 An adversary opposed Israel, inciting David to count how many warriors Israel had. 2 David told Joab and the leaders of the army, “Go, count the number of warriors from Beersheba to Dan. Then bring back a report to me so I may know how many we have.” 3 Joab replied, “May the Lord make his army a hundred times larger! My master, O king, do not all of them serve my master? Why does my master want to do this? Why bring judgment on Israel?” 4 But the king’s edict stood, despite Joab’s objections. So Joab left and traveled throughout Israel before returning to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 21:1-4).
These parallel accounts in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles give us a more complete picture of what took place, so far as the contributing factors are concerned. In 2 Samuel, we read that God was angry with Israel and that He prompted David to act in a way that would bring judgment on the people. First Chronicles tells us that “an adversary” opposed Israel. In my opinion, the “adversary” is Satan.184 In this incident, we see that a man’s sin is a personal choice, for which he is held accountable. Nevertheless, Satan may be “fanning the flames,” as he is inclined to do. And behind it all, God is completely sovereign. As in the first two chapters of the Book of Job, God may allow Satan to inflict or influence someone, so that His (God’s) sovereign purposes are realized. David’s sin did bring divine discipline on the nation Israel, but our text makes it clear that they deserved to suffer because of their sin as a nation. I find it very difficult to do more than one task at a time (for example, listening to a Christian CD, while writing this sermon); God is able to do many things at one time. He is able to give men, and even Satan, a measure of freedom, and yet have the outcome achieve His foreordained plans and purposes.
22 “Israelite men, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man clearly attested to you by God with powerful deeds, wonders, and miraculous signs that God performed through him among you, just as you yourselves know— 23 this man, who was handed over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you executed by nailing him to a cross at the hands of Gentiles. 24 But God raised him up, having released him from the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:22-24, emphasis mine).
From this point on, we view David’s sin from his perspective. David decided to number the Israelites. This was something that was not necessarily evil, in and of itself (see Numbers 1:1-2; 4:1-2; 26:1-4), but there was this instruction given in Exodus 30:
11 The Lord spoke to Moses: 12 “When you take a census of the Israelites according to their number, then each man is to pay a ransom for his life to the Lord when you number them, so that there will be no plague among them when you number them” (Exodus 30:11-12).
We cannot be certain of the exact reason why numbering Israel was wrong at that moment. It did not seem necessary, and it may have been done only to bolster David’s ego. We know that it was wrong, and even a man as spiritually insensitive as Joab knew it, along with other leaders.
David would not be talked out of his intended course of action, and thus he ordered Joab to go ahead with the numbering. After almost a year, Joab reported the number of soldiers who were available to the king. It was then that David was troubled by his conscience for what he had done. David’s stricken conscience was probably due to the fact that God seems to have struck Israel with some kind of plague (1 Chronicles 21:7). When David confessed his sin and consulted with the prophet Gad, the Lord gave David his choice as to which judgment he would choose:
12 “Go, tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am offering you three forms of judgment. Pick one of them and I will carry it out against you.’” 13 Gad went to David and told him, “Shall seven years of famine come upon your land? Or shall you flee for three months from your enemy with him in hot pursuit? Or shall there be three days of plague in your land? Now decide what should I tell the one who sent me” (2 Samuel 24:12-13).
David’s choice of judgment revealed that he was still a “man after God’s heart.” He chose to suffer three days of plague, not because it was the shortest punishment time-wise, but because this would come directly from the hand of God:
David said to Gad, “I am very upset! I prefer that we be attacked by the Lord, for his mercy is great; I do not want to be attacked by men!” (2 Samuel 24:14)
The plague came upon Israel for the appointed time, and 70,000 men died throughout the kingdom. The plague seems to have spread across Israel, because when the angel was stretching out his hand over Jerusalem (for the plague to fall on that city), the Lord stayed the judgment, and the city of Jerusalem was spared. The angel was near the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite. David cried out to God that this punishment was due to his sin. He prayed that judgment might fall on him and on his family, and not on these people. Gad instructed David to build an altar for the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah. David purchased the land from Araunah, built an altar, and then offered burnt sacrifices and peace offerings. It was on this very spot (or somewhere nearby) that Abraham had offered up his son Isaac (Genesis 22:2). It was also on this spot that Solomon would build the temple (2 Chronicles 3:1).
As I have considered this text, I have a couple of concerns I must share with you before I move on to the application of the text. To begin, what we have observed in the White House in recent years is all too similar to what took place in the palace of King David centuries ago. As a result, I fear that this text is not the least bit shocking to us. We are not horrified that a man who professes to believe in God would be unfaithful and engage in sexual immorality – indeed, that he would use his position and power as a great leader to do so. Compared to recent revelations of presidential misconduct, David’s story may hardly seem shocking at all. A friend of mine from the Third World told me that the kind of conduct we have seen in our country is expected of political leaders in other parts of the world. I must say, therefore, that we should not judge David’s actions (or the actions of our contemporaries) in the light of our culture, but rather in the light of God’s Word. David’s conduct was appalling; if to no one else, it was appalling to God.
Furthermore, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard men use this text regarding David’s sins as the justification for their own sins. When confronted with their sin, all too many respond something like this: “Well, I’m only human and, after all, David sinned.” The inference usually is, “Well, David sinned, confessed, and then was let off easy by God, so why should God deal this way with me?”
I must say several things in response to this kind of argument. First, Paul deals very specifically with this kind of logic in Romans 6 and also in 1 Corinthians 6:
1 What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:1-2)
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, 13 and do not present your members to sin as instruments to be used for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness (Romans 6:12-13).
21 So what benefit did you then reap from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now, freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit leading to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the payoff of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:21-23).
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
God’s grace is never an excuse for sin. I have never yet seen a Christian who knowingly sinned and came away with a smile on his face, smugly satisfied for having done so. The wages of sin is death. Satan promises much, but he gives little. The price for sin is high, and the ride is short.
Second, when we read the whole story of David’s life after his sin, we become painfully aware of just how costly his sin was. David did repent of his sins, and God did forgive them, but the consequences of his sins were great (2 Samuel 12:13-14). David’s son died. David’s daughter was raped by one of his sons. Another son seeks to take the throne from David. Also, all too many Israelites died.
In recent days, many Christian leaders have fallen into sexual sin (along with other sins). Some of these men have sincerely repented; the confessions of others leave some doubt. All too often, those who have fallen seem to think that all they have to do is to “repent” and then everything will go back to the way it was – that somehow they can “turn back the clock” on their sin and its consequences. It was never the same for David after his sin, and it will never be the same for you, or for me either. Sin always comes at a cost that exceeds any momentary pleasures it may promise, or even provide.
What a difference there is between this description of David’s sin, which we find in our Holy Bibles, and the version of it we see coming out of Hollywood. Sin is not glorified or glamorized. The consequences are not overlooked, nor its pleasures overrated. Our text was meant to warn us about sin and not to tempt us to sin.
Having said this, there are some other important lessons for us to learn from our text. Let me conclude by suggesting just a few areas of application.
First, we see that even though man’s sin is evil and has very painful consequences, God can still cause what we meant for evil to be used for good. We saw this with the sins of Joseph’s brothers:
As for you, you meant to harm me, but God intended it for a good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people, as you can see this day (Genesis 50:20).
While the first child born to David and Bathsheba died, their son Solomon was loved of the Lord and chosen to be the next king of Israel. David’s sin of numbering the Israelites cost many their lives, but it resulted in the purchase of the place where the temple was to be built by Solomon. God is able to take the sins of men (without causing or justifying them) and turn them into instruments of His blessings. God is able to cause all things to work together for good, to those who love Him, and who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). Man’s sin cannot thwart the eternal purposes of God.
Second, covering up our sins only adds to our sin; confessing our sins and repenting of them is the only cure. David sought to cover up his sin by committing murder. It only made him guiltier. It was only after David confessed his sins that he experienced God’s forgiveness and reconciliation.
Third, our text has a great deal to teach us about leadership, especially about bad leadership. While David exemplified good leadership when he stood up to Goliath, he also provides us with many illustrations of bad leadership. David abused his position and power in taking Bathsheba and in killing her husband, Uriah the Hittite. A poor and powerless man could not have done what David did. David frequently failed in his leadership as a father. David’s failure to lead in his family cost his daughter Tamar her innocence and shattered her life. Surely David should have seen the warning signs in what Amnon requested. David failed to lead in a righteous manner in dealing with the sin of Amnon. David’s failure to discipline Amnon was partly to blame for Absalom’s rage and vengeance. David failed to deal with Absalom as he should have. David was virtually forced to deal with this son, even though he loved him deeply. And then, of course, David sent his men to fight with Absalom and his army but urged his forces not to hurt this rebel.
Fourth, we learn that there really is no such thing as a private sin. How many times in the past few years have we been told that the sins of the highest political leader in our nation were “private,” and thus not a matter of public concern? David’s sin was private, and it had everything to do with his public life and leadership. Sin undermined David’s authority and his administration. David’s sin cost not only the life of a military hero – Uriah the Hittite – but also the lives of some of his other valiant warriors. David’s sin was devastating to his family. David’s sins divided the nation and put Israelites at war with fellow-Israelites. Private sin has everything to do with public policy, with public ministry, and with politics. Let me remind you of God’s words to David:
“‘Although you have acted in secret, I will do this thing before all Israel, and in broad daylight’” (2 Samuel 12:12).
When I was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary, we were having a very special chapel service in honor of the graduating class. It was a very solemn occasion, at least for the administration. But a couple of the students had made a banner that was rolled up like a scroll. They suspended it above the curtain, out of sight, and had a fishing line attached so that it could be released from the back of the auditorium. At a very solemn moment, the banner was released, and it unrolled before the eyes of all. It read something like this: “Is This The Best The Grace Of God Can Do?” Apparently a recent speaker had used these words, and now they were being applied to the senior class.
There was a certain measure of truth to those words. How easy it is for seminarians, after years of studying the original languages, theology, and homiletics to think that we are really something special. That’s exactly the way David felt, just before he fell. Our text should remind us that even the greatest men in the Bible were men who had feet of clay (as a friend of mine would say, “I’m clay all the way up to my arm pits.”). The best men who have ever lived were still sinners, whose eternal salvation was due to God’s grace alone, and the free gift of salvation that God gives all who believe, apart from works.
This ought to warn us about idolizing men. That was the problem with Israel’s desire to have a king. It was idolatrous. They wanted someone they could see, who would go before them and fight their battles. No man is worthy of being our idol. Only God deserves our worship and adoration as God. David, though a great king, could never fulfill the hopes of Israel for the “perfect king,” the promised deliverer (Genesis 3:15; 49:10; Deuteronomy 18:18-19; 2 Samuel 7:14-16). Only the Messiah could fill such a role. David sacrificed others, for his own self-interest. Jesus set aside His self-interest and sacrificed Himself, so that we might have eternal life:
5 You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had,
6 who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
8 He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:5-8)
He alone is the One we should worship and adore as King of kings and Lord of lords. He alone is the One to whom we should entrust ourselves for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life.
176 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on March 25, 2001.
177 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without (continued) cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
178 We know from personal experience that the roof of the “King David Hotel” in Jerusalem has a commanding view of the city.
179 My thanks to Virginia Oubre, who reminded me that Bathsheba’s father, Eliam, was also a military hero (2 Samuel 23:34), and that her grandfather was Ahithophel, David’s counselor, who abandoned David and became Absalom’s advisor (2 Samuel 15:12ff.). Did the fact that Uriah was the husband of Ahithophel’s granddaughter have anything to do with this? I suspect it did (compare 2 Samuel 3:6-12).
180 This is an issue that requires more time and explanation than we can provide in this study. For a more detailed exposition of 2 Samuel 12 and the death of David’s son, please consult my lesson on the Biblical Studies Foundation web site. It can be found at: /docs/ot/books/2sa/deffin/2sam-12.htm
181 We know from 2 Samuel 3:2-3 that Amnon was David’s firstborn son, whose mother was Ahinoam the Jezreelite. His third son was Absalom, the son of Maacah, daughter of King Talmai of Geshur. Further, we learn from 2 Samuel 13:1 that Tamar was Absalom’s sister. She would thus be the half-sister of Amnon.
182 For those who seek to overwork the fine points of the Greek language, I should warn you that the word for “love” in 2 Samuel 13:1-2 in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) is agape. My point is that we need to be careful not to assume that “agape love” is always “the highest form of love.”
183 David’s foolish order here reminds me a bit of the oath Saul foolishly imposed on his men, causing them not to be nourished in the time of battle – see 1 Samuel 14:24ff.
184 In the King James Bible, this Hebrew word occurs twenty-seven times. Nineteen times it is rendered “Satan.” Seven times it is rendered “adversary,” and in two of these instances the “adversary” is God (Numbers 22:22-23). Thus, most translations render this word “Satan” in our text.
1 Kings 1-11185
This past presidential election certainly kept us all on edge for several weeks. I was watching the election returns with friends when it looked as though Al Gore had won. A few hours later it appeared that George Bush was the winner, and Al Gore even conceded the election. Then, the count became so close that Mr. Gore reversed his concession and the race seemed to be a draw. After counting and re-counting the ballots (along with a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States), George Bush was declared the winner. These were uncertain moments for many people.
The situation was something like this nearly 3,000 years ago when David was the king of Israel.186 His health and vitality were diminishing daily, and it was only a matter of time until his death. It was assumed that one of David’s sons would become the next king, but no one knew for certain which son it would be. Privately, David had told Bathsheba that Solomon would reign in his place, but he had not publicly installed Solomon as his replacement. David’s failure to step down and to act decisively in installing Solomon on the throne created a leadership vacuum that Adonijah, one of David’s other sons, attempted to fill. Adonijah managed to convince some of Israel’s key leaders to give him their support, and the celebration of his “victory” was already underway.
These were tense moments for the nation Israel, and even more so for Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, and for those who remained loyal to David. If Adonijah was successful in his efforts to seize the throne, he would almost certainly kill every descendant of David who might be a rival for the throne. The first two chapters of 1 Kings are thus filled with suspense and intrigue, as Solomon finally prevails and secures his position as the king of Israel.
The story of Solomon is, in many ways, a wonderful success story. He is the wisest man who ever lived. His wealth and power were known to all who lived in Israel and most of those who lived beyond its borders. Solomon was a prolific writer, composing 1,005 songs and 3,000 proverbs. In spite of all this, Solomon’s life ended as a disaster. His many foreign wives succeeded in turning his heart from the Lord, which cost Solomon’s son much of his kingdom and divided Israel for centuries to come. The lessons we learn from Solomon are largely negative lessons – how not to make the same mistakes Solomon did.
The parallels between the days in which Solomon lived and our own times are many, and they are striking. Let us listen carefully to the words of the first 11 chapters of the Book of 1 Kings, and let us learn from Solomon’s mistakes, rather than repeat them ourselves.
I was tempted to title this section, “Over the Hill, But Not Passing the Torch.” As I read the first four verses of chapter 1, I see a very different “David” from the valiant warrior who stood up against Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. Here is a very old man, who is very near the end of his life. He is lying in his bed shivering, virtually oblivious to the daily affairs of his kingdom. He has a beautiful young woman to attend him, who did serve him, but who in my opinion was intended to be far more than a nurse. She was a concubine, which events will clearly substantiate. The fact that David did not “know” her is told to the reader as an indication of David’s age and physical strength. He was a man who no longer was able to function in many areas of his life.
There is no indictment here, no words of condemnation, as though David were at fault for his diminished capacity. The fault lies in David’s failure to step aside, and more particularly in his failure to designate who would follow him as the king of Israel. This man, whose right to rule had earlier been challenged (by Absalom, and probably others), was not eager to let go, and yet he was not really in control either.
Several factors seem to have contributed to Adonijah’s bid to become Israel’s next king. (1) He was apparently David’s oldest surviving son. (2) He was a very attractive and winsome fellow (1 Kings 1:6).
(3) Adonijah was able to assemble an elite group of men who served as his bodyguards (1:5). (4) He was a son that David failed to discipline or “reign in.” I take it that he had never been told, “No,” and so he was used to having his way (1:6). A child who had no respect for, nor fear of, his father would be more inclined to try to replace him. Had David actually been functioning as Israel’s king, Adonijah would not have stood a chance. (5) Adonijah had gained the support of Joab, the commander of the army, and Abiathar, the priest. (6) David was oblivious to what was taking place and virtually non-functioning as the king. There was a vacuum of leadership in Israel, and Adonijah seemed to have the resolve and the resources to fill it.
Nathan was aware of what Adonijah was up to and that he and those loyal to David were carefully excluded by Adonijah. Nathan warned Bathsheba that if she did not use her influence with David, she and her son would soon be in grave danger. At Nathan’s prompting, Bathsheba went to David and told him what was going on. She also reminded the king of his promise that her son, Solomon, would be Israel’s next king. She urged David to do something or she and her son would become enemies of the state should Adonijah be allowed to carry out his revolt.
“Coincidentally,” Nathan now arrives at the king’s court. It would appear that Bathsheba leaves the king’s presence when Nathan appears, so that they can talk privately. Nathan tells David the same story, that Adonijah is seeking to seize the throne. He informs David that the celebration of his victory has already begun. Nathan asks David if these things have been approved by the king. David responds by calling once again for Bathsheba. David then summons Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada (1:32). He gives instructions that they are to immediately crown Solomon as Israel’s king at David’s request.187
While Adonijah and his supporters are celebrating his “victory,” Zadok, the priest, is anointing Solomon as Israel’s king. The trumpet is sounded and the people are declaring, “Long live King Solomon!” The masses must have dreaded having Adonijah as their king; the news of Solomon’s coronation is met with jubilant celebration. The sound of this celebration reaches the ears of those who are with Adonijah, but they don’t know what it means. Jonathan, son of Abiathar the (soon to be “retired”) priest, informs them that the sounds of celebration are not good news for Adonijah and his supporters. He informs them that David has designated Solomon as his successor and that he had already taken the throne. Adonijah’s guests panicked when they realized they were now Solomon’s enemies. They quickly left, and Adonijah fled to lay hold of the horns of the altar. Solomon granted his brother’s plea for mercy and sent him home.
The transition from one ruler to the next is not always a smooth one. In our last presidential election Bill Clinton spent the final hours of his time in office granting pardons and signing executive orders. Much of what was done in those last hours was partisan politics at best. President George W. Bush and his administration will spend many hours reviewing these last minute moves, and many of them will have to be reversed or revised. This is a very different kind of transition than the one described in 1 Kings 2. David called Solomon and gave him some very good advice that would enable him to begin his new administration on the right foot. The interesting thing about David’s advice was that he encouraged Solomon to correct those things which he himself had failed to do while he was king of Israel.
First, David urges Solomon to devote himself to keeping God’s law:
2 “I am about to die. Be strong and become a man! 3 Do the job the Lord your God has assigned you by following his instructions and obeying his rules, commandments, regulations, and laws as written in the law of Moses. Then you will succeed in all you do and seek to accomplish, 4 and the Lord will fulfill his promise to me, ‘If your descendants watch their step and live faithfully in my presence with all their heart and being, then,’ he promised, ‘you will not fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel’” (1 Kings 2:2-4).188
Second, David urges Solomon to deal with Joab:
5 “You know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me—how he murdered two commanders of the Israelite armies, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. During peacetime he struck them down like he would in battle; when he shed their blood as if in battle, he stained his own belt and the sandals on his feet. 6 Do to him what you think is appropriate, but don’t let him live long and die a peaceful death” (1 Kings 2:5-6).
It is difficult for me to understand why David would urge Solomon to deal with Joab, when he himself did not. David spoke out against Joab’s acts of murder, but he did not act decisively as he had with the young Amalekite (2 Samuel 1:13-16) and with the servants of Ish-bosheth (2 Samuel 4:5-12). One wonders if David feared Joab, as many kings and presidents fear the head of their military forces. After all, David did replace Joab once, only to have him back in power within a few days (see 2 Samuel 19:11-15; 20:4-23).
Third, David encourages Solomon to reward Barzillai, a man who remained faithful to him in his time of trouble:
“Treat fairly the sons of Barzillai of Gilead and provide for their needs, because they helped me when I had to flee from your brother Absalom” (1 Kings 2:7).
Just as justice needed to be meted out to those who had sinned, so those who had been faithful to David ought to be rewarded by his son, who succeeded him.
Finally, David urged Solomon to deal with Shimei, a man who had been a thorn in David’s flesh:
8 “Note well, you still have to contend with Shimei son of Gera, the Benjaminite from Bahurim, who tried to call down upon me a horrible judgment when I went to Mahanaim. He came down and met me at the Jordan, and I solemnly promised him by the Lord, ‘I will not strike you down with the sword.’ 9 But now don’t treat him as if he were innocent. You are a wise man and you know how to handle him; make sure he has a bloody death” (1 Kings 2:8-9).
Is this pure vindictiveness, or is David convinced that Shimei will always be an adversary to one of the house of David because he is not a descendant of Saul (see 2 Samuel 16:5-8)? It is somewhat ironic that the man who accused David of being a “man of bloodshed” (2 Samuel 16:7-8) is now to have a “bloody death”
(1 Kings 2:9).
The remainder of 1 Kings 2 describes how Solomon carried out David’s counsel and thereby consolidated his kingdom. Adonijah made it relatively easy for Solomon. Adonijah persuaded Bathsheba to request that he be given Abishag as his wife. Abishag was considered one of David’s concubines and, as such, giving her to Adonijah would be tantamount to acknowledging his right to reign as Israel’s king. To possess the king’s concubine was to take his place.189 David saw through Adonijah’s scheme. He had granted him mercy once, but now he sends Benaiah to execute him. Adonijah will not trouble the kingdom further.
Solomon next dealt with Abiathar, the priest who had betrayed him by supporting Adonijah in his attempt to become king. David did not execute this priest, but he did banish him to his home. Solomon appointed Zadok as priest in his place (1 Kings 2:35). We are reminded that this fulfilled the words of the Lord against the house of Eli (1 Kings 2:27; see 1 Samuel 2:27-36).
When word reached Joab that Solomon was dealing with his enemies, he fled to the altar and grasped its horns, hoping for mercy as Adonijah had received earlier from Solomon. There was reason to hope for mercy, except for those guilty of willful murder (see Exodus 21:12-14). This time, Joab was not to escape the punishment he deserved. Solomon dispatched Benaiah, who put Joab to death before the altar. At last justice was meted out for Joab’s acts of murder (1 Kings 2:31-33).
Solomon finally carried out David’s counsel regarding Shimei, the Benjamite who had wrongly spoken against David. Shimei brought about his own death. Solomon ordered Shimei to build himself a house in Jerusalem, where he could keeps his eye on him. He promised Shimei that if he left Jerusalem, his life would be taken. Two years later, two of Shimei’s servants fled, and Shimei set out after them. When Solomon learned that Shimei had left Jerusalem, he summoned him and rebuked him for violating the terms the king had set down. Solomon then instructed Benaiah to execute him. In this way, Solomon’s kingdom was firmly established, because those who would oppose him had been removed.
It is usually in fairy tales or jokes, but we’ve all heard of someone being granted their wish. Who would have ever thought we would find God offering to give a man whatever he wished, but here it is. The granting of Solomon’s wish is found immediately after these words:
1 Solomon made an alliance by marriage with Pharaoh, king of Egypt; he married Pharaoh’s daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he could finish building his residence and the temple of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem. 2 Now the people were offering sacrifices at the high places, because in those days a temple had not yet been built to honor the Lord. 3 Solomon demonstrated his loyalty to the Lord by following the practices of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places (1 Kings 3:1-3).
Knowing about the warning in Deuteronomy 17:16-17 and how the account of Solomon’s life will end, the reader has to have some concerns about Solomon’s marriage to an Egyptian princess.190 We must remember, however, that there is no specific prohibition against marrying an Egyptian. It was only Canaanite women that the Israelites were forbidden to marry. Abraham took Hagar as a concubine in Genesis 16; Joseph also took an Egyptian wife in Genesis 41:45. Moses took an Ethiopian as a wife, although his siblings did not like it (Numbers 12:1-2).
We might say that when Solomon took an Egyptian princess as a wife, he was beginning to move in the wrong direction. While the author of our text commends Solomon for generally following the practices of his father David, he indicts Solomon for “offering sacrifices and burned incense on the high places” (3:3). If I understand these words correctly, it is not that Solomon is offering sacrifices to the wrong god(s), but rather that he is offering sacrifices to God in the wrong places.
3 “Blood guilt will be accounted to any man from the house of Israel who slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat inside the camp or outside the camp, 4 but has not brought it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to present it as an offering to the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord. He has shed blood, so that man will be cut off from the midst of his people. 5 This is so that the Israelites will bring their sacrifices that they are sacrificing in the open field to the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting to the priest and sacrifice them there as peace offering sacrifices to the Lord” (Leviticus 17:3-5).
5 But you must seek only the place that he has chosen to establish his name, his place of residence, and you must go there. 6 And there you must take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. 7 Both you and your children must feast there before the Lord your God and rejoice in all the output of your labor with which he has blessed you… . 11 then you must bring to the place the Lord your God will select as the place of residence for his name everything I am commanding you—your burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, the personal offerings you have prepared, and all your choice votive-offerings which you devote to him (Deuteronomy 12:5-7, 11; see also verses 13-14).
It is after a statement about Solomon’s sin (of offering sacrifices on the high places) that God speaks to him. Solomon is at Gibeon, the “high place,” where he intended to offer sacrifices and offerings to
God – the very thing that was said to be wrong in verse 3. And yet, God appeared to Solomon in a dream:
4 The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for it had the most prominent of the high places. Solomon would offer up a thousand burnt sacrifices on the altar there. 5 One night in Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream. God said, “Tell me what I should give you” (1 Kings 3:4-5).
These are hardly the words I would have expected from God. I would have expected God to rebuke Solomon for his sin and to call upon him to repent and worship Him properly. Instead, God offers Solomon anything he wishes. What an amazing thing to do!
My attention is drawn to Psalm 72, a psalm either written by David to (or on behalf of) Solomon, or written by Solomon himself:
1 O God, grant the king the ability to make just decisions!
Grant the king’s son the ability to make fair decisions!
2 Then he will judge your people fairly,
and your oppressed ones equitably.
3 The mountains will bring news of peace to the people,
and the hills will announce justice.
4 He will defend the oppressed among the people;
he will deliver the children of the poor
and crush the oppressor (Psalm 72:1-4).
I am deeply grateful for the questions raised by a couple of friends in our church after I taught this lesson. The superscription reads, “For Solomon” (NET Bible, KJV), or “Of Solomon” (NKJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV). The Hebrew letter before Solomon’s name could mean either; it is the translator’s choice. Initially, I was inclined to suppose that the psalm was written by Solomon, but I have changed my mind. If it were written by Solomon, there is too much of Solomon in it. I believe it was David who wrote this of his son, in the hope that through Solomon (or at least his descendant), the Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7) would be fulfilled by the Messiah. This means there would be a great deal of prophecy involved. Would this be surprising? Aware of this psalm, no wonder Solomon asked God for wisdom – it was his father’s wish!
Either way, while Solomon professed that he lacked wisdom, he showed great wisdom in what he requested:
6 Solomon replied, “You demonstrated great loyalty to your servant, my father David, as he served you faithfully, properly, and sincerely. You have maintained this great loyalty to this day by allowing his son to sit on his throne. 7 Now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in my father David’s place, even though I am only a young man and am inexperienced. 8 Your servant stands among your chosen people; they are a great nation that is too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning mind so he can make judicial decisions for your people and distinguish right from wrong. Otherwise no one is able to make judicial decisions for this great nation of yours”
(1 Kings 3:6-9).
I am curious that there is no mention of the Spirit of God in the biblical accounts of the life of Solomon, and yet he is the wisest man who ever lived. The Spirit came visibly upon Saul, shortly after he was anointed to be king (1 Samuel 10:10-11). The Spirit also came upon David when he was anointed to be the King of Israel (1 Samuel 16:13). Yet, there is no mention of the Spirit coming upon Solomon at the time of his anointing; in fact, there is no mention of the Spirit coming upon him at all. How do we explain this? To be honest, I’m not sure. I am inclined to think that the Spirit came upon Solomon in answer to his request for wisdom, though there is no spectacular demonstration of the Spirit’s coming upon Solomon. Perhaps we are to learn that one need not have a spectacular experience in order to be empowered by the Spirit.
In Solomon’s case, the “proof was in the pudding.” Immediately after being told that God granted Solomon’s request for wisdom (along with riches and fame – 3:13), we find a number of examples of wisdom in his life. Let me enumerate some of these.
First, there is the example of personal wisdom that we see from Solomon’s actions in the verses which immediately follow his dream:
Solomon then woke up and realized it was a dream. He went to Jerusalem, stood before the ark of the Lord’s covenant, offered up burnt sacrifices, presented tokens of peace, and held a feast for all his servants (1 Kings 3:15).
What a pleasant surprise these verses are to us after reading the first three verses of this same chapter! Solomon received his dream while he was at Gibeon where he had gone to offer sacrifices (3:4), even though this was wrong (3:3). When God granted Solomon his request for wisdom, the first thing the king did was to go back to Jerusalem and offer up burnt sacrifices and peace offerings “before the ark of the Lord’s covenant” (3:15). I think we could all agree that offering sacrifices in the high places was foolish; offering his sacrifices before the ark was a wise move. Solomon’s first demonstration of wisdom was in his own personal life, in his obedience to God’s commands regarding worship.
Second, there is the example of Solomon’s judicial wisdom, as seen in the way he handled the dispute between two women, both of whom claimed the same child as their own (3:16-28). Two prostitutes came before Solomon for him to settle their dispute. Both women had a baby, but one of them accidentally suffocated her child in the night. Each claimed the living child as their own. There seemed to be no way of knowing the truth, but Solomon acted wisely. He asked for a sword and threatened to cut the child in half, giving half of the child to each woman. The mother of the dead child was willing to accept this judgment – if she couldn’t have the other woman’s child, she did not want the mother to have him either. Let Solomon kill the boy. The mother of the living child cared so much for her son that she was willing to give him up, just to save his life. Solomon knew this boy was her child and commanded that the child be given to its true mother. Everyone marveled at Solomon’s wisdom, the wisdom for which he had asked.
Third, there is the example of Solomon’s administrative wisdom, as seen in the men he chose for his “cabinet” (4:1-19).
Fourth, we are also given an example of the wealth and glory that God promised to give Solomon (4:20-28). We see from these verses that all Israel seemed prosperous and peaceful under Solomon’s leadership. The borders of Israel were at their widest point. At the same time, we are told how well Solomon lived. The consumption of goods by Solomon and his royal court was immense, just as Samuel had warned years before in 1 Samuel 8:11-18. Though stated without any word of indictment, Solomon’s prosperity had crossed the lines that God had drawn for Israel’s kings in Deuteronomy 17. Trouble was ahead, though it was not immediately apparent.
Fifth, we see the wisdom of Solomon in his musical compositions, in his research, and in his writings:
29 God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment; the breadth of his understanding was as infinite as the sand on the seashore. 30 Solomon was wiser than all the men of the east and all the sages of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than any man, including Ethan the Ezrahite or Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol. He was famous in all the neighboring nations. 32 He composed three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs. 33 He produced manuals on botany, describing every kind of plant, from the cedars of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows on walls. He also produced manuals on biology, describing animals, birds, insects, and fish. 34 People from all nations came to hear Solomon’s display of wisdom; they came from all the kings of the earth who heard of his wisdom (1 Kings 4:29-34).
Solomon’s wisdom surpassed that of anyone in his own day, and even in our own. He was somewhat of a mixture of the best of Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Einstein, Beethoven, Leonard Bernstein, and George Gershwin. This man was a poet, a musician, a scientist, and a writer. The whole nation seemed to benefit from his giftedness. No doubt, many benefited from his work in biology and botany. People came from far and wide to ask him questions and to hear him speak.
Sixth, Solomon manifested great wisdom as a builder. Many great building projects were commenced and completed in Solomon’s lifetime, foremost of which was the construction of the temple. Hiram, king of Tyre, was quick to recognize Solomon’s wisdom:
When Hiram heard Solomon’s message, he was very happy. He said, “The Lord is worthy of praise today because he has given David a wise son to rule over this great nation” (1 Kings 5:7).
We should recognize that while Solomon took on the task of building the temple and of dedicating it, it was really David who made all the preparations for its construction. David made the plans, David and the people of Israel provided the gold, and David had orchestrated the service of the Levites. This we see in
1 Chronicles 23-29. This is not to take anything away from Solomon’s skill as a builder, but only to remind us of how many preparations David had made for the temple before his death.
The dimensions of the temple were twice the size of the tabernacle, so far as its footprint was concerned, and it was certainly higher – 45 feet in height. It had much fine craftsmanship and contained a great deal of gold. It took the labor of thousands of men – 180,000 men – not to mention 3300 supervisors (5:13-16). The project took seven years to complete (6:37-38).
I am somewhat puzzled by a couple of things related to the building of the temple. I have to wonder why so many foreigners were involved in this project:
13 King Solomon sent for Hiram of Tyre. 14 He was the son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a craftsman in bronze from Tyre. He had the skill and know-how to make all kinds of works of bronze. He reported to King Solomon and did all the work he was assigned (1 Kings 7:13-14).
15 Here are the details concerning the work crews King Solomon conscripted to build the Lord’s temple, his palace, the terrace, the wall of Jerusalem, and the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 (Pharaoh, king of Egypt, had attacked and captured Gezer. He burned it and killed the Canaanites who lived in the city. He gave it as a wedding present to his daughter, who had married Solomon.) 17 Solomon built up Gezer, lower Beth Horon, 18 Baalath, Tadmor in the wilderness, 19 all the storage cities that belonged to him, and the cities where chariots and horses were kept. He built whatever he wanted in Jerusalem, Lebanon, and throughout his entire kingdom. 20 Now several non-Israelite peoples were left in the land after the conquest of Joshua, including the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 21 Their descendants remained in the land (the Israelites were unable to wipe them out). Solomon conscripted them for his work crews, and they continue in that role to this very day. 22 Solomon did not assign Israelites to these work crews; the Israelites served as his soldiers, attendants, officers, charioteers, and commanders of his chariot forces (1 Kings 9:15-22).
When the tabernacle was constructed, it was made from materials and money contributed by the Israelites during David’s lifetime (1 Chronicles 29:1-20). I don’t see joyful participation on the part of the people, as we did in the construction of the tabernacle and in the preparations David made for the temple. When the tabernacle was constructed, God gifted certain Israelites like Bezalel and Oholiab (Exodus 31:1-11). Why is the temple constructed by skilled craftsmen who are foreigners,191 whose abilities are not said to be given him by the Spirit of God? And why does the palace Solomon builds for himself take almost twice as long to build (see 7:1)? Is there any possibility that this hints to the time when the building of God’s “spiritual house” will involve Gentiles as well as Jews (see Ephesians 2:11-22)? To be honest, I’m not sure I have the answer.
One thing that we must note is that when the temple is finally completed, God dramatically takes possession of it:
6 The priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its assigned place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, in the most holy place under the wings of the cherubs. 7 The cherubs’ wings extended over the place where the ark sat; the cherubs overshadowed the ark and its poles. 8 The poles were so long their ends were visible from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from beyond that point. They have remained there to this very day. 9 There was nothing in the ark except the two stone tablets Moses had placed there in Horeb. It was there that the Lord made an agreement with the Israelites after he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 10 Once the priests left the holy place, a cloud filled the Lord’s temple. 11 The priests could not carry out their duties because of the cloud; the Lord’s glory filled his temple (1 Kings 8:6-11).
When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the Lord’s splendor filled the temple (2 Chronicles 7:1).
There is little doubt that the building of the temple is viewed as one of Solomon’s greatest contributions. More space is devoted to the building of the temple than any other aspect of his life. Solomon’s prayer of dedication is certainly one of the high points of his spiritual life. His prayer does demonstrate Solomon’s grasp of the law and of the role of the temple. Whether he received this primarily from his father, or came from his own meditation on the law, is debatable. I am inclined to think that Solomon learned most of his spiritual insights from his father. Allow me to make several observations concerning Solomon’s prayer of dedication.
First, this dedication of the temple is a predominantly Solomon’s prayer that is addressed to God, who has taken up residence in the temple (8:10-11, 23ff.). This is not a speech that Solomon makes to the crowd that is gathered, but a petition to the God whose temple it is.
Second, there is a very close link between this dedicatory prayer and the Mosaic Covenant. Solomon anticipates certain events in the future, which should prompt the people of God to turn toward the temple and pray. These include:
Defeat by an enemy (8:33-34; see Deuteronomy 28:25ff.)
Drought and famine (8:35-40; see Deuteronomy 28:23-24)
Captivity in a foreign land (8:46-51; see Deuteronomy 28:36-37, 63-68)
All of these things are anticipated in Deuteronomy. Solomon’s prayer is, therefore, shaped and guided by the Mosaic Covenant.
Third, this dedication is not only a prayer, it is about prayer. The word “pray” or “prayer” occurs 17 times in 1 Kings 8. The temple was intended to encourage and facilitate the prayers of God’s people. Those who could pray included both Jews and Gentiles:
41 “Foreigners, who do not belong to your people Israel, will come from a distant land because of your reputation. 42 When they hear about your great reputation and your ability to accomplish mighty deeds, they will come and direct their prayers toward this temple. 43 Then listen from your heavenly dwelling place and answer all the prayers of the foreigners. Then all the nations of the earth will acknowledge your reputation, obey you like your people Israel do, and recognize that this temple I built belongs to you” (1 Kings 8:41-43).
This certainly helps us to understand why our Lord was so upset when some of the Jews occupied the temple court and turned it into a business plaza, rather than a place of prayer:
Then he began to teach them and said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have turned it into a den of robbers!” (Mark 11:17)
Fourth, there is a strong emphasis on the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises in this prayer. Among other things, Solomon is praising God for this temple as the fulfillment of His promises. On the one hand there is thanksgiving and praise for the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abram and to Moses:
“The Lord is worthy of praise because he has made Israel his people secure just as he promised. Not one of all the faithful promises he made through his servant Moses is left unfulfilled” (1 Kings 8:56, emphasis mine).
20 The Lord has kept the promise he made. I have taken my father David’s place and have occupied the throne of Israel, as the Lord promised. I have built this temple for the honor of the Lord God of Israel 21 and set up in it a place for the ark containing the covenant the Lord made with our ancestors when he brought them out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 8:20-21, emphasis mine).
We see fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant in the number of Israelites, in Israel’s geographical boundaries under Solomon, and in the blessings that have come to the Gentiles:
1 Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household
to the land that I will show you.
2 Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,
and I will make your name great,
in order that you might be a prime example of divine blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
but the one who treats you lightly I must curse,
and all the families of the earth will pronounce
blessings on one another using your name”
(Genesis 12:1-3, emphasis mine; compare 1 Kings 8:41-43, cited above).
18 That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites” (Genesis 15:18-21; see also Deuteronomy 11:24; Joshua 1:4).
Solomon ruled all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt. These kingdoms paid tribute as Solomon’s subjects throughout his lifetime (1 Kings 4:21).
More than anything, Solomon views the completion of the temple in terms of the covenant God made with his father David:
15 He said, “The Lord God of Israel is worthy of praise because he has fulfilled what he promised my father David. 16 He told David, ‘Since the day I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city from all the tribes of Israel to build a temple in which to live. But I have chosen David to lead my people Israel.’ 17 Now my father David had a strong desire to build a temple to honor the Lord God of Israel. 18 The Lord told my father David, ‘It is right for you to have a strong desire to build a temple to honor me. 19 But you will not build the temple; your very own son will build the temple for my honor.’ 20 The Lord has kept the promise he made. I have taken my father David’s place and have occupied the throne of Israel, as the Lord promised. I have built this temple for the honor of the Lord God of Israel 21 and set up in it a place for the ark containing the covenant the Lord made with our ancestors when he brought them out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 8:15-21).
Fifth, there is a strong sense of expectation in this prayer of dedication that God will completely fulfill His covenant with David:
24 You have kept your word to your servant, my father David; this very day you have fulfilled what you promised. 25 Now, O Lord, God of Israel, keep the promise you made to your servant, my father David, when you said, ‘You will never fail to have a successor ruling before me on the throne of Israel, provided that your descendants watch their step and serve me as you have done.’ 26 Now, O God of Israel, may the promise you made to your servant, my father David, be realized” (1 Kings 8:24-26, emphasis mine).
When these words of Solomon are compared with Psalm 72, one gets the distinct feeling that Solomon hopes his reign might be the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant. When you stop to think about it, Solomon and others had some basis for thinking along these lines. After all, Solomon’s kingdom could appear to be the fulfillment of the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants. The descendants of Abraham are as numerous as the sand of the sea (1 Kings 4:20). Israel is living in the Promised Land, they dominate the surrounding nations, and they are living in great prosperity. If all these promises were fulfilled, then why not the promise God made to David, and why not through his son, Solomon?
Sixth, Solomon’s words reveal that he rightly understands God’s presence cannot, and will not, be limited to a temple:
12 Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that he lives in thick darkness. 13 O Lord, truly I have built a lofty temple for you, a place where you can live permanently.” … 27 “God does not really live on the earth! Look, if the sky and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:12-13, 27).
This is a point Stephen will take up many years later when he is accused of speaking against the temple (Acts 7:45-50).
The warning signs were already there, if anyone had eyes to see them. In the Book of Deuteronomy, God had issued warnings to the nation Israel concerning the dangers they would face once they entered the land of Canaan. He warned them about the danger of leaving the Canaanites in the land and of inter-marrying with them. They must not worship the gods of the Canaanites (7:1-6). Their victory over the Canaanites was not due to their greatness as a nation, but due to the faithfulness of God to His covenant promises (7:7-11). Then, in chapter 8, we find these words of warning:
11 “Be very careful lest you forget the Lord your God, not keeping his commandments, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today. 12 When you eat to your satisfaction, when you build and occupy good houses, 13 when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything, 14 be careful lest you feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, 15 and who brought you through the great, fearful desert of venomous serpents and scorpions, a thirsty place of no water, bringing forth for you water from flint rock and 16 feeding you in the desert with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might test you and eventually bring good to you. 17 Be careful lest you say, “My own ability has gotten me this wealth.” 18 You must remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives ability to get wealth; if you do this he will confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, even as he has to this day. 19 Now it will come about that if you forget the Lord your God at all and run after other gods, worshiping and prostrating yourselves before them, I testify to you today that you will be utterly destroyed. 20 Just like the nations the Lord is about to decimate from your sight, so he will do to you because you would not pay attention to him” (Deuteronomy 8:11-20).
Israel had never experienced prosperity and success to the degree that God blessed them during the reign of Solomon. Now, the danger was that Solomon (and others) might suppose that he was the reason for their prosperity. Solomon might begin to think too highly of himself, and the Israelites might “idolize” their king, rather than worship and serve their true King, God Himself. It is for this reason that God appears to Solomon a second time with these words of admonition:
1 After Solomon finished building the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, and all the other construction projects he had planned, 2 the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, in the same way he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 The Lord said to him, “I have answered your prayer and your request for help that you made to me. I have consecrated this temple you built by making it my permanent home; I will be constantly present there. 4 You must serve me with integrity and sincerity, just as your father David did. Do everything I commanded and obey my rules and regulations. 5 Then I will allow your dynasty to rule over Israel permanently, just as I promised your father David, ‘You will not fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’ 6 “But if you or your sons ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, and decide to serve and worship other gods, 7 then I will remove Israel from the land I have given them, I will abandon this temple I have consecrated with my presence, and Israel will be mocked and ridiculed among all the nations. 8 This temple will become a heap of ruins; everyone who passes by it will be shocked and will hiss out their scorn, saying, ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and this temple?’ 9 Others will then answer, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God, who led their ancestors out of Egypt. They embraced other gods whom they worshiped and served. That is why the Lord has brought all this disaster down on them’” (1 Kings 9:1-9).
These words are a reiteration of what God had spoken to the Israelites through the prophet Samuel when the people had demanded to have a king like the nations:
12 “When you saw that King Nahash of the Ammonites was advancing against you, you said to me, ‘No! A king will rule over us’—even though the Lord your God is your king! 13 Now look! Here is the king you have chosen—the one that you asked for. Look, the Lord has given you a king. 14 If you fear the Lord, serving him and obeying him and not rebelling against what he says, and if both you and the king who rules over you follow the Lord your God, all will be well. 15 But if you don’t obey the Lord and rebel against what the Lord says, the hand of the Lord will be against both you and your king (1 Samuel 12:12-15).
Both Israel and her king must abide by the commandments God had set down in His law. If they obeyed God’s commandments, God would continue to bless them. If not, God would judge His people, as the rest of the world looked on and learned. Israel’s king would not set aside the law – the law must be observed, both by the king and by the people. We are about to see that Solomon will not live up to the law. Before we read of Solomon’s downfall, we are reminded of the standard God established for the king and the people.
The first clear indications of trouble appear in 1 Kings 9:10-10:29. In 9:10-14, we read that King Hiram of Tyre was displeased with the cities Solomon had given him. Hiram called them Cabul (which seems to mean “good for nothing”). Is Solomon beginning to abuse his power? His friend Hiram is not at all pleased with the way Solomon has dealt with him.
In 9:15-23, the author describes the work crews that Solomon employed to carry out his building projects. In verses 17-19, we are told about some of the cities Solomon built:
17 Solomon built up Gezer, lower Beth Horon, 18 Baalath, Tadmor in the wilderness, 19 all the storage cities that belonged to him, and the cities where chariots and horses were kept. He built whatever he wanted in Jerusalem, Lebanon, and throughout his entire kingdom (1 Kings 9:17-19, emphasis mine).
Three times in the account of Solomon’s life we are told that he had acquired a large number of horses and chariots (1 Kings 4:26; 9:19; 10:26, 28-29). This is a violation of God’s instructions regarding kings in Deuteronomy 17:
16 Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the Lord has said you must never again return that way. 17 Furthermore, he must not marry many wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold. 18 When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this instruction on a scroll given to him by the levitical priests. 19 It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this instruction and these statutes in order to carry them out (Deuteronomy 17:16-19, emphasis mine).
In verses 20-23, we learn where Solomon obtained the laborers to carry out his construction projects:
20 Now several non-Israelite peoples were left in the land after the conquest of Joshua, including the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 21 Their descendants remained in the land (the Israelites were unable to wipe them out). Solomon conscripted them for his work crews, and they continue in that role to this very day. 22 Solomon did not assign Israelites to these work crews; the Israelites served as his soldiers, attendants, officers, charioteers, and commanders of his chariot forces. 23 These men were also in charge of Solomon’s work projects; there were a total of five hundred fifty men who supervised the workers (1 Kings 9:20-23, emphasis mine).
The problem with the forced laborers that Solomon employed is that they were Canaanites, whom God had instructed His people to annihilate:
1 When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you—Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—2 and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no covenant with them nor show them compassion! 3 You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the wrath of the Lord will erupt against you and he will soon destroy you (Deuteronomy 7:1-4, emphasis mine).
We know from Judges 1 that a number of these Canaanites were not destroyed and the Israelites became content to live among them. When the Israelites were strong, they made these folks serve as slave laborers:
34 The Amorites forced the people of Dan to live in the hill country. They did not allow them to live in the coastal plain. 35 The Amorites managed to remain in Har Heres, Aijalon, and Shaalbim. Whenever the tribe of Joseph was strong militarily, the Amorites were forced to do hard labor. 36 The border of Amorite territory ran from the Pass of the Scorpions to Sela and on up (Judges 1:34-36, emphasis mine).
This historical backdrop may have made Solomon feel less guilty about his treatment of the Canaanites. He was only dealing with the Canaanites as his predecessors had – by using them as forced laborers. One could hardly say, however, that Solomon allowed the Canaanites to live because he was not able to defeat them. His reasons seem to be much more pragmatic – he wanted to keep them alive to do jobs that his own people would not be willing to do. In effect, Solomon wanted to keep the Canaanites alive so that he could use them in a way that was similar to the Egyptians’ treatment of the Israelites who were in their
land – by making slave laborers of them.
We are soon to learn that Solomon’s major failure came as a result of his “foreign wives” (11:1ff.). I would like to suggest that the turning point may have come with a “foreign woman,” who did not become his wife – the Queen of Sheba:
1 When the queen of Sheba heard about Solomon, she came to challenge him with difficult questions. 2 She arrived in Jerusalem with a great deal of pomp, bringing with her camels carrying spices, a very large quantity of gold, and precious gems. She visited Solomon and discussed with him everything that was on her mind. 3 Solomon answered all her questions; there was no question too complex for the king. 4 When the queen of Sheba saw for herself Solomon’s extensive wisdom, the palace he had built, 5 the food in his banquet hall, his servants and attendants, their robes, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings which he presented in the Lord’s temple, she was amazed. 6 She said to the king, “The report I heard back home about your wise sayings and insight was true. 7 I did not believe these things until I came and saw them with my own eyes. Indeed, I didn’t hear even half the story! Your wisdom and wealth surpass what was reported to me. 8 Your attendants, who stand before you at all times and hear your wise sayings, are truly happy! 9 May the Lord your God be praised because he favored you by placing you on the throne of Israel! Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he made you king so you might make just and right decisions” (1 Kings 10:1-9).
I am reminded of the proverb that Solomon may have written himself:
Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).
It is my opinion that the visit of the Queen of Sheba fanned the coals of Solomon’s pride into flames of arrogance. She had heard the stories about his wisdom and thought they were exaggerated. Then she came to visit Solomon to see for herself. When he answered all of her most difficult questions, she was impressed. The worst of it is that she told him so. It would have been very difficult for Solomon not to believe what this woman told him. After all, most of it was true. But in the process of hearing her words, I fear that Solomon began to take credit for his wisdom and status. The text does not tell us this directly, but it is interesting that what follows is further details concerning his great success.
Solomon had accumulated a great deal of wealth (10:14-22), but God had forbidden the kings of Israel to do so (Deuteronomy 17:17). Those who came to visit Solomon and to marvel at his wisdom came bearing gifts, which further enhanced his wealth (10:23-25). All of this success and fame seemed to pave the way for the last chapter of Solomon’s life, a chapter that did not go well for this great king.
1 King Solomon fell in love with many foreign women (besides Pharaoh’s daughter), including Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. 2 They came from nations about which the Lord had warned the Israelites, “You must not establish friendly relations with them! If you do, they will surely shift your allegiance to their gods.” But Solomon was irresistibly attracted to them. 3 He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines; his wives had a powerful influence over him. 4 When Solomon became old, his wives shifted his allegiance to other gods; he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God, as his father David had been. 5 Solomon worshiped the Sidonian goddess Astarte and the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 6 Solomon did evil before the Lord; he did not remain loyal to the Lord, like his father David had. 7 Furthermore, on the hill east of Jerusalem Solomon built a high place for the detestable Moabite god Chemosh and for the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 8 He built high places for all his foreign wives so they could burn incense and make sacrifices to their gods (1 Kings 11:1-8).
Solomon’s failure is not described until the end of his biography, in the last chapter (1 Kings 11) that deals with his reign. Solomon married many wives – 700 royal wives and 300 concubines. Can you imagine trying to keep track of the names of your wives and children? Deuteronomy 17:17 was very clear about having many foreign wives:
Furthermore, he must not marry many wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold (Deuteronomy 17:17).
The warning God gave through Moses could not have been more accurate. Solomon’s wives worshipped foreign gods. To keep them happy, Solomon built places of worship for them. Eventually, Solomon even joined them in the worship of their gods. Solomon, the wisest man on the face of the earth, played the fool.
God was angry with Solomon. Twice before, God had appeared to him and warned him of the dangers of disobedience (1 Kings 11:9-10). God told Solomon that his persistent disobedience would cost him most of his kingdom. For the sake of David, God would put off judgment on Solomon’s house until after his death. One tribe would be left for Solomon’s son to reign, but ten tribes would follow someone else (11:11-13).
God did bring about certain consequences during Solomon’s lifetime. He raised up adversaries who opposed Solomon: Hadad the Edomite (11:14-22); Rezon son of Eliada (11:23-25); and Jeroboam son of Nebat, who would eventually rule over ten of the tribes of Israel (11:26-40). Jeroboam was assured that God would give Jeroboam a lasting dynasty, if he only obeyed His rules and commandments. This divided kingdom would not be forever.
We then come to the final epitaph in 1 Kings 11:21-43:
41 The rest of the events of Solomon’s reign, including all his accomplishments and his wise decisions, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of Solomon. 42 Solomon ruled over all Israel from Jerusalem for forty years. 43 Then Solomon passed away and was buried in the city of his father David. His son Rehoboam replaced him as king (1 Kings 11:41-43).
The story of Solomon’s life contains many lessons for us. First, it has some important lessons for us about leadership. I see in the first two chapters of 1 Kings a reluctance on the part of David to step aside and let others take his place. David was once a great leader, but there came a time when he was no longer able to continue at the helm of the kingdom. He functioned with a greatly diminished capacity. He seems not to have been aware of what was going on in his kingdom. He was certainly not aware of Adonijah’s plot to seize the throne. There comes a time when leaders ought to lead by stepping aside, before others wish they had and before someone has to come along and force them to let go. It was not that Solomon was unfit for the task; it was that David was unwilling to step aside.
Adonijah can also teach us a lesson about leadership. There are those today, like Adonijah, who are far too eager to be “in charge,” who grasp for positions of power and prestige. Adonijah would not have been a servant-king; he would have been a despot. Over the years I have served in the church, I have observed some people who were too eager to be leaders and were too driven to be placed in positions of authority. It would seem that many (if not most) of Israel’s great leaders were those who began as servants.
Second, here is another lesson to be learned about leadership from our text. Those whom God has called to lead need to deal quickly and decisively with those who would undermine their administration. It seems to me that David should have personally dealt with men like Joab and Shimei, but at least he had the wisdom to encourage his son to deal with them. Wise leaders identify those who are wicked and seek to remove them from any leadership role:
Drive out the scorner and contention will leave;
strife and insults will cease (Proverbs 22:10).
A king sitting on the throne to judge
separates out all evil with his eyes (Proverbs 20:8).
A wise king separates out the wicked;
he turns the threshing wheel over them (Proverbs 20:26).
Remove the wicked from before the king,
and his throne will be established in righteousness (Proverbs 25:5).
One cannot read the story of Solomon without asking the question, “How is it possible for a man who was so wise to become so foolish?” The answer to our questions may very well come from Solomon himself in the Book of Ecclesiastes. But for now, let me suggest that the key may be found in the contrasts between Solomon and his father, David.
David is credited with 73 of the Psalms – almost half of them. Of Solomon’s 1005 songs, only 1 (or at the most 2) of them are “published” in the Book of Psalms.
Solomon’s wisdom was, to one degree or another, wisdom that dealt with somewhat secular matters. These are important matters – construction, botany, biology, government, justice – but we do not see his wisdom focused on the revealed Word of God, the Law of Moses. One would think that his wisdom could have provided great insight into the Law. Psalm 119 makes it clear that there is a great wealth of truth to be found here, but Solomon doesn’t seem to have spent as much time here as he did elsewhere.
David sought to know and to worship God; Solomon sought to know much about God’s creation.
David was a “man after God’s own heart;” Solomon was never in the same league, spiritually speaking.
David was a servant, who was rejected (to some degree) by his brothers. He learned to serve God faithfully, in menial ways. Solomon seemed to have been born into royalty and position. He was never a shepherd boy, defending his flock against wild animals.
David suffered much in his life; Solomon suffered little, if at all.
David fought many battles; Solomon was a man of peace. He did not attempt to rid the land of the remaining Canaanites.
It was David who became the standard by which all subsequent kings in Israel were measured; it was not Solomon, even though his kingdom was greater than that of David by external standards.
I have been especially troubled by the downfall of David and Solomon. At least David spiritually recovered from his fall, something that Solomon never did so far as the biblical record is concerned. The failures of these two great men should serve as a warning to each of us. Both men allowed their sexual passions to dominate their lives with devastating consequences. Both men, in my opinion, were driven by their egos, as well as by their hormones. David had become proud and arrogant as a military leader. He stayed home when he should have been with his men fighting the enemy. He abused his position as commander-in-chief of Israel’s armed forces to kill Uriah, one of his faithful servants.
It is my opinion that Solomon’s sexual passions were enflamed by his ego as well. He listened to the flattery of women like the Queen of Sheba, and he liked what he heard. He did not disobey God by engaging in sex outside of marriage; he just married any woman he wanted. This, too, was a violation of God’s law for Israel’s kings, as found in Deuteronomy 17. I suspect that most of Solomon’s marriages were not the result of his sexual passions, but a pragmatic means of extending his power, and his alliances with other nations. Even so, it was his wives who turned his heart from the Lord to the point that he began to worship foreign gods.
There was one crucial difference between David and Solomon. David had a heart for God. He became the standard by which all subsequent kings were measured. Solomon had a more intellectual relationship with God. He was more detached, more philosophical about his relationship with God. It was an “upper story faith,” rather than an intimate, daily, passionate relationship with God. As I have watched biblical scholars rise and fall, the two major causes have been sexual immorality and intellectualism – an infatuation with one’s own intellectual powers.
The Bible has some words of wisdom for all of us, words that the life of Solomon illustrates:
With regard to food sacrificed to idols, we know that “we all have knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Corinthians 8:1, emphasis mine).
I fear that many of us (including me) are more “Solomonic” in our relationship with God than “Davidic.” It is wonderful for us to pursue truth (biblical or natural), but it is no substitute for a simple childlike faith in God. Let us give serious thought to those things which predisposed both David and Solomon to fall. Let us learn from their experience so that we need not learn from our own.
Finally, as I conclude this lesson, I wish to turn from mere men and their failures to the impeccable Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Consider the fact that Israel’s two greatest kings fell; they fell far short of the standard God had set for the Messiah. If God’s promises to David – promises of an eternal kingdom through the offspring of David – are to be fulfilled, it will not be by mere men, no matter how great they may be. Israel wanted a king, and they got one, and then another, and another… . The only king who will ever fulfill God’s promises and our hopes is God Himself. God’s promises to David were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
30 So the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 Listen: you will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:30-33).
Solomon’s greatest accomplishment may have been in the completion of the temple. Whenever God’s people were in trouble, they were to look to the temple and to pray, trusting that God would hear and answer their prayers. Consider, for a moment, just what those circumstances were that were to prompt men to turn to the temple and pray:
When accused of sin (8:21-32)
When defeated by an enemy (8:33-34)
When God judges the nation for their sins against Him (8:35-40)
When a foreigner wishes to turn to God (8:41-43)
When the Israelites go to war (8:44-45)
When God gives sinful Israel over to her enemies,
and they need forgiveness and deliverance (8:46-51)
It is our Lord Jesus who is the “ultimate temple”:
Now the Word became flesh and took up residence [literally “tabernacled”] among us. We saw his glory—the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father (John 1:14).
18 So then the Jewish leaders responded, “What sign can you show us, since you are doing these things?” 19 Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” 20 Then the Jewish leaders said to him, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and are you going to raise it up in three days?” 21 But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 So after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the saying that Jesus had spoken (John 2:18-22, emphasis mine).
Jesus made it clear to the Samaritan “woman at the well” that worshipping God is no longer a question of “the right place,” but it is a matter of worshipping the right person, Jesus Himself:
21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever he comes, he will tell us everything.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he” (John 4:21-26).
Are you guilty of sin? Turn to Jesus. Are you overcome by difficulties and trials in your life? Turn to Jesus. He alone will hear and answer your prayers for salvation. He was the visible manifestation of God’s presence among men. He lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial death, by which He paid the penalty for sin. He died, was buried, and rose from the dead and is now at the right hand of the father. He is the One we should worship and serve. Men, no matter how great, will fail; Jesus never fails.
185 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on April 1, 2001.
186 I should mention that the account of the transition of Israel’s leadership from David to Solomon in 1 Chronicles 29 is quite different in its perspective. There, David seems to take the initiative, not only to provide all that is needed for Solomon to complete the temple construction, but for Solomon’s ascent to the throne of Israel. In Chronicles the author does not seem as interested in pointing out the problems as he is in giving the big picture. Thus, David’s sin regarding Uriah and Bathsheba is never mentioned in Chronicles, though it is spelled out in 2 Samuel. David’s reluctance to designate Solomon as his replacement is also passed over in Chronicles. It would seem that chapters 23 through 29 of 1 Chronicles (at least 23:1 and 29:22) describe David’s actions after Bathsheba and Nathan advised him concerning Adonijah’s attempt to seize the throne.
187 As mentioned earlier, this is the point that I see the events of 1 Chronicles 23-29 taking place.
188 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
189 See Genesis 35:22; 49:3-4; 2 Samuel 16:20-23; 1 Kings 2:22.
190 Commentators point out that, while it was not unusual for the Pharaoh of Egypt to take a wife from the surrounding nations, it was very rare for the Pharaoh to give one of his daughters in marriage to someone like Solomon. They view this: (1) as a sign of the weakness of Egypt at this point in time, and (2) as a sign of Solomon’s great power and prestige.
191 There are two Hiram’s involved in the construction of the temple: (1) Hiram, the King of Tyre (5:1ff.), who supplies the timber for the temple; and, (2) the “Hiram of Tyre” of chapter 7 (7:13ff.). The latter “Hiram” was the son of a woman from the tribe of Naphtali, whose father was a man of Tyre, who was a craftsman with bronze (1 Kings 7:13-14). We know from 2 Chronicles 2:3 that Hiram’s mother was said to be a Danite, which some explain by understanding Dan to be her tribe by birth and Naphtali her residence, or vice versa.
1 Kings 12; 2 Chronicles 10
A young man spends hours working on his car, laboring meticulously to make it a showpiece. He not only restores the car to its original condition, but he overhauls the engine, modifying it to obtain maximum performance. He invites a couple of friends to cruise around the streets of Dallas with him, showing off his handiwork. They stop at a local hangout for hamburgers and meet another young man, who also has a high performance automobile. Each begins to boast that his car is faster than that of his rival. Eventually, they race down a major street at high speed. One young man presses his car beyond its limits, and it careens out of control, striking other automobiles, and eventually killing a young mother and her child, standing in their front yard talking with friends.
The young man responsible for the death of these two innocent people did not set out that night to kill someone with his car. He did, however, want to show off. He wanted others to see how well he had transformed a tired old car into a beautiful muscle machine. He wanted to impress others with how fast his car was, and how skilled he was as a driver.
How many times in history has something like this happened? The unintentional consequences of a foolish action may be far greater than one would have ever imagined. This past April a cocky and over-zealous pilot maneuvered his fighter too close to the propellers of a U.S. intelligence plane. The events that followed triggered a growing rift in the relationship of the United States and China.
This is precisely what happens in 1 Kings 12 and its parallel text in 2 Chronicles 10. When Rehoboam and the Israelites met that fateful day in Shechem, everyone assumed that Rehoboam would become Israel’s king. The people made a simple and reasonable request of Rehoboam, and after consulting with others, this would-be king arrogantly rejected it. The people renounced him as their king and went their way. Reconciliation might have occurred had Rehoboam not acted foolishly. The result was a divided kingdom. This unintended consequence would shape the history of the nation to this very day.
This is one of the great “turning points” in the history of Israel, one that is crucial to our understanding the Bible. From this point on, the southern kingdom will be known as Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital and one of David’s descendants as their king. The northern kingdom, composed of ten tribes, will be known as Israel. Samaria will eventually become its capital and its dynasties will frequently change. At times, the two kingdoms will be at war with each other, and at other times they will make certain alliances. The glorious days of the united kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon are gone. The northern kingdom will consistently have evil kings and behave wickedly. They will be the first to be scattered in judgment. The southern kingdom will have its good kings and its wicked ones, and eventually Judah will be taken into captivity by the Babylonians.
There are many lessons to be learned from Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, and Jeroboam, Israel’s first king. Let us listen well to the words of the Scriptures and seek to learn the lessons from Israel’s history which God has for us:
For everything that was written in former times was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through encouragement of the scriptures we may have hope (Romans 15:4).247
The united kingdom lasted the length of the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon. Saul, Israel’s first king, was a Benjamite who failed to obey God. He did not wait for Samuel at Gilgal but went ahead to offer sacrifices, fearing his soldiers would desert him (1 Samuel 13). Later, Saul failed to totally annihilate the Amalekites. He let King Agag live and kept some of the best of the Amalekites’ cattle (1 Samuel 15). After the death of Saul and his sons at the hand of the Philistines, David was anointed king, first over Judah and then later over all Israel. David was a man with a heart for God. His great failure came when he sinned with regard to Bathsheba and Uriah, her husband. While he repented and was forgiven, he, his family, and his kingdom suffered some very painful consequences. His daughter was raped by her brother Amnon; another of David’s sons – Absalom – had Amnon killed, and then fled. Eventually Absalom returned to Israel and later succeeded in overthrowing his father David. After David’s forces killed Absalom and defeated his army, David returned to claim his throne in Jerusalem.
An incident occurred in conjunction with David’s return to Jerusalem that reveals the already fragile state of the united kingdom’s unity:
41 Then all the men of Israel began coming to the king. They asked the king, “Why did our brothers, the men of Judah, sneak the king away and help the king and his household cross the Jordan—and not only him but all of David’s men as well?” 42 All the men of Judah replied to the men of Israel, “Because the king is our close relative. Why are you so upset about this? Have we eaten at the king’s expense? Or have we misappropriated anything for our own use?” 43 The men of Israel replied to the men of Judah, “We have ten shares in the king, and we have a greater claim on David than you do. Why do you want to curse us? Weren’t we the first to suggest bringing back our king?” But the comments of the men of Judah were more severe than those of the men of Israel (2 Samuel 19:41-43).
David’s son, Solomon, was the last of the kings of the united kingdom. His sin was the reason for the division of the united kingdom. In our next section, we will look more carefully at the role Solomon played in the division of the kingdom, along with Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
There are three major participants in the events which led to the division of the united kingdom: Solomon, Jeroboam, and Rehoboam. We will briefly look at the part each of these men played in the division of the kingdom.
It was not until after David’s son Adonijah sought to seize the throne for himself that David publicly designated Solomon as his successor. God appeared to Solomon two times before his fall.248 The first appearance is found in 1 Kings 3 where God promised Solomon that He would grant his request. Solomon asked for wisdom. God granted him not only wisdom, but also fame, great power, and incredible wealth. He also made it clear that Solomon was to keep His instructions:
11 God said to him, “Because you asked for the ability to make wise judicial decisions, and not for long life, or riches, or vengeance on your enemies, 12 I grant your request, and give you a wise and discerning mind superior to that of anyone who has preceded or will succeed you. 13 Furthermore, I am giving you what you did not request— riches and honor so that you will be the greatest king of your generation. 14 If you follow my instructions by obeying my rules and regulations, just as your father David did, then I will grant you long life.” 15 Solomon then woke up and realized it was a dream. He went to Jerusalem, stood before the ark of the Lord’s covenant, offered up burnt sacrifices, presented tokens of peace, and held a feast for all his servants (1 Kings 3:11-15).
The second appearance of God to Solomon came after the dedication of the temple. God promised that His presence would be with the nation Israel in the temple, but with these warnings:
1 After Solomon finished building the Lord’s temple, the royal palace, and all the other construction projects he had planned, 2 the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, in the same way he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 The Lord said to him, “I have answered your prayer and your request for help that you made to me. I have consecrated this temple you built by making it my permanent home; I will be constantly present there. 4 You must serve me with integrity and sincerity, just as your father David did. Do everything I commanded and obey my rules and regulations. 5 Then I will allow your dynasty to rule over Israel permanently, just as I promised your father David, ‘You will not fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’ 6 “But if you or your sons ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, and decide to serve and worship other gods, 7 then I will remove Israel from the land I have given them, I will abandon this temple I have consecrated with my presence, and Israel will be mocked and ridiculed among all the nations. 8 This temple will become a heap of ruins; everyone who passes by it will be shocked and will hiss out their scorn, saying, ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and this temple?’ 9 Others will then answer, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God, who led their ancestors out of Egypt. They embraced other gods whom they worshiped and served. That is why the Lord has brought all this disaster down on them’” (1 Kings 9:1-9).
In addition to these words of instruction and warning, addressed specifically to Solomon, there were the general instructions and warnings of the Law regarding Israel’s kings:
14 When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will appoint a king over me like all the nations surrounding me,” 15 you must without fail select over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king—you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. 16 Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the Lord has said you must never again return that way. 17 Furthermore, he must not marry many wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold. 18 When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this instruction on a scroll given to him by the levitical priests. 19 It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this instruction and these statutes in order to carry them out, 20 so that he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens and turn from the commandment right or left, and so that he and his descendants may enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).
The high points of Solomon’s reign were no doubt the construction and dedication of the temple. His downfall came late in his life. Solomon married many foreign wives, and eventually his heart was turned to worship their pagan gods:
1 King Solomon fell in love with many foreign women (besides Pharaoh’s daughter), including Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. 2 They came from nations about which the Lord had warned the Israelites, “You must not establish friendly relations with them! If you do, they will surely shift your allegiance to their gods.” But Solomon was irresistibly attracted to them. 3 He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines; his wives had a powerful influence over him. 4 When Solomon became old, his wives shifted his allegiance to other gods; he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God, as his father David had been. 5 Solomon worshiped the Sidonian goddess Astarte and the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 6 Solomon did evil before the Lord; he did not remain loyal to the Lord, like his father David had. 7 Furthermore, on the hill east of Jerusalem Solomon built a high place for the detestable Moabite god Chemosh and for the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 8 He built high places for all his foreign wives so they could burn incense and make sacrifices to their gods (1 Kings 11:1-8).
As a result of Solomon’s folly, God announced that he would lose his kingdom. Because of his father David, God would delay this judgment until after Solomon’s death:
9 The Lord was angry with Solomon because he had shifted his allegiance away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him on two occasions 10 and had warned him about this very thing so that he would not follow other gods. But he did not obey the Lord’s command. 11 So the Lord said to Solomon, “Because you insist on doing these things and have not kept the covenantal rules I gave you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. 12 However, for your father David’s sake I will not do this while you are alive. I will tear it away from your son’s hand instead. 13 But I will not tear away the entire kingdom; I will leave your son one tribe for my servant David’s sake and for the sake of my chosen city Jerusalem” (1 Kings 11:9-13).
The saddest thing about Solomon’s failure is that in spite of God’s rebuke, he gives no evidence of repentance. God raised up men who opposed Solomon in his lifetime. The first of these opponents was Hadad the Edomite (1 Kings 11:14-22), a most interesting fellow. One wonders why so much detail is given about him, especially regarding his connection with Egypt. While David was king of Israel, Joab slaughtered every male in Edom, but somehow Hadad, who was a young lad at that time, escaped to Egypt. For some reason, Pharaoh had a special affection for Hadad and gave him the queen’s sister for his wife. The son born to Hadad and his Egyptian wife was raised in Pharaoh’s palace, along with Pharaoh’s sons. Nevertheless, when Hadad learned that David and Joab were dead, he asked to return to his homeland. Reluctantly, Pharaoh let him go.
I cannot help but sense a fairly strong element of déjà vu here. The connection with Egypt sounds too much like Joseph and also a bit like Moses. Why are we given all these details? I am inclined to conclude that God wants us to see this connection. Egypt was one of the superpowers of ancient times. God “used” Egypt to protect His people, and then to release them (well-supplied at that). Now, it would seem, God was once again using Egypt to protect Hadad, so that he could be an instrument of divine discipline.
God also raised up Rezon, the son of a runaway slave of King Hadadezer of Zobah (1 Kings 11:23-25). Not nearly as much detail is given concerning Rezon. He organized a band of raiders, and when David sought to kill him, he fled to Damascus. He and his men gained control of the city, and they caused trouble for Israel throughout Solomon’s reign.
The third “troubler of Israel” was Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, one of Solomon’s servants (1 Kings 11:26-40). One does not get the impression that Jeroboam was a troublemaker, out for trouble. It appears, rather, that Solomon himself created his own problems by the way he dealt with this fellow. Jeroboam was an Ephraimite, the son of a widow. He was a very talented and skillful worker. When Solomon commenced the construction of a terrace and was closing the gap in the wall surrounding his palace, Jeroboam was one of his workers. Solomon recognized his abilities and promoted him to leader of the work crew of the tribe of Joseph.
It was at this time that the prophet Ahijah privately took Jeroboam aside and informed him that he would be given ten of the tribes of Israel to lead as king. He underscored this prophecy by tearing his new robe into 12 pieces, and then giving Jeroboam 10 of them. He was told that God would leave one tribe, Judah, for Solomon’s descendants to rule. Ahijah made it clear that the division of the kingdom was the result of Solomon’s sin in worshipping the foreign gods of his many wives. He also indicated that at some time in the future the nation would once again be reunited (11:39). This would be some time in the more distant future, however. God promised Jeroboam great success as the first king of Israel (the ten northern tribes of Israel), but only on the condition that Jeroboam walked in the steps of David:
34 I will not take the whole kingdom from his hand. I will allow him to be ruler for the rest of his life for the sake of my chosen servant David who kept my commandments and rules. 35 I will take the kingdom from the hand of his son and give ten tribes to you. 36 I will leave his son one tribe so my servant David’s dynasty may continue to serve me in Jerusalem, the city I have chosen as my home. 37 I will select you; you will rule over all you desire to have and you will be king over Israel. 38 You must obey all I command you to do, follow my instructions, do what I approve, and keep my rules and commandments, like my servant David did. Then I will be with you and establish for you a lasting dynasty, as I did for David; I will give you Israel. 39 I will humiliate David’s descendants because of this, but not forever.” 40 Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam escaped to Egypt and found refuge with King Shishak of Egypt. He stayed in Egypt until Solomon died (1 Kings 11:34-40).
It is amazing that the prophet makes a promise very much like the Davidic Covenant. Time will reveal that Jeroboam is not like David, and his kingdom will not last. It would appear that Solomon somehow heard of the prophecy of Ahijah – either that or Solomon simply became jealous of Jeroboam. For one reason or another, Solomon sets out to kill Jeroboam, forcing him to flee to Egypt. There, Jeroboam finds refuge, not unlike Hadad, the Edomite. In time, Shishak, king of Egypt, will come to the aid of Jeroboam when he returns to Israel.
The tragedy is that Solomon’s heart is not softened by these adversaries. There is no indication of repentance on his part. He seems to stay the same wicked course until the day of his death. The scene is now set for the division of the kingdom, which occurs shortly after the death of Solomon.
Rehoboam was Solomon’s son, and it seems that no one disputed the fact that he would be Israel’s next king. All Israel gathered at Shechem to make Rehoboam their next king. The people had sent word to Jeroboam in Egypt, asking him to return to Israel. He gathered with the Israelites at Shechem to make Rehoboam king. Whether Jeroboam served as their spokesman is not indicated, but we do know that he was present. The people had only one request to make of Rehoboam, and they seem to have made it in a respectful and submissive manner: they asked Rehoboam to “lighten up.”
The words of warning, spoken years before by the prophet Samuel, were now coming true:
10 So Samuel spoke all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “Here are the policies of the king who will rule over you: he will conscript your sons and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they will run in front of his chariot. 12 He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment. 13 He will take your daughters to be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers. 14 He will take your best fields and vineyards and give them to his own servants. 15 He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his servants. 16 He will take both your male and female servants, as well as your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own use. 17 He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will be his servants. 18 In that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t answer you in that day” (1 Samuel 8:10-18).
Solomon’s wealth and power had cost the people of Israel a great deal. Solomon had become heavy-handed with them. At the beginning of Rehoboam’s reign, his subjects asked him to consider the severity of his father and to make the proper adjustments.
Rehoboam had the presence of mind to ask for time to seek counsel. He promised to meet with the people and to convey his decision in three days. Rehoboam first inquired of his father’s counselors. One might expect them to reinforce the policy of Solomon, but they did not. (Had they been advising Solomon to “lighten up” as well?) Their counsel to Rehoboam was short, to the point, and wise:
Then they spoke to him, saying, “ If you will be a servant to this people today, will serve them, grant them their petition, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever” (1 Kings 12:7, NASB, emphasis mine).
This was not the counsel that Rehoboam wanted, however, and so he turned to his “cronies,” the young men with whom he had grown up. Their advice was considerably different:
10 The young advisers with whom Rehoboam had grown up said to him, “Say this to these people who say to you, ‘Your father made us work hard, but now lighten our burden.’ Say this to them: ‘I am a lot tougher than my father. 11 My father imposed heavy demands on you; I will make them even heavier. My father punished you with regular whips; I will punish you with whips that really sting your flesh’” (1 Kings 12:10-11).
Rehoboam was foolish. No doubt his cronies had become used to the “good life,” enjoying the benefits of their association with the king’s son. If they counseled Rehoboam to lessen the demands his father Solomon had imposed on the people, it might mean that they would not live quite as well. Perhaps they had already been corrupted with a lust for power. Whatever the reason, their counsel was foolish. Was Rehoboam trying to impress his friends when he arrogantly promised tougher times for the people?
The brash young king turned a deaf ear to the requests of the people. I doubt that the nation gathered that day, intent on dividing it. I believe they fully intended to serve Rehoboam, as they had served the kings before him. But Rehoboam’s arrogance and highhandedness was just too much for the people to swallow. The seeds of division had been sown years before, as is evident during the reign of David:
41 Then all the men of Israel began coming to the king. They asked the king, “Why did our brothers, the men of Judah, sneak the king away and help the king and his household cross the Jordan—and not only him but all of David’s men as well?” 42 All the men of Judah replied to the men of Israel, “Because the king is our close relative. Why are you so upset about this? Have we eaten at the king’s expense? Or have we misappropriated anything for our own use?” 43 The men of Israel replied to the men of Judah, “We have ten shares in the king, and we have a greater claim on David than you do. Why do you want to curse us? Weren’t we the first to suggest bringing back our king?” But the comments of the men of Judah were more severe than those of the men of Israel (2 Samuel 19:41-43).
The ten northern tribes of Israel walk out on Rehoboam and on the united kingdom:
16 When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, the people answered the king, “We have no portion in David, no share in the son of Jesse. Return to your homes, O Israel! Now, look after your own dynasty, O David!” So Israel returned to their homes (1 Kings 12:16).
In my opinion, there was still time and opportunity for reconciliation. But it was God’s will that the kingdom be divided (1 Kings 12:15), and the heart of Rehoboam had been hardened; he refused to back off his strong statements. He went so far as to try to compel the ten tribes to return and to submit. He sent Adoniram, the supervisor of his work crews, after them, but the angry Israelites stoned him to death. They would have no more of Rehoboam’s heavy hand and no more of his royal work crews.
It is only at this point that Jeroboam begins to play a significant role in the rebellion, at least as far as the inspired account of Scripture goes. Jeroboam does not appear to assert himself; rather, the ten tribes seek him out, appointing him as their king:
When all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they summoned him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. No one except the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the Davidic dynasty249 (1 Kings 12:20).
It does not sound as though Jeroboam was vocal or public in his opposition to Rehoboam, or that he sought to be appointed as king over the ten northern tribes, even though he had been told this was his destiny. We will soon see that Jeroboam was not a godly man; perhaps he doubted Ahijah’s prophecy. Regardless, the text would seem to suggest that the division of the united kingdom was the result of Solomon’s sin and Rehoboam’s folly, rather than Jeroboam’s political intrigue.
Rehoboam makes one more very foolish effort to restore his rule over all Israel – he summoned the warriors of Judah and Benjamin to go to war with the ten tribes. In response, God sent the prophet Shemaiah to Rehoboam with this message:
23 “Say this to King Rehoboam son of Solomon of Judah, and to all Judah and Benjamin, as well as the rest of the people, 24 ‘The Lord says this: “Do not attack and make war with your brothers, the Israelites. Each of you go home, for I have caused this to happen.”’” They obeyed the Lord and went home as the Lord had ordered them to do (1 Kings 12:23-24).
At least Rehoboam heeded the word of God spoken through the prophet. He sent his warriors home, realizing that the division of the kingdom was ultimately God’s doing.
The role of Rehoboam after the “great divorce” is summarized in 1 Kings 14:21-31:
21 Now Rehoboam son of Solomon ruled in Judah. He was forty-one years old when he became king and he ruled for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city the Lord chose from all the tribes of Israel to be his home. His mother was an Ammonite named Naamah. 22 Judah did evil before the Lord. They made him more jealous by their sins than their ancestors had done. 23 They even built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. 24 There were also male cultic prostitutes in the land. They committed the same horrible sins as the nations that the Lord had driven out from before the Israelites.
25 In King Rehoboam’s fifth year, King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. 26 He took away the treasures of the Lord’s temple and of the royal palace; he took everything, including all the golden shields that Solomon had made. 27 King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned them to the officers of the royal guard who protected the entrance to the royal palace. 28 Whenever the king visited the Lord’s temple, the royal guard carried them and then brought them back to the guardroom. 29 The rest of the events of Rehoboam’s reign, including his accomplishments, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah. 30 Rehoboam and Jeroboam were continually at war with each other. 31 Rehoboam passed away and was buried with his ancestors in the city of David. His mother was an Ammonite named Naamah. His son Abijah replaced him as king (1 Kings 14:21-31, emphasis mine).
There are various points of interest in this summation of the rule of Rehoboam. The first is the twice-mentioned fact that Rehoboam’s mother was an Ammonite named Naamah (12:21, 31). Once would seem to have been enough. Twice would indicate that the author wants us to take special note of this fact. The Ammonites were descendants of Lot (Genesis 19:38), and yet their relationship with the Israelites was not particularly friendly or beneficial. It would seem that the author is suggesting that a part of the explanation for Rehoboam’s folly was related to his ancestry.
The second thing that catches our attention in the description of Rehoboam’s reign is the emphasis on the wickedness of the people. Often we are told that the king caused the people to sin. This is certainly the case with Jeroboam (see 1 Kings 12:25-32). But under the rule of Rehoboam, it is Judah who seems to take the initiative in the nation’s sins. The impression given is that the people of Judah wanted to sin, and that Rehoboam did little or nothing to resist their sinful ways. It was not that Rehoboam imposed his wickedness on the people, but that the people imposed their wickedness on Rehoboam. Is it possible that because Rehoboam lost most of his kingdom by being too rigid he completely reversed his approach and was now lax in his dealings with the Israelite’s because of their sins? At least we can see that the people of Judah were pursuing wicked ways.
The third observation about the reign of Rehoboam is that God used Egypt as His chastening rod against Judah. We see this in verses 25-28. You may recall that when Hadad the Edomite and Jeroboam fled from Israel, they both fled to Egypt (1 Kings 11:17-22, 40). Shishak was the king of Egypt who gave sanctuary to Jeroboam (11:40). Is it any great wonder that Shishak would attack Rehoboam in Jerusalem (14:25ff.)? He did Jeroboam the favor of weakening and humiliating his rival, Rehoboam. At the same time, he helped himself to much of the wealth Solomon had accumulated. He was God’s chastening rod against Judah and their king, for all of their sins. How humbling it must have been for Rehoboam to replace the gold shields of the royal guard with bronze shields. One could almost say, Ichabod – gone is the glory of Solomon’s empire (see 1 Samuel 4:21).
Jeroboam played a much more active role in the spiritual decline of the northern kingdom of Israel:
25 Jeroboam built up Shechem in the Ephraimite hill country and lived there. From there he went out and built up Penuel. 26 Jeroboam then thought to himself: “Now the Davidic dynasty could regain the kingdom. 27 If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem, their loyalty could shift to their former master, King Rehoboam of Judah. They might kill me and return to King Rehoboam of Judah.” 28 After the king had consulted with his advisers, he made two golden calves. Then he said to the people, “It is too much trouble for you to go up to Jerusalem. Look, Israel, here are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” 29 He put one in Bethel and the other in Dan. 30 This caused Israel to sin; the people went to Bethel and Dan to worship the calves. 31 He built temples on the high places and appointed as priests people who were not Levites. 32 Jeroboam inaugurated a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the festival celebrated in Judah. On the altar in Bethel he offered sacrifices to the calves he had made. In Bethel he also appointed priests for the high places he had made (1 Kings 12:25-32).
There is something very ironic about Jeroboam’s reign. God had promised Jeroboam that his kingdom would last and that he would be very successful, if he only obeyed His commandments:
38 You must obey all I command you to do, follow my instructions, do what I approve, and keep my rules and commandments, like my servant David did. Then I will be with you and establish for you a lasting dynasty, as I did for David; I will give you Israel. 39 I will humiliate David’s descendants because of this, but not forever” (1 Kings 11:38-39).
Jeroboam listened to his advisors rather than to God (1 Kings 12:28). Jeroboam was afraid that he would lose his kingdom, and even his life. He feared that the divided kingdom would re-unite. In order to protect himself and his kingdom, he established a counterfeit religion for the northern kingdom of Israel.
Everything Jeroboam did flew in the face of Israel’s history and of God’s law. His great fear was that the people of Israel would worship in Jerusalem, as God had instructed. If they did, Jeroboam reasoned, the people of Israel would shift their loyalty to Rehoboam, king of Judah. The solution Jeroboam and his advisors reached was to establish a counterfeit religion – a religion very much like the worship God had ordained for His people, but one which kept the people of Israel from returning to Jerusalem, and worse yet, turned them to idolatry.
Jeroboam made two golden calves, one located in Bethel at the southern part of his kingdom, and the other located in Dan in the northern portion of Israel. His words at the presentation of these idols are all too familiar:
After the king had consulted with his advisers, he made two golden calves. Then he said to the people, “It is too much trouble for you to go up to Jerusalem. Look, Israel, here are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28, emphasis mine).
Jeroboam’s words should be familiar to the reader of the Old Testament:
7 And the Lord spoke to Moses: “Go, descend, because your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have acted corruptly. 8 They have turned aside quickly from the way that I commanded them—they have made for themselves a molten calf, and have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘ These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt’” (Exodus 32:7-8, emphasis mine).
Is it possible that these words are merely coincidental, or is Jeroboam exceedingly wicked? Is he saying, in effect, “You think that Aaron led Israel in worship; just watch me!”? It seems virtually impossible for Jeroboam not to have known that he was leading Israel to disobey God by his worshipper-friendly religion.
His religious revisions were not limited to golden calves. Jeroboam built temples on the high places. He appointed men to serve as priests who were not Levites. He instituted feasts that were designed to replace the divinely appointed Jewish feasts (especially those which required the Israelites to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem). All-in-all, Jeroboam created a counterfeit religion. It was one that imitated the Canaanite religions. It was one that appealed to the people of Israel. It was one that turned the Israelites away from the worship of the one true God. Jeroboam therefore becomes the standard by which other evil kings are measured:
33 In the third year of Asa’s reign over Judah, Baasha son of Ahijah became king over all Israel in Tirzah; he ruled for twenty-four years. 34 He did evil before the Lord; he followed in Jeroboam’s footsteps and encouraged Israel to sin (1 Kings 15:33-34; see also 16:2, 19; 22:52).
Jeroboam did this, supposing that it would preserve and promote his reign as king over the northern kingdom. In reality, it did just the opposite. Even after being rebuked for his sins, Jeroboam persisted in his evil ways, which prompted divine judgment:
7 Go, tell Jeroboam, ‘This is what the Lord God of Israel says: “I raised you up from among the people and made you ruler over my people Israel. 8 I tore the kingdom away from the Davidic dynasty and gave it to you. But you are not like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me wholeheartedly by doing only what I approve. 9 You have sinned more than all who came before you. You went and angered me by making other gods, formed out of metal; you have completely disregarded me. 10 So I am ready to bring disaster on the dynasty of Jeroboam. I will cut off every last male belonging to Jeroboam in Israel, including even the weak and incapacitated. I will burn up the dynasty of Jeroboam, just as one burns manure until it is completely consumed. 11 Dogs will eat the ones who die in the city, and the birds of the sky will eat the ones who die in the country.”’ Indeed the Lord has announced it (1 Kings 14:7-11).
With the division of the kingdom, the Israelites reached a new level of sin and rebellion against God. Jeroboam led the northern kingdom into what was virtually a variation of Canaanite worship. Under Rehoboam’s leadership, the people of Judah fell to a new level of sin as well:
22 Judah did evil before the Lord. They made him more jealous by their sins than their ancestors had done. 23 They even built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. 24 There were also male cultic prostitutes in the land. They committed the same horrible sins as the nations that the Lord had driven out from before the Israelites (1 Kings 14:22-24).
The division of the united kingdom is a very significant turning point in the history of the nation Israel. If the reader did not know “the end of the story,” he would probably conclude that it was all over for the nation Israel. The adage, “divide and conquer” would surely seem to apply. The promised blessings that God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all applied to the 12 tribes of Israel (see, for example, Genesis 49:1-28). The promised Messiah was to sit on the throne of David (2 Samuel 7:12-16). At this moment, the kingdom is divided into two nations, with two kings. Worse yet, these two nations are frequently in conflict with one another. How can God’s promises to the patriarchs possibly be fulfilled now? Once again, the purposes and promises of God seem in peril. It is a situation that only God can resolve, and resolve it, He will. It will be many, many years, however, until this happens.
The once united and powerful kingdom of Israel is now greatly weakened by division. Both the northern and the southern kingdoms will be more vulnerable to foreign powers. Both will be tempted to make alliances with Gentile nations. Both will be exposed to the idolatry of heathen religions. The division of the kingdom is, in one sense, the beginning of the end for both the northern and the southern kingdoms. The northern kingdom of Israel will be ruled by various kings and various dynasties – all evil. The southern kingdom of Judah will have a somewhat checkered history. The Davidic dynasty will produce some good kings and more wicked kings. The northern kingdom of Israel will be defeated and scattered abroad by the Assyrians. The southern kingdom of Judah will be carried off to captivity by the Babylonians. The division of the two kingdoms will only intensify. The animosity of the Jews of Jesus’ day for the Samaritans is the fruit of the divided kingdom. It will take a spectacular intervention on the part of God to put this nation back together.
From this point on, it is a downhill and very slippery slope that Israel and Judah will walk. God’s dealings with Israel will serve as a warning to Judah, a warning which the southern kingdom will not heed. Things will quickly deteriorate from bad to worse, with only a few bright spots for Judah. The prophecies of Deuteronomy 28-31 are quickly beginning to find their fulfillment in this history of Israel, now a divided kingdom.
There are a number of lessons to be learned from our text and from this turning point in Israel’s history. Let me point out just a few.
Our text is a vivid illustration of the way divisions occur. The division of the united kingdom occurred in a way that is classic for all divisions. Churches have split and marriages have ended in divorce in precisely the same manner. Let me point out some of the key elements. The first element is pride (or arrogance). Rehoboam was too proud to heed the petition of the people and to lighten the load his father had placed on them. The second element, closely related, is power. Rehoboam wanted to be in control, to be “in charge.” He viewed mercy, kindness, and humility as weakness, and he would have none of this. The third element is “godly counsel.” Rehoboam refused to heed the wise counsel of his father’s counselors; instead, he listened to his peers. I don’t know how many divorces have been facilitated by the “advice” of good friends. The fourth element is that of leadership. Rehoboam abused his position of leadership. He viewed his position as the opportunity to force others to serve him, rather than as his opportunity to serve others. Humility and servanthood would have saved his kingdom. Finally, there is the element of time. There was a window of opportunity for healing and reconciliation, and Rehoboam did not seize it. The longer the division lasted, the more intense it became. We would do well to ponder the failures of Rehoboam, for divisions are still very much a part of the fallen world in which we live.
Our text is also a great illustration of the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. From one perspective, the division of the kingdom was the result of the arrogance and the foolishness of Rehoboam. One could look at the entire sequence of events from a totally human perspective. And yet we must take into account the words of 1 Kings 11:9-13. And lest we forget them, in the midst of the account of the division, we are reminded that the division of the kingdom was ultimately God’s will:
The king refused to listen to the people, because the Lord was instigating this turn of events so that he might bring to pass the prophetic announcement he had made through Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat (1 Kings 12:15).
The major problem that most people face in dealing with the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man is that they assume it must be all one way or the other. They assume that if God is sovereign, then man must not be free to make choices. The only other option for many is that men are free agents, causing God not to be in complete control of human history. How, they reason, can God hold any man accountable for choices that he was predestined to make? The fact is that God gives men the freedom to make choices, but He is always in complete control of human history.
When I seek to be in control of my children, I must do so by restricting their freedoms and by limiting their choices. I cannot let them out of my sight, or I lose control. God’s sovereignty is far greater in nature and scope. God is so great that He can give men the freedom to make choices, yet these “free choices” can never contradict, hinder, nor thwart God’s purposes or promises. The relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility is never an “either/or” issue; it is a “both/and” matter. We see this very clearly in the division of the nation Israel.
A friend of mine reminded me of the “principle of unintended consequences.” To be honest, I’m not sure that I fully grasp it, but I do think that our text demonstrates the fact that our actions often can have very profound “unintended consequences.” At the moment Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, I am convinced that she had no idea where her sin would lead. Actions that may seem trivial at the time have profound consequences, for good or evil. Rehoboam did not set out to divide his kingdom or to set the nation on a path of disaster. But the fact is that his foolish decision did have these consequences. Rehoboam should have known better. He followed the example of Solomon his father (at a very foolish time in his life) and the advice of his friends, rather than the Word of God and the words of wise men.
18 When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this instruction on a scroll given to him by the levitical priests. 19 It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this instruction and these statutes in order to carry them out, 20 so that he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens and turn from the commandment right or left, and so that he and his descendants may enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel (Deuteronomy 17:18-20, emphasis mine).
This whole matter of servanthood and leadership is prominent in the Bible, and especially in the New Testament. Jesus’ disciples hoped for a kingdom in which they would have power and authority, so that others would serve them. This is the way the scribes and Pharisees exercised their power:
1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and his disciples, 2 “The experts in the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. 3 Therefore pay attention to what they tell you and do it. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by people, for they make their phylacteries wide and their tassels long. 6 They love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and elaborate greetings in the marketplaces, and to have people call them ‘Rabbi.’ 8 But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers. 9 And call no one your ‘father’ on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one teacher, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Matthew 23:1-12).
The disciples were tempted to follow this path, but Jesus taught them otherwise:
35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him and said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” 36 He said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” 37 They said to him, “Permit one of us to sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I experience?” 39 They said to him, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink, and you will be baptized with the baptism I experience, 40 but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give. It is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 Now when the other ten heard this, they became angry with James and John. 42 Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them. 43 But it is not this way among you. Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:35-45).
The church at Corinth was plagued with divisions and strife, and it had everything to do with pride, power, and arrogance (see 1 Corinthians 1:10-12). It was fostered by those who sought to lead in a “Gentile” sort of way:
19 For since you are so wise, you put up with fools gladly. 20 For you put up with it if someone makes slaves of you, if someone exploits you, if someone takes advantage of you, if someone behaves arrogantly toward you, if someone strikes you in the face (2 Corinthians 11:19-20).
The source of division is frequently pride and arrogance and a seeking for power. The key to unity is humility, manifested in true servanthood:
1 Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort provided by love, any fellowship in the Spirit, any affection or mercy, 2 complete my joy and be of the same mind, by having the same love, being united in spirit, and having one purpose. 3 Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself. 4 Each of you should be concerned not only about your own interests, but about the interests of others as well. 5 You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had,
6 who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
8 He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross!
9 As a result God exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow
—in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess
to the glory of God the Father
that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:1-11).
The cross of Jesus Christ is a constant source of wonder and amazement to me. Think of it. Our Lord was God incarnate. He created the heavens and the earth (see John 1:1-5; Colossians 1:16). He, above any other person to set foot on this earth, was, and is, sovereign. I know of no better definition of sovereignty than that given by Nebuchadnezzar:
34 “But at the end of the appointed time I, Nebuchadnezzar,
looked up toward heaven, and my sanity returned to me.
I blessed the Most High,
and I praised and glorified the one who lives forever.
For his rule is an everlasting rule,
and his kingdom extends from one generation to the next.
35 All the inhabitants of the earth are regarded as nothing.
He does as he wishes with the army of heaven
and with those who inhabit the earth.
No one slaps his hand
and says to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:34-35).
Think of it! The sovereign God of the universe humbled Himself by taking on sinless humanity. He who had the power to call thousands of angels to His side humbled Himself by His death on the cross of Calvary. He bore the sinner’s guilt and punishment, so that all who believe in Him could have the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life. If the all-powerful, almighty God could humble Himself and submit Himself to the agony of the cross, what does that mean for us? First, it means that we can be saved by trusting in Him. Secondly, it means that we should follow in His steps, for the glory of God, and the good of others:
19 For this finds God’s favor, if because of conscience toward God someone endures hardships in suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if you sin and are mistreated and endure it? But if you do good and suffer and so endure, this finds favor with God. 21 For to this you were called, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was maligned, he did not answer back; when he suffered, he threatened no retaliation, but committed himself to God who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we may leave sin behind and live for righteousness. By his wounds you were healed. 25 For you were going astray like sheep but now you have turned back to the shepherd and guardian of your souls (1 Peter 2:19-25).
Let us follow in the steps of the Savior. Let us first receive the gift of salvation, by faith in His death, burial, and resurrection in our place. Then, let us seek to walk in humility and obedience, setting aside our selfish interests, so that we are free to serve others.
246 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on May 20, 2001.
247 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
248 It is interesting to note that of the three kings of the united kingdom, David had the most intimate relationship with God, and yet we never read that David was overcome by the Holy Spirit, as Saul was. Neither do we read that God ever appeared to David, as He did to Solomon.
249 We know from 1 Kings 12:21, 23 that the tribe of Benjamin also remained loyal to Rehoboam. Apparently they were such a small and insignificant tribe that they hardly even counted in the mind of the writer. Thus it is that he speaks of the ten tribes and Judah.
Part I: The Book of Ezra330
Neither Judah’s exile nor her return should have come as a surprise to the Jews of Ezra’s day. The exile was foretold nearly a millennium before it took place. In Genesis 12:1-3, God entered into a covenant with Abraham:
1 Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household
to the land that I will show you.
2 Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,
and I will make your name great,
in order that you might be a prime example of divine blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
but the one who treats you lightly I must curse,
and all the families of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using your name” (Genesis 12:1-3).331
God promised him a land (Canaan), a seed (descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens), and a blessing (blessing for Abraham and his descendants, and through his seed, blessing for the world). Just a couple of chapters later, in Genesis 15:12-17, God spoke of a 400-year-bondage in a foreign land, after which He would bring His people into the Promised Land of Canaan:
12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep. Then great terror overwhelmed him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. 14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15 But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.” 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking firepot with a flaming torch passed between the animal parts (Genesis 15:12-17).
This prophecy concerned the first “exile” of the nation Israel in the land of Egypt and a subsequent “exodus” from their Egyptian captivity. The first exodus became the prototype of a second “exodus” that God would accomplish, centuries later. The release of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity was thus described in terms that were deliberately reminiscent of the first exodus:
1 Now, this is what the Lord says,
the one who created you, O Jacob,
and formed you, O Israel:
“Don’t be afraid, for I will protect you.
I call you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I am with you;
when you pass through the streams, they will not overwhelm you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
the flames will not harm you.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the sovereign king of Israel, your deliverer.
I have handed over Egypt as a ransom price,
Ethiopia and Seba in place of you.”
… 14 This is what the Lord says,
your protector, the sovereign king of Israel:
“For your sake I send to Babylon
and make them all fugitives,
turning the Babylonians’ joyful shouts into mourning songs.
15 I am the Lord, your sovereign ruler,
the one who created Israel, your king.”
16 This is what the Lord says,
the one who made a road through the sea,
a pathway through the surging waters,
17 the one who led chariots and horses to destruction,
together with a mighty army.
They fell down, never to rise again;
they were extinguished, put out like a burning wick (Isaiah 43:1-3, 14-17, emphasis mine; see also 44:27).
We find the first clear prophecy of this Babylonian captivity in the Book of Leviticus:
34 “‘Then the land will make up for its sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its sabbaths. 35 All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have on your sabbaths when you lived on it. 36 “‘As for the ones who remain among you, I will bring despair into their heart in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a blowing leaf will pursue them, and they will flee as one who flees the sword and fall down even though there is no pursuer. 37 They will stumble over each other as those who flee before a sword, though there is no pursuer, and there will be no one to stand up for you before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you. 39 “‘As for the ones who remain among you, they will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of your enemies, and they will also rot away because of their ancestors’ iniquities which are with them… . 43 The land will be abandoned by them in order that it may make up for its sabbaths while it is made desolate without them, and they will make up for their iniquity because they have rejected my regulations and have abhorred my statutes” (Leviticus 26:34-39, 43, emphasis mine; see also Deuteronomy 28:64-68332).
The Babylonian captivity is therefore described in 2 Chronicles as the fulfillment of the prophecy in Leviticus:
20 He deported to Babylon all who escaped the sword. They served him and his sons until the Persian kingdom rose to power. 21 This took place to fulfill the Lord’s message delivered through Jeremiah. The land experienced its sabbatical years; it remained desolate for seventy years, as prophesied (2 Chronicles 36:20-21, emphasis mine).
The release of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon and their return to the land of Canaan was also prophesied centuries before it took place:
1 “Now when all these things happen to you—the blessing and the curse I have set before you—and you remember them in all the nations where the Lord your God has exiled you, 2 if you turn to the Lord your God and listen to him just as I am commanding you today—you and your descendants—with your whole mind and being, 3 then the Lord your God will reverse your captivity and have pity on you. He will turn and gather you from all the peoples among whom he has scattered you. 4 Even if any of your dispersed are under the most distant skies, from there the Lord your God will gather and bring you back. 5 Then he will bring you to the land your ancestors possessed and you also will possess it; he will do better for you and multiply you more than he did your ancestors. 6 The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being, in order to live” (Deuteronomy 30:1-6, emphasis mine; see also Leviticus 36:40-42).
Much later, the prophet Jeremiah foretold the captivity of Judah and its release, specifying the number of years the Jews would be subject to Babylon:
8 “Therefore, the Lord who rules over all says, ‘You have not listened to what I said. 9 So I, the Lord, affirm that I am going to send for all the peoples of the north and my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it and make them everlasting ruins. I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. 10 I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness, to the glad celebration of brides and grooms in these lands. I will put an end to the sound of people grinding meal. I will put an end to lamps shining in their houses. 11 This whole area will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’ 12 “‘But when the seventy years are over, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation for their sins. I will make the land of Babylon an everlasting ruin. I, the Lord, affirm it” (Jeremiah 25:8-12, emphasis mine).
10 “For the Lord says, ‘Only when the seventy years of Babylonian rule are over will I again take up consideration for you. Then I will fulfill my gracious promise to you and restore you to your homeland. 11 For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. ‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you a future filled with hope. 12 When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, I will hear your prayers. 13 When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you. If you seek me with all your heart and soul, 14 I will make myself available to you,’ says the Lord. ‘Then I will reverse your fortunes and will re-gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have exiled you,’ says the Lord. ‘I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you’” (Jeremiah 29:10-14, emphasis mine).
Over a hundred years before Jeremiah, the prophet Isaiah spoke of Judah’s return from Babylon to the land of Canaan. The amazing thing about Isaiah’s prophecy is that he even names “Cyrus” as the “servant” God would employ to bring about the return of His people to the land of Canaan:
44:26 [Thus says the LORD] who fulfills the oracles of his prophetic servants
and brings to pass the announcements of his messengers,
who says about Jerusalem, ‘She will be inhabited,’
and about the towns of Judah, ‘They will be rebuilt,
her ruins I will raise up,’
27 who says to the deep sea, ‘Be dry,
I will dry up your sea currents,’
28 who commissions Cyrus, the one I appointed as shepherd
to carry out all my wishes
and to decree concerning Jerusalem, ‘She will be rebuilt,’
and concerning the temple, ‘It will be reconstructed.’”
45:1 This is what the Lord says to his chosen one,
to Cyrus, whose right hand I hold
in order to subdue nations before him,
and disarm kings,
to open doors before him,
so gates remain unclosed (Isaiah 44:26—45:1, emphasis mine).
During the days of their exile in Babylon, godly Jews had a deep sense of loss and a strong desire to return to Jerusalem and to the temple, where they could worship the God of their fathers:
1 By the rivers of Babylon
we sit down and weep
when we remember Zion.
2 On the poplars in her midst
we hang our harps,
3 for there our captors ask us to compose songs;
those who mock us demand that we be happy, saying:
“Sing for us a song about Zion!”
4 How can we sing a song to the Lord
in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand be crippled!
6 May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
and do not give Jerusalem priority
over whatever gives me the most joy (Psalm 137:1-6).
You can imagine the joy and elation the Jews in Babylon experienced when they heard the words of this decree:
1 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in order to fulfill the Lord’s message spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord stirred the mind of King Cyrus of Persia. He disseminated a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, announcing in a written edict the following:
2 “So says King Cyrus of Persia:
“‘The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has instructed me to build a temple for him in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3 Anyone from his people among you (may his God be with him!) may go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and may build the temple of the Lord God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. 4 Let anyone who survives in any of those places where he is a resident foreigner be helped by his neighbors with silver, gold, equipment, and animals, along with voluntary offerings for the temple of God which is in Jerusalem’” (Ezra 1:1-4).
What an exciting moment in Israel’s history this must have been. Can you imagine the sense of eager anticipation these returning exiles must have felt? Surely they must have been thinking something like this:
“Our forefathers really missed God’s blessings. It was their sins which brought us into captivity. But now that’s all in the past. Now we’re returning to the land. We’ve learned to obey God’s law and to forsake idolatry. We’re going to go back to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, and experience the blessings God promised. The ‘kingdom of God’ is finally going to be experienced on earth.”
The reader likewise finds himself entering into this spirit of hope and optimism. Adam and Eve were given a place of blessing, in the garden. Had they obeyed God, they could have lived there forever, enjoying His presence. But they failed, bringing about sin and separation. Then, God wiped the slate clean at the flood, and Noah and his family started fresh. But Noah and his descendents failed as well. Then came the tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, another judgment from God (soon to be followed by the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah). But then God made an unconditional covenant with Abraham, promising to bless the whole earth through Abraham by giving him a land, a seed, and the promise of His blessings. It wasn’t long before Abraham and his descendants made a mess of things, and God had to sequester His people in Egypt, where they would remain separate,333 and where they would grow into a mighty nation. Those who left Egypt with Moses failed many times and were not allowed to enter the promised land, so a second generation was raised up to possess the land under the leadership of men like Joshua and Caleb. But the Book of Judges informs us that this generation would pass, and another ungodly generation would follow, caught up in a deadly cycle of sin and judgment.
What Israel needed was a king, a leader. Surely that would do it:
In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right (Judges 17:6).
Hopes were running high when Israel’s first king – Saul – was anointed. But it did not take very long to see that Saul was a failure who led the nation astray. Our hopes are rekindled, however, when we read that God designated David as Saul’s replacement. Now here is a man after God’s own heart. Surely the good times are here at last for Israel. But David is a sinner as well, and so is his son, Solomon. Because of Solomon’s sin, his kingdom is divided, and before long the people of God will be spewed out of the Promised Land of Canaan. The northern kingdom is scattered by the Assyrians, and the southern kingdom of Judah is carried off as slaves to Babylon.
Now, at last, the time has come for the Babylonian exiles to be released to return to the Promised Land. Do we not feel a renewed sense of hope and optimism? Surely the Jews will get it right this time. The lessons of history should serve to keep them from repeating the same sins. We will get only a few chapters (and even fewer years) into the return and restoration account when the people of God fail again. By and large, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are not a “success story” to be imitated by men today. They are yet another repetition of the failures of God’s people, from the beginning of human history. The lessons we learn are often negative, but they have the positive effect of turning our attention and our trust toward God, and not toward ourselves. Let us listen well, then, to the story of Ezra. It is not only a fascinating account; it is one we desperately need to hear and to heed.
The Assyrians chose to scatter their enemies, hoping to sever them from all their ties to their land and their religion. The Babylonians made captives of their enemies, using them as slaves (as we see with Daniel and his friends). God then fulfilled His promise to bring judgment upon the Babylonians (Isaiah 13; Jeremiah 25:12; chapters 50-51). The Persians who defeated them dealt with their prisoners of war in a very different way. They sought to instill gratitude in their captives, rather than hatred. They sent their captives back to their homeland and helped them re-establish their worship. And so it was that God orchestrated the events of human history in such a way as to fulfill His promise, made nearly 200 years beforehand, that a man named Cyrus would act as His servant, bringing the Jewish exiles in Babylon back to the Promised Land (see Isaiah 44:26–45:1).
It is interesting that our author does not choose to emphasize the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, but rather the prophecy of Jeremiah:
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in order to fulfill the Lord’s message spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord stirred the mind of King Cyrus of Persia. He disseminated a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, announcing in a written edict the following (Ezra 1:1, emphasis mine).
I believe we may safely assume that the prophecies of Jeremiah that were fulfilled by Cyrus would be those of Jeremiah 25:12 and 29:10-14.
There is yet another prophecy of Jeremiah that was fulfilled by the decree of Cyrus:
21 “Indeed, the Lord God of Israel who rules over all has already spoken about the valuable articles that are left in the Lord’s temple, in the royal palace of Judah, and in Jerusalem. 22 He has said, ‘They will be carried off to Babylon. They will remain there until it is time for me to show consideration for them again. Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.’ The Lord affirm this” (Jeremiah 27:21-22).
Cyrus included a command to return the vessels removed from the temple in Jerusalem, which had been kept in Babylon. The text makes it very clear that it was God who moved in the heart of Cyrus (1:1) and in the hearts of the 50,000 (1:5). God was sovereignly working to fulfill His purposes and promises regarding His people.
In Ezra 2, we are provided with a list of those “whose spirits God stirred” (Ezra 1:5), prompting them to go back to their homeland. We should not minimize the courage and faith of those who chose to return. We know that some of those who made this trek were elderly (see 3:12). The trip was approximately 800 miles, taking several months (see 7:8-9). There were grave dangers involved in such a journey, especially for a group carrying many valuable objects with them (1:66-69; compare 8:21-23, 31). Life was not so bad in Persia, and many of the Jews seem to have been content to remain there, as did Esther and Mordecai (the Book of Esther).
When the people arrived they assembled in Jerusalem, where they promptly constructed an altar and began to offer sacrifices. Their motivation includes fear of their enemies:
1 When the seventh month arrived and the Israelites were living in their towns, the people assembled in Jerusalem. 2 Then Jeshua the son of Jozadak and his priestly colleagues and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and his colleagues started to build the altar of the God of Israel so they could offer burnt offerings on it as required by the law of Moses the man of God. 3 They established the altar on its foundations, for they were in terror of the local peoples, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, both the morning and the evening offerings (Ezra 3:1-3, emphasis mine).
The exiles’ concerns regarding the “local peoples” were not unfounded. When the Assyrians defeated the northern kingdom of Israel, they transplanted these Israelites far from their homeland. The Assyrians then brought in other subjected peoples. We know that these people began to worship the God of Israel, in addition to their own gods (see 2 Kings 17:24-33). When the Babylonians defeated the people of Judah and sacked Jerusalem, the land was left to only a few of the poor. As we might expect, surrounding peoples began to “possess” the vacated land. They were not at all happy to learn that the Jews had returned to repossess their land and to permanently settle there. These Samaritan-like peoples were not willing to give up the land they had occupied without opposition. The decree of Cyrus made any opposition illegal, but then the Persian king was a long way away.
In the second year of the exiles’ return, they began to rebuild the temple. This began with the laying of the foundation of the temple (3:9). When the builders completed laying the foundation of the temple, there was a great celebration. There was the music of trumpets and cymbals, along with joyful singing. There was something strange about this “celebration,” however:
11 With antiphonal response they sang, praising and glorifying the Lord:
“For he is good;
his loving kindness toward Israel is forever.”
All the people gave a loud shout as they praised the Lord when the temple of the Lord was established. 12 Many of the priests, the Levites, and the leaders—older people who had seen with their own eyes the former temple while it was still established—were weeping loudly, and many others raised their voice in a joyous shout. 13 People were unable to tell the difference between the sound of joyous shouting and the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people were shouting so loudly that the sound was heard a long way off (Ezra 3:11-13).
It was the older generation who was weeping loudly, while the younger generation was jubilant. Why? Because the older generation was living in the past; they were re-living “the good old days.” These folks could remember the temple in Jerusalem. How much more beautiful it was than what the reconstructed temple would look like. This living in the past and weeping was wrong. It is at the prompting of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, that the temple will be completed. When the temple is completed and the people celebrate, there are no tears. Why? I believe it is because the prophets corrected the error of their thinking.
Think about it for a moment. These older men could only have seen the temple in its last days, just before its destruction. These older men would have been quite young when they last saw the temple. No doubt they were overly impressed with its appearance, just as our Lord’s disciples were awe-struck by the beauty of Herod’s temple:
Now as Jesus was going out of the temple courts, one of his disciples said to him, “Teacher, look at these tremendous stones and buildings!” (Mark 13:1)
We know that in its last days, temple worship had been greatly corrupted. Images of other gods were there (see 2 Chronicles 33:1-9, 22; 36:14-21). What, then, was so “good” about the “good old days”? I think the only thing one can say was “good” was that it was a beautiful building.
The fears of all (3:3) and the tears of some (3:12-13) were the first evidences of failure among those exiles who returned to their land. Chapter 4 further unfolds the sequence of events leading to the cessation of their efforts to rebuild the temple.
One must be very alert here to the chronological indicators in the text. A careless reading of the text could allow one to reach this conclusion:
The “peoples of the land” hear that the Jews are rebuilding the temple and offer their assistance. They, too, worship the God of Israel. The Jews know that if these peoples worship the God of Israel, it is only as one of many gods, rather than as the one true God. And so the Jews refuse to be “unequally yoked”334 with these unbelievers in the work of rebuilding the temple. Their neighbors then set out to oppose this rebuilding project. As a part of their resistance they send a letter to King Artaxerxes, accusing the Jews of rebuilding the temple and the city so they can once again rebel against their captors, as they have done throughout their history. When Artaxerxes looks into this matter, he discovers that the Jews of Jerusalem and Judah have a history of rebellion, and so the king issues an order for the Jews to cease their rebuilding project. The peoples of the land then march against Jerusalem, threatening to go to battle against them if they do not stop rebuilding immediately. After Haggai and Zechariah begin to prophesy, the Jews once again commence the rebuilding of the temple, even though it is against the specific orders of Artaxerxes.
There are several problems with the (false) view articulated above. First, King Artaxerxes reigned from 464 through 424 B.C., during the days of Ezra (Ezra 7:1ff.) and Nehemiah (Nehemiah 2:1ff.), while the events of Ezra 4:1-5 take place somewhere around 536 B.C. Second, the Jews would have had to commence rebuilding the temple against the orders of the king. Throughout the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, it is with the blessing of the kings of Persia that the return of the Jews and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple take place. Third, the letter sent to Artaxerxes does not specifically mention rebuilding the temple, but rather the rebuilding of the city and its walls (see 4:12-13). Fourth (and in my mind, most compelling), the prophet Haggai rebuked the Jews for a very different reason than that of Ezra 4:6-23:
1 On the first day of the sixth month of King Darius’s second year, the Lord spoke this message through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak: 2 The sovereign Lord says this: “These people have said, ‘The time for rebuilding the Lord’s temple has not yet come.’” 3 So the Lord spoke through the prophet Haggai as follows: 4 “Is it right for you to live in paneled houses while my temple is in ruins? (Haggai 1:1-4, emphasis mine)
The Jews are rebuked for placing their own construction projects above the rebuilding of the temple. That’s a far cry from obeying the king’s decree and ceasing construction because they would be killed otherwise.
The solution to these problems is found in the details provided in Ezra 4. In Ezra 4:1-5, we are told that early on the peoples of the land sought to participate in the rebuilding of the temple and that their offer was flatly rejected. We then read that they set out to resist or hinder the Jews’ reconstruction efforts. This they did by intimidation and various other hindrances. We must remember that during the days of Cyrus and Darius those who opposed the Jews would have been in violation of the king’s decree and subject to severe punishment (see Ezra 6:6-11).
In verse 6, we are told that a complaint against the Jews was filed with Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus was the king of Persia during the events of the Book of Esther. No response by Ahasuerus is indicated. Verses 7-23 then reach out into the more distant future. The author seeks to show us that the hostility and opposition which commenced in Ezra 3 and 4 grows more intense as time passes. While the people of the land could not use military force to stop the rebuilding of the temple during the days of Cyrus or Darius, they would do so in the days of Artaxerxes, with his (temporary)335 permission.
Verse 24 then returns to the days of Zerubbabel, when opposition to the Jews’ work in Jerusalem was just in its initial stages. If we were reading the events of Ezra 4 in chronological order, we would read verses 1-5, then verse 24, and finally verses 6-23 would need to be in parentheses, since they project us forward in time to a future period of opposition on the part of the people of the land.
There is an important point to all this detail. Construction of the temple seems to have halted only a few months after it was first begun. This was not because Cyrus ordered the Jews to stop building the temple, or even because the people of the land forced (4:23) them to stop. It was because the Jews were disheartened and discouraged, and distracted by their own interests. They were disheartened and discouraged because this new temple was not going to be as glorious as the old one. It was not going to be an architectural masterpiece. They were discouraged because they faced a certain amount of opposition from the people of the land. We might say that the Jews were depressed. They turned their attention and their efforts toward building their own magnificent (paneled) homes. They became self-indulgent and self-absorbed. It is for their own sins that the prophet Haggai rebuked them.
The Jews had left Persia with much enthusiasm and zeal. No doubt they assumed that they would return to their land, quickly rebuild the temple and the city, and then turn their attention to their land and houses. When they found that completing the temple would not be as quick and easy as they had supposed (and that the temple was not as glorious as they had hoped, or remembered), they threw up their hands and turned their attention and energies to building their own homes. They did not give up on building the temple because it was forbidden by the king, or because the people of the land made it impossible. They gave up because the task was more difficult than they first thought, and because the temple did not seem as glorious as they had hoped. To turn their attention to their own homes was not that difficult (they really wanted to build their own homes anyway), and it did not seem to provoke the people of the land. It appeared safer and easier to put off work in Jerusalem, and it was really what they preferred anyway. How little it takes to cause God’s people to stumble (see Song of Solomon 2:15).
I am reminded of the words of the writer to the Hebrews:
You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin (Hebrews 12:4).
That is the point, I believe, of the parenthetical inclusion of 4:6-23. Are the Jews ready to “throw in the towel” and give up rebuilding the temple? They have not come up against an immovable object; they have encountered a little resistance. They have the assurance of God, the decree of the king, and the means provided to accomplish their task. If they faced the circumstances of verses 6-23 they could claim substantial opposition, but this is not the case. Verses 6-23 are placed here, I believe, to contrast the puny difficulties of this time to the major obstacles of a later day. No wonder these folks are rebuked by Haggai (see chapter 1).
The prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah did the job. The rebuilding of the temple resumed, with the encouragement and support of the prophets. The peoples of the land were greatly disturbed to see that the temple construction had resumed. Tattenai, the governor of the Trans-Euphrates area, along with others, challenged Zerubbabel. They wished to know who authorized the temple construction and the completion of the walls. They also wanted to have the names of those who were in charge of the project. In contemporary legal terms, the enemies of the Jews were seeking an injunction against them. They hoped that an order would be given to cease and desist from this construction project until a hearing could be held and a verdict pronounced.
Had an injunction been granted, construction could easily have been delayed for a year or more, even if the king of Persia ruled in favor of the Jews. But God was looking after His people. No order was given to stop the construction until the king had reached a decision. I find the letter that was sent to Darius most interesting. The Jews’ case was presented with amazing accuracy:
11 They responded to us in the following way: ‘We are servants of the God of heaven and earth. We are rebuilding the temple which was previously built many years ago. A great king of Israel built it and completed it. 12 But after our ancestors angered the God of heaven, he delivered them into the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this temple and exiled the people to Babylon. 13 But in the first year of King Cyrus of Babylon, King Cyrus enacted a decree to rebuild this temple of God. 14 Even the gold and silver vessels of the temple of God that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem and had brought to the palace of Babylon—even those things King Cyrus brought from the palace of Babylon and presented to a man by the name of Sheshbazzar whom he had appointed as governor. 15 He said to him, “Take these vessels and go deposit them in the temple in Jerusalem, and let the house of God be rebuilt in its proper location” (Ezra 5:11-15).
When Darius ordered the archives to be searched, he learned that the Jews had spoken correctly. Cyrus had given the Jews authority to rebuild Jerusalem, and the temple in particular. Darius gave very specific orders, permitting the Jews to continue, while prohibiting the peoples of the land from interfering:
6 “Now Tattenai governor of Trans-Euphrates, Shethar Bozenai, and their colleagues, the officials of the Trans-Euphrates—all of you stay far away from there! 7 Leave the work on this temple of God alone. Let the governor of Judah and the elders of Judah rebuild this temple of God in its proper place. 8 “I also hereby issue orders as to what you are to do with those elders of the Jews in order to rebuild this temple of God. From the royal treasury, from the taxes of Trans-Euphrates the complete costs will be given to these men, so that there may be no halt. 9 Whatever is needed—whether oxen or rams or lambs or burnt offerings for the God of heaven or wheat or salt or wine or oil, as required by the priests who are in Jerusalem—must be given to them daily without any neglect, 10 so that they may be offering incense to the God of heaven and praying for the good fortune of the king and his family. 11 I hereby give orders that if anyone changes this directive a beam is to be pulled out from his house and he is to be raised up and impaled on it, and his house is to be reduced to a rubbish heap for this indiscretion. 12 May God who makes his name to reside there overthrow any king or people who reaches out to cause such change or to destroy this temple of God in Jerusalem. I, Darius, have given orders. Let them be carried out with precision!” (Ezra 6:6-12)
I have to chuckle as I read the words of Ezra 6:13:
Then Tattenai governor of the Trans-Euphrates, Shethar-Bozenai, and their colleagues acted accordingly—with precision, just as Darius the king had given instructions (Ezra 6:13).
The words of warning contained in the decree of Darius took the wind out of the sails of the people of the land. They no longer opposed the rebuilding of the temple, and indeed assisted in whatever ways the Jews requested (which were probably few).
As a result, the temple was soon completed (Ezra 6:13-15). There was a great celebration as the temple was joyfully dedicated, and as they observed Passover.
19 The exiles observed the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. 20 The priests and the Levites had purified themselves, and they all were ceremonially clean. They sacrificed the Passover lamb for all the exiles, for their colleagues the priests, and for themselves. 21 The Israelites who were returning from the exile ate it, along with all those who had separated themselves from the uncleanness of the nations of the land to seek the Lord God of Israel. 22 They observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days with joy, for the Lord had given them joy and had changed the opinion of the king of Assyria toward them, so that he assisted them in the work on the temple of God, the God of Israel (Ezra 6:19-22).
This time there was no weeping.336
Nearly 60 years pass from the end of chapter 6 until the events of chapter 7. It is during this interval that the drama in Persia, depicted in the Book of Esther, takes place. It is also during this time that Artaxerxes issues a decree, forbidding the Jews to continue work on the walls and city of Jerusalem (Ezra 4:7-23). Something has caused King Artaxerxes to change his mind, for when we come to Ezra 7 we find Ezra and a group of Jewish exiles preparing to journey to Jerusalem and the land of Judah. This is the second wave of returning exiles, with the third return taking place when Nehemiah made his trek to Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1:1ff.).
Ezra is a very gifted man. He is a priest whose lineage is traced back to Aaron (7:5), and he is a scholar (7:6, 10-11). Whatever changed Artaxerxes’ mind about allowing the Jews to rebuild the temple, his decree was generally very supportive of the Jews who wished to return to Jerusalem to rebuild it. It specifically empowered Ezra to lead this effort, to govern, and to teach (see 7:12-26). Any man who is given the right to employ the death penalty is surely a man with authority (see 7:26). Ezra recognized that the king’s decree was evidence of the good hand of God:
27 Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, who so moved in the heart of the king to so honor the temple of the Lord which is in Jerusalem! 28 He has also conferred his favor on me before the king, his advisors, and all the influential leaders of the king. I gained strength as the hand of the Lord my God was on me, and I gathered leaders from Israel to go up with me (Ezra 7:27-28).
Once again in Ezra, we come upon a meticulous listing of those exiles who returned to their homeland, this time with Ezra, some 80 years after the first wave of exiles returned with Zerubbabel. The first wave of exiles numbered around 50,000; this second wave was probably no more than 5,000 strong, counting women and children. Derek Kidner provides us with a good explanation for this second list:
The interest of this forbidding list of names and numbers lies in the fact that in every case but one these groups are joining, at long last, the descendants of the pioneers from their own family stock, who had been in the first part to return from Babylon eighty years before.337
When the people had assembled in preparation for their “exodus” by the river of Ahava, Ezra proclaimed a fast (8:21-23). Ezra had apparently spoken to the king concerning the sovereignty of his God. Having done so, Ezra could hardly ask the king for an armed escort to protect them and the wealth they were transporting from those who might wish to ambush them on the way (see 8:31). Ezra distributed the gold and silver and the temple utensils among twelve of the leading priests (8:24), and the people set out on their journey to Jerusalem. When these Jews arrived, they offered sacrifices to God at the temple and also delivered the king’s edicts to the governors of those lands surrounding Judah (8:35-36).
It was after this that Ezra learned some very distressing news. From the time the temple had been completed until the arrival of Ezra and those who accompanied him (approximately 70 years), the spiritual state of the Jews had seriously declined:
1 Now when these things had been completed, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the local residents who practice detestable things similar to those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. 2 Indeed, they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons and have intermingled the holy seed with the local residents. Worse still, the leaders and the Levites have been at the forefront of all of this!” (Ezra 9:1-2)
It is worthy of note that the leaders of the Jews led the way in this sin (9:2). Ezra was stunned when he heard this report. He immediately began to mourn over these sins. He tore his garments and pulled some of the hair from his head (9:3). Those who were godly joined him in his mourning. Ezra’s prayer is certainly a model prayer; it is the prayer of a godly leader in response to the sin of his people:
5 At the time of the evening offering I got up from my self-abasement, with my torn tunic and robe, and then dropped to my knees and spread my hands to the Lord my God. 6 I prayed, “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed, my God, to lift my face to you. For our iniquities have climbed higher than our head, and our guilt extends to the heavens. 7 From the days of our fathers until this very day our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities we, along with our kings and priests, have been delivered over by the local kings to sword, captivity, plunder, and embarrassment—right up to the present time. 8 “But now briefly we have received mercy from the Lord our God, in that he has left us a remnant and has given us a secure position in his holy place. Thus our God has enlightened our eyes and has given us a little relief in our time of servitude. 9 Although we are slaves, our God has not abandoned us in our servitude. He has extended kindness to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, in that he has revived us to restore the temple of our God and to raise up its ruins and to give us a protective wall in Judah and Jerusalem. 10 “And now what are we able to say after this, our God? For we have forsaken your commandments 11 which you commanded us through your servants the prophets with the words: ‘The land that you are entering to possess is a land defiled by the impurities of the local residents. With their abominations they have filled it from one end to the other with their filthiness. 12 Therefore do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons, and do not take their daughters in marriage for your sons. Do not ever seek their peace or welfare, so that you may be strong and may eat the good of the land and may leave it as an inheritance for your sons forever.’ 13 “Everything that has happened to us has come about because of our wicked actions and our great guilt. Even so, our God, you have exercised restraint toward our iniquities and have given us a remnant such as this. 14 Shall we once again break your commandments and intermarry with these abominable peoples? Would you not be so angered by us as to wipe us out, with no survivor or remnant? 15 O Lord God of Israel, you are righteous, for we are left as a remnant this day. Indeed, we stand before you in our guilt. However, because of this guilt no one can really stand before you” (Ezra 9:5-15).
Time will only allow us to point out a few characteristics of this marvelous prayer.
1. Ezra identifies himself with these Jews, and with their sins. He does not say, “They have sinned,” but rather, “We have sinned.” He does not speak of their iniquity, but of our iniquity (see 9:6-7).
2. Ezra recognizes the intermarriage of the Jews with the people of the land as a clear violation of God’s command, given in the law (see 9:12).
3. Ezra recognizes their sins as part of a consistent pattern of rebellion and disobedience, from the days of their forefathers to the present (9:7).
4. Ezra recognizes their present condition of slavery as the consequence of their sins, and the sins of their forefathers (9:7-13).
5. Ezra acknowledges that God has been gracious in dealing with their sins, for their judgment could have been much more severe (9:13).
6. Ezra acknowledges that in all of this God showed Himself to be righteous, while the Jews have shown themselves to be sinners.
7. Ezra casts himself and his people on his God, Who is gracious and compassionate.
How different Ezra’s leadership style is from Nehemiah’s, as we see it in Nehemiah 13. Ezra pulled out his own hair, while Nehemiah pulled out the hair of the people (Nehemiah 13:25). Ezra did not immediately correct the sins of the people. He was still praying and confessing their sins when Shecaniah encouraged Ezra to act decisively:
1 While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself to the ground before the temple of God, a very large crowd of Israelites—men, women, and children alike—gathered around him. The people wept loudly. 2 Then Shecaniah son of Jehiel, from the descendants of Elam, addressed Ezra: “We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the local peoples. Nonetheless, there is still hope for Israel in this regard. 3 Therefore let us enact a covenant with our God to send away all these women and their offspring, in keeping with the counsel of my lord and of those who have regard for the commandments of our God. And let it be done according to the law. 4 Get up, for this matter concerns you. We are with you, so be strong and act decisively” (Ezra 10:1-4).
Shecaniah was apparently the spokesman for the large number of Jews who mourned with Ezra. Encouraged by the words of Shecaniah, Ezra took action. He sent word throughout Judah, summoning all the exiles to appear in Jerusalem within three days. Those who failed to do so would forfeit their property and their place among the people of God. As you might suspect, the Jews gathered in Jerusalem, as instructed.
What a scene that must have been. It was cold and raining heavily; the people were shivering. They trembled not only because of the cold, but because of their sins (10:9). Ezra rebuked the people for their sins and demanded that they separate themselves from the people of the land by putting away their foreign wives. The people acknowledged that Ezra was right, but they appealed to him to modify the process by which this sin was to be corrected. It was cold and raining, and the matter would take a considerable amount of time to carry out. They asked that their leaders might represent them and that their sins might be dealt with on a local level, in their own cities. This could be done according to a schedule, so that it could be resolved in a reasonable amount of time (10:13-14). Nearly all agreed that this was the right thing to do, and Ezra records the names of those few who were dissenters (10:15) – and so this sin was dealt with. Those guilty were identified. Their names are listed for us to read, beginning with the priests and the Levites who had sinned in this manner (10:18-23). Some of those who had married foreign wives already had children by them (10:44).
Before we leave this tragic incident, let me attempt to be quite clear about my understanding on the teaching of the Bible on the matter of divorce. It is apparent to me that in both Ezra and Nehemiah, divorce was not only permissible, it was commanded. We should remember that Malachi, the prophet who wrote just a few years after this incident, made it quite clear that God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). The Jews sinned greatly by marrying foreign wives. They should never have married these foreign wives in the first place. The lists that we find in Ezra should tell us how important it was for these Jews to maintain their genealogical identity. Their inheritance was allocated on the basis of their tribal lineage. The promised Messiah was to come from the line of Judah (Genesis 49:10) and from the seed of David (2 Samuel 7:1-17). They must maintain racial purity. Not only would foreign wives lead them astray (Nehemiah 13:26-27), they would contaminate the seed. Divorce thus became necessary.
You and I are not ancient Jews. Our earthly inheritance is not allocated on the basis of our physical lineage. We are to marry within the faith (1 Corinthians 7:39), but those who married before they came to faith are encouraged to remain married to their unbelieving mate if at all possible (1 Corinthians 7:12-14; 1 Peter 3:1-6). Just because Ezra demanded that those who sinned by marrying foreign wives must divorce them is no excuse for us to walk away from our marriages today. I would liken the putting away of foreign wives in Ezra’s day to the teaching of our Lord concerning the severing of a member of our own body:
7 Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! It is necessary that stumbling blocks come, but woe to the person through whom they come. 8 If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into fiery hell” (Matthew 18:7-9).
The remedy for sin is radical. Let us not misuse chapter 10 of Ezra as an excuse for sin.
For seventy years, the southern kingdom of Judah has been in bondage to Babylon and then to Persia. The godly saints have yearned to return to the land of promise (Psalm 137), and it has happened at last. What should we learn from this return, as Ezra describes it?
We should certainly learn about man. What we learn about man is far from flattering. I am reminded of the words of the hymn, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.” When given the opportunity to return to the land of promise and of blessing, a mere 50,000 Jews chose to do so. The Book of Esther, which takes place during the 60-year period between Ezra 6 and 7, deals with many of the Jews who chose to be “left behind” – more accurately, to stay behind. This is not particularly encouraging. But even those devout people who did return were “prone to wander.” We see from chapters 3 and 4 that a little opposition and difficulty was all that was required to terminate the rebuilding of the temple. (Granted, the prophet Haggai will add the additional element of self-interest.) And then when Ezra returns to Jerusalem he soon learns that, beginning with some of the leaders, a number of the Jews have intermarried with the peoples of the land.
If one were to dare to speak of some of the events of Ezra as a revival, we must also acknowledge that revival is short-lived indeed! The initial enthusiasm of those who first returned with Zerubbabel quickly faded to the point that Haggai and Zechariah had to prompt the people to return to the task of rebuilding the temple (rather than attending to their own homes). We can also see that the next generation quickly fell into the sins of their forefathers. Imagine it; the Jews began to intermarry with the same folks who sought to hinder the building of the temple! They became sons-in-law to their enemies, those with whom they formerly would not even share the building of the temple. If we expected the Jews of the return to be different from their forefathers, we are sadly disappointed.
We can certainly learn much about God. The Book of Ezra portrays a God Who is sovereign and Who is faithful to His covenant promises, in spite of the failures and faithlessness of men. One cannot fail to see the truth of this proverb exemplified in the Book of Ezra:
The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord like channels of water;
he turns it wherever he wants (Proverbs 21:1).
God moved in the heart of Cyrus, so that his decree fulfilled the prophecies of Jeremiah (25:8-12; 27:21-22; 29:10-14) and Isaiah (44:28—45:1). In truth and reality, Cyrus was God’s servant (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1), and so was Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 25:9). In addition, God moved in the hearts of the Jews, prompting them to return to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:5). God spoke through the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, urging the Jews to renew the construction of the temple (Ezra 5:1ff.) God also worked through Darius, whose decree facilitated the completion of the temple (Ezra 6). In spite of all the failures of the Jews, God brought a remnant back to the Promised Land and fulfilled His promises regarding the return of His people. How I am reminded of these words in 2 Timothy 2:
If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13).
What a faithful God we serve! This is not an excuse for Christians to sin or to be careless and sloppy in their walk with God. It is instead a strong incentive for faithfulness, for we can be assured that our labors are not in vain.
Where can we see Christ in the Book of Ezra? If God calls Cyrus His servant in the Book of Isaiah, He also speaks of the Messiah as His servant (Isaiah 52:13ff.). If God could use Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus as His servants, just as He foretold, then surely He will send the Messiah, His servant, as well. Nehemiah is a great man and a great leader, but his ministry results in only a temporary repentance and revival. In order for God’s covenant promise to Abraham to be fulfilled, someone far greater than Ezra must come. The revival He brings must involve the transformation of hearts of stone to hearts of flesh, the renewal that comes through the fulfillment of the New Covenant:
24 “‘I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you to your land. 25 I will sprinkle pure water over you and you will be clean from all you uncleanness; I will purify you from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put my spirit within you, and I will make you walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances, and you will do them” (Ezekiel 36:24-27; see also 11:17-20).
31 “Indeed, a time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 It will not be like the old agreement that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. For they violated that agreement, even though I was a faithful husband to them,” says the Lord. 33 “But I will make a new agreement with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land,” says the Lord. “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. And I will be their God and they will be my people. 34 “People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. That is because all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me,” says the Lord. “All of this is based on the fact that I will forgive their sin and will no longer call to mind the wrong they have done” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
The full and final fulfillment of God’s promised blessings to Israel will not be found in the events of the restoration under Ezra or Nehemiah; it will only come about through the appearance of the Messiah. Thus, the Jews must look beyond the moment to the days ahead, when God will fully and finally bless His people. This becomes even more apparent in the Book of Nehemiah.
What, then, does the Book of Ezra have to teach us? Much, in every way. First of all we can learn from the example of Ezra. My friend, Marvin Ball, pointed this text out to me several months ago:
Now Ezra had given himself to the study of the law of the Lord, to its observance, and to teaching its statutes and judgments in Israel (Ezra 7:10).
Should this not be our passion and commitment as well? We should resolve (give ourselves) to the study of God’s Word. Daily devotional readings are fine, but they are far from sufficient. Listening to sound sermons and reading excellent books is good also, but it is not enough. We should make it a life goal to know God through His Word. A lifetime of diligent study will not exhaust the depths of God’s revealed Word.
The fervent study of God’s Word is not enough. It is an excellent beginning, but it must never be an end in and of itself. We must also devote ourselves to the practice of God’s Word. I am reminded of our Lord’s words to His disciples before His ascension:
18 Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).
What marks one as a disciple of Jesus Christ is not just their knowledge of God’s truth, but also their application of it:
Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Matthew 7:24).
“If you understand these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:17).
But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out—he will be blessed in what he does (James 1:25).
It is important to proclaim the truths of God’s Word, but our words are far more powerful when our deeds demonstrate the truths we declare to others:
33 I have desired no one’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine provided for my needs and the needs of those who were with me. 35 By all these things, I have shown you that by working in this way we must help the weak, and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’” (Acts 20:33-35).
16 I encourage you, then, be imitators of me. 17 For this reason, I have sent Timothy to you, who is my dear and faithful son in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church (1 Corinthians 4:16-17; see also Philippians 3:17-19; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12).
We can also learn from the failures of God’s people. How quickly and easily the people were discouraged so that they gave up the work on the temple, yet found time to work on their own homes. I find a very disturbing tendency to lack endurance and perseverance in God’s work, in myself and in others.
So we must not grow weary in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9).
But you, brothers and sisters, do not grow weary in doing what is right (2 Thessalonians 3:13).
Think of him who endured such opposition against himself by sinners, so that you may not grow weary in your souls and give up (Hebrews 12:3).
I have seen it happen time and time again. A person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, and in those early days, he or she overflows with joy and zeal for God. At first they cannot help but read their Bible and share their faith. Then perhaps a little opposition or rejection comes their way. Or perhaps they are disappointed by another Christian, or by their church. Perhaps God fails to bless them in the way and within the time frame they expected. Often such folks become more and more self-absorbed, less and less active in the things of God. They talk about the “good old days” and grumble about the present. They become disillusioned and bitter. They lack endurance. God has a word for us:
35 So do not throw away your confidence, because it has great reward. 36 For you need endurance in order to do God’s will and so receive what is promised. 37 For just a little longer and he who is coming will arrive and not delay (Hebrews 10:35-37).
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us (Hebrews 12:1).
3 Because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything. 5 But if anyone is deficient in wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without reprimand, and it will be given to him (James 1:3-5).
Let me ask you very honestly, my friend, have you lost your first love? Then you need to repent and to return to your former works:
4 But I have this against you: you have departed from your first love! 5 Therefore, remember from what high state you have fallen and repent! Do the deeds you did at the first; if not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place—that is, if you do not repent (Revelation 2:4-5).
May God give us a fresh supply of love and good deeds. May we practice our former works. May we not become self-absorbed and self-indulgent. May we be faithful to our calling, and obedient to His commands. May we return with fresh commitment to the work He has given us to do.
330 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 52 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Robert L. Deffinbaugh on November 4, 2001.
331 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
332 Notice that in Deuteronomy 28:68, the Babylonian captivity is described in “back to Egypt” terms. There will be a second exile, and a second exodus.
333 Primarily because the Egyptians loathed the Hebrews, and would not be interested in inter-marriage with them.
334 See 2 Corinthians 6:14.
335 His position on the Jews’ return and the rebuilding of Jerusalem obviously changes, as we can see his support of the return of Ezra and others (Ezra 7:1ff.) and later of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1:1ff.).
336 Our study of Haggai will explain why the weeping ceased (see Haggai 2:1-9).
337 Derek Kidner, Ezra and Nehemiah (Madison, Wisconsin: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979), p. 65.
Esther is a popular book. It contains many winning story elements: a common girl who becomes queen; a dastardly villain and his wicked plot; a clever resolution; and justice served. It could almost be trite were it not for the seriousness of its underlying message. The story is masterfully told, and the literary composition of Esther is one of the most sophisticated in the Scriptures. Whether it is history cast in pedagogy or pedagogy cast in history, Esther has lessons to teach everyone and depths to interest the serious student.
Most people are familiar with this story, and if you are not, it is a quick and entertaining read. Much of this lesson assumes a basic knowledge of the story and focuses on the book’s dynamics. The sections of this lesson are:
Ahasuerus: He was the king of Persia and one of the dominant characters, appearing by name or reference in every chapter except chapter 4. He is usually identified in secular history as Xerxes who ruled in Persia from 486-464 B.C. You might wonder how one gets Xerxes from Ahasuerus. The name, Xerxes, in secular history comes from the Greek version of his name. Moving from the Greek to the Persian to the Hebrew to the English shows that the derivation is not as strange as might first appear: Xerxes – Xshayarshan – Achashverosh – Ahasuerus.
Herodotus, clearly no fan of a king that invaded his country, reported that Ahaseurus had a very bad temper. Here are two stories from his history.
A Failed Bridge
They then began to build bridges across the Hellespont from Abydos to that headland between Sestus and Madytus, the Phoenicians building one of ropes made from flax, and the Egyptians building a second one out of papyrus. From Abydos to the opposite shore it is a distance of almost two-thirds of a mile. But no sooner had the strait been bridged than a great storm came on and cut apart and scattered all their work.
Xerxes flew into a rage at this, and he commanded that the Hellespont be struck with three hundred strokes of the whip and that a pair of foot-chains be thrown into the sea. It's even been said that he sent off a rank of branders along with the rest to the Hellespont! He also commanded the scourgers to speak outlandish and arrogant words: “You hateful water, our master lays his judgement on you thus, for you have unjustly punished him even though he's done you no wrong! Xerxes the king will pass over you, whether you wish it or not! It is fitting that no man offer you sacrifices, for you're a muddy and salty river!” In these ways he commanded that the sea be punished and also that the heads be severed from all those who directed the bridging of the Hellespont.
A Father’s Request
As he marched out the army, Pythias the Lydian, dreading the heavenly omen and encouraged by the gifts given to him by Xerxes, came up to Xerxes and said, “Master, I wish to ask a favor of you, which would be a small favor for you to render, but would be a great favor for me to receive.” Xerxes, thinking that he knew everything Pythias could ask for, answered that he would grant the favor and asked him to proclaim what it was he wished. “Master, it happens that I have five sons, and they are all bound to soldier for you against the Greeks. I pray you, king, that you have pity on one who has reached my age and that you set free one of my sons, even the oldest, from your army, so that he may provide for me and my possessions. Take the other four with you, and may you return having accomplished all you intended.”
Xerxes flew into a horrible rage and replied, “You villainous man, you have the effrontery, seeing me marching with my army against the Greeks, with my sons and brothers and relatives and friends, to remind me of your son, you, my slave, who should rather come with me with your entire household, including your wife! You may now be certain of this, that since the spirit lives in a man's ears, hearing good words it fills the body with delight, when it hears the opposite it swells up. When you at one time performed well and promised more, you had no reason to boast that you outperformed your king in benefits; and now that you have turned most shameless, you shall receive less than what you deserve. You and four of your sons are saved because of your hospitality; but one of your sons, the one you most desire to hold your arms around, will lose his life!” Having answered thus, he commanded those charged to accomplish this to find the eldest of Pythias's sons and cut him in half, and having cut him in two to set one half of his corpse on the right side of the road and the other on the left side, and between these the army moved forth.339
The rage exhibited in this account of Herodotus is worth remembering as you read Esther. Ahasuerus’ anger is a critical dynamic.
Vashti: She was the queen of Ahasuerus, but she was quickly deposed for disobeying his wishes and incurring his anger. Some identify her with Amestris, who is the only wife of Ahasuerus known to secular sources. Other than that, there is no record of her outside the Bible. Of course, there is no record of Esther or Mordecai in secular writings either. Since you cannot really argue from absence, especially with the scant historical material we have from the time, such omissions should not be especially troubling.
Esther/Hadassah: She was the non-practicing Jewish heroine of the story and an orphan raised by her cousin Mordecai. Hadassah was her given Jewish name, but she went by Esther. We cannot tell from the Book of Esther when she took on this name. It is probable that it was part of hiding her Jewish identity at the command of Mordecai.
There are four possible derivations of the name Esther.340
Mordecai: He was the non-practicing Jewish cousin and protector of Hadassah a.k.a. Esther. His name was possibly derived from Marduk, the Akkadian god of war.
He was also a possible descendant of King Saul. Here is the connection. Esther tells us that he was a descendant of Benjamin. The names of Mordecai’s grandfather, Kish, and great-grandfather, Shimei, suggest that he descended from Kish, the father of King Saul, and Shimei (2 Samuel 16:5) of the house of Saul. These data provide clues to the deep conflict that arises between Mordecai and Haman, which I will discuss later.
Haman: Ahasuerus’s anti-Semitic chief advisor and the story’s villain. He is identified as an Agagite. Thus he was possibly a descendant of King Agag, an Amalekite, whom King Saul failed to destroy when commanded by God to do so. Although Samuel killed Agag shortly after Saul failed to, it seems that a descendant may have gotten away. The Saul/Mordecai and Agag/Haman connection should now be clear. They were parties to a family hatred that went back centuries. If this seems extreme, look at the Middle East today, where the feuds go back for millenniums.
The Eunuchs: It is amazing where these guys pop up. They operated behind the scenes, but were somehow instrumental in just about every decision anyone made. Hegai helped Esther become a queen. Hathach relayed messages between Esther and Mordecai. Harbonah suggested that Haman be hung on his own gallows.
Zeresh: She was the wife of Haman. Her allegiances shifted as soon as the direction of the winds of fortune changed for her husband.
Haman’s Ten Sons: They are named on the day that Jews killed them along with the rest of their enemies.
With the characters in place, we can turn our attention to the structural elements of the book.
Nearly every event in Esther happens twice, the second time being a variation of the first. In the first chapter, there is a long banquet and a short banquet. In the second chapter, there is a “virgin pageant” that leads to the queening of Esther, followed by a second “virgin pageant.” Esther holds two banquets that lead to the downfall of Haman, which is paired with the two banquets that led to the fall of Vashti. There is a decree that zips through the empire calling for the destruction of the Jews, and then later there is a decree sent calling for the destruction of their enemies. Esther comes twice unannounced to King Ahasuerus. Haman goes home with his head covered after giving honor to Mordecai, and his head is covered before he is hung. The Jewish defense in Susa lasts for an extra day. Paired events are one of the motifs in this book. This will become an important point later on, when I examine the Name of the Lord in Esther.
Related to the paired events are a series of ironic reversals in Esther. Ahasuerus commands Vashti to come before him, she refuses, and loses her position; Esther comes before him uncommanded and at the peril of her life, but gains position. In chapter 1, a decree is sent to the empire that wives are to obey their husbands, but the end of Esther shows her to be obeyed (Esther 9:32). Mordecai, a Jew, refuses to bow to Haman, and later Haman bows before Esther, a Jew. Haman is lifted up by Ahasuerus and then humbled. The Jews fast and then the Jews feast. There is the casting of lots to choose a day, and providential events that foil the day. As with the paired events, the ironic reversals come into play with the Name of the Lord in Esther.
You cannot read Esther without asking questions. Why is there no reference to God or religious activities? Why does Esther hide her Jewish identity? Why is there no reference to the Feast of Passover even though the date for that feast may be inferred? Why did Vashti not appear before the king? Why did Mordecai refuse to bow to Haman, and why does Haman react so out of proportion? Did Ahasuerus ever have an original thought? Did anyone ever eat at the banquets or only drink? Why did Esther not just come out and accuse Haman instead of doing the two banquets?
You can see that Esther is a deeper book than meets the eye, but what purpose do these literary devices serve? The answer is that they underpin the central message in this book, which is the providential care of God for His people. Both Mordecai and Esther are non-practicing Jews. Even more so, Mordecai’s behavior places all Jews in Persia under a death sentence. In the telling of the history, the central characters do not appeal to their God; they do not make the connection between Passover and the crisis crashing on them. Mordecai and Esther seek a human solution with a foreign king. By highlighting the paired events, ironic reversals, and puzzles, the author of Esther begs us to see God behind the scenes. We see that God rescued His people because He cares for them. We are also challenged to see the hand of God in the events surrounding our lives.
Early in his reign, King Ahasuerus held two banquets. The first one lasted 180 days and involved the regional rulers. The second lasted for seven days and included everyone. At the end of this second feast, a “domino tipping” event occurred.
On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar and Carkas, the seven eunuchs who served in the presence of King Ahasuerus, to bring Queen Vashti before the king with her royal crown in order to display her beauty to the people and the princes, for she was beautiful. But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command delivered by the eunuchs. Then the king became very angry and his wrath burned within him (Esther 1:10-12).
“The heart of the king was merry with wine,” and “the king became very angry.” Although somewhat separated in this passage, these two events are linked. Ahasuerus was a mean drunk. Herodotus reported that Ahasuerus had a severe temper. Mix that with drink, and you have cause for fear.
Why did Vashti not come at the king’s command? What seems most reasonable is a combination of: 1) her having responsibilities at the feast she was giving for the women; and 2) her not wanting to appear before a drunk king and a drunk crowd. In the first case, it is obvious that separate feasts for men and women were being held. This suggests a custom of separating men and women. King Ahasuerus may have asked Vashti to cross a cultural line. Add to this the unpredictable consequences of a drunken husband who was prone to anger. I suspect that Vashti considered staying put to be the safest course. Who knows, she may have been right.
Nevertheless, Vashti’s decision cost her position in the court.
This day the ladies of Persia and Media who have heard of the queen’s conduct will speak in the same way to all the king’s princes, and there will be plenty of contempt and anger. “If it pleases the king, let a royal edict be issued by him and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Media so that it cannot be repealed, that Vashti may no longer come into the presence of King Ahasuerus, and let the king give her royal position to another who is more worthy than she. And when the king’s edict which he will make is heard throughout all his kingdom, great as it is, then all women will give honor to their husbands, great and small” (Esther 1:18-20).
Vashti was deposed via a royal edict that could not be repealed. Certainly, this is essential information for what lies ahead. Once the law concerning Vashti was on the books, Ahasuerus was not able to see her again. All the decrees in Esther had this quality of being permanent.
Because the principle of wives respecting their husbands exists in other Scriptures, one might be tempted to use this edict for a proof text of this doctrine. However, we need only look at Ahasuerus’s action to see the folly of this. The Scriptures also speak of husbands loving their wives and laying down their lives for them. Ahasuerus certainly did not model this behavior. Rather, he sought to humiliate his wife. For the roles of men and women in the home, church, and society, this passage is bad case law, and we are better served by treating it as an interesting bit of history.
Some have romanticized the process by which Esther became queen. There was nothing romantic in the reality at all.
Let the king appoint overseers in all the provinces of his kingdom that they may gather every beautiful young virgin to the citadel of Susa, to the harem, into the custody of Hegai, the king’s eunuch, who was in charge of the women; and let their cosmetics be given them. “Then let the young lady who pleases the king be queen in place of Vashti.” And the matter pleased the king, and he did accordingly (Esther 2:3-4).
This gathering of “every beautiful” virgin has no indication of being a voluntary program. If it were, what father or daughter would find desirable the prospect of a year’s preparation for one night, with a stud king, whose outcome was likely to be isolation in the concubine harem. Here is the description of this process:
Now when the turn of each young lady came to go in to King Ahasuerus, after the end of her twelve months under the regulations for the women—for the days of their beautification were completed as follows: six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and the cosmetics for women— the young lady would go in to the king in this way: anything that she desired was given her to take with her from the harem to the king’s palace. In the evening she would go in and in the morning she would return to the second harem, to the custody of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. She would not again go in to the king unless the king delighted in her and she was summoned by name (Esther 2:12-14).
With a new virgin every night, how likely was Ahasuerus to remember any concubine’s name? All that remained for the girl was to mourn the loss of having a real husband and a family of her own. There is a similarity here between Ahasuerus’ actions and the tale of Shaharazade. There, a king, who was scorned by a former wife, took vengeance by taking a new bride each night and having her executed the next day. At least in the history of Ahasuerus, the young women’s lives were spared.
One of the eunuchs in charge of the virgin pageant showed favor to Esther and helped her to become the queen.
Now when the turn of Esther, the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai who had taken her as his daughter, came to go in to the king, she did not request anything except what Hegai, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the women, advised. And Esther found favor in the eyes of all who saw her. So Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus to his royal palace in the tenth month which is the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. The king loved Esther more than all the women, and she found favor and kindness with him more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti (Esther 2:15-17).
If you read through Esther with a view towards how King Ahasuerus made decisions, you will notice that he never made a decision on his own, except maybe here. On the other hand, what was it that Hegai, the eunuch, gave to Esther? Could it have been a signal to the king to choose this woman? Perhaps not, but why bother to tell us that Esther took anything in at all, much less that she took what Hegai advised? This, of course, is not to diminish the charm and grace that Esther possessed. She did, after all, find the favor of Hegai and the rest of the court. Perhaps the object that Hegai gave her was something to tell Ahasuerus that this one was special.
When the virgins were gathered together the second time, then Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate. Esther had not yet made known her kindred or her people, even as Mordecai had commanded her; for Esther did what Mordecai told her as she had done when under his care. In those days, while Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate, Bigthan and Teresh, two of the king’s officials from those who guarded the door, became angry and sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus. But the plot became known to Mordecai, and he told Queen Esther, and Esther informed the king in Mordecai’s name (Esther 2:19-22).
The first thing to note is that soon after Esther became queen, a new virgin pageant began. Besides being an example of the paired events that proliferate in Esther, it speaks of the sensuality of Ahasuerus.
With such a king, it is small wonder that Mordecai stuck close to her quarters. It also seems as if Mordecai had some official position or business as his sitting at the king’s gate implies. While sitting there, he heard news of a plot against the king. To protect Esther, he informed her of the plot and she, in turn, told the king. There was an investigation, and the conspirators were apprehended and executed. As we learn later, Mordecai received no honor for having saved the king’s life.
In the first chapter, Vashti disobeyed King Ahasuerus. As a paired event, Mordecai also disobeyed the king by refusing to bow before Haman:
All the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman; for so the king had commanded concerning him. But Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage. Then the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate said to Mordecai, “Why are you transgressing the king’s command?” Now it was when they had spoken daily to him and he would not listen to them, that they told Haman to see whether Mordecai’s reason would stand; for he had told them that he was a Jew (Esther 3:2-4).
It is worth noting that it was not Haman, but the king’s servants, who noticed that Mordecai refused to bow. When they questioned Mordecai about his behavior, he seems to have told them, in effect, “I do not bow down to Haman, because I am a Jew.” This is one of the puzzles in the Book of Esther. Why does Mordecai not bow down to Haman, and why does Haman overreact? Since the author of Esther makes a point of identifying Haman as an Agagite and that Mordecai was possibly of the family of Saul, the issue seems to be one of long-past grievances. After all, Saul lost his dynasty, because he failed to destroy King Agag along with the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15).
This may also explain why Haman was not content to have Mordecai arrested and executed. Mordecai’s offense was really against King Ahasuerus. Getting the king to hang him would have been an easy thing to do. Instead, Haman reacted to “who the people of Mordecai were.” He decided, on account of Mordecai, to eliminate all the Jews. Haman is, thus, the first recorded anti-Semite.
When Haman saw that Mordecai neither bowed down nor paid homage to him, Haman was filled with rage. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him who the people of Mordecai were; therefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. In the first month, which is the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, Pur, that is the lot, was cast before Haman from day to day and from month to month, until the twelfth month, that is the month Adar (Esther 3:5-7).
It says that the Pur “was cast before Haman from day to day and from month to month.” Did Haman begin by casting a Pur for tomorrow and then the day after and so forth through the months? The language seems to say so. If this was the case, the Pur came up negative day after day until the middle of the last month in the year. In other words, Haman almost cycled through an entire year before arriving at the date. The providential significance of this will be revealed later.
Armed with the chosen date, Haman persuaded King Ahasuerus to declare as law a day for the destruction of the Jews.
Then the king’s scribes were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month, and it was written just as Haman commanded to the king’s satraps, to the governors who were over each province and to the princes of each people, each province according to its script, each people according to its language, being written in the name of King Ahasuerus and sealed with the king’s signet ring. And letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces to destroy, to kill and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to seize their possessions as plunder
A copy of the edict to be issued as law in every province was published to all the peoples so that they should be ready for this day. The couriers went out impelled by the king’s command while the decree was issued at the citadel in Susa the capital; and while the king and Haman sat down to drink, the city of Susa was in confusion (Esther 3:12-15).
Note the date in Esther 3:12, “the thirteenth day of the first month.” The decree to annihilate the Jews went out on the 13th of Nisan. Among observant religious Jews, here is what should have been going on:
Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb. Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight’” (Exodus 12:1-6, emphasis mine).
Haman’s decree went out on the eve of the slaughter of the Passover lambs. But Mordecai the Jew made no reference to this holiday of national deliverance at a time when the Jews needed deliverance! Not only does the Book of Esther make no mention of God, it does not do so even when it would be the most natural. Instead of seeking the God of Moses, Mordecai appealed to Esther to seek King Ahasuerus’ favor:
Mordecai told him [the eunuch shuttling messages between Mordecai and Esther] all that had happened to him, and the exact amount of money that Haman had promised to pay to the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. He also gave him a copy of the text of the edict which had been issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show Esther and inform her, and to order her to go in to the king to implore his favor and to plead with him for her people (Esther 4:7-8).
This marks the beginning of the author’s pedagogy. From this point on, Mordecai and Esther contrived and played out their schemes, but who was really engineering events?
One of the laws of King Ahasuerus was that anyone who came into the throne room without an appointment was subject to death. Esther had not been called to the king for some thirty days.
All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that for any man or woman who comes to the king to the inner court who is not summoned, he has but one law, that he be put to death, unless the king holds out to him the golden scepter so that he may live. And I have not been summoned to come to the king for these thirty days (Esther 4:11).
In the one statement that borders on any faith, Mordecai told Esther that her becoming a queen might have been for this day.
Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not imagine that you in the king’s palace can escape any more than all the Jews. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, “Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens also will fast in the same way. And thus I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:13-16).
Esther then called upon all the Jews in Susa to fast for three days. That period covered the time during which the Passover lamb was to have been slaughtered and eaten. It is ironic that the Jews fasted when the calendar called for feasting. It would seem as if these Jews of the early Diaspora were disconnected from the spiritual life in Jerusalem and the second temple.
Esther passed the “golden scepter” test, and King Ahasuerus was ready to hear her petition. The last time Esther had brought an issue to King Ahasuerus’ attention was to inform him of the plot against his life. What was he to think of Esther’s petition for he and Haman to have dinner?
Esther said, “If it pleases the king, may the king and Haman come this day to the banquet that I have prepared for him.”
Then the king said, “Bring Haman quickly that we may do as Esther desires.” So the king and Haman came to the banquet which Esther had prepared.
As they drank their wine at the banquet, the king said to Esther, “What is your petition, for it shall be granted to you. And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom it shall be done.” So Esther replied, “My petition and my request is: if I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my petition and do what I request, may the king and Haman come to the banquet which I will prepare for them, and tomorrow I will do as the king says” (Esther 5:4-8)
Haman was thrilled with his good fortune. He believed the queen was marking him for special consideration, and it went to his head. He was so overjoyed and overconfident that he decided it was a good day to rid himself of that nuisance Mordecai:
Then Haman recounted to them the glory of his riches, and the number of his sons, and every instance where the king had magnified him and how he had promoted him above the princes and servants of the king. Haman also said, “Even Esther the queen let no one but me come with the king to the banquet which she had prepared; and tomorrow also I am invited by her with the king. Yet all of this does not satisfy me every time I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.”
Then Zeresh his wife and all his friends said to him, “Have a gallows fifty cubits high made and in the morning ask the king to have Mordecai hanged on it; then go joyfully with the king to the banquet.” And the advice pleased Haman, so he had the gallows made (Esther 5:11-14).
It’s worth noting that these gallows were more for skewering than for hanging a man by the neck with a rope. This was how making them “fifty cubits” high was not such a big construction project. Haman wanted Mordecai skewered 75 feet high on a pole for all to see.
If Haman was overjoyed, the king was worried. He was likely asking himself, “Why did Esther risk her life to see me and what does Haman have to do with it?” and “What was that incident that Esther told me about earlier?” It takes little imagination to see that the king was beginning to think less of Haman.
During that night the king could not sleep so he gave an order to bring the book of records, the chronicles, and they were read before the king. It was found written what Mordecai had reported concerning Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s eunuchs who were doorkeepers, that they had sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus. And the king said, “What honor or dignity has been bestowed on Mordecai for this?” Then the king’s servants who attended him said, “Nothing has been done for him” (Esther 6:1-3).
At this point we have:
What would happen when these two met?
The next morning Haman arrived to request Mordecai’s hanging, but Ahasuerus gave him no time to make his request, but rather chose him to give honor to Mordecai.
So Haman took the robe and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and led him on horseback through the city square, and proclaimed before him, “Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king desires to honor.”
Then Mordecai returned to the king’s gate. But Haman hurried home, mourning, with his head covered. And Haman recounted to Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him. Then his wise men and Zeresh his wife said to him, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish origin, you will not overcome him, but will surely fall before him” (Esther 6-11-13).
This passage marks the first time Haman’s head is covered.341 Haman’s wife, quick to read the winds of political fortune, provided no comfort to her falling husband.
Remember the poor father who dared ask Ahasuerus to exempt one of his five sons from military service? At that time, Ahasuerus flew into a rage and had the son cut in half and then marched his army between the halves. This gives some insight into why Esther phrased her request in terms of avoiding inconveniencing the king with anything but a life or death issue:
Then Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me as my petition, and my people as my request; for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed and to be annihilated. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for the trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king.”
Then King Ahasuerus asked Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who would presume to do thus?”
Esther said, “A foe and an enemy is this wicked Haman!” Then Haman became terrified before the king and queen. And the king arose in his anger from drinking wine and went into the palace garden; but Haman stayed to beg for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm had been determined against him by the king (Esther 7:3-7).
“The king arose in his anger from drinking wine.” Note the cause of King Ahasuerus’ anger. It was not that Esther and her people had been betrayed to death. Rather, he had been drinking. I am of the opinion that Esther used the banquet as the venue for her request precisely to add the drink element to the equation. Ahasuerus and drinking are linked three times in Esther. The first is during the second banquet of the first chapter (1:7, 8 and 1:10). The second tells us that Ahasuerus and Haman sat down to drink when the decree went out (3:15). And here in this chapter drinking dominates (7:1, 8, 7). Indeed, Esther 7:1 tells us that, “the king and Haman came to drink wine with Esther the queen.” Not a word about food.
In his rage, and at the suggestion of a eunuch, Ahasuerus had Haman hung on his own gallows and elevated Mordecai to Haman’s position.
A drinking rage does not last forever, and this one was only good for removing Haman, but the effects of the decree to destroy the Jews remained in force while Esther waited and waited for Ahasuerus to act.
Haman’s decree and Esther’s banquets occurred during the month of Nisan. By the month of Sivan, three months later, Esther again risked her life – and giving us another paired event.
Then Esther spoke again to the king, fell at his feet, wept and implored him to avert the evil scheme of Haman the Agagite and his plot which he had devised against the Jews. And the king extended the golden scepter to Esther. So Esther arose and stood before the king. Then she said, “If it pleases the king and if I have found favor before him and the matter seems proper to the king and I am pleasing in his sight, let it be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king’s provinces. For how can I endure to see the calamity which will befall my people, and how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?” (Esther 8:3-6)
King Ahasuerus gave Queen Esther and Mordecai the freedom to issue another decree that the Jews may defend themselves against their enemies.
On the day when the enemies of the Jews thought they could destroy them all, the Jews gained the upper hand and defeated them.
The king said to Queen Esther, “The Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men and the ten sons of Haman at the citadel in Susa. What then have they done in the rest of the king’s provinces! Now what is your petition? It shall even be granted you. And what is your further request? It shall also be done.”
Then said Esther, “If it pleases the king, let tomorrow also be granted to the Jews who are in Susa to do according to the edict of today; and let Haman’s ten sons be hanged on the gallows.”
So the king commanded that it should be done so; and an edict was issued in Susa, and Haman’s ten sons were hanged.
The Jews who were in Susa assembled also on the fourteenth day of the month Adar and killed three hundred men in Susa, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder. Now the rest of the Jews who were in the king’s provinces assembled, to defend their lives and rid themselves of their enemies, and kill 75,000 of those who hated them; but they did not lay their hands on the plunder (Esther 9:12-16).
It should be noted that Haman’s ten sons had already been killed. Esther was asking that their bodies be skewered and set on display.
Today the Jews celebrate the events recorded in Esther as a holiday named Purim, after the Pur that Haman cast to determine the date for the Jew’s destruction.
Thus the Jews undertook what they had started to do, and what Mordecai had written to them. For Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the adversary of all the Jews, had schemed against the Jews to destroy them and had cast Pur, that is the lot, to disturb them and destroy them.
But when it came to the king’s attention, he commanded by letter that his wicked scheme which he had devised against the Jews, should return on his own head and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows. Therefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. And because of the instructions in this letter, both what they had seen in this regard and what had happened to them (Esther 9:23-26).
The celebration typically includes a Purim play or a Purim reading. Everyone will have some form of noisemaker, called a grogger,342 with which to express displeasure at hearing Haman’s name. There is also a
not-so-well-celebrated custom of becoming so drunk as to not be able to tell the difference between hearing, “Blessed be Mordecai” and “Cursed be Haman.”343 The drinking motif in the Book of Esther is probably behind this custom.
A slight shift in the events recorded in Esther would have doomed the Jews, except as Mordecai said, “help would come from someplace else.” Nevertheless, success in the small details mattered. As an Agagite, Haman may well have used his position against the Jews at the first provocation, whether it came from Mordecai or not. And so we have a web of God’s providence weaved into the fabric of the story:
And so the one who knows his God can see His hand even if Mordecai and Esther did not. This is grace and mercy. Unlike Daniel, who would not eat Nebuchadnezzar’s non-kosher food, and who publicly prayed even when it carried a death sentence, Esther concealed her identity and, therefore, ate whatever was placed before her. Neither she nor Mordecai appealed to Passover as a celebration of the Lord’s deliverance from Egyptian slavery, even though the celebration of Passover was at hand.
In short, Mordecai and Esther were not people of faith.
But the Lord God proved faithful to His people, and one of the grand purposes of the Book of Esther is to show the Lord’s preserving hand. We are led to see the Lord moving behind the scenes for the discerning eye to see.
It seems, however, that the author of Esther does reference the name of the Lord with sufficient signposts as to leave his intention clear. As mentioned previously, the Book of Esther is full of pairs, ironies, and reversals, and the hidden name of the Lord shows all three characteristics.
The name YHWH appears in acrostic form four times in the Book of Esther. All four acrostics appear in four consecutive words, and to my knowledge, no other such acrostics exist in the Old Testament. The following chart provides the essential aspects of these acrostics.
Verse |
Hebrew Phrase |
Dynamics |
Speaker |
|
Esther 1:20 |
WnT=y] <yv!N`h^-lk*w+ ayh! |
Initial Letters |
Reversed Name |
Memucan: Gentile |
Esther 5:4 |
<oYh^ /m*h*w+ El#m#h^ aoby` |
Initial Letters |
Forward Name |
Esther: Jew |
Esther 5:13 |
yl! ho#V WNnya^ hz# |
Final Letters |
Reversed Name |
Haman: Gentile |
Esther 7:7 |
hu*r`h* wyl*a@ ht*l=k*-yK! |
Final Letters |
Forward Name |
Author: Jew |
Whenever a Jew speaks, the name of the Lord appears in correct sequence. Whenever a Gentile speaks, the name of the Lord is reversed. You can see the pairings: two acrostics on the initial letters and two acrostics on the final letters; two acrostics by Gentiles and two acrostics by Jews. The reversed names tie in with the reversals that make up the book. The irony lies in the fact that both Esther and Haman spoke on their own initiative about their own schemes, but, in their speaking, the Lord was really acting to promote Esther’s success and Haman’s failure.
By this literary device, the author tells us, in a hidden way, how the Lord God worked, in a hidden way, to save His people.
Why could there not have been peace made between the Jews and their enemies? Why did the Jews find it necessary to kill their enemies, even if they left the spoils alone? Are the Jews any better for having done this than other peoples that we accuse of genocide? The key to answering these questions is to discern why Haman’s plot found such success. Think about this. Imagine yourself going to your mailbox tomorrow and finding an official government-issued document giving you permission to kill your Jewish neighbor on Adar 13th next year. There is no compulsion here – nor was there compulsion in Haman’s decree, but it put the Jews in great danger. How would you react? How would a member of the Aryan Nation react?
The reality is that there are those throughout the world and through the centuries who passionately hate or have hated the Jews. Do you know that nearly every country in Europe has expelled its Jews at some point: England in 1290, France 1306, Spain 1492, Portugal 1497, Germany 1348, Austria 1421, and so on. Often the expulsions meant the loss of property and sometimes life. The expulsion of the Jews by Spain was part of the Inquisition led by Torquemeda and helped provide the funds for Columbus’ voyage. Those in government at the time of these expulsions showed the same spirit that drove Haman and the others in Persia. Again, the musical Fiddler on the Roof is about a pogrom in Russia that evacuated a Jewish community. Over 30 similar pogroms have occurred in Russia and the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany had about nine death camps for the Jews. It is well known that the Nazi regime led to the slaughter of six million Jews.
The spirit of Haman also exists in Islam:
“The Hour (the Day of Judgment) will not begin until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. A Jew will hide behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will say, ‘O Muslim, O Slave of Allah! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’ – except for the gharaqad (box thorn), for it is one of the trees of the Jews” (al_Bukhari 2926; Muslim, 2921-2).
Anti-Semitism is alive and well in the world, and part of the life of a Jew is the knowledge that he is never safe. Esther gives us a picture of it and lets us know that God is still there with His people.
Anti-Semitism will remain a force in the world until its fullest expression triggers the return of the Messiah to establish His kingdom in Israel and His dominion over the world. How many times have we seen the member nations of the United Nations stand up one after another to condemn some action of Israel? In our day, it would seem that Jerusalem is “a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah” (Zechariah 12:2). How strange that such a small piece of earth could compel such interest and consternation in the world.
Moses told the children of Israel that such things would be while they are dispersed over the earth:
Moreover, the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth; and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, which you or your fathers have not known. Among those nations you shall find no rest, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul.
So your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you will be in dread night and day, and shall have no assurance of your life. In the morning you shall say, ‘Would that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Would that it were morning!’ because of the dread of your heart which you dread, and for the sight of your eyes which you will see (Deuteronomy 28:64-67).
Since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the Jews have had no rest and do live in fear of the next expulsion or death camp. But such days will surely come to an end. The reason I have hope that it will be soon is the rise of Messianic Judaism in the mid-1970’s.
It is ironic to read the New Testament and see how Paul found a place for the Gentiles to enter the kingdom of God without becoming Jews. If you read carefully, however, he never asked the Jews to stop being Jews, nor did he stop behaving like a Jew, himself. Many years after Paul, the Gentile church began to require of the Jews what Paul never required of the Gentiles. It required the Jews to convert to Christianity. We must see this conversion as distinct from having saving faith in Yeshua the Messiah and Son of God. The Gentile church required the Jews to become non-Jews. The Jews have rediscovered in our day the truth of the gospel for the Jews.
Here is why this is important. In Israel today, there are thousands of Messianic Jews worshiping in Messianic Jewish synagogues. This does not mean that their non-Messianic brothers and sisters are opened arms about this, but the Messianic Jews are there and their presence is known. A day is coming when the world will once more surround Jerusalem to destroy it. When Jerusalem “causes reeling to the peoples around,” the Lord will “will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it” (Zechariah 12:3). It is my conviction that the crisis of that day will cause the voice of the Messianic Jews in Jerusalem to be heard with this result:
And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn (Zechariah 12:9-10).
Two things happen when the nations come against Jerusalem. First, the Lord will destroy their armies. Second, Israel, as a nation, will look upon Him “whom they have pierced” and will “mourn” in their recognition of Him as their Messiah. What a day that will be:
Behold, a day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.
Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south. You will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him!
In that day there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle. For it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at evening time there will be light. And in that day living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and the other half toward the western sea; it will be in summer as well as in winter.
And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be one, and His name one (Zechariah 14:1-9).
Until these events come, we must realize that the Lord watches over His chosen people even, as in the case of Esther and Mordecai, when they are non-practicing.
The Lord still works today. I would hope that, after this study of Esther, you would look at events in your life from the perspective that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). Behind friends, families, enemies, leaders, events, and so forth, He moves and directs to bring about His purposes on the earth. The interesting thing about Esther is that it offers the hope that every once in awhile, we may be able to see His hidden hand.
338 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Donald E. Curtis at Community Bible Chapel, on November 18, 2001. Don is an elder at Cobb Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kennesaw, Georgia. You can e-mail comments and questions to email Don Curtis.
339 Richard Hooker, “Herodotus: The Histories: Xerxes at the Hellespont (mid 5th Century BCE),” No pages. Cited January 4, 2002. Online: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/herodotus.html.
340 Christian Debater, “Bible Query from Esther,” No pages. Cited January 4, 2002. Online: http://www.inerrancy.org/esth.htm.
341 There is a Jewish tradition that Haman’s daughter, thinking that Mordecai was leading Haman on a horse, dumped the contents of a chamber pot on Haman’s head.
342 Israel has a long-standing history of not playing the music of Richard Wagner, because of its associations with Nazi Germany and the death camps. However, on October 27, 2000, after winning an Israeli supreme court battle, the silence was broken, and the Rishon L’Zion Symphony Orchestra performed Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. During the performance of the work, a man in the audience used a grogger to disrupt the performance until the audience shouted him down. Many news accounts referred to it as a rattle or noisemaker, but it was a good old-fashioned Purim grogger. A write up of the concert and association of Wagner and Nazism can be found at:
http://www.allegroassai.com/newspage.asp?NewsID=64.
343 These and other Purim celebrations, including a recipe for a cookie that looks like Haman’s hat, can be found at http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday9.htm.
The Message of the Book of Job233
The Apostle Paul writes in the Book of Romans:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from the bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:18-21)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither heights or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:28-39). 234
There are many question words in any language. In English, most of the question words begin with WH: “What,” “When,” “Where,” Who,” and “How.” Much knowledge is gained by asking these questions. However, the question that troubles us the most is the one that I did not mention: “WHY.” This is the one we ask each other more often than any of the other questions. We want to know the reason behind every event under the sun and rhyme for everything that happens. Why did you forget our anniversary? Why were you not present at our junior’s baseball game? Why did you go there? Why did you do this, and why did you not do that?
But all these WHY questions pale when compared to the “WHY” question that we are sometimes forced to ask God.
Imagine, for example, you have three sons. Of course, you love them all. But the youngest is the most cherished one. It is the hardest to let him go. He leaves home after high school for college. He is just about done with college – one more year to go. He calls you to tell you that he will be coming home for Thanksgiving. You are eagerly waiting for the time when he will be home. Just a week or so before he comes home, you get a phone call from his roommate. Your son had a motorcycle accident . . . . He was killed. What kind of parents would you be if you did not raise your fist before God and ask “WHY? Why did You let this happen?”
This, of course, is not an imaginary example. It happened in my own family when my sister’s
21-year-old son was killed in a motorcycle accident. Every person reading this would have many personal stories like this, if not far more tragic than this.
The age-old question that man has raised is this: why would an all powerful and loving God allow such things? An atheist, of course, would have a ready answer: “There is no God. If there was a God, certainly He would not allow such things.” In anything and everything, an atheist finds proof for denying the existence of God because “In all his thoughts there is no room for God” (Psalm 10:4b).
On the other hand, it is an enigma for the believer to see all the misery and suffering in the world while he continues to believe in God. The question for the believer is: “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?” As the Psalmist said:
The wicked have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills (Psalm 73:4-5).
This is what the wicked are like – always carefree, they increase in wealth (Psalm 73:12).
On the other hand, seeing all his trouble, the righteous person thinks:
Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning (Psalm 73:4, 5, 12-14).
Or, another Psalm where the Sons of Korah, after describing all their troubles, raise their cry of anguish to God:
All this happened to us,
though we had not forgotten you
or been false to your covenant.
Our hearts had not turned back;
our feet had not strayed from your
path.
But you crushed us and made us a
haunt for jackals
and covered us over with deep
darkness.
If we had forgotten the name of our
God
or spread out our hands to a foreign
god,
would not God have discovered it,
since He knows the secrets of the heart?
Yet for your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be
slaughtered.
Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us
forever.
Why do you hide your face
and forget our misery and
oppression?” (Psalm 44: 17-24).
For many people, especially believers, when they go through intense pain and many problems, the book in the Bible that they go to find comfort and encouragement is the Book of Job. It is not because in this book they find the resolution to the problem of pain, but when they are going through intense pain, they can identify themselves with the person of Job.
This is considered the oldest book in the Bible (the books in the Old Testament are not ordered chronologically, but thematically). There are indications in the book that Job lived during the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Also, the events in the book are real events; it is not a parable or a myth. Actually, it is an autobiography where the author refers to himself usually in the third person, a practice which was not unusual in ancient literature (for example, Moses’ account about his personal life in Exodus to Deuteronomy). After his suffering was completed, Job lived 140 years and had enough time to ponder all the events of his life and write down his own story (Job 42:16).
The Book of Job describes a man who went through more intense pain that most of us can only imagine. He was a blessed man in every respect. His wealth was unparalleled. After describing his wealth, the book says, “He was the greatest man among all the people of the East” (1:3). He had a very happy family life. He not only had seven sons and three daughters, but the love among them was as ideal as any man could covet for his children (1:2, 4). Job’s concern for his family is seen in the fact that he would offer sacrifices for even the remotest possibility of them offending God.
He was most respected person in the society. Reminiscing about his past honor, he says:
When I went to the gate of the city and took my seat in the public square, the young men saw me and stepped aside and the old men rose to their feet; the chief elders refrained from speaking and covered their mouths with their hands; the voices of the nobles were hushed, and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths. Whoever heard me spoke well of me, and those who saw me commended me.
. . . men listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel. After I had spoken, men spoke no more; my words fell gently on their ears. They waited for me as for showers and drank in my words as the spring rain. When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it; the light of my face was precious to them (29:7-10, 21-24).
Most of all, Job was a very devout man. He feared God more than anything or anyone. The book begins with a certificate about his character, “This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (1:1). Speaking to Satan, God Himself gives him the same commendation, not just once, but twice:
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (1:8; 2:3).
In these four characteristics, two are related to his human relationships. In his relationship to others, Job was blameless and upright. No one could point a finger at him and accuse him of any wrong he had committed. Later, he himself denies committing any wrong or ever depriving anybody of justice and fairness (chapter 31). The other two characteristics refer to his relationship to God. He feared God, and because of that, he would shun evil at any cost. Whether in his relationship to man or in his relationship to God, he had spotless character and unblemished integrity. It is almost like Jesus Who “grew in favor with God and with men” (Luke 2:52).
What would you expect for this kind of person other than blessing from God? It is true that God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. Scripture is replete with the promises and examples of such things. Yet God is not bound by our expectations; God does not owe us a thing. We owe Him everything, even the very breath that we take.
For Job, everything changed overnight – literally. See how fast things happen:
One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!” (Job 1:13-17)
And the greatest blow of all:
While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you" (1:18-19).
And as if these were not enough:
The Lord afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes (2:7-8).
Although the loss of all his wealth and all his sons and daughters were some of the greatest blows that any human being can suffer, Satan’s argument was, “Skin for skin! A man will give all he has for his own life” (2:4).
And Job is alone in all this! None of his sons or daughters is left. The only survivor from his family is his wife, and she does not seem to have any sympathy for him or understanding of his commitment to the Lord. She talks like a “foolish woman” (2:10). She is surprised that Job can still hold on to his integrity, and her advice is, “Curse God and die!” (2:9). This is exactly what Satan’s claim was: “Take away all these things and he will surely curse you to your face” (1:11; 2:5).
The question in the background of the Book of Job is, “Why do the righteous suffer?” The major part of this book is a description of man’s efforts to find an answer to this puzzling question.
The easiest answer from a human perspective is that God brings trouble in man’s life as a consequence of his sin. Trouble indicates some sin in man. If we believe that God is love and God is all-powerful, then the source of pain cannot be in God; it must be in man. Man brings pain on himself because of his sin. God is holy and so cannot tolerate sin in a man’s life, and He cannot let any sin go unpunished. There is a cause and effect relationship between pain and sin. Every effect has a cause behind it; every trouble and pain has a sin behind it. According to this law of cause and effect, there is no pain without sin.
This is seen in the speeches of Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar beginning from chapter 4 all the way to chapter 31. There are three cycles of the dialogue between these friends and Job. Eliphaz speaks and Job responds; Bildad speaks and Job responds; and Zophar speaks and Job responds. The same thing happens in the second cycle. In the third cycle, only Eliphaz and Bildad speak.
Their basic argument is that there is no pain without sin in a person’s life. God punishes sin, and the person is seemingly being punished by God, and so he must have sinned. Job must have committed some terrible sin; now finally God has caught up with his sin, and he is now suffering the full reward of his sin.
Eliphaz says:
Consider now: who being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it” (3:7-8).
Or,
All his days the wicked man suffers torment, the ruthless through all the years stored up for him (15:20).
In his final speech, he comes out straightforward without any pretense:
Is it for your piety that He rebukes you and brings charges against you? Is not your wickedness great? Are not your sins endless? (22:4-5).
Then he goes into describing Job’s alleged sins (22:6ff).
Bildad has the same argument:
Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right? When your children sinned against him, He gave them over to the penalty of their sin. ...Such is the destiny of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the Godless (8:3, 4, 13).
And,
Surely such is the dwelling of an evil man; such is the place of one who knows not God (18:21).
Zophar strikes a direct blow: “Know this, God has even forgotten some of your sins” (11:6). That is, God has punished you far less than you deserve! His advice is:
If you put away the sin that is in your hand and allow no evil in your tent, then you will lift up your face without shame; you will stand firm and without fear (11:14-15).
We cannot really blame Job’s friends for assuming that he must have sinned; otherwise, why would God bring such a terrible punishment on him? As we can see from their arguments, they were just following an age-old belief system. Eliphaz cites dreams and visions to support his view (4:12-16). Bildad presents the age-old experiences of former generations and forefathers to prove his point (8:8-10). Zophar’s argument is, “Surely you know how it has been from of old, ever since man was placed on earth” (20:4).
Such thinking was not just during Job’s time. We see that assumption thousands of years later during the time of Jesus. In John 9, the disciples saw a man born blind and asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:1). The question is not whether there was any sin behind his being born blind. That is taken for granted. Their question was, “WHO sinned?” It is also obvious that it must not be his own sin, because he was born blind, and a person cannot sin before he is born. Also, Jewish theology does not believe in reincarnation, which would allow one to assume sin in a previous life. So they have to assume that it must be his parents’ sin. But one thing is for sure: he could not have received this punishment if there was no sin involved, whether his own or his parents’ sin.
For Job’s friends, there are two reasons for assuming Job’s sinfulness and his troubles as a result of some sin in his life. One is the principle of cause and effect. In Hindu theology, the principle of cause and effect is so airtight that the person has to suffer consequences, good or bad, for anything he does, for many lives to come. So the pain in a person’s life is an effect connected with the cause: some sin, either in this life or in some previous life. Although Jewish theology does not believe in reincarnation, it does allow this cause and effect relation with sin and its consequences. The reasoning is this: God punishes sin. The person is seemingly punished, and so he must have sinned. In Hindu theology, and also in most of the other religions, forgiveness of sin is not available, and so this is a logical argument.
The second reason for assuming a person’s sin is man’s attempt to plead God’s case and to clear Him of any wrongdoing. This is especially true of Job’s three friends. The argument is, “If God is bringing all these troubles on Job without him having committed any sin, that would not be just, and a righteous and holy God cannot do anything that is unjust.”
Bildad follows this thinking when he raises this question:
Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right? When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin. But if you will look to God and plead with the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse himself on your behalf and restore you to your rightful place (8:3-6).
The logic is clear, however faulty. God punishes sin and rewards righteousness. If the person is punished, he must have sinned. If you want to be rewarded, you must repent, and then you will be reassured. God follows a particular justice system: “Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers” (8:20).
Elihu, who is on a much higher plane than Job’s other three friends, has the same argument:
Far be it from God to do evil, from the Almighty to do wrong. He repays a man for what he has done; he brings upon him what his conduct deserves. It is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert Justice (34:10-12).
Seeing Job’s situation, his friends see only two options: either Job has sinned and God is punishing him justly, or, Job has not sinned, and God is punishing him unjustly. Obviously, for any religious person there is only one choice left: Job has sinned, and God is punishing him justly, because the other choice would be tantamount to blasphemy. In their airtight religious thinking, God is confined in a box from which He cannot escape. He has to follow the justice system that we think is right.
The Scriptures seem to support this argument, and it is true that God does bring affliction as a result of a particular sin in a person’s life.
In the Old Testament, God clearly warned the people of Israel of the consequences of their sins. “If you obey Me, you will be blessed” (Deuteronomy 28:1-14). “But if you disobey Me, you will be punished” (Deuteronomy 28:15-68). Leviticus 26 also spells out the rewards of obedience and punishment for disobedience. In both Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, the list of punishments for disobedience is much longer than the list of rewards for obedience!
There are also many individual examples in the Bible in which a person received punishment for a particular sin in his life. For example, God punished David for his sin of adultery with Bathsheba, and the child born of this relationship died (2 Samuel 12:15-20). In another case, David took a census against the will of God, and 70,000 of the people died by the plague that the Lord had sent as a punishment for David’s sin (2 Samuel 24:1-17). Elisha’s servant Gehzi, because of his greed, took presents from Naaman the Syrian and was struck with leprosy (2 Kings 5:19-27). King Uzziah was one of the good kings in Judah. He reigned in Jerusalem for 52 years and, “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” But after he became powerful, he became proud, and in his pride, he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar. He did what only priests consecrated to burn incense could do. As a result, he had leprosy until the day of his death
(2 Chronicles 26:1-21).
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Romans 1:18). And, “Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for the perversion” (Romans 1:27). Ananias and Sapphira lied to God, and they both received instant punishment of death (Acts 5:1-11).
So, it is clear from the Scripture that God does sometimes bring calamity in a person’s or nation’s life as a result of some particular sin. However, obviously this does not apply in every situation where a person is suffering. Because God does punish sin and sometimes brings calamity as a result of a particular sin in a person’s life, this does not mean that whenever a person is in a difficulty or is suffering, it must be a result of his sin. Whenever we see suffering, we are tempted to apply the faulty logic of Job’s friends: God brings suffering as a punishment for sin. The person is suffering, so he must have sinned and is being punished for his sin.
This theory obviously does not answer Job’s situation. The question is not “why do the wicked suffer?” We have a seemingly logical and plausible answer to that question. Our question is: “Why do the righteous suffer?” In Job’s case, it is so plain that he was not suffering as a result of a particular sin in his life. His character was spotless – as much as a human being’s character can be. As we noted earlier, the book opens with a statement that gives an excellent commendation on his character: “This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (1:1), and God Himself uses exactly the same words for him in front of Satan.
So, our problem of pain is not solved by the popular argument represented by Job’s three friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. It is too simplistic and does not apply to Job’s and many other situations in our own experience. When a person, who has lived his whole life doing what is pleasing to God and has been a blessing to all the people around him, is overwhelmed by insurmountable suffering, we cannot help but wonder about God’s justice system and ask Him “Why?” Job’s friends do not have the answer. They are convinced that troubles inevitably indicate a presence of sin. Whereas Job’s question (and ours too) is: “He destroys both the blameless and the wicked” (9:22). Why?
Apart from these three friends, Job had one more friend named Elihu. He too expresses his opinion, which is noteworthy. He goes beyond the argument presented by the three friends. So far he had kept quiet and had not said anything. He kept silent because the three friends were older than he and also because he had hoped that they would present some solution to Job’s problem. Finally, he says:
I am young in years, and you are old; that is why I was fearful, not daring to tell you what I know. I thought “Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom” (32:6).
He could wait no longer; he was angry with the three friends because they had found no way to refute Job, and yet had condemned him:
I waited while you spoke, I listened to your reasoning; while you were searching for words, I gave you my full attention. But not one of you has proved Job wrong; none of you has answered his arguments (32:11-12).
Elihu has sometimes been blamed for being self-conceited and over-confident by those who have not understood his long speech. However, he does go beyond what the three friends have said and, instead of presenting age-old arguments, he attempts to suggest a solution to the problem of pain. He is not a self-conceited babbler, but presents good and sound advice.
First, Elihu notes, in a manner similar to the other three friends, that suffering may indicate hidden or unconfessed sin in a person’s life. He argues that through suffering, God gently guides man and turns him away from a wrong and puts him on the right path. Elihu says when there is sin in a person’s life, God deals with him in one of two ways. One of these ways is:
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with the warning and keep him from pride, to preserve his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword (33:16-18).
Another way God speaks to a person is through suffering:
Or, a man may be chastened on a bed of pain with constant distress in his bones, so that his very being finds food repulsive and his soul loathes the choicest meal. His flesh wastes away to nothing, and his bones, once hidden, now stick out. His soul draws near to the pit, and his life to the messengers of death (33:19-22).
As a result, the man who has been afflicted by suffering comes to other people and gives his testimony that:
I sinned and perverted what was right, but I did not get what I deserved. He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit, and I will live to enjoy life (33:27-28).
God does all these things to a man, sometimes speaking to him in pain, “To turn back his soul from the pit, that the light of life may shine on him” (33:30).
Elihu’s opinion is that out of these two ways God has been speaking to Job through pain. So his advice to Job is that he should listen, repent, and be restored. Instead of repenting of his sin, Job keeps saying:
I am pure and without sin; I am clean and free from guilt. Yet God has found fault with me; he considers me his enemy (33:9-10).
And,
I am innocent, but God denies me justice. Although I am right, I am considered a liar; although I am guiltless, his arrows inflict an incurable wound (34:5-6).
Elihu’s argument is that we cannot tolerate Job blaming God for injustice. Because: “It is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert justice” (34:12). Instead, “He repays a man for what he has done; he brings upon him what his conduct deserves” (34:11).
It seems that Elihu has the same argument as the other three friends. Like them, he too tries to justify God and accuses Job, who “keeps company with evildoers and associates with wicked men” (34:8). However, he does not assume a particular sin in Job’s life as the other three had done. He only presents it as a possible reason.
Also, unlike the three, instead of assuming a sin in Job’s life in the past which has brought the present suffering, he directs Job’s attention towards his present attitude because of his intense suffering. He is not sure, unlike the other three, if Job has committed any particular sin in the past. But he can clearly see what Job is doing now. He is: “answering like a wicked man. To his sin he adds rebellion; scornfully he claps his hands among us and multiplies his words against God” (34:36-37). His advice is that it would have been better for Job to trust God and patiently endure the pain, rather than blame God for injustice. “Beware of turning to evil, which you seem to prefer to affliction” (36:21).
Elihu provides a significant insight as to what kind of response we should have when we are going through suffering. It is best for a person going through suffering and pain to examine himself and to evaluate his own life and see if there is any particular sin in his life which may be the cause for his suffering. If he finds it, he should confess and repent and be reconciled to God. Even though the suffering may not be removed immediately, he will find peace in his soul and see God’s love even through suffering (Psalm 51:1-12). However, this has to be done by the person himself, not by anyone else, like the three friends are doing for Job.
Elihu’s second argument is that suffering does not always indicate God’s wrath, but sometimes God’s love as a gentle teacher. He says; “Who is a teacher like him?” (36:22). Describing how God teaches through suffering, he says:
The godless in heart harbor resentment; even when he fetters them, they do not cry for help. They die in their youth, among male prostitutes of the shrines. But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from affliction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food (Job 36:13-16).
But the fact is, Elihu observes, Job has not listened to God’s instruction, and so “judgment and justice have taken hold of you” (36:17). Like Solomon, he seems to be telling Job, “Do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in” (Proverbs. 3:11-12).
Elihu’s third argument is that God is not bound by our expectations. Unlike the other three, he does not want to put God in a box so that He has to punish the wicked and reward the righteous. The other three had set up an air-tight rule of cause and effect, sin and punishment, that even God Himself cannot supersede; He is bound to follow it, whereas Elihu’s argument is we cannot make God follow the rules and regulations that we set up with our limited understanding. God is sovereign. He can do whatever He likes; He can behave in any way He chooses. Nobody can stop Him or restrain Him. “Who has prescribed his ways for him, or said to him, ‘you have done wrong?’” (36:23). And, “If he remains silent, who can condemn him? If he hides his face, who can see him?” (34:29).
Elihu’s fourth, and the most important argument, is that we cannot fathom God’s ways and cannot comprehend His words, so it is not proper for us to accuse God of injustice. Rather, we should submit and wait patiently. “How great is God – beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out” (36:26). And, “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding” (37:5). Like Paul, who after describing God’s marvelous grace in His work in salvation, bursts out in doxology:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord! Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:33-34; cf. Isaiah 40:13).
Since we cannot fathom God’s ways and cannot comprehend His works, Elihu’s argument is that we cannot blame God for injustice. We have to assume that He can do no wrong, even when it does not make any sense to us. “It is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert justice” (34:12). And, “The almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness he does not oppress” (37:23). Not only does God do only that which is good, we have to go a step further and assume that whatever He does is good, even when it does not make sense to us and does not seem to meet our standard of right and wrong. Again, “It is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert justice” (34:12).
So, the only thing left for man to do is to trust and obey – to submit and wait patiently. It is better to submit than demand explanation. It is better to fear Him than to be wise in our own eyes, . . . “for does He not have regard for all the wise in heart?” [for those who think they are wise, 37:24]. Elihu sees only two alternatives for man before God: obey and be blessed, or disobey and perish:
If they obey and serve him, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity and their years in contentment. But if they do not listen, they will perish by the sword and die without knowledge [die because they did not have knowledge, 36:11-12].
Elihu in his arguments has gone much further than the other three friends. First, instead of assuming a particular sin in the past, he scolds Job for the present sinful and self-righteous attitude. Second, he points out that troubles do not always indicate God’s wrath, but sometimes God’s love as a gentle teacher. But, third, and most important, he brings out God’s character and His sovereignty over a person’s life. God is not bound by our expectations. We cannot fathom God’s ways, and we cannot comprehend His works fully. And so, we cannot blame God for injustice, but we submit to Him and wait patiently until He takes us out of the suffering and pain. It is better to submit than to demand explanation; it is better to fear Him than to be wise in our own eyes.
J. Sidlow Baxter provides a beautiful summary of Elihu’s speech:
He sees a different and superior purpose in suffering from that which Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar have seen. It is a much higher and more spiritual purpose. The other three speakers have all been bound hand and foot by the theory that suffering is the punishment of past sinning. Elihu goes beyond that, to a truer and wider meaning. Suffering is not exclusively punitive; it is also corrective. It is not only penal; it is moral. It does not only come to requite man; it comes to restore man. It does not always come just to chastise; it often comes to chasten. It is not only the judge’s rod; it is the shepherd’s goad. 235
To this, Job does not have any response; he keeps quiet! Also, Elihu’s speech prepares the way for God’s speech. Some of the things that Elihu has tried to emphasize on God’s sovereignty are exactly what God is about to say to Job!
In spite of all this, Elihu does not have the complete picture. He cannot have a complete picture, because “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror . . . ” (1 Corinthians 13:12). He does not and cannot provide the solution to man’s age-old problem of pain. He does not have a satisfying answer for Job, or for us. Ultimately, it is only God Who can provide it.
The question to which we seek to find an answer in the Book of Job is, “Why do the righteous suffer?” The solutions offered by Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, do not fit Job’s situation, nor do they explain the suffering of many of God’s people today. Elihu’s answer may be too theological for most people. We want real answers. We want a practical solution, not a theological treaty. We may agree with Elihu wholeheartedly, but he does not provide a solution to the problem of pain. Job, too, agrees with what Elihu has to say and does not provide any rebuttal, as he did to the other three friends. However, he is still looking for the answer to the problem of righteous suffering.
Now, when no one has been has been successful in finding the answer, we must look to God for the ultimate solution. Job is not looking to his friends for the answers. They are uninvited guests and make unwelcome and unpleasant comments. For Job, and for us, if there is anyone who can provide an acceptable solution to the problem of pain, it has to be God. Job is looking to God for the ultimate and satisfying answer. His question to God is, “How many wrongs and sins have I committed? Show me my offense and my sin. Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy?” (13:23-24). Addressing his friends, he complains, “Know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me. Though I cry ‘I have been wronged!’, I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice” (19:6-7).
He is looking for God to present his case before Him, but he cannot find Him;
Even today my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy in spite of my groaning. If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling! I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would find out what he would answer me, and consider what he would say (23:2-5).
But the problem is he cannot find God; he does not even know where to look for Him:
But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him there. He is at work in the north, I do not see him; when He turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him (23:8-9).
His problem is, “I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me” (30:20-21). His misery is beyond measure, and it is God, he complains, Who has inflicted it, and it is God from Whom he demands an answer:
If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas – no wonder my words have been impetuous. The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me. Therefore I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul (6:2-4; 7:11).
Finally God speaks! Now we should have all the answers! Are you anxious to hear what He has to say? Imagine you are reading this book for the first time in your life and are not familiar at all with the Book of Job. You would be touched not only by the poetical beauty of the book, but far more than that by the intense pain that Job has been going through. Although you do have some idea of what is going on in the heavenly places, you would still be anxious to know what God is going to tell Job. Then you come to the point in the book where it says, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm” (38:1). You would hold your breath to hear what that answer would be.
But, there is no answer! Only questions! And more questions! Lots of them! Not less than 70 of them! If you read God’s speech expecting to find the answer to Job’s problems, or to the problem of pain in general, you will be greatly disappointed. There is no mention whatsoever of Job’s troubles or of his miserable condition or his cries for help and demands for explanation. There is a beautiful and poetic description of God’s power revealed through various natural elements, but no explanation of the problem of pain.
The language, the poetry, the rich imagery, the universal sweep of ideas and illustrations – all these certainly eclipse everything that has preceded, and probably they are unsurpassed in all literature, ancient or modern; but there is neither explanation nor argument. 236
Through His speech, God wants to remind Job, and us, of several things. He is telling Job, “I am the eternal God, are you eternal?” He asks, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell Me, if you understand” (38:4). And:
What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years! (38:19-21).
God names various creatures, small and large, and describes His control over and care of each of them: mountain goats (39:1-4), the wild donkey (39:5-8), the wild ox (39:9-12), the ostrich (39:13-18), the horse (39:19-25), the hawk (39:26-30), behemoth (40: 15-24) and leviathan (41:1-34). All these receive their strength, power, abilities and skills from God. Even the stupidity of the ostrich is not without God’s plan and purpose, “for God did not endow her with wisdom or give her a share of good sense” (39:17). God seems to be telling Job, “I have created all these creatures; can you do such things? I exercise authority and control over all these things; can you do so on any of the smallest of these things? How can you comprehend My ways with man, when you cannot comprehend and control the things I have made? Who are you to ask an account of My actions?”
God not only describes His power and control over the natural elements, but also over the moral government. He can unleash the fury of His wrath and humble the proud and crush the wicked. God’s question to Job is, “Can you do that?”
Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his? Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor and majesty. Unleash the fury of your wrath, look at every proud man and humble him, crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them all in the dust together; shroud their faces in the grave. Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you (40:9-14).
But if you cannot do that, you do not have any right to question my justice to justify yourself (40:8).
It is interesting to note Job’s response to God’s speeches. From Job’s two responses it is obvious that he was satisfied with God’s answer (40:3-5; 42:1-6). If God did not answer his questions or give explanation to his suffering, how can he be satisfied? What did he hear or see in God’s response that he was satisfied? We will note five things:
1. 1. Now I know you.
After hearing God speak, Job came to know God in a real and intimate way. He says, “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you” (42:5). He did know God before this; he feared God and lived a life that was pleasing to Him; he worshiped God in truth. However, now he has a far more real and intimate knowledge of God than ever before. It is one thing to accept God’s existence, know of His power and worship and fear Him, but it is another thing to experience God personally in such a way that the person would be willing to submit to Him, no matter what. After going over the details of some of the wonderful creations of God, Job learned about God's character and understood that he can take God at His word, while hardly understanding any of the mysteries of the universe and workings of God and the reasons why he was suffering.
Personal and intimate knowledge of God is God’s priority for any of His disciples and many times God uses suffering and pain to draw His child closer to Him. As Peter notes:
Though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials, these (trials) have come that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:7).
Sometimes suffering can be a blessing in disguise as it leads us closer to God and to a deeper knowledge and understanding of Him. As Paul said:
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecution, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
Or, as James notes:
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (James 1:2-4).
2. Now I know myself.
When Job knows God, he knows himself. When God revealed Himself and displayed His splendor in the creation before Job’s eyes, he came to realize who God is and who he himself is before God. As a result, he confesses, “I am unworthy” and “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (40:4, 42:6). Here he does not despise himself because a mountain of troubles had come upon him, as he did in chapter 3. Neither is he repenting for a particular sin in his life. But after he comes to know God intimately, he comes to realize who he is before God and despises himself for asking God for an account of His actions and repents for that sin. “Who am I before you that I would ask an account of your actions?” “Who am I that I would blame you for injustice?” He despises himself and repents for these things. This is exactly what Elihu’s rebuke was:
But you have said in my hearing—I heard the very words—I am pure and without sin; I am clean and free from guilt. Yet God has found fault with me; he considers me his enemy. He fastens my feet in shackles; he keeps close watch on all my paths. But I tell you, in this you are not right, for God is greater than man (33:8-12).
Man does not know himself until he knows God. Compared to the other people, he may have a reason to boast or to feel superior, like the Pharisee who compared himself with the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14). But when man knows God and puts himself in the light of that knowledge, he comes to realize where he stands. When Moses stands before God, he realizes, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). When the prophet Isaiah stands before the holy God, he realizes, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:5). When Simon Peter realized who he was standing before, “He fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man’” (Luke 5:8).
Before the Most High and Sovereign God, man is insignificant. Before the Holy God, man is sinful. Before Him Who gives and sustains life, man has no rights or claims, even to ask an explanation for His actions. As God said, “Who has a claim against Me that I must pay” (41:11, NIV, or, “Who has given to Me that I should repay him?” NASB). He is not my servant that He would obey my commands. He does not have to give an explanation or ask my forgiveness if He does something that I do not like. Job says, “Now I know you and so I know myself. Who am I that I should ask an account of your actions or an explanation for your dealings with me? I am unworthy and I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes for doing just that.”
2. 3. You can do all things.
Job now comes to realize that God is sovereign. No one can stop Him from doing whatever He wants to do, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (42:2). If God is God, who can stop Him from doing what He wants to do? Through displaying His power over the creation and moral order of the universe, God seemed to be telling Job, “I am a sovereign God and I do whatever pleases Me.” As the psalmist declared, “Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases him” (Psalm 115:3), and “The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths” (Psalm 135:6). Nebuchadnezzar confessed:
All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” (Daniel 4:35).
Of course, Job himself had said earlier, “He stands alone, and who can oppose him? He does whatever he pleases” (23:13). But there it was in the form of a complaint. Here it is as a confession of the truth; he comes to realize that truth in a very personal way. He acknowledges God’s sovereignty over his own personal life and relinquishes all his rights and demands before the Sovereign Lord.
So, there is only one thing that remains for Job and for us: submit – complete, unreserved submission – submission without any questions or complaints. As the hymn writer wrote, “Have Thine own way, Lord, have Thine own way,” and “There is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.” As Peter commends:
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).
3. 4. Things too wonderful for me to know.
Not only is the sovereign God not bound to give an account of any of His actions, but even if He did, we would not understand. God declared through the prophet Isaiah:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher that the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Or, as Solomon said:
When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe man’s labor on earth--his eyes not seeing sleep day or night – then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it” (Ecclesiastes 8:16-17).
Elihu had said this repeatedly, “How great is God – beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out” (36:26). And, “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding” (37:5). “The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power” (37:23). Job himself had said, “He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted” (9:10).
We do not know, and cannot fully know, the works of God because we do not have the complete picture. We do not know what is going on behind the curtain in the heavenly places. As Paul says, “For we know in part,” and “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:9, 12). We cannot fully know God and his workings as we are fully known by Him, and we cannot fully comprehend the purpose and reason behind everything that He does.
Man trying to comprehend the works of God is like the story of the blind men trying to figure out what kind of creature the elephant is. One grabbed its tail and argued that the elephant is like a rope. Another grabbed its legs and argued that the elephant is like a pole; and so on. But none of them had the faintest idea what kind of creature the elephant is. Each had a partial knowledge, but none of them had the full picture. The interesting thing is that if some seeing man had tried to describe an elephant to these blind men, they could not have comprehended his description; it probably would have raised more questions in their minds.
We all are like these blind men in relation to our knowledge of the Most High. If we experience some problems or trials and sufferings, we judge God from that experience and doubt His love for us. When we see wickedness and injustice all around us and see the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer, we are inclined to question God’s justice system. When we see wars, famines, earthquakes and other widespread destruction and pain, we are likely to question God’s control over the universe. We judge God, His character, His love, or lack of it, on the basis of what we see around us without having the complete and overall picture about Him and His purposes behind everything that happens under the sun. We, with our puny minds and limited comprehension, will never be able to understand God’s complete plans and purposes, either with the things happening around us in the world or with what God is doing in our own individual lives. Job finally came to realize, “I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (42:3).
God always has a purpose in not revealing all His plans and purposes for our lives. In Job’s case we, the readers, are given the glimpse of what is going on in the heavenly places. But the question is, “Why did God not reveal that to Job? Would it not have been much easier for Job to go through the intense pain if he had been aware of God’s purpose behind it?” But that is exactly the point of the whole book! Then it would not be a real test of his character, nor would there have been any place for the genuine exercise of his faith. Imagine, for example, God asking Abraham to offer his son Isaac and telling him that he will not have to kill him. As Baxter notes:
There are some things about human suffering which God cannot possibly explain to us without destroying the very purpose which they are designed to fulfill. 237
4. 5. It is enough that I have seen your face.
All the things mentioned above are important to know for Job, and for us. However, the most important thing that Job comes to know firsthand from his experience is that God loves him; He is concerned for him, and He cares enough for His servant to speak to him.
For a long time, God was silent. He seemed to be hiding His face from Job. Because of this, Job had assumed that God did not care, that He had become his enemy. Job had said:
God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me; my opponent fastens on me his piercing eyes (like a lion on a prey before pouncing upon it). All was well with me, but he shattered me; he seized me by the neck and crushed me. He has made me his target; his archers surround me. Without pity he pierces my kidneys and spills my gall on the ground. Again and again he bursts upon me; he rushes at me like a warrior” (16:9, 12-14).
Job thought God was hiding His face from him (23:8-9) and did not want to talk to him (19:7; 30:20).
The most difficult thing for Job was not that everything he owned was gone overnight, or even that all his ten children were destroyed altogether. To this, his response was, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (1:21). It was not even that his body was afflicted with painful sores. His response to his wife about that was, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (2:20). He was able to stand firm even before his accusing friends. But the most unbearable thing for Job was that God had become his enemy, and He had turned His face away from him.
His friends found the reason for all his troubles in Job himself. But he, after many self-examinations, does not find any cause in himself for all his troubles. He confidently tells his friends:
I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live” (27:5-6).
Consequently, he assumes the cause of all his problems in God. God has become my enemy!
Finally when God speaks to him, he is satisfied. As a result of his encounter with God, Job learned that God had not abandoned him. He came to realize that even without knowing the reason behind his suffering, he could face it, so long as he was assured that God was still his friend. It is enough for him that the Creator of the whole universe is ready to talk to him personally. He meets God in Whom all his questions are answered. All his doubts are gone. Expectations are fulfilled. Longings are satisfied. Now there is no need for any explanation.
So far, Job’s complaint was that he was looking for God but he could not find Him anywhere (23:3-9). But was he really looking for God? He was not looking for God; he was looking for answers, for explanations, for vindication. And yet, because of His love for His servant, God reveals Himself to His servant even when he is not looking for Him. As in Isaiah, God speaks of His people Israel:
I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, “Here am I, here am I” (Isaiah 65:1).
That’s grace! And when Job experiences that grace, there was no need to ask anything more.
Why do the righteous suffer? Job’s friends do not have the answer. (Actually, their answer is that the one who is righteous does not suffer, and if he does suffer, by his suffering, it becomes evident that he is not really righteous!). Job does not have the answer. We do not have the answer. God does not answer this question, nor is He bound to answer. Then, where do we find the answer to the problem of pain? It is found in Job’s response to God.
From the encounter with God, Job comes to realize that rather than finding the solution to our pain and suffering, it is far better to submit to God and trust Him, in Whom the ultimate solution is found. Rather than question God’s love, God’s justice, and the appropriateness of His actions, it is far better to trust Him completely. It is not enough to believe that God does only what is good; but we have to accept that whatever He does is good even when, and especially when, it does not seem so. The Psalmist said, “You are good, and what you do is good” (Psalm 119:68). God does not answer Job’s questions, but seems to be telling Job, “For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).
1. Pain is a part of God’s plan and program. It does not always indicate His wrath, but His love.
2. We cannot ever fully comprehend God’s works; we see but dimly as in a mirror.
3. God is God; we cannot put Him in a box.
4. God can never do anything that is bad for His people. In time of trouble, it is better to trust Him fully rather than doubt His love.
The Book of Job does not solve the problem of pain, but it tells us about God, about His sovereignty, His goodness, and His love. When we realize these things, we do not need all our questions answered.
The Book of Job, as we noted previously, does not answer the question, “Why do the righteous suffer?” It only leads to the conclusion, based on Job’s experience and his final response to God’s speech, that rather than trying to find the solution, it is better to submit and trust God in Whom the ultimate solution is found. The reason the Book of Job is a source of consolation to many believers going through intense pain is not that this book gives some reason behind their difficult experience, but because we can identify with Job. The tragedies and sufferings in our lives, no matter how grave, would pale compared to what Job experienced. Knowing that others have suffered like we have, or even much more severely, can be a source of real comfort. As Paul mentioned in relation to temptation, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man" (1 Corinthians 10:13a). Or, as Peter said in relation to persecution, “Resist him (Satan), standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings” (1 Peter 5:9).
The Book of Job does not answer the question, “Why do the righteous suffer?” because that is not the question in the background of the book! All human characters in the book try to answer the wrong question! The question the Book of Job raises and answers is not, “Why do the righteous suffer?”, but “Why do the righteous serve God?”
What is the point behind Satan’s argument? What is his challenge to God? His question is:
Does Job serve God for nothing? Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face” (1:9-11).
God takes up the challenge and takes away everything from Job, including all his ten children. Job’s response, unlike what Satan had expected was, “May the name of the Lord be praised. In all this Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (1:21-22).
Satan persists in his accusations. “Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you in your face” (2:4-5). When God allowed Satan to strike Job’s body, Job’s response was, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? In all this Job did not sin in what he did” (2:10). Satan’s accusation against Job was that he was serving God with a selfish motive. His heart was set on material blessing, on his family, on his own well-being, and not on God Himself. Why would he not serve God since God had blessed him so much?
Also, there is an accusation against God Himself and on His character. Satan dared to claim that God bought Job’s worship by giving him so many material and other blessings. “Nobody worships God,” Satan accused, “for the sake of worship. People worship God for selfish motives.” And, God is so naive that He does not even know how people take advantage of Him and deceive Him by an outward show of worship for the benefit they receive from Him. How easily is God duped, Satan implied!
Through Job’s response, the Book of Job clearly answers this question. Job was serving God not for any of the blessings he received from God, but because of his pure, unselfish devotion to God. Job, through his response, showed that the true believer is committed to serve God not because of the blessings he receives from God, but in spite of any and every difficult situation he may have to go through because of his commitment to God. He says, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in him” (13:15). When everything is taken away, including all his children and his own health, his wife’s advice is “curse God and die” (2:9). This was exactly the same thing Satan had accused that Job would do! But he stands firm to the end in spite of all the suffering he goes through.
Of course, Job demands an explanation, he challenges God in a court case, he defends himself with the skin of his teeth, and he stands firm on his claims of integrity and blamelessness. He puts all the blame of all his troubles at God’s feet. But nowhere does he turn himself away from God or curse God for all his troubles, as Satan had accused and expected.
The Book of Job tells us that the true worshiper worships God in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers God seeks. “God is spirit and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24). God blesses those who worship Him with true devotion of the heart and who want to live a life that is pleasing to Him. The heart of the true worshiper is not set on those blessings, but on God, Who is the source of all blessings. The attitude of the true worshiper is:
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior” (Habakkuk 3:17-18).
Or, again, as Job says, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in him” (13:15).
From the prologue of the Book of Job, it may seem that Satan was behind all the troubles of Job. God Himself tells Satan, “You incited me against him to ruin him without any reason” (2:3). It creates the impression that if Satan had not raised the question about Job, Job would not have suffered.
However, it is obvious that God is not working under Satan’s direction; Satan is working under God’s control. We have to note that it is not Satan who begins to ask about Job; it is God Who raises a question about him: “Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job?’” (1:8). And again, “Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job?’” (2:3). God already knew what Satan was thinking, and God Himself raised the issue and gave Satan an opportunity to prove His servant.
From the book, it is also clear that it was not Satan who inflicted suffering on Job; it was God. Since Satan was working under God’s control, he could not do anything without God’s permission and could not go beyond the limitations set by God. At first, he could only touch Job’s wealth and family, not his body. Then he could touch only Job’s body, not his life. It was God Who stretched out His hand and struck everything Job had (1:11), and then stretched out His hand and struck Job’s flesh and bones (2:5).
All the human characters in the book rightly assume God’s hand behind all the troubles of Job. His wife assumed that God was behind all the troubles, and so her advice was “Curse God and die,” since God, she assumed, did not reward Job for his righteousness and faithfulness. All Job’s friends assumed God was behind all this, and they tried to find a justifiable reason behind it.
Job, too, assumed God’s hand was behind all his sufferings. When everything is taken away and all his children are destroyed, he says, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away” (1:21). When severe physical pain is inflicted upon him, he accepts it as from God’s hand (2:10). Nowhere in the book does he blame anyone for all his troubles, except God:
He destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent. When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds the judges. If it is not he, then who is it? (9:22-24).
Job blames his friends for not understanding his situation, for not having any sympathy for him, and for falsely accusing him of wickedness, but never for his troubles.
It is true that Satan was behind the original sin of Adam and Eve that brought the curse on the earth and on human beings and also that he continues to work today leading people astray. He blinds the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4). Nevertheless, Satan works under God’s control, and he cannot do anything without God’s permission. Unlike some eastern religions, the Bible does not allow the duality of good and evil, both being coequal and coexistent. Although the Scripture does depict the tension between good and evil, even in a believer’s life (e.g., Romans 7:14-25), evil is subservient to good, and God is in control of the evil. He allows suffering, even in the lives of some of His choicest servants, for some positive and beneficial purposes (see Romans 8:28-39, quoted in the beginning).
Considering suffering and adversity from our limited perspective under the sun, we may feel, like Job, “He destroys both the blameless and the wicked” (9:22). Or, like Solomon:
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked men get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless (Ecclesiastes 8:14).
However, the Book of Job shows that God always has a good purpose behind it and that He uses suffering and pain to bless and build up His servants.
The Book of Job clearly brings out the limitations of Satan’s power.
First, he works under the spatial limitations. Unlike God, Job is not omnipresent. When God asks him where he had come from, his response is, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it” (1:7, 2:2). Roaming means going from one place to another, from the place he is to a place where he is not. He can only be at one place at a time. Since he is a spiritual being, his going from one place to another can happen almost instantaneously. That may create the impression that he is everywhere. But in reality, he is not, and he cannot be. The Book of First Peter gives the purpose of his uneasy roaming; he “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He had his sights set on Job, and God knew it; that is why God was the One to raise the question about Job.
Second, Satan cannot do anything without God’s permission. That means, unlike God, he is not omnipotent. Initially, he was able to touch only Job’s property and family; he could not touch Job’s body. The second time he was able to touch only Job’s body, but not his life.
Third, he does not truly know Job’s heart and his true unselfish devotion to God. This indicates that Satan is not omniscient, as God is. Satan boldly argues that Job was serving God because God had immensely blessed him. Satan claimed that if God took away the blessings, “he will surely curse you to your face” (1:11). Even after Job remains firm in the first round of tests, Satan does not lose his confidence. His claim is, “stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face” (2:5). From the rest of the book, we know how wrong Satan was. On the other hand, God knew whether His servant would withstand the test or not, and so He takes up the challenge.
The limitations of Satan have two implications for a believer: First, it brings tremendous comfort to know that God is in control, Satan is not. God would not allow Satan to do anything to His servant that is beyond his ability to bear; “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Second, however, this puts a tremendous responsibility on the believer. He cannot blame Satan for sin in his life. He cannot say, “The devil made me do it.” God has taken away that excuse. Like John says in one of his epistles, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them (false spirits), because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Satan gets far more credit for all the troubles in a believer’s life than he deserves!
The central idea of the Book of Job is that though the evil and suffering may seem to have an upper hand, God is still on the throne, and He remembers His own. His love is never ending, and His grace is sufficient for all our needs; His promises remain true. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. As Paul writes:
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:37-39).
And as Peter notes:
And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever (1 Peter 5:10).
FINALLY:
The purpose for studying the Book of Job is:
To see who God is
To see who we are
To see that all our problems are solved in Him
To see that all our questions are answered in Him even when He is silent
To know God and to realize that even when everything (and, everyone) else is
gone, He is still there, and HE IS ENOUGH.
The question every believer has to ask himself is this: “If Satan brings a similar accusation against me before God, would God be able to take up the challenge?” Where is my heart set? Is it set in God, or in all His blessings? Jesus demanded unrivaled commitment from His disciples:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life . . . he cannot be my disciple. Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26, 33).
We have far more revelation than Job had. We have the witnesses of so many people in the past from Job to Jesus. As the author of Hebrews said:
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, Whom he appointed heir of all things, and through Whom he made the universe (Hebrews 1:1-2).
And so,
Therefore because we are surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son” (Hebrews 12:1-6).
233 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Imanuel G. Christian, guest speaker at Community Bible Chapel, on May 6, 2001.
234 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission.
235 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), vol. 3, p. 57; emphasis in the original.
236 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), vol. 3, p. 68.
237 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), vol. 3, p. 70.
Today just happens to be my sister’s birthday. In addition, Easter (perhaps it would be better to say “Resurrection Sunday”) is just a week away. This is a time when the greeting card section of the supermarket will be busy with folks looking for just the right card. We purchase greeting cards because someone else is better at putting words to our thoughts than we are. Strangely, though, many of the greeting cards are not the traditional “Hallmark Card” – the card for those “who care enough to send the very best.” Nowadays, people are just as inclined to send a humorous card as they are to send a serious one, especially for birthdays, anniversaries, and even sweetheart cards. When relationships ran deeper, people had strong feelings, and they struggled to find just the right words to express them. Now, many do not want truly intimate relationships, and so they send humorous cards instead, cards that never get below the surface of the relationship.
The Book of Psalms is something like the “Hallmark Cards” section of the Bible. Here we find words that express our deepest and strongest emotions, no matter what the circumstance. Some psalms express joyful praise for God’s acts of deliverance; others express repentance and confession of sin; still others cry out to God because He appears to be oblivious to the writer’s plight. The whole spectrum of human emotions is expressed in the psalms. It is for this reason that men and women have turned to the psalms over the centuries. The psalms express the deepest emotions of the heart.
I have a very daunting task – I must attempt to deal with the Book of Psalms in two lessons. In this lesson, I will attempt to give a very broad overview of the psalms, seeking to persuade you that this book is worth a great deal of your time and attention. I will attempt to show why the psalms are so important and what unique contribution they make to the Holy Scriptures. I will endeavor to summarize some of the characteristics of the psalms. Then, we will briefly look at one psalm, Psalm 73. Finally, I will seek to show how the psalms apply to us and to our worship today.
After Isaiah, Psalms is the most frequently quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament. Jesus indicated that the psalms spoke of him:
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” (Luke 24:44).193
On the cross of Calvary, Jesus cried out the words of Psalm 22:1. The apostles used the psalms to prove that Jesus was the Messiah (see Acts 2:24-36; 12:29-39). Psalms also played an important role in the early church:
What should you do then, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each one has a song, has a lesson, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all these things be done for the strengthening of the church (1 Corinthians 14:26).
18 And do not get drunk with wine, which is debauchery, but be filled by the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord (Ephesians 5:18-19).
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God (Colossians 3:16).
The psalms have been important throughout church history. Chrysostom and Augustine are among those who have written commentaries on the psalms. John Calvin had this to say about the psalms:
“This book I am wont to style an anatomy of all parts of the soul; for no one will discover in himself a single feeling whereof the image is not reflected in this mirror. Nay, all griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, anxieties – in short, all those tumultuous agitations wherewith the minds of men are wont to be tossed – the Holy Ghost hath here represented to the life.”194
Luther said of the psalms:
“The Psalter is the favorite book of all the saints … [Each person], whatever his circumstances may be, finds in [the book] psalms and words which are appropriate to the circumstances in which he finds himself and meet his needs as adequately as if they were composed exclusively for his sake, and in such a way that he himself could not improve on them nor find or desire any better psalms or words.”195
Bernhard Anderson reminds his readers that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazi regime, was a man deeply influenced by the Psalms.196 His last publication before his death was The Prayer Book of the Bible: An Introduction to the Psalms (1940). On May 15, 1943, he wrote these words: “I am reading the Psalms daily, as I have done for years. I know them and love them more than any other book in the Bible.”197
(1) The psalms are poetry. Psalms are poetry, but not the kind of poetry to which many of us are accustomed. When you look at the psalms in the King James Version of the Bible, you will discover that the format of the Book of Psalms is no different than that of Genesis. It was not until over 100 years later than Bishop Robert Lowth rediscovered the genius of Hebrew poetry.198 Hebrew poetry is not like our poetry. When we think of poetry, we think of lines that rhyme:
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.
Hebrew poetry does not rely heavily on rhyme; it is based upon repetition and development of thought from one line to the next. This repetition is known as “parallelism.”199 In synonymous parallelism, the first line is echoed in the second, with only a slight change of terms:
Why do the nations cause a commotion?
Why are the countries devising plots that will fail? (Psalm 2:1; see also 3:1).
In antithetical parallelism, the words of the first line are affirmed in the second, not by repetition, but by contrast:
Certainly the Lord rewards the behavior of the godly,
but the behavior of the wicked is self-destructive (Psalm 1:6; see also 40:4).
In climactic parallelism, the second line refines, develops, and completes the thought of the first:
Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the nations,
ascribe to the Lord splendor and strength! (Psalm 96:7)
There are other types of parallelism, but this gives you some examples of how parallelism is the backbone of Hebrew poetry. How wise and gracious God was to use Hebrew poetry, rather than the kind of poetry to which we are accustomed. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to translate “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into the Hebrew language so that it rhymed? Hebrew poetry is the most easily translated form of poetry I know of, and this is the poetry God chose for the Book of Psalms.
Poetry is a medium of expression that facilitates the communication of deep feelings and emotions. When my father was in the Navy during World War II, he wrote poems to my mother. (In fact, until recently, my father wrote a poem to each of his children and grandchildren for their birthdays.) During my years of prison ministry, I was shocked to learn how many prisoners write poetry. For some reason, this is considered an acceptable way of revealing one’s feelings (something that is not done very much inside a prison).
Because the psalms are poetry, they must be interpreted in a different manner than historical narrative. We expect figures of speech and what appears to be exaggeration. We know better than to take every word literally. For example, in the psalms we read,
Let the rivers clap their hands!
Let the mountains sing in unison (Psalm 98:8).
(2) The psalms are songs. The Hebrew word Tehillim that is the title of the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible means “songs of praise.” The terms found at the heading of many psalms are often musical terms. Sometimes there will be a reference to the “choir director” in the first verse of psalm (e.g., Psalms 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, etc.). Various musical instruments are mentioned, such as the flute (Psalm 5) and stringed instruments (Psalms 4, 6, 54, 55).
Music played a vital part in the worship of ancient Israel, just as it has in the church through the ages and down to the present. Martin Luther once said,
“He who despises music … does not please me. Music is a gift of God, not a gift of men … . After theology, I accord to music the highest place and the greatest honor.”200
Music is not an incidental part of our worship; it plays a fundamental role in our lives. David’s music somehow calmed the demonically troubled spirit of Saul (1 Samuel 16:14-23). Prophetic revelations through God’s Spirit were closely linked with music in at least a couple of instances (1 Kings 10:5-6, 9-11; 2 Kings 3:15).
The ancient Israelites knew the tune to at least some of the psalms:
For the music director; according to the tune of “lilies;’ by the Korachites, a well-written poem, a love song (preface to Psalm 45).
Somewhere along the line the musical score for the psalms was lost, and I am inclined to think that this was no accident. It means that in order for us to sing the psalms we must put them to music, our own music. It would have to be this way. Can you imagine what it would have been like trying to match the words to the notes when the psalms were translated? Sometimes, due to the nature of translation, there would be twice as many words as notes, and at other times just the reverse. Some Hebrew words MUST be translated with a phrase,so more words are required.
God knew that the psalms would be translated into many, many languages, and that each language group would have its own culture, its own music, and its own preferences. The psalms encourage us to write the musical score which we find appropriate to the psalm and to our culture.
I am sometimes amused when someone stands and says, “Can we please sing hymn number 256, and can we sing it worshipfully?” Worshipfully means different things to different people. To some, it means singing a cappella; to others it means singing softly and slowly; to still others it means singing loudly, perhaps with the clapping of hands. The psalms do not contain any prescribed music so that we can put these inspired words to music in a way that fits our own cultural grid. This is, of course, within the limits of propriety, but there is a considerable range of freedom here.
(3) The psalms are expressions of worship. The psalms are an expression of man’s response to God in the light of his circumstances. The range of precipitating circumstances is very wide in the psalms. Ron Allen has, with some words of caution, divided the Scriptures into three major categories: revelation, reflection, and response.201 Revelation would include the narrative accounts of the Bible, for example. Reflection would include some of the wisdom books, such as Proverbs. Response would be expressed in the psalms.
Often, the psalms are one’s public response to God as an outgrowth of a more private encounter with God. We see the psalmists expressing their worship to God as the fulfillment of their vow to praise God publicly for His intervention in their lives in answer to their petitions:
I will fulfill my vows to the Lord
before all his people (Psalm 116:14).
You are the reason I offer praise in the great assembly;
I will fulfill my promises before the Lord’s loyal followers. (Psalm 22:25; see also 66:13-16)
The psalmist frequently urges his fellow-Israelites to join him in worshipping God. In Romans 12:15, we are exhorted to,
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
The psalms actually facilitate this. We are enabled not only to enter into the experience of the psalmists, but also to enter into their inner thoughts, especially their thoughts about God:
1 As a deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God!
2 I thirst for God,
for the living God.
I say, “When will I be able to go and appear in God’s presence?”
3 I cannot eat, I weep day and night;
all day long they say to me, “Where is your God?”
4 I will remember and weep!
For I was once walking along with the great throng to the temple of God,
shouting and giving thanks along with the crowd as we celebrated the holy festival.
5 Why are you depressed, O my soul?
Why are you upset?
Wait for God!
For I will again give thanks
to my God for his saving intervention.
6 I am depressed,
so I will pray to you while I am trapped here in the region of the upper Jordan,
from Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
7 One deep stream calls out to another at the sound of your waterfalls;
all your billows and waves overwhelm me.
8 By day the Lord decrees his loyal love,
and by night he gives me a song,
a prayer to the living God.
9 I will pray to God, my high ridge:
“Why do you ignore me?
Why must I walk around mourning
because my enemies oppress me?” (Psalm 42:1-9)
(4) The psalms are prayers:
This collection of the prayers of David son of Jesse ends here (Psalm 72:20).
At the moment, a great deal of attention is being given the “prayer of Jabez:”
Jabez called out to the God of Israel, “If only you would greatly bless me and expand my territory! May your hand be with me! Keep me from harm so I might not endure pain!” God answered his prayer (1 Chronicles 4:10).
I am not trying to fault those who would have us model some of our prayers after this “prayer of Jabez,” but I would point out that the psalms are prayers that were specifically designed to be repeated. I’m not quite as certain about the prayer of Jabez. In fact, it seems to me that most of the psalms are the prayers of men who have found themselves in very difficult circumstances. They are often prayers for deliverance from danger and death, not prayers for prosperity. I would be inclined to say that the prayer of Jabez is narrow in its focus (on Jabez and his well-being), while the psalms focus more on God, and they are definitely much more “broadband” in terms of their content.
(5) The psalms are instruction. The psalms are a summation, a condensation, of Old Testament theology. The psalms are rich in their content so far as doctrine is concerned. We find the attributes of God to be a constant theme in the psalms. We see the law the way it was meant to be viewed in the psalms. The psalms also summarize the history of God’s dealings with man in the Old Testament (see Psalms 78, 105). The psalms contain a great deal of prophecy, as we shall point out in our next lesson. The psalms make it easier to learn God’s Word and to memorize it. Psalm 119, for example, is arranged alphabetically. Each segment of the psalm begins with the next letter of the alphabet. The psalms are rich in instruction. What incredible insight we are given concerning the Old Testament law:
97 O how I love your law!
All day long I meditate on it.
98 Your law makes me wiser than my enemies,
for I am always aware of it.
99 I even have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your rules.
100 I am more discerning than the older men,
for I observe your precepts.
101 I stay away from the evil path,
so that I might keep your instructions.
102 I do not turn aside from your regulations,
for you teach me.
103 Your words are tastier
in my mouth than honey!
104 Your precepts give me discernment.
Therefore I hate all deceitful actions (Psalm 119:97-104).
(6) The psalms speak for us. We know that the psalms speak to us, but they also speak for us. The psalms may express our hearts and our thoughts better than our own words can. On several occasions, I have been asked if Romans 8:26-27 is a prooftext for speaking in tongues:
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes on behalf of the saints according to God’s will (Romans 8:26-27).
Without seeking to engage in a debate over the gift of tongues, I would say that whether or not one believes this gift exists today, I don’t think Romans 8:26-27 is referring to the gift of tongues. This text tells us that the Spirit helps us to communicate with God, especially when we can’t seem to find the words to express our hearts to God. We know that the Spirit of God also communicates from God to us things that our natural minds cannot comprehend:
14 The unbeliever does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The one who is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is understood by no one. 16 For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to advise him? But we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:14-16).
This communication from God is not by means of the gift of tongues. Indeed, without interpretation, we don’t even know what has been spoken in tongues (see 1 Corinthians 14:6-19). Furthermore, the Scriptures are very clear that the gift of tongues is only given to some, but not to all of the saints, just as any other gift (1 Corinthians 12:29-30). If the gift of tongues is the means by which we are enabled to communicate our inexpressible thoughts to God in prayer, then not all saints are thus enabled, because not all saints speak in tongues.
My point here is that the provision spoken of in Romans 8:26-27 must be a universal provision for all saints, and not just for some. The psalms are one means by which the Spirit of God helps us to articulate the thoughts and groanings of our hearts. Our hearts trouble us, but we can’t quite seem to put our finger on what it is that is causing our distress. Then we turn to the psalms and find a particular psalm that precisely describes our own struggle. I am not saying that the psalms are the only “universal” provision the Spirit of God places at our disposal, but I do think the psalms are one of the Spirit’s provisions that help us to express the deep feelings of our hearts.
It was Athanasius, an outstanding church leader in the fourth century, who reportedly declared “that the Psalms have a unique place in the Bible because most of the Scripture speaks to us, while the Psalms speak for us.”202
Martin Luther found the Psalms to be a school of prayer:
“The Christian can learn to pray in the psalter, for here he can hear how the saints talk with God. The number of moods which are expressed here, joy and suffering, hope and care, make it possible for every Christian to find himself in it, and to pray with the psalms.”203
I have chosen Psalm 73 to demonstrate the manner in which the psalms teach theology. Psalm 73 addresses the problem of evil, as does Psalm 37 and others. Psalm 73 is one of those psalms that ends on a happy note. Not every psalm ends this way. In some psalms, the psalmist cries out to God for deliverance or divine intervention because God has not already acted. In such cases, the psalmist must simply cast himself on the God of the Bible and trust in Him in spite of his circumstances, based upon His character, His covenant promises, and His actions in the past (see, for example, Psalms 6, 13, 34, 44, 74, 79, 80, 89, 94). In Psalm 73, however, the psalmist reaches a resolution to his problem beforehand, which he expresses in his psalm. Let us briefly consider the psalmist’s problem, the solution he reaches, and his response to God.
The author of this psalm is Asaph, the author of 12 of the psalms.205 Asaph is the chief “worship leader” who ministered before the ark of the Lord (1 Chronicles 16:4-5). I can imagine that much of his agony came from looking out upon those who came to worship, knowing how hypocritical some must have been. Asaph’s dilemma is based upon this fundamental premise, believed by every faithful Israelite:
Certainly God is good to Israel,
and to those whose motives are pure! (Psalm 73:1)
The Mosaic Covenant assured God’s people that He would bless those who were righteous and that He would punish the wicked. As Asaph observed men in the course of his ministry, this did not seem to be happening. Indeed, it seemed as though just the opposite was happening – it looked as though God was blessing the wicked, or worse yet, that the wicked were prospering and God didn’t seem to know or care!
2 But as for me, my feet almost slipped;
my feet almost slid out from under me.
3 For I envied those who are proud,
as I observed the prosperity of the wicked.
4 For they suffer no pain;
their bodies are strong and well-fed.
5 They are immune to the trouble common to men;
they do not suffer as other men do.
6 Arrogance is their necklace,
and violence their clothing.
7 Their prosperity causes them to do wrong;
their thoughts are sinful.
8 They mock and say evil things;
they proudly threaten violence.
9 They speak as if they rule in heaven,
and lay claim to the earth.
10 Therefore they have more than enough food to eat,
and even suck up the water of the sea.
11 They say, “How does God know what we do?
Is the sovereign one aware of what goes on?”
12 Take a good look! This is what the wicked are like,
those who always have it so easy and get richer and richer (Psalm 73:2-12).
Asaph makes it clear that he has sinned by doubting God’s goodness and by envying the wicked due to their prosperity. The context of the entire psalm should make it clear to us that Asaph’s perception was far from accurate. Not everyone who was prosperous was wicked, nor were all the righteous poor and oppressed. Neither has it ever been true that the wicked are entirely free from pain and suffering. Asaph saw some who were wicked who were also prosperous, and they seemed to be getting away with it. What made matters worse was that these same folks were arrogant about their sin, boasting about it (verse 8). They seemed to act and speak as though they were God. They were so arrogant that they even spoke against God (verse 9). They dared to think and to say that God must not know or care how they acted (verses 10-11). To sum it all up, as Asaph looked at the wicked, he envied their prosperity, and he began to doubt the fundamental premise that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. He nearly denied one of the fundamentals of the Jewish faith:
Now without faith it is impossible to please him, for the one who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6).
Asaph confesses how close he came to “throwing in the towel” and giving up:
13 I concluded, “Surely in vain I have kept my motives pure
and maintained a pure lifestyle.
14 I suffer all day long,
and am punished every morning” (Psalm 73:13-14).
What good had being righteous done him, Asaph questioned. This assumes, of course, that he truly was righteous – a very dangerous assumption:
We are all like one who is unclean,
all our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in your sight.
We all wither like a leaf;
our sins carry us away like the wind (Isaiah 64:6).
Asaph honestly confessed his sin and the dangers it posed for himself and others:
If I had publicized these thoughts,
I would have betrayed your loyal followers (Psalm 73:15).
21 Yes, my spirit was bitter,
and my insides felt sharp pain.
22 I was ignorant and lacked insight;
I was as senseless as an animal before you (Psalm 73:21-22).
The solution to Asaph’s quandary came when he went to the sanctuary of God and was able to see the wicked from a divine and eternal perspective:
16 When I tried to make sense of this,
it was troubling to me.
17 Then I entered the precincts of God’s temple,
and understood the destiny of the wicked.
18 Surely you put them in slippery places;
you bring them down to ruin.
19 How desolate they become in a mere moment!
Terrifying judgments make their demise complete!
20 They are like a dream after one wakes up.
O sovereign Master, when you awake you will despise them (Psalm 73:16-20).
I remember the one time my brother and I went salmon fishing on a charter boat off the coast of Oregon. The fishing wasn’t that good on that particular day (that’s how it usually is with me and fishing). But there was a fellow on the boat who was pouring over a dirty magazine as he waited for the fish to bite, and they did – at least for him. I said something to my brother about the injustice of this (surely God could have directed just one salmon to my hook), and he wisely responded, “This is all the pleasure this fellow will ever get; we’ve got heaven to look forward to.” Of course he was right. That is what Asaph came to realize also, as he now looked at the prosperity of the wicked from an eternal point of view.
Asaph now looks at the same people, but from a divine perspective. He sees not only their present prosperity, but their eternal doom. Do the wicked prosper? If so, their prosperity is but for a moment. But in spite of their arrogance and apparent security, their future is far from secure. God will someday bring down the wicked, and they will pay for their sins. Their prosperity will suddenly vanish like a dream. When God “awakens,” He will deal with them for their sins.
Asaph now views his own circumstances from a divine perspective:
25 Whom do I have in heaven but you?
I desire no one but you on earth.
26 My flesh and my heart may grow weak,
but God always protects my heart and gives me stability (Psalm 73:25-26).
In their prosperity, the wicked have arrogantly spoken against God (see verses 8-12). Prosperity has not drawn them closer to God. Asaph, on the other hand, is now keenly aware of the blessedness of his intimacy with God. While his life may not be marked by affluence and ease, he knows that God is with him. His “poverty” (at least when compared with the prosperous who are wicked) has drawn him nearer to God. And so his earthly life, with God, is better than that of the wicked. And to top it all off, his earthly relationship with God is only the beginning. He is assured of eternal fellowship with God in His presence.
If Asaph were to have concluded that the wicked “have it best” for now, but that he will “have it best” in eternity, he would have been wrong. Asaph has it best, now and forever. Asaph has now arrived at a very different definition of good:
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Thy works (Psalm 73:28, NASB).
Asaph began with the statement, “Certainly God is good to Israel” (73:1a). To Asaph, as to others, this meant that God would materially bless those whose motives were pure. Asaph now sees things differently. He realizes that his motives were not pure (see 73:15, 21-22). He did not deserve God’s blessings. And furthermore, God’s goodness was not to be measured in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of nearness to God.
How many of us are guilty of thinking in the same mistaken terms? When we think of heaven, we often think of the streets of gold, or that there will be no more tears, no more suffering and sorrow, no more death. While this is true, the greatest blessing of heaven is that this is where God is. Heaven is blessed because there we can enjoy unhindered intimacy with God for all eternity. Our sufferings are meant to loosen our grip on this world and its material goods and to enhance our hunger for heaven:
16 Therefore we do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. 17 For our momentary light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 18 because we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
Many books have been written about the problem of pain and human suffering. This one psalm says it better than many other noble efforts to tackle the issue of human suffering. It is a distillation of biblical truth. It corrects some very popular misconceptions about Christians and suffering (and prosperity). It does so in just a few words. What a marvelous treasure chest of truth is to be found in the Book of Psalms. No wonder the Psalms played a significant role in the New Testament churches:
18 And do not get drunk with wine, which is debauchery, but be filled by the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord (Ephesians 5:18-19).
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God (Colossians 3:16).
If I sense any areas of deficiency in my own Christian life, one of these is in the area of worship. The Psalms are a gold mine of material for worship. They provide not only the content but also the format for praise and worship – personal and corporate. The Psalms enable me to praise God in any circumstance. The Psalms display an honesty, openness, and transparency in worship which is often lacking in mine. Perhaps most importantly for me, the Psalms help me to experience more than a cerebral Christianity – a kind of intellectualized faith. The Psalms engage my heart and my emotions, as well as my mind.
The Psalms are also instructive as to my public participation in the corporate worship of the church. In our church, we have an open meeting, where the men publicly lead in worship and where we observe the Lord’s Supper weekly. If my participation in this meeting is guided by the Psalms, then it is my experiences and encounter with God during the week that should provide the raw materials for my participation on Sunday. It is not quite as important where my participation starts as where it ends. Many of the Psalms were born in humbling situations, such as David’s feigning madness before Abimelech (Psalm 34:1). David’s psalm ended, however, focusing on the majesty of God’s compassion and salvation. Several men in our church have come close to death, and some have passed on to be with our Lord. Their words of worship have prompted us to draw near to God and to praise God with them. Psalms are not about us, but about God. They start with our experience, but they focus on God, and they are an expression of worship.
The Psalms remind us that we should come prepared for worship. The Psalms are not spontaneous expressions of worship, but carefully thought out and beautifully structured praises and petitions. The Psalms should caution us about being sloppy in our worship and about coming to church unprepared to lead others in worship. While some churches have their worship leaders, it would seem to me that every man who leads in worship is to carry out his task as a worship leader, to call people’s attention to God, and to challenge and inspire them to worship Him.
May God use the Psalms to enrich our lives and our worship, and may He grant us new psalms of worship as we continue to worship God through poetry and song. I close with a psalm written by the Fourth grade Sunday School class in our church in response to their study of the Psalms:
I’ve been taught and I believe
Jesus is the One for me
Who’s the One we’re fighting for?
King of Kings and Lord of Lords
Who’s the One who gives us grace?
Jesus Christ, the One who saves.
One day He will come again
Take His children home with Him
Sound off
One-two
Three-four.
192 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on April 8, 2001.
193 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
194 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), Six volumes in one, vol. 3, pp. 83-84.
195 As quoted by John H. Hayes, Understanding the Psalms (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1976), p. 5.
196 A. A. Anderson, The Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1972), p. x, 2, 75-76.
197 Ibid., p. 75.
198 Ibid., p. 48.
199 The following examples of Hebrew parallelism are from Ronald Barclay Allen, Praise! A Matter of Life and Breath (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980), pp. 23-24. See also Derek Kidner, Psalms (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973), I, pp. 2-4; A. A. Anderson, The Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1972), I, pp. 40-42; R.K. Harrison, “Hebrew Poetry,” The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975), III, pp. 76-87.
200 As quoted by Allen, p. 23, from Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says: An Anthology, 3 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), vol. 2, p. 980.
201 Ronald Barclay Allen, Praise! A Matter of Life and Breath (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980), p. 97.
202 Ibid., p. x.
203 As quoted by Ronald Barclay Allen, Praise! A Matter of Life and Breath (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980), p. 24.
204 For a more thorough exposition of Psalm 73, see
/docs/ot/books/psa/deffin/psa-06.htm.
205 Psalms 50, 73-83.
The Messianic Psalms: The Savior’s Script 206
Years ago, we were observing the Lord’s Supper when the communion tray was accidentally dropped. Cups filled with grape juice were scattered, with their contents soaking into the carpet. It was a most awkward time for the one who was holding the tray at that moment. Marvin Ball was in the audience at the time, and I shall never forget the words he spoke in response to this accident. They went something like this:
What we have just seen was an accident. The grape juice, representing the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, was spilled. Sometimes I hear people refer to the shedding of our Lord’s blood in the same way. They say His blood was spilled. It was not; it was poured out. A spill is an accident, and the shedding of our Lord’s blood was no accident. It was His purpose to die, so that His shed blood might atone for our sins.
I’ll never forget the impact Marvin’s words made on all of us who witnessed that accident. Our Lord’s death was not an accident. This is Resurrection Sunday, and there will be those who will choose to look upon our Lord’s death as an accident, as though Jesus somehow underestimated the opposition. They think of the crucifixion as the unfortunate result of something that went very wrong with our Lord’s plan to become Israel’s Messiah.
Most Christians know better than this. They understand that those who think of Jesus’ death as an accident are wrong. But in my opinion, their thinking still falls short of the mark. Most Christians seem to think that God the Father caused all the events of our Lord’s life to turn out in such a way that they fulfilled the Scriptures. But in thinking this, they see our Lord as passive in the process of His arrest, trial, and crucifixion. I believe Jesus was an active participant in the divine process of bringing the Old Testament prophecies concerning His passion to fulfillment. When I was teaching about the final week of our Lord’s life in the Gospel of John, I referred to this section as, “Jesus, Lord at Thy death.”207 Jesus was not a “victim” in the sense that He was unable to save Himself from death; rather, Jesus purposefully orchestrated the events leading up to His death in a way that fulfilled prophecy.
It is very important for us to see how much our Lord was in control of the events leading to His death. It is especially apparent in the Gospel of John, where our Lord carefully wages His attacks on the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem. The first of these “attacks” is our Lord’s initial temple cleansing during the Passover season, as recorded in John 2:13-25. During His earthly ministry, Jesus made several other visits to Jerusalem, each of which led to even greater animosity on the part of the Jewish religious leaders. The religious leaders were already determined to kill Jesus208 when He returned to Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem, to raise Lazarus (John 11). After the raising of Lazarus, the peoples’ hopes and expectations that Jesus might be the Messiah were at an all-time high (John 11:45; 12:9-11, 42-43). The Jewish religious leaders were virtually forced to take action against Jesus:
47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called the council together and said, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many miraculous signs. 48 If we allow him to go on in this way, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our sanctuary and our nation.” 49 Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said, “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.” 51 (Now he did not say this on his own, but because he was high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not for the Jewish nation only, but to gather together into one the children of God who are scattered.) 53 So from that day they planned together to kill him (John 11:47-53).209
The Jews were determined to kill Jesus, but they fully intended to do it in their own way and according to their own schedule. Jesus was not bound by their schedule, but by a divine schedule, by a divine script, which had been determined long before Jesus came to this earth. Let me remind you of just a few of the ways Jesus forced the religious leaders to “change their plans” in order to fulfill biblical prophecy.
(1) The Scriptures required that Jesus would die by crucifixion, but the Jewish method of execution was stoning. The Jews charged Jesus with blasphemy on several occasions, including at His trial before the high priest (see Mark 14:64; Luke 5:21; 10:33). The penalty for blasphemy was stoning (Leviticus 24:11-16). The Jews attempted to stone Jesus on several occasions, but they were never successful (see John 8:59; 10:31). The Messiah must be crucified, however:
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”) 14 in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit by faith (Galatians 3:13-14).210
(2) In order to fulfill prophecy, the Messiah must die publicly during Passover, as the Passover Lamb (see, for example, John 1:29; 1 Corinthians 5:7). The Jewish religious leaders had specifically instructed that Jesus not be killed during the feast, and that He be arrested and put to death secretly:
3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people met together in the palace of the high priest, who was named Caiaphas. 4 They planned to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. 5 But they said, “Not during the feast, so that there won’t be a riot among the people” (Matthew 26:3-5, emphasis mine).
Jesus prevented His enemies from arresting Him before Passover by keeping His whereabouts a secret, from the Jews, and even from Judas. Judas was looking for the right time to hand Jesus over to the religious leaders privately (Matthew 26:14-16), but Jesus did not even let Judas know where He would be observing the Passover:
17 Now on the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 18 He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The Teacher says, “My time is near. I will observe the Passover with my disciples at your house.”’” 19 So the disciples did as Jesus had instructed them, and they prepared the Passover (Matthew 26:17-19).
While gathered in the Upper Room for Passover, Jesus indicated to His disciples that He would be betrayed by one of them. When Judas asked if he were the one, Jesus indicated to Judas that he was the traitor:
21 And while they were eating he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.” 22 They became greatly distressed and each one began to say to him, “Surely not I, Lord?” 23 He answered, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. 24 The Son of Man will go as it is written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for him if he had never been born.” 25 Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” Jesus replied, “You have said it yourself” (Matthew 26:21-25).211
This virtually forced Judas to flee from our Lord and His disciples in the Upper Room to the Jewish religious leaders. From that point on, how could he look Jesus in the eye? How could he take the risk that the other disciples would understand what Jesus had said and know he was a traitor? What would Peter and the others have done to him if they knew he had agreed to hand Jesus over to His enemies? (It would not be long before Peter would use his sword on one of those who came to arrest Jesus.) If he was going to hand Jesus over to the Jewish religious leaders, it would have to be now and not later. Judas knew very well that Jesus and His disciples would likely spend the night in the Garden of Gethsemane, as He had done before. Jesus had set the stage for His own arrest, at the place and time of His choosing, so that the Scriptures would be fulfilled.
(3) I do not believe that the Jews wanted to involve the Romans in their plot to kill Jesus, but our Lord forced them to change their plans and to set aside their preferences and prejudices. There were some very strange alliances made by the enemies of our Lord. The scribes and Pharisees did not like the Sadducees, but they found it necessary to cooperate with them. Neither did the Jews wish to cooperate with the Romans in putting Jesus to death. They had hoped for a Messiah that would come and overthrow Rome. But it was necessary that all segments of Judaism take part in the rejection of Messiah, including the Gentiles as well. Because this was the Passover, extra Roman soldiers were present (along with Pilate and Herod) to prevent an uprising. Thus, the Jewish religious leaders could not avoid involving the Romans. In their previous efforts to arrest Jesus, the religious leaders had embarrassed themselves (see John 7:45-53). They did not intend to fail this time. They would use Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus, and they would seek Rome’s permission to put Jesus to death.
(4) Even in His death, the Lord Jesus was in complete control. We will look at this more closely in a moment, but let me remind you that that the Romans normally broke the legs of those they crucified. This was to hasten the death of the one being crucified. While the legs of the two thieves beside our Lord were broken, the legs of Jesus were not broken, because He was already dead:
32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men who had been crucified with Jesus, first the one and then the other. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water flowed out immediately. 35 And the person who saw it has testified (and his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth), so that you also may believe. 36 For these things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled, “Not a bone of his will be broken.” 37 And again another scripture says, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced” (John 19:32-37, emphasis mine).
I have pointed these things out to you to underscore the fact that Jesus was no mere victim, who found Himself overcome by His circumstances. Jesus was in complete control of every aspect of His life and of His death. He was truly, “Lord at His death.” Even the hardened centurion, who stood guard beside our Lord’s cross, had to confess that the death of Jesus was unique:
Now when the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and what took place, they were extremely terrified and said, “Truly this one was God’s Son!” (Matthew 27:54)
This lesson is a part of a series that traces “the unfolding drama of redemption” from creation to the consummation of all things at the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. In our last lesson, we took a very general look at the Book of Psalms. In the providence of God, this is Resurrection Sunday. It therefore seemed appropriate to devote our second and final lesson in the Book of Psalms to the messianic psalms – those psalms which speak of the coming of Israel’s Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this lesson, I want to begin by demonstrating how much our Lord was conscious of prophecy and of His duty to fulfill it. I am attempting to show that the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament (and, in this lesson, the messianic psalms in particular) are viewed as our Lord’s script, of which He was deeply aware, and which He fulfilled in detail. We shall then look at some of the characteristics of the messianic psalms. Then, we will look at Matthew’s account of our Lord’s arrest, trial, and crucifixion to show how our Lord meticulously fulfilled the messianic psalms concerning His death. We will also look at the sermon in Acts 2 to see how Peter interpreted our Lord’s death and resurrection as the fulfillment of two messianic psalms. In all of this, it is my intention to underscore the fact that our Lord’s death was no accident, but it was rather the result of His obedience to God’s plans, purposes, and Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah’s saving act on the cross of Calvary and His victorious resurrection from the dead.
Throughout our Lord’s earthly life and ministry, He made it clear that He was intent upon doing the Father’s will. We see this from the time that our Lord was 12 years old discussing the Scriptures in the temple:
46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard Jesus were astonished at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were overwhelmed. His mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” 49 But he replied, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 Yet his parents did not understand the remark he made to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. But his mother kept all these things in her heart (Luke 2:46-51).
Does anyone doubt that a portion of the things our Lord discussed with the teachers pertained to the coming Messiah?
In His temptation (Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-12), Jesus refused to act independently of the Father. Especially in the Gospel of John, we find our Lord expressing His commitment to do His Father’s will. He refused to speak and to act independently of the Father; He did and spoke only what the Father gave Him to speak and to do:
So Jesus answered them, “I tell you the solemn truth, the Son can do nothing on his own initiative, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise” (John 5:19).
I can do nothing on my own initiative. Just as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the one who sent me” (John 5:30).
Then Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing on my own initiative, but I speak just what the Father taught me” (John 8:28).
49 “For I have not spoken from my own authority, but the Father himself who sent me has commanded me what I should say and what I should speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. Thus the things I say, I say just as the Father has told me” (John 12:49-50).
Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father residing in me performs his miraculous deeds” (John 14:10).
I believe that the Scriptures are very clear fact that Jesus was conscious of the prophecies concerning His death and that He very carefully saw to it that they were fulfilled:
3 So Judas obtained a squad of soldiers and some officers of the chief priests and Pharisees. They came to the orchard with lanterns and torches and weapons. 4 Then Jesus, because he knew everything that was going to happen to him, came and asked them, “Who are you looking for?” 5 They replied, “Jesus the Nazarene.” He told them, “I am he.” (Now Judas, the one who betrayed him, was standing there with them.) (John 18:3-5)
27 He then said to his disciple, “Look, here is your mother!” From that very time the disciple took her into his own home. 28 After this Jesus, realizing that by this time everything was completed, said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty!” 29 A jar full of sour wine was there, so they put a sponge soaked in sour wine on a branch of hyssop and lifted it to his mouth (John 19:27-29).
I must therefore conclude that, while everyone else failed to grasp the fact that most of the messianic prophecies were, in fact, prophecy, Jesus knew them as such and was careful to fulfill them. The messianic prophecies of the Old Testament served as the script, which Jesus performed in obedience to the will of His Father.
Our focus in this lesson is with the messianic psalms. There are far too many messianic prophecies in the psalms for us to consider in this one lesson, so I will limit myself to only those messianic psalms referred to in Matthew’s crucifixion account (Matthew 26:20—27:66) and in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (specifically Acts 2:22-36). But first, let us look at some of the characteristics of the messianic psalms.
(1) Most of the messianic psalms are written by David.212 David’s experiences as Israel’s king, and as one who suffered and was often opposed as king, made him a kind of “kindred spirit” with the coming Messiah. Since the Messiah would be the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant, it was appropriate that David would be the one to prophesy concerning His coming.
(2) Generally speaking, the messianic psalms were not recognized as prophecy at the time they were written, nor until after the resurrection of our Lord. The messianic psalms were not understood as prophecy by their authors, nor by the Old Testament Israelites who read them. In large part, this was because the Jews were not inclined to look for a suffering Savior:
10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who predicted the grace that would come to you searched and investigated carefully. 11 They probed into what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he testified beforehand about the sufferings appointed for Christ and his subsequent glory (1 Peter 1:10-11).
20 Then he instructed his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. 21 From that time on Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 So Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This must not happen to you” (Matthew 16:20-22).
The messianic psalms, like much Old Testament prophecy concerning the Messiah, were not understood as prophecy until after the resurrection of our Lord. Looking back, we know they are messianic psalms because the New Testament writers tell us so.
44 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.” 45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it stands written that the Messiah would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:44-48).
(3) Most of the messianic psalms speak both of David’s experiences and of the Messiah’s experiences at the same time. Psalms 22 and 69 are good examples of this. Neither psalm actually identifies David’s experience, which prompted the psalm. In Psalm 22, David is obviously in deep distress as he cries out to God. He is, at the moment, suffering greatly, but God does not appear to be answering his prayers. It would seem that God has forsaken him (22:1). In spite of this, David knows that God has always come to the aid of His people in their time of distress in answer to their cries. His description of his own physical and mental state, as well as that of his enemies, is exaggerated by the poetic descriptions he employs. Nevertheless, it falls well within the acceptable range of poetic language.
What neither David nor his ancient readers seem to have known is that this psalm goes far beyond the psalmist and his times to speak of the Messiah who will come to the earth centuries later. The descriptions, which were poetic exaggeration when speaking of David, are pure (and often literal) prophecy when applied to our Lord’s suffering on the cross of Calvary.
What takes place in these messianic psalms is something like the description of Satan in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.
3 When the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and anxiety, and from the hard labor which you were made to perform, 4 you will taunt the king of Babylon with these words:
“Look how the oppressor has met his end!
Hostility has ceased!
5 The Lord has broken the club of the wicked,
the scepter of rulers.
6 It furiously struck down nations
with unceasing blows.
It angrily ruled over nations,
oppressing them without restraint.
7 The whole earth rests and is quiet;
they break into song.
8 The evergreens also rejoice over your demise,
as do the cedars of Lebanon, singing,
‘Since you fell asleep,
no woodsman comes up to chop us down!’
9 Sheol below is stirred up about you,
ready to meet you when you arrive.
It rouses the spirits of the dead for you,
all the former leaders of the earth;
it makes all the former kings of the nations
rise from their thrones.
10 All of them respond to you, saying:
‘You’ve also become weak like us!
You’ve become just like us!
11 Your splendor has been brought down to Sheol,
as well as the sound of your stringed instruments.
You lie on a bed of maggots,
with a blanket of worms over you.
12 Look how you have fallen from the sky,
O shining one, son of the dawn!
You’ve been cut down to the ground,
O conqueror of the nations!
13 You said to yourself,
“I will climb up to the sky.
Above the stars of El
I will set up my throne.
I will rule on the mountain of assembly
on the remote slopes of Zaphon.
14 I will climb up to the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High!”
15 But you were brought down to Sheol,
to the remote slopes of the pit.
16 Those who see you stare at you,
they look at you carefully, thinking:
“Is this the man who shook the earth,
the one who made kingdoms tremble?
17 Is this the one who made the world like a desert,
who ruined its cities,
and refused to free his prisoners so they could return home?”’
18 As for all the kings of the nations,
all of them lie down in splendor,
each in his own tomb.
19 But you have been thrown out of your grave
like a shoot that is thrown away.
You lie among the slain,
among those who have been slashed by the sword,
among those headed for the stones of the pit,
as if you were a mangled corpse.
20 You will not be buried with them,
because you destroyed your land
and killed your people.
The offspring of the wicked
will never be mentioned again.
21 Prepare to execute his sons
for what their ancestors have done.
They must not rise up and take possession of the earth,
or fill the surface of the world with cities” (Isaiah 14:3-21, emphasis mine).
12 “Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“‘You were the signet of perfection,
full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering,
the ruby, topaz, and diamond,
the beryl, onyx, and jasper,
the sapphire, turquoise, and emerald;
and your settings and engravings were made of gold.
On the day you were created they were prepared.
14 I placed you as an anointed cherub which guards;
you were on the holy mountain of God;
you walked among the stones of fire.
15 You were blameless in your conduct from the day you were created,
until iniquity was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence,
and you sinned;
so I threw you down like a profane thing from the mountain of God,
and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom on account of your splendor.
I threw you down to the ground;
I placed you before kings, that they might see you.
18 By the multitude of your iniquities,
in the unrighteousness of your trade,
you profaned your sanctuaries.
So I brought fire from within you; it consumed you,
and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the eyes of all who saw you.
19 All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you;
you have become terrified and will be no more forever’” (Ezekiel 28:12-19, emphasis mine).
In both of these texts, God is speaking against human, earthly kings, the “king of Babylon” (Isaiah 14:4) and the “king of Tyre” (Ezekiel 28:12). Soon, the description of these kings shifts to a description of Satan. These men had taken on Satan-like qualities. Behind these cruel and arrogant kings is Satan, whose cruelty and arrogance has corrupted the human race. The focus shifts within each of these texts so that at one moment the human king is in view, and the next moment Satan is in focus.
I believe that this is similar to what happens in the messianic psalms. The psalmist describes his suffering in bold and dramatic poetic language, and then suddenly the words seem to go beyond anything an earthly king can experience. In these moments, the psalm is messianic, and yet in a way that was not immediately apparent to the reader. This was especially true, since no Old Testament reader was inclined to think of a Messiah who was a Suffering Savior.
(4) The messianic psalms were understood as such by Jesus, and they became His script. As we shall see, Jesus understood the messianic psalms as such, and He responded accordingly. He grasped what others failed to see. These psalms governed and guided the words and actions of our Lord. Let us look to Matthew’s account of the arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of our Lord to see how the messianic psalms played a role in our Lord’s final hours.
When we come to the account of our Lord’s last hours in Matthew’s Gospel, we find that our Lord is very conscious of the fact that the Scriptures are being fulfilled in the events of His death. Three times attention is drawn to the fulfillment of the Scriptures in Matthew 26:
“The Son of Man will go as it is written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for him if he had never been born” (Matthew 26:24, emphasis mine).
“How then would the scriptures that say it must happen this way be fulfilled?” (Matthew 26:54)
“But this has happened so that the scriptures of the prophets would be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled (Matthew 26:56, emphasis mine).
Our Lord was more than aware that the time of His death had come; after all, this was what He had been actively bringing about for the three years of His public ministry. When Jesus was at the home of Simon the leper in Bethany, Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with an expensive perfume. This was the “last straw” for Judas, who soon thereafter made his bargain with the Jewish religious leaders (Matthew 26:14-16). But what interests me here is our Lord’s response to the disciples’ protests because of the extravagance of this act:
10 When Jesus learned of this, he said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a good service for me. 11 For you will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. 12 When she poured this oil on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial” (Matthew 26:10-12, emphasis mine).
It should come as no surprise to us, but let me underscore this fact anyway: Jesus knew that the time of His death had come. This fact is further emphasized by our Lord’s words to His disciples as they were eating the “last supper”:
27 And after taking the cup and giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, from now on I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:27-29, emphasis mine).
Jesus had just told His disciples that one of them was going to betray Him, and when Judas pressed Jesus to be more specific, Jesus let him know that he was the traitor (26:20-25). He went on to inform them that they would all forsake Him, fulfilling the messianic prophecy of Zechariah 13:7. He further spoke of His resurrection (26:32) and of Peter’s denial (26:34).
After Jesus had been arrested, they brought Him before the high priest, who asked Jesus under oath to declare whether or not He was the Christ, the Son of God. When Jesus answered this question, He employed the words of a messianic psalm:
63 But Jesus was silent. The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” 64 Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:63-64, emphasis mine).
Our Lord’s response, under oath, combines the words of Psalm 110:1 with those of Daniel 7:13.
Consider for a moment the words of this messianic psalm:
1 Here is the Lord’s oracle to my master:
“Sit down at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool!”
2 The Lord extends your dominion from Zion.
Rule in the midst of your enemies!
3 Your people willingly follow you when you go into battle.
On the holy hills at sunrise the dew of your youth belongs to you.
4 The Lord makes this promise on oath and will not revoke it:
“You are an eternal priest after the pattern of Melchizedek.”
5 O sovereign Lord, at your right hand
he strikes down kings in the day he unleashes his anger.
6 He executes judgment against the nations;
he fills the valleys with corpses;
he shatters their heads over the vast battlefield.
7 From the stream along the road he drinks;
then he lifts up his head (Psalm 110:1-7).
Jesus is not only telling the high priest that He is the Messiah, but that He will judge His enemies when He returns to the earth to possess His throne. Here was a psalm that the Jews might well have believed to be messianic, but they never expected it to be used as Jesus did.
Matthew’s account of our Lord’s death is filled with references to prophecy. Judas’ remorse and suicide is shown to be a fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy (Matthew 27:3-5; Zechariah 11:12-13). While not indicated as the fulfillment of prophecy, our Lord’s silence before Pilate certainly fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53:7.
When they crucified Jesus, they inadvertently fulfilled yet another messianic psalm:
33 They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “Place of the Skull”) 34 and offered Jesus wine mixed with gall to drink. But after tasting it, he would not drink it. 35 When they had crucified him, they divided his clothes by throwing dice. 36 Then they sat down and kept guard over him there (Matthew 27:33-36, emphasis mine).
Compare Matthew’s account with these messianic psalms:
They put a poisonous herb into my food,
and to quench my thirst they give me vinegar to drink (Psalm 69:21).
They are dividing up my clothes among themselves;
they are rolling dice for my garments (Psalm 22:18).
As the crowds mocked our Lord on the cross, they fulfilled another prophecy:
39 Those who passed by defamed him, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “You who can destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are God’s Son, come down from the cross!” 41 In the same way even the chief priests—together with the experts in the law and elders—were mocking him: 42 “He saved others, but he cannot save himself! He is the king of Israel! If he comes down now from the cross, we will believe in him! 43 He trusts in God—let God, if he wants to, deliver him now, because he said, ‘I am God’s Son’!” (Matthew 27:39-43)
7 All who see me taunt me;
they mock me and shake their heads.
8 They say,
“Commit yourself to the Lord!
Let the Lord rescue him!
Let the Lord deliver him, for he delights in him” (Psalm 22:7-8).
Perhaps the most striking fulfillment of a messianic psalm is found in the cry our Lord uttered from the cross:
At about three o’clock Jesus shouted with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, emphasis mine).
How strange it is to realize that no one even recognized what Jesus was saying. They did not grasp the fact that Jesus had just cited the Hebrew text of the first line of Psalm 22:1. In so doing, Jesus was identifying Himself with the psalmist and, more importantly, with the Messiah of whom this messianic psalm spoke. He was thereby indicating that He was the fulfillment of this psalm, that He was the promised Messiah.
The messianic psalms, pertaining to the suffering of our Lord, have much to teach us. If the psalmist’s suffering was a prototype of the Messiah’s suffering, that gave meaning and purpose to the psalmist’s suffering. For saints today, just the opposite is true. It is our Lord’s suffering and agony that is a prototype of the suffering we are called and privileged to endure for Christ’s sake:
18 Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the perverse. 19 For this finds God’s favor, if because of conscience toward God someone endures hardships in suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if you sin and are mistreated and endure it? But if you do good and suffer and so endure, this finds favor with God. 21 For to this you were called, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was maligned, he did not answer back; when he suffered, he threatened no retaliation, but committed himself to God who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we may leave sin behind and live for righteousness. By his wounds you were healed. 25 For you were going astray like sheep but now you have turned back to the shepherd and guardian of your souls (1 Peter 2:18-25, emphasis mine).
The apostles picked up on this, as revealed by their attitudes toward suffering as saints, and by their teaching on this subject:
8 More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things—indeed, I regard them as dung!—that I might gain Christ, 9 and be found in him, not because of having my own righteousness derived from the law, but because of having the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness—a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness. 10 My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death (Philippians 3:8-10).
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you and I fill up—for the sake of his body, the church—what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (Colossians 1:24).
12 Dear friends, do not be astonished that a trial by fire is occurring among you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice in the degree that you have shared in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice and be glad. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory, who is the Spirit of God, rests on you (1 Peter 4:12-14).
The good news is that the messianic psalms do not leave us with a dead Messiah, but with a Messiah who triumphs over death and the grave. It was only after the resurrection of our Lord that the disciples grasped the significance of the messianic psalms:
44 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.” 45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it stands written that the Messiah would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:44-48, emphasis mine).
But once this truth was grasped, the messianic psalms are used as a vital part of the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We see this in Peter’s first sermon after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, as recorded in Acts 2:22-36:
22 “Israelite men, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man clearly attested to you by God with powerful deeds, wonders, and miraculous signs that God performed through him among you, just as you yourselves know— 23 this man, who was handed over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you executed by nailing him to a cross at the hands of Gentiles. 24 But God raised him up, having released him from the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held in its power. 25 For David says about him,
‘I saw the Lord always in front of me,
for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken.
26 Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced;
my body also will live in hope,
27 because you will not leave my soul in Hades,
nor permit your Holy One to experience decay.
28 You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will make me full of joy with your presence.’
29 “Brothers, I can speak confidently to you about our forefather David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 So then, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, 31 David by foreseeing this spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his body experience decay. 32 This Jesus God raised up, and we are all witnesses of it. 33 So then, exalted to the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, he has poured out what you both see and hear. 34 For David did not ascend into heaven, but he himself says,
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand
35 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’
36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know beyond a doubt that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:22-36, emphasis by underscoring mine).
Peter now understands and proclaims that the messianic psalms not only foretold the suffering and death of our Lord, but that they also required His resurrection from the dead. God had promised David an “everlasting kingdom” (2 Samuel 7:13). This can only take place if Israel’s king is free from the bondage of death. No merely human king could ever have an eternal kingdom. Thus, Peter proclaimed to his audience that it was necessary for Messiah to be raised from the dead, never to die again. Since David’s tomb was nearby, and so also the tombs of Israel’s other kings, it must be fulfilled by someone other than David. It must be fulfilled by Israel’s Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Not only did men reject Jesus, as the Scriptures foretold, but God raised Him from the dead, as the messianic psalms foretold. Peter’s sermon at Pentecost began with a reference to the prophecy of Joel, which explained the significance of the tongues speaking the crowds heard. But from this point on, Peter’s proof texts are found in the psalms. He turns first to Psalm 16:8-11 to show that the resurrection of Israel’s Messiah was prophesied by David. It was not impossible for a man to be raised from the dead – Jesus had demonstrated this by the raising of Lazarus. It was impossible for Jesus not to be raised from the dead. He was the Son of God, and God would not abandon His Son; He would not allow His flesh to undergo decay in a grave. He made known to Him the way of life.
The point of Peter’s sermon has not yet been declared; the bottom line is yet to come. And come it will, using the words of another messianic psalm, Psalm 110, verse 1, the same psalm to which our Lord earlier alluded when He stood before the high priest:
32 This Jesus God raised up, and we are all witnesses of it. 33 So then, exalted to the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father, he has poured out what you both see and hear. 34 For David did not ascend into heaven, but he himself says,
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand
35 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’
36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know beyond a doubt that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:32-36, emphasis mine).
Let me paraphrase Peter’s message for you:
“I’ve got some good news for you, and I’ve got some bad news. The good news is that Jesus has been raised from the dead. The bad news is that He has been raised from the dead so that He can return to this earth and deal with His enemies. Now just who might those enemies be? Well, it was you who cried out for His death. It was you who said, ‘Let His blood be upon us, and upon our children.’ It is you whom He is soon to deal with as His enemies. The solution is for you to repent of your sin, and to acknowledge Jesus Christ to be God’s Messiah, and your Savior. Admit that He did not deserve to die, but that you do. Trust in His death, in your place, for the forgiveness of your sins. In this way, you will receive the promised blessings of God through His Messiah.”
There will be many sermons preached today about the resurrection. Some will be so bold as to proclaim that Jesus was literally and bodily raised from the dead. Many will promise that because of the resurrection of Jesus, we can have the assurance of eternal life. For some, of course, this is true, but Peter’s sermon at Pentecost should underscore the fact that, for others, it holds only the assurance of future judgment. I will come back to this in just a moment.
The implications of the resurrection of Christ are staggering; its importance for the Christian can hardly be overestimated. Let me summarize a few of the consequences of the resurrection of our Lord.
First of all, we should understand that Jesus staked everything He said on His ability to rise from the dead:
38 Then some of the experts in the law along with some Pharisees answered him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:38-40).
Even if His disciples had forgotten this, our Lord’s enemies had not. They knew that the absence of our Lord’s body from the tomb would give credit to His claims to be the Messiah:
62 The next day (which is after the day of preparation) the chief priests and the Pharisees assembled before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember that while that deceiver was still alive he said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give orders to secure the tomb until the third day. Otherwise his disciples may come and steal his body and say to the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “Take a guard of soldiers. Go and make it as secure as you can.” 66 So they went with the soldiers of the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone (Matthew 27:62-66).
Second, the resurrection is God’s seal of approval on our Lord’s ministry, including His atoning death at Calvary.
[Christ Jesus] who was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 1:4).
Third, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the completion of His saving work (Romans 6). By faith in Christ, we die to the penalty for our sins. In Christ, we are raised to newness of life.
Fourth, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the means and the assurance of living a life that is pleasing to God. When Paul agonized over the fact that sin was more powerful than his flesh, he cried,
“Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24)
The solution to his struggle with sin (and ours) is found in Romans 8:
“Moreover if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies alive through his Spirit who lives in you” (Romans 8:11).
Sixth, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead means that our believing friends and loved ones who have already died are waiting for us, on the other side. During the past several years, death has taken some of our congregation from us. The truth of our Lord’s resurrection is also our assurance that we will be reunited with our believing loved ones again:
13 Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. 15 For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord always. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).
Let me add just a few summary thoughts for you to consider:
The magnitude of Messiah’s suffering is the measure of the magnitude of our sins.
The magnitude of Messiah’s suffering is the measure of Christ’s obedience to the will of the Father.
The magnitude of Messiah’s suffering is the measure of God’s grace and love toward us in the cross of Christ.
These truths are a part of the blessed hope of the Christian, but I dare not allow you to leave this lesson without warning you that the “blessed hope” of eternal life in God’s presence is not the destiny of all. Peter’s sermon puts the matter as plainly and as strongly as possible. The work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary does not automatically save every human being.
I must be faithful to the Word of God and tell you that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most frightening truth of all for the person who has never come to a personal saving faith in Jesus Christ. The resurrection message that Peter preached at Pentecost was the most terrifying word his audience could have heard. Jesus had been raised from the dead, something that the Scriptures required. Jesus, now raised from the dead, is waiting on His Father’s instruction to return to the earth to punish His foes. Who else would His foes be except those who called for His death on the cross of Calvary?
Don’t feel at ease because you did not live in Jesus’ day and because you were not there to cry, “Crucify Him!” “Crucify Him!” You and I were as good as there, and we are as guilty for His death as they were. His death, burial, and resurrection can mean the forgiveness of your sins, and the assurance of eternal life. It can also mean that Jesus Christ has become the victor over sin and death, and that He will soon come to defeat and to destroy His foes. Now is God’s graciously provided window of opportunity for you to acknowledge your sin (particularly your sin of rejecting Jesus as the Son of God) and to trust in the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.
Whether you believe it or not, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a biblical necessity – the messianic psalms required it. Whether you believe it or not, Jesus was raised from the dead, and there were literally hundreds who witnessed this (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-11).
3 For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:3-6).
Whether you believe it or not, Jesus is coming again, either as your blessed Savior and Lord, or as your Judge. The truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not incidental to the gospel; it is at the heart of the gospel. To be saved, you must believe that Jesus Christ was the sinless Son of God, who died in the sinner’s place at Calvary, and who arose from the grave, triumphant over sin and death. Is the resurrection of Jesus Christ your blessed hope, or is it your greatest dread? You can settle this question once and for all, as you confess your sins and trust in Jesus Christ for the gift of eternal life.
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we preach), 9 because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and thus has righteousness and with the mouth one confesses and thus has salvation. 11 For the scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, who richly blesses all who call on him. 13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:8-13).
206 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on April 15, 2001.
207 http://bible.org/series/you-might-believe-study-gospel-john
208 The disciples feared that they would die when they returned to Jerusalem – see John 11:16.
209 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
210 It should be noted that the events described in Psalms 22 and 69 would not have been fulfilled by a stoning, but only by crucifixion.
211 The parallel account in Luke 22:7-13 makes it clear that Jesus sent Peter and John to make these preparations for their Passover celebration.
212 I am looking at Psalms 2, 16, 22, 40, 41, 68, 69, 109, 110, and 118 as messianic psalms. Psalms 2 and 118 are not designated as Davidic psalms in the superscription or introduction. In Acts 4:25, Peter indicates that Psalm 2 is written by David. This leaves only Psalm 118 as a messianic psalm not designated as having been penned by David.
Words of Wisdom238
Nearly 30 years ago, I had just completed my first year of seminary. My family and I were returning to Washington State for the summer. We had no idea what kind of employment I might find. As we drove into the driveway of my parents’ home, they received a call from the superintendent of schools. A mature and seasoned teacher had literally been driven to distraction by her fourth grade class. They needed someone to finish out the year, and hopefully, to bring the class under control. I was offered the job and gladly took it.
A month later when the school year ended, the fourth grade class was once again well behaved. The principal called me into his office and asked me about my plans for employment for the rest of the summer. He told me that the prison in my hometown was in need of a teacher and promised to give me a good recommendation. And so it was that I became a teacher in a state prison, known by some as the “Shelton Hilton.” There was a fully accredited high school program in that prison, and the principal of that school was my principal when I was in high school. Many of the teachers there were my teachers when I was a student. It was a most interesting and enlightening experience.
I taught the inmates psychology and world history. One of my students was honest enough to inform me that he planned to use what he learned when he was released from prison. What he told me next came as a surprise. He hinted that when he got out of prison, he would return to a life a crime, but he planned to be much smarter this time around. While in that prison, he sought out the gurus of crime and learned all of the tricks of their trade. Then, when he was released, he planned to become a consultant of crime. He would charge a fee for engineering specific criminal acts. He would not participate in the crime directly, but only charge a commission for successful crimes. If his clients were caught, that was their problem; his involvement would be almost impossible to prove.
I think I learned more from teaching that summer than my students did. For one thing, I experienced the difference between “knowledge” and “wisdom.” Knowledge of psychology and world history, when applied with wisdom, could prove profitable. But that same knowledge could be used in a way that would be both criminal and cruel. I wonder how many people in our educational institutions are being educated to do great harm, to themselves and to others.
The Book of Proverbs is all about wisdom:
1 The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
2 To learn wisdom and moral instruction,
and to discern wise counsel.
3 To receive moral instruction in skillful living,
in righteousness, justice, and equity.
4 To impart shrewdness to the morally naive,
and a discerning plan to the young person.
5 (Let the wise also hear and gain instruction,
and let the discerning acquire guidance!)
6 To discern the meaning of a proverb and a parable,
the sayings of the wise and their riddles.
7 Fearing the Lord is the beginning of moral knowledge;
but fools despise wisdom and instruction (Proverbs 1:1-7).239
Solomon was exceedingly wise, and he wrote most of the proverbs we find in the Book of Proverbs, with the exception of chapters 30 and 31. Remember that Solomon penned many more proverbs than this:
30 Solomon was wiser than all the men of the east and all the sages of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than any man, including Ethan the Ezrahite or Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol. He was famous in all the neighboring nations. 32 He composed three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs (1 Kings 4:30-32).
Proverbs are highly compressed, carefully chosen words of wisdom. In the Bible, proverbs are found elsewhere than just in the Book of Proverbs. I cannot help but smile when I read the proverb Israel’s King Ahab cites to Ben Hadad, king of Syria. Ben Hadad had assembled his army and besieged the city of Samaria. He sent word to Ahab, conveying his demands, threatening to destroy Samaria if Ahab did not comply. Ahab sent Ben Hadad this response:
“Tell him the one who puts on his battle gear should not boast like one who is taking it off” (1 Kings 20:11).
We would have said, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”
Proverbs may very well exist in every culture. We have many proverbs in our culture. Here are just a few:
“First things first.”
“A stitch in time saves nine.”
“Don’t cry over spilled milk.”
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
“Hind sight is better than foresight.”
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
Proverbs are words that are skillfully crafted to stick in our minds and to engage us in thought:
Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout,
so is a beautiful woman who rejects discretion (Proverbs 11:22).
Like a door that turns on its hinges,
so a sluggard turns on his bed (Proverbs 26:14).
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish;
he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth (Proverbs 26:15).
29 There are three things that are magnificent in their step,
four things that move about magnificently:
30 a lion, mightiest of the beasts,
who does not retreat from anything;
31 a strutting rooster, a male goat,
and a king with his army around him (Proverbs 30:29-31).
Proverbs are not necessarily promises, but rather generalizations of what is commonly true. Generally speaking, those who work hard and are self-disciplined prosper, while those who are lazy and gluttonous become poor:
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
observe its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
overseer, or ruler,
8 yet it prepares its food in the summer;
it gathers at the harvest what it will eat.
9 How long, you sluggard, will you lie there?
When will you rise from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to relax,
11 and your poverty will come like a robber,
and your need like an armed man (Proverbs 6:6-11; see also 13:18;
14:23; 20:13; 21:7, 17, 25; 23:21; 28:19).
The one who is lazy becomes poor,
but the one works diligently becomes wealthy (Proverbs 10:4).
There are other reasons for poverty, however, that are beyond the power of the poor to prevent:
There is abundant food in the field of the poor,
but it is swept away by injustice (Proverbs 13:23).
Because hard work is no guarantee of prosperity, we find many proverbs that promote generosity and compassion toward the poor:
The one who despises his neighbor sins,
but whoever is kind to the needy is blessed (Proverbs 14:21).
Therefore we find a number of proverbs that indicate poverty may be superior to prosperity in some circumstances:
Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity
than one who is perverse in his speech and is a fool (Proverbs 19:1).
What is desirable for a person is to show loyal love;
and a poor person is better than a liar (Proverbs 19:22).
A poor person who walks in his integrity is better
than one who is perverse in his ways even though he is rich (Proverbs 28:6).
All of this is to say that we must be careful not to read any particular proverb as though it comes with an unconditional guarantee of being fulfilled. Proverbs, like all Scripture, must be interpreted in the light of other Scriptures.
Many of the proverbs appear to be the words of a father, addressed to his son. This seems to be the case in a number of instances, especially when the “son” is also urged to heed the instruction of his mother:
My child, guard the commands of your father
and do not forsake the instruction of your mother (Proverbs 6:20; see also 23:22, 25; 31:1).
Most scholars would seem to agree, however, that the term “my son” is sometimes used more generally in Proverbs. The one who says, “my son” in Proverbs seems to include the wise men of the community – those older and wiser men in the community240 who have a hand in the instruction of the young and immature.
In the Old Testament, the expression, “my father,” is found a number of times in situations where the one who was called “father” was not the biological father of the speaker. In 1 Samuel 24:11, David spoke to Saul as his “father.” In 2 Kings 2, we read the account of Elijah’s exodus into heaven. As Elijah disappears into the heavens, Elisha cries out, “My father, my father! The chariot and horsemen of Israel!” (2 Kings 2:12). When Elisha is dying, the king of Israel uses the same words, “my father” (2 Kings 13:14). Naaman’s servants speak to their master, calling him “father” (2 Kings 5:13). The king of Israel also speaks to Elisha as his “father” (2 Kings 6:21). I think our Lord’s own words suggest a similar understanding of the “father-son” language:
6 “They [the scribes and Pharisees] love the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and elaborate greetings in the marketplaces, and to have people call them ‘Rabbi.’ 8 But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers. 9 And call no one your ‘father’ on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one teacher, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:6-12, emphasis mine).
Proverbs is certainly a book for parents to use in the education of their children. It is also instructive to parents regarding their responsibilities as parents. Many Christian parents would do well to heed the instructions of Proverbs regarding child-training and discipline, especially in a culture that tends to regard any spanking or discipline as child abuse. But parents should also heed the lesson that wise people in the Christian community have an important role to play in the education of their children.
Years ago when I was a student in seminary, a professor handed out a list of the abilities and skills that were required of a pastor. When I looked at that list I remarked to the professor, “Sir, in effect you have given us a list of all the spiritual gifts mentioned in the Bible. Do you think that any one of us possesses all of these gifts?” Some pastors act as if they possess all of the spiritual gifts, but fortunately most know better. God has distributed spiritual gifts among the members of the church so that we are interdependent as believers:
12 For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body – though many – are one body, so too is Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Whether we are Jews or Greeks or slaves or free we were all made to drink of the one Spirit. 14 For in fact the body is not a single member, but many. 15 If the foot says, “Since I am not a hand, I am not part of the body,” it does not lose its membership in the body because of that. 16 And if the ear says, “Since I am not an eye, I am not part of the body,” it does not lose its membership in the body because of that. 17 If the whole body were an eye, what part would do the hearing? If the whole were an ear, what part would do the smelling? 18 But as a matter of fact, God has placed each of the members in the body just as he decided. 19 If they were all the same member, where would the body be? 20 So now there are many members, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” nor in turn can the head say to the foot, “I do not need you.” 22 On the contrary, those members that seem to be weaker are essential, 23 and those members we consider less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our unpresentable members are clothed with dignity, 24 but our presentable members do not need this. Instead, God has blended together the body, giving greater honor to the lesser member, 25 so that there may be no division in the body, but the members may have mutual concern for one another. 26 If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it. 27 Now you are Christ’s body, and each of you is a member of it (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
Parents have a primary role in the raising of their children, but God has given gifts to the whole body of Christ so that we will be interdependent on one another. As parents, we desperately need the help of other Christians in raising our children: youth workers, Sunday school teachers, AWANA, Vacation Bible School, Christian camps, Boy Scouts, and so on. I cannot tell you how much other believers have contributed to the raising of our children.
As we come to the Book of Proverbs, we should keep in mind that the method employed in the Book of Proverbs is very similar to the teaching method employed by our Lord.
Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the crowds; he did not speak to them without a parable (Matthew 13:34).
To discern the meaning of a proverb and a parable,
the sayings of the wise and their riddles (Proverbs 1:6, emphasis mine).
The Greek translation of the word “proverb” above is a transliteration of the Greek word for parable. Several times the Septuagint actually chooses to render the Hebrew word for “proverb” with the Greek word for “parable.” The proverbs are like parables in that they provoke people to thought, and they create vivid mental images of truth.
At the very outset of the Book of Proverbs, the reader is challenged to choose one of two “ways.” While wisdom has many different dimensions, in the final analysis, wisdom is a spiritual matter. It is a “way” that one chooses, leading to life.
It begins with the fear of the Lord (1:7), and it ends with eternal life:
But the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light,
growing brighter and brighter until full day (Proverbs 4:18).
She is like a tree of life to those who obtain her;
and everyone who grasps hold of her will be blessed (Proverbs 3:18).
The only other “way” is the way of folly that leads to death:
True righteousness leads to life,
but the one who pursues evil pursues it to his own death (Proverbs 11:19).
Proverbs 1 is both a warning and an exhortation. The first seven verses introduce the entire Book of Proverbs, describing the benefits of wisdom, which Proverbs offers to all who will receive it. The way of wisdom is a choice that must be made, and the only alternative is the way of folly that leads to death. The starting point for the way of wisdom is the “fear of the Lord,” but fools despise wisdom and instruction (1:7). The wise father instructs his son that the way of folly is promoted by false friends:241
8 Listen, my child, to the instruction from your father,
and do not forsake the teaching from your mother.
9 For they will be like an elegant garland on your head,
and like pendants around your neck.
10 My child, if sinners try to entice you,
do not consent!
11 If they say, “Come with us!
We will lie in wait to shed blood;
we will ambush an innocent person capriciously.
12 We will swallow them alive like Sheol,
those full of vigor like those going down to the Pit.
13 We will seize all kinds of precious wealth;
we will fill our houses with plunder.
14 Join with us!
We will all share equally in what we steal.”
15 My child, do not go down their way,
withhold yourself from their path;
16 for they are eager to inflict harm,
and they hasten to shed blood.
17 Surely it is futile to spread a net
in view of any bird;
18 but these men lie in wait for their own blood,
they ambush their own lives!
19 Such are the ways of all who gain profit unjustly;
it takes away the life of those who obtain it (Proverbs 1:8-19).
The words of chapter 1 of Proverbs are painfully true to life. They describe all too well the choices which put one on the wrong path. The choice to take the wrong path is made during one’s youth. A young man must decide whether to trust his parents and follow their instruction and discipline or to follow the foolish counsel of foolish and evil friends. Choosing one’s peers is often synonymous with choosing one’s path. Notice the enticing and seductive offer of these lethal companions.
First, they promise group acceptance and identity. Nothing seems as important to a young person as being accepted by a group of their peers. Those who would lead this young man astray offer him what he desperately wants – acceptance and a sense of identity.
Second, they promise material gain, obtained not by hard work but by violence and crime. I remember all too well a young man that I visited for a number of weeks while he was incarcerated in the Dallas County Jail. He told me that he knew he could get a job when he was released from jail, but that crime would make him a lot more money in a lot less time, and with very little effort! These would-be companions offer “the good life” through crime and violence.
Third, they promise excitement and the thrill that comes from having a sense of power. Now, as then, young people are bored with the routines of life and want more excitement. These false friends offer excitement in abundance, but it is the excitement and sense of power that comes from being associated with those who are wicked, and by committing crimes of violence against those who are vulnerable and helpless.
There are several problems with the offer these false friends make. The “gain” they promise is not honest gain, but rather it is profiting at the expense of others. It is “gain” achieved through crime. Further, all this “gain” is really loss. This kind of gain happens at the expense of the victim and the villain. In the final analysis, those who follow the path of folly face the consequence of death and destruction. Crime might possibly pay in this life, but it does not pay in eternity. Let no one be deceived – the wages of sin is death.
When I taught the Book of Proverbs 20 years ago or so, I found parts of the description of the false friends almost too much to believe. Who would ever seek to lure one to join their group by promising violence and the thrill of causing others pain? The answer is now all too clear, just a few years later – gangs. Is Proverbs 1:8-19 not describing gang life today? The path of folly leads to death, and it begins by rejecting the wisdom of parents for the seductive temptation of false friends.
Those who choose the way of folly do so because they have rejected the offer of wisdom:
20 Wisdom calls out in the street,
she shouts loudly in the plazas;
21 at the head of the noisy streets she calls,
in the entrances of the gates in the city she utters her words:
22 “How long will you simpletons love naivet?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
23 If only you will respond to my rebuke,
then I will pour out my thoughts to you
and I will make my words known to you.
24 However, because I called but you refused to listen,
because I stretched out my hand but no one paid attention,
25 because you neglected all my advice,
and did not comply with my rebuke,
26 so I myself will laugh when disaster strikes you,
I will mock when what you dread comes,
27 when what you dread comes like a whirlwind,
and disaster strikes you like a devastating storm,
when distressing trouble comes on you.
28 Then they will call to me, but I will not answer;
they will diligently seek me, but they will not find me.
29 Because they hated moral knowledge,
and did not choose to fear the Lord,
30 they did not comply with my advice,
they spurned all my rebuke.
31 Therefore they will eat from the fruit of their way,
and they will be stuffed full of their own counsel.
32 For the waywardness of the simpletons will kill them,
and the careless ease of fools will destroy them.
33 But the one who listens to me will live in security,
and will be at ease from the dread of harm (Proverbs 1:20-33).
Here, as elsewhere in the Book of Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman who cries out publicly, inviting the naive to come and to learn wisdom from her.242 She is contrasted with “Madam Folly,” who is portrayed as a wicked, adulterous woman who seeks to seduce those who are gullible.
16 to deliver you from the adulteress,
from the sexually loose woman who speaks flattering words;
17 who leaves the husband from her youth,
and forgets her marriage covenant made before God.
18 For her house sinks down to death,
and her paths lead to the place of the departed spirits.
19 None who go in to her will return,
nor will they reach the paths of life.
20 So you will walk in the way of good people,
and will keep on the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will reside in the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it;
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be torn away from it (Proverbs 2:16-22).243
The seductive woman does not really care about her victim. He is only a meal ticket:
For on account of a prostitute one is brought down to a loaf of bread,
but the wife of another man preys on your precious life (Proverbs 6:26).
This is the way of an adulterous woman:
she eats and wipes her mouth
and says, “I have not done wrong” (Proverbs 30:20).
While the adulterous woman does seek to appeal to the sensual desires of her victims (see 7:10, 16-18), her primary weapon is flattery. She tells the unsuspecting lad what he wants to hear. She appeals to his ego:
To deliver you from the adulteress,
from the sexually loose woman who speaks flattering words (Proverbs 2:16).
So that they may keep you from the adulterous woman,
from the loose woman who flatters you with her words (Proverbs 7:5).
She persuaded him with persuasive words;
with her smooth speech she compelled him (Proverbs 7:21).
One can hardly call the appeal of “Dame Wisdom” flattery:
1 Wisdom has built her house;
she has carved out its seven pillars.
2 She has prepared her meat, she has mixed her wine;
she also has arranged her table.
3 She has sent out her female servants;
she calls out on the highest places of the city.
4 “Whoever is naive, let him turn in here,”
she says to those who lack understanding.
5 “Come, eat some of my food,
and drink some of the wine I have mixed.
6 Abandon your foolish ways, so that you may live;
and proceed in the way of understanding” (Proverbs 9:1-6).
In the broadest of terms, then, we can see that the Book of Proverbs sums up all of life in terms of just two “ways,” two paths – the “way of wisdom,” leading to life, and the “way of folly,” leading to death. Each of us is on one path or the other. Each of us make decisions about whom we will believe, about whose authority we will respect and whose instructions we will obey. Each of us is on a path, and the only way we can know the outcome is because God has told us where each path leads. The most important question we will ever answer is, “What path am I on?”
The New Testament has a much more specific answer. In Proverbs, the way of life is the way of wisdom. Wisdom is personified in Proverbs 8, and it is not difficult for the New Testament Christian to see this to be fulfilled by our Lord Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, Jesus is absolutely clear about the “path” we must be on to obtain eternal life:
1 “Do not let your hearts be distressed. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 There are many dwelling places in my Father’s house. Otherwise, I would have told you. I am going away to make ready a place for you. 3 And if I go and make ready a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me, so that where I am you may be too. 4 And you know the way where I am going.” 5 Thomas said, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:1-6, emphasis mine).
Jesus is the incarnation of wisdom:
22 The Lord created me as the beginning of his way,
before his works of old.
23 From eternity I was appointed,
from the beginning, from before the world existed.
24 When there were no deep oceans I was given birth,
when there were no springs abounding with water;
25 before the mountains were settled,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
26 before he made the earth and its fields,
or the beginning of the dust of the world.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he marked out the horizon over the face of the deep,
28 when he established the clouds above,
when the fountains of the deep grew strong,
29 when he gave the sea his decree
that the waters should not pass over his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him as a master craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day,
rejoicing before him at all times,
31 rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth,
and delighting in the human beings (Proverbs 8:22-31).
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The Word was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind (John 1:1-4).
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, 16 for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him—all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers—all things were created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him (Colossians 1:15-17).
20 Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Mosaic law? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made the wisdom of the world foolish? 21 For since in the wisdom of God, the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching. 22 For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, 23 but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. 24 But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 26 Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers and sisters. Not many were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, and not many were members of the upper class. 27 But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, 29 so that no one can boast in his presence. 30 He is the reason you have a relationship with Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:20-30).
2 My goal is that their hearts, having been knit together in love, may be encouraged, and that they may have all the riches that assurance brings in their understanding of the knowledge of the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:2-3).
There are many books on the shelves of bookstores that have to do with personality types; some of them are addressed to the Christian community. I hear Christians telling others that they are sanguine or phlegmatic, as though this really defines them. So far as I can tell, this kind of psychological profiling began with the ancients. I have never found one text in the Bible that speaks in terms of these categories. I take it that this means they are not really very significant.
The Bible – and particularly the Book of Proverbs – does speak of a different set of “profiles.” These are profiles of one’s character, not one’s personality. There are five basic character types, which I will very briefly define in this message.244
The simple or naive. This character type is very much related to age and experience. The naive are those who have not experienced much of life. The simple or naive are gullible. They tend to believe whatever they are told:
A naive person believes everything,
but the shrewd person discerns his steps (Proverbs 14:15).
The naive do not look ahead; they do not consider the consequences of their actions:
A shrewd person sees danger and hides himself,
but the naive keep right on going and suffer for it (Proverbs 22:3; see also 27:12).
There is a crucial difference between naivety and innocence. The simple possess a certain measure of foolishness and culpability:
22 “How long will you simpletons love naivet?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
32 For the waywardness of the simpletons will kill them,
and the careless ease of fools will destroy them (Proverbs 1:22, 32).
The naive inherit folly,
but the shrewd are crowned with knowledge (Proverbs 14:18).
The simple can learn, however. Sometimes they learn from observing the folly of others and its consequences:
Beat a scorner, and as a result the simpleton will learn prudence;
correct a discerning person, and as a result he will understand knowledge (Proverbs 19:25).
Wisdom therefore seeks to instruct the simple, so that they might become wise:
You who are naive, discern wisdom!
And you fools, understand discernment! (Proverbs 8:5)
4 “Whoever is naive, let him turn in here,”
she says to those who lack understanding.
16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here,”
she says to those who lack understanding (Proverbs 9:4, 16).
The fool. The fool is old enough to know better. The fool is a simpleton who has not learned the way of wisdom, but has come to spurn it. The fool is more actively engaged in folly. We should begin by saying that folly is not learned.
Man is born with a predisposition toward folly:
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,
but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him (Proverbs 22:15).
I have the feeling that a lot of parents need to post this proverb on their refrigerator door. It is not what Dr. Spock would have told us.245
If the origin of wisdom is humility and the fear of the Lord, folly is rooted in a deep-seated hostility toward God and those in authority. The fool takes pleasure in evil and flaunts his folly:
A person’s folly subverts his way,
and his heart rages against the Lord (Proverbs 19:3).
The wise person accepts instructions,
but the one who speaks foolishness will come to ruin (Proverbs 10:8).
Carrying out a wicked scheme is enjoyable to a fool,
and so is wisdom for the one who has discernment (Proverbs 10:23).
Every shrewd person acts with knowledge,
but a fool displays his folly (Proverbs 13:16).
The fool is arrogant (14:16; 30:32). He knows better than others. He does not learn from others, or even from his own mistakes:
A wise person is cautious and turns from evil,
but a fool throws off restraint and is overconfident (Proverbs 14:16).
If you have done foolishly in exalting yourself
or if you have planned evil,
put your hand over your mouth! (Proverbs 30:32)
The way of a fool is right in his own opinion,
but the one who listens to advice is wise (Proverbs 12:15).
The one who trusts in his own heart is a fool,
but the one who walks in wisdom will escape (Proverbs 28:26).
The fool is betrayed by his speech.
Even a fool who remains silent is considered wise,
and the one who holds his tongue is deemed discerning (Proverbs 17:28).
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding
but only in disclosing what is on his mind (Proverbs 18:2).
Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity
than one who is perverse in his speech and is a fool (Proverbs 19:1).
The fool loses his temper (14:17; 29:11) and quarrels (20:3). The fool is deeply entrenched in his sin and won’t change (15:5; 17:10, 12; 23:9; 26:11; 27:22). When confronted, the fool will react rather than repent. Confronting a fool is therefore useless and sometimes painful (29:9). The fool is wasteful and self-indulgent (21:20). The fool is unprofitable to others (10:1; 12:1, 7; 14:1, 7; 17:21, 25; 19:13; 26:6, 10).
The sluggard. The sluggard is a most fascinating character. Let’s consider some of the distinguishing characteristics of the sluggard.
The sluggard is lazy and procrastinates. If he fails to work, he hopes to live off the labor of others:
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
observe its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
overseer, or ruler,
8 yet it prepares its food in the summer;
it gathers at the harvest what it will eat.
9 How long, you sluggard, will you lie there?
When will you rise from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to relax,
11 and your poverty will come like a robber,
and your need like an armed man (Proverbs 6:6-11).
The sluggard will not plow during the planting season,
so at the harvest time he looks for the crop but has nothing (Proverbs 20:4).
30 I passed by the field of a sluggard,
by the vineyard of one who lacks wisdom.
31 I saw that thorns had grown up all over it,
the ground was covered with weeds,
and its stone wall was broken down.
32 When I saw this, I applied my heart;
I received instruction from what I saw:
33 “A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to relax,
34 and your poverty will come like a robber,
and your need like an armed man” (Proverbs 24:30-34).
The sluggard is not only slow to start, but unlikely to follow through to completion (ouch!):
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish;
he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth (Proverbs 26:15).
The sluggard is a master at rationalization:
The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside!
I will be killed in the middle of the streets!” (Proverbs 22:13; see also 26:13)
The sluggard takes the path of least resistance, always looking for the easy way out, such as “get rich quick” schemes that will allow him to live without laboring:
19 The one who works his land will be satisfied with food,
but whoever chases daydreams will have his fill of poverty.
22 The stingy person hastens after riches
and does not know that poverty will come on him (Proverbs 28:19, 22).
The sluggard is foolish, though he thinks himself wise:
The sluggard is wiser in his own estimation
than seven people who respond with good sense (Proverbs 26:16).
When I taught on the sluggard a number of years ago, I agonized over the way my words might be twisted by some. “Who is it,” I asked myself, “who will twist my words to mean something I don’t?” “Who will cheer me on when I preach this lesson, when they should be rebuked by it?” The answer that came to my mind was the “workaholic.” The workaholic would love to hear me preach about the sluggard. Were my words not a validation of the workaholic’s lifestyle? Actually not! The workaholic is a sluggard, in my opinion. The sluggard is not stupid, nor is the sluggard completely inactive. The sluggard works very hard at avoiding the “work” he most dislikes. The sluggard avoids those tasks which he ought to be doing. The workaholic often uses his job as his excuse for not spending time with his wife or his family. His job is his “lion in the road.” Workaholics, take note!
The scoffer. There seems to be a progression from the simple to the fool to the scoffer. The simple lacks wisdom; the fool scorns wisdom; the scoffer mocks and opposes wisdom.
The scoffer is proud and arrogant:
A proud and arrogant person, whose name is “Scoffer,”
acts with overbearing pride (Proverbs 21:24).
The scoffer is beyond correction:
7 Whoever corrects a mocker is asking for insult;
whoever reproves a wicked person receives abuse.
8 Do not reprove a mocker or he will hate you;
reprove a wise person and he will love you (Proverbs 9:7-8).
A wise son accepts his father’s discipline,
but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke (Proverbs 13:1; see also 15:12).
Punishment and divine judgment await the scoffer:
Although he is scornful to arrogant scoffers,
yet he shows favor to the humble (Proverbs 3:34).
Judgments are prepared for scorners,
and floggings for the backs of fools (Proverbs 19:29).
When the scoffer is punished, those who look on may learn from his experience, even though he will not:
Beat a scorner, and as a result the simpleton will learn prudence;
correct a discerning person, and as a result he will understand knowledge (Proverbs 19:25).
The scoffer is a very negative influence, and the best course of action is to remove him:
A foolish scheme is sin,
and the scorner is an abomination to people (Proverbs 24:9).
Drive out the scorner and contention will leave;
strife and insults will cease (Proverbs 22:10).
The principle of a Christian school once embraced the teaching of Proverbs 22:10, and wisely so. There are some students (and teachers) who are scoffers and who only disrupt and cause dissention. Since they can’t be corrected, they should be removed (kicked out of school, fired). Many employers acknowledge the truth of this proverb. The workplace is a much better place when the scoffer has been removed.
The way of the wise. The whole of the Book of Proverbs is meant to make one wise (1:1-7), so we can hardly sum up the way of wisdom in a few words. Nevertheless, let me list a few of the characteristics of those who are wise:
Humility – 11:2
Fear God – 2:6-7; 9:10; 11:7; 15:33; 21:30
Delight in wisdom – 10:23
Diligently seek wisdom – 4:5-7; 7:4
Choose companions carefully – 13:20
Are a blessing to others – 11:30; 13:14; 15:20; 23:15, 24; 27:11; 29:3
Wise use of their words – 10:13-14, 19, 31; 12:18; 14:3; 15:2, 7; 16:21, 23; 31:26
Self-control, avoid over-indulgence – 20:11; 21:20; 29:11
Seek wise counsel – 24:6
Listen and learn – 1:5; 2:2; 5:1; 18:15; 23:19
Conciliatory – 16:14; 29:8
Impartial – 24:23
Respond well to instruction, correction, and rebuke – 9:8-9; 10:8; 12:15; 13:10; 15:31; 19:20; 21:11; 29:15
Live skillfully – 1:1-6
There are many good things that could be said of the Book of Proverbs, but let me conclude by summarizing some of the benefits that can be gained by studying and applying the Book of Proverbs.
The Book of Proverbs instructs us how to think correctly. Proverbs 1:1-7 speaks of the wisdom that the Book of Proverbs offers those who will diligent seek it. Proverbs helps us learn to think straight and to look at life as it really is. Proverbs will improve our thinking.
The Book of Proverbs instructs us how to live correctly. God not only wants us to think straight but to live righteously. Those who are wise are those who live their lives skillfully. Proverbs not only tells what we should believe, but how we should behave. Let me suggest a few of the practical benefits of Proverbs.
(1)Proverbs teaches us about parenting. Proverbs instructs us that children are born with an innate foolishness that must be addressed by parents. Discipline is necessary to deal with the foolishness of the child. Children are not innately innocent or good. They are predisposed to sin. The “Proverbs parent” understands this and deals with their child accordingly.
(2)Proverbs has much to say to children. They are to listen to and learn from their parents. They are to beware of associating with the wicked. They are to obey their parents. Most of the folly that children experience could be avoided by heeding the warnings of Proverbs.
(3)Proverbs challenges us all to live wisely, to treasure and diligently seek wisdom. It informs us that wisdom comes from God to those who are humble and fear Him. Wisdom is the way of life, turning us from the way of death. It leads to life eternal, as well as enabling us to live life to the full in the present.
(4)Proverbs has much to say about marriage. Those who heed the teaching of Proverbs, and who choose their friends well, will seek to find a mate who is wise. They will embrace the qualities that make one a godly husband or wife (e.g., Proverbs 31).
(5)Proverbs instructs us about our work. It teaches us to avoid slothfulness and to work hard. It tells us to give a dollars worth of product or labor for a dollar paid. It tells us the kind of person to hire, and to fire.
(6)Proverbs is a wonderful source of divine guidance. Someone once said that “divine guidance is a compass, not a map.” Guidance most often comes in the form of general principles. For example, the Bible may not tell us precisely which woman to marry, but it certainly does tell us the kind of woman to avoid, and the kind of woman to seek. Much of the “advice” we receive is from our friends. Proverbs teaches us about the kind of friends we should choose.
A number of years ago, my wife and I decided that we would remain on in Texas. We started looking for a house to buy. I called my father for advice, and he suggested that it would be wise to establish my ministry before we bought a home. It was shortly after this that I came across this proverb:
Prepare your work outside
And make it ready for yourself in the field;
Afterwards, then, build your house (Proverbs 24:27).
We waited until our ministry was established, and then we purchased a home. It was a wise decision, prompted by Proverbs in two ways. First, I sought my father’s counsel, and second, I followed this counsel and the counsel of Proverbs. You might put it this way, “Don’t put the cart (your house) before the horse (your ministry). Proverbs is a rich source of very practical guidance.
(7)Proverbs has a great deal to say about government and politics. There may be wisdom in maintaining a certain degree of separation between church and state, but there should be no separation at all between faith and practice. We have just recently elected a new President. What might the Book of Proverbs have to say to him? Consider some of the counsel that Proverbs offers those in positions of leadership and authority:
A king sitting on the throne to judge
separates out all evil with his eyes (Proverbs 20:8).
A wise king separates out the wicked;
he turns the threshing wheel over them (Proverbs 20:26).
Remove the wicked from before the king,
and his throne will be established in righteousness (Proverbs 25:5).
A king brings stability to a land by justice,
but one who exacts tribute tears it down (Proverbs 29:4).
Loyal love and truth preserve a king,
and his throne is upheld by loyal love (Proverbs 20:28).
The one who loves a pure heart
and whose speech is gracious—the king will be his friend (Proverbs 22:11).
If a ruler listens to lies,
all his ministers will be wicked (Proverbs 29:12).
If a king judges the poor in truth,
his throne will be established forever (Proverbs 29:14).
May God grant us hearts and minds that desire wisdom and that will diligently seek it in His Word. May God make us students of this marvelous Book of Proverbs.
238 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on May 13, 2001.
239 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
240 Among the sources of teaching and wisdom in Israel, there were the prophets, the priests, and the wise men (see Jeremiah 18:18; Ezekiel 7:26).
241 A good many years ago, I wrote this in my lesson on Proverbs 1: “A little while ago I read an article on the family of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. It described the life of the Nelson family during the years the program was on television, as well as the life of David and Ricky since. The thing that caught my eye was that Rick joined a group of ‘hoods.’ The writer said this of Rick’s new associations: ‘Most of his fellow hoods, Ricky later explained, ended up in jail and went into bigger things--like armed robbery.’” It was after this that Ricky himself died in a plane crash, apparently the result of using drugs while in flight. How true this chapter proved to be.
242 See Proverbs 4:1-9; 8:1-36; 9:1-6.
243 See also Proverbs chapter 5; 6:20-25; 7:1-27.
244 My more extensive study in the Book of Proverbs has a more thorough consideration of these character types. See /docs/ot/books/pro/deffin/toc.htm.
245 We are not talking about abusing a child here; we are talking about godly discipline, exercised in love, and in self-control. To characterize all spanking as “abuse” is foolish.
The Message of Ecclesiastes213
There is nothing like the joy and satisfaction of a job well done. For example, you like to work with your hands and start to make a piece of furniture. After several days of hard work, when you finally complete the job and take a look at the beautiful piece that you produced, you are filled with the joy and the deep satisfaction of having produced something beautiful.
Life, however, is not always a success story. There are times when a person has to face disappointments and frustrations of a task that has been messed up. For example, the other day I started out to fix our toaster. I thought it would be very easy, and so I opened it up. As soon as I opened it up, the springs became loose. I did not even know there were springs in a toaster! Everything tangled up. After a couple of hours, I was finally able to put it back together and felt very good about my ability to fix things. But as soon as I plugged it in, the coil blew up! I must have connected the wires incorrectly.
Such things happen ever so often in our homes. However, such things do not really matter. In most cases, a spoiled job can be amended or started over to a successful completion. It may take a little more time or sometimes a little more expense than originally planned. At the worst, you may have to throw away the broken appliance and buy a new one.
But what if the job that you have almost completed, and are looking back over to see how you have done, is nothing less than your very life? What if, to your utter dismay, you find that it was a total failure, completely messed up? What can you do? Can you start it all over again? Can you exchange your life for a new one?
One of the wisest statements you can find in the Bible was uttered by an old lady from a remote, primitive town named Takoa. Talking to King David, she tells him, “Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered so we must die” (2 Sam. 14:14). In the context of the life lived in the Middle Eastern parched desert, that statement provides a far more vivid picture of wasted life than we in the Western world can imagine!
However, you can do one thing. Tell your children and grandchildren about the mistakes you made to warn them early in life. Or, even better, you can write a book about your frustrating life-experience so people can read it and learn a lesson, perhaps many years after you have gone from this world.
This is exactly what the wise man of old did when he wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes.
It is assumed here that Solomon is the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, although his name is nowhere mentioned in the book. The references in the book clearly suggest his authorship. It is also assumed that Solomon wrote this book in the later part of his life.
We can picture King Solomon sitting in the beautiful garden of his royal palace. He is now old and weak; most of his life is gone. He is surrounded by a crowd of servants, but he is feeling lonely. He has all the good things that the world can offer, but he is not interested in them any more. Sitting in his rocking chair, lost in his thoughts, he takes a look over his life to see how he has done. What does he see? After taking stock of all his major works, he finds:
“Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun” (2:11).
The Book of Ecclesiastes is part of the wisdom literature of the Bible. It is a philosophical book, actually the most philosophical book in the Bible, and it presents the Judeo-Christian perspective of the world and the things of the world.
Thematically, this is perhaps the most misunderstood book of the Bible. A quick and superficial reading gives the impression that the author presents a very negative and pessimistic picture of life. The repeated use of words like “vanity” or “meaninglessness,” and phrases like “striving after wind,” create the impression of hopeless despair, depicting the emptiness and disappointments of life. For this reason, even its legitimate place in the canon has often been questioned, beginning from early church history.
Obviously, there are verses in the book that, taken out of context, present a very pessimistic worldview. But actually the book presents the hope of all hopes. It presents life as a beautiful tapestry designed by God and states that the ultimate meaning of which can only be found in complete submission to God.
There are three threads of thought that run through the book: the enjoyment theme, the vanity theme, and the eternity theme. These three threads are carefully woven together in the book to bring out the beautiful picture of God's design for mankind.
Solomon is certainly not against material things, as it may seem from a superficial reading of the book. On the contrary, he believes that material things are a gift from God, created and given to us for our enjoyment. He says:
“There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God” (2:24).
Again:
“I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor – it is the gift of God” (3:12-13).
Also:
“Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one's labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward. Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God” (5:18-19).
He says the same thing in 9:7-9 and 11:9-10.
From the Biblical perspective, material things are not evil. It is against the nature of the Holy God to create anything evil. As the Bible says, “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). On the contrary, things are considered good in the Bible. In the creation account of Genesis 1, when God repeatedly surveyed the parts of the creation, it is remarked several times that God looked at what He had made and “saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). It is interesting to note that this phrase is used twice in relation to the creation of the earth and the things on the earth (1:9-13), which are later gifted to man for his enjoyment (Genesis 1:29). At the end of the overall creation, it is noted, “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:31). The Psalmist praises God again and again for the beauty of God’s creation. Our physical body is also not considered evil, but as David notes in one of his Psalms, it is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-16).
In the New Testament also material things are never considered evil. Jesus declared material things “good” when He said, “you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children … ” (Matthew 7:11). Jesus included “daily bread,” which is a symbol of all the physical and material needs of man, in his model prayer. The Apostle Paul says, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude” (1 Timothy 4:4).
So, Solomon is not against the use or enjoyment of material things of the world. On the contrary, he believes that material things are a gift from God, created and given to man for his enjoyment, and that there is nothing wrong in enjoying material things.
However, there is one more thing he wants us to remember: the meaning of life cannot be found in anything under the sun – be it our material possessions or other immaterial things like human wisdom or intellect. Everything of this world is vain and futile in the ultimate sense, as it cannot fulfill the human desire for meaningfulness.
The vanity theme is the most prominent theme in the Book of Ecclesiastes. So, at the first impression, the book creates a very pessimistic picture. The Hebrew word “hebel,” meaning “vanity” or “meaninglessness,” has been used 38 times in this book, 5 in the first verse of the main body, and 3 times in the last verse just before the final conclusion. Similarly, the phrase “striving after wind” has been used 9 times. “Labor” occurs 23 times; “evil” 22 times; “vexation of spirit” 9 times. Such words as “oppression,” “grief,” “mourning,” “no advantage,” “nothing gained,” “what advantage is there?” are used frequently. All this creates an overall picture of pessimism.
One after another Solomon takes all the things that we usually consider good and points out their futility and meaninglessness: futility of all human endeavor (1:3-11); futility of pleasure and possession (2:1-11); futility of human wisdom (2:18-23); and futility of wealth (5:8-17). He sets forth the vanity of everything in this world of which he can think. He tries everything under the sun that is supposed to be capable of making man happy, but to his utter dismay, he finds that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that every effort in acquiring happiness in whatever way it may be ends in sorrow. The greater the capacity of the object to give enjoyment, the deeper and wider is the experience of disappointment and vexation of spirit.
Solomon has brought out the meaninglessness of everything under the sun, as we noted above, to lay up the foundation for his final thesis. If nothing is permanent, if nothing under the sun can give real and lasting happiness, how can man fulfill his desire for the meaning of life? Where can he find the things that can give real and lasting happiness and fulfill the quest for the meaning of life? Solomon says certainly not under the sun, but he can surely find it from beyond the sun.
Although everything under the sun is temporal, God has set eternity in man's heart (3:11b). Every culture, no matter how primitive or developed, has a concept of eternity, of something that will last forever. Because of this sense of eternity in his heart, man is looking for something that will last forever, most of all, something that will make him last forever.
Generally speaking, man's efforts to find ways to become eternal are misdirected; he tries to do something that will make him eternal on the earth. But Solomon says that there is only one way that man's sense of eternity can be fulfilled – it can be fulfilled only in God – not in anything else under the sun. He says, “I know that everything God does will remain forever, there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it” (3:14). Apart from God, anything that man does on earth does not have any eternal value; it is only God who can bring eternity to the temporal works of man. That is why Moses prayed, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and do give permanence to the work of our hands; yes, give permanence to the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:17).
Because God is infinite and man is finite, man can never fully comprehend the work of God:
“When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the task which has been done on the earth (even though one should never sleep day or night), and I saw every work of God, I concluded that man can not discover the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover; and though the wise man should say 'I know,' he cannot discover” (8:16-17).
Again:
“Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things” (11:5).
Because God is in complete control and man a finite creature, the only way left for man to be happy and satisfied is obedience – complete submission to God. The truest and greatest joy of life comes from obedience to God alone and from nothing else. Everything else is vain and meaningless – like chasing after the wind. That is why Solomon advised the young man to remember his creator before it is too late:
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no delight in them;’ before the sun, the light, the moon, and the stars are darkened, and clouds return after the rain … ” (12:1-2).
In summary, what Solomon is saying is this: enjoy all the material things of the world. There is nothing wrong in that. They are gifts from God. However, remember that these things cannot last forever nor can they give real lasting happiness. The purpose and meaning of life cannot be found in any of these things. So, acknowledge God as the source of all enjoyment; He alone can give meaning to life; He alone can give eternal significance to our temporal works.
Solomon learned from his own experience that all material things are his to use and fully enjoy, but he realized that he can enjoy them only if he has first established a relationship with God, who is the Giver of all material blessing and the source of real joy and happiness. Without that primary relationship to God, all things are vain and empty. That is why he raises the question: “For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?” (2:25). Augustine said, “No man can find peace except he finds it in God.” Similarly, Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person. And it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ."”
This is the message of Ecclesiastes; this is the message of the Bible. This is what Jesus said: “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). Paul writes in Philippians (4:11-13) that he can be happy and content in every situation no matter what kind of circumstances he is in, since his joy does not depend on the outward circumstances, but on the inner strength that comes from God.
Someone has described the enjoyment of material things during this brief lifetime like a bird perched on a branch of a tall tree.
“Let us be like a bird
For a moment perched
On a frail branch while he sings,
Though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song,
Knowing that he has wings.”
(Sarah Williams in “The Old Astronomer”)
To live life enjoying only material things without the perspective of eternity is to be like a bird whose wings are clipped sitting on a frail branch of a tall tree. Man can enjoy this life only on wings of eternity. Solomon missed it. And he wrote this book so none of us have to miss like him.
There is a positive example in the Bible from the life of another man of God, Paul. Like Solomon, he too, near the end of his life, takes a look back and evaluates his life. What does he find?
“For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge will award to me on that day—not only to me but to all who have longed for His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
What a joy!! What a satisfaction!! At the end of my life when I look back, what will I find? Heartbreaking frustration like Solomon, or joyful satisfaction like Paul? The answer depends on whether I am living my life on the basis of the here-and-now or on the Wings of Eternity.
The book begins with the note of utter frustration: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” But it ends with the certain cure of that problem: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
213 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by guest speaker Imanuel Christian at Community Bible Chapel, on April 22, 2001.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. Your oils have a pleasing fragrance. Your name is like purified oil. Therefore the maidens love you. Draw me after you and let us run together! The king has brought me into his chambers215 (Songs of Songs 1:2-4).
Right from the start, the Song of Songs, or, as some know it, the Song of Solomon, separates itself from the other books in the Bible. The opening words introduce a poetic work whose subject is romantic love and its physical expression in marriage. This is not what one would expect from a book in the Bible, but it is only the beginning of its mysteries. The Song of Songs is easily the most enigmatic book in the Scriptures.
The Song of Songs is enigmatic because it has no unambiguous reference to God, religion, or spiritual things. The closest that any verse comes to mentioning God is Songs 8:6, which reads:
Put me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy is as severe as Sheol;
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
The very flame of the Lord.
The Hebrew behind “The very flame of the Lord” is not all that clear, and it is the NASB alternate reading, “a vehement flame,” that is probably correct216. The New International Version (NIV) and the New English Translation (NET) use, “a mighty flame.” Thus, the Song of Songs is likely to be the second book in the Bible, Esther being the first, with no reference to God. The absence of God in the Song of Songs is very problematic, because Esther, at least, communicates God’s providential care, and the name YHWH appears acrostically in two places.217 Not so the Song of Songs: it remains first and foremost a book about love, marriage, and its physical expression. Its place in the Scriptures must be understood in light of its message, as it is, and not as we would hope or expect it to be. The subject matter has obviously proved troublesome for many, and through the centuries, there have been grand attempts to make Solomon’s Song to be about something else. Such attempts falter in light of all sound, hermeneutical principles.
The Song of Songs is enigmatic because there is no consensus about many of the book’s elements. Questions having diverse answers abound. Are there two main characters or three? How does one divide the speaking parts? Are the characters peasants or royals? What is the structure of the book? Who wrote it? How many people wrote it? Here is an example of the issues that exist discerning the speaker in Songs 8:12:
As Marvin Pope has said, the implications can be quite opposite depending on whether the girl or the groom speaks the opening words of Song 8:12. Here are the main choices: girl to her other lover; girl to Solomon; girl to brothers; Solomon to girl; Solomon literally of vineyard; another lover to girl; another lover to Solomon.218
So we come to The Song of Songs. It is enigmatic; it is about a subject that makes many Christians and Jews uncomfortable; it does not seem to be a religious book, and making sense out of it is hard and controversial. So why bother with it? Why don’t we just skip over to Isaiah and pretend this little work isn’t there? What would we miss?
First, let’s start with the obvious and obligatory reason for caring. It is in the Canon of Scripture and “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Since the Lord intended the Song of Songs to be part of His message, it is our responsibility to profit by it. Let us note, for example, that modern sexuality is primarily about entertainment and marketing. It is in our movies, our books, and our advertisements. It is certainly out of control.219 The Song’s sexuality is chaste, self-giving, and bonding. It should be understood, taught, and emulated. As far as being difficult, the book is not a quick study, but it is a pleasant one.
Second, the Song of Songs has inspired many to seek and to find a deeper experience with God and a clearer understanding of His love. So even though it does not have an overt spiritual message, it seems to have a covert spiritual effect. This should also be understood, taught, and emulated.
As an overview of the Song of Songs, this message will present:
1. Different approaches to understanding the book.
2. Various opinions regarding its structure, meaning, and story lines.
3. Advice on how to read the book for enjoyment and understanding.
4. The Song’s lessons for body, soul, and spirit.
Hopefully, at the end, the Song of Songs will have become less of an enigma and more of a spring garden full of surprises and delights.
For centuries, the common wisdom concerning the Song of Songs was to view it strictly as an allegory. The logic that prompted such a view was simple:
All books in the Bible are about God.
The Song of Songs is in the Bible.
Therefore, the Song of Songs is about God.
Consequently, the early church and Jewish rabbis completely allegorized its characters and imagery. At a basic level, Jewish allegory holds that the bridegroom represents God, and the bride represents Israel. Similarly, Christian allegory holds that the bridegroom represents Christ, and the bride represents the Church. The allegorical approach stipulates that the author intended to write an allegory and that a non-allegorical reading is wrong. The following introduction to a Jewish “translation” of Song of Songs illustrates this.
As the entire gamut of Talmudic and Rabbinic literature relating to Shir HaShirim220 makes clear, this highly emotional, seemingly sensuous song is an allegory. As such, a literal translation would be misleading - even false - because it would not convey the meaning intended by King Solomon the composer. The ArtScroll translation follows the commentary of Rashi, and a full commentary may be found in the ArtScroll Shir Hashirim by Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz. The following introductory comments are adapted from Rashi’s own introduction:
Solomon foresaw through the Holy Spirit, that Israel is destined to suffer a series of exiles and will lament, nostalgically recalling her former status as God’s chosen beloved. She will say, ‘I will return to my first husband (i.e. to God) for it was better with me then than it is now.’ (Hoshea 2:9) The children of Israel will recall His beneficence and the trespasses which they trespassed (Leviticus 26:40). And they will recall the goodness which He promised for the End of Days.
The prophets frequently likened the relationship between God and Israel to that of a loving husband angered by a straying wife who betrayed him. Solomon composed Shir HaShirim in the form of that same allegory. It is a passionate dialogue between the husband [God] who still loves his estranged wife [Israel], and the wife, a veritable widow of a living husband, who longs for her husband and seeks to endear herself to him once more, as she recalls her youthful love for him and admits her guilt.
God, too, is afflicted by her afflictions (Isaiah 63:9), and He recalls the kindness of her youth, her beauty, and her skillful deeds for which He loved her [Israel] so. He proclaimed that He has not afflicted her capriciously (Lamentations 3:33) nor is she cast away permanently, for she is still His “wife” and He her “husband,” and He will yet return to her.221
And here is the first chapter of that translation. You will find it instructive to compare it verse by verse with your favorite translation.
1. The song that excels all songs dedicated to God, the King to Who peace belongs.
Israel in exile to God:
2. Communicate your innermost wisdom to me again in loving closeness, for Your friendship is dearer than all earthly delights.
3. Like the scent of goodly oils is the spreading fame of your great deeds; Your very name is flowing oil; therefore have nations loved you.
4. Upon perceiving a mere hint that You wished to draw me, we rushed with perfect faith after You into the wilderness. The King brought me into His cloud-pillared chamber; whatever our travail we shall always be glad and rejoice in Your Torah. We recall Your love more than earthly delights; unrestrainedly do they love you.
5. Though I am black with sin, I am comely with virtue, O nations who are destined to ascend to Jerusalem; though sullied as the tents of Kedar, I will be immaculate as the draperies of Him to Whom peace belongs.
6. Do not view me with contempt despite my swarthiness, for it is but the sun which has glared upon me. The alien children of my mother were incensed with me and made me a keeper of the vineyards of idols, but the vineyard of my own true God I did not keep.
7. Tell me, You Whom my soul loves: Where will You graze Your flock? Where will You rest them under the fiercest sun of harshest Exile? Why shall I be like one veiled in mourning among the flocks of Your fellow shepherds?
8. If you know not where to graze, O fairest of nations, follow the footsteps of the sheep - your forefathers who traced a straight, unswerving path after My Torah. Then you can graze your tender kids even among the dwellings of foreign shepherds.
9. With My mighty steeds who battled Pharaoh’s riders I revealed that you are My beloved.
10. Your cheeks are lovely with rows of gems, your neck with necklaces - My gifts to you from the splitting sea, … .
11. … by inducing Pharaoh to engage in pursuit, to add circlets of gold to your spangles of silver.
12. While the King was yet at Sinai my malodorous deed gave forth its scent as my Golden Calf defiled the covenant.
13. But my Beloved responded with a bundle of myrrh - the fragrant atonement of erecting a Tabernacle where His Presence would dwell amid the Holy Ark’s staves.
14. Like a cluster of henna in En Gedi vineyards has my Beloved multiplied his forgiveness to me.
15. He said, ‘I forgive you, My friend, for you are lovely in deed and lovely in resolve. The righteous among you are loyal as a dove.’
16. It is You Who are lovely, my Beloved, so pleasant that you pardoned my sin enabling our Temple to make me ever fresh,
17. The beams of our House are cedar, our panels are cypress.222
As comforting as allegorizing the text might be, there is really no internal or external justification for it. The problem with saying that the Song of Songs is “seemingly sensuous” is that unenlightened readers, not knowing any better, will read it as sensuous, and what passage in the Song of Songs, or the Old Testament, or the New Testament will enlighten such readers to Solomon’s real intent? What tools would they have by which to properly decipher Solomon’s symbolism? There are none. An allegory’s only benefit is to explain, to our sensibilities, why Song of Song’s is in the Bible. I submit to you that it is better to admit our discomfort than to seriously consider the allegory. When Solomon wrote, “My beloved is to me a pouch of myrrh which lies all night between my breasts,” could he really mean, “But my Beloved responded with a bundle of myrrh - the fragrant atonement of erecting a Tabernacle where His Presence would dwell amid the Holy Ark’s staves?” Let me tell you, it takes imagination to blaze a trail between the two.
Later on, there came those who acknowledged the sensual elements of Songs while still holding to a strong connection to God. They did this by using the concept of types. They proposed that King Solomon typified Christ, and the bride typified the Church. Just like Jesus Christ came to earth for a bride to take to heaven, so King Solomon found a peasant girl working in a vineyard and brought her into his royal courts. Although potentially more true to the text, the sensual elements were acknowledged and then ignored. Therefore, in practice, the typology, not the sexuality, was the principle purpose of the book’s place in the Scriptures. How else could it be there? The presumed logic of canonicity still prevailed:
All books in the Bible are about God.
The Song of Songs is in the Bible.
Therefore, the Song of Songs is about God.
We must set aside typology for the same reason we set aside the allegorical approach. There is no internal or external evidence for it, and we must acknowledge that the motivation for drawing the types is the same discomfort that motivated allegory: a book in the Bible must somehow be about God. It is not that typology here is wrong, per se. It is that typology is used to dismiss the primary focus of the Song of Songs, which is the celebration of marriage and its physical relationship. Only after we give the book’s message its proper emphasis do we have a chance to catch any hints of a spiritual truth. Also, typology needs to stand on a foundation of generally accepted meaning, which the Song of Songs does not have. It should never be the stimulus for such meaning. The need for a type might well interfere with a correct understanding of the book.
The natural approach takes the Song of Songs, at face value, as a poem about marriage and the physical relationship that is part of marriage. This does not immediately answer the question of why the Song of Songs is in the Bible, but maybe the problem has been our preconceptions about what makes a book fit for the Canon. This approach has gained prominence only within the last century, and discoveries of other ancient love poems have shed light on the Song of Songs’ imagery.223
The challenge is still imagery. For the allegorist and the typologist, the challenge was to relate imagery to spiritual meaning. Now, it is to understand how the imagery relates to healthy romance and enduring love. There is a cultural and historical divide between the author and us. Consider these words of the bridegroom: “Your hair is like a flock of goats that have descended from Mount Gilead.” Such words will hardly melt the heart of a young maiden today, but we must assume they were precious words at the time of writing. So, picture a compact herd of goats moving down the switch-backed trails of a mountain. How might this scene look from a distance? Would they seem to move in waves and suggest hair blown by a soft wind? Okay, it might work. Try this one, “Your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn ewes which have come up from their washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them has lost her young.” In the days before modern orthodontics, the young man or young woman would appreciate someone with a complete set (“not one has lost her young”) of straight (“all bear twins”), white (“newly shorn and washed”) teeth.
Agricultural and botanical imagery abounds. The imagery communicates both beauty and a veiled eroticism. This is the genius of the book’s sexual message. The eroticism is as hidden and discrete as is appropriate in marriage. Sexuality is between the husband and the wife and is not for public view. The Song of Songs provides a biblical basis for celebrating this part of life while teaching that discretion preserves its value. The imagery adds dimension to the experience and anchors it to the higher values of chastity, surrender, mutual desire, and committed love. Note these excerpts:
Chastity – On the wedding night’s consummation, the bridegroom says, “A garden locked is my sister, my bride, A rock garden locked, a spring sealed up” (Songs 4:2). The bride is a virgin who has kept her garden for this moment. As you read the next verses, you will see how she opens her garden and invites her husband to enjoy its fruits.
Chastity – The bride remembers how her brothers “watched over” her when she was of tender age. The brothers speak:
We have a little sister, and she has no breasts; what shall we do for our sister on the day when she is spoken for? If she is a wall, we will build on her a battlement of silver; but if she is a door, we will barricade her with planks of cedar (Songs 8:8, 9).
The bride then reflects on her choice and the value it had to her husband, “I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers; then I became in his eyes as one who finds peace” (Songs 8:10). Being “a wall” suggests that the young woman is one not open to the advances of men before marriage. Being “a door” suggests otherwise. In the first case, they give her honor and the means to withstand a siege. In the second case, they do whatever it takes to preserve her honor.
Surrender – On the wedding night’s consummation, the bride says:
Awake, O north wind, And come, wind of the south; Make my garden breathe out fragrance, Let its spices be wafted abroad. May my beloved come into his garden and eat its choice fruits! (Songs 4:16)
Mutual Desire – The bride says, “His mouth is full of sweetness. And he is wholly desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem,” (Songs 5:16) and again “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me” (Songs 7:10).
Committed Love – The focal verse of the entire book is Songs 8:6, 7:
Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, jealousy is as severe as Sheol; its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it; if a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly despised.
In our day, we need to understand, teach, and emulate this aspect of the Song of Songs. As I see it, it is a book intended for our time.
Does the Song of Songs tell a story? If so, who are the characters? How does our understanding of the message and themes change as our perception of the story elements change? These questions are the subject of this section. One of the enigmatic aspects of the Song of Songs is that there are so many viewpoints that have merit.
The first story line is, in fact, not a story line at all. There are many who read the Song of Songs, then note how disconnected the material seems to be and conclude that the work is a loosely organized collection of love songs. Each of the songs may, therefore, be about different characters and even have different authors.
Whereas, there is much to commend this viewpoint, it is not totally satisfactory. Although it attempts to explain how disconnected the book seems, paradoxically (dare I say, enigmatically), it does not explain how connected the book seems to be. For example, there is the recurring refrain, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, that you do not arouse or awaken my love until she pleases” (Songs 2:7; 3:5; 8:4 and note 8:5b). Of course, this could all be a matter of editorial arrangement, but pretty soon the arrangement almost seems to tell a story. Still the notion that the book is an anthology of love songs is worth considering.
This is the generally accepted story line. The tale of King Solomon and the Shulammite goes like this: King Solomon notices a chaste and attractive young vinedresser in one of his vineyards. He falls in love with her, marries her, and brings her into his court.
There are two interesting variations of this story line, both of which have to do with the dream sequences and other signs of trouble in the relationship.
The first and most popular variation regards the bride as being shy and not fully comfortable with this king who is suddenly showing such attention and affection to her. Evidences of her reticence include her hiding in a rocky cleft (Songs 2:14) and her reluctance to open the door to her husband/lover (Songs 5:2, 3). The imagery also lends itself to the allegorists and typologists, since Jesus would be the faithful seeker of the unsure bride. When she is not fully open to Him, she gets herself into difficult and even dangerous situations.
The second variation views the bride as being devoted, but struggling with the relationship she has with a polygamous king. Those who propose this variation come the closest to drawing a coherent teaching purpose for the Song of Songs.224 Here we have a young peasant bride whose heart and body have been kept for her husband, King Solomon. She is unsure of her status within the harem (Songs 1:5, 6), and the very presence of the harem is demeaning (Songs 6:8-10). Her speech and thoughts include both physical and emotional aspects of their relationship, but he talks primarily of her beauty. Her dreams are symptomatic of one who is adjusting to a troubling relationship. There is a call for an ideal of monogamous marriage when the bride asks her husband, “Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, jealousy is as severe as Sheol; its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord” (Songs 8:6). Here she calls for the same heart and dedication from her husband that she has shown for him.
Either variation of this story line would be strong, were it not that some story elements make difficult the identification of the bridegroom as a king. Why, for example, would the young woman want to know, “where do you pasture your flocks, where do you lie down at noon?” (Songs 1:7). This seems to indicate that the woman’s lover is a shepherd and not a king. This leads us to a third story line.
To state it simply, King Solomon falls in love with a young, virtuous vinedresser and marries her, but she really loves a shepherd. If Song of Songs doesn’t have enough trouble accounting for its place in the Scriptures, this viewpoint compounds it. This story line is only useful for explaining the ambiguous references to the bridegroom as a king, and it suggests some really bad outcomes. Although the book opens in the court, it ends in the country. Does the girl leave Solomon and escape to her shepherd lover? Does she finally get fed up and run away at Songs 6:13, which reads, “Come back, come back O Shulammite.”
Perhaps the two lovers in Song of Songs are not royals at all, just peasants. In their mutual admiration and young love, they refer to each other using royal terms. He is as King Solomon in her eyes, and she is as a princess in his. The young newly-weds playfully pretend to be part of the court life. However, they soon see the shortcomings of palace life and settle down in their pastoral setting. This view frames Songs 8:7 in high relief, “if a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly despised.” I am reminded of the song with the lines, “Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you, honey.”225 Love is just something money cannot buy.
Having made the case for the difficulties of the book, I must now make the case for your making it your own. Difficulties aside, Song of Songs is a refreshing book that grows on you. Discovery builds on discovery, and a distinct beauty emerges from its chapters and verses. Let me start you off with the most important clue to understanding it: The Song of Songs is told from the bride’s point of view. It is a feminine book and, like a woman, she only reveals her secrets to those who love her and listen with their heart. Here is a second important clue: The book defies western-style logic; it must be understood holistically – not as a collection of parts.
To make this book your own requires three things:
1. You need to know who is speaking (or thinking).
2. You need to put on historical lenses.
3. You need to discern its structure.
All the diverse story lines come from different conclusions about these three items, but do not let that discourage you. Rather let it give you the freedom to explore your own ideas.
The Song of Songs is told from the bride’s point of view. Indeed, one could view it as a “stream of consciousness” monologue wherein the young girl’s thoughts flit from immediate experience to memories to hopes. Although I have not read anyone else who makes this claim, I actually ascribe much of the book to her private thoughts. When I read, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” I feel as if I have been given access to the thoughts and feelings of a young girl in love. I would not even know to whom she would be speaking.
Most translations provide help with speaking assignments. In some cases, the translation identifies the speaker in the marginal notes. Others identify the speaker in a heading above the text. My own taste is to have the speaker identification close by in order to get a better feel for the exchange. To this end, I have actually copied the book into a word processor and color coded the text and made other changes to the fonts. In this, my private version, I made the bride’s words pink, the bridegroom’s words blue, and all others black. When I guessed that the bride was thinking rather than speaking, I used pink italics. The effect was quite dramatic.226 One advantage of having the text in a word processor and using colors to identify the speakers is immediacy. There is no looking back to the heading or over to the margins to reconnect with the speaker.
Some places where the NASB, NET, and NIV differ in speaker assignments demonstrate how the meaning of the book subtly changes. Let’s take the recurring refrain again, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, that you do not arouse or awaken my love until she pleases” (Songs 2:7; 3:5; 8:4). The NET and NASB ascribe all three to the bride, but the NIV ascribes the first two to the lover and the last to the beloved. I prefer the NET and NASB rendering and believe that it foreshadows and adds dimension to the bride’s words, “Beneath the apple tree I awakened you;” (Songs 8:5b). The drama of 8:5b does not exist in the NIV.
I have already covered this a little, but it is worth repeating: the language and imagery within the Song of Songs comes from another place and time. Some of the imagery carries well, such as, “Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely” (Songs 4:3a). Other imagery is not so clear, “Your temples are like a slice of pomegranate behind your veil” (Songs 4:3b). To appreciate this book, we must stretch our imaginations and relate the images to love and romance. In others words, we need to visualize the imagery from different angles until something romantic, or even erotic, emerges. One of the delights of this book is the “a-ha” experience when a sudden insight reveals the meaning of a puzzling phrase.
The Song of Songs is not western literature, which has a strong sense of sequential flow, time, and logic. Hebrew literature is not so fascinated with time ordered sequences and prefers more exotic arrangements. Time, in the Song of Songs, is all over the clock and calendar.
Before I go further with the structure of the Song of Songs, I want to show the structure of a section in Daniel. This will set the stage for a similar arrangement in Songs. Daniel 2:4–7:28 is written in Aramaic227 and has this structure:
A. Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream
B. Condemnation and Rescue (The Fiery Furnace)
C. A King is Humbled (Belshazzar loses the kingdom)
C’. A King is Humbled (Nebuchadnezzar goes insane)
B’. Condemnation and Rescue (The Lion's Den)
A’. Daniel’s Dream
Daniel’s material is not ordered by time. The two center sections, C and C’, are in reverse chronological sequence, and so are A’ and B’. Instead of time providing the structural underpinning, Daniel uses an inverted parallelism, known as a “chiasm.” The structure exists to invite comparison among the parallel parts: A to A’, B to B’, and C to C’.
Besides having an unfamiliar structure, the Song of Songs consists of Hebrew poetry, whose elements are the relationship of themes and ideas instead of rhythm and rhyme. Some of the poetic elements that you will notice as you read are:
Many of these elements are illustrated in the following passages:
I am the rose of Sharon,
The lily of the valleys (Songs 2:1).
Like a lily among the thorns,
So is my darling among the maidens (Songs 2:2).
I am the rose of Sharon,
The lily of the valleys.
Like a lily among the thorns,
So is my darling among the maidens.
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest,
So is my beloved among the young men.
In his shade I took great delight and sat down (Songs 2:1-3).
Notice how the imagery flows from “rose” to “lily” to “like a lily” to “like a tree” to “in his shade.” The literary intent seems to be to have an associative link that ties one phrase to the next while seeing how far from the original you can get.
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest,
So is my beloved among the young men.
In his shade I took great delight and sat down (Songs 2:3).
Beneath the apple tree I awakened you;
There your mother was in labor with you,
There she was in labor
And gave you birth (Songs 8:5b).
Like Daniel, the Song of Songs has a chiastic structure, but one that is freer and looser. By this I mean that it is hard to draw an unambiguous line separating the parts. You can step back and see it, but when you get close, it almost disappears. What you see from a distance is this:
A. Home in the king’s court
B. Developing love
C. Dream Sequence
D. Consummation
C’. Dream Sequence
B’. Developing love
A’. Home in the country
As with Daniel, the nested segments invite comparisons. There are several themes in the first and last chapters that are clearly parallel, and the chiasm gives us good reason to compare them. Consider these phrases: “My mothers sons were angry with me” (Songs 1:6), and “We have a little sister … ” (Songs 8:8). Note the references to “vineyard” in the two sections. We can surmise, therefore, that the two sections tell the same childhood events from different points of view. The first is from the bride’s viewpoint, and the second is from her brothers’ viewpoint. In the first, the girl “suffered” under brothers who made her work in the fields. In the second, the brothers look after the same girl’s future interests.
So, as you read the Song of Songs:
After awhile, you will find a story emerging.
So why is the Song of Songs in the Bible? What is it that makes it “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness?”
There are two errors people have had regarding sexuality, and the Song of Songs corrects both. The first says that sex is for making children and any other use is carnal and at best tolerated. The second says that sex is a recreational activity that should have limited restraints.
The view that sexual intercourse in marriage is solely to conceive children was put forth by Saint Augustine in his work, “On Marriage and Concupiscence” in which he writes:
The union, then, of male and female for the purpose of procreation is the natural good of marriage. But he makes a bad use of this good who uses it bestially, so that his intention is on the gratification of lust, instead of the desire of offspring.228
The Song of Songs clearly teaches that Saint Augustine was wrong. On their wedding night, the lovers are told, “Eat, friends; Drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers.” The Song of Songs has explicit passages wherein the lovers delight in the features of the other. There is no hint anywhere that the delight of the young married couple is in the seeking of children. Rather, we see the bonding effect that the physical union creates between them.
But in our day, we have no worries about Saint Augustine’s error taking root. Sex is entertainment, and sex education seems to consider abstinence among young people to be impossible. But the lovers in the Song of Songs rejoice in their chastity. After her brothers talk about their “little sister” and whether she is a virtuous wall or a loose door, the young woman tells us, “I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers; Then I became in his eyes as one who finds peace” (Songs 8:10). She tells us that she was both virtuous and sexually attractive. Both pleased her husband, who could trust her to be faithful to him.
Songs 8:6,7 proclaims love’s desire to be the only one in the eyes of the other:
Put me like a seal over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy is as severe as Sheol;
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
The very flame of the Lord.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Nor will rivers overflow it;
If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love,
It would be utterly despised.
What is the seal in this refrain? According to some, it is a cylinder seal worn around the neck or a stamp seal worn on the wrist.229 Since the seal uniquely belongs to and identifies its owner, the seal imagery is a request to uniquely belong to and identify the beloved. Alternatively, the seal could be an imprint on the heart made as one would make by rolling a cylinder on wet clay. This speaks of the desire to be a permanent impression on the heart. Either way, Songs 8:6 is about permanent love in a relationship, the reality of jealousy, and the fact that love cannot be bought. Such a picture is gone from today’s cultural message. Perhaps the frankness of the Song of Songs could bring it back.
As I stated previously, the language of the Song of Songs is discrete. As we read, we know what is going on, but the privacy of the young couple is preserved. We share in their joy and their feelings, but we are not assaulted with graphic images. The discretion is achieved by the artistic use of images and double entendre.
So the lessons for the body are to honor chastity and virtue, to enjoy the physical union in marriage, to be devoted exclusively to one another, and to be discrete. As such, the Song of Songs could be very useful in pre-marriage counseling and maybe college and young singles classes.
The Song of Songs is good for the soul because the poetry it contains is beautiful, and beauty is good for the soul. Much of evangelical Christianity has promoted left-brained rationalism over right-brained artistry. Daniel Wallace writes in his excellent paper, “The Uneasy Conscience of a Non-Charismatic Evangelical”:
The Holy Spirit does not work just on the left brain. He also works on the right brain: he sparks our imagination, causes us to rejoice, laugh, sing, and create. Few Christians are engaged and fully committed to the arts today. Where are the hymn writers? Where are the novelists? Painters? Playwrights? A very high-powered editor of a Christian magazine told me two weeks ago that he knows of only one exceptional Christian fiction writer. What are our seminaries doing to encourage these right brainers? What is the Church doing to encourage them?230
The Song of Songs is a completely right-brained book and is, therefore, good for the development of the right brain. It will be the right brain that will comprehend the book’s poetic images. It will be the right brain that will delight in the language. Take the following picture of spring:
My beloved responded and said to me:
“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along.
For behold, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers have already appeared in the land;
The time has arrived for pruning the vines,
And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.
The fig tree has ripened its figs,
And the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance.
Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along!” (Songs 2:10-13).
This is food for the soul as one feels no longer the cold wet of the winter rains, sees the fields colored with the flowers, hears the sound of the turtledove, tastes a ripe fig, and smells the fragrance as one walks with a loved one. All five senses plus the emotions of young love are alive here. What I am saying is simply this: the Song of Songs is to be enjoyed.
Must we conclude that the Song of Songs has nothing to say about God and spiritual matters? Not necessarily, but we will not find it in the simple meaning of the text. Nevertheless, I have noticed that as people read the book, they seem to experience the love of God in a special way. I think the difference is that they come into contact with the phileo love of God for them. We do not often hear about such a thing. We talk of the agape love of God, how He loves us unconditionally and how it is a higher love. We talk about loving our spouses with unconditional agape love. But phileo love between friends, that which finds value in the other, is also important. Agape love may be all that is needed for a marriage to survive, but it is when it is combined with phileo love that it is its most satisfying. Many read the Song of Songs and note how the bridegroom and bride rejoice over each other, and they begin to think about their heavenly Bridegroom. They see Him rejoicing over His bride and, by extension, to them personally. Think of the purity, joy, excitement, discovery, intimacy, promise, and beauty shared between the lovers in the Song of Songs. It is preposterous, in this light, to imagine a stoic Bridegroom on the day of our salvation and the day of our wedding banquet. There is a hint here of something truly marvelous and precious. Consider what Isaiah says:
You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
It will no longer be said to you, “Forsaken,”
Nor to your land will it any longer be said, “Desolate”;
But you will be called, “My delight is in her,”
And your land, “Married”;
For the Lord delights in you,
And to Him your land will be married.
For as a young man marries a virgin,
So your sons will marry you;
And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
So your God will rejoice over you (Isaiah 62:3-5).
Whereas there is not sufficient presence in the Song of Songs to develop a formal typology, there is a hint of the love that Jesus Christ has for His bride. Isaiah tells us that He will rejoice, and the Song of Songs gives us the language of that rejoicing.
For this reason, composers have felt free to “borrow” verses to communicate God’s love to us. A favorite seems to be Songs 2:4. One well-known song goes like this:
He’s brought me to his banqueting table; His banner over me is love (3x).
His banner – Over me – Is love.
And, I have a friend who has written an oratorio based on the Song of Songs. His use of Songs 2:4 goes like this:
There’s a table laid before you,
There’s a banquet hall in laud.
Here the calling of His able,
Hear the calling of their God.
There’s a banquet hall in heaven
Go there slowly close your eyes.
You’re the only one attending,
Will you come?231
Both songs take the verse out of context, because it is not plausible that Solomon wrote about the wedding feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9). On the other hand, someone who knows about the wedding feast can read Songs 2:4 and, by association, think about that wedding feast. It is exactly the kind of thought we would have on that day. Why not sing about it now? What I submit for your consideration is that the Song of Songs provides us with the love language that we need to express our relationship with our heavenly Bridegroom. J. Sidlow Baxter writes:
To some it may seem that the language of Solomon’s Song is too intimate or extravagant to express the communion of the saints with the heavenly Bridegroom; yet it is a fact that the most ardent lovers of the Lord have here found a relief of expression such as could be found nowhere else. There is a rapture of communion with Christ which no ordinary phraseology can utter.232
The Song of Songs vividly and brightly tells us how the bridegroom and the bride rejoice over each other and delight in each other. On the day of our salvation, our Lord and Savior and now Bridegroom will rejoice and delight over us and we in Him. This is what resonates in our spirit as we read the Song of Songs. What makes this different from typology is that we are not actually making identification between the Song of Song’s bridegroom and Jesus. The Song of Songs just helps us to know His heart.
So, start on your adventure with this book. Perhaps I should pass on the admonishment of the Jewish rabbis that no one under thirty should be so engaged, but it’s probably too late for that. Study this book over a period of time, and you will discover this: Although it has no mention of God, it is, nevertheless, a Holy Book.
214 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Donald E. Curtis at Community Bible Chapel, on April 29, 2001. Don is an elder at Cobb Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kennesaw, Georgia. You can e-mail comments and questions to http://bible.org/user/69/contact
215 Unless noted otherwise, All Scripture is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE.
216 For more information, see the translation notes for Songs 8:6 in the NET Bible [Available Online.
217 The first acrostic appears in Esther 5:4 <((oYh^ /m*h*w+ El#m#h^ aoby which means “may the king and Haman come this day.” You can see the covenant name of God, hwhy, as an acrostic of the first letter in each word reading right to left. The second acrostic appears in Esther 5:13, yl! ho#v oNnya@ hz#-lk*w which means “Yet all of this does not satisfy.” Here, the acrostic is on the final letters in the word reading left to right. I have little doubt that the acrostics are deliberate. In the first acrostic, Esther is the speaker and one might say that the Lord is moving, behind the scenes, on her behalf. In the second, the speaker is Haman and his hatred for Mordecai has reached the point where it will mean his undoing. The double reversal, i.e., the final letters and reverse spelling, communicates that the Lord is working, behind the scenes, against him.
218 Robert L. Alden., “Songs of Songs 8:12a: Who Said It?,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, September 1988, 277.
219 See the Independent Women’s Forum research study, “Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right—College Women on Dating and Mating Today,” Online: http://www.iwf.org/news/010727.shtml.
220 This is the Hebrew title for the Song of Songs.
221 Siddur Eitz Chaim / The Complete ArtScroll Siddur (Brooklyn, NY; Mesorah Publications, ltd.; 1985) 328, 329.
222 Ibid. 328, 329.
223 J. Paul Tanner, “The History of Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” Bibleotheca Sacra, January-March 1997.
224 J. Paul Tanner, “The Message of the Song of Songs,” Bibleotheca Sacra, April-June 1997.
225 Kenny Loggins, “Danny’s Song.”
226 The complete colorized text is available online at http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/~nbchesed. (Editors note: this is no longer available on that link. Consider using the Bible.org contact form to contact the author to locate this item.)
227 The rest of Daniel is written in Hebrew.
228 Saint Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book 1, Chapter 5, Online: http://www.fordham.edu/
halsall/source/aug-marr.html.
229 Greg W. Parsons, “Guidelines for Understanding and Utilizing the Song of Songs,” Bibleotheca Sacra, October-December 1999.
230 Daniel B. Wallace, “The Uneasy Conscience of a Non-Charasmatic Evangelical,” Online: /docs/soapbox/estsw.htm.
231 Richard Woods, “Your Kiss is My Desire,” Copyright 2000, Unpublished.
232 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book, 1978 Zondervan Publishing House, Volume 3, p. 176.
As you know, we are in the midst of what may be called an Old Testament Survey, a series entitled “From Creation to the Cross.” The purpose of this series is to provide us with a better working knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, a better understanding of God’s progressive revelation, and a fresh look at the unfolding drama of redemption which culminates in Jesus Christ.
The previous two lessons discussed the ministry of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, which has given us some insight into the deteriorating situation in Israel, Judah, and the divided kingdom. Following on the heels of Elijah and Elisha, God raised up new prophets to speak for him. These new prophets continued in the prophetic tradition of Moses. They continued in the spirit of Elijah. I call these new prophets the writing prophets to distinguish them from their predecessors, for they are unique in that their prophecies are written down for us. I am referring of course to the Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel) and the Twelve Minor Prophets (the final twelve books of our Old Testament). In fact, it may be helpful to turn to the Table of Contents in your Bible to see them all listed.
It should be pointed out that the minor prophets are so-called only because these books are relatively short in length; the major prophets are relatively long books. The terms imply nothing about their relative importance.251 It would perhaps be more appropriate to refer to them as the longer and shorter prophets.
These two combined lessons will give an introduction to these Writing Prophets. It is appropriate to devote some time to an “introduction” for a couple of reasons. First, there is much in common among them as a type of Old Testament literature which can help us understand them.252 They have similarities not only in literary style, but in context and content which are worth noting. Second, an overview will hopefully prepare us and encourage us to study them on our own, as we look forward to dealing with most, if not all of them, individually as our series continues.
Let us first take a look at the chart in Figure 1 on page 2, which will help us see how the writing prophets fit chronologically in the history of Israel and Judah.253 The bar represents the nation of Israel becoming a divided kingdom after the rule of Solomon. You will remember God told Solomon that upon his death, the Kingdom would become divided (1 Kings 11:9-13), and it did.
As you see, the writing prophets come on the scene immediately after Elijah and Elisha and continue where their ministries left off. We see here an approximate chronological relationship of the writing prophets, which span the period from Elisha to the end of the Old Testament Scriptures.254
The writing prophets may be divided into four groups:
Prophets of Israel – Jonah, Amos, and Hosea
Prophets of Judah – Obadiah, Joel, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk
Exilic Prophets – Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel
Post-exilic Prophets – Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi
The dating of the prophets Jonah, Joel, and Obadiah are more questionable than the other prophets. All three of these have are the subject of fair arguments for much later dates.255 I have shown them here at their earliest suggested dates for convenience.
Studying the Figure above can give us a feel for how the various prophets relate to each other chronologically, which we notice is not how they are presented in the canonical order. Understanding the chronological order along with the corresponding events in Israel’s history is vital to understanding why the prophets say what they say (which will hopefully become evident later). But let’s begin by considering the writings of the prophets in general, as we find them presented to us in the Old Testament.
I think most of us would agree at the outset that these prophetic books are among the most difficult parts of the Bible to interpret or to read with understanding. We shouldn’t be embarrassed to admit we have difficulty reading the prophets, for actually we are in good company if we do. In referring to the prophets, Martin Luther once said the following:
“They have a queer way of talking, like people who, instead of proceeding in an orderly manner, ramble off from one thing to the next so that you cannot make heads or tails of them or see what they are getting at.”256
Now that is a comment to which I can relate.
Let’s look at a few reasons for some of the difficulty we have:
The Meaning of Prophecy – The primary difficulty for most modern readers of the prophets stems from an inaccurate understanding of the words “prophet” and “prophecy.” The word prophet refers to one who tells forth (or proclaims), as well as one who foretells.257 But we often limit the meaning of prophecy to foretelling the future, so many Christians refer to the prophets only for predictions about Christ’s first coming, or his second coming, and the end times as though prediction of events far distant to their own day was their main concern.
It should be pointed out that less than 2% of Old Testament prophecy is messianic. Less than 5% specifically concerns the New Covenant age. And less than 1% concern events still future to us.258 The prophets did indeed announce the future. But it was usually the immediate future of Israel, Judah, and the surrounding nations they announced – not our future. One of the keys to understanding the Prophets, therefore, is to recognize that for us to see their prophecies fulfilled, we must often look back on times that were still future to them, but for us are past.259
To see the prophets as primarily predictors of future events is to miss their primary function, which was, in fact, to speak for God to their contemporaries.
Historical Distance – Another matter that complicates our understanding the prophets is the problem of historical distance. By the very nature of things, we will have a harder time understanding the words of the prophets than the Israelites who heard those same words in person. We are far removed from the religious, historical, and cultural life of ancient Israel, and we simply have trouble putting the words of the prophets in their proper context. It is often hard for us to see what they are referring to and why. Things clear to them tend to be opaque to us.
The Spoken Nature of the Prophets – Finally, the spoken nature of their prophecies causes many of our difficulties in understanding.
For example, of the hundreds of prophets in ancient Israel in Old Testament times, only 16 were chosen to speak oracles that would be collected and written down into books. We know that other prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha, played a very influential role in delivering God’s Word to His people and to other nations as well. But we know more about these prophets than we do of their actual words. What they did is described in far greater length than what they said -- and when we are told what they said, it is placed very specifically and clearly in the context of the narratives in which they appear. Generally, in the narrative books of the Old Testament, we hear about prophets and very little from prophets. In the prophetic books, however, we hear from the prophets and very little about the prophets themselves. That single difference accounts for most of the problem people have making sense of the prophetic books.
Furthermore the prophetic books, especially the longer ones, are collections of spoken oracles, not always presented in their original chronological sequence, often without hints as to where one oracle ends and another begins, and often without hints as to their historical setting. On top of that, most of the oracles were spoken in poetry. We’ll talk more about oracles later, but I think you get the point.
Now, if these are the reasons we have difficulty with the prophets, then in order to really understand the prophets, we have to get a better handle on: (1) the function of a prophet; (2) the historical context of their writings; and (3) the form of their writings.
Covenant Enforcement Mediators – To understand what God would say to us through these inspired books, we must first have a clear understanding as to the role and function of the prophet in Israel. The prophets spoke for God to His people. They functioned to call Israel back to God,260 which meant a call back to faithfulness to their Covenant relationship with God; i.e., back to the Law of Moses. In accomplishing this primary purpose, they confronted Israel’s sin and demanded repentance. Simply stated, the prophets were “covenant enforcement mediators.”261 There was a covenant relationship between God and His people. This covenant contained not only the rules which they were to keep, but it describes the sorts of punishments that God will necessarily apply to His people if they do not keep the Law, as well as the benefits He will impart to them if they are faithful. What is important is that God does not merely give His Law, but He enforces it. Positive enforcement is blessing; negative enforcement is curse. This is where the prophets come in. God announced the enforcement of His Law (both positive and negative) through the prophets.
Moses as a Model – Moses was the mediator of God’s Law when he first announced it, and thus is a paradigm (or model) for the prophets. They are God’s mediators, or spokesmen, for the covenant. Through them, God reminds people in the generations after Moses that if the covenant is kept, blessing will result, but if not, judgment will come.
Blessing and Cursing – The kinds of blessings that come for faithfulness are found in Leviticus 26:1-13, Deuteronomy 4:32-40, and Deuteronomy 28:1-14. Generally, these may be categorized as life, health, prosperity, agricultural abundance, respect, and safety. But these blessings are announced with a warning of curses (punishments) if Israel is not obedient and faithful to the covenant. The curses are found in Leviticus 26:14-39, Deuteronomy 4:15-28, and Deuteronomy 28:15-32:42. Generally, these may be categorized under ten “D’s”: death, disease, drought, dearth, danger, destruction, defeat, deportation, destitution, and disgrace.
These same categories apply in what God communicates through the prophets. One must always bear in mind that the prophets did not invent the blessings and curses they announced. They reproduced God’s Word, not their own. Through them, God announced His intention to enforce the covenant and always in accordance with the categories of blessing and curse already contained in the Law. If we will take the trouble to learn those chapters from the Pentateuch, we will be rewarded with a much better understanding of why the prophets say the things they do.
When God wants to announce blessing for the nation through the prophet Amos, He does so in terms of metaphors of agricultural abundance, life, health, prosperity, respect, and safety (see Amos 9:11-15). When He announces doom for the disobedient nation of Hosea’s day, He does so according to one or more of the ten “D’s.” For example: destruction in Hosea 8:14 or deportation in Hosea 9:3. These curses are often metaphorical, though they can certainly be literal as well. They are always corporate, referring to the nation as a whole. Blessings or curses do not guarantee prosperity or dearth to any specific individual.
Statistically speaking, a majority of the prophets announce curse because in the time of their prophecies (generally 800 - 587 BC), the Israelites (north and south) were heading for punishment. After the destruction of both kingdoms, i.e., after 586 BC, the prophets were moved more often to speak of blessings rather than curses because once the punishment of the nation is complete, God resumes His basic plan, which is to show mercy. Deuteronomy 4:25-31 gives a nutshell description of this sequence:
25 “When you become the father of children and children’s children and have remained long in the land, and act corruptly, and make an idol in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord your God so as to provoke Him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you shall surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long on it, but shall be utterly destroyed. 27 “And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you shall be left few in number among the nations, where the Lord shall drive you. 28 “And there you will serve gods, the work of man’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. 29 “But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul. 30 “When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice. 31 “For the Lord your God is a compassionate God; He will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them.
As you read the prophets, look for these simple patterns: either (1) an identification of Israel’s sin followed by a prediction of cursing, or (2) an announcement of God’s faithfulness and love for her followed by a prediction of blessing, depending on the circumstance. Most of the time, that is what the prophets are conveying.
The prophetic books require time and study. People often approach these books casually, as if a surface reading through the Prophets will yield a high level of understanding. This isn’t done with textbooks in our ordinary schooling, and it doesn’t really work with the Prophets either. Specifically for understanding and interpreting the Prophets, one must be willing to consult outside resources, such as Bible dictionaries and commentaries, which can shed light on the background information so we will be able to catch the point of what a Prophet conveys. God’s Word came through the prophets to people in particular situations. Its value depends partly on our ability to appreciate those situations so we can in turn apply them to our own.
Historical Context – It is interesting to note that the 16 prophetic books of the Old Testament come from a rather narrow band in the whole panorama of Israelite history. Why is there such a concentrated writing down of prophetic word during the time between Amos and Malachi? It is probably because this period in Israel’s history called especially for covenant enforcement mediation, which was the task of the prophets. That is along with the evident desire of God to record for all subsequent history the warnings and blessings that those prophets announced on His behalf during those pivotal years.
Those years were characterized by three things: (1) unprecedented political, military, economic, and social upheaval; (2) an enormous level of religious unfaithfulness and disregard for the original Mosaic covenant; and (3) dramatic shifts in populations and national boundaries. In these circumstances, God’s Word was needed anew. God raised up prophets and announced His Word accordingly.
The Books of 1 and 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles provide the biblical context of the writing prophets leading up to the Babylonian exile. There we see that by the time the writing prophets come on the scene, Israel was a nation permanently divided by a long ongoing civil war. The northern kingdom’s disobedience to the covenant had far outstripped anything yet known in Judah, and Israel was slated for destruction by God because of its sin. Amos, beginning around 760, and Hosea, beginning around 755, announced the impending destruction. God raised up the Assyrians as the new superpower at that time and the instrument of judgment on Israel. In 722 BC, Assyria sacked the capital city of Samaria and thus conquered Israel.262
The people of Judah witnessed the destruction of the northern kingdom, as did Isaiah and Micah, who warned that they were not immune to God’s wrath and were, in fact, on the same road to destruction. Thereafter, the mounting sinfulness of Judah and the rise of another superpower, Babylon, became the subject of the prophets Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, as well as Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Judah, too, was destroyed for its disobedience and carried off into exile. Perhaps this is where an example of the importance of historical context can be best illustrated.
The Babylonians rose up and defeated the Assyrians (612 BC), and then defeated the Egyptians at the battle of Carchemish in 605 BC to become the number one power in the civilized world. Following the defeat of the Egyptians, Nebuchadnezzar headed south into Judah and entered Jerusalem as conqueror. Then begins the exile. When we think of the exile, however, we need to know that there were actually three deportations. The first occurred in 605 BC when Daniel was taken to Babylon. The second deportation occurred in 597 BC when Nebuchadnezzar returned to quell a resistance movement; this is when Ezekiel was taken to Babylon (during all this, Jeremiah remained in Jerusalem). The final deportation occurred in 586 BC when Jerusalem was finally destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.
Now take, for example, the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: Both prophesied before and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The Book of Jeremiah was written before the destruction. Jeremiah, an eyewitness to the destruction, wrote Lamentations afterward. Ezekiel’s prophecies in chapters 1-32 were given in Babylon before the fall of Jerusalem. Chapters 33-48 were prophecies given after. The focus of the prophet’s ministry changes with respect to that event. Before the destruction of Jerusalem, they spoke mainly of judgment. After the destruction, they begin to talk more of restoration. If you know the historical context, it is easier to understand why they said what they did.
After the exile, when the people were allowed to return to Jerusalem, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi announced God’s will for the rebuilding of the temple, the rebuilding of the nation, and the reinstitution of orthodoxy.
Unless we know these events and others within this era too numerous to mention here, we probably will not be able to follow very well what the prophets are saying. Each prophetic oracle was delivered in a specific historical setting. God spoke through His prophets to people in a given time and place, and under given circumstances. A knowledge of the date, audience, and situation, therefore, when they are known, contributes a great deal to a reader’s ability to comprehend an oracle.
A. They Spoke in Oracles – When we come to the actual study of the prophetic books, the first thing we must learn to do is to think oracles (just as we must learn to think paragraphs in the epistles or narrative sections of the Bible).263 This is not always an easy task, but to know the difficulty and the need to do this is the beginning of some exciting discovery. For the most part, the longer prophetic books are collections of spoken oracles, not always presented in their original chronological sequence, often without any indication as to where one oracle ends and another begins, and often without hints as to their historical setting. To top it off, most of the oracles were recorded in poetic form.
Most of the time, what the prophets said is presented in their books in run-on fashion. That is, the words they spoke at various times and places over the years of their ministry have been collected and written down together, without divisions to indicate where one oracle ends and another begins. Moreover, even when one can assume by a major change of subject that a new oracle has probably begun, the lack of explanation still leaves one asking, “Was this said on the same day to the same audience, or was it said years later -- or earlier -- to a different group under different circumstances?” The answer can make a big difference as to one’s understanding.
Some parts of prophetic books provide exceptions. In Haggai and the early chapters of Zechariah, for example, each prophecy is dated. With the help of a Bible dictionary, handbook, or commentary, we can follow the progression of those prophecies in their historical context rather easily. And some of the prophecies in other books, notably Jeremiah and Ezekiel, are likewise dated and placed in a setting by the inspired author. But it simply does not work that way most of the time. A good commentary or Bible dictionary is often helpful in explaining such things to us as we read.
Literary Form of the Oracles – Since the isolation of individual oracles is one key to understanding the prophetic books, it is important to know something about the different forms the prophets used to compose their oracles. Just as the Bible as a whole is composed of many different kinds of literature and literary forms, so also the prophets employed a variety of literary forms in their divinely inspired messages. The commentaries can identify and explain these forms. Perhaps the three most common forms are the lawsuit oracle, the woe oracle, and the promise oracle.264 They each have different literary features. Understanding the features of these prophetic literary devices helps one to comprehend the message of God more accurately. I’d like to take the time to look at some examples to show you what I mean.
The Lawsuit Oracle – Let’s turn to Isaiah 3:13-26, which constitutes an allegorical literary form called a “covenant lawsuit.” In this and scores of other lawsuit allegories in the Prophets (e.g., Hosea 3:3-17, 4:1-19, etc.), God is portrayed imaginatively as the plaintiff, prosecuting attorney, and judge in a court case against the defendant, Israel. The full lawsuit form contains a summons, a charge, evidence, and a verdict, though these elements may sometimes be implied rather than being explicit. In Isaiah 3, the elements are incorporated as follows: The court convenes, and the lawsuit is brought against Israel (verses 13-14a). The indictment or accusation is spoken (verses 14b-16). Since the evidence shows that Israel is clearly guilty, the judgment sentence is announced (verses 17-26). Because the covenant has been violated, the sorts of punishments listed in the covenant will come upon the people of Israel: disease, destitution, deprivation, and death. The figurative style of this allegory is a dramatic and effective way of communication to Israel that it is going to be punished because of its disobedience, and that the punishment will be severe. The special literary form helps get the special message across.
The Woe Oracle – Through the prophets, God makes predictions of imminent doom using the device of the “woe,” and no Israelite could miss the significance of the use of that word. Woe oracles contain, either explicitly or implicitly, three elements that uniquely characterize this form: an announcement of distress (the word “Woe,” for example), the reason for the distress, and a prediction of doom. Read Habakkuk 2:6-8 as an example of a woe oracle spoken against Babylon. The oracle announces “woe” in verse 6. The reason is also given in verse 6, where Babylon is personified as a thief and extortionist. Disaster is predicted in verses 7-8, when all those Babylon has oppressed will one day rise up against it. This form is allegorical, though not all woes are; cf. Micah 2:1-5; Zeph. 2:5-7.
The Promise (or Salvation) Oracle – Another common prophetic literary form is the promise or “salvation” oracle. You will recognize this form whenever you see these elements: reference to the future, mention of radical change, and mention of blessing. Amos 9:11-15, a typical promise oracle, contains these elements. The future is mentioned as “In that day” (verse 11). The radical change is described as the restoration and repair of “David's fallen tent” (verse 11), the exaltation of Israel over Edom (verse 12), and the return from the exile (verses 14, 15). Blessing comes via the covenantal categories already mentioned (e.g., life, health, prosperity, agricultural abundance, respect, and safety). All these items are included in Amos 9:11-15, though health is implicit rather than explicit. The central emphasis here is upon agricultural abundance. Crops, for example, will be so enormous that the harvesters will not be finished by the time the sowers are to start planting again (verse 13). For other examples of promise oracles, see Hosea 2:16-20 and 2:21-23, Isaiah 45:1-7, and also Jeremiah 31:1-9.
B. They Were Poets – God spoke through His prophets largely in poetic form. People were used to poetry, and they could remember it much better than prose. The prophets often used what may be called “poetic prose,” a special, formal style employing the same characteristics as poetry, though less consistently. Because it is so much more regular and stylized than colloquial prose, it too was better remembered.
All the prophetic books contain a substantial amount of poetry, and several are exclusively poetic. As a matter of fact, poetry is the second most common literary feature and comprises almost one-third of the Bible.265 Therefore, we must have some understanding of biblical poetry in order to better understand Scripture. The language of poetry is imagery. It is designed to stir the emotions and create vivid mental pictures, not feed the intellect. Consequently, poetry uses devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole to create images that evoke a sensory experience in our imagination. It is therefore important that we be able to identify and interpret the devices of poetic language. Poetry must be read, understood, and interpreted as poetry.
Finally, the structure of poetry is parallelism. Parallelism is the verse form in which virtually all biblical poetry is written.266 Hopefully, you have some knowledge of poetic parallelism in the Bible, but I’ll touch on it just a bit anyway since it is so prevalent in the prophets. When we speak of parallelism, we are referring to the Hebrew technique of presenting a thought using parallel literary members. It is the phenomenon whereby two or more successive poetic lines strengthen, reinforce, and develop each other’s thought. The most common types of parallelism are Synonymous, Antithetical, and Synthetic parallelism as illustrated below:
Synonymous parallelism is where the second or subsequent line repeats or reinforces the sense of the first line, as in Isaiah 44:22:267
“I have swept your offenses like a cloud,
your sins like the morning mist.” Or,
“Then I shall turn your festivals into mourning
And all your songs into lamentation” (Amos 8:10a).
Antithetical parallelism, on the other hand, is where the second or subsequent line contrasts the thought of the first, as in Hosea 7:14:
“They do not cry out to me from their hearts,
but wail upon their beds.”
Synthetic parallelism, perhaps a little harder to discern, is where the second or subsequent line adds to the first line in any manner which provides further information, as in Obadiah 21:
“Deliverers will go up from Mount Zion
to govern the mountains of Esau.
And the kingdom will be the Lord’s.”
It should be noted that the literature discusses other more extensive and sophisticated forms of parallelism found in biblical poetry. It would certainly be worthwhile to become more familiar with this poetic structure.268 As with oracle forms, a general familiarity with Hebrew parallelism can be quite rewarding as we read the prophets. The presentation of ideas in poetic forms such as this need not be confusing, as long as we read carefully and are aware of the unique features. Poetry is just as comprehensible as prose if we know the rules.
There is another feature in the prophetic books which I find fascinating. This feature is primarily seen in the narrative portions where we are told something about the prophets themselves. Many of the Old Testament prophets became what may be called a “pedagogy in biography.”269 This means that what they did became a teaching experience for the onlookers.
Very often the prophets of God had to endure unusual hardship so that their lives and experiences could be an instrument of teaching to those around them. It is interesting to look for these “pedagogy’s in biography” in the narrative sections of the prophetic books. You will find the prophets have some hard days to live through and some hard experiences to endure as they provided themselves as visual aids for the prophecies which God would deliver to the people.
Examples of “Pedagogy in Biography” in the life of Ezekiel – A striking example is found in Ezekiel 4:1-13. He was instructed to take a brick, lay it on the ground, and inscribe the word Jerusalem on it. Making believe the brick was “Jerusalem,” he was to build a siege wall, pitch toy camps around it, and place battering rams against it on all sides. The reason for this is given in verse 3. It was to be a sign to the house of Judah. This was prior to the final invasion of Nebuchadnezzar in 588, which lasted until 586 when the city was breached. Ezekiel’s prophecy took place between 592 and 589 BC.
In addition, Ezekiel was commanded to lie on his left side for 390 days (apparently beside his little model of the city under siege) to bear the iniquity of the house of Israel, and when that was completed, he was to lie on his right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for 40 days. For nourishment, he was to eat only peasant’s food cooked over cow dung. All this was to symbolize the pollution with which Israel and Judah had defiled themselves.
A second good example is seen in chapter 12:3-7. God commanded Ezekiel to dig a hole in a wall, to gather the baggage of an exile by day, throw it over his shoulder, and to go out through the wall in the evenings like an exile leaving his city. He was apparently to do this over and over so the people would ask him what he was doing. He was to say,
“I am a sign to you. As I have done, so it will be done to them (in Jerusalem). They will go into exile, into captivity.”
Other Examples of “Pedagogy in Biography”:
Hosea is another example of pedagogy in biography (Hosea 1:2-9). God had Hosea experience the heartbreak of an unfaithful wife as both a picture of Israel’s unfaithfulness to Him and a preparation of Hosea for his prophetic ministry.
Isaiah went about barefoot and naked as a sign for the Lord. “Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a sign against Egypt and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush” (Isaiah 20:2-4).
Jeremiah became a participant in the technique of “Pedagogy in Biography” when God commanded him to make a yoke for his neck and then to walk around wearing it (Jeremiah 27:2-3). This was to illustrate God’s prophecy that Judah was to soon come under the yoke of Babylon. And since this was God’s judgment, Jeremiah told them to submit to Babylon rather than resist. The people hated Jeremiah, not only for this message of coming judgment, but for his call to submit and surrender. He was branded a traitor.270
We have touched on a number of characteristics and features of the writing prophets, which hopefully will encourage us to spend more time reading them. In summary, let’s remember that in order to understand the prophets, we must understand the function of the prophet (which is not merely to tell the future), the historical context (not only in general, but specifically with regard to each prophet and, ideally, each oracle). We must also understand the literary devices used in the prophetic writing (the poetic and oracle forms). And we must be willing to devote a little time and prayer to the endeavor. We must remember that the prophets were primarily covenant enforcement mediators. They spoke for God to His people. They confronted Israel’s sin and called them back to the Law. They called them back to a covenant relationship with God.
There is much more that could be said about the writing prophets. I have only scratched the surface and talked of some of the features they have in common. They each have their own unique features, their own unique structure, and their own unique contribution to the Old Testament, which are well worth our study.
The task of interpretation is to set the Prophets within their own historical contexts and to hear what God was saying to Israel through them. Once we hear what God said to them, even if our circumstances differ considerably, we will often hear it again in our own settings in a rather direct way, which brings us to the area of application. In thinking about application of the prophets to us today, we can make some observations:
(1) The ungodly society in Israel and Judah in the days of the prophets is certainly similar to the ungodly society of our day; i.e., we see the similar self-indulgence, materialism, sexual promiscuity and perversion, pluralism, humanism, rampant ungodliness, etc. Does that in itself not suggest that there is a message in the prophets for us today?
(2) Can it not be argued that the sins of Israel are sins in the New Testament too? After all, they violate the two great commandments that both the Old Covenant and New Covenant share (Matthew 22:36-40).
(3) We see through the prophets that God is serious about His covenant with Israel. Does this not suggest He is just as serious about His New Covenant through Jesus Christ? Does this not imply that there is a message in the prophets for the church today?
There are, no doubt, many varied applications for today which may be derived from the individual prophetic writings, but I want to step back and look at the context for application from the prophets viewed as a whole. There is an overarching theme in the prophets which should serve as the primary thrust of application.
To understand what I am driving at, let me ask a couple of questions: “What was the goal of the prophetic ministry?” Or, perhaps more appropriately, “What was it the prophets were seeking in their ministry?” You might say restoration, i.e., a restored covenant relationship with God. Yes, that may properly be understood as the ultimate goal. But what was it the prophets actually sought? The prophets sought repentance. Restoration was the goal, but repentance is what they hoped to see from the people. In fact, this message of the prophets was so prevalent that Zechariah (one of the last prophets) was able to sum up in one sentence all the prophets that preceded him: “the earlier prophets proclaimed: Thus says the Lord of Hosts, turn from your evil ways and doings,” (Zechariah 1:4). The message of the prophets was a call for repentance.
Is there a place for a call to repentance today? Is there a need for a message of repentance today? Israel, the people of God in the Old Testament, turned away from God and needed a message of repentance. Do we Christians, who are looking so much like the pagan society around us that we are virtually indistinguishable, need the same message?
Walt Kaiser, one of my favorite authors in Old Testament studies, commented on application from the prophets in the following,
“Preaching from the prophets can have a great contemporary application if we recognize repentance as the condition for experiencing God’s favor.” 271
How much are we like Israel, who claimed God’s eternal favor based on His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then worshipped the things of this world? We claim the eternal favor of God based on the blood of Jesus, we say “once saved always saved,” and we worship the things of this world. How different is that? I say the prophets of the Old Covenant do indeed have a message for us today. As one of our elders related to me last week, “When you read the book of Micah, it’s almost as if he was writing to the church today.”
God preserved a faithful remnant in Israel. But being an Israelite did not guarantee you were part of that remnant: “not all Israel is Israel,” (Romans 9:6). God is preserving a faithful remnant in the church today, but being “in the church” does not guarantee that you are a part of that remnant.
The prophets serve as constant reminders to us of God’s serious regard for His covenant. For those who obey the stipulations of the New Covenant (loving God and loving one's neighbor through Jesus Christ), the final, eternal, result will be blessing, even though the results in this world are not guaranteed to be so encouraging. Dare I suggest that for those who disobey, the result can only be curse, regardless of how well one fares during life on earth?
250 This is the edited manuscript of messages delivered by Jim Ellis at Community Bible Chapel, on June 10 and June 17, 2001.
251 Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Zondervan, 1993), p. 165.
252 The Old Testament is made up of a number of types of literature (or literary genre). One of those genre is “prophetic” literature which has its own unique features. See William W. Klein, et. al., Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Word Publishing, 1993), pp. 259-322.
253 Thomas R. Rodgers, The Panorama of the Old Testament (Trinity Press, 1997): chronology of the early prophets, p. 310, and chronology of the later prophets, p. 321.
254 The prophets are shown at single points-in-time along the bar to keep the graphic from getting too complicated; however, this does not do justice to the fact that some had long ministries. For example, Isaiah’s ministry covered a period of 40 years. Hence, Isaiah, Micah, and Hosea were contemporaries with overlapping ministries.
255 For a chronology showing later dates for Jonah, Obadiah, and Joel, see Willem A. VanGemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word (Zondervan, 1990), p. 103.
256 Cited by Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Trans. D.M.G. Stalker, 2 Vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962, 1965) 2:33, n. 1.
257 The most common term for the person and office is “prophet,” from the Greek prophetes, which basically means “one who speaks for God.” It can mean “to speak for, proclaim” as well as “speak beforehand.” A prophet then is a forthteller as well as a foreteller; both meanings are implicit and both usages are found in the Bible. The corresponding Hebrew word nabi emphasizes “one who is called.” See William S. LaSor, et. al., Old Testament Survey (Eerdmans, 2nd ed, 1996), p. 222.
258 William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, & Robert L. Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Word Publishing, 1993), p. 303.
259 Klein, et. al., pp. 307-310.
260 For specific examples of the prophets calling Israel back to God, see Amos 5:6, Hosea 14:1, Joel 2:12-13, Isaiah 55:3, and Zephaniah 2:1-3.
261 Fee and Stewart, p. 167.
262 As an aside, the Assyrians not only plundered the cities of the northern kingdom, but they removed the wealthy and influential people of Israel to other conquered areas and took people from other nations and moved them into the land (2 Kings 17:24). This was an effective way to prevent organized resistance in conquered lands. It also effectively resulted in a new mixed race of people who became known as Samaritans.
263 Fee and Stuart, p. 176.
264 Ibid., pp. 175-178.
265 J. B. Gabel and C. B. Wheeler, The Bible as Literature, 2nd. ed. (New York/Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 37 and p. 293.
266 Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Academie Books, Zondervan, 1984), p. 103.
267 Jesus used parallelism on numerous occasions. For example, he uses synonymous parallelism in John 6:35.
268 See William S. LaSor, David A. Hubbard & Frederic W. Bush, Old Testament Survey (Eerdmans, 2nd edition, 1996), pp. 231-242. Also see Klein, pp. 225-236.
269 Rodgers, p. 351.
270 For more examples of “Pedagogy in Biography,” see Jeremiah 19:1-11; 43:9; 51:63-64; Ezekiel 5:1-4; 21:6,7; and 24:1-24.
271 Walter C. Kaiser, Toward an Exegetical Theology (Baker Books, 1981), p. 195.
In our progress through the Scriptures to review major redemptive themes, from “Creation to the Cross and Beyond,” we have come now to writings of the prophet Isaiah.283 It is quite a book. I have had a special interest since going through it with the Agape Ministry Group for over two years in the 1980’s, and partially with the old Promenade Group in the 1990’s. After my wife and I left for Colorado, the men in Promenade completed the teaching over the next years.
Isaiah’s writings intrigue me. There is so much here that a person could study it for many years and not plumb the depths. It is a daunting task, and one of awesome responsibility, to cover this great book in two weeks. Today, we will undertake only an overview, discuss the historical setting and authorship, and list the major themes.
In our next lesson, we will study a number of specific passages, especially those dealing with the promised Messiah … Immanuel … the Branch … the Servant … the all-conquering King of kings … Jesus Christ. But let’s be clear about one thing before we begin.
You will grasp the full impact of this book only if you take advantage of two additional opportunities: (1) Daily study of the suggested passages, and the questions that accompany them and (2) The discussions at the 11 a.m. interactive classes, when we break into smaller groups. There is no way I can cover all of that material and answer all those questions in only two lessons.
For now, consider this: From all the prophecies in the Old Testament about Himself that Jesus could have chosen to read to folks in His hometown, He selected passages from Isaiah. Turn to Luke 4:17-21:
And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him, and He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, and to declare the favorable day of the Lord.” And He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. All the eyes of the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
You may be thinking, “Hey, the passage says that they handed the scroll to Him (verse 17). It was just coincidence that it was Isaiah.” Come on! Are you saying that the Holy Spirit didn’t cause the Rabbi, or whomever, to pick that scroll for Jesus to read? Obviously, Jesus meant to read those passages. He picked Isaiah before He ever entered that synagogue.
When John the Baptist is in prison, his faith wavering, Jesus answers his questions by quoting Isaiah chapters 35 and 61 (Matthew 11:5). All through His ministry, He quotes from Isaiah and the Psalms more than from any other portion of Scripture. If it’s that important to Christ, then Isaiah merits our attention.
Of course, like most Scripture, Isaiah has critics. Some point to specific prophecies, as in chapter 45 where Cyrus is named as a special servant of the Lord. They argue: “Isaiah couldn’t have written the whole book. Someone else, with the benefit of hindsight, finished it for him. He couldn’t have known about a man who wouldn’t be born for 200 years! Isaiah may have started it, but someone else added the later sections.”
Well, in His last public discourse (John 12:37-41), Jesus quotes from early in Isaiah (chapter 6:10) and late (chapter 53:1). If it had been a forgery or involved a much later “ghostwriter,” so to speak … someone else writing under Isaiah’s name … Jesus would have avoided the questionable sections or at least clarified the authorship. Jesus attributes it all to one man … Isaiah. That’s good enough for me.
This really brings up some very important questions about Scripture in general. Is it possible that, over the centuries, God somehow lost control over the way Scripture was put together and edited? In other words, sections were included or omitted, and God couldn’t prevent it? Books were included that weren’t inspired? Other inspired books were left out? People wrote under the pen name of someone else?
You see, these questions bear on the Isaiah authorship issue. If Isaiah, in fact, did not write all 66 chapters, then God misleads us to attribute it all to him. If someone wrote sections many years after Isaiah died, it certainly changes how we’d view the prophecies … in fact, the entire Bible.
Obviously I believe, and I think you do too, that God did not lose control. He is, and always has been, the Master Editor. We have the Bible exactly as He intended for us to read it. Nothing has been omitted. Nothing misleading made the final cut. And each section was written precisely by the man who claims authorship.
Which brings up another side issue involving how we look at Isaiah or any other portion of Scripture. We must be very cautious interpreting a passage according to the era and/or culture in which it was written.
The reason? Well, if someone just reads a passage and takes it at face value … without prior knowledge of the culture or setting … he or she could miss entirely the point of what God is saying.
I’ll give you a brief example, and then we’ll get right back to Isaiah. Jesus says in Matthew 19:24, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
We all know that a camel can’t do that, so there are scholars who try to help Jesus out by explaining what He really meant:
“There was a small opening in the wall of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day, and a camel could squeeze through only by having the rider dismount and push his animal through the hole, with another guy pulling on the reins from the other side. It was so hard that few people tried to do it. That’s what Jesus is talking about … ‘the eye of the needle in the wall.’”
Sorry. That’s wrong. Look how the disciples respond in Matthew 24:25, and how Jesus answers. The disciples ask, “Then who can be saved?” They know that what Jesus is talking about simply can’t be done.
Jesus then says that what’s impossible with men … not just difficult, impossible … is possible with God. Every person down through the corridors of time knows exactly how big the eye of a needle is. Even a little child knows that a camel can’t go through so small a space. If Jesus had been talking about some hole in the city wall, it changes the entire point of the passage.
Therefore, we won’t make cultural adjustments to Isaiah’s message. Yes, he lived in a different time and addressed people in a different culture than ours, but the Master Editor of Scripture brings this book, intact as we find it, to us here in 2001.
The messages, warnings and prophecies are for us … just as much as for the people of Isaiah’s day. We won’t read his culture into what he has to say. Isaiah’s culture sounds too much like ours. Sin is sin. Then and now.
It’s true that Isaiah warned the ancient Judeans about things they’re doing and attitudes they demonstrate, which will bring down God’s wrath if they don’t repent and change. “But we’re different here in the 21st Century,” you say.
Really? As we go through this brief study in this lesson and in the next lesson, you’ll see that those ancient Judeans from 2700 years ago are just like us. They bowed before idols of wood and stone, and the Lord through Isaiah argues over and over that idolatry and absurdity … or even idiocy … are synonyms.
We do the same things. Our idols assume a different form, but they’re still idols. Turn with me to Colossians 3:5-6:
Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion evil desire and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come.”
Isaiah preaches for 50 years that God’s wrath is coming on the Judeans. Although our idols may be different, they will certainly bring God’s wrath just the same.
The ancient Judeans burned up their children on hilltops as sacrifices to horrible gods like Molech. The only difference between them and us is timing. They burned the child after it had been born. We kill the unborn child first and then burn it in the incinerator … in sacrifice to what? “A woman’s choice!” Why would we think that God views the two sins any differently?
Our attitudes about dependence on our Savior are too often just like those of the ancient Hebrews. We often have Plan B all ready to go if God doesn’t step in and rescue us from some threat. So Isaiah’s message is directed squarely at us also! We need the history lesson, the warnings, the reassurances, the promises, and the marvelous hope as much as, perhaps even more, than did those people of Isaiah’s time. Solomon sums it up succinctly in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
The 66 chapters make up one of the longest books in the Bible. The Bible has 66 books, and Isaiah has 66 chapters. Is there something in that? I’m not sure. The chapter and verse divisions were added about 300 to 400 A.D., so it may or may not be significant. You can decide if you think so. There are three major sections in Isaiah:
11. Chapters 1 through 35The sins of both Judah and Israel that will bring down God’s wrath; Object lessons for the Jews in how God deals with their neighbors; the instruments of judgment (Assyria, Babylon); glimpses of the restored nations in a glorious future under the Messiah’s reign.
12. Chapters 36 through 39A historic interlude that shows God’s patience toward Judah in not allowing them to be swept away by Assyria as had happened in the north. King Sennacherib is defeated by the Lord Himself.
13. Chapters 40 through 66The nation of Babylon and how God will punish Judah by their hands, but ultimately how He will restore His true servants (although just a remnant) to the land, and His plans for their marvelous future through the work of His Messiah.
Isaiah’s visions have very specific condemnations, frightening warnings, and marvelous prophecies from the Lord. Prominent among these prophecies is the Messiah Who would, from Isaiah’s vantage point, come in the future.
He relays to us numerous references and descriptions from God about the Millennial Kingdom, Christ’s 1000-year reign on earth, which from our vantage point, is still in our future. The prophecies co-mingle our time and our sins with those of the ancient Jews.
In our next lesson, we’ll look at the many references to Christ … some of which you’re familiar with, and perhaps quite a few that you’re not.
Certainly, we all thrill at Christmas when a big choir sings Handel’s magnificent “Messiah.”
“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be on His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6, KJV).284
Handel quotes Isaiah (9:6), as he tells us about the birth and ultimate destiny of Jesus Christ. Then in chapter 53:5-6, we read of the “Servant,” of whom Isaiah says:
“Our chastening fell on Him. By His scourging, we are healed. The Lord caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”
Few of us have any trouble identifying this Servant as Jesus when He shed His blood for us at Calvary. Since Jesus is the very core of what God does with and for mankind, it isn’t surprising that Isaiah speaks often of Him.
Why Isaiah? Who was he? Why did God pick him as a messenger? Where did he live? When? What were times like in his day? How did people respond to him?
To place Isaiah in time, recall from earlier studies in this series that God tells King Solomon in 1 Kings 11:1-13 that his kingdom, as it is, will not continue after his death.
Considering how he started, it’s almost inconceivable that Solomon would drift so far from the Lord … not only to building altars to horrible gods (human sacrifice, sexual perversions) for his foreign wives, but also going there himself to join in the worship. He falls victim to the pleasures of the world, pleas from his wives, political pressure, and begins to think that he can do anything because of his power.
Rather than zapping Solomon on the spot, our long-suffering Lord tells him that only two tribes of his present kingdom will remain under the control of his son, Rehoboam. This group will be called “Judah.”
Ten tribes, named “Israel,” will split away in rebellion, to be ruled by the son of Solomon’s servant. … and it happens exactly that way about 931 B.C.
But now, about 190 years have passed. It’s approximately 740 B.C. Numerous kings have come and gone in both the Northern and Southern divisions of Solomon’s old kingdom. God is very patient with both sections. Each group has ample opportunity to repent and to turn back to the true worship of Jehovah. In the long run, neither kingdom does, although Judah has a few brief periods of revival.
Judah in the South bounces up and down spiritually. The general track, however, is a downward spiral. Most of their kings are bad news, while only a few are God-fearing.
The Southern Kingdom starts with kings of the right age. Rehoboam is 41. As one king replaces another, Judah begins to put men on the throne much too early. After a while, every one is too young to serve as king.
By the principles lived out in Scripture by example, the Lord wants His designated servant-leaders to be at least 30 years old: Joseph, as he stands before Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46); priests who went in before the altar (Numbers 4:3). Saul was 40 when made king (1 Samuel 13:1). David was 30 (2 Samuel 5:4). We can be pretty sure about this, because even Jesus honors the 30-years-of-age stipulation before beginning His earthly ministry (Luke 3:23).
Now don’t misunderstand my point here. The Lord often uses much younger people in His service. David against Goliath. Esther in Medo-Persia. Jeremiah. Mary, the mother of Jesus. His kings and priests, however, were to be at least 30, in my opinion. This might give us a guideline about selecting deacons and elders.
But in the Southern Kingdom, Ahaziah is 22; Joash is 7; Amaziah is 25; Uzziah is 16; Jotham is 25; Ahaz is 20; Hezekiah is 25; Manasseh is 12; Josiah is 8; Johoahaz is 23; Jehoakim is 25; Johoachis is 18; Zedekiah is 21. Solomon warned about this: “Woe to you, O land, whose king is a lad …” (Ecclesiastes 10:16).
Some of the kings of the right age, like Jehoshaphat, are reasonably good men but unfortunately are just plain gullible. One of these days, take a moment to read the “Why Don’t You Be The One To Dress Up As King?” episode in 1 Kings 22.
Jehoshaphat must have felt isolated or something. By marriage, he befriends (of all people) Israel’s King Ahab, Jezebel’s husband. Jehoshaphat even agrees to go into battle in all his regal robes, when Ahab fears he’ll be killed if identified as king. Ahab disguises himself as a common soldier.
Sounds like Jehoshaphat, mentally, might have been several cards short of a full deck. At best, he wins the “Mr. Naive” award for his era, and he’s one of Judah’s better kings.
Isaiah lives in Jerusalem, in Judah, the Southern Kingdom. He’s young when we first meet him, perhaps about 30, but since Jeremiah is younger, Isaiah may have been also. He’s destined to minister some 50 years.
The prophet Amos is just winding down his messages to Israel in the North, turning the job over to Hosea, shortly before Isaiah begins in the South. Micah is another messenger in the Southern Kingdom at about the same time as Isaiah, and both will be followed by the great Jeremiah.
Isaiah appears for the first time during the reign of King Uzziah, and he serves through the reigns of three more kings: Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Tradition says that his father, Amoz, is a friend of King Uzziah’s dad, Amaziah. So as a young man, Isaiah is likely a “friend of the court,” so to speak, with access to the king. We might even consider him well born, privileged, a member of the upper class. Most of God’s messengers are humble folk … country boys like John the Baptist, but Isaiah’s an exception. He’s from the big city and from a wealthy family also.
Isaiah chapter 6 tells us that during Uzziah’s reign, something happens that threatens to rock the national boat. Everybody’s scared. Uncertainty and fear creep into every conversation. I suspect that young Isaiah is nervous too, but why? Well, the people of Judah have good reason to be jittery.
King Uzziah makes a big mistake. Second Chronicles 26 tells of his mighty exploits early on in his reign and how God helps him, but then after a while, how he becomes really puffed-up. He’s famous (verse 15). Pride ruins even the good man, and it changes Uzziah. He thinks he can do anything. He’s immune from all regulations that apply to everyone else.
For some reason, maybe just pride, Uzziah enters the holy Temple and burns incense personally on the altar, an act of worship forbidden by God to all except the descendants of Aaron, the Levite priests (2 Chronicles 26:18). The priests try to stop him, but Uzziah loses his temper and goes right ahead.
God may be patient about some sins, but profaning his Temple, His Ark, or His altar gets a quick response. Remember a man named “Uzzah” in David’s time who died for just touching the Ark when he wasn’t supposed to? Interesting similarity in names, isn’t it?
Uzziah is punished immediately for irreverence. God strikes Uzziah instantly with leprosy right there in the Temple, on his temple (okay, his forehead). He never recovers. He has to be isolated, cut off from everyone else, and this may mean more than just separate living quarters.
Second Chronicles 26:21 says Uzziah is “cut off from the house of the Lord.” That’s scary. I sure wouldn’t want to be cut off from “The Lord’s Household.” Whatever the full consequences are beyond having the horrible disease, Uzziah can no longer conduct government business. Jotham, his son, takes over as Co-Regent.
This is very unsettling to the people. It’s one thing for a king to die. That’s the natural order of things. It’s far more troubling to see the wrath of God fall in a supernatural manner on Uzziah. If God punishes a leader so directly, He may punish the people in a severe manner also.
Recall the incident when David decided to number his fighting men (1 Chronicles 21). It was sinful, because he doesn’t need to know the size of the army. God fights for Israel. Defeat or victory doesn’t depend on numbers.
God gave David a choice of punishments, and he picked one involving the shortest time frame. It still resulted in a plague that killed 70,000 (1 Chronicles 21:14). The people were punished for David’s sin.
“Hey,” the people here in Uzziah’s day reason, “That could happen again. We’ve been ignoring Jehovah for a long time. What if He sends a seven-year drought? What if some foreign power like Assyria senses our leadership void, and invades before young Jotham learns how to act like a king? If Jehovah cuts off our king for one act of irreverence, what might He do to us?” People are scared.
God doesn’t drop the hammer on them quickly as they fear, but He does act. He calls someone to warn the Judeans. Lets read 6:1-10:
1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. 2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth if full of His glory.” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. 5 Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 And he touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” 9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.’ 10 “Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Lest they see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And repent and be healed.”
We’re not told how long it takes Uzziah to die, but in the final year, Isaiah sees a vision of the Lord Jesus on His throne. John 12:41 confirms the amazing fact that it was Jesus he saw.
These things Isaiah said, because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him.
Note that anytime a flesh and blood man encounters the unveiled Christ, it’s devastating. That person … Isaiah here, Daniel in 10:7-10, Paul in Acts 9:3-8, John in Revelation 1:17 … is immediately aware of his sinful condition in the presence of a holy God. If something isn’t done quickly about that sin … “Woe is me for I am ruined!”
Just think what this will mean to the billions of unsaved people who one day encounter the Living God on His throne in the awesome judgment described in Revelation 20:11-15. They will say exactly what Isaiah does here, but for them there will be no remedy.
After cleansing Isaiah of sin, the Lord appeals for a messenger to the people of Judah. Isaiah doesn’t hesitate: “Here am I. Send me! (6:8).”
Wow! That explains a lot as to why Jehovah speaks to this particular young man. Even mighty Moses doesn’t respond like that on Mount Sinai. He tries to get out of the job. Gideon asks for a couple of signs. Jeremiah says that he’s too young (1:6-7). Mary asks a few questions for clarification when Gabriel appears to her. Isaiah doesn’t hesitate. He volunteers.
It’s a strange commission. God instructs Isaiah to warn the Judeans of how they’ve sinned, but also tells him that they won’t listen. God will harden their hearts and stop their ears.
Jesus later quotes Isaiah as He explains to His disciples why He teaches in parables, rather than just saying plainly what He means (Luke 8:10). There are people in every generation, it seems, that are so wicked that God allows a veil to remain in place over their minds and hearts. They’re given the truth, but they refuse to buy it.
So what’s Isaiah to say? What great truths are the Judeans destined to ignore?
Isaiah’s name means: “The Salvation of Jehovah,” or “Jehovah Saves,” and that’s the central message Isaiah tries to get across over and over to the Jews of his day. Anytime you face a threat. Anytime you’re afraid of what the future holds. Anytime you appear to be up against overwhelming odds, don’t look for rescue or support anywhere else! Only God offers His people of every era any hope of deliverance from evil.
Listen up Judeans: Your salvation always has been, is now, and always will be found “in God alone.” You can count on it. The Lord made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and those promises will be kept. However, if you look elsewhere for your salvation in times of trouble, God will abandon most of you to your worst fears.
Is Jehovah our salvation, just as He was and is for the Hebrews? Certainly. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, is one with Jehovah … one Being in some way we’ll never fully understand while we’re in the flesh. Jesus says so in John 10:30: “I and the Father are One.” One Unit. One Essence.
Jesus’ name is the Greek version of the Hebrew “Jeshua,” which means “Jehovah Saved.” That’s why so much of Isaiah refers to Jesus Christ. The salvation of Jehovah is my salvation. It’s yours also if you belong to the Lord. Isaiah’s message is for us too.
Turn only to the Lord. Appeal only to Him. Remember what He’s done for you in the past. Remember how He’s demonstrated through the centuries that He loves you and will care for you.
God isn’t time-bound. We are (for now). He isn’t. His messages to anyone who’ll take the time to look could be compared to viewing a large historical panorama painted around the walls of a vast hall. Early events appear at one end, and if you follow the panorama around, you’ll see how the story plays out. In God’s panorama, He also interposes hints here and there of what to expect later on.
The entire Bible is like that. There’s a beginning and an end, but if you read carefully all along the way, you shouldn’t be surprised by the ending. Jesus appears in Genesis, in Revelation, and in-between. Isaiah follows the pattern.
The Messiah is promised in chapters 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 25, 28, 32, 33, 35, 42, 49, 50, 52, 53 … and countless other places. Jesus Christ appears everywhere. God Himself will reign on David’s throne in place of the miserable excuses for kings that the Jews had to suffer through the centuries after David. His rule will include the entire earth.
Another theme running prominently throughout Isaiah: God firmly controls all rulers, kingdoms, and all world events. Nothing escapes His notice. No one pulls the wool over His eyes. No one challenges the Lord and gets away with it.
Listen up, those who march today on the gay and lesbian parades, those who live only for the next “rave” party, and those who take away the unborn’s right to life. Look at chapter 5:18-23:
Woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood,
and sin as if with cart ropes;
Who say, “Let Him make speed, let Him hasten His work, that we may see it;
And let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near
And come to pass, that we may know it!”
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight.
Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine,
And valiant men in mixing strong drink;
Who justify the wicked for a bribe,
And take away the rights of the ones who are in the right.
You can march in your parade all you want, pulling along your sin behind you as if on a cart for all to see. You can hide behind the laws and courts to support your views about your lifestyle or the right to take an unborn baby’s life. You can even shake your fist in God’s face, daring Him to do something about it, and then laugh when lightning doesn’t strike you. Just remember what Isaiah says.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, … is too difficult for our Lord to control, solve, or correct. His word to you is “Woe!” … and that’s not what you ever want directed at you from the mouth of the Living God. Nothing is impossible for Him. Jeremiah confirms this in 32:17 and 32:27.
We look around at our world and shudder. With no emotion, teenagers gun down other kids. Some of our leaders show no moral fiber. The political scene around the earth has one spark after another that could erupt into global conflict. God’s standards for marriage and childrearing are mocked.
How comforting to hear Isaiah reinforce the truth of God’s sovereignty over every detail on the earth. Big, little, past, present, future. Not a sparrow falls in the most remote region of the Rockies where we live unless God approves (Matthew 10:29). God even keeps track of how many hairs I still have on my head (Matthew 10:30). There’s not a ruler in office, good or bad, who got there, or stays there, outside of God’s permission (Daniel 2:21).
No wonder, in Romans 11:33-34, Paul cries out in awe: “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!” And then Paul immediately quotes guess who? Isaiah 40:13: “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?”
Moses’ God parts a huge body of water and dries up the mud instantly. Joshua’s God stops the rotation of the earth. Daniel’s God causes a hunger strike in a pride of lions while he spends the night with them. Isaiah’s God will kill 185,000 Assyrians in one night (chapter 37:36) to lift a siege of Jerusalem, and each story illustrates the rhetorical question posed in Jeremiah 32:27: “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for Me?”
If Isaiah can teach us anything, we must accept the obvious answer to God’s question, “Is anything too difficult for Me?” – 250 years before Isaiah, David expresses the correct response very eloquently:
“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed, everything that is in the heavens and the earth. Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as Head over all. Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might, and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone” (I Chronicles 29:10-12).
Then, 100 or so years after Isaiah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon echoes the answer:
“For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. But He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth. And no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’ Now, I Nebuchadnezzar praise, exalt, and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He is able to humble those who walk in pride” (Daniel 4: 35 & 37).
Isaiah knows that he’s indeed a special messenger from God. He knows that his family is also (8:18). His two sons’ names convey messages. He and his children are “signs and wonders” directly from the Lord of Hosts. One boy’s name means “A remnant shall return.” The other boy, “Swift will the prey and spoils be taken.” When God gets enough of the Judeans’ sin and failure to repent, the Babylonians will invade and overcome them quickly. However, someday a remnant will come back to the land.
But how effective is his ministry? How many can he point to as having been “saved”? He preaches to his people for 50 years. Surely, in all that time, there must be thousands who turn back to the Lord. Not likely. If they had repented, God might well have withheld His hand of judgment. It’s more likely that only a remnant listen.
That’s another of Isaiah’s messages: The doctrine of the “Remnant.” God always preserves a few of His chosen people. He may punish them harshly, and many have to die throughout the centuries, but the Jewish race is never obliterated. God always has a few that “haven’t bent the knee to Baal.” However, it’s not the majority. It was true then. It’s true now. Jesus says so:
“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
Isaiah is not disheartened by his fruitless mission, even though God tells Isaiah when He calls him: “Go preach to these people what I’ll tell you to say, but they won’t listen.” How discouraging. How easy to fall into despair after a 50-year effort for the Lord, and only a handful pay attention. Jeremiah certainly becomes very discouraged (Jeremiah 20:14-15), and Isaiah may have also, but he never says so.
It brings to mind the missionaries we know who labor many years in a remote land, but can count only a handful of converts. Isaiah doesn’t give up. He isn’t after numbers. He seeks the imperishable wreath Paul looks for in 1 Corinthians 9:24-25.
As we study Isaiah, it’s easy to become deeply burdened by the repeated condemnations and judgments the Lord pronounces for those who reject Him, in ancient times or in the 21st Century. God’s anger is evident. Of that, there’s no doubt. He means business. He singles out sins of religious hypocrisy and power-abuse for special attention.
We’re convicted when we see ourselves in the pages of Isaiah, and we will, but if you belong to the Lord, don’t allow this conviction to make you guilt-ridden all over again to the point of despair.
The same God Who condemns and judges also provides a remedy for our condition: His own blood shed on our behalf. Through Isaiah, the Lord tells His people to be “washed clean” (1:16). If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are clean! You need not fear these judgments unless, like the ancient Israelites, you try to cover up sin in your life. If you’ll confess it, Jesus is faithful to forgive (1 John 1:9). The Jews refused to do that. God’s discipline resulted.
The ancient Judeans thought that if they obeyed God outwardly by observing the sacrifices, feasts and other rituals, they had Him fooled. They would make Him think that they bought everything He said and would obey. They could then live their lives any way they wanted to … even to the point of sacrificing to other gods. Look at one passage from Ezekiel which shows how brazen they had become in this:
Again, they have done this to Me: They have defiled My sanctuary on the same day and have profaned My sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered My sanctuary on the same day to profane it; and lo, thus they did within My house” (Ezekiel 23:38-39).
In our next lesson, we’ll see Isaiah’s specific warnings to Judah (and to us) about doing this kind of thing. We’ll hear the Lord say, “Bring your worthless offerings to Me no longer (1:13). And I’m not listening when you pray. You might as well save your breath” (1:15).
In summary, Isaiah’s a tough book! Most believers never study it in depth, because of the cryptic nature and all the gloom and doom. They dismiss much of it as irrelevant to the 21st Century and, therefore, to them. How tragic, especially if God intends these messages for us as we enter (what may likely be) the last days of the Church Age.
We’ll scan the major themes by looking at specific passages. We’ll see the Lord send messages to the countries surrounding Judah as object lessons to His people. We’ll study the prophecies about Messiah. We’ll see Him promised, and His suffering when He does come. We’ll see His wonderful victory over Satan and reign on the earth as King of kings and Lord of Lords. Over and over, we’ll hear the Lord offer forgiveness and mercy to those who listen and repent of their sins. We’ll briefly look at some prototypes of the Antichrist … men like Sennacherib … from whom God will deliver His people in a miraculous fashion. I think you too will be intrigued.
283 Copyright 2001 by Community Bible Chapel, 418 E. Main Street, Richardson, TX 75081. This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 40 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Gordon Graham on August 12, 2001.
284 Scripture quote of Isaiah 9:6 is from the King James Version of The Holy Bible.
August 19, 2001
This is our second message that looks at the Book of Isaiah, as we progress from Creation to the Cross and beyond. In our previous lesson (Part 1), we went into the historical setting for Isaiah’s visions, who this man was, some of the problems critics try to find with the book, and we discussed the major themes. Let’s summarize those themes:
1. God Alone Saves
2. God Himself Will Rule Israel and the Entire Earth Some Day
3. God Runs the Show. Always Has. Always Will!
4. God is A Being Without Limits
5. His Creatures Have No Right to Question An All-Powerful God
6. The Remnant Who Listen, Repent, and Obey are Preserved
7. Hypocritical Religion Makes the Lord Especially Mad
We noted that Isaiah lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah about 200 years after Solomon’s kingdom was divided. His culture was very corrupt. These ancient Judeans burned up their children in worship of idols; they were corrupt in protecting the rights of “those in the right,” they had corrupt rulers, and paraded their sin before God in a defiant manner. Twisted as they were, they then tried to fool God through a hypocritical religion that observed His feasts and ceremonies also.
It all makes the Lord furious. Isaiah is called to warn them to repent, but the Lord tells him up front that the Jews aren’t going to listen. The Lord is so mad at them that He will place a veil over their minds and hearts. Isaiah volunteers to carry the message anyway.
We noted also that our culture in the 21st Century is very similar. We, too, burn up our unborn children and parade our alternate lifestyles in God’s face. We, too, often think that if we attend church, or give money, or read our Bibles, or sing in the choir, or pray every day … God is satisfied, and we can live the rest of the week however we please.
In this message, let’s see what God is going to do about this sin-infection that has corrupted His chosen people … and not only them, but has also corrupted mankind of every race down through the centuries long after the ancient Judeans are gone. We’re going to look at numerous Scriptures, so get out your Bibles, and be ready for an old-fashioned sword drill. We’ll be moving rapidly from one passage to another.
In the pages of Isaiah, the Lord explains precisely who is behind the whole mess, how this came about, and how He will deal with this evil being and his protg.
Turn to Isaiah 14. If you’ve ever wanted to be a time-traveler, this chapter is for you. It looks eons back in time, and then fast-forwards to the future. We even hear the voices of people long dead. First, verses 12-14 take us into the distant past where an angelic being named “Helel” (see your Bible’s margin for verse 12) becomes corrupted. He wants more than God has given him. He wants it all. He wants to replace God.
How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High.
“Helel,” here translated “morning star,” can also be translated “shining one,” “light bearer” or “Lucifer.” So we don’t have to wonder who Isaiah is talking about. Ezekiel 28:14 and 17 add more detail. This “Helel” becomes corrupted by his own beauty and splendor. But he once walked in the midst of the stones of fire on the holy mountain of God. His position was “the anointed cherub who covers or guards.”
Satan’s five-part program is outlined here in Isaiah 14. Ever since he rebelled, Satan has intended to put himself in place of God. He wants God’s position. He wants His power. He covets the worship God receives. His exalted angelic position isn’t enough for him.
Today, Satan is permitted to have a limited measure of these things, for reasons known only to the Lord. He’s the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), and he masquerades as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). He lurks behind the curtain while unwitting people worship him even today through the idols he places in front of them.
Jesus gives gifts. |
Satan tries to counterfeit them. |
Jesus offers living water. |
Satan offers a mirage that disappears as you get closer. |
Jesus offers living bread. |
Satan shows plastic loaves in an attractive display case. |
Jesus gives true light. |
Satan says if you believe him, you’ll be more “enlightened.” |
Jesus offers freedom. |
Satan says that he will free you from such a demanding and restricting God, but you’ll wind up trapped forever in his kingdom as a prisoner. |
Jesus offers life eternal. |
Satan leads a person to eternal death. |
Isaiah chapter 14 also shows us the future for Satan (verses 15 and then 9-11):
Nevertheless, you will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the pit (Isaiah 14:15).
We know this will indeed happen, as confirmed in Isaiah 14:9-11:
Sheol from beneath is excited over you to meet you when you come. It arouses for you the spirits of the dead, all the leaders of the earth. It raises the kings of the nations from their thrones. They will all respond and say to you, “Even you have been made as weak as we. You have become like us. Your pomp and the music of your harps have been brought down to Sheol. Maggots are spread out as your bed beneath you, and worms are your covering” (Revelation 20:1-3).
Note the interesting reaction from the souls of former kings and rulers already in Sheol, when Satan is confined there also. Sheol is something like a “holding cell” for souls awaiting God’s final judgment. They seemed surprised when he shows up, and then they take pleasure in mocking him.
Paraphrasing, “Hey everybody, look who’s here! Welcome, big boy! Ha! What a surprise! You always said that you’d never wind up down here. Now you’re just as weak and helpless as we are. Well, come on in, hot shot. Your bed of maggots and blanket of worms awaits you!”
The chapter begins by addressing “the king of Babylon” (verse 4), but the power behind every evil kingdom is Satan of course.
However, One Fact Remains: Satan Has Had a Measure of Success.
Satan has managed to corrupt God’s finest creation … beings made in His own image – beings with eternal souls who will live forever. As soon as Adam and Eve appear in the Garden of Eden, Satan is right there tempting them with all of his own ambitions.
Don’t you want to be more than you are? Don’t you want to know more than you do? Sure you do! God doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Do what I tell you, and you’ll expand your possibilities.”
… and sin infected mankind. We see the results in the ancient Judeans of Isaiah’s day. We see it in our own culture. We see it all too often in ourselves. Jews, Gentiles … it doesn’t matter. All are corrupt, and the ancient Judeans even polluted the sacrifices and ceremonies God provided to cleanse them on a temporary basis.
Isaiah says that the sin-infestation is total. Every person of every social strata or position is sick, and most are so oblivious to their condition that they’ve not even tried to apply “soothing oils or bandages.”
Where will you be stricken again, as you continue in your rebellion? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, and raw wounds, not pressed out or bandaged, nor softened with oil (1: 5-6).
Something had to be done, or not a single human being could ever qualify to live in God’s presence for eternity. There would be only one track down which mankind could go, and that track would lead straight to the lake of fire.
Let’s read Isaiah 59:9-20. Here we see a summary of conditions … in Isaiah’s day and in ours … and what God is going to do about it. Remember Isaiah’s central theme: “God Alone Saves.” If a permanent solution is to be found for mankind’s condition, God will have to do it. Everyone else on earth is too corrupt to provide the answer.
And so He will. For His creation, there will now be two tracks down which they can go. One will lead to eternal life, while the other leads to physical destruction here on earth and the second death ultimately. Isaiah shows us how both will play out.
No human ruler will ever truly lead God’s people properly, nor trust completely and consistently in the Lord alone. The sacrifices are insufficient, and the priests are too often corrupt also (Ezekiel 22:26). The Lord Himself will have to be first the Sacrifice, then the Priest (Hebrews 8:1) and finally the King.
Mankind’s sin-infestation is so all-encompassing … the darkness in which they walk is so total … that a complete spiritual makeover is needed, and God must do the job Himself. No one else can do it. It requires God’s “Right Arm.”
The Servant God has in mind for the job is Jesus Christ … a part of Himself Who acts as the Father’s right arm (Matthew 26:64, Mark 16:19). When we think about it, Jesus has always acted as God’s right arm. The Bible says so explicitly. Jesus created everything, and He holds it all together (Colossians 1: 16-17).
But note that even God’s Right Arm must wrap Himself in the same armor (verse 17) we need (Ephesians 6:13-17) when He enters a realm where evil is so dominant.
But it’s a very interesting dialogue we find in chapter 49 between the Father and the Son. God isn’t referring to the nation, Israel, in verse 3. “Israel” means “God Strives” or “God Contends,” or as we’d say it, “God Fights.” The Jews never lived up to that name, but Jesus Christ certainly does, in its purest form.
However, it will be a thankless task at first, and the Servant states that, on the surface, it doesn’t appear to be worth all the grief He will have to go through (verse 4). He will toil in vain and spend His strength for nothing … or so it seems. He will be abhorred by His own people and have to be subservient to evil rulers (verse 7). The complete plan, with Him in control of the government, with all the glory and honor He should have, will not take place in His first coming.
Yet despite all this, the Son realizes that His reward will come from the Father. Justice won’t be given to Him on earth, but it will in heaven (verse 4). Isaiah foresees the reward in 49:7, but Paul tells us just how complete Christ’s reward will be.
Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2: 9-11).
Remember Hebrews 12:2: “… who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame … .”
Not only that. The Father broadens the overall assignment, beyond just reconciling the Jews, to include everyone on earth. Jesus is to be the “light to the nations” in verse 6. He’s the “sharp sword,” the “select arrow” in verse 2. God gives the job of “light bearer” to a Servant who won’t fail … as Lucifer did.
Note that Jesus is concealed “in the shadow of His hand” … the Father’s hand, until just the right time to reveal Him. Jesus is the Father’s “secret weapon” in the battle against Satan.
Even the most enlightened prophets didn’t understand this clearly. The ancient Judeans probably viewed the prophecies of Isaiah much as today we view the prophecies in Revelation. We have the benefit of looking back at Isaiah to see how it all played out.
The Judeans knew someone was promised, but who precisely it would be wasn’t clear. They worshipped the one God … Jehovah. This was the very basis of their theology.
Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! (Deuteronomy 6:4)
It wasn’t clear to the Jews that the Godhead was made up of more than one Being. Some even thought there might be two different Messiahs.
This very special Servant is promised to the Jews from the early pages of Isaiah. Chapter 2:1-4 speaks of a day when the Lord Himself will judge the nations from Jerusalem.
Chapter 4: 2-6 talks of the “Branch of the Lord,” someone beautiful and glorious, Who will dwell on Mount Zion with clouds by day and fire by night marking His presence.
Chapter 7:14 promises a son named “Immanuel” to be born of a virgin. This is an intriguing little vignette. King Ahaz and the Southern Kingdom are invaded by a coalition of forces from the Northern Kingdom and Syria. Everyone is terrified, because many people have already been killed and taken captive. The king has even lost one of his own sons in combat, and now the invading force has Jerusalem under siege.
Isaiah is sent with a message from the Lord to Ahaz. The place of meeting is very important. It’s where the life-giving water flows into Jerusalem. The symbolic meaning: “Ahaz, the real water of life doesn’t flow in here. You need the living water that only God can provide. You need water for your soul … not just your body.”
Thirty years later, as Assyrian bigmouth will stand at this very spot and insult the Living God. The king at that time, Hezekiah, will turn to God for deliverance. Ahaz doesn’t.
But Isaiah is instructed to tell Ahaz: “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. These two nations … these ‘firebrands’ … that have come against you will not prevail.”
To prove it, God offers Ahaz a chance to ask for any sign he wants … anything at all. There are absolutely no limits put on it (verse 7:11). He could have asked for the sun to stand still, as Joshua did, or to have his son killed in combat to come back from the dead, or have angels appear, for gold … anything … if only he would believe.
But Ahaz piously turns down the offer (7:12). The reason? He already has Plan B underway to save his bacon, and it doesn’t involve some crazy prophet nor a God He doesn’t believe in. Second Kings 16:7-8 tells how he has messengers at that moment in Assyria trying to hire mercenaries to come to his aid.
The Lord becomes angry and promises a sign anyway … something even Ahaz wouldn’t have dreamed of asking for. A virgin will conceive some day, and God Himself will come to earth to reign on David’s throne (9:7) in place of this miserable excuse for a king.
Chapter 8:14 calls God’s special Servant a “stone to strike and a rock to stumble over.” Jesus was “the Rock” that was struck in the wilderness for the Jews so that they could live. The water they needed for life … physical and spiritual … has always come from Him and Him alone.
Look at this passage in the New Testament, one which you may never have really stopped to ponder before. I know I hadn’t really thought about it.
For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea. And all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4).
Jesus is the Rock that God struck so that the Israelites could drink to quench their thirst in the wilderness. Jesus is also the Rock that God struck so that you and I can have the living water of eternal life.
If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink (John 7:37).
Chapter 28:16 says that anyone who believes in this “costly cornerstone” will not be disturbed.
Chapter 9:6 says that this Boy to be born to us will have the government resting on His shoulders, and His additional names are “Wonderful Counselor,” “Mighty God,” “Eternal Father,” “Prince of Peace.” He will reign on the throne of David, and His kingdom will never end.
As we said in Lesson 40, 2000 years have already passed between the first line of 9:6 and the second. No problem for God in His panorama of time. Past, present, future … are all the same to an infinite, timeless Being.
Chapter 11:1-5 again calls Him “The Branch” and lists seven spirits He will possess: The Spirit of the Lord, wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and fear of the Lord. He will judge in perfect righteousness, but He also carries a big stick. He rules with “the rod of His mouth.”
In that same chapter (verses 6-9), amazing changes occur on the earth when God Himself rules here as King of kings. Carnivores dwell right with their former prey. Little children have very unusual pets.
There’s an obscure passage in chapter 22:20-23 that describes a man called “Eliakim.” He’s a righteous, trustworthy servant indeed, but only a prototype of the ultimate Servant … Who’s given “the key to the House of David.” This Servant “opens and no one shuts.” He “shuts and no one opens.”
Eliakim may have controlled access to the king, but these powers in their ultimate form belong only to Jesus Christ (Revelation 3:7). He alone grants access to the Father. He is the only Mediator between man and God (1 Timothy 2:5).
This is one of the reasons I really like Isaiah. Hidden deep in oft-neglected chapters are great nuggets of insight. In that same chapter, an evil scribe named Shebna usurps a position he doesn’t deserve, and God takes it all away from him and gives everything to Eliakim. Shebna pictures the usurper, Satan, who temporarily is the god of this world. One day, that title and position will be given to their rightful owner, Jesus Christ.
We see Jesus in chapter 25:6-9 serving as the “Lord of Hosts” in a different way, as He hosts a lavish banquet “for all peoples” at some point in His millennial kingdom. You’ll be there. So will I. We’ll get a chance to visit with Moses, Daniel, Paul, Esther, Ruth, Mary, and the Lord Himself. Bob Deffinbaugh will be seated next to his favorite prophet, Jonah.
Here, the Father speaks of “My Servant, My chosen one in whom My soul delights,” Who will bring forth justice to the nations, and when we first see Him, He heals the bruised reed and doesn’t let the dimly burning wick go out … the sick, discouraged people He does indeed heal and feed.
In chapter 50: 4-11, the Servant describes some of the mistreatment that He will endure, but also says that He’ll go through it because He knows Who vindicates Him. He also tells the destiny of anyone who dares to contend against Him (verses 9 and 11).
In chapter 61:1, we find the passage Jesus read to the people in His hometown about binding up the brokenhearted and freeing captives, and where He added, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
However, it’s in chapters 52 and 53 that we see this Servant most clearly and grasp the big picture of what He’s to do. There should have been a chapter break after 52:12, because from verse 13 out through the end of chapter 53, it’s the Servant in view.
It’s a very familiar passage, for it gives a panorama of Jesus’ “Lamb of God” role in the Father’s redemptive plan for mankind.
Isaiah 52:13 starts off with a summary of sorts. The Servant will prosper, be high and lifted up, and greatly exalted in the final result. However, He will also be “marred more than any man,” so much so that those who see Him are astonished.
Have no doubt about this: The Romans do a brutal job on our Lord. Satan lurks behind the scenes urging them on with this particular convict, and they get carried away in their beating.
Satan wants Jesus killed before He can get to that cross and die under the Father’s plan. Satan tried to kill Him at Bethlehem and again by His own townspeople at Nazareth, and here with the Romans. He dies either way, but Jesus could not then be “lifted up” like Moses’ serpent, as He had predicted He would (John 3:14). If Jesus dies during the beating, the Romans would just throw Him into a pit.
So when Jesus struggles through the streets to Golgotha, He’s hard to recognize. No man has ever endured the kind of beating He has and survived. He can barely walk, let alone carry a heavy cross very far. The bystanders are astonished. Once on the cross, He dies perhaps more quickly than the Romans expected. … and let’s not forget this: He did that for you! He was there in my place! I deserved it. He didn’t.
Isaiah 52:15 says that “Jesus sprinkles many nations,” and that people will finally understand what they’ve heard from the prophets. Peter verifies that we have indeed been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus (1 Peter 1:1a-2), and Paul quotes Isaiah 52:15 in Romans 15:21 to explain why he feels called to preach only to people who have never heard the good news before.
Chapter 53 begins by asking if anyone among the Jews understands what’s happening with this Servant? Is anyone out there listening to what God is revealing through Him?
Isaiah 53:2 hints that they could miss His importance because of His background and physical appearance. He grows up in “Galilee of the Gentiles,” an area looked down upon by so-called “religious” people (John 7:41 and 52, Nathanael’s response in John 1:46).
But Isaiah 9:1 promised that this land would be “made glorious.” Immanuel will grow up there. If Jesus had grown up in Richardson, Texas, we’d surely say that our city received great honor and glory. Galilee certainly did, no matter what people previously thought about the area. Immanuel did not grow up in Jerusalem where the religious snobs were. He grew up out there among the outcasts, but in so doing, He loaded that land with glory.
In His unveiled glory, Jesus is so brilliant and awesome that everyone who sees Him falls to the ground, as John does in Revelation 1:17, but what do you think Jesus looked like in the flesh?
He’s not a physically imposing or appealing man. He’s very ordinary looking. He isn’t tall like King Saul. He isn’t strong like Samson. It isn’t how He looks that gets your attention. It’s what He says and does! (Mark 1:22 “teaching with authority;” Matthew 9:33 … “nothing like this seen in Israel.”)
Isaiah 53:3 shows us that Jesus’ earthly life was marked by sorrow and grief. That’s interesting, because if He’s our role model, then we can expect the Christian life to be something other than a bowl of cherries.
Some preachers and writers tell us that we should always be joyful, happy, in high spirits and feeling very fulfilled. God wants us to be happy, etc. If we’re not smiling all the time, there’s something wrong with our Christian walk.
Well, that doesn’t compute with what Jesus says in John 15:18-20. If we truly serve Him, we can expect trouble, persecution, unfairness, injustice and some sorrow in our lives, just as He experienced. This life’s not fair … but also like our role model, we know Who will justify us in the long run (Isaiah 49:4).
Isaiah 53:3 says that “we did not esteem Him.” Tragic. Incredible. Unbelievable. Isaiah 53: 4-7 sums up the plan of salvation … the Gospel … in four verses.
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The Apostle Paul says that nothing is more important than this (1 Corinthians 15:3). No fact in the universe compares with it. All other truth pales when placed against it. For you and me, nothing that has happened, or ever will, benefits us as much.
Remember this in a little while when you take the bread and the cup in the worship meeting here at Community Bible Chapel this Sunday morning.
Thus far, Isaiah has shown us one side of this Servant, Who in turn reveals to us one side of the Father Who sent Him on His mission. We see God’s loving, caring, healing, merciful side, reaching out to all sinners with an offer of living bread and water. We see Him taking the judgment we deserve. We see Him providing the vaccine for our massive sin-infestation.
But this God and His Servant have another side. Over and over throughout Isaiah and the other Scriptures, He pleads for His finest creatures to heed His offer and come to Him in repentance. An awesome consequence awaits those who refuse.
Turn a few pages to chapter 55, where the wayward sinner is advised 16 times to do something. It’s not by accident that chapter 55 follows 53. Summarizing and also paraphrasing verses 1-11:
“Come, come, buy, eat, come, buy, listen, eat, delight, incline, come, listen, seek, call, forsake, return. Do it before it’s too late (verse 6). Don’t try to figure Me out. Don’t argue about My ways in bringing salvation to you. You’ll never figure out how I think or work. Look up at the stars. You can’t understand the universe you can see. You surely can’t understand My ways in dealing with My own creation. You don’t have to. All you have to do is ‘Seek, call, forsake and return!’”
Sixteen things a person must do are mentioned. In other words, a response … a reaction … to the great sacrifice of chapter 53 is required.
God Himself became the sacrifice for our sins, a sacrifice we could never offer for ourselves. Now, the Holy Spirit draws the unbeliever to Himself (John 6:44, Romans 9:16). He calls, He draws, He opens eyes and hearts. These are also things we can’t do for ourselves.
But having done all this, God now waits for a response. Sinful man must “seek, listen, come, forsake, return and buy” the true bread, milk and wine that’s been offered, and the “water of life without cost” Jesus offers in Revelation 21:6.
In 55: 8-9, God explains why we humans are not really capable of figuring out precisely how He works.
We know that the earth’s rotation cannot be stopped, but God did it (Joshua 10:12-14). Dead men don’t walk out of tombs, or walk in fiery furnaces, or live three days in the belly of a fish. Babies aren’t born of virgins, and camels can’t pass through the eye of needle either, but “impossible” is a word found only in man’s vocabulary. There’s no such word to God.
Behold. I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for Me? (Jeremiah 32:27)
Mankind looks up at the stars and realizes that he simply has no idea how it all got there or how all those orbits continue as they do. It should humble his great ego, as it did with David, a man after God’s own heart:
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have ordained, what is man that You take thought of him? And the son of man that You care for him? Psalm 8: 3-4)
The heavens are an infinite distance above the earth, and infinity is not a concept our finite minds can grasp. And these are objects we can see (at least a few of them). How much less can we truly grasp how our God works His ways to cause a person to come to faith? In John 3:8, Jesus tries to get Nicodemus (and us) to see that the Holy Spirit’s work is not something we can fathom completely.
Now, let’s consider 55:6-7. Could we conclude that there may come a time in a person’s life when God cannot be found?
If he continues to harden his heart, and steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that he needs to repent … as the Holy Spirit tells him … God may turn away and leave him to serve the god he prefers (Romans 1: 21-24).
Isaiah has this answer also. You’ll get to see, first-hand, the other side of God and His Servant … the judgment side. You’ll experience the wrath of God against sinners who “will not have this Man to reign over us!”
In chapter 63:1-4, an entirely different picture of Christ appears. This is not a suffering Servant. This is not a sacrificial lamb. It’s a conquering King.
In fact, we cannot truly grasp the wonder of chapter 53 unless we grasp the awesome picture of judgment in chapter 63. Until we see the terrible consequences of unforgiven sin, we can’t understand the full measure of what Christ did for us at Calvary. Until we see the scope of the judgment God will impose on the earth, we can’t understand the scope of what He poured out on his own Son so that we escape that wrath.
Here, we see the same King of Kings John sees in Revelation 19:11-21. His clothing is stained with the blood of those He has trampled, as one would crush wine in a winepress. This passage inspired Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword.
His truth is marching on.
It fits closely with the scene John portrays in Revelation 14:20, where the blood of Jesus’ opponents is compared to wine flowing from a winepress.
Make no mistake about this point: Our God is indeed a God of love and mercy. He is also a God of justice and retribution. If you shake your fist in His face, and keep on doing so, you will experience His wrath. If you spit on His Son, if you insist on placing other gods before Him, if you live a lifestyle that mocks Him … you will most certainly stand in the front row before His throne of judgment (Revelation 20: 11-15).
Turn back to Isaiah 13: 9-13. God has the most effective pest-control program ever seen, and He will assuredly use it to “exterminate” (His word not mine) sinners from off the earth before His Son can reside here as King. How could Jesus reign over the pigsty earth as it is? It needs a complete makeover, and that includes the inhabitants. Mortal man will become scarcer than pure gold (verse 12). Look at Isaiah 24:19-21. The Lord will shake this earth violently until it totters like an old shack. Jesus Himself said that if He doesn’t step in and shorten these days, nobody on earth would survive (Matthew 24:22).
Finally, Isaiah has much to say about this magnificent era when Jesus does come to reign as King of Kings in Jerusalem. Chapter 2 shows Christ rendering judgments and decisions for the nations, with all law emanating from Him. The Prince of Peace is in residence, so all weapons of war are converted to peaceful uses.
Chapter 9:6 says that “the government rests on His shoulders,” and chapter 11:9 adds that “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
Chapters 11:6-8 and 65:25 also picture animals sleeping and grazing together that never would today, children playing with cobras, and small boys leading lions around on a leash.
Recall chapter 25’s lavish banquet (God’s description) where Jesus serves as our Host … still another way entirely of viewing Him as the “Lord of Hosts.”
Chapter 65:19-25 pictures inhabitants of Christ’s kingdom living a very long time. As long as trees. In Colorado, we have trees near our house that are 400 years old. No more crib deaths. A person is considered accursed if he dies before age 100.
Perhaps after so many people die during the Tribulation period just ahead of Christ taking over as King, the Lord allows people to again live hundreds of years to repopulate the earth, as with Adam and those just after him.
It’s difficult for us to imagine conditions like this. We’ve never seen anything like them, and never will until the Lord returns to throw out the usurper, Satan, and claim His rightful place as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
That’s why Jesus told us to pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Now, when you take the bread and the cup this morning, keep your mind focused on the Lamb of God Whose body was beaten and broken and His blood shed for you.
And as we close, listen to Isaiah’s magnificent words from Handel’s Messiah:
Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
These words from this beautiful music are word for word from Isaiah 9:6 (KJV). Perhaps you need to pray right now to the Lord to thank Him for dying for your sins. Perhaps, until today, you’ve never really understood just what He has done for you and how desperately your sins needed His sacrifice in your place. This would be a good time to confess those sins, ask Him to forgive you, accept His death in your place, and ask Him to come in and rule your heart and life as King of kings.
285 Copyright 2001 by Community Bible Chapel, 418 E. Main Street, Richardson, TX 75081. This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 41 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Gordon Graham on August 19, 2001.
This lesson is the first of three that highlight the Books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. The order of the lessons is chronological and thematic. This first covers Jeremiah’s word about the coming judgment of the Lord against Judah and Jerusalem. The second will cover the fall of Jerusalem and the Book of Lamentations. The final lesson will return to Jeremiah and look at his teaching of the New Covenant.
No prophet had a tougher assignment than Jeremiah, for it fell to him to proclaim and oversee the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem; and although the opposition against him and his message was unrelenting, he stayed on message for over 40 years. His prophetic vision saw the coming of terrors and horrors beyond imagining. When vision became reality, he witnessed those terrors and horrors. Throughout it all, he was the soldier who stood his post in disciplined obedience, pressing on even when he wanted to quit. He went the distance with no compensation, but having done the will of God.
Jeremiah lived in chaotic times, and the compilation of his book reflects them. A quick scan of Jeremiah chapters 21-39, which takes note of the names of the kings and other chronology clues, shows that the arrangement of these chapters is not chronological. Among the possible reasons for this are that the arrangement came from those who collected and assembled Jeremiah’s scrolls and messages during the confusing time following the fall of Jerusalem. A small bit of evidence for this view comes from noting that the Massoretic text and the Septuagint are different in arrangement and content. The Septuagint contains just 80% of the material that the Massoretic text contains, and it has a different arrangement of that material.315 Perhaps this was due to a Babylonian vs. Egyptian compilation. After the fall of Jerusalem, Jeremiah and some of the exiles traveled south to Egypt while the main body of exiles traveled north and east to Babylon. One can imagine that Jeremiah’s material underwent different treatment in the two places. What is noteworthy is that there is no contradictory material in the two. In any case, it seems that Jeremiah’s times and his book were chaotic.
On the large-scale, the book does have a discernable structure. The first 19 chapters contain messages of judgment that progress with increasing intensity. Chapter 20 relates a personal crisis in the life and ministry of Jeremiah. Chapters 21-44 contain messages of judgment and of hope. Chapters 45-51 contain messages to other nations. Chapter 52 is a near repeat of 2 Kings 24:18-25:30. Only chapters 21-44 and 52 contain chronology clues.
Jeremiah’s prophetic career spanned the reigns of five kings: Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoaichin, and Zedekiah. Like the structure of the book, the line of kings speaks of the chaos and growing confusion of the times as four of the five kings had short reigns.
Since Jeremiah’s career began in the 13th year of Josiah’s reign and continued for an unspecified period beyond the fall of Jerusalem, we can infer a career lasting for more than 40 years.
One of the keys to understanding the Book of Jeremiah is to see that the reforms of Josiah failed to permeate the general population. This was not from lack of effort or zeal on Josiah’s part. No king prior to Josiah did as much to rid the land of its places of idol worship. As recorded in 2 Kings 23:25:
Before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him.316
However, right from the beginning, the Word of the Lord, through Huldah, indicated that the reforms would have little redeeming effect. This is recorded in 2 Kings when Josiah sent emissaries to ask Huldah about the book found in the temple:
So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe (now she lived in Jerusalem in the Second Quarter); and they spoke to her.
She said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘Tell the man who sent you to me, thus says the Lord, “Behold, I bring evil on this place and on its inhabitants, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read. Because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense to other gods that they might provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore My wrath burns against this place, and it shall not be quenched’”
“But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord thus shall you say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel, “Regarding the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I truly have heard you,” declares the Lord. “Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place.”‘” So they brought back word to the king (2 Kings 22:14-20).
Josiah tore down altars and defiled them. He renewed and repaired the temple. He celebrated a great Passover. Yet, it seems that this had little impact on the people. Consider, for example, that Jeremiah began speaking the Word of the Lord some five years before Josiah’s reforms began. Then consider that these reforms continued for 13 years. Yet, not one word of these reforms occupies the pages of Jeremiah. The people of Judah were deeply committed to their gods. To be sure, they worshiped the Lord, but not Him alone. He was just another entity in the pantheon to be served. Jeremiah must, then, be understood against a backdrop of extreme and heartfelt apostasy, which I will now describe.
There were idols in the Temple of the Lord.
They have turned their back to Me and not their face; though I taught them, teaching again and again, they would not listen and receive instruction. But they put their detestable things in the house which is called by My name, to defile it (Jeremiah 32:33, 34).
There is a detailed description of the idols placed within the temple recorded by Ezekiel in a vision that he received. What he records is chilling and must be remembered as you read Jeremiah and the words of judgment it contains:
It came about in the sixth year, on the fifth day of the sixth month, as I was sitting in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, that the hand of the Lord God fell on me there. Then I looked, and behold, a likeness as the appearance of a man; from His loins and downward there was the appearance of fire, and from His loins and upward the appearance of brightness, like the appearance of glowing metal. He stretched out the form of a hand and caught me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the idol of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy, was located. And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the appearance which I saw in the plain.
Then He said to me, “Son of man, raise your eyes now toward the north.” So I raised my eyes toward the north, and behold, to the north of the altar gate was this idol of jealousy at the entrance. And He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, so that I would be far from My sanctuary? But yet you will see still greater abominations.”
Then He brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, a hole in the wall. He said to me, “Son of man, now dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall, and behold, an entrance. And He said to me, “Go in and see the wicked abominations that they are committing here.” So I entered and looked, and behold, every form of creeping things and beasts and detestable things, with all the idols of the house of Israel, were carved on the wall all around. Standing in front of them were seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them, each man with his censer in his hand and the fragrance of the cloud of incense rising. Then He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are committing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’” And He said to me, “Yet you will see still greater abominations which they are committing.”
Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz. He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Yet you will see still greater abominations than these.”
Then He brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house. And behold, at the entrance to the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east; and they were prostrating themselves eastward toward the sun. He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they have committed here, that they have filled the land with violence and provoked Me repeatedly? For behold, they are putting the twig to their nose. Therefore, I indeed will deal in wrath. My eye will have no pity nor will I spare; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, yet I will not listen to them” (Ezekiel 8).
The worship of idols involved child sacrifice.
They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin (Jeremiah 32:35).
The Lord was just one of several gods to be worshiped and appeased.
Behold, you are trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’ – that you may do all these abominations? (Jeremiah 7:8-11)
The people had a persistent and deep emotional attachment to their gods and goddesses.
As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you! But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune (Jeremiah 44:16, 17).
What is significant about these words is that they were spoken in Egypt after Jerusalem had been destroyed. In spite of the events, the people carried a deep attachment to their idols as a source of protection and prosperity. Had this not been the case, these people would have listened to Jeremiah and remained in Judah where they may well have greatly prospered.
So the spiritual state in Judah and Jerusalem was very bad. The Lord God had made a place for His Name, but that place was full of imposters. He had sought a covenant relationship with His people, but they had no regard or love to return for His. Although Jeremiah mentions other evil activities, the one charge that he makes over and over again is that God’s people had turned away and did not desire to return. To understand how completely was this state of affairs is to understand why Jeremiah spoke of coming judgment: there was no reasonable expectation of repentance or change.
There are four components to Jeremiah’s call as a prophet of the Lord. The first component is a mission statement, the second is internal spiritual fortification to carry out the mission, the third places an important restriction on Jeremiah’s ministry to the people, and finally there is instruction regarding the taking on of a wife.
See, I have appointed you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant (Jeremiah 1:10).
What an awesome matter it was to be the Lord’s Prophet! Jeremiah had a ministry of words, and yet those words meant the plucking up and dislocation of people, the breaking down of culture and society, the destruction of cities, the overthrow of kings, the building of new communities, and the planting of new hope. His ministry was to speak the Word of the Lord, and in speaking, release Spiritual activity that moved events along a God-directed course. The Lord God could not bring about His judgment without His messenger explaining what was to happen and why. To do otherwise would be unjust.
Now behold, I have made you today as a fortified city and as a pillar of iron and as walls of bronze against the whole land, to the kings of Judah, to its princes, to its priests and to the people of the land. They will fight against you, but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver you,’ declares the Lord (Jeremiah 1:18, 19).
Jeremiah’s audience would be hostile, but his message had to carry on till the end. Therefore, Jeremiah could neither give up nor die. Although Jeremiah is rightly called the weeping prophet, we must also understand that he was as tough as nails. He was strong and unrelenting in his message. He delivered it year in and year out without compromise and under great pressure to give up. Even when he was down and wanted to quit, the Lord would burst through:
O Lord, You have deceived me and I was deceived; you have overcome me and prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me. For each time I speak, I cry aloud; I proclaim violence and destruction, because for me the word of the Lord has resulted in reproach and derision all day long.
But if I say, “I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,” then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.
For I have heard the whispering of many, “Terror on every side! Denounce him; yes, let us denounce him!” All my trusted friends, watching for my fall, say: “Perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him and take our revenge on him.”
But the Lord is with me like a dread champion; therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will be utterly ashamed, because they have failed, with an everlasting disgrace that will not be forgotten (Jeremiah 20:7-11).
Part of the strength in Jeremiah was the strength of the message to burst out of him even when he would have preferred to remain quiet. Jeremiah knew that each time he spoke, he was in for trouble. And on some days, he would have liked to stay out of trouble. But the message in him burned like a fire until he could not help but speak.
The Old Testament records times when Israel’s leaders interceded with a God on the verge of wrath and destruction. The most well known of these was between the Lord and Moses:
They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”
The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation.”
Then Moses entreated the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, ‘With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth’”? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.”
So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people (Exodus 32:8-14).
Moses and others interceded with the Lord on behalf of His people to turn away from judgment and show mercy.
It is of great significance, then, that the Lord commanded Jeremiah not to do this! Jeremiah was not to intercede, for Judah and Jerusalem, that the Lord would relent from the calamity that He had planned. Look at these verses:
As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you (Jeremiah 7:16).
Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them; for I will not listen when they call to Me because of their disaster (Jeremiah 11:14).
So the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. When they fast, I am not going to listen to their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I am not going to accept them. Rather I am going to make an end of them by the sword, famine and pestilence” (Jeremiah 14:11,12).
Then the Lord said to me, “Even though Moses and Samuel were to stand before Me, My heart would not be with this people; send them away from My presence and let them go!” (Jeremiah 15:1)
This restriction reveals that the coming judgment was on an irrevocable course. This was underscored, with amazing effect, when the Lord informed Jeremiah that even the likes of Moses and Samuel would not be able, through intercession, to stay the hand of the coming wrath.
The families of the prophets often carried some of the prophet’s message. The Lord commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute. He instructed Hosea and Isaiah regarding what names to give their children, names that contained core themes of His message. For Jeremiah, the word from the Lord was,
You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place. For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bear them, and their fathers who beget them in this land: They will die of deadly diseases, they will not be lamented or buried; they will be as dung on the surface of the ground and come to an end by sword and famine, and their carcasses will become food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth (Jeremiah 16:2-4).
Have you not heard people say that they do not want to bring children into the current world? Most of the time the fear is unfounded, but in Jeremiah’s day having a family would have reduced the effectiveness of his message and brought him great heartache.
Jeremiah is a large book, and it is impossible to convey everything in an overview. Nevertheless, Jeremiah’s prophetic call gives a handle by which we can glean his “core message.” This is the message that occupied the bulk of his 40-plus years of ministry. “See, I have appointed you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10).
To pluck up, break down, destroy, and overthrow. Much of Jeremiah’s message brought charges against the nation of Judah and its people. This is especially true in the first 19 chapters. Along with the charges, Jeremiah also pronounced the sentence for the guilt that the nation bore.
To build and plant. The sentence on Judah and Jerusalem was their destruction and deportation of its people. During the critical last days, Jeremiah spoke a message by which the godly within the besieged walls of Jerusalem could escape. He also wrote letters, encouragement, and instruction to those carried into exile with Jehoiachin. Most significantly, Jeremiah proclaimed a future New Covenant that did not have the weakness of the first.
There are several reasons why the Lord might bring suffering into our lives. In one case, He may bring suffering to discipline us and bring us to maturity. In another case, He sends trials and tribulations our way so that we can stand as His witnesses on the earth. These situations have a compensating good that we can expect to receive for our pain. We can consider such troubles as cause for joy, as James 1:2-4 tells us. But when He bares His arm in wrath, there is no cause for joy. The Lord’s wrath comes when He needs to remove a cancer from His creation. It is the terrible state of being where the only response of the soul is to say, “Woe is me!” As the Lord said through Huldah:
Behold, I bring evil on this place and on its inhabitants, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read. “Because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense to other gods that they might provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore My wrath burns against this place, and it shall not be quenched” (2 Kings 22:16-17).
There is no hope in these words. The Lord is not moving to discipline His people. He is not bringing tribulation their way. Rather, he is going to demolish the nation and leave it an ash heap.
For the Lord to be just, He must communicate the charges before carrying out the sentence. This was a significant part of Jeremiah’s message. Alongside the failure, as noted above, of Josiah’s reforms to remove rampant idolatry and child sacrifice from Judah, Jeremiah brought these charges:
There were very few God-seeking people in the land. One of the reasons for wrath over discipline for Judah and Jerusalem was the extreme rarity of godly people. On one occasion, the said:
Roam to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and look now and take note. And seek in her open squares, if you can find a man, if there is one who does justice, who seeks truth, then I will pardon her. And although they say, ‘As the Lord lives,’ surely they swear falsely (Jeremiah 5:1, 2).
Jeremiah goes on to describe how he searched among the common people and then among the court. On that day, at least, he could find no one. The people in Judah and Jerusalem had not the slightest inclination to know the Lord and His paths. Jeremiah described their attitude this way:
To whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed and they cannot listen. Behold, the word of the Lord has become a reproach to them; they have no delight in it” (Jeremiah 6:10).
Indeed, beyond a lack of interest, the Word was treated with disdain and derision. Jeremiah wrote,
Thus says the Lord, “Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and you will find rest for your souls.” But they said, “We will not walk in it” (Jeremiah 6:16).
Moral decline reached its heights. When the nation rejected God and His Scriptures, its general moral state also declined. At the same time, it maintained some external religious affectations. Combined, they were a great insult to the Holy God:
Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, “We are delivered!” — that you may do all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 7:9-11).
These are the charges that Jeremiah brought against the nation. It would seem as if the nation as a whole, not in part, was guilty of:
For such charges to have meaning, there must be a legal code on which they are based. That code, of course, is the Law of Moses, which was more than just a legal code, but was a covenant document. It spelled out responsibilities to both parties of the covenant. If the children of Israel obeyed, there would be the blessings of prosperity, health, and safety. If they disobeyed, there would be the curse of poverty, sickness, and terror. All this was clearly spelled out in Deuteronomy 28. So, along with the charges came the expectation of the consequences written in the covenant.
And so Jeremiah, the Prophet of the Lord, had to speak the sentence of the curse:
And it shall be that when they say to you, “Where should we go?” then you are to tell them, Thus says the Lord: “Those destined for death, to death; And those destined for the sword, to the sword; And those destined for famine, to famine; And those destined for captivity, to captivity.” I will appoint over them four kinds of doom,” declares the Lord: “the sword to slay, the dogs to drag off, and the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy” (Jeremiah 15:2, 3).
On at least 15 occasions, Jeremiah spoke of “famine, pestilence, and sword.” These are the terrors that Jeremiah saw coming and over which he anguished,
My soul, my soul! I am in anguish! Oh, my heart! My heart is pounding in me; I cannot be silent, because you have heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Disaster on disaster is proclaimed, for the whole land is devastated; suddenly my tents are devastated, my curtains in an instant. How long must I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet? For my people are foolish, they know me not; they are stupid children and have no understanding. They are shrewd to do evil, but to do good they do not know (Jeremiah 4:19-22). 317
At one point, Jeremiah compared the coming destruction to the undoing of the Creation:
I looked on the earth, and behold, it was formless and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens had fled. I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a wilderness, and all its cities were pulled down before the Lord, before His fierce anger. For thus says the Lord, “The whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not execute a complete destruction. For this the earth shall mourn and the heavens above be dark, because I have spoken, I have purposed, and I will not change My mind, nor will I turn from it” (Jeremiah 4:23-28).
The deaths of many would symbolize the failure of Judah and Jerusalem’s gods to save them:
At that time, declares the Lord, they will bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of its princes, and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves. They will spread them out to the sun, the moon and to all the host of heaven, which they have loved and which they have served, and which they have gone after and which they have sought, and which they have worshiped. They will not be gathered or buried; they will be as dung on the face of the ground (Jeremiah 8: 1, 2).
Out of the covenant that promised both blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience comes the sentence for the nation’s great apostasy. The curses of the covenant must surely come, as would have come the blessings, if the nation had maintained its love for the Lord alone.
But not all within the city and countryside were apostate, and surely, there were some who would listen to Jeremiah. What was to happen to them? Were they to also come under the wrath of God? Did their faith not commend some mercy from His hand? As Abraham once asked the Lord before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” (Genesis 18:23)
There was good news here. Anyone who knew the Lord and knew Jeremiah to be His spokesman had options that led to safety during those trying times. This is not to say that safety meant life as usual, or that it did not mean suffering. There was still loss, and great at that. But the path of safety led to hope and a future. Jeremiah set it out this way:
You shall also say to this people, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. He who dwells in this city will die by the sword and by famine and by pestilence; but he who goes out and falls away to the Chaldeans who are besieging you will live, and he will have his own life as booty. For I have set My face against this city for harm and not for good,’” declares the Lord. “It will be given into the hand of the king of Babylon and he will burn it with fire” (Jeremiah 21:8-10).
Anyone who believed this message had freedom to leave the city and become the captives of the Chaldeans. This, of course, meant exile and the loss of home. But it was the path of hope for those who took it.
If the King of Judah had listened to such words, he could have saved the entire city. Jeremiah told him:
Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “Thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘If you will indeed go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then you will live, this city will not be burned with fire, and you and your household will survive. But if you will not go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then this city will be given over to the hand of the Chaldeans; and they will burn it with fire, and you yourself will not escape from their hand’” (Jeremiah 38:17; 18).
And so we see that those who knew the Lord could escape His wrath. This is a principle first illustrated when the Lord God removed Lot and his family from Sodom. God’s wrath is against the wicked, but He will preserve the righteous. Even more so, He lets the presence of the righteous preserve the wicked. I will cover this topic more later on, but it is important for us to understand that the Lord prefers to show mercy. In His own words, He is:
“The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Exodus 34:6b, 7).
To be sure, He will punish the guilty, but look at the preponderance of mercy and wrath in this proclamation.
The bottom line in Jerusalem was that nobody had to suffer the sword, the famine, or the pestilence. Those who could hear the Word of the Lord through Jeremiah had the God-given freedom to leave nation and home. Such words branded Jeremiah as a traitor, and several tried to take his life. And those who left took word to Nebuchadnezzar about this man in the city telling people to leave. For this, Nebuchadnezzar treated Jeremiah favorably. The charge of treason was just one more thing that Jeremiah had to bear in his ministry.
Two times before the fall of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar took captives from Jerusalem and Judah. The Lord used these first two waves to prepare homes and a reception for the final devastated group at the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s Jerusalem campaign.
The first exile occurred during the third year of Jehoiakim. At this time, Nebuchadnezzar carried off the best and brightest of the young men in the royal court in Jerusalem. Among those taken were Daniel and his friends. These young people were likely the beneficiaries of Josiah’s reforms, because they were full of faith and godly wisdom. And by them, the Lord established godly instructors and overseers in high places prior to the fall of Jerusalem. You need only to think of Daniel’s rise in Nebuchadnezzar’s court to see how the Lord was preparing a governmental covering for His people who would lose their homes in later years.
The second exile occurred at the end of Jehoiachin’s short three-month reign as King of Judah. In this group were the likes of Ezekiel. The important elements in this group were craftsmen and smiths, who upon arriving in Babylon began to build communities for the Jewish people. Thus the Lord created an infrastructure to receive the last and final wave of exiles. Ezekiel provided for their instruction.
Jeremiah’s word to these exiles was in stark contrast to his words to the citizens of Judah and Jerusalem. He did not speak to them directly, but rather wrote letters. These letters were full of hope, promise, and encouragement. Here are the words from his letter to the exiles:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, “Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.
For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream. For they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.
For thus says the Lord, “When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,” declares the Lord, “and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile” (Jeremiah 29:4-14).
Think again about those in the city that Jeremiah told to leave. To leave was to come under the hope and promise of these words Jeremiah had for the exiles. To stay was to face sword, famine, and pestilence. To leave was to build homes, marry, have children, grow, and prosper. As the Lord surely brought His wrath to Judah and Jerusalem, He prepared a place for those who escaped through obedience to Jeremiah’s word. Because of the previous exiles, the Lord had created a place for the ones who came during and after the devastating times. It is imperative that we see the how the Lord moved in mercy to the fullest extent.
I happened to be preparing this lesson on September 11, 2001. This is one of those dates, like December 7, 1941, that will be part of our national consciousness for decades, and perhaps centuries, to come. As I watched, live, the towers burn and collapse, my head was full of Jeremiah. The combination was chilling. The question that I had to ask was, “Is the USA in line for God’s judgment?” As part of my preparation, I had read Francis Schaeffer’s Death in the City, wherein he writes:
We do not have to guess what God would say about this because there was a period of history, biblical history, which greatly parallels our day. That is the day of Jeremiah. The Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations show how God looks at a culture which knew Him and deliberately turned away. But this is not just the character of Jeremiah’s day of apostasy. It’s my day. It’s our day. And if we are going to help our own generation, our perspective must be that of Jeremiah, that weeping prophet Rembrandt so magnificently pictured weeping over Jerusalem, yet in the midst of his tears speaking without mitigating his message of judgment to a people who had had so much yet turned away.318
To this, I could add a contemporary saying, “If God does not judge America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” There seem to be many voices telling us that judgment is near.
Are we living in days similar to Jeremiah’s? Is there wisdom to be gained from matching idolatry with secularism, child sacrifice with abortion, adultery with adultery, and so forth, and conclude that God’s wrath is imminent and that the destruction of the World Trade Towers is its beginning?
I think not! He may be bringing discipline our way. He may be bringing some measure of tribulation our way. But His wrath is not to be expected at this time. He is full of mercy, and He is concerned for His people. He is not eager to pour out His wrath, but willingly delays it until all hope for a change is gone. The following chart compares the things of Jeremiah’s day with our day:
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Of course, we also have ungodly leaders, and we have a solid population of unbelievers. I will even grant that we, as a nation, are sliding downhill. But that does not place us, as a nation, in Jeremiah’s day. If I were to place us, I would say more like the times of Isaiah. God’s discipline often comes in our lives and the lives of nations, but discipline is not wrath. God’s people are often persecuted and then shine like a beacon calling others to faith, but persecution is not wrath. God’s wrath is a cutting away of a cancer about to overwhelm and bring death. It is extreme, and it is rare. The Lord God is not eager to show His wrath. There can be joy in discipline and persecution. There is no joy in wrath.
Along these lines, let us remember the discussion Abraham had with the Lord over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:
Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham was still standing before the Lord.
Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”
So the Lord said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.”
And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the whole city because of five?” And He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”
He spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose forty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it on account of the forty.”
Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak; suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
And he said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.”
Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.”
As soon as He had finished speaking to Abraham the Lord departed, and Abraham returned to his place (Genesis 18:22-33).
Compare this episode with Jeremiah 5:1b:
“If you can find a man, if there is one who does justice, who seeks truth, then I will pardon her.”
There is a principle here that says that the presence of the righteous has a preserving effect on the wicked, because the Lord does not want to break forth in wrath against the righteous. As Abraham said, “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Genesis 18:25)
The proof of this principle is that in the case of Sodom, two angels removed Lot and his family from the city before its destruction came. In the case of Jerusalem, Jeremiah instructed the righteous to leave, and the Lord had already prepared a place in Babylon for them to remove to. So let us give thanks to the Lord for His mercy and renew our efforts at renewing and reforming the nation in which we live. Now is not the time to proclaim wrath, but to continue to proclaim the gospel that is the essence of His mercy.
This counterpoint of judgment/wrath and mercy is illustrated in 2 Peter 2:4-9:
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment (2 Peter 2:4-9).
It would seem that for every outpouring of wrath on men, there is a remnant that is rescued.
So through Jeremiah, we witness a time of God’s judgment declared and executed. We also see the workings of His mercy. In the next two lessons, we will go deeper into the fall of Jerusalem and its expression in Lamentations. Then we will return to Jeremiah to see the promise of a New Covenant to replace the Old.
314 This is the edited manuscript delivered by Donald E. Curtis at Community Bible Chapel on September 23, 2001. Don is an elder at Cobb Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kennesaw, Georgia. You can e-mail comments and questions to /email.asp?email=curtis.
315 Gleason L. Archer, “The Relationship Between the Septuagint Translation and the Massoretic Text in Jeremiah,” Trin 12:2 (Fall 1991): 139-50.
316 All Scripture is taken from the New American Standard Bible, 1965 Update.
317 In these verses, the speaker is ambiguous. In the beginning it seems as if Jeremiah must be speaking, but suddenly it reads, “For my people are foolish, they know me not.” This sounds like it is the Lord speaking, for it seems irrelevant for Jeremiah to complain that the people “know him not.” On the other hand, it is hard to picture the Lord saying, “My soul, my soul! I am in anguish.” The ambiguity tells me that the Lord also feels grief over the coming destruction.
318 Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p. 16.
This lesson is the third of three that highlight the Books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. The order of the lessons is chronological and thematic. The first covered Jeremiah’s word about the coming judgment of the Lord against Judah and Jerusalem. The second covered the fall of Jerusalem and the Book of Lamentations. This lesson returns to Jeremiah to look at his teaching of the New Covenant.
As the first lesson on the Book of Jeremiah showed, Jeremiah spoke of the coming judgment of God at great length. It was a difficult and joyless message to carry, but carry it he did for over 40 years. Jeremiah’s letters of hope to the exiles may have been a welcome relief to his message, but such relief could only be mixed; he was writing to banished people. I have described Jeremiah as a soldier obediently standing his post, with no compensation but having done the will of God. That assessment is mostly true, but the Lord did bring a word of hope to Jeremiah: The restoration of the people to the land and the New Covenant to come. One might even be so bold as to say that these two promises alone are sufficient for the author of Lamentations to have found hope in the truth, “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness”321 (Lamentations 3:22; 23).
As with Jeremiah, so it is with us. In this lesson, we can move away from terrors and horrors and see the good things that Lord has done for us. Unlike Jeremiah, who could only hope, we live in the day of the New Covenant and, indeed, have great cause to rejoice.
In this lesson, I will look at the Old Covenant and tell why it failed. I will then look at the Lord’s plan to bless His people in spite of their apostasy. After that, I will describe the New Covenant as promised and as delivered. I will conclude this series with a retrospective of the whole.
The Old Covenant was presented and ratified by the children of Israel during the days of Moses. The covenant was a good covenant. It was fair. It faithfully laid out the duties of each side. It said that the Lord God would bless His people if they obeyed the Law and that He would curse the people if they disobeyed. Of course, when you distill the essence of the covenant in such terse terms, it sounds awful. The actual reading and meditation of the Old Covenant is enjoyable and uplifting, because one can sense the underlying principles and know that it speaks of relationship, truth, justice, and goodness. After all, it is the Old Covenant that the Psalmist refers to when he says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalms 119:105).
No matter how light giving the potential of the Old Covenant, the fact was that in Jeremiah’s day, it was time for the “curses” to kick in:
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Cursed is the man who does not heed the words of this covenant which I commanded your forefathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, ‘Listen to My voice, and do according to all which I command you; so you shall be My people, and I will be your God,’ in order to confirm the oath which I swore to your forefathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day.” ‘ “ Then I said, “Amen, O Lord.”
And the Lord said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Hear the words of this covenant and do them. ‘For I solemnly warned your fathers in the day that I brought them up from the land of Egypt, even to this day, warning persistently, saying, “Listen to My voice.” ‘Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked, each one, in the stubbornness of his evil heart; therefore I brought on them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not’” (Jeremiah 11:1-8).
I believe that in this section Jeremiah based his argument on Deuteronomy 28. There, Moses describes the blessings that would come upon the nation if they obeyed all the words of the covenant. One could group the blessings as providing prosperity, health, and safety. On the other hand, in the same chapter, Moses put forth the curses that would follow disobedience. In a nutshell, instead of prosperity, health, and safety, there would be poverty, sickness, and terror. Certainly there was motivation to obey, and yet the Israelites failed over and over again to appropriate the blessings until, in Jeremiah’s day, the full force of the curses fell on them. Judah and Israel received what their forefathers agreed to. No one can bring a charge of unfairness to the Lord. Instead, one can see His sustained mercy through the centuries until the point where not bringing judgment would, itself, be fatal to His people and their destiny. As the following table shows, to read Deuteronomy 28:49-68 is to read Lamentations. The one looks forward and the one looks backward, but they see the same curses.
Deuteronomy 28 |
Lamentations |
49-52: A foreign nation with an unknown language will come against you and destroy the walls of your city. |
2:8, 9a – The Lord determined to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out a line, He has not restrained His hand from destroying, and he has caused rampart and wall to lament; they have languished together. Her gates have sunk into the ground, He has destroyed and broken her bars. |
53-57: Men and women will fight over and eat their own children. |
2:20 – See, O Lord, and Look! With whom have you dealt thus? Should women eat their own offspring? The little ones who were born healthy? |
60-62: Sickness and plague |
3:4 – He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away, he has broken my bones. |
63-65: Scattered to the nations |
1:3 – Judah has gone into exile under affliction and harsh servitude; she dwells among the nations, but she has found no rest; all her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of distress. |
66-68: Depression and despair of soul |
3:17-20 – My soul has been rejected from peace; I have forgotten happiness. So I say, “My strength is gone, and so has my hope from the Lord.” Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and s bowed down within me. |
With such great blessings for obedience and such horrible curses for disobedience, why could not the nations of Israel and Judah choose rightly? Why did they come to receive the curses instead of the blessings? The answer lies in the ineffectiveness of the Covenant of Law.
The Law is ineffective because the heart (mind, will, and emotions) is defective. The heart of man does not naturally lean towards the Lord and His ways, but rather is full of self-interest. Jeremiah wrote:
The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds (Jeremiah 17:9, 10).
In other words, the heart leads the man against the things of God. It is dishonest and sick.
The Law is ineffective because the heart is unmoved by it. The Law can reveal lawless behavior, but it is usually ineffective in changing behavior. I may find myself wanting something my neighbor has. If I have the means, I may get one for myself. If I do not have the means, I may stew and fret over my misfortune. I may secretly hope that my neighbor loses his possession or breaks it or tires of it. The point is, I am in a mental and emotional state. Its origins are within myself, because of the deceitfulness of my heart. When the Law comes along and says, “Do not covet,” what am I to do? Often, I am in the same mental and emotional state with the addition of the Law’s condemnation. The Law typically does not correct my heart; it only condemns my heart. I can read the command and know that I am a man who covets. The command does not lead me to seek my neighbor’s good.
One could say that Paul’s words in Romans 7 are all about the defectiveness of the heart and the ineffectiveness of the Law to correct it:
What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.
I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin (Romans 7:7-25).
The Law is ineffective because the heart gravitates to legalism and defeats the intent of the Law. We have a sick heart and a law that shows its sickness. At the same time, we might acknowledge that the Law is good and marvel at our inability to meet its standards. One scheme that the heart, in its deceitfulness, has for self-justification is legalism. Legalism focuses on what is measurable in the Law. Meeting the requirements of such laws requires discipline and character, and in the meeting of the measure, the heart contents itself. The misfortune is that laws of measure do not get the heart right with God.
Here is a maxim well worth understanding: “Legalism likes the tithe and hates the corners of the field.” The tithe, Deuteronomy 14:22, is a gift of 10% of your income. The corners of your field (Leviticus 19:9) are what you leave unharvested for the sake of the poor. One can know when he or she has met the tithe standard, but when have you left enough of your field behind? Can you count what you leave behind in your field as part of your tithe? The questions can go on and on. In the asking of the questions, the weightier issues of generosity and compassion are lost, and yet it is generosity and compassion that both the tithe and the corners of the field would like to promote.
This is why the Jewish leadership could reject Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. The Oral Law, later codified in the Talmud, defined the details of “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Under the Oral Law, keeping the Sabbath was “measurable” like the tithe. Jesus went beyond the measure and, therefore, was guilty of breaking the Oral Law. Jesus saw the Sabbath as an opportunity to demonstrate compassion and to do good to others, but he broke a legal standard. The deceived heart behind the legal standard would rather see a man or woman sick and suffering until sundown. The intent of the Sabbath in the Old Covenant was thereby defeated.
The Law is ineffective because the heart misuses the redemptive provisions in the Covenant of Law. The blessings in the Old Covenant of Law did not demand perfect obedience. Instead, an entire system of blood sacrifice and offerings was erected to provide a covering for sin. So there were Guilt Offerings, Sin Offerings, etc. Once a year, the high priest would take blood into the Holy of Holies to provide redemption for national guilt. In other words, the Law never required perfect obedience. However, the provision for covering tends to promote more sin. What God intended as a vehicle for His mercy, man distorts as a palliative for a guilty conscience. The Lord, through Jeremiah, expressed this well:
“‘Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, “We are delivered!” — that you may do all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 7:9-11).
The Law is ineffective because the heart’s deception and wickedness does not seek God by faith. Faith is not a New Testament concept. Genesis 15:6 and Habakkuk 2:4 both underpin the role of faith in establishing righteousness in a man or woman. However, the heart’s gravitation to legalism subverts the formation of faith.
In short: The Law reveals sin, but it does not impart righteousness. Ask yourself this question, “When is a thief not a thief?” You might answer, “When he is not stealing.” That is wrong; a thief not stealing is a thief out of work. When is an adulterer not an adulterer? You cannot say, “When he is not with his mistress,” because his mind is full of lust and memories and the schedule for the next encounter. Once more we see the commandments “Do not steal” and “Do not commit adultery” provide a diagnosis of sin, without imparting righteousness. You can see, in part, that this is because the Law identifies sin, but not righteousness. Righteousness is more of a “corners of the field” issue. It always moves outside of self-interest and engages in the interests of others. Thus, in answer to “When is a thief not a thief” one could do better with the answer in Ephesians 4:28:
“He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need.”
A person who works to have things to give to others in need is not a thief.
What should be apparent, from the above discussion, is that the Old Covenant, although good and right, was doomed to fail. In the days of Jeremiah, all that remained of the Covenant was the execution of the curses. Through Jeremiah, the Lord diagnoses the condition of the people and gives His prognosis of the outcome, “For thus says the Lord, ‘Your wound is incurable and your injury is serious. There is no one to plead your cause; no healing for you sore, no recovery for you’” (Jeremiah 30:12, 13). The disease is terminal. There seems to be no hope. The children of Israel must be, it seems, no more.
But like a cancer patient who is told that there is no hope, but only certain death, so it is with God’s people. We can always turn and seek the power and mercy of God. Some people diagnosed with a fatal injury or sicknesses are healed. I do not know of a single believer who will not pray for the healing of someone he or she loves. And so, even though the prognosis for Jerusalem and Judah is not good, we find that the Lord revealed to Jeremiah His plans to heal and restore His people, “‘For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the Lord, ‘Because they have called you an outcast, saying: “It is Zion; no one cares for her”‘” (Jeremiah 30:17). Again the Lord tells Jeremiah, “Behold, I will bring it to health and healing, and I will heal them; and I will reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth” (Jeremiah 33:6).
A different path to righteousness is needed to accomplish this healing, however. The Covenant of Law could not bring righteousness, but perhaps there could be another way. Through Jeremiah, the Lord says, “In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell in safety; and this is the name by which she shall be called: the Lord is our righteousness” (Jeremiah 33:16). Here is a recognition that the deceitful heart of man could never stand in its own righteousness, but that perhaps the Lord, Himself, could supply or be the required righteousness. I cannot help quoting Romans 8:3, 4 here, although it might logically be better placed elsewhere in this lesson:
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did; sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Clearly, Jesus our Messiah has accomplished for us what the Law failed to do. However, this thought really is where the lesson is moving. We are not there yet.
Besides health, healing, and righteousness, the Lord promises His people through Jeremiah that He will restore all things:
“Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob and have compassion on his dwelling places; and the city will be rebuilt on its ruin, and the palace will stand on its rightful place. From them will proceed thanksgiving and the voice of those who celebrate; and I will multiply them and they will not be diminished; I will also honor them and they will not be insignificant. Their children also will be as formerly, and their congregation shall be established before Me; and I will punish all their oppressors. Their leader shall be one of them, and their ruler shall come forth from their midst; and I will bring him near and he shall approach Me; for who would dare to risk his life to approach Me?’ declares the Lord. ‘You shall be My people, and I will be your God’” (Jeremiah 30:18-22).
Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare in the coastlands afar off, and say, “He who scattered Israel will gather him and keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.” For the Lord has ransomed Jacob and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he. They will come and shout for joy on the height of Zion, and they will be radiant over the bounty of the Lord— over the grain and the new wine and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; and their life will be like a watered garden, and they will never languish again. Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old, together, for I will turn their mourning into joy and will comfort them and give them joy for their sorrow. I will fill the soul of the priests with abundance, and My people will be satisfied with My goodness,” declares the Lord (Jeremiah 31:10-14).
Thus says the Lord, “Yet again there will be heard in this place, of which you say, ‘It is a waste, without man and without beast,’ that is, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man and without inhabitant and without beast, the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, ‘Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting’; and of those who bring a thank offering into the house of the Lord. For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first,” says the Lord (Jeremiah 33:10; 11).
And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, “Have you not observed what this people have spoken, saying, ‘The two families which the Lord chose, He has rejected them’? Thus they despise My people, no longer are they as a nation in their sight. Thus says the Lord, ‘If My covenant for day and night stand not, and the fixed patterns of heaven and earth I have not established,
then I would reject the descendants of Jacob and David My servant, not taking from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy on them’” (Jeremiah 33:23-26).
And so you can see the complete restoration of all things: kings, priests, prosperity, health, and safety. This is what the Lord intends to do. But how can such things really be? The heart of man is still the heart of man. What is to prevent a recurrence of apostasy?
It is the heart of man that preempts the blessings intended by Old Covenant Law. That is why the Law convicts of sin. For the Lord to bring healing, something fundamental must happen to the heart. It is not surprising, then, when Jeremiah writes down the words of the New Covenant to come, that it involves the heart:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
“I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it.” The houses of Judah and Israel broke the Old Covenant. The first tenet of the New Covenant is that the Law would be within the people of God and that it would be written on their hearts. The Law would not be on tablets of stone or on the leather pages of a scroll. It will instead be an operating principle in the heart. This is indeed new! Under the Old Covenant the forefathers forgot the Lord, but in the new, “they will all know me.” Under the Old Covenant, sin was remembered, but in the new, “I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.”
On our side of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, we see that the New Covenant is operational. We should be able to examine Jeremiah’s text and see its fulfillment in the New Testament. So let us take these three components of the New Covenant:
1. We will all know God;
2. Our sin will be forgiven and forgotten; and
3. The Law will be within us and written on our hearts.
Let us look at some New Covenant Scriptures that illustrate how all these components are part of the righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus the Messiah.
“They will all know me.” The presence of Jesus the Messiah on the earth revealed the Father and made Him known in an intimate way. For us to know Jesus is to know God. Note these two passages from several in the New Testament:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, (Hebrews 1:1-3).
“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him” (John 14:7).
The writer to the first century Jewish believers tells us that God has spoken to us in His Son and that the Son was an “exact representation” of His nature. And Jesus’ own words tell us that to know Him is to know the Father.
“I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.” The single most complete treatment of this aspect of the New Covenant is presented in Hebrews, chapters 8 through 10. In chapter 8, the writer clearly connects Jesus as the high priest and mediator of Jeremiah’s New Covenant. In chapter 9, he tells us how Jesus took His own blood into the holy place that is in heaven to provide an “eternal redemption.” Chapter 10 contrasts the work of the Aaronic priesthood with the priesthood of Jesus. Throughout this section in Hebrews, the superiority of Jesus sacrifice for sin is put forth.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance (Hebrews 9:11-15).
“I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it.” The first two parts of the New Covenant are well understood by all believers. They form the basis of the gospel message preached today. We all speak of salvation in terms of “knowing Christ” and “forgiveness of sin.” What is not so well understood, because of a widespread misunderstanding of the place of Law in the New Covenant, is having the Law “within us” and “written on our hearts.”
Let me first talk about the misunderstanding of the place of Law in the New Covenant. The way some Christians talk, one gets the idea that the Law is bad. Such a notion does not stand the test of New Testament Scriptures. In the first place, Paul used Law to argue his points. For example, in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4 to establish the right of a minister of the gospel to make a living from the gospel. In the second place, Paul spells out the place that Law has in the life of faith:
But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted (1 Timothy 1:8-11).
According to Paul, the Law still serves to identify sin. A person who is righteous has no need for the Law, but who is righteous? The point is that Jesus Christ did not do away with God’s standards of righteousness. It is still there, it still gives light, and it is still useful. Paul’s admonition to the Galatian churches was that they do not bind themselves to the Old Covenant to seek its blessings, because that path can only bring the curses. Instead they were to “walk by the Spirit.”
According to Jeremiah, and also the teaching of Paul as we shall see, Law has a place in the New Covenant. But the placement of the Law changes from stone and parchment to the heart of man. Perhaps the best way to understand what it means for Law to be “written on our hearts” is to examine Mount Sinai (Exodus 19, 20) and the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2). This might seem strange to you, because very few Gentiles know that Pentecost is the day when the Jews celebrate the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.322 So you can see that this day commemorates both the beginning of the Old and the New Covenants. Therefore, it would seem worth our while to compare the two events.
Here is a very brief summary of the flow of events when the Law came forth from Mount Sinai. The Lord tells Moses that He desires to have a “nation of priests” (Exodus 19:6). A few days later, the Lord descends on Mount Sinai with fire, smoke, the sound of a trumpet, and other manifestations (Exodus 19:16-25). On the mount, the Lord speaks, out loud, the ten commandments to the people (Exodus 20:1-17). The people respond by drawing back and asking Moses to be a mediator. In the end, the people do not become a nation of priests. Rather, that responsibility falls to the descendants of Aaron.
Let’s compare these events with the Day of Pentecost. Whereas a single fire descended and landed on the top of the mountain and before a barrier keeping the people away, when the Holy Spirit came, the fire separated and alighted on individual believers. This is an incredible statement of the new access to the Father in the New Covenant. The presence of God no longer must be remote and terrifying, but is now individual and within. Whereas the Lord spoke from Mount Sinai, it is the believers, filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, who speak. Whereas the ancient Israelites withdrew, on the Day of Pentecost, the people came close and 3,000 were saved. Indeed, all became priests (Revelation 5:9, 10). When Jesus died and took His own blood into the Holy Place in heaven, He established the New Covenant. Because the hearts of men could now be cleansed and healed, the Holy Spirit could now indwell every believer.
I will say this strongly. It is the Holy Spirit who is the key distinctive of the New Covenant over the Old. You might say that we are saved by faith. That is not new, because Abraham is the father of justification by faith (Genesis 15:6). Blood has provided a covering for sin since the Lord clothed Adam and Eve with animal skins. The Lord’s lovingkindness and mercy are expressions of His grace. Faith, blood, and grace are active principles in the Old Covenant. The new thing in Acts 2 is the indwelling, sanctifying, and empowering effect of the Holy Spirit made possible by the cleansing blood of Jesus the Messiah. From this base, we can comprehend what Jeremiah meant by the Law written on out hearts:
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:1-11).
Notice Paul’s words “that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). One can begin to see the dynamics of the Lord’s words through Jeremiah, “I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it” (Jeremiah 31:33b). As we walk according to the Spirit, we begin to manifest a godliness that emanates from within.
This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (Galatians 3:2-5)
When Paul says, “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3b), does he not imply that there is a “being perfected” by the Spirit? The doctrine of sanctification recognizes this principle that the Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer by conforming him or her into the image of Jesus Christ. This transformation is the work of the Lord putting His Law within us and writing it on our hearts.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another (Galatians 5:16-26).
Think of all that this lesson has discussed concerning the heart, and the Old and New Covenants, and you will find expression in these few verses. Paul’s words here tell of the propensity of the heart to deceit and sin. It hints that there are laws against the expressions of the flesh. It puts forth the fruit of the Holy Spirit as He operates in the lives of believers and does the work of writing Law in the heart. The work of the Holy Spirit is the work of generating righteous self-giving behavior. We must understand that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is not that I receive, from the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, and so forth. Rather it is that I, by the Holy Spirit, will be a source of love, joy, peace, and so forth. A tree does not eat its own fruit. The fruit is for those who come to the tree hungry.
The fruit of the Holy Spirit, in concept, is like the “corners of the field.” When do I show enough love, bring enough joy, broker enough peace, and have a character as kind, good, faithful, gentle, and under control as can be? Through the Holy Spirit, I can increase in such things every day of my life. Not only that, but I need the discernment of the Holy Spirit to know when the loving thing is to be close or to be far away.
So the New Covenant is the basis by which the Lord can fully restore all things. His Son came to earth, lived, died, and rose from the dead. His death enabled the cleansing of our hearts from sin so that the Holy Spirit could indwell, empower, and sanctify us. In this way, we have forgiveness of sin, the knowledge of God, and the Law within us. It is for these reasons that the New Covenant will succeed where the Old Covenant failed. Does this mean that we will find perfection in this life? No! Even Paul near the end of his life refers to himself as the “foremost of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15, 16). The writing of the Law on our hearts is a process, which is why Jeremiah’s New Covenant also tells us that the Lord will forgive our sin and remember it no more. How good it is to be in this age!
And so we come to the end of these lessons on Jeremiah and Lamentations. In them, we saw how Jeremiah announced and oversaw the failure of the Old Covenant; how he saw and grieved over the destruction of Jerusalem; and how he saw and announced the day of a New Covenant. Through all of this, I believe that we can come away with these fundamental lessons:
1. It is God’s lovingkindness, mercy, and faithfulness that are everlasting. Since to know Jesus is to know the Father, we need only look at His life on the earth to see the Father’s heart. Jesus was always quick to show mercy over judgment.
2. His discipline, the tribulations He brings our way, and even the wrath that He pours out are momentary, and work to establish His lovingkindness, mercy, and faithfulness!
ADONAI TZIDKENU: The Lord is our Righteousness.
320 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Donald E. Curtis at Community Bible Chapel, on October 7, 2001. Don is an elder at Cobb Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kennesaw, Georgia. You can e-mail comments and questions to /email.asp?email=curtis
321 All Scripture is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE.
322 Donald E. Curtis, “The Lord’s Appointed Times,” No pages. Cited January 3, 2002. online:/docs/ot/books/lev/deffin/lev-17.htm.
This lesson is the second of three that highlight the Books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. The order of the lessons is chronological and thematic. The first covered Jeremiah’s word about the coming judgment of the Lord against Judah and Jerusalem. This second lesson covers the fall of Jerusalem and the Book of Lamentations. The final lesson will return to Jeremiah and look at his teaching of the New Covenant.
To understand the Book of Lamentations, one must come to know what it was like during the final days of Jerusalem before Nebuchadnezzar breached her walls. The days before her destruction marked the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s words about the coming famine, pestilence, and sword. They were dark days and full of terrors and horrors.
As the armies of Babylon advanced through the land of Judah, the word went out to enter the fortified cities. One of the early words in Jeremiah declared that this would happen, “Declare in Judah and proclaim in Jerusalem, and say, ‘Blow the trumpet in the land;’ Cry aloud and say, ‘Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities’” (Jeremiah 4:5).
And so the population of the cities increased overnight. Among those streaming into the “safety” behind the walls were nomadic tribes such as the Rechabites (Jeremiah 35:11). Of course, it was the function of the city to provide such protection, but one must still imagine the impact of such drastically increased numbers during a long siege.
Lodging: Let’s imagine the annual Passover crowd that would descend upon Jerusalem. There would, of course, be rooms in the city, but many would stay in the outlying towns in guest rooms and so forth. During the siege, even the people in those towns would come into the city seeking shelter. It is reasonable to assume that the city would soon fill with makeshift shelters to accommodate those unable to find or afford the cost of an inn or a room. There would be people everywhere you looked. Many would become quickly destitute.
Food and Water: Jerusalem had an internal water supply. What people could eat, however, would be limited to whatever supplies the city had stored for such an emergency. Regardless of how the leaders rationed the food, the finite supply would run out.
Fuel: Except for fresh vegetables, fruit, and nuts, most of the food people eat requires cooking. Perhaps some meat could be eaten raw, but grains are hard for humans to eat without some form of cooking. Eating uncooked grain is like eating un-popped popcorn. How useful, really, is uncooked flour? It is reasonable to suppose that wood would disappear long before the food.
At this point, it is worth reading what the Lord told Ezekiel and asked him to do regarding the coming siege of Jerusalem:
“But as for you, take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt, put them in one vessel and make them into bread for yourself; you shall eat it according to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days. Your food which you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; you shall eat it from time to time. The water you drink shall be the sixth part of a hin by measure; you shall drink it from time to time. You shall eat it as a barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human dung”
Then the Lord said, “Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them.”
But I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I have never been defiled; for from my youth until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any unclean meat ever entered my mouth.”
Then He said to me, “See, I will give you cow's dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread.”
Moreover, He said to me, “Son of man, behold, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they will eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and drink water by measure and in horror, because bread and water will be scarce; and they will be appalled with one another and waste away in their iniquity” (Ezekiel 4:9-17).
And so we see the people crammed into Jerusalem’s alleys eating rationed food, drinking rationed water, cooking over their own excrement. Add to this the anxiety that increases each day. Beyond the walls, the attacking enemy has fresh food, fresh water, and time. Your only hope is that some other event calls the enemy away before the siege engines are finally built.
Lodging, food, and fuel are certainly important issues in this city under siege. But there is more.
Garbage: No one can really collect and take garbage outside the city for disposal. Much of this, of course, might lend itself to solving the fuel problem, and there will be no wasted food to throw out.
Human waste, sanitation, and hygiene: There is no taking it outside the city. As indicated above, some of it can be used for fuel. Beyond that, however, people will not be able to keep themselves clean, their utensils clean, their clothes clean, or anything clean.
At this point, it becomes easy to envision what Jeremiah meant when he told the people that famine, pestilence, and the sword were coming. Once you have a city crowded with makeshift shelters of unwashed malnourished people, you have a recipe for the rapid spread of disease. Smallpox, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, etc. could erupt with nothing to stop the spread. This brings us to the final logistical problem.
Corpses: People will begin to die – some of natural causes, but eventually disease will take its toll. What do you do about the dead? I have no information about what they really did, but I can imagine some options. I do not think that they would attempt storage. Perhaps they threw them over the city wall. As Jeremiah wrote, “Speak, ‘Thus says the Lord, “The corpses of men will fall like dung on the open field, And like the sheaf after the reaper, but no one will gather them”’” (Jeremiah 9:22).
Eventually the situation in the city becomes very desperate. Especially when the food finally runs out. I have gone to great length here to describe the dynamics of a besieged city, because the Book of Lamentations represents one person’s coming to terms with the terror and horror of being there. Here is what he says about the famine and its effects:
All her people groan seeking bread; they have given their precious things for food to restore their lives themselves. “See, O Lord, and look, for I am despised” (Lamentations 1:11).
My eyes fail because of tears, my spirit is greatly troubled; my heart is poured out on the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, when little ones and infants faint In the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, “Where is grain and wine?” As they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom (Lamentations 2:11, 12).
“Arise, cry aloud in the night at the beginning of the night watches; pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord; lift up your hands to Him for the life of your little ones who are faint because of hunger At the head of every street. See, O Lord, and look! With whom have You dealt thus? Should women eat their offspring, the little ones who were born healthy? Should priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? (Lamentations 2:19, 20)
The tongue of the infant cleaves to the roof of its mouth because of thirst; the little ones ask for bread, but no one breaks it for them. Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets; those reared in purple embrace ash pits (Lamentations 4:4, 5).
Their appearance is blacker than soot, they are not recognized in the streets; Their skin is shriveled on their bones, it is withered, it has become like wood. Better are those slain with the sword than those slain with hunger; for they pine away, being stricken for lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women boiled their own children; they became food for them because of the destruction of the daughter of my people (Lamentations 4:8-10).
We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin has become as hot as an oven, because of the burning heat of famine (Lamentations 5:9, 10).
The siege of Jerusalem lasted from the winter months in Zedekiah’s ninth year as king to the summer of his eleventh year. This works out to be about eighteen months of an increasingly terrible situation.
Now it came about in the ninth year of his reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, camped against it and built a siege wall all around it. So the city was under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. Then the city was broken into, and all the men of war fled and went forth from the city at night by way of the gate between the two walls which was by the king’s garden, though the Chaldeans were all around the city. And they went by way of the Arabah (Jeremiah 52:4-7).
Now on the tenth day of the fifth month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the captain of the bodyguard, who was in the service of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He burned the house of the Lord, the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every large house he burned with fire. So all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard broke down all the walls around Jerusalem (Jeremiah 52:12-24).
The last chapter of Jeremiah records the end of Jerusalem. When the food supply failed, the siege engines of Nebuchadnezzar also broke through the city walls, and the war was over. Most of the survivors were packed off to Babylon, but the poorest of the poor were left in the land. Time does not permit the telling of their story, but it, too, is tragic.
Let me ask you, how did you feel when you saw the smoldering remains of the World Trade Towers as the rescuers began to pick their way through the rubble? Now, imagine a whole city, and that it was your home, and that it was the place where the Lord God had established the Temple to bear His Name. Nebuchadnezzar has burned it all.
Someone, who was there through the siege and fall, wrote the Book of Lamentations. He saw the destruction and the famine and the disease. He saw women who ate their own children. In writing Lamentations, he comes to terms with those memories and the place that the Lord God had in their making. Many hold that Jeremiah wrote Lamentations, and that is certainly possible. But I would submit to you that it really does not matter. The grief and the emotion Lamentations expresses belong to all of us. I will, therefore, simply refer to the author as “the author.” I do this not out of disrespect for Jeremiah, but to help promote Lamentations as a universal poem of grief.
Lamentations begins with one pithy statement that seems to tell it all. It captures our attention and draws us in. This profound opening begins a process of grieving over the lost city and the lost temple.
How lonely sits the city
That was full of people!
She has become like a widow
Who was once great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
Has become a forced laborer! (Lamentations 1:1)
Lamentations is, of course, a series of “laments.” The lamentations progress from grief at arm’s length – to grief up close and personal – to grief shared in community. Throughout the work, the memories of the recent events in Jerusalem play counterpoint to issues that the author must confront. As he seeks to find meaning, he finds the basis for discovering hope.
The author of Lamentations uses subtle literary devices to underpin his message. There are three that are clearly important and all, but one, are easily discerned in an English translation. First, the author uses acrostics to demark sections of the work. The acrostics are not all perfect, however, and we must understand that the author is speaking within the variation. Second, each section has different arrangements of its verses within the acrostic pattern. Third, there are changes in the pronouns and points of view. I will first cover the first two of these devices in the next section and cover the third device when I take a chapter-by-chapter look at the book’s contents.
An acrostic is a series of sentences whose first letters either spell out a message or run through the alphabet. The first chapter of Lamentations contains 22 verses, and each verse begins with the next Hebrew letter in sequence. One might fiddle with the English translation and carry the acrostic over. It would look something like the following:
Alas the city that was full of people sits alone . . .
Bitterly she weeps in the night and her tears are on her cheeks . . .
Cast away under affliction and under harsh servitude, Judah has gone into exile . . .
Desolation marks her gates, no one travels to Zion . . .
Enemies prosper and have mastery over her . . .
Besides the acrostics, each verse in chapter 1 contains three related thoughts. For example, the first verse contains these three thoughts:
1. How lonely sits the city that was full of people.
2. She has become like a widow who was once great among the nations.
3. She who was a princess among the provinces has become a forced laborer.
The second chapter of Lamentations is an acrostic with a “twist.” The twist is best shown by laying out 22 letters in the English alphabet to represent the starting Hebrew letters:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Q P R S T U V
The acrostic in chapter 2 still contains 22 verses, and each begins with a different letter in the Hebrew alefbet, but two of the letters are reversed in their sequence; note the P and the Q. In the Hebrew, it is ‘U’ and ‘p’ that are reversed. There are several possibilities to account for this reversal. It would draw attention to itself to the Hebrew reader, and it creates an imbalance. By altering the accepted structure ever so slightly, the author tells you that things are not right. There has been a “reversal” of fortune in Judah and Jerusalem. The accepted order is broken. Things are not what you expected.
Like chapter 1, the verses in chapter 2 are also triplets.
Moving to chapter 3, we find that there are 66 verses. Each verse has a single thought. This chapter is also an acrostic, but note its form in an English rendition of the first 6 verses:
Affliction I have seen because of His wrath.
Away from light into darkness He has driven me.
Against me He has turned His hand all the day.
Breaking my bones and wasting away my flesh.
Besieging me with bitterness and hardship.
Black and dark are the place in which I dwell.
Here we see that each successive Hebrew letter is the beginning of 3 verses in a row; 3 verses per letter times 22 letters yields the 66 verses in chapter 3. But note that this chapter also contains the same acrostic reversal as chapter 2 where the 3 verses that begin with ‘p’ precede the 3 verses that begin with ‘U’.
Chapter 4 contains 22 verses. Each verse contains 2 related thoughts and each verse has an acrostic arrangement identical to chapter 2; i.e., 2 letters are reversed.
Chapter 5, which is the last chapter, has 22 verses each, of which, contains a single thought. Even though there are 22 verses, there is no acrostic pattern in this chapter.
To summarize these structural elements in Lamentations’ five chapters, note the following chart:
Acrostic Form |
Number of Verses |
Verse Arrangement |
Perfect |
22 |
Triplets |
Two letters reversed |
22 |
Triplets |
Two letters reversed |
66 |
Singletons |
Two letters reversed |
22 |
Doublets |
None |
22 |
Singletons |
In literary terms, I believe the author of Lamentations invokes this structure to emulate the cycle of tears during a time of mourning. In the collapse of the acrostic pattern, there is a loss of control. The triplets moving to 66 singletons emulate a building of intensity as grief swells in the chest. The shift to doublets and then just 22 singletons show a loss of energy, and then quiet. As we shall see in the chapter descriptions, this is the pattern of the words, but it is marvelous to see how the author uses the physical structure of the book to underpin his words and ideas.
Lamentations flows from grief at arms length to up front and personal. The first chapter talks about the recent events in Jerusalem in a detached manner. In my own mind, I even imagine the chapter as a breaking news event from the WJER newsroom. Verses 1 through 11 can be made to sound like an on-scene reporter describing the recent events. Verses 12-16, in typical news fashion, presents the microphone to devastated Jerusalem herself to speak firsthand of her suffering. In verse 17, the camera moves back to show the outstretched arms of Jerusalem in grief, while in verses 18 through 22, she continues to speak of her sorrows. While this musing is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it connects with some realities about the chapter; the tone of Lamentations 1 is factual. The author, or observer, may or may not have been part of the events. And although it invokes sympathy in the reader, personal grief is kept away. Notice how this meshes with the perfect acrostic structure in chapter 1. The author is trying to keep himself together by pushing the events away. He is in denial.
Chapter 2 changes the situation for the author. The realization that it was the Lord, Himself, that brought such destruction breaches the walls of the author's defenses, and he is once more in the thick of personal memories. The first ten verses describe what the Lord has done to the city. Verse 11 marks the point where we know that the author was there, “My eyes fail because of tears, my spirit is greatly troubled; my heart is poured out on the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.” For the remainder of this chapter, the author is pressed by the memories of what he saw as the city went down.
The first ten verses are very significant. They ascribe to the Lord all the devastation that has come upon the land. It is the Lord who has “swallowed up,” “thrown down,” “profaned,” “cut off,” “burned,” “bent His bow,” “destroyed,” “rejected,” “despised,” “abandoned,” etc. Verse after verse tells of the terrible wrath from the Lord that has befallen the city and its people. But not one word is mentioned of Babylon or Nebuchadnezzar. These verses do not describe the permissive will of God, but the direct determined will of God. The author is working to deal with such knowledge.
Lamentations 1 provides hints at the reasons for the destruction, but the second chapter is descriptive of that destruction by first focusing on what the Lord has done, and second, by focusing on what the author has seen.
In this chapter, the author succumbs to the events, and the full weight of his grief crashes on top of him. As you read the first 18 verses, you can see him sinking into despair and depression until he says in Lamentations 3:18, “So I say, ‘My strength has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord.’” Like chapter 2, the author sees his personal affliction as being from the direct hand of the Lord.
In verses 19 through 26, however, there is a reconnection with the essential character of the Lord that is incredibly significant.
Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord (Lamentations 3:19-26).
Immediately after crying out that his strength and hope are gone, the author speaks a simple and short prayer, “Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.” The response in his spirit could not be more profound or dramatic. The Lord both remembers and visits to bring hope. The words that have been part of great hymns and songs come from the answer to this prayer, “The Lord's lovingkindness indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail, they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” The contrast between verses 18 and verses 21-22 could not be greater. The author’s self-pity and self-centeredness dissipates, and he begins to turn his attention first to the next generation
(verses 40 – 47) and then to community (verses 48 – 66).
What the author comes to know in chapter 3 is that the Lord prefers to show mercy. It is the Lord's terrors that are only for a moment. Therefore, the immediate events that he is facing are the anomaly, not the days of grace and mercy. He realizes the Lord had shown great mercy in the past and that He will show great mercy in the future. This, by the way, is exactly what Jesus demonstrated during His earthly ministry. Although He never compromised His message and never glossed over sin, he always welcomed a sinner in need of mercy and forgiveness. And so Lamentations 3 gives us a core truth.
Let me help you connect with this further. Read through and follow these steps:
1. Close your eyes.
2. Picture yourself standing in the smoking rubble of the ruin of the World Trade Towers right after the dust settled.
3. Say to yourself, “The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”
Is this exercise crazy? How much more did the author of Lamentations overcome to find hope in this truth? He is at Ground Zero in Jerusalem, his home city is gone, his people are gone, he has seen inexpressible horrors, and he knows that the Lord did it! If this truth rescued him from despair, how much more can it rescue us from the situations that we face?
I am struck by the suddenness of the reversal from despair to hope and the recognition of the preeminence of God's mercy. I am inclined to believe that the author experienced the presence of the Lord in response to his prayer. He was in a situation that was beyond all logic. To come to him as an “instructor” and say, “Cheer up, God is merciful,” would hardly bring a change of attitude. Such truths as these require the manifested presence of the Lord to carry them. In other words, it was not logic that brought these amazing thoughts into his head and caused such a turn for hope. It was his apprehending the presence and character of the Lord that made it sink in.
Chapter 4 does not have the energy of the previous chapters. Unlike chapters 1 and 2 with their 22 triplet verses and chapter 3’s 66 single verses, chapter 4 contains 22 doublets. The first 16 verses again recap the last days in Jerusalem, and the last verses contain words of national confession and national hope. But the emotional energy that drove chapter 3 is dissipating, and the tears are beginning to dry out. Unlike the first chapter that is on the outside looking in, or the second and third chapters that is the man alone in his grieving, this fourth chapter contains the confession of the nation.
Lamentations’ last chapter is a national appeal. Like the fourth chapter, it is exclusively communal. It is a chapter of humility. The nation asks the Lord to turn His face to them and see their condition, and then they ask for restoration. To this day, the last verses represent the plea of the children of Israel in exile. You can see both hope and impatience, and a certain lack of certainty about the future.
Except for the principles of grieving and God’s mercy that Lamentations contains, the book is much more for the Jews than for the Gentiles. It is hard for us to appreciate what it is like to be a nation dispersed among the nations and whose homeland lies in desolation. To know this is to understand why, among the Jews, the Book of Lamentations has a special place in the summer when they remember the loss of the first and second temples. It is during this time that Lamentations has an annual reading. This day of remembrance is known as TISHA B’AV or in English the 9th of Av.
Jeremiah 52:12, 13 identifies the tenth day of the fifth month as the day that Jerusalem and Solomon's temple were torn down and burned. Second Kings 25:8 identifies it as the seventh day of the fifth month. It would seem that TISHA B’AV splits the difference. Given that the task of wrecking a city is not reasonably completed in a single day, the difference in the dates is inconsequential. What they agree on is that the events occurred in the fifth month, which is the month of Av in the Jewish calendar. TISHA B’AV is the day when the Jews remember the loss of both Solomon's temple and the second temple. In their respective years, it was around this day that:
On the evening before TISHA B’AV, a Jew will eat a last meal alone and then fast during the day in an attitude of mourning. During the day, they will read from Lamentations.
Lamentations expresses grief and, by example, teaches us how to deal with it:
1. Nothing is outside the Lord's command and control. If the author of Lamentations could ascribe the destruction of his home and the exile of his people to the Lord, we can acknowledge His actions in the tragic events that come to our lives.
2. The Lord is full of lovingkindness and mercy. It is important to remember that it is the Lord's mercies that are new every morning.
3. It is okay to remember. It was good for the author of Lamentations to write down for himself and posterity the horrors that he saw. It is pointless to try to forget them; the images will remain too strong. We also know that repression seems to cause worse problems. So it would seem that remembering and communicating the pain and realities behind our grief is appropriate and healthy. I believe that the recognition of the Lord's mercy can be an important element in helping face these things.
4. Moving beyond ourselves to see and come alongside the sufferings of others aids the process. Once you recognize personally that God renews His mercies and lovingkindnesses in our lives, you should have the will to train the next generation and enter into community.
However, we do live in this age, and it is and will continue to be full of tears. The events of September 11, 2001, have left us shaken. The likelihood of further incidents is high, and who knows which of us will have personal cause to pour out our hearts in grief. That is why we always look to the return of our Savior and the new age that He will create. But for now, in this age, we can take comfort in Paul's perspective,
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).
319 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Donald E. Curtis at Community Bible Chapel, on September 30, 2001. Don is an elder at Cobb Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kennesaw, Georgia. You can e-mail comments and question to /email.asp?email=curtis.
The Holiness and Judgment of God323
Chapters 1-24
What is the most basic relationship that a Christian can have? You would agree with me that the most basic relationship the Christian can have is his relationship with God.
But the question is, how can we develop that relationship with God? Developing a personal relationship with God, as with any other person, requires a personal and intimate knowledge of the person. Knowledge of God is the basis of eternal life, as John notes Jesus saying, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Not only is the knowledge of God the basis of eternal life, but continued growth in the knowledge of God is the basis of a life that is pleasing to Him.
On the other hand, the lack of the knowledge of God is the basis of a life that is not pleasing to Him. One of the most basic weaknesses of the church today is not having enough emphasis on the knowledge of God. J. I. Packer, in the preface of his book Knowing God, writes:
The conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God – ignorance both of His ways and of the practice of communion with Him – lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today. . . The modern way with God is to set Him at distance, if not to deny Him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world, have allowed God to become remote.324
Knowing God is the basic theme of the Book of Ezekiel. The phrase, “They/you shall know that I am the Sovereign Lord” is used around 70 times in this book.
On the one hand, the book presents God as holy and sovereign. On the other, it provides the picture of the sad predicament that the people of God – in a sense the whole world – has come into because of their lack of the knowledge of God.
It is not just the lack of the knowledge of God; it is a lack of desire for the knowledge of God. The picture is of willful ignorance and rebellion in spite of God’s clear revelation. The Apostle Paul writes in the New Testament:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible
qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1:18-23).325
If God holds the heathen accountable for their willful ignorance of the knowledge of God, how much more His own people, who in spite of His clear revelation in His Word would ignore Him?
Ezekiel’s message is not much different from his older contemporary, Jeremiah, who wrote:
This is what the Lord says: Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
Jeremiah then follows up in verses 25-26 to spell out the result of the lack of the knowledge of God.
Likewise, Ezekiel’s message is not much different from his predecessor the prophet Isaiah. Actually, the first few verses of the Book of Isaiah provide a concise overview of the Book of Ezekiel!
Right after the first introductory verse, the Book of Isaiah begins with God’s lament about His people not knowing Him:
Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows his master, the donkey his owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand (Isaiah 1:2-3).
Right after this, verses 4-7 describe the sinful condition of the nation, which is the direct result of the lack of the knowledge of God. Then verses 7-8 describe the judgment of God on the nation because of their sinfulness. Finally, verse 9 provides the message of hope, “Unless the Lord almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” This is not only the concise overview of the Book of Isaiah, but also of the Book of Ezekiel, except that Ezekiel adds one more principle, the principle of individual responsibility which was also touched by the prophet, Jeremiah.
Ezekiel preached to Israel from 592 to 570 B.C. for 22 years during their Babylonian captivity. During the later years of the monarchy, before the Babylonian captivity, the people of God had taken Him for granted. They assumed that God’s covenant with their forefathers was irrevocable, the ownership of the land was permanent, and that they were immune to any foreign captivity as long as God was in their midst because of the temple in Jerusalem.
But to their utter shock, Jerusalem was captured, and the nation was exiled from the land to live in captivity. How could this happen? Is our God impotent before the Babylonian gods? Has He forgotten us? Why has He abandoned us? They became angry. They became disillusioned. Bitter. Cynical.
To these people, Ezekiel is called to bring God’s message to the people who have constantly rebelled against God.
I am sending you to the Israelites, to the rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day. The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn (Ezekiel 2:3-4).
They are repeatedly described as a rebellious house or a house of rebellion.
Ezekiel has a two-fold message. On the one hand, he brings the message of judgment. The holiness of God cannot tolerate sin, especially sin in the life of His own people, people known by His name. So He has to bring judgment on them. God seems to be saying, “I have not forgotten you, you have forgotten Me; I have not been unfaithful to you, you have been unfaithful to Me.” If God seems far away, before blaming Him, consider who has moved! The first half of the book, chapters 1-24, presents this message of judgment.
On the other hand, Ezekiel brings the message of hope. God cannot forsake His people. God cannot forget His covenant.
God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? (Numbers 23:19)
God is going to restore the faithful ones back to the land, back to the worship that will come from their hearts and He will be their God, and they will be His people. The second half of the book, chapters 25-48, presents this message of hope.
The book is filled with many visions and allegories and the prophet’s strange actions and behavior. Because of this, for many Christians, Ezekiel is too strange and the book too complex and bizarre to deserve serious attention. So the prophet remains a mystery. Liberal scholars have branded Ezekiel as ecstatic, visionary, neurotic, someone who periodically practiced acts of levitation, and the one who was psychotic and schizophrenic. However, no other prophet in the Bible is so creative in his presentation and forceful in his message as the prophet Ezekiel.
The book begins with a vision, with the call of the prophet which is not much different than the prophet Isaiah’s call in Isaiah chapter 6. We cannot and do not need to go into explaining all the details and symbols of the vision. But similar to Isaiah’s vision, Ezekiel’s vision reveals the character of God.
Isaiah saw God seated on a throne, high and exalted. Similarly, Ezekiel saw God seated on a throne high above. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords, the sovereign ruler of the whole universe. The faces of the four living creatures, of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, represent aspects of the creation over which God rules.
The other aspect of God’s character revealed in the vision is the holiness of God. Ezekiel does not describe His holiness as much as He brings it out by powerful symbols. God is surrounded by flashing lightening and brilliant light (Ezekiel 1:4). “He looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire . . . and brilliant light surrounded him” (Ezekiel 1:27). All this shows His glory, His holiness, His judgment and wrath.
The most natural response of Ezekiel was, “When I saw it, I fell facedown” (Ezekiel 1:28). It was just like the Apostle John in the Book of Revelation, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).
In contrast to God’s awesome glory, Ezekiel is addressed as “son of man.” This phrase is used around 93 times in the book, which expresses the idea of man being formed from the dust, as it was said to Adam, “for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). Several other places, especially in the Book of Psalms, the fact of man being created from dust is presented to bring out the contrast between God’s eternal character and man’s transitoriness (e.g., Psalm 90:2-3; 103:14-17; 104:29-30).
When we have a true vision of God and see Him in His glory, we cannot help but realize that God is so exalted, so awesome, and we are but dust and we cannot stand before Him. We are filled with awe and fear and reverence. And when we know God in that manner, we will live a life that is pleasing to Him, a life that honors His name. We will not approach Him lightly, but with awe and reverence, with far more awe than queen Esther had before the king, her husband (Esther 4:11, 16). No wonder the wise man said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).
But the sad reality is that the holiness of God and sinfulness of His own people are placed
side-by-side. The darkness and awfulness of man’s sin is presented against the brilliant light of the glory of God. The major part of the first half of the Book of Ezekiel is spent in presenting the sinfulness of the people known by His name and God’s wrath against them because of that. As Moses wrote in his psalm, “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence” (Psalm 90:8).
The emphasis in the New Testament is upon the love of God, and the grace of God. We do not talk much about the holiness of God and the wrath of God. However, why would we need the grace of God if there was no cause for the wrath of God? The tendency in the church today is to give them the “good” news; why talk about the bad news? However, the good news is good news only in the background of the bad news. But we do not want to scare the “seekers” away by preaching the wrath of God!
The result is that we have produced a wishy-washy Christianity that talks only about the promises of God, without mentioning commitment to God, and brings God down to the level of a vending machine. Again, hear what Packer says about the subject of God’s wrath:
The modern habit throughout the Christian church is to play the subject down. Those who still believe in the wrath of God (not all do) say little about it; perhaps they do not think much about it. To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex and self-will, the church mumbles about God’s kindness, but virtually says nothing about God’s judgment.326
There is no other book in the whole Bible that presents the sins of God’s people in as much detail as the Book of Ezekiel. Do you want to get the full picture of the sinfulness of man? Do you want to get the full picture of the hopeless situation of man? Do you want to get the full picture of the awesome character of God and His holiness? Do you want to get the full picture of the wrath of God? Study the Book of Ezekiel, and your life will be transformed.
In the beginning of his book, Isaiah described the awful situation of the people of God:
Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness – only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil (1:5b-6).
What Isaiah described through symbols, Ezekiel describes in gory details.
Their sin of idolatry takes the most prominent place. Idols are mentioned more often in the Book of Ezekiel than any other book of the Bible (52 times). Chapter 8 describes the idol worship by the leaders of Israel right in the temple. God asks the prophet, “Is it is trivial matter for the house of Judah to do detestable things they are doing here?” (8:17) Chapter 16 describes Israel’s idolatry in most graphic terms. In spite of God’s love and tender care, they lusted after other gods.
Idols are the things we create to take care of our needs so we do not have to depend on God or anybody else. That is why idol worship in Israel was always connected with their foreign alliances:
You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and provoked me to anger with your increasing promiscuity. . . . You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too, because you were insatiable; and even after that, you still were not satisfied. Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia, a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied . . . . You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband! (Ezekiel 16:26-32).
The prophet Isaiah too noted:
Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord (Isaiah 31:1).
What they were looking for was safety and security – outside God. What they really found was spiritual bondage that led them into the physical bondage. Instead of trusting God, they trusted their idols and perished because of the lack of their knowledge of God,
My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests” (Hosea 4:6).
The lack of fear of God led them into the lack of fear and respect for man. Those who do not fear God do not care about men (Luke 18:4). Like all the other prophets, Ezekiel takes note of the social sins of the people of God:
The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of injustice. See how each of the princes of Israel who are in you uses his power to shed blood. In you they have treated father and mother with contempt; in you they have oppressed the alien and mistreated the fatherless and the widow. . . . In you one man commits a detestable offense with his neighbor’s wife, another shamefully defiles his daughter-in-law, and another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter. In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign Lord (Ezekiel 9:9; 22:6-7, 10-12).
One of the sins noted both by Jeremiah and Ezekiel is the sin of desecrating Sabbaths:
I gave them my decrees and made known to them my laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them. Also I gave them my Sabbaths as a sign between us, so they would know that I the Lord made them holy. Yet the people of Israel rebelled against me in the desert. They did not follow my decrees but rejected my laws – although the man who obeys them will live by them – they utterly desecrated my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God; follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Keep my Sabbaths holy, that they may be a sign between us. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God. But the children rebelled against me: They did not follow my decrees, they were not careful to keep my laws – although the man who obeys them will live by them – and they desecrated my Sabbaths (Ezekiel 20:11-13, 19-21).
In the New Testament economy, we feel we are not under the law, and so we are not under the law of keeping the Sabbaths. However, the concept of keeping the Sabbaths is not based on the law, it is based on the character of God. In the creation account:
By the seventh day God finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done (Genesis 2:2-3).
This is the same reason given behind keeping the Sabbath holy in the Ten Commandments:
. . . For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Exodus 20:11).
There was a time in the United States when most everything was closed on Sunday except the necessary services. All the department stores were closed on Sunday. Grocery stores were open, but you could buy only foodstuff from the grocery stores. If you needed to buy a pen or a paper or a hammer, you would have to wait for Monday. Now everything is open not only seven days a week, but also many places 24 hours and 7 days a week. Behind all this, the main reason is greed, “For their hearts were devoted to their idols” (Ezekiel 20:16).
One of the main reasons behind the breakdown of our family structure, the social structure, and the moral structure of our nation, is not keeping the Sabbath holy. Because with all of this, there is no time left for the family or for moral instruction to the children, and the vicious cycle of greed continues leading to the total breakdown. We have really ignored this important aspect of the Word of God.
A holy God cannot tolerate sin, especially sin in the people who are known by His name.
One of the results of their sin is the impending judgment:
Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and not followed my decrees. Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: You have been more unruly than the nations around you and have not followed my decrees and kept my laws. You have not even conformed to the standards of the nations around you (5:6-7).
What an indictment on the people of God that their heathen nations are morally better off! Like Paul said, quoting from Isaiah and Ezekiel, “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24; Isaiah 52:5; Ezekiel 36:22).
And so, “They will go into exile as captives” (12:11). Babylon will be God’s sword of judgment.
Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will withdraw my favor; I will not look on you with pity or spare you (Ezekiel 5:11).
Another result of their sin was that the glory of God departed from among them.
The glory of God was in the temple, “And the glory of the Lord was standing there” (3:23). From there it moved to the threshold of the temple” (9:3). “Then the glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim at the entrance to the east gate of the temple” (10:18-19). “Finally the glory of the Lord departed from within the city and stopped above the mountain outside the city” (11:23). And the sad fact was that the people of God did not even know it or care that it happened.
The moving of the glory of God in stages and also the hovering of the glory of God before it moves away seem to indicate the hesitation of God in leaving His people. God never leaves His people willingly and cheerfully. It breaks His heart. He leaves them as a last resort. But leave He will, because He cannot tolerate sin in His own people.
That departed glory is still not returned. Ezekiel later describes the return of the glory of God to Jerusalem in the millennial kingdom. But until then, as Jesus said, “Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matthew 23:38-39; Luke 13:35).
The people said, “That’s not fair! We have not done anything wrong! We can’t help it if our forefathers sinned! Why are we punished for the sins of our forefathers?” Ezekiel sets down the principle, “The soul that sins shall die.” Jeremiah had already laid down this principle, “Everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes – his own teeth will set on edge” (Jeremiah 31:30). Ezekiel expands this principle with illustrations from three successive generations (chapter 18). The son is not punished because of his father’s sin, nor is he spared for his wickedness because of his father’s righteousness.
The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him (Ezekiel 18:20).
Of course, they had been warned earlier that, “I the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 5:9). And it is true that the children suffer for the sinful lifestyle of parents and also that the parents are responsible for raising children the way they should go so when they are old they will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6). Children coming from broken homes many times suffer the consequences of their parents’ mistakes. In the case of the Israelites, a whole generation was born in the exile because of their parents’ sin as Jeremiah noted, “Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment” (Lamentations 5:7).
However, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel note here the principle of personal responsibility. A person cannot excuse his sinful lifestyle by saying that he was raised in a sinful environment. A person raised in a broken home does not have to go that way. He himself is responsible to take charge of his own life. Today we live in a society where people are very eager to take credit for anything good that happens in their life, but always find fault with someone or something else when they mess up their own life. Of course, there is nothing new, as we saw in Genesis when Adam blamed God when he said, “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” She in turn tried to shift the blame when she said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12, 13).
Ezekiel also speaks about a person’s responsibility before God. When we stand before God, we will give account of our own life, not of the messed-up lives of others.
The question that may be asked is why God is so cruel in His judgment. Why would God be so cruel to His own people? Ezekiel brings out that God does not delight in judgment. We choose the judgment of God; God does not:
Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live! (Ezekiel 18:30-32).
Also,
Son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what you are saying: “Our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?” Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’ (Ezekiel 33:10-11)
God does not delight in the death of the wicked. God provides them the way of life. People choose death, God does not. Even through His judgment, He shows His love for us so we would know Him and His loving concern for us.
When we know God as the holy One who cannot tolerate sin, we are forced to live a life that is pleasing to Him. But when we know God’s fatherly love, we WANT to live a life that is pleasing to Him.
In his epistle, Peter brings out both these aspects of God’s character when he says, “Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear” (1 Peter 1:17), and he presents God both as a Judge to be feared and a Father Who loves.
323 Copyright 2002 by Community Bible Chapel, 418 E. Main Street, Richardson, TX 75081. This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 49 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Imanuel G. Christian on October 14, 2001.
324 Packer, J.I., Knowing God, (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973, p. 12).
325 All Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, new International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission.
326 Ibid., p. 148.
The Victorious and Abundant Life through the Knowledge of God327
Chapters 25-48
The holiness of God demands judgment of sin. The sinfulness of man deserves the wrath of God. But the love of God provides a way for our salvation.
In the first part of Ezekiel (chapters 1-24), we heard of the “bad” news; the news – about the wrath of God and God’s judgment on His people because of their sinfulness. However, in the Bible, there is no bad news without good news. For example, read Isaiah 1:2-9. In verses 2-8 the prophet describes the sinfulness of the people of God because of their lack of knowledge of God (verses 2-6). Then he describes the judgment because of their sinfulness (verses 7-8). Right after this “bad news,” he notes, “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9).
Let us go back to the initial vision of Ezekiel’s call. What did he see there? He saw four living creatures speeding back and forth like flashes of lightning. He saw God in the fullness of His glory like glowing metal, and brilliant light surrounded Him.
But he also saw something else. He saw that the radiance around God looked like a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day (Ezekiel 1:28). There are only three other mentions of the rainbow in the Bible: Genesis 9:13-16, Revelation 4:3 and 10:1. Every time the rainbow is mentioned, it is mentioned in the context of God and His sovereign power. The rainbow around God’s throne is a symbol of God’s faithfulness that even in judgment, God will always remember His covenant and protect His own. The rainbow is a sign of God’s faithfulness to His people.
In the first half of the book, chapters 1-24, Ezekiel talked about the wrath of God. He spoke about the judgment of God because of the sinfulness of His people. Because of the sinfulness of the people of God, the glory of God departed from the temple, and from His people. The people are in exile. The land is desolate. The temple is destroyed. Now all the crutches they leaned upon before are taken away. The people of God are left without any hope, as they themselves said, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off” (37:1). In that situation, the prophet brings them a message of hope.
The message of hope is twofold: 1) God will take care of their enemies, and 2) God will take care of His people.
The first of these two is described in the form of the judgment on the enemy nations in chapters 25-32: Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Egypt and specifically Tyre. Most of these nations actually had family relations with Israel. But they were against the people of God, which was their basic sin.
We may ask why does the Bible speak about destroying the enemies? There are two reasons:
1. Because there is no peace for the people of God in the presence of their enemies. God said, “No longer will the people of Israel have malicious neighbors who are painful briers and sharp thorns. Then they will know that I am the Sovereign Lord” (Ezekiel 28:24).
2. However, the other, and more important, reason is that the enemy is not flesh and blood. Behind all the enemies of the people of God, there is one enemy: Satan. This is very clearly brought out in the description of the king of Tyre:
You were the model of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
The garden of God;
Every precious stone adorned you:
ruby, topaz and emerald,
chrysolite, onyx and jasper,
sapphire, turquoise and beryl . . . .
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
For so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
You walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you (Ezekiel 28:12-15).
In Christianity, there is no duality of Good and Evil as co-equal and co-existent. Though for a time being evil may seem to have the upper hand, the final victory of good is assured. Other religions portray the never-ending struggle between the good and the evil. For example, in Hinduism there are various incarnations of God. Krishna said:
Whenever there is defeat of the good and evil prevails, I incarnate myself. For the protection of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked and establishment of the good I incarnate myself in every age (Gita 4:7, 8).328
The repeated incarnations show that these gods are not able to take care of the evil once for all, and so they have to keep coming back! Whereas in Christianity, when Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), the work of providing salvation for the righteous and destroying the evil was complete and then, having “offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12; also 1:3; 8:1; 12:2).
And so, God has already won the victory for the Christian. We do not have any excuse for living under the bondage of sin. A Christian cannot say, “The devil made me do it.”
Are you caught up in drugs or alcohol? Are you caught up in a homosexual/lesbian lifestyle? Is your marriage on the rocks? Are you under a mountain of debt? Are you going insane with fear because of the current national and international situation? Take hold of your life and claim victory in and through the power of God.
However, we still have these problems because the enemy still rules. The world is still under the control of the evil one. During the temptation of Jesus the devil offered Him the kingdoms of the world and said, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to” (Luke 4:5-6). He is “the God of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is “the ruler of the kingdom of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). The Apostle John says, “We know . . . that the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).
The devil’s final defeat is described in the form of the defeat of Gog, of the land of Magog (Ezekiel 38:2). These are all the ungodly nations who oppose the people of God under the leadership of the Antichrist. These nations are addressed:
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. I will turn you around and drag you along. I will bring you from the far north and send you against the mountains of Israel. Then I will strike your bow from your left hand and make your arrows drop from your right hand. On the mountains of Israel you will fall, you and all your troops and the nations with you. I will give you as food to all kind of carrion birds and to the wild animals. . . . I will send fire on Magog and on those who live in safety in the coastlands, and they will know that I am the Lord
(Ezekiel 39:1- 6).
In the Book of Revelation we see the final fulfillment of this prophecy where before the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies are defeated, and the beast and the false prophet are both thrown alive in the fiery lake of the burning sulfur. The rest of the opposing armies are “killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds of the air gorged themselves on their flesh” (Revelation 19:17-21). At the end of the Millennial Kingdom, there is the climax to the last battle with Satan and his armies, whose eternal destiny is already determined (Revelation 20:7-10).
The Scriptures clearly tell us about the final defeat of the enemy of God and His people. Martin Luther said it very well:
And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us;
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.329
We are involved in a battle in which the victors are already decided! We are more than conquerors! As we know God more and more and develop our relationship with Him, we are not overcome by the world, but we can overcome the world. As John said, the One who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world (1 John 4:4).
On the one hand, God gives us a victorious life through our relationship with Him. On the other, He gives us a life that is filled with abundant joy, which is the theme of the rest of the Book of Ezekiel.
All the positive conditions that Ezekiel describes in this part of the book will finally be fulfilled during Christ’s Millennial rule. However, a believer can already experience these blessings right now.
1. God will be their true Shepherd. The spiritual and political leaders of Ezekiel’s time had failed in their role:
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally (Ezekiel 34:2-4).
So, God says, I Myself will be their shepherd:
For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. . . . I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak . . . (Ezekiel 34:11-16).
God speaks about another Shepherd:
I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd (Ezekiel 34:23; 37:24).
Of course, there are not two shepherds. In the New Testament Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (John 10:11, 14). Psalm 23 beautifully describes the Lord’s shepherdship for His people even now.
2. God will give them a new heart and new a spirit. Jeremiah spoke about this, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). Ezekiel expands this:
3. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws (Ezekiel 36:25-27).
Man, in his natural condition, cannot follow God as Isaiah beautifully described, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Isaiah 53: 6). The dry bones give a very graphic picture of man’s hopeless situation without God. “They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off’” (Ezekiel 37:11). Without the Spirit of God, man is dead in his sins:
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel, then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open the graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live (37:12-14).
This is very similar to what Paul says in the New Testament:
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. . . . But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:1, 4-6).
4. God will make them one nation under one King. The two wooden sticks symbolize two separate nations of Israel, the northern kingdom of Ephraim and the southern kingdom of Judah, which was the case since the time of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son. They will finally be united under one King, and all the promises of God to Israel will finally and literally be fulfilled in Christ:
5. This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms. . . . My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. . . . They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob (Ezekiel 37:2125).
6. There will be the new temple from where the true worship will be offered. As described in chapters 40-48, during the Millennial Kingdom, the temple will be rebuilt. The land will be allotted by the tribal inheritance and the sacrificial system reestablished.
7. The sacrifices seem contrary from the New Testament point of view (e.g., Hebrews chapters 8-10). However, literal interpretation would require reestablishment of the nation of Israel with the temple and literal sacrifices. These sacrifices will have a memorial value, like the Lord’s Supper.
As Jesus described:
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).
8. The Lord will be with His people forever. The book ends with a mention of the name of the city “The Lord is there” (Ezekiel 48:35b). The Lord will be with His people forever and ever.
9. This already had a partial fulfillment when, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The prophet Isaiah had predicted a long time ago, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14), which Matthew quotes in relation to the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1:23). At the time of His leaving the earth, Jesus promised His disciples, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
However, the final and complete fulfillment of this will be at the end of the time in the new heaven and earth:
Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever (Revelation 21:3-4; 22:3-5).
10. The river of life. Ezekiel describes a river coming out from under the threshold of the temple. This is the river of life, “for where the river flows everything will live” (Ezekiel 47:9). The river is described further:
11. Fruit trees of all kind will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing (Ezekiel 47:12).
In only two other places is the river of life described. One is Genesis 2:10, where a river watering the garden flowed from Eden. Then again in the Book of Revelation, we read:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1-3)
The description of the river in the Book of Genesis presents the picture before the Fall when man had perfect relationship with God, and man and God had uninterrupted fellowship. This was a beautiful picture of paradise before it was lost. Then came the Fall, and paradise was lost. Ezekiel foresees the paradise regained as described in the Book of Revelation.
Again, there already is a partial fulfillment of this in a believer’s life. As Jesus said, “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). The believer already has the abundant life in and through his relationship with Jesus Christ.
All these have a literal and final fulfillment for Israel in future. However, they already have a partial fulfillment in a believer’s life today as he lives in the knowledge and relationship with God:
12. God has already given us the victory over Satan. We are already more than conquerors.
13. The Lord is our shepherd (cf. Psalm 23).
14. He has given us a new heart and new Spirit, made us alive in Christ, and seated us in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.
15. He has given us a new system of worship that we worship Him in Spirit and truth.
16. He came down and dwelt with us and has promised to be with us forever – Immanuel.
17. He has given us the abundant life in and through Jesus Christ right now.
18. However, many times we are not experiencing these blessings, or are not able to enjoy these blessings fully, because of the lack of our growth in the knowledge of God. As we noted earlier, the theme of the Book of Ezekiel is the knowledge of God. The lack of the knowledge of God, or the lack of the desire to know Him and to have fellowship with Him, is the basic reason for the life that is not pleasing to Him (Ezekiel, Part 1) and also that is the same reason for not having the victorious life and not being able to enjoy the spiritual blessings in their fullness (Ezekiel, Part 2).
Of course, the best way for growth in the knowledge of God is spending time in His Word. God’s promise is clearly laid down in the Book of Isaiah:
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose which I sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11).
Usually we apply these verses in the context of evangelism – how the Word of God works in the hearts of the unbelievers to bring them to the knowledge of God’s truth. But Isaiah is speaking in the context of the believers. When the Word of God works in the believer’s hearts and produces the result that God desires, there would be the result described in the next verse: “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12).
When the Word of God takes root in the believer’s heart and he grows in the knowledge of and fellowship with God, the inevitable result is overflowing joy and peace, a life that is filled with satisfaction and meaningfulness, with fullness and fulfillment. Then they have life and life abundant (cf. John 4:14; 10:10).
As Peter notes:
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1:3-4).
The question, of course, is do we avail ourselves of this abundant life, or do we live a mediocre Christian life because of our lack of desire to know God?
327 . This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 50 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Imanuel G. Christian on October 21, 2001.
328 Krishna is one of the Hindu gods, and Gita is one of the main Hindu scriptures.
329 A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Words and music: Martin Luther (1483-1546).
The name Joel means, “The Lord is God.” Nothing is known about his personal life. Twelve other men in the Old Testament have this name, none of whom can be identified with the author of this book. His father, Pethuel, is mentioned nowhere else in the Bible.
From this book, we can see that he was acquainted with the land, the farming and the geography. Also, it is clear that he lived and prophesied in Judah since he mentions Judah and Jerusalem, and he is thoroughly familiar with the temple and its ministry.
Joel must have lived during the early Eighth Century B.C., and prophesied in Judah during the days of King Uzziah (792-740 B.C.), because he does not mention Assyria, Babylon or Persia. Assyria was in severe decline from 782-745 B.C., and Babylon and Persia had not yet come on the forefront of history. Also, the events, the general attitude of the people, and the literary themes he presents in this book reflect the early Eighth Century B.C. atmosphere.
When you think of King Uzziah, you remember the prophet Isaiah’s call, “The year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted” (Isaiah 6:1). What Isaiah indirectly was saying is that with the death of King Uzziah, Judah lost the king, lost the golden period of the monarchy, and there was no real king left in Judah after Uzziah. At that time, Isaiah saw the real King, seated on a throne, high and exalted.
This means that the prophet Joel lived during the golden period of King Uzziah’s 52 years extended rule. His was the time of great expansion in every aspect: militarily, administratively, commercially, and economically. It was a period of great expansion and solidification. It is noted about him that, “His fame spread as far as the border of Egypt, because he had become very powerful,” and “His fame spread far and wide, for he was greatly helped until he became powerful” (2 Chronicles 26:8, 15). It was a period of peace and prosperity second only to Solomon’s time.
Joel indirectly talks about their prosperity. Their vine vats were overflowing, the fig trees and the pomegranates and apples, all the fruit trees were loaded down; their land was fertile, and barns were filled to the brim and olive oil was flowing like a river (1:10, 17). Their cattle never failed, their herds were multiplying, and flocks were plentiful (1:18).
What does material prosperity bring? Spiritual poverty and religious formalism. Moses had already warned them long time ago:
When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you – a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (Deuteronomy 6:10-12).
This is exactly what had happened during Joel’s time. Much of their time was spent in merrymaking and drinking orgies as Joel tells them, “Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips” (1:5).
There is nothing wrong in enjoying life and the material blessing as a gift from God. But when that becomes the goal in life, “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless,” and “Nothing was gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:1; 2:11).
Of course, people do want to keep God happy and appeased lest all the material benefits are taken away. Remember Satan’s accusation about Job?
Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face (Job 1:9-11).
Of course, that was not right in Job’s case. But only God knows how many times that is just what it is in many who are called by His name.
The people in Joel’s time were bringing their grain offerings and drink offerings as required by the law (1:9). They did rend their garments and had extended sessions of fasting and weeping and mourning (2:12-13). But their heart was not in that. This is exactly what the Lord indicted them for through the prophet Isaiah, who came right after Joel,
The multitudes of your sacrifices – “what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New moons, sabbaths and convocations – I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them” (Isaiah 2:11-14).
So, like in Isaiah’s case, it took the death of the king to be able to see who the real King was, in the same way for Joel’s time it took a natural disaster of epic proportion to wake people up. God has His ways to bring His people around. He cannot let them go, because He loves them so much.
Joel provides very vivid and poetic descriptions of the locusts. First, he describes them in the form of the agricultural devastation:
A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has lain waste my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white. … The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up, the oil fails. Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed. The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree – all the trees of the field – are dried up” (1:6-7, 10-12).
Second, he describes them as a marching army:
They have the appearance of horses; they gallop along like cavalry. With a noise like that of chariots they leap over the mountaintops, like a crackling fire consuming stubble, like mighty army drawn up for battle. At the sight of them, nations are in anguish; every face turns pale. They charge like warriors; they scale walls like soldiers. They all march in line, not swerving from their course (2:3-7).
The description of the locusts is very vivid and poetic, but not unrealistic. This is a very common phenomenon in that part of the world, even today. I grew up in a small farming community in a remote village in India, and I have seen with my own eyes the devastation that the locusts can make. When the people in my area heard the news of locusts coming, they all would come out of their homes and beat pots and pans with sticks, making a loud noise to scare them away. At least once we saw the widespread devastation by the locusts. For a few days, we heard rumors of locusts eating away the flesh of young babies who were laid out on coats under the open sky. That would give a chill to anyone.
As if that is not enough, Joel describes the drought, “The seeds are shriveled beneath the clods. The storehouses are in ruins. The granaries have been broken down, for the grain has dried up” (1:17).
1. All the material blessings are taken away (1:7, 10-12).
2. All the religious sacrifices are taken away. “Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord” (1:9).
For a Hebrew, cutting off the religious sacrifices was far more serious than the loss of the material blessings, because the religious sacrifices guaranteed them the covenant relationship with the Lord. As long as they were able to offer the sacrifices, they thought that the Lord was bound by His covenant to keep His part and continue to take care of them in every way. But, when the sacrifices are taken away, there is no guarantee of any blessings from the Lord.
3. The joy is taken away. “Surely the joy of mankind is withered away” (1:12). That is how it is with the joy that is based on material blessing and religious formalities.
When man trusts in other things and turns away from the Lord, even the very ground is taken away from under his feet to make him realize how shaky the ground is upon which he stands.
Joel’s concern, however, is not limited to these disasters. He sees them as symbols of deeper significance – the Day of the Lord. It may be that the hordes of locusts that covered the sky and blotted out the sun and the moon and the stars (2:10) caused the prophet to reflect upon the Day of the Lord (2:2). The locusts’ plagues were just a sign of future judgment.
The locusts are described in terms of the Day of the Lord, “Alas for that day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty” (1:15). “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming” (2:1). Verse 2:11 is transitional; it indicates more the future day of the Lord than the locust army:
The Lord thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty are those who obey his command. The day of the Lord is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?
What Joel is saying is that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Five of the 19 explicit references to the “day of the Lord” in the Old Testament are found in this short book (1:15; 2:1, 11, 31; 3:14).
First, the call for repentance is given after the invasion of the locusts, “Put on sackcloth, O priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar … .” And, “Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly, summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord” (1:13, 14).
Second, the call for repentance is given after the more intensive description, “Even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning” (2:12). Not just an outward show, but genuine repentance: “Rend your heart and not your garments” (2:13).
Priority of repentance is given to the priests and the religious leaders, “Put on sackcloth, O priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar.” And, “Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the temple porch and the altar” (1:13; 2:17). Then, they called the rest of the people, from the oldest to the youngest, “Bring together elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber” (2:16).
The prophet’s call is, “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill” (2:1), where Zion is a symbol of the people of God who take the lead. The spiritual condition of the nation at any given time in history was the barometer of the spiritual condition of Zion.
It is the same with the church today. Does the spiritual condition of the nation reflect the spiritual condition of the church? As Paul writes,
Now you, if you call yourself a Jew (Christian); if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth – you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples (or, God as in the sense of Malachi's statements)? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written, 'God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles (non-Christians) because of you (Romans 2:17-24; italics added)
The Scripture puts the responsibility on the people of God,
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).
If the land is in broken condition, it is not because the heathen are acting as heathen, but because the church is not acting as the church.
Verse 2:18 begins with “Then,” just like 2 Chronicles 7:14 above. If the people, the people of God, will turn to Him in true repentance, “Then the Lord will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people” (2:18). The prophet describes fourfold blessing as a result of their genuine repentance.
1. God will heal their land for their material abundance (2:18-27). The blessings are described in the same agricultural terms as the devastation because of the locusts described earlier. “I am sending you grain, new wine and oil, enough to satisfy you fully” (2:19). And, “The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil … . You will have plenty to eat, until you are full … ” (2:24-26).
However, the emphasis is not on the material blessing; it is on the Lord Who provides the material blessings, on the relationship with and the knowledge of God, that provides the full satisfaction. It is the Lord Who is sending the grain and new wine (2:19): “Surely the Lord has done great things” (2:21). “Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God for he has given you autumn rains in righteousness” (2:23), and “You will praise the name of the Lord your God who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be ashamed” (2:26).
The ultimate purpose of God for blessing His people is that they would want to know Him and grow in their relationships with Him. God says, I will bless you: “Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other; never again will my people be shamed” (2:27). The purpose of blessing and meeting all our needs overabundantly is not that we get into enjoying the gifts and forget the Giver, but that we would find our joy, our fulfillment, our satisfaction in Him alone, because, as David said, “You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:11).
Repentance, as defined in the English dictionary, usually means “to feel sorry or self-reproachful for what one has done or failed to do,” or “to feel sorry, contrite, or self-reproachful over an error, sin, etc.”282 However, when the prophets preached repentance, it was not always repentance of a particular sin in a person or community’s life. Repentance in the Old Testament does not always mean being sorry for a particular sin, because that word is used for God Himself (e.g., Genesis 6:6; Exodus 32:14; Psalm 106:45; Jeremiah 18:8, 10; etc.). The basic idea in repentance is to turn about, changing the course, making a U-turn, changing life goals and priorities. This is what the people of God, people who call themselves Christians, need to do today. Instead of running after the material things, they need to seek after the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Instead of finding happiness in the things of the world, they need to seek the true joy, fulfillment, and contentment in relationship with the Lord. The ultimate purpose of God for blessing us is that we seek Him and desire to know Him more and more and love and serve Him more and more.
2. God will pour out His Spirit for their universal spiritual restoration (2:28-32). After speaking about their material blessing because of their turning back to God, Joel speaks of their spiritual blessing. In the New Testament, Peter applied this to the outpouring of the Spirit at the beginning of the church (Acts 2:16-21). Paul applied 2:32 for the salvation available to all,
For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:12).
Although the ultimate fulfillment of this will be at the Second Coming of Christ, it already has been partially fulfilled, as all believers have the indwelling Spirit and can experience the fullness of the Spirit as they are filled with the Spirit in the sense that Paul speaks (Ephesians 5:17-20).
3. God will judge the wicked and establish His eternal Kingdom (3:1-21). Joel speaks of God’s wrath and ultimate punishment of all the nations that oppressed God’s people. They will be judged and ultimately destroyed, e.g., Edom. The wrath of God on the unbelieving nations is described as God’s trampling of the grapes in the winepress (3:13). As the Apostle John describes in the Book of Revelation,
The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia (180 miles) (Revelation 14: 19-20).
Then, the Kingdom of God will be established, and God’s unlimited blessings will flow to His people,
In that day the mountains will drip new wine, and the hills will flow with milk; all the ravines of Judah will run with water. A fountain will flow out of the Lord's house and will water the valley of acacias (3:18).
4. The ultimate blessing. The book ends with a note of the ultimate blessing, “The Lord dwells in Zion,” the Lord’s eternal presence with His people as described in Revelation:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).
However, for a Christian, a partial fulfillment of this blessing has already taken place, because “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). We can enjoy the presence of the Lord in our life right now. We can experience His guidance, His provision, His abundant blessing in the sense that David talks in Psalm 23 right now. “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6).
So, Joel begins with the devastation of the locusts and ends with the eternal blessing of the presence of the Lord with His people forever. Those who have trusted the Lord and committed their lives for His glory, and those who long to fellowship with Him and seek to know Him more and more, enjoy all these blessings right now.
Two of the oldest writing prophets, Obadiah and Joel, speak about the Second Coming and the millennial Kingdom without speaking about the first coming. Why? One of the reasons is that they did not have the full revelation, and they did not have the clear picture and the distinction between the two comings.
However, the more important reason is that, as Peter tells us, “It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you” (1 Peter 1:12). And, as Paul writes, “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). With the Cross and more than the Cross behind us, the Christian now needs the exhortation of the Second Coming of Christ and to be prepared to meet Him, which the Old Testament prophets provide more than anything else.
We look back to the cross with gratefulness for what God has done for us, and live a life that expresses that gratefulness, and look forward with boldness and great expectation to His Second Coming. Like Paul, every believer should be able to say near the end of his life,
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day--and not only me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing (2 Timothy 4:7-8).
281 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Imanuel Christian, guest speaker at Community Bible Chapel, on August 5, 2001.
282 Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition.
When Jim Ellis taught us the overview of the Prophets, and explained the various literary forms the prophets used, he went to Amos for several of his examples. Amos contains all of the literary types he described: The Covenant Lawsuit, Woe Oracles, Laments, Promise Oracles, Visions, and parallelism. Although he may have been just a sheepherder from Tekoa, he was a well educated one and a skilled writer, and his book has quite an elaborate structure.
Amos was a sheepherder from the southern kingdom of Judah. Amos 7:15 shows us that he received a direct call from God to go prophesy to the northern kingdom of Israel. So Amos goes to Bethel, which was where the king, Jeroboam II, lived. Bethel had special significance in Israel’s history. In Genesis 28, we see that this is where Jacob had his dream about the angels descending on the ladder and his wrestling with God. But now it had become the center for idol worship in the Northern Kingdom. Jeroboam set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan for the Israelites to worship, because he didn’t want the people worshipping God in Jerusalem and reuniting the kingdom.
It says this happened in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam. So we know this to be somewhere between 790-753 BC. Most date the book around 760 BC. Israel was at the height of its power politically, but was very corrupt spiritually and morally.
We know that Israel was defeated by the Assyrians in 722 B.C., so this is just before that time, and Amos is warning Israel so they will turn from their wicked ways before it is too late.
Three things we need to notice is the phrase, “The Lord comes roaring out of Zion.”273
2:11 Where now is the den of the lions,
the feeding place of the young lions,
where the lion, lioness, and lion cub once prowled
and no one disturbed them?
2:12 The lion tore apart as much prey as his cubs needed
and strangled prey to provide food for his lionesses;
he filled his lairs with prey
and his dens with torn flesh.
So this imagery sets the stage and lets the people know that God is angry.
Why is He angry? That is the theme of the book. And I don’t want to tell you just yet.
OVERVIEW OF BOOK
Key to unlocking the book – Understanding the literary devices used, isolating each unit, figuring out what the point of that unit is and then put the pieces together. When we do that, we see that Amos might be organized as follows:
So, with these things in mind, we see Amos is preaching in the northern kingdom to the Israelites, and he begins by giving a series of speeches against Israel’s surrounding enemies.
The Old Testament prophets were adept at luring hostile audiences into listening to their judgment speeches. In 1 Kings 20:35-43 a prophet tricked Ahab into pronouncing his own guilt and punishment. And Nathan tricked David into declaring his own guilt by the artful use of a parable (2 Samuel 12).
Amos 1-2 contains a great example of this entrapment technique, and recognizing what Amos is doing here really helps us to understand what is being said and what is the theme of the book.
I can just imagine him shouting and pronouncing judgment on these surrounding nations, and his audience would be listening with delight as he listed the evil things their enemies had done and what God was going to do to them. Israel was anticipating a day when God would deliver them from their enemies. When we studied Obadiah and Joel, you may remember they talked about the day of the Lord when the nations would be judged.
Let’s look at the speeches in Amos. Typically, people read these speeches and try to draw application from each one. They try to analyze each nation’s sin, etc. But that is perhaps, not the best way to understand what Amos is doing here.
It seems that Amos is using these speeches to build to a climax. He starts with foreigners, then denounces Israel’s neighbors and then the seventh speech is against Judah. You all know that the number seven is significant in the Bible, and it was to the Jew. They would have thought this was the culmination of the sermon, and they certainly would have been pleased that Judah was going to get what was coming to her.
But Amos uses another literary device to build the listener’s interest and make him hang around till the end.
Let’s look at what Amos does:
THE THREE/FOUR FORMULA
One of the first things you notice is this saying, “Because ________ has committed three treaty violations—make that four! (Amos 1:3a) What does that mean?
It is especially confusing when he doesn’t list three or four things after he says that. We might label this device as an x/x+1 formula--explain...
This x/x+1 formula is found throughout the Bible and usually follows a set pattern.
He will give us peace.
When the Assyrians try to invade our land,
and attempt to set foot in our fortresses,
we will send against them seven shepherd-rulers,
make that eight commanders.
This means there will be plenty of shepherds (leaders). This is also seen in Ancient Near Eastern secular literature (from Ugarit). E.g. Baal has 7 yea 8 bolts of lightning.
But it usually precedes a list of some sort. In Psalm 62:11-12, we see the one/two formula. In Proverbs 30:15-16, 18-19, 21-23, 29-31, we have the three/four formula and in Job 5:19-22 and Proverbs 6:16-19 we have a six/seven grouping. Proverbs 6: 16-19 is fairly well known.
In all these sections the author gives a list corresponding to the larger number of the formula. The significance of all this is that the typical Jew would have been expecting Amos to list four transgressions for each of these nations mentioned. Does he do that? No. Why?
Amos is going to adapt this common 3-4 # formula to set up the audience and emphasize his message.
Let’s look at the speeches:
“They ripped through Gilead like threshing boards with iron teeth.”
Damascus was the capitol of the Arameans or Syrians off to the North. Hazael and Ben-hadad were previous kings of Aram. This probably refers to the constant battles between Gilead and the Arameans. The word “threshing” is probably figurative for harsh and thorough conquest with the idea of Aram’s armies raking across Gilead slicing and crushing it as though it were grain on the threshing floor. This could even refer to actual methods of torture where a device like a sledge with iron prongs or knives was used on prisoners, or as Charles Ryrie says in his footnote274--the huge sledges were literally dragged over the enemies to crush them.
But notice, even though it is a gruesome thing, there is only one transgression listed. Not four as the audience would have expected.
For your information, Damascus fell to Assyrians in 732 BC.
The cities mentioned, Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Ekron were major cities in Philistia.
Their sin was “They deported a whole community and sold them to Edom.”
Although it might look like two crimes listed, the overall concept is that of one thing--large-scale slave trade. The Philistines were famous for capturing whole villages and selling them into slavery to Edom, and from there they were sold to other parts of the world. Joel 3:4-8 talks further about their slave trade and also mentions that Tyre participated with them. Tyre is the next city mentioned.
This section refers to the Phoenicians. Their crime against humanity was also slave trade with Edom. Strictly speaking, we might see two transgressions here, but it seems that it is really one sin because the covenant of brotherhood was broken by the slave trade.
So, we have three nations condemned but only one sin listed for each. The 3/4 formula would have made the audience anticipate the fourth nation to be mentioned as the climax of the story.
When Amos mentioned Edom fourth, I’m sure many thought this was the conclusion because the 3/4 formula might be mirrored in the speech as a whole with Amos denouncing three nations and then concluding with a special denunciation on the fourth. And I’m sure they were pleased. Charles Ryrie mentions in his footnote on 1:7275 that Edom was Israel’s bitterest enemy. That is truly a sad thing because the Edomites were the descendants of Esau - Jacob’s brother. Remember Jacob’s other name was Israel.
“He chased his treaty partner with a sword, he wiped out his allies” certainly refers to this relationship between Israel and Edom.
With all the emphasis on three and four transgressions, these four separate statements might make it seem like this is the culmination of the speech. But these four statements really all describe one basic sin and that is the intense hostility for Israel.
So Amos continues.
They ripped open Gilead’s pregnant women, so they could expand their territory. (1:13)
This is certainly a gross sin. Ancient armies would sometimes do this to terrorize the enemy. And certainly committing this atrocity against defenseless women and children showed how immoral they had become. But again, I think there is just one conceptual sin listed. It says they ripped open the pregnant women in order to expand their borders. So it is their cruel imperialistic expansion that is in view.
Ammon and Moab were daughters of Lot. More relatives. The sin listed is burning the bones of the king of Edom. It seems that in ancient times, much importance was placed on a dead man’s body being peacefully placed in the family burial site, so he could be, “gathered to his fathers.”276 If you remember they hauled Joseph’s bones out of Egypt to bury them in the promised land.
So their sin was that of desecrating graves.
Now he is getting closer to home. And he makes a couple of statements against them. But again, I think these statements are really just an elaboration on one sin.
And as Judah is the seventh nation mentioned, the audience would be certain this was the point of the message. Actually, the sin listed is perhaps the worst so far and is appropriate for the seventh pronouncement.
Notice the progression in his indictments. He starts off with foreign nations and gets closer to home as he lists relatives.
Notice the numbers. First we notice Amos doesn’t follow the usual convention of listing four sins after he uses the 3/4 formula. And second, it appears at first that he is going to focus his attention on Edom and then he continues. Then it looks like he is culminating with Judah which is listed 7th. Seven is a significant number and represents fullness, etc. The number eight is also significant in that it follows seven and gives the idea of abundance or “therefore … .”
So there is something wrong with the way Amos has told his story. He didn’t follow the rules. That is part of understanding and appreciating the literature of the Bible. When someone doesn’t follow the rules, it is usually done on purpose to make you take notice. The audience would have noticed this and been expecting something more. In other words, he has set up his audience. He has told them of those that will be destroyed and seemingly ends with Judah.
But - surprise - he continues and adds an 8th item to the list -- Israel. Israel is the target of the speech and the judgment. So we really shouldn’t isolate each speech and the sin and judgment of each nation and turn them into principles. These are more than likely just building to #8.
The point is: Israel is worse than all the other nations.
Now he gets personal. He gives it to them. Amos 2:6-16 is the eighth oracle. Here he lists eight or ten sins (depending on how you count them), which could possibly be divided into four categories. So, Israel appears worse than the rest.
As you read verses 6-8, you notice some parallel structure:
E.g.: They sold the innocent for silver,
the needy for a pair of sandals.
Parallel structure was just the Hebrew way of saying everything. They like to repeat themselves. So, in this case, although it might look like separate sins, it is really a poetic way of describing one sin. Since we divided the sins of the other nations conceptually, we will do that here to be consistent.
I’m going to give you the four conceptual categories:
In verse 6, we see the justice system was corrupt. The law said it was okay to sell a debtor to pay the debt, but they were abusing it. The word “righteous” may mean the one who is right in a lawsuit. So the rich and the powerful may have been able to bribe judges to decide in their favor in a false lawsuit and that allowed them to sell the “righteous” (the one who was innocent but declared guilty) into slavery to pay the fine.
Selling “the needy for a pair of sandals” shows that the people were being sold into slavery for small debts or pledges. The Law commanded the Israelites to give to the needy without demanding repayment (Deuteronomy 15:7f), but I guess “business was business” for most Israelites.
Verses 9-11 recounts God’s provision for Israel. This reminds me of the unforgiving servant who refused to forgive his fellow slave a small debt, when he had just been forgiven a huge amount. I think God is heightening Israel’s guilt by setting their rebellion against the backdrop of his own gracious acts toward them. It was He who conquered Canaan for Israel—at Jericho, Ai, etc. and later with Gideon and Samson. They took his forgiveness and salvation and provision but did not pass it on to others.
Verse 7 is probably a reference to the fact that the Israelite men were going to pagan temples and participating with the temple prostitutes.
Verse 8 may also be referring to a different scenario. First, they weren’t supposed to keep a cloak taken as a pledge overnight (Exodus 22:26-27). It was assumed that only the very needy would borrow anything, and so lenders were not to charge interest and profit from another person’s misfortune, nor were they to keep coats that were given as collateral overnight. The poor persons would need it to stay warm. The poor person probably was required to give his coat as collateral so he couldn’t go from place to place borrowing from every merchant. If a guy came in without a coat, that meant he had already borrowed for the day, and he wouldn’t be able to borrow anything else. He needed his coat back so he could stay warm that night and have something to use as collateral the next day. So these merchants were keeping the coats and, to make matters worse, we see the second sin - they used them to sleep on at night as they “worshipped” at pagan altars.
Verse 12 shows the corruption and rejection of the religious system and the rejection of religious leaders. The Nazarites had taken a vow not to drink any alcohol, but the Israelites were coercing them to break their vows. They had no commitment to God and had no respect for those who did.
Does anything stand out to you at first glance?
I think two things stand out:
First, Amos finally lists four sins. This is the point of his 3/4 formula. He didn’t list four sins for the other nations because Israel is the target of the coming judgment.
Second, these sins don’t look nearly as bad as those of the other nations. So what is the point? Why does God consider Israel to be worse than all the other nations?
I think this points us to the theme of the book.
THEME: God requires more from those to whom He has given more (Luke 12:48).
God had given the Jews the Law. They knew better. That was God’s complaint against Judah in
verse 4 – that Judah rejected the Law. And it is God’s complaint against Israel, but he elaborates because Israel is the target audience, and he really wants to drive the point home.
Amos wants you, the listener, to ask the question, “Why are these lists so short?” Then he gets to Israel who has many more sins listed than every other nation. Israel is really guilty - more guilty than all the rest.
What do all these sins of Israel have in common? Love of money and things had replaced love for people. Money had become their god. Does this have any practical application for America and for us?
The sins of Israel don’t look as bad as those of the other nations. After all, the other nations were going to war, murdering people and ripping open pregnant women. But Israel’s sins are worse because they knew better. Theirs was the sin of hypocrisy.
One obvious problem in Israel was the sin of materialism. We certainly face this problem in our society. We can see how the Israelites compromised God’s laws and principles to achieve success (which they defined as wealth). We need to be careful that we do not fall into the same trap. The Israelites did something else. Their theology said that the wealthy person was a righteous person. We see that over and over again in the parables in the New Testament. This further pacified their conscience as they told themselves that their prosperity was God’s sign of approval.
We see how the Israelites abused people in need. I don’t know if we overtly abuse people, but how concerned are we for the poor? What are we doing for them? Are we ignoring them or ministering to them? I think in our society we expect Uncle Sam to take care of them. We criticize big government, but we depend on government to do what we ought to be doing.
I said the Israelites’ theology said prosperity was a sign of spirituality. Is our theology such that we assume they are poor because they are ungodly?
The main point of this section is this: We look at society and think other people are bad … abortion, homosexuality, murder, etc., but we do things that are, in God’s eyes, worse, because we know better. God expects more out of His people. This doesn’t mean we ignore the other sins. They are terrible, but don’t gloss over what we think are little sins, or what we have rationalized away as not even being a sin.
Remember: To him who has been given much is much required.
When you get to 3:2, you see that Israel is chosen, and you would normally think that means special treatment. That is what the Jews thought at that time. There was an aberrant doctrine of eternal security floating around Israel. They thought they were immune from judgment, because they were the chosen people living in the chosen city. They thought it didn’t matter what they did. They took their relationship with God for granted. I think 6:8 may be a reference to this attitude.
But to God, being chosen, means having responsibility. Israel forgot the stipulations of the covenant made in Deuteronomy. They were only secure as long as they followed God. That was part of the Old Testament law.
How does this relate to us since we are not under the covenant blessings and curses?
The father/child relationship is probably the most helpful for understanding this. I treat my children differently than other children. I wrestle with them, play games, take them out to eat breakfast, buy them things, etc., but I also spank them when they disobey. If I’m watching several kids at my house, I don’t spank other people’s kids when they disobey. It would probably be fair to say that I expect more from my kids than the other kids. I know I’ve told my kids not to do carrier landings on the coffee table. If they do it, they will get a spanking.
In the same way, we are children of God. We can’t remove the relationship no matter how much we sin. What we can change is whether or not he needs to discipline us or whether He can continue with His planned blessings for us. When Israel was bad, they were still God’s chosen people, they just didn’t get to enjoy His blessings. Instead, God had to discipline them. And He disciplined them for transgressions that didn’t seem as bad to us as the other nations. But they knew better.
We have a tendency to want to earn God’s blessings, and we think we deserve God’s blessings. (That is one of the main lessons from Hosea), but there is a fine line here that we need to understand. We do not earn God’s blessings by being good. We just free God up to graciously bless us.
In 3:3-8, Amos uses seven rhetorical questions to show that the judgment of God is inevitable. There is a progression here:
3:3 No element of force or disaster
3:4 One animal overpowering another
3:5 Man overpowering animals
3:6 Man overpowering other men
3:6b God overpowers man. Climax
3:7-8 God always reveals Himself and His plan to mankind. He tells us what He wants us to do, but with that information comes responsibility to do it. If we fail to do it, judgment will follow.
EXAMPLE: The theme of this whole book and especially this section causes me to go back to the parenting/discipline process for an analogy. When Mandy does something wrong, but I have never before told her not to do that, I usually tell her what she is doing is wrong and not to do it again. But I don’t discipline her then. However, if I’ve told her not to do something and she does it anyway, the discipline is sure to follow. Because she knew better.
And the Israelites knew better!
3:9 Ashdod (Philistines) and Egypt were former oppressors of Israel. But things were so bad in Israel now that Amos is sarcastically calling them to witness the internal oppression going on now. It is like saying, “You thought you oppressed them? You don’t even know how to oppress compared to them. Watch them oppress themselves.”
Because of the oppression God was going to send an enemy in to destroy them. And in case some of the listeners thought God would save them again this time, Amos compares God’s saving them to a shepherd snatching a leg bone or ear from a lion’s mouth. Only a few people would be spared.
The reference to the lion in 3:12 goes back to the first verse of Amos. Remember he said, “The LORD roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem … .” This is just another literary device Amos uses which shows his skill as a writer.
So, the point of the first message is that Israel was chosen and because of their rebellion and internal oppression, judgment was certain.
4:1 This is certainly a colorful and sarcastic section. Women are normally sensitive and compassionate, but note the contrast here. The women are compared with the fat cows living on the lush pastures of Bashan. The idea here is that these spoiled women demanded luxury from their “masters” (not the typical word for husband – more sarcasm and reversal of roles), and the only way their husbands could meet their demands was by oppressing the poor.
How does this apply to us? Are we guilty of this? Are we so materialistic and so demanding that our spouse has to work overtime to make enough money to satisfy our demands? Do we have to cheat other people in our business in order to make the most money we can?
4:2 The cattle imagery is continued by the meat hook imagery. See Ryrie’s note.
So, economic exploitation was one problem; now, he describes another.
4:4 continues the sarcasm. Bethel and Gilgal were important sites in Israel’s salvation history (Genesis 28:10-22; Joshua 4-5). Normally the priest would call people to come worship, but here we see Amos calling the people to come to Bethel and Gilgal to sin. The sacrifices and tithes that they were bringing to God had become a sham. They did everything to impress other people (verse 5), not to worship God. They were actually going to church to sin. Not to mention the fact that they weren’t going to Jerusalem to worship, which was the only authorized worship center for Yahweh.
4:5 Notice it says “Make a public display of your voluntary offerings!.” I think this shows that they were bragging about their spirituality, their giving, etc. They were doing things to be seen.
We might ask ourselves if we are guilty of this.
4:6-11 shows God’s response to their hypocrisy and His repeated attempts to bring them back to Him. The phrase, “Yet you did not come back to me” is repeated five times.
Amos 4:6 says, “yet you did not come back to me,” declares the Lord. The punishments mentioned in the next few verses are an allusion to the promised curses of Deuteronomy 28.
I think this shows God’s patience - that He tried so many times, and it shows His mercy because we see that He started out with less severe measures and then increased the severity. (Famine, drought, crop failure, disease and war.)
4:12 – Turning point in book – “Prepare to meet your God, Israel.”
Chapter 5 is divided into two sections using a favorite literary device called a Chiasm.277
Sometimes a Chiasm was just used as an outline and sometimes it really points us to the key idea of main point of the section. So not only is it fun to look for these, but it usually helps us understand the main idea of the author.
If we outline these two messages, it points to the overall truth that: the nation would be judged by its mighty Sovereign God, but individuals could yet repent and live.
1. Description of certain judgment (5:1-3)
2. Call for individual repentance (5:4-6)
3. Accusation of legal injustice (5:7)
4. Portrayal of a sovereign God (5:8-9)
5. Accusation of legal injustice (5:10-13)
6. Call for individual repentance (5:14-15)
7. Description of certain judgment (5:16-17)
1. Description of certain judgment (5:18-20)
2. Accusation of religious hypocrisy (5:21-22)
3. Call for individual repentance (5:23-24)
4. Accusation of religious hypocrisy (5:25-26)
5. Description of certain judgment (5:27)
Remember Isaiah 6: When Isaiah saw the glory of God on his throne, it caused him to repent and make himself available to serve God.
That is the point of the third and fourth messages. The Chiastic structure points us to that. The sovereignty of God in message three should cause the repentance in message four.
There are a few things I’d like to point out about these messages.
In 5:1, Amos summons the people to hear his lament over Israel.
Israel’s demise was so certain that Amos lamented her fall as though it had already happened. This should have been as shocking to the Israelites as it would to one of us to read our own obituary in the newspaper.
5:2 The reference to “the young lady, Israel” (or “virgin Israel” depending on your translation) is a picture of being in the prime of life and experiencing a premature death. Israel could have and should have had a long prosperous life. Actually, God’s plan was for an eternal kingdom for them.
5:10 They hate the one who points out their wickedness. Doesn’t that sound like America? One example that comes to mind is the abortion issue. The Pro-life people are abused and beaten and thrown in jail when they try to protest (point out or reprove) those having and performing abortions. People don’t want to be told that they are sinning. Darkness hates the light.
5:17 Just as God passed through Egypt (in judgment), He was going to pass through Israel (Exodus 12:12).
5:18-20 pictures a man fleeing from one thing after another with no escape to be found.
5:23 shows that their worship and singing was just noise in God’s ears because their worship was merely external.
5:24 shows that God desires justice. How you treat your fellow man is what is important to God and that is what shows that you love God. Over and over again, we see the theme repeated that we are to love God and show it by our love for our neighbor.
This reminds me of the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the story, the priest and Levite are on their way from Jerusalem. If they were on their way to Jerusalem, they might have been able to use the excuse that they didn’t want to become defiled and not be able to worship God. But they had already “worshipped God” (which supposedly showed that they loved God) but they refused to help the injured man (they did not love their neighbor) and that demonstrated that they really did not love God. Their worship was also merely external.
6:1 Here we see Amos saying it is “all over” for both Judah and Israel. By referring to the capitol cities, he is referring to the whole nation.
6:2 This message addresses the problem in Israel in which everyone felt they were better because they were the chosen people. And they felt that God would always bless them.
I think this section speaks for itself:
6:4 They lie around on beds decorated with ivory,
and sprawl out on their couches.
They eat lambs from the flock,
and calves from the middle of the pen.
6:5 They sing to the tune of stringed instruments;
like David they invent musical instruments.
6:6 They drink wine from sacrificial bowls,
and pour the very best oils on themselves.
Yet they are not concerned over the ruin of Joseph.
6:7 Therefore they will now be the first to go into exile,
and the religious banquets where they sprawl out on couches will end.
6:8 We’ve already mentioned the aberrant doctrine of eternal security going around in that day. They thought they were invincible - partly because they were God’s people, and because of their own strength. The rest of this chapter shows how wrong they were.
“I detest his citadels” – another translation for this word is “palace.” 11 of 33 occurrences of this word in the bible occur in Amos. This is the 11th and last time Amos uses this word. It is a special term to him and I think it represents oppression, arrogance and self-sufficiency.
6:12 “Yet you have turned justice into a poisonous plant,” The judicial system, which was designed to preserve the nations’ health, had become a lethal poison within its body. This sounds exactly like America with all the lawsuits that are going on and the lack of punishment for crimes.
6:13 says rb*d* aOl= <yj!m@C=h^ or (h^C=m@j’< l=l)a d`b*r) which is translated in as “You are happy because you conquered Lo-Debar.” Lo Debar was a city on the East side of the Jordan which they had conquered. rbd (d*b*r) can mean either “word” or “thing” and with the negative (loa) could mean “no thing.” Therefore, Amos could be making a play on words (Lo Debar vs. Lo Dabar) saying that they rejoice in nothing.
6:14 Reference to Assyria. Hamath was a city in the north. The Brook of Arabah marked the southern border of Israel during Jeroboam II’s reign. Mentioning these two cities shows how complete will be the destruction.
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Once on a time there were three billy goats who were to go up to the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was “Gruff.”
On the way up was a bridge over a river they had to cross, and under the bridge lived a great ugly troll with eyes as big as saucers and a nose as long as a poker.
So first of all came the youngest Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge. “Trip, trap, trip, trap!” went the bridge.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the troll.
“Oh, it is only I, the tiniest Billy Goat Gruff, and I’m going up to the hillside to make myself fat,” said the billy goat with such a small voice.
“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up!” said the troll.
“Oh, no! pray don’t take me. I’m too little, that I am.” said the billy goat. “Wait a bit till the second Billy Goat Gruff comes. He’s much bigger.”
“Very well, be off with you,” said the troll.
A little while after came the second Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge. “Trip, trap, trip, trap” went the bridge.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the troll.
“Oh, it is only I, the second Billy Goat Gruff, and I’m going up to the hillside to make myself fat,” said the billy goat and his voice was not so small.
“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up!” said the troll.
“Oh, no! Don’t take me,” said the billy goat. “Wait a bit till the big Billy Goat Gruff comes. He’s much bigger.”
“Very well, be off with you,” said the troll.
Just then up came the big Billy Goat Gruff. “T-r-i-p, t-r-a-p, T-r-i-p, t-r-a-p!” went the bridge, for the billy goat was so heavy that the bridge creaked and groaned under him.
“Who’s that tramping over my bridge?” roared the troll.
“It is I! the BIG BILLY GOAT GRUFF!” said the billy goat, who had an ugly hoarse voice of his own.
“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up!” said the troll.
“Well, come along! I’ve got two spears,
And I’ll poke your eyeballs out at your ears,
I’ve got besides two great big stones,
And I’ll crush you to bits, body and bones.”
That was what the billy goat said, and so flew at the troll, and poked his eyes out with his horns, and crushed him to bits, body and bones, and tossed him into the river. Then he went up to the hillside.
There the billy goats got so fat they were scarce able to walk again, and if the fat hasn’t fallen off them, why they’re still fat and so --
“Snip, snap, snout.
This tale’s told out.”
You are probably wondering why I told you that story. Well, I did so because it illustrates what goes on in oral literature. You typically read stories like this and “The Three Little Pigs” to children who can’t read. They become totally caught up in the story and the author sets them up for the unexpected conclusion. The New Testament does this for us with the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.
That is what Amos does to his audience with the next three visions. He uses the same literary technique. The first two visions are similar but the third one is different and catches the listener or reader’s attention.
A. The Vision Of The Locust Swarm Amos 7:1-3
1. The vision of destruction - 7:1-2a
2. The plea for mercy 7:2b
3. The suspension of judgment 7:3
B. The Vision Of The Fire AMOS 7:4-6
1. The vision of the all consuming fire 7:4
2. The plea for mercy 7:5
3. The suspension of judgment 7:6
C. The Vision Of The Plumb Line Amos 7:7-9
1. The vision of the Plumb Line 7:7-8
2. The promise of Judgment
The third vision does not begin with judgment nor have a plea for mercy and the subsequent cancellation of judgment. The rhetorical purpose of this trilogy of visions is to set the audience up for the message of the third vision. The contrast of the third vision with the first two should draw attention to what is being said to emphasize to the audience that Israel is “out-of-line” and doesn’t measure up to God’s standards. The prophet had asked for mercy in the first two visions, but when he was shown just how bad the people were (with the plumb line), he didn’t ask for mercy because he could see that the judgment was deserved.
What is the main point of these visions? First we notice that the first two visions are like motion pictures. Amos responds to them emotionally and is overwhelmed by the destruction and effect on the nation. The third vision is like a snapshot. It invites reflection from the one seeing it. Amos sees the nation as God sees it. He looks at the situation theologically (the plumb line) and from reality (Amaziah’s response) and sees that the judgment is deserved.
Too often we respond to bad things emotionally and blame God or think that it isn’t fair, but we don’t see what is going on from God’s perspective.
The biographical account in 7:10-17 seems out of place but really isn’t. It shows the reaction of the leaders of Israel (especially the priest) to the message of Amos. They rejected his warning and this proves that the visions are correct. The nation is corrupt all the way up to the priests and the king.
Amaziah’s report is not accurate. He accuses Amos of conspiring to kill Jeroboam with the sword (7:11), but Amos’ prophecy and reference to the sword was figurative language (metonymy of adjunct) referring to God’s judgment on Jeroboam, or perhaps it was picturing the severing of the king’s line. Amaziah also says that the Israelites will go into exile. Amos didn’t say that.
Amos responded to Amaziah’s accusation by describing in more detail what God’s judgment would bring. It is ironic that the details of Amaziah’s saying would indeed come true. Many would fall by the sword and the rest would be hauled away into exile.
The vision in 8:1-3 fits in nicely with the preceding section. The three visions, culminating with the vision of the plumb line, showed that judgment was very much deserved. The response of Amaziah, the priest, showed the corruption of the nation, even up through the leadership. It also showed that the warning was rejected. Finally, the vision of the basket of summer fruit or ripe fruit showed the time was ripe for executing the judgment. The time was now.
There is word play in verse 2 between the word for “fruit” (Jy!q*) q*y!J and the word for “the end” (JQ@h^) h^ Q@J. They both sound the same. I believe this figure of speech is called paronomasia. When Amos said he saw a basket of Jy!q*, God says, “Yes, the JQ! has come.”
This is one figure of speech that could be transferred into English. It is not the same type of figure of speech, but the idea is similar. The NIV says the fruit is “ripe,” and God says the time is “ripe” for judgment.
Verse 5 shows the hypocrisy of the people. They went to worship on the sabbath, but they resented the sabbath because they couldn’t go to work and make more money by cheating others. If the law can be summed up by loving God and loving your neighbor, the Israelites showed that they did neither. And as we have pointed out before, if you don’t love your neighbor, it proves that you don’t love God.
Verse 11 shows that it is worse to go without hearing the word of God than to go without food.
Amos 9:8-9 shows that God will shake the nation to separate the wheat from the chaff. And when God shakes, no good wheat is lost and no chaff will remain. Time and again, we see God will sort everyone out in the end and He will determine who will be saved and who will not. We have a tendency to want to judge others and determine if they are saved, but that is God’s job.
Because of God’s promises to Abraham and David, He will not totally annihilate Israel. He will save a few.
The ultimate purpose for God’s judgment is not revenge; it is restoration. God punishes us to bring us back to Him. This is always the purpose for discipline. You see it in Matthew 18 when Jesus talks about reproving your brother. The goal is to bring him to the point where he sees his sin and repents. Peter understands this, and so he asks the question in Matthew 18:21 about how many times we must forgive. Jesus’ answer is - always.
There will come a time when God will restore the nation of Israel.
Verse 12 shows that it will be time when godly people from other nations will be included. That was Israel’s purpose all along -- to be a testimony to the world of how great God is and lead the nations to Him. In Ezekiel 17:22-23, God says:
This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
I will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and plant it. I will pluck from the top one of its tender twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.
17:23 I will plant it on a high mountain of Israel,
and it will send forth branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar.
Every bird of every kind will live under it;
in the shade of its branches they will live.
He gave them another parable:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 13:32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest garden plant and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come and nest in its branches.”
In these passages, the birds represent the nations partaking of and benefiting from the establishment of the kingdom.
Application: It is the church’s and the individual believer’s role to attract the nations to God and bring them into the kingdom.
In Acts 15 at the council of Jerusalem, when they met to discuss whether or not the Gentiles needed to be following the Law. Peter said that the Gentiles did not need to be under the Law, and that just as the Jews were now saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus, so also the Gentiles were saved by grace. James stood up and quoted Amos to show that what Peter was saying was consistent with Old Testament prophecy.
Verses 13-14 make references to much wine when Israel is restored. Perhaps Jesus’ first miracle, turning the water into wine, should have made the Jews who witnessed the miracle think about prophecies such as this one.
Verse 15 says they will not again be rooted out from their land. This has to be a reference to the millennium and eternity. The many references in the prophets to the land promise made to Abraham are one reason I believe there is still a future for Israel, and they haven’t been replaced by the Church.
Just like the Israelites looked down on her neighbor’s for the atrocities they committed, I think we look down on those that commit gross sins and think that we are better than they. We forget that if it were not for the grace of God, we would be the same. And we do not realize that God hates our sins of hypocrisy and idolatry more. So, although the unbeliever’s sins often appear worse to us, in God’s eyes, those of the Christian are worse because we should know better (chapters 1-2).
All the nations surrounding Israel were judged based on their treatment of others. Much of what Amos condemned in Israel was the way they treated others, especially the poor. And like Amos said in 2:9-11, we have what we have because God gave it to us. We need to evaluate how we are treating others. What might some of the modern day equivalents for oppression be? The way the poor are treated in the legal system? Sweat shops? This might be a good topic to discuss in your Sunday school classes.
Israel’s material wealth caused her to feel arrogant and self-sufficient. When you don’t trust in God, you trust in yourself, and you do everything you can to protect yourself. We are certainly a materialistic society and very wealthy compared with the rest of the world. We need to guard against trusting in our bank account instead of God.
Israel’s greed caused her to mistreat others as she thought only of profit instead of people. I can’t help but think of all those special “sales techniques” in which you conquer every buyer’s objection. How often do you find a salesman that says, “You know, after talking about this with you, I don’t think my product is best for you. I think you’d be better off with brand X.” Somewhere along the way, we’ve become just like Israel.
Just like God was patient with Israel and gave opportunity to repent, God also is patient with us and gives us time to repent, but don’t abuse God’s grace because we don’t know when He will finally bring judgment (chapter 4).
Just like Amos reacted to God’s judgment emotionally and thought it was unfair, we often do the same. When Amos saw things from God’s perspective, he didn’t protest any more (chapter 7).
272 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Hampton Keathley, IV at Community Bible Chapel, on July 8, 2001.
273 All Scripture quotations are from the New English Translation: NET Bible. 1998 (electronic edition) Dallas, TX: Biblical Studies Press.
274 Charles Ryrie, The Ryrie Study Bible, NASB 1977.
275 Charles Ryrie, The Ryrie Study Bible, NASB 1977.
276 Donald R. Sunukjian, “Amos,” Bible Knowledge Commentary (Victor Books, 1985), p. 1430.
Stoke Poges is a small village in England not too far from Windsor Castle.278 One of the most famous cemeteries of the world is located in this village, where the well-known poet Thomas Gray penned his famous Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. Those who have gone through the American school system have, I am sure, studied it, or, at least, read this poem at one time or the other during the course of their studies. I came to know about it only recently when I wrote a commentary on the First Letter of Peter and was reading Warren Wiersbe's commentary on that book. Wiersbe quotes these words from that poem:
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour,
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.279
“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” and “… there was no profit under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:11). Those who find their safety and security in the things under the sun will finally be destroyed, along with the things in which they trusted. But those who find their safety and security in the Eternal God will never be shaken. This is the central message of the Bible so clearly presented in the little book penned by an ancient prophet named Obadiah.
The shortest book in the Old Testament and among all the writing prophets, Obadiah provides an overview of the message presented in each of the writing prophets: God's judgment on the unbelieving Gentiles who opposed God's chosen people Israel, and God's grace and ultimate deliverance of the believing Israel. This double thread is woven throughout every prophetic book in the Old Testament.
Obadiah literally means “Servant of the Lord.” This was one of the most common names in the Hebrew Bible. There are 12 other men with this same name in the Old Testament, none of whom can be identified with the author of this book. We do not know anything about this man except that he must have lived in Judah since he prophesies in relation to Jerusalem.
From the historical references in the book, we can locate Obadiah’s ministry in Judah during the reign of Jehoram (848-841 B. C.), son of Jehoshaphat. Edom is indicted because of his violence against his brother Jacob: “On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them …” (11-14). Both 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles tell of the war and rebellion of Edom in the days of Jehoram when Edom, after a fierce struggle, threw off the yoke of Judah (2 Kings 8:20-22; 2 Chronicles 21:8-10). Shortly after that revolt of Edom, according to 2 Chronicles 21:16ff, the Philistines and Arabians broke into Judah and,
They attacked Judah, invaded it and carried off all the goods found in the king’s palace, together with his sons and wives. Not a son was left to him except Ahaziah (Jehoahaz), the youngest (2 Chronicles 21:17).
This best fits the statements in Obadiah, chapters 11-14. When the Philistines, Arabians, and Edomites entered Jerusalem, they cast lots to decide which portions of the city would be granted to each contingent for the purpose of plunder.
The animosity between Edom and the Israelites, and Edom’s punishment because of that, is the literal theme of the Book of Obadiah. The animosity between the Edomites and the Israelites is one of the oldest examples of a discord in human relationships. It began even before their ancestors, Esau and Jacob, were born: “The babies jostled each other within her,” in the womb of their mother Rebekah (Genesis 25:22). Then, for a bowl of red stew, Esau readily traded his birthright to his younger brother Jacob (Genesis 25:29-34). Later Jacob stole the blessing to which Esau said, “Isn't he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me these two times: he took my birthright, and now he has taken my blessing!” And so, Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob” (Genesis27:36, 41). Then Esau moved to the land of Seir (Genesis 36:8-9), the red sandstone area southeast of the Dead Sea.
Later, Edom refused to let the Israelites pass through their land when the Israelites were on the way to the Promised Land, and the Edomites “… came out against them with a large and powerful army” (Numbers 20:14, 21). Even then, God told Israel, “Do not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother” (Deuteronomy 23:7). However, the animosity continued for centuries, and the Edomites harbored hostility against Israel (Ezekial. 35:5). Saul (1 Samuel 4:47), David (2 Samuel 8:13-14), Joab (1 Kings 11:16), and Solomon (1 Kings 11:17-22) all had problems with the Edomites.
The enmity between the seed of Jacob and the seed of Esau is seen even in the New Testament incident. Edom was later controlled by Assyria and Babylon, and in the Fifth century B. C., they were forced by the Nabateans to leave their territory and move to the area of southern Palestine, where they became known as Idumeans. Herod the Great, an Idumean, became the King of Judea under Rome in 37 B. C. This was the king who attempted to murder Jesus by ordering that all the babies under two years of age be killed.
Obadiah, the oldest of all the writing prophets, takes up here the topic of the doom of Edom. After him, almost all prophets have made Edom an object of the Lord’s wrath and destruction, and more than any other nation mentioned in the Old Testament, Edom is the supreme object of God's wrath.
What was so wrong about Edom that God was so upset with him and made him the object of His supreme wrath? The basic reasons were his pride and self-sufficiency. The book gives five reasons for this pride and self-sufficiency:
1. Pride because of their safety and security. Obadiah writes:
The pride of your heart had deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, “Who can bring me down to the ground?” Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars … (verses 3-4).
Edom’s imposing capital city of Petra was impregnable and virtually inaccessible. Edom found her security in the clefts and the rocks. Some of the peaks reached as high as 5,700’ and surrounded her like fortresses. The deep terrifying gorges kept the enemy away. Edom found her safety and security in her surroundings.
However, there is something more involved in the high peaks and lofty clefts. The prophet speaks about her soaring like the eagle and making her nest among the stars. That reminds us of someone else who thought to himself:
I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; will make myself like the Most High (Isaiah 14:13-14).
Edom in her pride had lifted her head against God, just like Satan.
2. Pride because of her hidden treasures. Obadiah talks about Edom's hidden treasures (verses 5-6), for which Edom was proud.
3. Pride because of her allies. Edom was proud of her allies and friends and their political alliances (verse 7).
4. Pride because of wisdom and wise men. Obadiah talks about “the wise men of Edom, men of understanding in the mountains of Esau” (verse 8). Edom was known for her wise men and sages. Her location on a major highway provided intellectual exchange with distant nations.
5. Pride because of her military power. Obadiah talks about her warriors, her military power for which Edom was proud. All these things for which Edom is proud, the prophet tells her, will be taken away. From her lofty heights, she will be brought down on the ground (verse 4). She will be ransacked and her hidden treasures pillaged (verse 6). All her allies will deceive and overpower her and set a trap for her (verse 7). The wise men will be destroyed (verse 8). The warriors will be terrified and will be cut down in the slaughter (verse 9).
Anything and everything that man trusts and relies upon will be taken away. These things will be taken away not because they are evil in and of themselves, but because they take the place of God. Man trusting in these things makes himself God and does not see any need for God. He raises his fist against God and says, “I don't care for you; I don't need you.”
Edom is a symbol of human philosophy that has no place for God. Strangely enough, if there is any nation on the face of the earth today who can boast of these things listed about Edom, it is the United States of America. Where has all the prosperity, military power, and prominent place in world politics brought us today?
6. Pride against God expressed in persecuting God’s people. Edom, and any nation’s or people’s pride and haughty attitude against God, is expressed in various ways. One of the ways is persecuting God’s people, which Obadiah describes about Edom.
The major reason for the judgment of Edom is: “Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame; you will be destroyed forever” (verse 10). The details of the violence against his brother are given in the next four verses:
1. They stood withholding assistance (verse 11).
2. They rejoiced over Judah’s downfall (verse 12).
3. They plundered the city, Jerusalem (verse 13).
4. They prevented the escape of Judah’s fugitives (verse 14).
Behind every persecution of God’s people, there is pride and rebellion against God. Jesus said:
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me (John 15:18-21).
Speaking about the judgment of Edom because of his violence against his brother Jacob, Obadiah turns to speak to all nations who have turned their back to God and talks about their final judgment in terms of the Day of the Lord: “The day of the Lord is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head” (verse 16). On the other hand, “But on Mount Zion will be deliverance; it will be holy, and the house of Jacob will possess its inheritance” (verse 17).
There are two major aspects of the Day of the Lord.
5. 1. Judgment. The first major aspect of the Day of the Lord will be judgment upon the nations who did not obey God. The wicked nations will drink the cup of God’s wrath: “ … so all the nations will drink continually; they will drink and drink and be as if they had never been” (verse 16). As the psalmist describes God’s wrath: “In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs” (Psalm 75:8). Isaiah declares in God’s words: “I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end of the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless” (Isaiah 13:11).
Those who trust in things will be destroyed, along with the things in which they trusted.
6. 2. Deliverance. The other major aspect of the Day of the Lord is the final deliverance of those who trust God, and the Lord's eternal Kingdom, as noted above: “But on Mount Zion will be deliverance; it will be holy, and the house of Jacob will possess its inheritance” (verse 17).
A. Mount Zion. Jerusalem will be the capitol of the Kingdom of God as noted in verse 17 above. Isaiah notes:
In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it… . The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:2-3).
The moon will be abased, the sun ashamed; for the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders, gloriously (Isaiah 24:23).
7. B.Israel will fully possess the Promised Land (verses 18-20).
8. C.The people of God will rule with the King as it says in verse 21: “Deliverers will go up on Mount Zion to govern the mountains of Esau.”
9. D.Finally, the Lord’s eternal Kingdom will be established: “And the kingdom will be the Lord’s” (verse 21b). And, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).
Obadiah, the first of the writing prophets, provides the overview of the kingdom message that becomes one of the major theses of all the rest of the prophets.
Obadiah does not talk about the “cross;” he only talks about the “crown.” David had already prophesied:
Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together against the Lord
and against his Anointed One.
“Let us break their chains,” they say,
“and throw off their fetters.”
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
Then he rebukes them in anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
I will proclaim the decree of the Lord:
He said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have become your Father.
Ask of me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
You will rule them with an iron scepter;
You will dash them to pieces like pottery.”
Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry
and you be destroyed in your way,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him (Psalm 2:1-12, NIV).
Those who rebel against God, trusting in themselves, will finally be destroyed. Those who trust in the Lord will finally be delivered for eternity.
To whom do you think Obadiah is talking? To Edom? No, the prophet is not talking to Edom; he is talking about Edom to his own people.
Remember the situation in Judah during Obadiah’s time? In northern Israel, Ahab-Jezebel ruled with all their wickedness (1 Kings 16-22).
In Judah, Asa begins well (2 Chronicles 14, 15), but ends in disgrace (2 Chronicles 16). Asa’s son Jehoshaphat, like his father, began well: “The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because in his early years he walked in the ways his father David had followed … ” (2 Chronicles 17:3-6), but later allied himself with Ahab (2 Chronicles 18:1; 19:1-2; 20:37). Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram from the beginning “walked in the ways of the kings of Israel,” and “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord” (2 Chronicles 21:6).
During this time, Obadiah brings the message to the faithful in Judah – a message of doom to those who trust in their own evil practices and wickedness – and a message of comfort and peace to those who continue to trust the Lord in spite of the wickedness around them.
We see three applications to us today in the Book of Obadiah:
1. God keeps His promises. God had promised Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3). He had promised Jacob, through Isaac’s blessing; “May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed” (Genesis 27:29b). God kept those promises.
Similarly, God kept His promise to Edom too: “Your dwelling will be away from the earth’s richness, away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother” (Genesis 27:39-40).
One of the most striking statements of God’s faithfulness in the Bible comes from the mouth of a heathen prophet. When the Moabite king Balak saw the hordes of Israelites camped along the Jordan across from Jericho, he was filled with dread, and he summoned Balaam to curse the Israelites. However, Balaam was not successful in cursing the Israelites, and when the Moabite king Balak kept forcing him, he said:
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19).
What he was saying is that God is faithful in keeping His promises, and no one can revoke the promises that He has given.
2. God makes His own choices. Not only does God keep His promises, He also makes His own choices. Obadiah speaks of the final doom of Edom and the final deliverance and blessing of Israel. However, God had already made His choice between Esau and Jacob, even before they were born. As Malachi later notes:
“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” the Lord says, “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals” (Malachi 1:2-3).
Paul, commenting on this, notes,
Not only that, but Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Romans 9:10-13).
10. 3. We are responsible for the choices we make. Edom made his choice, and he suffered the consequences. Moab (Lot) made his choices, and his descendants suffered the consequences. The people of the world make their own choices, and they will suffer the consequences. “They will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Peter 4:5).
We too will have to stand before the Lord to give account of our choices. We will not be condemned like the unbelievers (Romans 8:1). However, we will have to give an account to the Lord of how we spend our life, how we use our resources that He has given us as His stewards, how we decide our priorities and goals, and where our heart is set. “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).
Those who trust in the things under the sun will be destroyed along with those things. But those who trust in the Lord will finally be delivered and enjoy His blessing.
“Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
But we trust in the Name of the Lord our God.
They are brought to their knees and fall,
But we rise up and stand firm” (Psalm 20:7-8).
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
All that beauty all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour,
Paths of glory lead but to the grave.280
“… but the man who does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17).
278 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Imanuel G. Christian, guest speaker at Community Bible Chapel, on July 29, 2001.
279 Warren W. Wiersby, Be Hopeful (1 Peter), (Colorado Springs: Victor Books, 1982), p. 18.
280 See footnote 1.
The Message of the Book of Habakkuk291
A few months ago, my friend Marvin Ball made a very insightful comment. He said that whenever we return to a text of Scripture, we are likely to see something we had not previously observed. We all know this to be true, but Marvin suggested an interesting reason for this: every time we come to a text, we come from a slightly different frame of reference. For example, we can read the Book of Psalms at a very comfortable stage in our lives and appreciate certain truths. But when we lose our job, or a family member, or our life’s savings, we come to the Psalms with a very different perspective. We see the same Scriptures in a whole new light.
How true this observation has proven to be this past week. I was driving back from a breakfast with several men when I first heard the news on the radio. An airplane had just struck one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Before long, a second plane had crashed into the second tower. Then there was the report of a plane crashing into the Pentagon building in Washington D.C. If that were not enough, we learned that a fourth airliner had crashed in Pennsylvania. It was soon recognized as a terrorist attack, and while the United States has not yet launched an attack, our nation considers itself at war with the terrorists who took part in this attack, along with those countries that have given them sanctuary and support.
I must tell you that the message of the Book of Habakkuk really comes alive in light of the events of this past week. I can think of no book of the Bible more directly applicable to the tragic incidents of last week. These events also shed new light on other Old Testament books. Take the Book of Jonah, for example. How easy it has been for me to criticize Jonah for refusing to go to Nineveh to proclaim God’s judgment on the Assyrians. But now, I can put myself in Jonah’s place. Suppose that God instructed me to go to Baghdad, Iraq, or to Kabul, Afghanistan to preach a message of judgment to Muslim extremists who were responsible for the attacks on our nation last week? How would I feel if I knew that my preaching might be used of God to save those who have caused such pain for my own countrymen? I can now better empathize with Jonah and feel some of the emotions he must have felt.
The Assyrians and the Babylonians were the terrorists of Habakkuk’s day. Accounts of the cruelty of these nations are mind-bending, both in the Old Testament and in the literature and artifacts of the Ancient Near East. They loved to terrorize their enemies so that they lost their will to resist or oppose them. There are differences between the Assyrians and Babylonians and the terrorists who ruthlessly killed, injured, and destroyed this past week, but the similarities are many.
It seems evident that the prophet Habakkuk wrote the Book of Habakkuk sometime during the 25-year interval between the fall of Nineveh (612 B.C.) and the fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.). It is likely that Habakkuk grew up during the reign of Josiah. He would have witnessed many of the reforms that took place during his reign over Judah. But Josiah was the last righteous king to sit on the throne of Judah. Those who followed him were wicked men. When Josiah died, all of his reforms died with him. There was almost no trace of godliness to be found in Judah. The prophet Jeremiah described the wickedness of Judah before Jerusalem’s defeat by the Babylonians (or Chaldeans):
But you are always thinking and looking
for ways to increase your holding by dishonest means.
Your eyes and your heart are set only
on killing some innocent person
and on committing fraud and oppression (Jeremiah 22:17).292
These were dark days for Judah, and Habakkuk did not like what he saw the people of Judah doing. Neither did Habakkuk like what God was doing (or rather “not doing”), so far as the prophet could tell. We will return to the subject of his protests, but first let us pause for a wide angle look at the Book of Habakkuk.
The first chapter of the Book of Habakkuk is dominated by the protests of the prophet. He is greatly distressed by the sins of his nation, and even more distressed that God seems to be doing nothing about it. Habakkuk accuses God of failing to do His job, as the prophet perceives it. God answers Habakkuk’s protest (1:5-11), but this only provokes a rebuttal from the prophet (1:12—2:1). With the exception of the first verse, chapter 2 is a divine declaration of foundational principles (2:2-5) and of woe’s pronounced upon the wicked (2:6-20). The third chapter reveals a radical change in Habakkuk’s heart. In chapter 1, the prophet demands justice; in chapter 3, the prophet pleads for mercy. In chapter 1, the prophet challenges God’s way of dealing with the wicked; in chapter 3, the prophet finds himself on his knees in prayer. In chapter 1, Habakkuk is protesting against God; in chapter 3, he joyfully praises God.
Something very dramatic happens to the prophet Habakkuk in the course of the book. He is not the same man we saw in chapter 1. The key to understanding the message of Habakkuk is to understand the process by which God changed the prophet’s attitudes and actions:
“The whole value of this prophecy is its revelation of the process that led to the song of 3:17-18. ”293
The answer is to be found in chapter 2. With the exception of the first verse of chapter 2,294 the entire second chapter is God’s response to the protests of His prophet. The centerpiece of God’s response is found in verse 4:
“Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous will live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4, NASB).
The protests of this prophet have often been repeated over the centuries. The events of this past week have caused some to raise them again. Let us look at Habakkuk’s angry protest, at God’s response, and at the final response of the prophet in chapter 3 with an eye to what it says to us, as well as to the people of a bygone day.
1 The following is the message which God revealed to Habakkuk the prophet:
2 How long, Lord, must I cry for help?
But you do not listen!
I call out to you, ‘Violence!’
But you do not intervene!
3 Why do you force me to experience injustice?
Why do you put up with wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence confront me;
conflict is present and one must endure strife.
4 For this reason the law lacks power,
and justice is never carried out.
Indeed, the wicked intimidate the innocent.
For this reason justice is perverted (Habakkuk 1:1-4).
Imagine for a moment that you are walking down the street and you see an elderly woman being attacked by a gang of thugs. Then you notice a policeman, sitting on a park bench nearby. You shout to the policeman, pointing to the woman in distress. The policeman refuses to lift a finger to come to her aid and goes right on reading his newspaper. Wouldn’t you be angry with the policeman?
This is how Habakkuk felt. He lived during the final dark days of Judah, just before her captivity. The prophet rightly assesses the spiritual state of the nation, and he agonizes because the sins of his day are rampant. Most of all, Habakkuk fumes with anger because God appears to be doing nothing about it, and that is His job! That is the essence of the prophet’s protest: “God, I have persisted at urging you to deal with the sins of this people, and you have been strangely silent? Don’t you care?” “God, if you are a just God, why is there no justice?”
5 "Look among the nations! Observe!
Be astonished! Wonder!
Because I am doing something in your days—
You would not believe if you were told.
6 "For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,
That fierce and impetuous people
Who march throughout the earth
To seize dwelling places which are not theirs.
7 "They are dreaded and feared;
Their justice and authority originate with themselves.
8 "Their horses are swifter than leopards
And keener than wolves in the evening.
Their horsemen come galloping,
Their horsemen come from afar;
They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour.295
9 "All of them come for violence.
Their horde of faces moves forward.
They collect captives like sand.
10 "They mock at kings
And rulers are a laughing matter to them.
They laugh at every fortress
And heap up rubble to capture it.
11 "Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on.
But they will be held guilty,
They whose strength is their god" (Habakkuk 1:5-11, NAU).
We might paraphrase the first part of God’s response this way: “Take a good look around you, Habakkuk, and you keep your eyes open. I am already at work, raising up the Chaldeans (the Babylonians).296 The problem is not that I am doing nothing, but that what I am doing is so beyond your grasp you would not even believe it if I revealed it to you.”
Did Habakkuk think that God had been “asleep at the wheel,” that He either did not know or did not care that His people were acting wickedly? Well, contrary to Habakkuk’s perception, God was at work. God informs Habakkuk that He is raising up the Babylonians as His rod of judgment upon Judah. These were an arrogant, powerful, and wicked people, who loved to terrorize their victims. Judgment, when it came, would be swift and devastating.
Verse 11 is crucial.297 God was in the process of raising up a very violent and cruel nation to judge His people. Let it not be thought that God is going to let them get away with their sins, however. These people had made their own strength into a god.298 They were cruel and vicious, and they worshipped themselves and they would be judged for it.
On the surface, Habakkuk’s rebuttal is based upon three impressive arguments. In the final half of chapter 1, the Habakkuk sounds more like a lawyer than a prophet. He attempts to reason with God on the basis of His character. He first argues in verse 12 that since God is eternal, God’s chosen people are indestructible. God is eternal, and thus His promises must also be eternal. God made a covenant with His people, Israel. He promised Abraham that he would become a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3, etc.) and David that he would have an eternal kingdom (2 Samuel 7:14). Therefore, Israel cannot cease to exist as a nation. Habakkuk appears to have assumed that if the Babylonians were allowed to prevail, they would completely wipe out Judah entirely. Thus, God could not allow the Babylonians to prevail.
The prophet’s logic is far from flawless, however. Habakkuk seems to have overlooked God’s promise to preserve a remnant of his people (Isaiah 1:9; 10:20-22; 11:11; Jeremiah 23:3; Micah 2:12; Zephaniah 2:7). Habakkuk was wrong. God could use the Babylonians to chasten His people, and yet preserve a remnant, through whom His covenant promises could be fulfilled.
Habakkuk’s second argument is also based upon God’s character. God is righteous, and He abhors evil. God cannot approve of evil; therefore, God cannot approve of an evil nation destroying His people. The way the prophet sees it, God’s plan to use the Babylonians as a chastening rod is inconsistent with God’s character. A righteous God cannot achieve His purposes through unrighteous means. God will simply have to change His plans, or so the prophet supposes.
But Habakkuk’s logic is wrong. The use of foreign nations as a chastening rod was not inconsistent with His character, and it was not something new. God had foretold this in the Mosaic Covenant:
36 The Lord will force you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there. 37 You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the people among whom the Lord will drive you… . 49 The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or consideration for the young (Deuteronomy 28:36-37, 49-50).
The Book of Judges is filled with examples of God’s use of foreign nations as His chastening rod:
13 They [Israel] abandoned the Lord and worshiped Baal and the Ashtars. 14 The Lord was furious with Israel and handed them over to robbers who plundered them. He turned them over to their enemies who lived around them. They could not withstand their enemies’ attacks (Judges 2:13-14),
God is morally just in using the wicked to achieve His purposes:
For the wrath of man shall praise You;
With a remnant of wrath You will gird Yourself (Psalm 76:10, NAU).
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28, NAU).
God is righteous, and He is also sovereign. He is able to use the wicked, and even their wicked deeds to accomplish His purposes. For the moment, I will cite only one example – Pharaoh:
For the scripture says to Pharaoh: “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may demonstrate my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth” (Romans 9:17).
Pharaoh’s oppression of God’s people, and his refusal to let God’s people go, became an occasion of blessing for the Israelite nation. It resulted in their release from slavery and their possession of the land of Canaan. Nevertheless, they did suffer under the hand of Pharaoh for a number of years. God used the wicked to accomplish His purposes. God used Pharaoh to bring Himself glory and to produce good for His people, Israel. Habakkuk was wrong. A righteous God can use wicked men to achieve His purposes.
I believe that Habakkuk’s second argument is further flawed in that it is based upon the very questionable assumption that the people of Judah are more righteous than the Chaldeans.
You are too just to tolerate evil;
you are unable to condone wrongdoing.
So why do you put up with such treacherous people?
Why do you say nothing when the wicked devour those who are relatively innocent?
(Habakkuk 1:13, emphasis mine)
The NAU translates the last part of verse 13 quite literally,
Why do You look with favor
On those who deal treacherously?
Why are You silent when the wicked swallow up
Those more righteous than they? (NAU, emphasis mine)
This is a very dangerous argument, in my opinion, and one that almost all of us have employed at one time or another. We know that certain things are sin, but we generally have different categories of sin. The Jews of Jesus’ day found Jesus guilty of blasphemy, an unpardonable sin to them, and yet they were self-righteous and greedy. They found ways to avoid their responsibilities to their parents and, according to Jesus, they stole widows’ houses. They oppressed the poor in the process of making themselves rich.
I would agree with you that some sins are certainly worse than others in terms of their effects. A murderer or a rapist may cause untold suffering, while one who is proud and arrogant may merely prove offensive to others. But at their root, all sins are against God, are abhorrent to God, and are worthy of God’s eternal wrath. Showing partiality or favoritism may not appear to be a terrible sin in our eyes, but James puts this sin in a different light:
1 My brothers and sisters, do not show prejudice if you possess faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. 2 For if someone comes into your assembly wearing a gold ring and fine clothing, and a poor person enters in filthy clothes, 3 do you pay attention to the one finely dressed and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and to the poor person, “You stand over there,” or “Sit under my feet”? 4 If so, have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil motives? 5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters! Did not God choose the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor! Are not the rich oppressing you and dragging you into the courts? 7 Do they not blaspheme the good name of the one you belong to? 8 But if you fulfill the royal law as expressed in this scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show prejudice, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as violators. 10 For the one who obeys the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. 11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but you commit murder, you have become a violator of the law. 12 Speak and act as those who will be judged by a law that gives freedom. 13 For judgment is merciless for the one who has shown no mercy. But mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:1-13).299
Habakkuk’s argument falls on it’s face in the light of Israel’s sins and in the light of statements such as this:
7 He [Manasseh] put an idol of Asherah he had made in the temple, about which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “This temple in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will be my permanent home. 8 I will not make Israel again leave the land I gave to their ancestors, provided that they carefully obey all I commanded them, the whole law my servant Moses ordered them to obey.” 9 But they did not obey and Manasseh misled them so that they sinned more than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed from before the Israelites. 10 So the Lord announced through his servants the prophets: 11 “King Manasseh of Judah has committed horrible sins. He has sinned more than the Amorites before him and has encouraged Judah to sin by worshiping his disgusting idols. 12 So this is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘I am about to bring disaster on Jerusalem and Judah. The news will reverberate in the ears of those who hear about it’” (2 Kings 21:7-12, emphasis mine).300
I believe the fatal flaw in Habakkuk’s second argument is exposed by his own words in 1:14-17 and by God’s words to the prophet in chapter 2. But for the moment, let those who would justify or minimize their sins by pointing to the “greater” sins of others beware.
Habakkuk has yet a third argument, one which I am sure he felt was the clincher. Habakkuk must have consoled himself with the thought that God could certainly not deny the force of his logic in this argument. This argument is put forward in verses 14-17 of chapter 1:
14 You made people like fish in the sea,
like animals in the sea that have no ruler.
15 The Babylonian tyrant pulls them all up with a fishhook;
he hauls them in with his throw net.
When he catches them in his dragnet,
he is very happy.
16 Because of his success he offers sacrifices to his throw net
and burns incense to his dragnet;
for because of them he has plenty of food,
and more than enough to eat.
17 Will he then continue to fill and empty his throw net?
Will he always destroy nations and spare none? (Habakkuk 1:14-17)
If the law was clear on any point, it was surely clear that God hates and forbids idolatry. Habakkuk uses this as the basis for his third argument. The Babylonians are idolaters, so surely God cannot allow them to prosper against His people. Habakkuk describes the people of Judah as defenseless victims of abuse, like a swarm of fish in the sea. He portrays the victory of the Babylonians over God’s people as that of fishermen casting out nets, capturing many fish. Worst of all, these heathen fishermen worship their own nets as their gods, giving their nets praise and worship for a good catch. Surely this imagery should get God’s attention. Why would God grant the Babylonians success if they are only going to worship idols as a result? “God, you hate idolatry,” Habakkuk argues, “Can you honestly allow the idolatrous Babylonians to prevail over the people of Judah, and then worship the god of their own strength?”
This argument is a double-edged sword. God does not have a double standard. If God should judge the Babylonians for their cruelty and idolatry, then why should He not also judge Judah for its cruelty and idolatry? After all, God has already sent Israel into captivity, at the hands of cruel oppressors, because of their sins. Are the Babylonians wicked and cruel and worthy of divine judgment? So are the people of Judah:
1 I said,
“Listen, you leaders of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation of Israel!
You should know what is just,
2 yet you hate what is right,
and love what is wrong.
You tear off my people’s skin,
and rip the flesh from their bones.
3 You devour my people’s flesh,
strip off their skin,
and crush their bones.
You chop up them up like flesh in a pot—
like meat in a kettle.
4 Someday these sinners will cry to the Lord for help,
but he will not answer them.
He will hide his face from them at that time,
because they have done such wicked deeds” … .
9 Listen to this, you leaders of the family of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation of Israel!
You hate justice
and pervert all that is right.
10 You build Zion through bloody deeds,
Jerusalem through violent deeds of injustice.
11 Her leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases,
her priests teach for profit,
and her prophets read omens for pay.
Yet they claim to trust the Lord and say,
“The Lord is among us.
Disaster will not come upon us!”
12 Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed up like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins,
and the temple mount will become a hill overgrown with brush! (Micah 3:1-4, 9-12)
Habakkuk wants to know how God can allow the wickedness of the Babylonians to go unpunished. Ironically, the answer to this question is the very thing that made Habakkuk angry in the first place. God is “slow to anger;” He is “long suffering.”301 His judgment often does not come as quickly as we would like. As God allowed time to pass before He brought judgment upon Israel, and soon upon Judah, He would allow some time to pass before bringing judgment upon the Babylonians.
Habakkuk seems very satisfied with the force of his rebuttal. He now will wait for God’s answers, and they had better be good. Even then, Habakkuk plans to dispute them, if God persists with His plan:
I will stand at my watch post;
I will remain stationed on the city wall.
I will keep watching, so I can see what he says to me
and can know how I should answer
when he counters my argument (Habakkuk 2:1).
There is a question that must be raised here: “Was Habakkuk right to speak to God as he has up till now?” Strangely, there are many who would seek to sanctify Habakkuk’s attitudes and actions in these verses. They make him an example for all of us to follow. I find this impossible to do. Prophets are not perfect, as we should know from folks like Balaam and Jonah. Every word of his prophecy is the inspired word of God, but I believe that we are to learn from the early words of Habakkuk how we should not respond to God when He acts in a way we don’t like. Habakkuk is a bad example, up till now. In chapter 3, it is a completely different story. Let me summarize the reasons why I cannot justify Habakkuk’s attitudes and actions in the first part of his prophecy.
(1) Habakkuk is angry with God. He does not question God in humility, but in rebuke. In Habakkuk’s mind, God has not acted promptly enough in judgment, and thus He is rebuked for being passive.
(2) Habakkuk is arrogant. His words sound like a man with his hands on his hips, rebuking his God.
(3) Habakkuk is wrong for assuming that God is doing nothing about Judah’s sins. The prophets had spoken of it, and it was only a matter of time. Habakkuk assumes that God is doing nothing because he is unable to see or to grasp what God is doing.
(4) Every one of Habakkuk’s arguments against God’s use of the Babylonians is flawed. How can a man who is wrong be right in his protest?
(5) There is a dramatic change in chapter 3. Habakkuk repents and humbles himself before God. He accepts the coming judgment, and he praises God. The words of chapter 3 are a psalm, recorded for Judah’s use in worship. Here, at last, is a Habakkuk whom we can follow.
I want you to notice several things about Habakkuk chapter 2. First, it is God who speaks here (with the exception of verse 1). Second, note the way God ends His response:
But the Lord is in his majestic palace.
The whole earth is speechless in his presence!” (Habakkuk 2:20)
No wonder Habakkuk ceases his protests and begins to praise God in chapter 3. Third, the reason for Habakkuk’s change of heart must be found here, in chapter 2. Fourth, the chapter is dominated by five “woes” that God pronounces upon the wicked.
I can just see Habakkuk standing there at his post, hands on his hips, arrogantly waiting for God’s retraction. God’s first words to the prophet might be summed up: “Petition denied!” Listen to what God says to His impertinent prophet:
2 The Lord responded:
“Write down this message! Record it legibly on tablets,
so the one who announces it may read it easily.
3 For the message is a witness to what is decreed;
it gives reliable testimony about how matters will turn out.
Even if the message is not fulfilled right away, wait patiently;
for it will certainly come to pass—it won’t be late arriving (Habakkuk 2:2-3).
Had Habakkuk succeeded in changing God’s mind about using the Babylonians to judge Judah? Not at all! God emphatically announced that His plans were moving ahead, in spite of the prophet’s protests. In fact, one could almost paraphrase verse 2 in this way: “Write these words on a billboard, Habakkuk, so that anyone passing by might read them.” The prophet was to proclaim the vision God had revealed. It was going to happen just as planned and prophesied. It was going to happen when God said it would. There was no turning back. The day of Judah’s judgment was at hand. The instrument of Judah’s judgment was already on standby.
Verses 4 and 5 of chapter 2 are the heart of the book, and the heart of the gospel:
4 "Behold, as for the proud one,
His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous will live by his faith.
5 "Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man,
So that he does not stay at home.
He enlarges his appetite like Sheol,
And he is like death, never satisfied.
He also gathers to himself all nations
And collects to himself all peoples” (NAU).
It was not God who needed to change His plans (as Habakkuk supposed), it was Habakkuk who was wrong and needed to change. According to verse 4, there are two kinds of people: (1) those who are proud, and whose souls are not right; and, (2) those who righteous, and who live by faith. When you boil it all down, it comes to this, doesn’t it? Those whose souls are not right are those who are proud. They trust in themselves for salvation. They believe that their good works are sufficient to save them. They disdain grace as a form of charity, which they neither want nor need. Those who are saved have ceased to trust in themselves, in their goodness or good works. They trust in God; they know that He alone can save them from their sins. They humbly accept His provision for salvation, and they live their lives trusting Him and obeying His word. The “faith” in verse 4 also means “faithfulness.” The righteous enter into salvation by faith, and they persevere by faith as well. Faith is the cause, and faithfulness is the result.
It looked to Habakkuk as though the Babylonian victory would be the end of all God’s people and of His promises to them. The vision Habakkuk received was a promise that God would judge those who were proud and arrogant, and who were sinners. What Habakkuk should also have known is that God’s promises to His people would be fulfilled. God would save a remnant of the righteous, as other prophets had indicated. Habakkuk had to believe this by faith, and he needed to endure the days ahead by walking in obedience to God’s Word.
The principle of Habakkuk 2:4 is taken up in three places in the New Testament:
For the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel from faith to faith, just as it is written, “the righteous by faith will live” (Romans 1:17).
Now it is clear no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous one will live by faith (Galatians 3:11).
37 For just a little longer and he who is coming will arrive and not delay. 38 But my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I take no pleasure in him. 39 But we are not among those who shrink back and thus perish, but are among those who have faith and preserve their souls (Hebrews 10:37-39).
In Romans and Galatians, Paul defends the gospel against those who wanted to add works to faith, as the basis for one’s eternal salvation. Paul makes it very clear that one is saved from his sins by trusting in Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, who bore the sinner’s punishment as He died on the cross of Calvary. It was He who also arose from the dead and ascended to the Father in heaven. Those who have died in Christ, are dead to their sins and its penalty. These have also risen to new life in Christ, empowered to serve God in the power of the Spirit (Romans 6).
The writer to the Hebrews is applying Habakkuk 2:4 in a way that is very similar to God’s dealings with Habakkuk. Days of tribulation and trial were coming upon the Hebrew saints. Some were tempted to “bail out” by returning to Judaism. They were tempted to cast off the New Covenant and live once again under the Old. Like God (Habakkuk 2:2-3), the writer to the Hebrews assures his readers that days of tribulation are soon to come on them, but that these will serve to prepare the way for our Lord’s return. Until He comes, they are to continue to “walk by faith,” just as they were saved by faith. The righteous are thus preserved (“saved”) through the days of trouble as they persevere by faith.
There is another side to this coin, however. Those who do not “live by faith” are the proud, who will perish in the time of God’s judgment. I have come to the conclusion that the wicked who do not live by faith, and who will perish, include both the unbelieving citizens of Judah and the unbelieving pagans, such as the Babylonians. Let me briefly attempt to illustrate this point, although we do not have the time to pursue it thoroughly.
(1) Jerusalem and Judah are proud and arrogant and will be humbled in judgment:
11 In that day you will no longer experience shame because of all your rebellious actions,
for then I will remove from your midst those who proudly boast,
and you will never again be arrogant on my holy hill.
12 I will leave in your midst a humble and meek group of people,
and they will find safety in the Lord’s presence (Zephaniah 3:11-12).
(2) The word for “net” that is found in Habakkuk 1:14-17 (when referring to the wickedness of the Chaldeans) is used in reference to the people of Judah in Micah 7:2. The same violence which Habakkuk abhors in the Babylonians is practiced by the people of Judah:
Faithful men have disappeared from the land;
there are no godly men left.
They all wait in ambush so they can shed blood;
they hunt their own brother with a net (Micah 7:2).
(3)In Habakkuk 2:12 God condemns the Babylonians who “build a city with bloodshed.” Now listen to these words from the prophet Micah, condemning God’s people for building Jerusalem with bloodshed and violence:
You build Zion through bloody deeds,
Jerusalem through violent deeds of injustice (Micah 3:10).
I believe that one can find indictments against Israel and Judah for every sin that God condemns in chapter 2 of Habakkuk. Does God emphatically announce that He will judge the Babylonians for their sins? He surely does. But we must realize that these woes apply to everyone who commits such sins, including His chosen people. The people of Judah are guilty of the very sins for which the Babylonians are condemned. God is giving Judah a “taste of her own medicine.”
In verse 4, I see a divine indictment against all who are proud.302 This, in my opinion, includes Habakkuk. I have to conclude that Habakkuk had an arrogant posture toward God. This petulant prophet accuses God of failing to act as He should, within the time frame Habakkuk has determined. I therefore understand Habakkuk 2:4 as being addressed first to Habakkuk, and then to others. It is as though God had said to the prophet, “Habakkuk, I don’t think I like the tone of your petitions. You have accused Me of failing to act when and how you think I should have. Your pride is as offensive to me as the pride of the pagan Babylonians. You need to be humble and to walk by faith. My ways are higher than your ways, so trust in Me.”
The last words of chapter 2 serve as a powerful conclusion to God’s proclamation to Habakkuk and others:
“But the LORD is in His holy temple.
Let all the earth be silent before Him” (Habakkuk 2:20, NAU).
It is amazing how a grasp of God’s majesty, high and lifted up, can change our perspective:
1 Then Job answered the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted;
3 you asked,
‘Who is this who darkens counsel
without knowledge?’
But I have declared without understanding
things too wonderful for me to know.
4 You said,
‘Pay attention, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you will answer me.’
5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye has seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself,
and I repent in dust and ashes! (Job 42:1-5)
15 If I had publicized these thoughts,
I would have betrayed your loyal followers.
16 When I tried to make sense of this,
it was troubling to me.
17 Then I entered the precincts of God’s temple,
and understood the destiny of the wicked.
18 Surely you put them in slippery places;
you bring them down to ruin.
19 How desolate they become in a mere moment!
Terrifying judgments make their demise complete!
20 They are like a dream after one wakes up.
O sovereign Master, when you awake you will despise them.
21 Yes, my spirit was bitter,
and my insides felt sharp pain.
22 I was ignorant and lacked insight;
I was as senseless as an animal before you.
23 But I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
24 You guide me by your wise advice,
and then you will lead me to a position of honor (Psalm 73:15-24).
1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the sovereign master seated on a high, elevated throne. The hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs stood over him; each one had six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and they used the remaining two to fly. 3 They called out to one another, “The Lord who leads armies has absolute sovereign authority! His majestic splendor fills the entire earth!” 4 The sound of their voices shook the door frames, and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, for my lips are contaminated by sin, and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who leads armies” (Isaiah 6:1-5).
29 After twelve months, he happened to be walking around on top of the walls of the royal palace of Babylon. 30 The king uttered these words: “Is this not the great Babylon that I have built for a royal residence by my own mighty strength and for my majestic honor?” 31 While these words were still on the king’s lips, a voice came down from heaven: “It is hereby announced to you, King Nebuchadnezzar, that your kingdom has been removed from you! 32 You will be driven from human society, and you will live with the wild animals. You will be fed grass like oxen, and seven times will pass by for you before you understand that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms and gives them to whomever he wishes.” 33 Now in that very moment this pronouncement came true with Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from human society, he ate grass like oxen, and his body became damp with the dew of the sky, until his hair became long like an eagle’s feathers, and his nails like a bird’s claws. 34 But at the end of the appointed time I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up toward heaven, and my sanity returned to me.
I blessed the Most High,
and I praised and glorified the one who lives forever.
For his rule is an everlasting rule,
and his kingdom extends from one generation to the next.
35 All the inhabitants of the earth are regarded as nothing.
He does as he wishes with the army of heaven
and with those who inhabit the earth.
No one slaps his hand
and says to him, ‘What have you done?’
36 At that time my sanity returned to me. I was restored to the honor of my kingdom, and my splendor returned to me. My ministers and my magistrates were seeking me out, and I was reinstated over my kingdom. Tremendous greatness was restored to me, greater than before. 37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, for all his deeds are right and his ways are just. He is able to bring low those who live in pride” (Daniel 4:29-37).
The first two verses of this chapter signal the fact that Habakkuk has had a serious change of heart:
1 A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth.
2 LORD, I have heard the report about You and I fear.
O LORD, revive Your work in the midst of the years,
In the midst of the years make it known;
In wrath remember mercy (Habakkuk 3:1-2, NAU, emphasis mine).
The marginal notes in the New American Standard Bible indicate that the term “Shigionoth” in verse 1 refers to a poetic form. It is very clear from other indicators that chapter 3 is a psalm of worship and praise:
Your bow is ready for action;
you commission your arrows. Selah.
You cause flash-floods on the earth’s surface (Habakkuk 3:9, emphasis mine).
The sovereign Lord is my source of strength.
He gives me the agility of a deer;
he enables me to negotiate the rugged terrain.
This prayer is for the song leader. It is to be accompanied by stringed instruments
(Habakkuk 3:19, emphasis mine).
This chapter is not just a prayer; it is a psalm, a psalm that has been preserved so that it can be sung in worship. It is clear that what we find in the third chapter is given to us as a pattern for our worship. I don’t believe that we are to imitate Habakkuk’s words or attitudes in chapter 1. However, I see a humbled Habakkuk in these verses, particularly verse 2: “LORD, I have heard the report about You and I fear.” It is as though he has said, “I get the message, Lord. These things were not only written for others, but for me” (see 2:2). As Job’s questions were silenced by God’s sequence of questions (see Job 38ff.); as Nebuchadnezzar was humbled before the sovereign God of Israel (Daniel 4); and as Asaph’s protests were squelched in Psalm 73 (compare verse 17 with Habakkuk 3:1-2ff.), so Habakkuk is humbled by God’s words in Habakkuk chapter 2. He no longer protests against God’s apparent inactivity; He now praises God for what He has done, and what He will do, in His good time.
We do not have time to carefully consider verses 3-15, but we should realize that this is a highly poetic description of God’s working in the past, when He delivered the Israelites from the hand of Pharaoh and the land of Egypt, and as He brought them into the land of Canaan. Eugene H. Peterson paraphrases the first verses of this poetic description this way:
God’s on his way again,
Retracing the old salvation route,
Coming up from the south through Teman,
The Holy One from Mount Paran (3:3).303
It really is the “old salvation route” which Habakkuk’s psalm describes. In majestic terms, God is described as coming down near Sinai, displaying His splendor and glory (verses 3-4). The plagues are His plagues, going before Him and behind Him (verse 5). The surrounding nations who beheld God’s power were terrified (verse 7). Verse 8 appears to refer to the parting of the Red Sea and then the Jordan. Verse 11 seems to refer to the days of Joshua, when God caused the sun to stand still (Joshua 10:12-14). God triumphed over the nations, bringing judgment upon them (verse 12), while at the same time He was saving His people (verse 13a). God triumphed over men and nature. Surely, one must infer, if God did all this for His people in the past, He will do the same for His people in Habakkuk’s day (and in ours). Fierce and powerful though the Babylonians might be, God would first use them and then judge them, in His good time.
Verse 16 describes Habakkuk’s new outlook, based upon God’s words in chapter 2 and the vision of God in 3:3-15:
I heard and my inward parts trembled,
At the sound my lips quivered.
Decay enters my bones,
And in my place I tremble.
Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress,
For the people to arise who will invade us (Habakkuk 3:16, NAU).
If Habakkuk stood erect, with his hand on his hips in chapter 1 (including 2:1), he now finds that he hasn’t the strength to stand at all. His stomach churns; his knees buckle (so to speak). He appears to collapse in worship and submission to the will of God. He knows that his arguments have failed, and that God’s day of judgment is coming upon the people of Judah, and upon the city of Jerusalem.304 He must patiently wait for that day, by faith, trusting that God will save His own, and that He will eventually judge the Babylonians for their cruelty.
There is something incredibly beautiful about the closing words of Habakkuk:
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom
And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
18 Yet I will exult in the LORD,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
19 The Lord GOD is my strength,
And He has made my feet like hinds' feet,
And makes me walk on my high places.
For the choir director, on my stringed instruments (Habakkuk 3:17-19, NAU).
We could certainly paraphrase these thoughts in more contemporary terms, since most of us do not measure our well-being in terms of figs, fruit, and flocks. We might say,
Though the Social Security fund is depleted,
Though the stock market crashes,
Though my insurance company goes bankrupt
and my IRA account vaporizes;
Though I lose my job or my business fails,
I will rejoice because of the Lord.
“William Cowper, the English poet who suffered from acute mental distress and illness, knew this personally, for he cast Habakkuk’s testimony into these great lines:
Though vine nor fig tree neither
Their wonted fruits should bear,
Though all the fields should wither,
Nor flocks nor herds be there;
Yet, God the same abiding,
His praise shall tune my voice;
For, while in him confiding,
I cannot but rejoice.”305
These final words of Habakkuk remind me of the closing words of the psalm of Asaph in Psalm 73:
22 I was ignorant and lacked insight;
I was as senseless as an animal before you.
23 But I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
24 You guide me by your wise advice,
and then you will lead me to a position of honor.
25 Whom do I have in heaven but you?
I desire no one but you on earth.
26 My flesh and my heart may grow weak,
but God always protects my heart and gives me stability.
27 Yes, look! Those far from you die;
you destroy everyone who is unfaithful to you.
28 But as for me, God’s presence is all I need.
I have made the sovereign Lord my shelter,
as I declare all the things you have done (Psalm 73:22-28).
Habakkuk’s peace and joy no longer were dependent upon his circumstances. When God brought judgment upon Judah, Habakkuk could still rejoice, for his hope and faith and joy were in God, in God alone. In His time, God would deliver the righteous and fulfill His covenant promises. Until then, God was the source of His strength, strength which would sustain him in the dark days ahead. A humbled Habakkuk now realized that it was God who lifted him up and gave him sure footing in hard times.306
As I conclude, I am reminded of the words of the writer to the Hebrews:
13 These all [Old Testament men and women of faith] died in faith without receiving the things promised, but they saw them in the distance and welcomed them and acknowledged that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth. 14 For those who speak in such a way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 In fact, if they had been thinking of the land that they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they aspire to a better land, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:13-16).
32 And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets. 33 Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle, put foreign armies to flight, 35 and women received back their dead raised to life. But others were tortured, not accepting release, to obtain resurrection to a better life. 36 And others experienced mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated 38 (the world was not worthy of them); they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and openings in the earth. 39 And these all were commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. 40 For God had provided something better for us, so that they would be made perfect together with us (Hebrews 11:32-40, emphasis mine).
As we now look back on the Book of Habakkuk, how do we explain the prophet’s change of heart? What happened to Habakkuk between chapter 1 and chapter 3? We must first point out that this change was not instant, but the result of a process, a somewhat painful process. Habakkuk did not understand what God was doing. He was angry with God for apparently failing to deal with the sins of His people. He could not understand how God could use the Chaldeans to judge the people of Judah. Through a sequence of events, God changed the heart of Habakkuk.
God changed Habakkuk’s perspective. Habakkuk had been looking at his circumstances and even His God through the eyes of man. The prophet rightly abhorred the wickedness and injustice that was rampant in Judah, but he wrongly accused God of “sleeping at the wheel,” of failing to act justly and in a timely way. The change came when he viewed himself and his circumstances from a divine perspective. Did Habakkuk think that God was doing nothing about Judah’s sin? He was wrong! God was already at work, raising up the Babylonians as His chastening rod. They would bring swift and strong justice by punishing the people of Judah.
When God revealed what He was about to do, Habakkuk protested that the Chaldeans307 were not the ones to be bringing judgment upon the people of God. Habakkuk felt that the people of Judah were more righteous than the Chaldeans. God’s revelation of Himself in chapters 2 and 3 set the record straight, and it set Habakkuk’s thinking straight as well. God did not take any sin lightly. Eventually, He would judge the Babylonians for their sins, just as He was about to judge the people of Judah and Jerusalem for their sins. Habakkuk was wrong to think of the people of Judah as “more righteous” than the Babylonians. If it is true that judgment is proportional to the degree of revelation one has received (and it surely is),308 then the people of Judah were even more culpable than the Babylonians. They had the Law, and they were the benefactors of God’s faithfulness to His people. They were well aware of the judgment God had brought upon the northern kingdom of Israel, and yet they persisted in the very sins for which the Babylonians would eventually be judged.
It is my opinion that as God pronounced woes upon the wicked in chapter 2, it dawned upon Habakkuk that he was at least guilty of pride, which God despised. It would not take much reflection for Habakkuk to realize that all of the sins that merited God’s judgment were true of the people of Judah, as much as it was true for the Babylonians. Judah was no better than the Babylonians.
I believe Habakkuk began to think beyond his own times, and as he did so, he remembered that God had promised to use the surrounding nations to discipline His disobedient people. Israel’s history was ample evidence of this, especially in the Book of Judges. Habakkuk began to look upon his times in the light of Israel’s history. As a result, I believe that Habakkuk had second thoughts about the arguments he had raised against God’s use of the Babylonians in 1:12-17. It was not God who was wrong; it was Judah, and even their prophet, Habakkuk. The prophet now views Judah’s future in the light of her past. God had previously judged His people, but He had also preserved a remnant; He had always accomplished their salvation. So He would do once again. And so the prophet humbly pleads, “In judgment remember mercy” (3:2).
James Montgomery Boice shares some principles that Martin Lloyd-Jones included in a commentary on the Book of Habakkuk entitled, From Fear to Faith. I would like to call attention to some of these principles as I conclude (I will indicate the principles mentioned by Martin Lloyd-Jones with an *).309 Consider, then, the lessons that we can learn from the Book of Habakkuk.
History is under God’s control.* In the light of the tragedy our nation underwent this past week, let modify the words of Martin Lloyd-Jones: All history is under God’s control. God is sovereign, in complete control of all things, including every event in human history. Nothing happens that catches God by surprise. Nothing happens that is outside His control. I have heard a number of comments this past week by well-meaning Christians that go something like this: “God allowed this to happen, and He is able to use it for good.” I do not pretend to know why tragedy has come upon our nation, nor do I know how God will use it. I do know this with great certainty:
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28, NAU).
Someone was kind enough to send me the words of John Piper in response to the events of this past week, and particularly in response to the words of some Christians, in an effort to “get God off the hook.” I would strongly encourage you to prayerfully consider his words.310
History follows a divine plan.* History is the outworking of God’s eternal plan. History has a goal toward which God is moving it. We know that the goal of God’s plan is to fulfill His purposes and His covenant promises. We likewise know that God’s plan is all-inclusive, and that it will not be thwarted or altered. God’s plan includes calamity and blessing, prosperity and pain. When men sin and when wicked men cause others great pain and agony, they do so out of the corruption and evil of their own hearts. Nevertheless, God has purposed to incorporate the sinful acts of men into His eternal plan, to accomplish His purposes in a way that brings Him glory (see Romans 9:17, cited earlier).
God’s divine plan is often not apparent, because we are unable (and sometimes unwilling) to comprehend it even when we are told in advance. God does have a plan, but it often does not appear so to us. God is at work, though we may not recognize it as such. Who would have thought that the rapid rise to power of the Babylonian empire was God’s hand in human history? God’s ways are above our ways, and thus we must leave the future in His hands. When the Israelites came to the Red Sea, trapped between the sea and Pharaoh’s army, it appeared that God had miscalculated, that God had led them to destruction. The truth was that God was preparing to destroy Pharaoh’s army, while at the same time saving His people. God’s plan to save His people through a Messiah was not even clear to the prophets who wrote of His coming (1 Peter 1:10-12). Who would ever have believed that God was going to save sinners by sending His Son to this world, to be rejected by sinners, who would crucify Him as a criminal on a hill outside Jerusalem?
God employs the deeds of wicked men to further His purposes. This does not mean that God approves of sin. God will ultimately punish the wicked for their sin. But what a reassuring truth it is to know that the wicked deeds of men cannot thwart the purposes of God; indeed these very deeds are ordained of God to fulfill His plans and promises. God is not limited to using the obedient deeds of faithful saints. If He were, we would be in a great deal of trouble. Nothing can keep us from the love of God toward His saints – nothing (see Romans 8:31-39).
History follows a divine timetable.* God has a timetable for all of His plans, and since God is in no hurry, He often seems to act too late for our satisfaction. God is not in any hurry, though we often are. Divine delays are not an indication of His lack of concern or resolve, but of His mercy:
3 Above all, understand this: in the last days blatant scoffers will come, being propelled by their own evil urges 4 and saying, “Where is his promised coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately suppress this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water. 6 Through these things the world existing at that time was destroyed when it was deluged with water. 7 But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, by being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. 8 Now, dear friends, do not let this one thing escape your notice, that a single day is like a thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years are like a single day. 9 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; when it comes, the heavens will disappear with a horrific noise, and the celestial bodies will melt away in a blaze, and the earth and every deed done on it will be laid bare. 11 Since all these things are to melt away in this manner, what sort of people must we be, conducting our lives in holiness and godliness, 12 while waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? Because of this day, the heavens will be burned up and dissolve, and the heavenly bodies will melt away in a blaze! 13 But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides (2 Peter 3:3-13, emphasis mine).
God’s ways are not our ways.311 When we seek to grasp what God is doing from our present circumstances, we will surely be puzzled and perplexed. Abram was told he was to become a father of a great nation, but he and Sarah did not have a son for 25 years. He was told he was going to possess the Land of Canaan, but he had to buy a burial place for his family from the Canaanites. God chose to give us eternal life through the death of His Son. Who can ever anticipate how God will accomplish His purposes?
The righteous must live by faith. Since we cannot anticipate how God will accomplish His purposes and promises, and since we most often cannot understand what He is doing, we are obligated to live by faith, if we are looking to Him for salvation. We should not leave the Book of Habakkuk without remembering the impact this book had on Martin Luther. As a monk, Luther had become deeply aware of his sin and knew that he fell short of the standards set by God’s law. The words of Habakkuk 2:4 struck Luther as the key to his problem, but it was some time before he grasped that his sins were forgiven by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, apart from any works of his own. Luther’s son wrote:
“As he repeated his prayers on the Lateran staircase, the words of the prophet Habakkuk came suddenly to his mind: ‘The just shall live by faith.’ Thereupon he ceased his prayers, returned to Wittenberg, and took this as the chief foundation of all his doctrine… . Luther himself said of this text, ‘Before those words broke upon my mind I hated God and was angry with him because not content with frightening us sinners by the law and by the miseries of life, he still further increased our torture by the gospel. But when, by the Spirit of God, I understood those words – “The just shall live by faith!” “The just shall live by faith!” – then I felt born again like a new man; I entered through the open doors into the very Paradise of God.”312
Having come to faith in Jesus Christ by faith, apart from human works, Luther not only grasped the glorious truth of Habakkuk 2:4, but he rejoiced in the greatness of the God in whom he came to trust. He was then delivered from his fear of divine judgment and able to pen the words of this great hymn:
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing;
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great,
And armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not His equal.
Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He,
Lord Sabaoth, His name,
From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim –
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers,
No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Thro’ Him who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.313
291 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on September 16, 2001.
292 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
293 Campbell Morgan, p. 116, as cited by David Prior, The Message of Joel, Micah & Habakkuk (Downers Grove, Illinois, U.S.A., Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), p. 205.
294 Habakkuk 2:1 should probably have been Habakkuk 1:18. It is a fitting summation to his protest and rebuttal in chapter 1.
295 Compare Jeremiah 4:13.
296 The “Chaldeans” (KJV; NASB) and the “Babylonians” (NET Bible; NIV) are one and the same people.
297 Typically in Habakkuk, God’s last words in each response are very important. Note 1:11 and 2:20 (also 2:14).
298 You can see this illustrated in 1:14-17. While the various translations handle verse 11 in a number of ways, the point of this verse is that God will not tolerate those who worship any “god” other than Himself. They were idolaters.
299 See also Matthew 5:17ff. Here Jesus plainly states that the “righteousness” of the scribes and Pharisees is not sufficient to get them into the kingdom of heaven. Specifically, Jesus condemns the selective enforcement of the law, which sets aside one of the commands. Jesus then goes on to say that hatred is as damnable a sin as murder, and lust as adultery.
300 Later on, in Micah 7:2, the prophet claims there are no godly men left. This may be hyperbole, but it at least calls into question Habakkuk’s reference to those who are “more righteous” than the Babylonians.
301 There are reasons for these delays (see Romans 9:22-24; 2 Peter 3:9), but we will not go into this now. Remember that God allowed the sin of the Amorites to “ripen” for 400 years (Genesis 15:16).
302 This is a satanic quality, as we see in Isaiah 14:12-15; Ezekiel 28:2-19.
303 Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Old Testament Prophets in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, Colorado: NavPress, 2000), p. 538.
304 I realize that some translators render this verse so that the judgment for which Habakkuk waits patiently is God’s judgment of the Babylonians. While that is true, I think the dominant idea is that Habakkuk must wait for the judgment upon Judah that God assured him was soon to come. Only later will judgment come upon the Babylonians. I believe that verses 17-19 serve to reinforce the focus on the coming judgment upon Judah, rather than upon the Babylonians.
305 Cited by James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary, vol. 2, Micah-Malachi (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), p. 111.
306 I am reminded of Asaph’s reference to his feet nearly slipping at the time he questioned God’s justice (Psalm 73:2).
307 The prophets use the terms “Chaldeans” and “Babylonians” interchangeably.
308 See Matthew 12:41-42; Luke 12:47-48; Romans 1-3. This is very clearly emphasized in prophets like Jeremiah, who finds Judah more guilty than Israel, because the people of Judah looked on as God judged Israel, but they did not learn from her judgment (see Jeremiah 3:6-11; Ezekiel 16:44-52).
309 Cited by James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary, vol. 2, Micah-Malachi (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), p. 78.
310 http://www.desiringgod.org/Online_Library/OnlineArticles/FreshWords/2001/091701.htm
311 This is the title Stuart Briscoe chose for his chapter on the Book of Habakkuk. Stuart Briscoe, God’s Voice Above the Noise: The Minor Prophets Speak to Us Today (USA, Canada, England: Victor Books, 1991), pp. 117-130.
312 James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary, vol. 2, Micah-Malachi (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), pp. 91-92, quoting F.W. Boreham in A Bunch of Everlastings or Texts that Made History (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1920), pp. 20, 27.
313 “ A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” Martin Luther.
The Book of Zephaniah is probably best known for being the least known book of the entire Bible. It is a small book, nestled in the midst of the Minor Prophets, toward the end of the Old Testament. Among the Minor Prophets, we are certainly much more familiar with Jonah and Hosea. Nevertheless, this is a great book with a significant contribution to make to the Old Testament and to the lives of the saints of every age.
We know very little of Zephaniah, the man -- the author of this book. Strangely, though, his genealogy is traced back four generations:
This is the prophetic message that the Lord gave to Zephaniah son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah. Zephaniah delivered this message during the reign of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah (Zephaniah 1:1).287
Since the introduction of Zephaniah takes us back these four generations, ending with Hezekiah, it is possible that this “Hezekiah” may have been King Hezekiah, but this is not certain. If so, it would mean that Zephaniah had royal blood. He would not be from the humble origins of a prophet like Amos, the sheepherder. Zephaniah would thus have had access to royalty. He would have had ready access to young King Josiah.
While we know almost nothing of Zephaniah’s personal life, we do know a good deal about the times in which he lived and ministered as a prophet in Judah. We are told in verse 1 that he was a prophet during the days of King Josiah, and we are given a good deal of information about Josiah and his times in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Knowing that Zephaniah prophesied during the reign of Josiah, we realize that his ministry overlapped that of Jeremiah (see Jeremiah 1:2).
Judah’s history was a mixture of those kings who were righteous, walking in the ways of David, and those who were wicked, following the path of Jeroboam. I will briefly review those kings who had a major impact on Judah, for good or evil.
Solomon had a great impact on the southern kingdom of Judah because he was really the first of Israel’s kings to introduce the worship of heathen gods in Jerusalem:
4 When Solomon became old, his wives shifted his allegiance to other gods; he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God, as his father David had been. 5 Solomon worshiped the Sidonian goddess Astarte and the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 6 Solomon did evil before the Lord; he did not remain loyal to the Lord, like his father David had. 7 Furthermore, on the hill east of Jerusalem Solomon built a high place for the detestable Moabite god Chemosh and for the detestable Ammonite god Milcom. 8 He built high places for all his foreign wives so they could burn incense and make sacrifices to their gods (1 Kings 11:4-8).
This sin of Solomon was the cause of the division of the united kingdom (see 1 Kings 11:9-13).
Rehoboam and Jeroboam were the first kings of the divided kingdom. Rehoboam was Solomon’s hard-headed son, who refused to lighten the burden his father had imposed on the people, which caused the ten northern tribes to break away under the leadership of Jeroboam. Jeroboam feared that he might lose his kingdom if the people continued to worship in Jerusalem, and so he established a counterfeit religion in the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 12:25-33). He made two golden calves for his people to worship, placing them in Bethel to the south and Dan to the north. When Jeroboam went to Bethel to celebrate his newly-instituted feast, he was about to offer a sacrifice on the altar when he was interrupted by a prophet from Judah:
1 Just then a prophet from Judah, sent by the Lord, arrived in Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing near the altar ready to offer a sacrifice. 2 With the authority of the Lord he cried out against the altar, “O altar, altar! This is what the Lord says, ‘Look, a son named Josiah will be born to the Davidic dynasty. He will sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who offer sacrifices on you. Human bones will be burned on you.’” 3 That day he also announced a sign, “This is the sign the Lord has predetermined: The altar will be split open and the ashes on it will fall to the ground” (1 Kings 13:1-3, emphasis mine).
This is the first mention of King Josiah, who will not come to the throne until almost 300 years later.
Hezekiah became king of Judah some 200 years after Jeroboam took the throne of Israel, and nearly 80 years before Josiah became king of Judah. Hezekiah did not have the benefit of a godly home, at least not a godly father. His father, Ahaz, was an exceedingly wicked king:
2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what pleased the Lord his God, in contrast to his ancestor David. 3 He followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel. He passed his son through the fire, a horrible sin practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites (2 Kings 16:2-3).
Hezekiah was a delightful contrast to his father. He was a godly king, who was instrumental in bringing about a revival in Judah:
3 He did what the Lord approved, just as his ancestor David had done. 4 He eliminated the high places, smashed the sacred pillars to bits, and cut down the Asherah pole. He also demolished the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been offering incense to it; it was called Nehushtan. 5 He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; in this regard there was none like him among the kings of Judah either before or after. 6 He was loyal to the Lord and did not abandon him. He obeyed the commandments which the Lord had given to Moses (2 Kings 18:3-6).
Under Hezekiah’s leadership, the Passover was celebrated in a way that had not been done for many years. He even invited those of the northern tribes to participate, and a few did (2 Chronicles 30:10-11, 18). When Hezekiah became mortally ill, he was told that he was about to die. Hezekiah pled for more years and God graciously granted them. It was in his later years that Hezekiah foolishly displayed his riches (in a way that reminds me of Solomon, puffed up by the flattery of the Queen of Sheba) to the son of the king of Babylon. The prophet Isaiah rebuked Hezekiah and told him that after his death, his riches would be plundered by the Babylonians, along with some of his sons (2 Kings 20:16-19).
Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, was one of the most wicked kings who ever sat on the throne of Judah:
2 He did evil before the Lord and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshiped them. 4 He built altars in the Lord’s temple, about which the Lord had said, “Jerusalem will be my home.” 5 In the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple he built altars for all the stars in the sky. 6 He passed his son through the fire and practiced divination and omen reading. He set up a pit to conjure up underworld spirits, and appointed magicians to supervise it. He did a great amount of evil before the Lord and angered him. 7 He put an idol of Asherah he had made in the temple, about which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “This temple in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will be my permanent home” (2 Kings 21:2-7).
Ironically, Manasseh reigned 55 years, the longest reign of any king of Israel or Judah (2 Chronicles 33:1). Manasseh brought the nation of Judah to an all-time low, spiritually speaking:
11 “King Manasseh of Judah has committed horrible sins. He has sinned more than the Amorites before him and has encouraged Judah to sin by worshiping his disgusting idols. 12 So this is what the Lord God of Israel says, ‘I am about to bring disaster on Jerusalem and Judah. The news will reverberate in the ears of those who hear about it. 13 I will destroy Jerusalem the same way I did Samaria and the dynasty of Ahab. I will wipe Jerusalem clean, just as one wipes a plate on both sides. 14 I will abandon this last remaining tribe among my people and hand them over to their enemies; they will be plundered and robbed by all their enemies” (2 Kings 21:11-14).
Because of his wickedness, Manasseh was taken in chains to Babylon, where he repented, so that he was once again restored to his throne. Once on the throne, he attempted to correct some of the consequences of his sinful reign. The end result was something less than a complete revival:
11 So the Lord brought against them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria. They seized Manasseh, put hooks in his nose, bound him with bronze chains, and carried him away to Babylon. 12 In his pain Manasseh asked the Lord his God for mercy and truly humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. 13 When he prayed to the Lord, the Lord responded to him and answered favorably his cry for mercy. The Lord brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh realized that the Lord is the true God. 14 After this Manasseh built up the outer wall of the City of David on the west side of the Gihon in the valley to the entrance of the Fish Gate and all around the terrace; he made it much higher. He placed army officers in all the fortified cities in Judah. 15 He removed the foreign gods and images from the Lord’s temple and all the altars he had built on the hill of the Lord’s temple and in Jerusalem; he threw them outside the city. 16 He erected the altar of the Lord and offered on it peace offerings and thank offerings. He told the people of Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel. 17 The people continued to offer sacrifices at the high places, but only to the Lord their God (2 Chronicles 33:11-17).
Amon, the son of Manasseh, reigned for only two years. He was evil and was killed by some of his servants. This created a situation in which his eight-year-old son, Josiah, was placed on the throne. A recent movie entitled “Princess Diaries” tells the story of a young girl (older than Josiah, from what I can discern, not having seen the movie) who learns that she is the princess of a small nation. The plot is apparently built on this young woman’s transition into a princess, in looks and conduct. Imagine what it must have been like for Josiah to suddenly be swept into his duties as king of Judah by the untimely death of his father.
One has to wonder who God used to impact this young man, turning him from the wicked ways of his father and grandfather to a king who sought the Lord. Did Manasseh, his grandfather, speak to Josiah, warning him not to take the same path he had walked for so many years? We are told the name of Josiah’s mother (Jedidah, 2 Kings 22:1). Was she instrumental in his spiritual development? We know that both Jeremiah and Zephaniah began their ministries during the life of Josiah. Were either of these prophets involved with Josiah in his early, formative years?
By the time Josiah would have been old enough to drive (a chariot? – age 16), he had already begun to purposefully seek the Lord (2 Chronicles 34:3). This may not have been a popular thing to do in a nation that had become deeply committed to heathen gods and pagan practices (see 2 Kings 21:9). At the age of 20, he set out to rid Judah of the heathen idols and altars that were found almost everywhere in Judah, even in Jerusalem:
3 In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his ancestor David. In his twelfth year he began ridding Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, Asherah poles, idols, and images. 4 He ordered the altars of the Baals to be torn down, and broke the incense altars that were above them. He smashed the Asherah poles, idols and images, crushed them up and sprinkled the dust over the tombs of those who had sacrificed to them. 5 He burned the bones of the priests on their altars; he purified Judah and Jerusalem. 6 In the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins around them, 7 he tore down the altars and Asherah poles, demolished the idols, and smashed all the incense altars throughout the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 34:3-7, emphasis mine).
In doing this, Josiah fulfilled the prophecy given to Jeroboam many years earlier, as recorded in 1 Kings 13:1-3.
At the age of 26, Josiah set out on yet another noble mission. Having torn down the heathen idols and altars, Josiah now commences the project of refurbishing the temple (see 2 Chronicles 34:8ff.). It was during this construction that workmen discovered a copy of the book of the law:
14 When they took out the silver that had been brought to the Lord’s temple, Hilkiah the priest found the law scroll the Lord had given to Moses. 15 Hilkiah informed Shaphan the scribe, “I found the law scroll in the Lord’s temple.” Hilkiah gave the scroll to Shaphan. 16 Shaphan brought the scroll to the king and reported, “Your servants are doing everything assigned to them. 17 They melted down the silver in the Lord’s temple and handed it over to the supervisors of the construction foremen.” 18 Then Shaphan the scribe told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a scroll.” Shaphan read it out loud before the king. 19 When the king heard the words of the law scroll, he tore his clothes. 20 The king ordered Hilkiah, Achikam son of Shaphan, Abdon son of Micah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, 21 “Go, seek an oracle from the Lord for me and those who remain in Israel and Judah. Find out about the words of this scroll that has been discovered. For the Lord’s fury has been ignited against us, because our ancestors have not obeyed the word of the Lord by doing all that this scroll instructs!” (2 Chronicles 34:14-21)
The nation had reached such a low spiritual state that there was not even a copy of the Law available to read, not even in the temple. God’s law had not only been forsaken, it had been forgotten! I am convinced that this copy of the Law at least included the Book of Deuteronomy. Can you imagine what it must have been like for Josiah and other godly people to hear the words of Deuteronomy for the first time in their life? No wonder Josiah tore his clothes! It was now painfully clear why the nation deserved divine judgment. Josiah sought a word from God, and it was the prophetess Huldah who confirmed what he feared:
22 So Hilkiah and the others sent by the king went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tokhath, the son of Hasrah, the supervisor of the wardrobe. (She lived in Jerusalem in the Mishneh district.) They stated their business, 23 and she said to them: “This is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘Say this to the man who sent you to me: 24 “This is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to bring disaster on this place and its residents, the details of which are recorded on the scroll which they read before the king of Judah. 25 This will happen because they have abandoned me and offered sacrifices to other gods, angering me with all the idols they have made. My anger will ignite against this place and will not be extinguished’” (2 Chronicles 34:22-25).
In response to Josiah’s repentance, God assured the king through Huldah that God’s judgment would not fall on Judah or Jerusalem until after his death (2 Chronicles 34:26-28). Josiah then re-instituted the celebration of the Passover (2 Chronicles 35).
Sadly, Josiah’s life ended in an unflattering way. The story of his death in 2 Chronicles 34 is strangely similar to the account of the death of wicked Ahab, many years earlier (see 1 Kings 22):
20 After Josiah had done all this for the temple, King Neco of Egypt marched up to do battle at Carchemish on the Euphrates River. Josiah marched out to oppose him. 21 Neco sent messengers to him, saying, “Why are you opposing me, O king of Judah? I am not attacking you today, but the kingdom with which I am at war. God told me to hurry. Stop opposing God, who is with me, or else he will destroy you.” 22 But Josiah did not turn back from him; he disguised himself for battle. He did not take seriously the words of Neco which he had received from God; he went to fight him in the Plain of Megiddo. 23 Archers shot King Josiah; the king ordered his servants, “Take me out of this chariot, for I am seriously wounded.” 24 So his servants took him out of the chariot, put him in another chariot that he owned, and brought him to Jerusalem, where he died. He was buried in the tombs of his ancestors; all the people of Judah and Jerusalem mourned Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:20-24).
The prophet Jeremiah even took part in Josiah’s funeral:
Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah which all the male and female singers use to mourn Josiah to this very day. It has become customary in Israel to sing these; they are recorded in the Book of Laments (2 Chronicles 35:25).
Such were the days in which the prophet Zephaniah lived and served. It would appear to me that Zephaniah’s ministry preceded and promoted the revival that took place during the reign of Josiah. One cannot be certain of this, but my study of Zephaniah has led me to draw this conclusion. It is now our task to consider the message and the contribution of the Book of Zephaniah.
As I understand the book, there are two dominant themes in Zephaniah: judgment and deliverance. Let us briefly consider both of these themes.
The “day of the Lord” is a very prominent theme in Zephaniah’s prophecy. Zephaniah graphically describes the terror of that coming “Day of Judgment”:
14 The Lord’s great day of judgment is almost here;
it is very rapidly approaching!
There will be a bitter sound on the Lord’s Day of judgment;
at that time warriors will cry out in battle.
15 That day will be a day of God’s anger,
a day of distress and hardship,
a day of devastation and ruin,
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and dark skies (Zephaniah 1:14-15).
This coming “Day of Judgment” is described in terms of being in the near future:
Be quiet before the Lord God,
for the Lord’s day of judgment is almost here.
The Lord has prepared a sacrificial meal;
he has ritually purified his guests (Zephaniah 1:7).
Judgment will soon come upon Jerusalem and Judah (3:1-5), but it will also come upon the nations surrounding her: the Philistines (2:4-7), the Moabites and Ammonites (2:8-11), the Ethiopians (2:12), and the Assyrians (2:13-15).
But there is also mention of a great and final – more distant – judgment that will come upon the whole earth:
2 “I will destroy everything from the face of the earth.” says the Lord.
3 “I will destroy people and animals;
I will destroy the birds in the sky
and the fish in the sea.
(The idolatrous images of these creatures will be destroyed along with evil people.)
I will remove humanity from the face of the earth,” says the Lord (Zephaniah 1:2-3).
If this prophecy is literally fulfilled, it must be the end of the world, as the following text also indicates:
“Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them
in the day of the Lord’s angry judgment.
The whole earth will be consumed by his fiery wrath.
Indeed, he will bring terrifying destruction on all who live on the earth” (Zephaniah 1:18).
Judgment will come upon the foreign nations because of their arrogant oppression of God’s people:
8 “I have heard Moab’s taunts
and the Ammonites’ insults.
They taunted my people
and verbally harassed those living in Judah… .
10 This is how they will be repaid for their arrogance,
for they taunted and verbally harassed the people of the Lord who leads armies” (Zephaniah 2:8,10).
They will also be judged for their arrogant self-sufficiency:
15 This is how the once-proud city [Nineveh] will end up—
the city that was so secure.
She thought to herself, “I am unique! No one can compare to me!”
What a heap of ruins she has become, a place where wild animals live!
Everyone who passes by her taunts her and shakes his fist (Zephaniah 2:15).
The reasons for Judah’s judgment are perhaps best summed up in chapter 1:
4 “I will attack Judah
and all who live in Jerusalem.
I will remove from this place every trace of Baal worship,
as well as the very memory of the pagan priests.
5 I will remove those who worship the stars in the sky from their rooftops,
those who swear allegiance to the Lord while taking oaths in the name of their ‘king,’
6 and those who turn their backs on the Lord
and do not want the Lord’s help or guidance” (Zephaniah 1:4-6).
These reasons for divine judgment can best be summarized in this way:
God had warned that divine judgment was coming upon Judah, upon the surrounding nations, and upon the entire earth. If God was about to judge all men, how would His covenant with Abraham and his descendants be fulfilled (see Genesis 12:1-3)? Paul tells us the answer in Romans 9:
27 And Isaiah cries out on behalf of Israel, “Though the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, 28 for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth completely and quickly.” 29 Just as Isaiah predicted,
“If the Lord of armies had not left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
and we would have resembled Gomorrah” (Romans 9:27-29).
God’s promises to Abraham would be fulfilled through a small remnant of His chosen people, rather than through the entire nation. This remnant would be composed of the righteous, not only those of Judah, but also from among the Gentiles:
Seek the Lord’s favor, all you humble people of the land who have obeyed his commands!
Strive to do what is right! Strive to be humble!
Maybe you will be protected on the day of the Lord’s angry judgment (Zephaniah 2:3).
The NASB renders Zephaniah 2:3 this way:
Seek the LORD,
All you humble of the earth
Who have carried out His ordinances;
Seek righteousness, seek humility.
Perhaps you will be hidden
In the day of the LORD'S anger.
We know that the remnant will include those of Judah:
Those who are left from the kingdom of Judah will take possession of it.
By the sea they will graze,
in the houses of Ashkelon they will lie down in the evening,
for the Lord their God will intervene for them and restore their prosperity (Zephaniah 2:7).
We are also informed that Gentiles will be among the righteous who worship God as well:
8 Therefore you must wait patiently for me,” says the Lord,
“for the day when I attack and take plunder.
I have decided to gather nations together
and assemble kingdoms,
so I can pour out my fury on them—
all my raging anger.
For the whole earth will be consumed
by my fiery anger.
9 Know for sure that I will then enable
the nations to give me acceptable praise.
All of them will invoke the Lord’s name when they pray,
and will worship him in unison.
10 From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,
those who pray to me will bring me tribute (Zephaniah 3:8-10).
There are several things that set the righteous remnant apart from the corrupt world in which they live:
Those who are a part of the righteous remnant seek God, and they obey His commandments:
Seek the Lord’s favor, all you humble people of the land who have obeyed his commands!
(Zephaniah 2:3a).
Those who are a part of the righteous remnant are humble:
Strive to do what is right! Strive to be humble!
Maybe you will be protected on the day of the Lord’s angry judgment (Zephaniah 2:3b).
Those who are a part of the righteous remnant are righteous in their actions toward others:
13 The Israelites who remain will not act deceitfully.
They will not lie,
and a deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouth.
Indeed, they will graze peacefully like sheep and lie down;
no one will terrify them” (Zephaniah 3:13).
Zephaniah also summarizes the hope of the righteous remnant:
Their sins are forgiven and they are cleansed from their sin (3:9, 11, 13).
They will be delivered from or through divine judgment (2:1-3).289
They will eventually be rescued from the hand of their oppressors (2:4-15; 3:15).
They have the hope of future blessings (2:6-9).
They will be given fame and honor (3:19-20).
They will enjoy security and peace (3:13).
They will enjoy being in God’s presence, as He rejoices over them as the objects of His love (3:15-17).
As I have studied the Book of Zephaniah, I have been forced to reconsider the relationship between divine judgment and divine blessing. I have always thought of them as opposites that have no relationship. I like to think of judgment as something that has little to do with me and much to do with my enemies. I like to think of God’s blessings and salvation as mine, unrelated to judgment. I have come to the conclusion that divine judgment and divine blessings are very closely inter-related.
In the first place, God’s judgment is the means whereby He delivers us from our enemies (2:4-15; 3:15, 19). Second, divine judgment purifies the righteous remnant (3:9). Finally, God’s judgment is the means by which God brings about our blessings. When God removes the wicked, it is so He may come and dwell with us. In addition, when God removes the wicked, He gives their possessions to His faithful remnant (2:5-7, 9-10). The judgment of the wicked is the means to our blessing.
Zephaniah also informs us that divine judgment is the means by which God removes our sins:
8 Therefore you must wait patiently for me,” says the Lord,
“for the day when I attack and take plunder.
I have decided to gather nations together
and assemble kingdoms,
so I can pour out my fury on them—
all my raging anger.
For the whole earth will be consumed
by my fiery anger.
9 Know for sure that I will then enable
the nations to give me acceptable praise.
All of them will invoke the Lord’s name when they pray,
and will worship him in unison.
10 From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,
those who pray to me will bring me tribute.
11 In that day you will no longer experience shame because of all your rebellious actions,
for then I will remove from your midst those who proudly boast,
and you will never again be arrogant on my holy hill.
12 I will leave in your midst a humble and meek group of people,
and they will find safety in the Lord’s presence.
13 The Israelites who remain will not act deceitfully.
They will not lie,
and a deceitful tongue will not be found in their mouth.
Indeed, they will graze peacefully like sheep and lie down;
no one will terrify them” (Zephaniah 3:8-13)
Several very important truths in these verses need to be underscored. First, it is not just “the heathen” who need deliverance from the guilt and penalty of their sins; it is all men. Second, it is God who saves men from their sins. It is not we who “work harder” or “strive to do better.” It is God who produces righteousness in us. Third, our sins are forgiven, and we are made righteous because God has passed judgment on our sins. How is this possible? Zephaniah does not tell us, but then he does not need to do so. We know that God poured out His wrath on His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, who took our sins upon Himself, and who bore the penalty we deserve. It is by means of divine judgment that we are saved and that we become righteous. That judgment was borne by the Lord Jesus Christ. All those who acknowledge their sin and guilt, and trust in Christ’s saving work at Calvary in their place have the forgiveness of their sins and the assurance of eternal life.
What are some of the significant contributions of the Book of Zephaniah? I believe we are given a clue by the placement of this book among the Old Testament Minor Prophets. In terms of simple chronology, the Book of Habakkuk is the last Minor Prophet before Judah goes into exile, at the hands of the Babylonians. But in terms of its placement in the Old Testament, it is the Book of Zephaniah which is the last of the Minor Prophets before the exile. Zephaniah therefore serves as the final written word of the pre-exilic Minor Prophets. Do some accuse Zephaniah of not being very original and of merely repeating what others before him have said? That seems to have been a good part of his job. By his repetitions, Zephaniah emphasizes the important themes and messages of the prophets who ministered before him. Because Zephaniah’s ministry overlapped that of Jeremiah, he served as a second witness, whose testimony confirmed the words of Jeremiah.
We have Zephaniah to thank for underscoring the fact that while God’s judgment for sin will be swift and severe, He also saves a remnant, thus assuring Israel of their hope for the future.
What should our response be to the message of the Book of Zephaniah? Zephaniah himself tells us.
First, we are instructed by Zephaniah to be silent:
Be quiet before the Lord God,
for the Lord’s day of judgment is almost here.
The Lord has prepared a sacrificial meal;
he has ritually purified his guests (Zephaniah 1:7).
What does it mean to be silent before the Lord? It may mean that we cease making excuses for our sin, or that we stop denying that we are sinners, deserving of God’s wrath. Silence is sometimes viewed as a way of admitting one’s guilt (Leviticus 10:3; Nehemiah 5:8; Job 6:24). Silence is also an expression of reverence. To be silent before God is to show reverence to Him (Psalm 62:1; 65:1; Habakkuk 2:20; Zechariah 2:13). It may also be that the “silence” called for is the “silence” of Jeremiah 7:16:
Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for these people. Do not cry out to me or petition me on their behalf. Do not plead with me to save them, because I will not listen to you (Jeremiah 7:16; see also 11:14; 14:11).
The time for God’s judgment had come; let not the righteous ask God to withhold His hand. Let the righteous silently await the “Day of Judgment.”
Second, we are instructed to seek the Lord:
1 Gather yourselves together, yes, gather,
O nation without shame,
2 Before the decree takes effect—
The day passes like the chaff—
Before the burning anger of the LORD comes upon you,
Before the day of the LORD'S anger comes upon you.
3 Seek the LORD,
All you humble of the earth
Who have carried out His ordinances;
Seek righteousness, seek humility.
Perhaps you will be hidden
In the day of the LORD'S anger (Zephaniah 2:1-3, NASB).
I take this as a call to repentance for those who do not know God, as well as for those who do know Him. Men and women should prepare to meet their God. My friends, the great and final “Day of Judgment” is still future, but it may not be far off. The bad news is that each and every one of us is a sinner, deserving of God’s judgment – the very judgment described in Zephaniah (see also Romans 3:9-20). The good news is that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer God’s judgment in our place. When Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, He did not die for His sins, for He was the sinless Lamb of God. He did not merely suffer at the hands of Rome; He endured the judgment of God that should have been ours. He then rose from the dead and ascended to the Father in heaven. He offers salvation to any who will trust in Him. Those who reject Him must endure the eternal wrath of God. What a terrifying thought.
Third, the righteous remnant is instructed to wait for the Lord:
Therefore you must wait patiently for me,” says the Lord,
“for the day when I attack and take plunder.
I have decided to gather nations together
and assemble kingdoms,
so I can pour out my fury on them—
all my raging anger.
For the whole earth will be consumed
by my fiery anger (Zephaniah 3:8).
Judgment Day, the “Day of the Lord,” is certainly coming. The godly should wait patiently for it to come. This will be a day of the vindication and deliverance for the righteous remnant.290 This will be the day that commences the times of blessing. The righteous should avoid taking vengeance and wait for this day when God will make all things right.
Fourth, the righteous are to joyfully worship God, in the light of the coming “Day of the Lord”:
14 Shout for joy, daughter Zion!
Shout out, Israel!
Be happy and boast with all your heart, daughter Jerusalem!
15 The Lord has removed the instruments of judgment that attacked you;
he has turned back your enemy.
Israel’s king, the Lord, is in your midst!
You no longer need to fear disaster.
16 On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
“Don’t be afraid, Zion!
Your hands must not be paralyzed from panic!
17 The Lord your God is in your midst;
he is a warrior who can deliver.
He takes great delight in you;
he renews you by his love;
he shouts for joy over you.”
18 “As for those who grieve because they cannot attend the festivals—
I took them away from you;
they became tribute and were a source of shame to you.
19 Look, at that time I will deal with those who mistreated you.
I will rescue the lame sheep
and gather together the scattered sheep.
I will take away their humiliation
and make the whole earth admire and respect them.
20 At that time I will lead you—
at the time I gather you together.
Be sure of this! I will make all the nations of the earth respect and admire you
when you see me restore you,” says the Lord (Zephaniah 3:14-20).
The prophecy of Zephaniah ends with a call to worship. The prophet is not speaking of worship in some future day, though that will surely take place. He is calling for worship now. God’s people should worship because the “Day of Judgment” and the times of blessing are certain to come. God’s people are to worship by faith, knowing that God is a covenant-keeping God. He always keeps His promises, whether they are promises of judgment or of blessing. Even in the most difficult of times, the future of the righteous is clear, and it is certain.
How much more this truth should be a comfort for New Testament Christians. In one sense our “Day of Judgment” came 2,000 years ago, when our Lord Jesus Christ bore our judgment on the cross of Calvary. We need not dread God’s coming judgment, and we anxiously await the full measure of God’s promised blessings. Much that was future for the saints of old is now history for us. We can look back upon the cross of Calvary, while they could only look forward. I repeat, how much more should we enter into joyful worship, knowing that we shall escape divine judgment, and that we shall soon enter into our eternal blessings, all because of the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ!
286 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Robert L. Deffinbaugh, teacher and elder at Community Bible Chapel, on September 9, 2001.
287 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
288 This is a most interesting text. Why would God judge the royal sons of Judah for wearing foreign clothing? It seems to me that in so doing they identified themselves with the heathen nations and with their heathen religion and practices. The nation Israel was to be distinct and separate from the nations. To begin to dress like foreigners was to cast off their unique identity and role. It was, in effect, to renounce their identity. If those in Judah – indeed, in Jerusalem, in the palace no less – were beginning to identify with their enemies, what would they do when they were scattered abroad? The leaders were the precedent-setters of the nation. What the royal sons did, the nation would do as well. How much influence did Princess Diana have over other young women in her days as a princess?
289 The words of Zephaniah 2:1-3 might be a call to repentance for the unbeliever, and this would explain why the prophet mentions deliverance as a possibility. One certainly gets the impression that the righteous are also addressed, and that they, too, may escape some of the coming destruction, if they persist in righteousness. Nevertheless, there is no “blank check” guarantee that the righteous will escape all suffering. Thus, I have said that the righteous remnant will either be delivered through judgment (as was Noah and his family, in the ark) or from judgment.
290 See 2 Thessalonians 1:4-8.
In a democracy like the United States of America, we do not live under the rule of a king. Instead, we have an elected servant to serve us, so we do not see much of the display of royalty. We talk about our President by his first name and often see him mingling with the crowd and shaking hands with the general public.
However, once in a while we do see some vestiges of royalty displayed in public. We just have to think of the inauguration of our presidents and all the festivities that go with it.
One of the programs on TV that I usually do not want to miss is when the President delivers his State of the Union address. Before the arrival of the President, we see all the dignitaries and state invited guests walking around, meeting with and talking to one another. Then suddenly a hush falls over the crowd, and you hear the announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States of America.” When I hear that announcement, I get goose bumps, because in those words I hear, “Here comes the head of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth,” or, “Here comes the most powerful man on the face of the earth.”
Also, when our President pays a state visit to a foreign nation, preparation on a large scale is made before his actual time of arrival in that place. For example, when the Clintons visited India a couple of years ago, scores of envoys and hundreds of FBI and CIA agents, as well as commando guards, were sent to comb all the cites the Clintons were to visit. You probably did not read much of the background details about their visit, but the weekly India newspaper that I receive devoted 30 out of 50 pages to pictures and details about their visit.
Sending envoys to prepare the way for the arrival of a king or a dignitary is not unknown to us. That practice is as old as the establishment of the monarchy. There is nothing unusual in that.
So, it was not unusual when the “King of kings” and the “Lord of lords” came into the world, He sent an envoy to prepare a way for Him: John the Baptist. However, the kind of envoy that was sent was as different and unusual as the kind of King he was supposed to announce.
God already had prepared the way for this envoy some 800 years ago when the prophet Isaiah made this announcement about his coming:
A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all the flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:3-5).345
The prophet Isaiah was speaking in the context of the Babylonian captivity, although that was yet in the future for his own time. For the nation that was in captivity, this was a comforting message, “’Comfort, O comfort My people’, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1).
A few hundred years later came the prophet Malachi, who made a similar announcement:
“Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold He is coming,” says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:1).
And:
“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5-6).
After the prophet Malachi, 400 more years passed and nothing happened. God was silent. No prophet and no revelation. Godly people kept looking for the consolation of Israel (e.g., Luke 2:25). Religion had become a show and hypocrisy a way of life. Religious leaders were blind guides who strained out a gnat and swallowed a camel (Matthew 23:24). Politically, the situation was not much different than when the prophet Isaiah some 800 years ago announced the coming of the forerunner. Isaiah was speaking in the context of the Babylonian captivity. Now they were under the Roman yoke. The Jews were yearning for a deliverer. The sky was covered with thick dark clouds, and there was seemingly no ray of hope.
Then the sky burst open with a bright shining light. One morning recently I was coming back from an early prayer time that I spend with two other friends. It was around 7.00 or 7.15. The sun was not yet out, and it was still a little dark. My car radio was down, and I was thinking about this message. Then I went over an overpass which is three levels high, at least 50’ from the ground. As I faced to the east, I saw the sky bright red, like the whole thing was on fire. It was one of those spectacular sights that we see once in a while. That’s how it was in the coming of John the Baptist. It was like an emblazoned bright shining sky that gave an unambiguous indication of the sunrise, like his father Zechariah prophesied:
Because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high shall visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:78-79).
John the Baptist lived a somewhat strange life. Someone said, “He was like an under-socialized relative who shows up unannounced and unexpected at holidays and other social functions and embarrasses everyone.”
John lived in the desert as a Nazarene. He ate locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:4). That indicates that he lived in seclusion and nobody brought him any food; he had to survive on whatever he got in the desert. He wrapped himself around in a garment made from camel’s hair (Matthew 3:4). Most probably he made it himself from a dead camel that he must have found in the desert. He probably looked like the two demon possessed men in the country of Gadarenes who lived in tombs (Matthew 8:28-34).
Do you think you would have invited John into your home for dinner?
He lived a very simple life. He did not have a home. He did not have any possessions. He did not have any other change of clothes except the one with which he covered himself.
Behind all this, he had a purpose; there was a method in his madness. All this was for one purpose — to prepare the way for the coming Christ. He was to be a gofer boy. His early childhood was probably not much different than the One for whom he came to be a forerunner.
Is my life different from the people of the world so than I can be a witness for Christ?
Is my life cluttered with things of this world so much that all my time, all my energy, all my resources are spent in taking care of these things, and no time, energy and resources are left in the service of the Lord? As Paul advises Timothy:
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier (2 Timothy 2:3-4).
John seems to be addressing two different groups. One group is the genuine seekers, who came to hear his message, believed him and repented, and were baptized by him as we read:
Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins (Matthew 3:5-6).
In Luke’s account, we see various groups of people: the general populace, tax-gatherers, and soldiers, who come to him asking questions and genuinely seeking his advice as to how they can change their life, and he answers each of their questions accordingly (Luke 3:10-14, 18). These were the people who were sincerely looking for answers and wanted to repent and change their way of life. They were aware of the wrong they were doing.
Then there were the Pharisees and the Sadducees who came to him for baptism, and he addressed them sternly:
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bring forth fruit in keeping with your repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you, that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham (Matthew 3:7-9, also Luke 3:7-9).
How politically incorrect can you be! These were the people who did not want to take anybody’s advice, but always wanted to give advice to others. They were righteous and holy in their own eyes and came to John not with sincere repentance and a desire to change, but to find fault with him.
No matter what group of people he addressed, his message was basically the same, and the center of his message was the coming Christ: “He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not even fit to remove His sandals” (Mathew 3:11). His attitude about himself in relation to Christ was, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
This, again, was for one single purpose: to prepare the way, to be a gofer boy, so that, “I decrease and He increases.”
Am I single-mindedly devoted to Christ, putting Him first in every aspect of my life, presenting Him before the lost world, so by life or death I can win some? Am I giving God all the glory for the successes He brings my way and continuing to be faithful to Him in spite of seeming failures?
To where did this single-minded devotion to the cause lead John? To a dark dungeon! In a solitary confinement! On death row! He must have asked himself, “Why?” See how Paul felt in the Roman prison even though comparatively his was not as hard as John’s imprisonment (2 Timothy 4:9-21).
John sent messengers to Jesus asking this basic question: “Are you the coming One, or shall we look for someone else?” (Matthew 11:3). He had recognized Him earlier as the Son of God, when he said, “I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34). Why would he doubt now? It was because his ministry brought him prison instead of success. Jesus was in Galilee instead of in the capital city of Jerusalem from where the kings ruled. Jesus became a friend of the sinners instead of zapping them and destroying them. Jesus seemed to condone the Romans instead of taking a sword against them.
What is Jesus’ answer?
Go and report to John the things which you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who keeps from stumbling (Matthew 11:4-6).
What was His answer? Yes? Or no? Why did He not give him a straightforward answer? Instead, what did He do? He reminds John of the Old Testament predictions of the Messiah and His ministry:
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy (Isaiah 35:5-6).
And:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord (Isaiah 61:1-2a).
That’s how God responds to us when we question His love in difficult circumstances. He reminds us of His faithfulness in the past. He reminds us of His promises in His Word. He reminds us of His unchangeable character.
How do I respond when God does not seem to live up to my expectations? Do I despair or cling to His promises and rely on His faithfulness? See how Zechariah praises God for His faithfulness, “As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old,” “to remember His holy covenant,” “the oath which He swore to Abraham our father” (Luke 1:70, 72, 73).
Was John the Baptist successful?
Well, he spent a major part of his life in a dungeon, in solitary confinement, on death row. You wouldn’t call that success!
The only person he counseled extensively chopped his head off! You wouldn’t call that success!
The purpose of his coming was to prepare the way for Christ so people would receive Him. Well, not many received Christ. He came to His own, but His own did not receive Him. You wouldn’t call that success!
Recently when I saw the sky amber red and brightly lit, I kept looking for the sun to come up from behind the range of small hills between Arlington and Duncanville as you are driving east on I-20. I was expecting a large, bright orange ball to move up any second. But you know, I did not see the sun come up. In a few minutes the sky was covered with clouds, and it remained cloudy the rest of the day. That day our high was only in the lower 30’s and that night was the coldest we have ever seen this winter season. And that’s exactly how it was with John the Baptist. He lived all his life with failures and died an ignominious death. You wouldn’t call that success!
The last thing we hear from him is his question, “Are you the coming One, or shall we look for someone else?” We do not even know if he got Jesus’ answer back before he was executed.
And yet, listen to Christ’s evaluation of John’s life: “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11). That you would surely call success!
John the Baptist was considered the greatest among all who are born of women, except, of course, Jesus Christ Himself. This was not because he achieved a great feat of success, but because he remained true to the task and faithful to the One who had sent him.
His life motto was: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Or, like Paul,
… according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:20-21).
John the Baptist lived a different life, he preached a different message, he lived with seeming failures, and he was prepared to die an ignominious death. All for one reason: his commitment to the cause of Christ. That is one thing I would want to emulate from John the Baptist — single-minded devotion to the cause of Christ so that whatever I do is geared to that single purpose of serving the Lord.
John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus Christ’s first coming. We all, who have known Christ as our personal Savior, are forerunners of His second coming. The life and death of John the Baptist sets a very high ideal before us to live as the forerunners of Christ: “Diligently presenting ourselves approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed” (2 Timothy 2:15). Because, “we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Closing the survey of the Old Testament, J. Sidlow Baxter comments:
Thus, as the Old Testament closes, we see the godly remnant speaking softly to one another of a great hope — “He is coming!” Then, for four hundred years they disappear from sight, until they reappear from obscurity in New Testament times in the aged Simeon and Anna, who are found in Jerusalem, “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). And so it is today. They who fear and love Jehovah-Jesus speak one to another amid the closing decades of the present age, comforting one another with the words, “He is coming!”
… Yes He is surely coming — for, “Unto you that fear My name,” saith Jehovah, “Shall the sun of Righteousness arise, with healing in His wings!” And our prayer is, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” 346
Am I prepared to meet the Lord? When I stand before Him, what kind of words will I hear?
Is my life different than the people of the world? Do I present a clear message to the lost world? Do I always rely on His Word and His sure promises? Do I always put Christ first in all that I am and all that I do so that He would increase even if I have to decrease?
344 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 60 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Imanuel G. Christian on January 6, 2002.
345 Unless otherwise indicated, all the Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, ÓThe Lockman foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, La Habra, California.
346 J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), vol. 4, pp. 267-68.
Our lesson in this From Creation to the Cross series is Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.354 We will be looking primarily at Matthew’s account of this discourse as given in chapters 5 through 7 of his Gospel. Now I’m sure you are all at least somewhat familiar with the Sermon on the Mount. This is probably the best known part of Jesus’ teaching, not only among Christians but among people in general. Sayings from the Sermon on the Mount have become part of our everyday language; sayings such as “do unto others” … “judge not,” “turn the other cheek,” and so on. But I would suggest it is also one of the least understood parts of our Lord’s teaching, and certainly the least obeyed. In this day and age, when we in the church seem to be looking more and more like the society around us, there may be no better medicine than the Sermon on the Mount. It describes what human life and human community look like when they come under the gracious rule of God.355 And in a word, what do they look like? Different … not the same.
It is of course impossible to address the details of the Sermon on the Mount in this one lesson. It is ambitious enough to attempt an overview. But as I thought about it, there is good reason to step back and consider the Sermon on the Mount as a whole. I do of course recommend detailed study, but if we jump into the details before we look at the whole, we are in constant danger of missing the forest for the trees. We all have a tendency to pick on certain particular statements and to concentrate on them at the expense of others. We must realize that “no part of the Sermon can be truly understood except in light of the whole.”356
The Literary Style of the Sermon – Before we proceed, I think it is worth noting the literary style of this sermon. The Sermon on the Mount has been rightly categorized as wisdom literature – in fact, it is wisdom literature in the best tradition of the Old Testament.357 It reads very much like what we might find in various places in the Book of Proverbs. This is important because, like Old Testament wisdom literature and the books of the Prophets, this passage is poetic in nature.
The Sermon on the Mount is full of the parallelism typical of Hebrew poetry. It is clearly evident in the Beatitudes as well as other places. 358 Poetic parallelism is seen virtually throughout the sermon as Jesus uses parallel thoughts to provide vivid contrasts as He teaches. We must also remember that the language of poetry is imagery.359 Poetry is designed to stir the emotions and create vivid mental pictures, not feed the intellect.
My point is this – poetic passages must be understood as poetic in nature, and we must not try to interpret them with the same inflexible literalism we might employ with prose. As one scholar has noted, “Proverbs are principles stated in extremes.”360 How tragic that someone would actually “pluck out his eye” or “cut off his hand” (5:29-30) in an attempt to control his lust, which, incidentally, has reportedly happened. So, let’s just remember that in the Sermon on the Mount we see Jesus speaking in the Old Testament wisdom form and poetic style.
Now let’s look at the context of our passage. The events leading up to the sermon are described by Matthew in chapter 4. We will look briefly at verses 12, 17, and 23. Beginning in verse 12, we read:
“Now when He heard that John had been taken into custody, He withdrew into Galilee; 13 and leaving Nazareth, He came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.”
Dropping down to 4:17, we read, “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”
There are two things to notice here: First, the phrase “From that time” refers to the arrest of John the Baptist. This is apparently the event Jesus chose to launch His public ministry. Secondly, Matthew wants us to see that Jesus’ message is linked directly to John’s message (3:1-2). There is a continuity made explicit by Jesus’ use of the same phrase John had used, and we are right to see Jesus as essentially picking up where John left off.
Then in 4:23 we read,
“And Jesus was going about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”
Matthew is introducing a theme which will wind its way through the rest of his gospel. That theme is the kingdom of heaven. As you read through Matthew’s Gospel, you will see that the Sermon on the Mount is the first of five great discourses. As a way of identification, each one of these discourses is marked at its conclusion with essentially the same phrase, namely, “when Jesus had finished these words.” It occurs here at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in 7:28. You will find it again in Matthew 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, and 26:1, each time at the end of an extended discourse by Jesus to His disciples. What you should note is that in one way or another, these five discourses all deal with the same theme: the Kingdom of heaven. This was the great burden of Jesus teaching – and we see it particularly evident here in the Sermon on the Mount.
“Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” If we view this proclamation as not only Matthew’s introduction to what follows but also a summary of it, then in a word, the message of the Sermon on the Mount is, “What it means to repent and belong to the kingdom of heaven.”
But let’s talk for a moment about this kingdom which Matthew has introduced to us here in his gospel. As an aside, I will mention that while Matthew primarily uses the term “kingdom of heaven” and other gospel writers (notably Luke) prefer the term “kingdom of God,” it is clear that these two expressions mean exactly the same thing (e.g., compare Matthew 5:3 with Luke 6:20). In the past some have tried to maintain a distinction between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God;361 however, the vast majority of theologians today recognize the terms as synonymous,362 and I therefore use the terms interchangeably.
The word translated kingdom has two elements. It refers first to the king’s reign and rule, and secondly to the king’s realm.363 The Kingdom of God, then, is primarily the reign and rule of God, the expression of His gracious sovereign will. In an ultimate sense, God sovereignly rules over all things, and His realm is therefore all creation. But that is not the kingdom in focus here. Here we are talking about the kingdom of God among men, that kingdom anticipated by the Old Testament prophets, that kingdom to be mediated through the coming Messiah. You will note that Matthew has spent the first four chapters of his gospel confirming to us that this Jesus is the Messiah, the one with the right to the throne, the coming King. As one commentator put it, with the coming of Jesus Christ “the new age had dawned, and the rule of God had broken into history.”364
This is precisely why Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand – because Jesus Himself is the King in God’s Kingdom, and where He reigns, there the Kingdom of God is already present. To those who first heard Jesus, this was a staggering message because they understood (at least in part) what He was saying. He was preaching that the long-hoped-for day, the day of the reign of God, was no longer confined to the future – it was now. That explained the urgency of His call to repent. In light of the presence of the King Himself, repentance, and for that matter a new life altogether, was called for.
Jesus proclaimed the same Kingdom as John the Baptist (and the Old Testament prophets); however, He did in the course of progressive biblical revelation explain it more fully. He also broke it out into its temporal components, and emphasized each element separately. For example: At times, Jesus spoke of the kingdom as being present in the person of the king. This aspect was more than “at hand;” it had already arrived. We read in Matthew. 12:28, “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” This is Phase I. The kingdom was inaugurated by and manifested in Jesus Christ at His first coming.
At other times, Jesus spoke of the kingdom as being present in a sense broader than His own person. For example, the parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13 show us the kingdom in its “mystery” phase. The mystery is the coming of the kingdom into history in advance of its consummation.365 This is Phase II. Christ now reigns in the hearts of His people, and His rule is played out through the work of kingdom citizens during this present age. The Sermon on the Mount and other principles of kingdom living articulated by Jesus apply directly to kingdom citizens in this period between His first and second coming.
However, Jesus never ignored the final consummation of the kingdom or even the uniquely Jewish flavor of the millennial reign (see Matthew 24-25). At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke of the future consummation of the Kingdom which will be manifested at His second coming. In Matthew 26:29, we read, “But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” This then is Phase III, which in turn ushers in the final eternal state.366
Therefore, recognizing that the kingdom of God was inaugurated by Christ at His first coming and that it continues today in a spiritual sense in those who are believers, let’s turn now to the Sermon itself.
The Setting – We are primarily looking at Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount, but we should note the parallel account in Luke 6. We don’t have time here to harmonize the accounts. Let me simply suggest that there is strong internal evidence that the two accounts are describing the same event in spite of the differences one may note.367 That is at least my assumption. We just don’t have time to get into the details.
I mention this because I want us to pause just long enough to get clear on who the audience is for Jesus’ sermon. In Matthew 5:1, we are told that He sat down and His disciples came to Him. We must not think this is referring only to the twelve – for we see in Luke 6:13 that early that morning He called His disciples to Himself and chose the twelve from among them. So there were other disciples – apparently a large number of them according to Luke 6:17. Therefore, we must understand that it was the twelve along with many other disciples who came to sit around Him.
We also see, not only from Luke’s account (6:18) but from the end of Matthew’s account (7:28), that a multitude was also there, gathered at least within hearing distance. So, to whom was Jesus speaking? You could look at it as a three-tiered audience – the twelve as His newly-appointed inner circle, the other disciples, and then, perhaps at a distance, the multitude. Even though His words were directed to His disciples (5:2) – which is indeed significant – I would suggest that He also spoke for the benefit of all.
Looking at the sermon itself, we can see four main sections: the first (5:3-16) describes the subjects of the kingdom, the second (5:17–5:48) deals with the precepts of the kingdom, the third (6:1-7:12) the righteousness of the kingdom, and the fourth (7:13-27) the tests of the kingdom.
First Section - Picture of Kingdom Citizens (5:3-16) – Every kingdom eventually has subjects, and Jesus begins His sermon by painting a picture of the kind of people who would populate His kingdom (5:3-16). Before He lists any responsibilities for them, He first wants His audience to see the character traits of kingdom citizens. He does this in what we commonly refer to as the beatitudes. We should note that the beatitudes do not refer to different groups of people as if some are merciful, others are peacemakers, and still others are called upon to endure persecution. Rather, this is a beautifully poetic way of describing the qualities of a kingdom citizen. All these qualities are to characterize each of His people.
Jesus also wants His audience to see that these qualities come with great blessing – which stands in stark contrast to that which this world can offer. What is this blessedness? The second half of each beatitude explains it. Taken together, we see that these kingdom citizens possess the kingdom of heaven, they inherit the earth, they are comforted and satisfied. They receive mercy, they see God, and they are called sons of God. All these blessings belong together. Just as the eight beatitudes describe the qualities of every citizen of the kingdom (at least in the ideal), so the eight blessings belong to each of them.
Some have taken the beatitudes (and in fact the whole sermon) as a description of what one must do in order to enter the kingdom of God. They see the beatitudes as a list of things you must do in order to receive the blessings mentioned. This cannot be further from the truth. It is clear from the text that Jesus is describing the qualities and duties of those already in the kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount is not a presentation of the gospel telling one how to get saved. As Dr. S. Lewis Johnson has humorously pointed out, when the Philippian jailer asked the apostle Paul, “what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), Paul did not reply with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”368 The Sermon on the Mount is not how to get into the kingdom, but how you are to be because you are in the kingdom.
So let’s be clear right here at the beginning. Jesus told Nicodemus “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3:3). Citizens of this kingdom are those who are born again believers. Jesus Himself makes it clear that to enter this kingdom is in fact to enter salvation and eternal life.369
This section ends showing the role of the kingdom citizens in an unbelieving world. Jesus says you, as kingdom citizens, are to be “salt” and “light” (5:13-16) in such a way as to bring glory to your Father in heaven. When He says “your Father,” He is saying something that can only be true of believers, not people in general. Although in this sermon Jesus was addressing a mixed audience (believers and unbelievers), He was speaking specifically to His disciples (Matthew 5:2), and He was addressing them as true disciples, i.e., true believers.
Second Section - Precepts of the Kingdom (5:17–5:48) – After the brief exposition about the members of the kingdom, the Lord now gives truths about the nature of the kingdom itself (5:17–48). This section is characterized by the repeated phrase, “you have heard it said, … but I say.” Jesus is going to do some interpretation of the Old Testament Law for His listeners, and He prefaces this by first stating He came not to abolish, but to fulfill the Law. Then He emphasizes the fact that “not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away until all is fulfilled.” Now, He makes this clear at the outset because He knows that what He is about to say is going to shock His listeners. He wants them to listen carefully and not take what He is about to say as negating the Law in any sense.
Some have said that Jesus here contrasts the letter of the Law with the spirit of the Law. But I don’t think that’s the case. The key, I believe is the phrase “you have heard it said.” In virtually every other place where Jesus refers to the Law (or Old Testament), He uses the phrase, “It is written” (e.g., Matthew 4:4, 7, 10; 21:13, 26:31). Here He uses the phrase “You have heard.” I would suggest that this is not a contrast between the letter of the law and the spirit of the Law. This is a contrast between a perversion of the letter of the law – the oral tradition perpetuated by the scribes and Pharisees – and the true letter and true spirit of the Law. So here, in six masterful strokes, Jesus says, “you have heard it said, … but I say,” thereby rejecting the scribal interpretations of the Law.
Although Jesus essentially quotes the Old Testament in some instances, it is clear from His arguments that He is dealing with abuses of the Law encouraged by the Pharisaic tradition.
Take for example Matthew 5:38: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’” This is indeed a quote from the Law; it is stated in Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:19-20, and Deuteronomy 19:18-21. But two things must be noticed from the context in the Old Testament: (1) The passage in Deuteronomy makes it clear that this was a law for the civil courts; it was instruction for the Judges in Israel; it was to define appropriate justice. (2) Although the law defined justice, it also restricted retribution and prevented personal revenge. It is not unreasonable to say its primary purpose was to restrain. But the scribes and Pharisees had extended this principle from the law courts (where it belongs) to the realm of personal relationships (where it does not belong). This is not how you treat your neighbor, but that’s exactly how the Pharisees used it and abused it. It was being used as an excuse for the very thing it was meant to abolish, namely, personal revenge.
The Old Testament repeatedly forbids personal vengeance. Leviticus. 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” Proverbs 20:22: “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil;’ Wait for the Lord, and He will save you.” Proverbs 24:29: “Do not say, ‘Thus I shall do to him as he has done to me; I will render to the man according to his work.’” – All of which Jesus beautifully expressed by saying, “turn the other cheek.” The concept of “turning the other cheek” is not limited to the New Testament; it was there in the Old Testament.
With a little digging, I think you’ll find this to be the case with Jesus’ other examples – He was correcting perversions of the Law perpetrated by the religious teaching of His day – all of which, incidentally, point to an issue of the heart.
Third Section - Righteousness of the Kingdom (6:1-7:12) - The first half of chapter 6 deals with kingdom righteousness regarding, basically, our worship of God. Jesus deals with giving, praying, and fasting – although these are particular areas of Pharisaic abuse, there are plenty of applications for the church today. The principle is given at the outset in verse 1, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.”
The second half of chapter 6 deals with righteousness regarding the intentions and ambitions of our heart. Basically, the emphasis is on our focus in life and how we expend or invest our energies. The principle here is given in verses 19-20, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, … But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
In verses 1-12 of chapter 7, Jesus deals with righteousness in relation to how we treat others. We are not to be judgmental especially with regard to fellow believers, yet we are to exercise discernment concerning unbelievers. Jesus is not simply saying, “do not judge.” His point is that we are to judge wisely, just as the earlier principle is to invest wisely. Where does one find such wisdom? He must turn to his heavenly Father … and ask (7:7-11).
Finally, in verse 12, the intent of the Old Testament law is summarized in the golden rule: “Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus began His teaching on kingdom righteousness in 5:17 with, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets;” and now concludes it by saying, “this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Fourth Section - Tests of the Kingdom (7:13-27) - Christ outlines three tests which will prove our righteousness is truly from God. These tests are presented as the two ways, two trees, and two builders. False Christianity will fail these tests.
First, true citizens of the kingdom of God go by the narrow way (7:13-14), which I believe speaks to the fact that Christianity is basically counter-cultural. By that I mean the society around us is going one way, the broad way, while we are to be going the narrow way, the way of Christ, e.g., by turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, putting our personal rights aside for the sake of another.
Secondly, true citizens of the kingdom are like the tree that bears good fruit (7:15-23), which refers not only to the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23): joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control, but to holy living (Romans 6:22) and good works (Ephesians 2:10).
And thirdly, true citizens of the kingdom build their house on the rock (7:24-27), which is Jesus Christ. Righteousness is not based on a church, a creed, or a good life, but on Jesus Christ who died for the believer.370 And here the point is that a true believer is a doer of the word and not a hearer only (James 1:22). The imagery of this section all points in one direction: the kingdom will be populated by those who live for an audience of One, namely, Jesus Christ the King.
The Sermon Concluded (7:28-29) - The sermon then concludes with a note about the crowds responding to Jesus in a way which they never did to the scribes. The crowd was “astonished at His teaching, for He taught as one having authority” (7:28-29). They were apparently more impressed with His authority than with the content of the Sermon itself. As one commentator put it, “The main question the Sermon forces upon the crowd is not so much ‘What do you make of this teaching?’ as ‘Who on earth is this teacher?’”371 – a question which the Gospel of Matthew clearly answers.
Not a code of ethics - It is extremely important to remember that the Sermon on the Mount is a description of character and not a code of ethics or morals. It is not to be regarded as a law – a kind of new “Ten Commandments” or a set of rules and regulations which are to be carried out by us – but rather a description of what we as Christians are meant to be, illustrated in certain particular respects.372 Jesus is not laying down a new code of legal regulations but communicating great ethical principles and how they affect the lives of those within the kingdom. “It would be a great point gained if people would only consider that it was a Sermon, and was preached, not an act which was passed.”373
All kinds of approaches to this sermon can be found in the church. Some have seen it as a message calculated to produce the greatest possible guilt in the fewest possible chapters! It has often been presented that way: “Here is the standard. Look how miserably you have failed. Pull yourself together and do better.”
This approach ignores what we have already seen is central to the sermon’s message, namely our relationship to Jesus Christ. We cannot avoid some degree of guilt as we read Jesus’ words. Undoubtedly, as He describes the lifestyle that is appropriate to citizenship in His kingdom, we sense how far short of its glory we fall. But the sermon is not aiming to produce a sense of hopelessness and despair in us; rather, it is intended to set before us a glorious vision of what the Lord means for our lives to become. As Bob Deffinbaugh once said, “It challenges us to live an excitingly distinctive life, adding savor to our society,”374 and bringing glory to God. The sermon is Jesus’ manifesto. It describes a regal lifestyle, the new behavior pattern for the new kingdom we have entered.
A new birth is essential - The righteousness Jesus described in the Sermon is an inner righteousness. Although it manifests itself outwardly and visibly in words, deeds and relationships, yet it remains essentially a righteousness of the heart. It is what a man thinks in his heart and where he fixes his heart which really matter. It is here too that the problem lies. For men are in their nature “evil.” As we are told in Jeremiah 17:9, “the heart of man is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.” And it is out of the heart that evil things come. Just as it is the tree itself which determines its fruit, so it is with man. There is but one solution – make the tree good, and its fruit good. A new birth is essential.
Only a belief in the necessity and the reality of a new birth can keep us from reading the Sermon on the Mount with either foolish optimism or hopeless despair. The high standards he set are appropriate only to believers.
We could never earn citizenship in His kingdom by accomplishing Christ’s standards. Rather by living out His standards, or at least approximating them, we give evidence of what – by God’s free grace – we already are. 375
Negative tests to apply - Martyn Lloyd-Jones recommended some principles which should govern our interpretation of this Sermon, suggesting that we might apply these “negative” tests as we study it: 376
(1) If you find yourself arguing with the Sermon on the Mount at any particular point, it means either that there is something wrong with you or your interpretation of the Sermon is wrong. In his own words, he said he found that test “very valuable.”
(2) If our interpretation makes any injunction appear to be ridiculous then we can be certain our interpretation is wrong. For example, in 5:40, Jesus says if you are sued for your shirt, give your coat too. This command has often been made to sound ridiculous. However, it is not to be taken as a mechanical rule. He’s not teaching how to behave if you are sued. He’s teaching a principle – I am to be of such a mind and such a spirit that under certain circumstances and conditions I must do just that – throw in the coat also, or go the extra mile. I am to be such a person that if it is God’s will and for His glory, I would readily do so. That is the issue, and it is very practical – nothing our Lord ever taught can be ridiculous.
(3) Finally, if you regard any particular injunction in this Sermon as impossible, once more your interpretation and understanding of it must be wrong. Jesus died and gave us the Holy Spirit that we might be able to live the Sermon on the Mount. We may not live it perfectly, but in the power of His Spirit we must work at living it. In 7:24, He says, “everyone who hears these words of mine and acts upon them” is wise. When giving the Great Commission, Jesus says, “make disciples, … teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20); and that certainly includes the Sermon on the Mount.
Be very careful as you read the Sermon on the Mount and especially when you talk about it. If you criticize it at any point, you are really saying a great deal about yourself.
Making Jesus Lord - Living the Sermon on the Mount means, fundamentally, submitting to the authority of Jesus. It means coming to Him, taking His yoke, and learning from Him (Matthew 11:28-30). This means that we might want to dispense with the myth that we can have Christ as Savior to begin the Christian life, and then at some later stage, submit to Him as Lord or make Him Lord in our lives.
That kind of thinking reveals a profound confusion about what the New Testament teaches. For one thing, we do not “make” Jesus Savior or Lord. And further, if having Christ as our Savior means belonging to the Kingdom of God (and it certainly does), we cannot possibly live in His Kingdom without His being King and Lord.
But submitting to the authority of Jesus can be described more explicitly. He expresses His authority through His Word, the Bible.
As John Calvin put it, the Bible is the scepter by which King Jesus rules His people.377 It is in Scripture that Jesus continues to give His teaching. When we read it, study it, and seek to obey it, we hear His voice and recognize His authority (see John 10:3-5). That is why one mark of the Christian ought to be loving study of Scripture and a growing obedience to everything Christ teaches us through Scripture.
As you turn to the Sermon on the Mount, you ought to ask yourself if you have settled these issues in your own life. And you ought to pray that through hearing Christ’s voice in this sermon, you will grow in settled obedience to whatever He says to you.
353 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Jim Ellis at Community Bible Chapel on February 17, 2002. Jim is a member of Community Bible Chapel and can be reached by email.
354 The title, Sermon on the Mount, is not found in the text. It is likely that the first one to call it such was Augustine, who wrote a treatise on this passage ca. 395 A.D. while still Bishop of Hippo. See Robert Guelich, The Sermon on the Mount, (Word Publishing, 1982), p. 15.
355 John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Inter-Varsity Press, 1978), p. 18.
356 Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Eerdmans, Reprinted 1991), p. 22.
357 Gary A. Tuttle, The Sermon On The Mount: Its Wisdom Affinities And Their Relation To Its Structure, JETS 20/3 (September 1977).
358 See for example Matthew 5:19; 6:14-15; and 7:6.
359 Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature (Zondervan Academie Books, 1984), p. 888.
360 A. M. Hunter, Design for Life, 1953, as quoted in The New Bible Dictionary, s.v. Sermon on the Mount.
361 Cf. John F. Walvoord, Matthew - Thy Kingdom Come, (Moody Press, 1974) p. 30.
362 Cf. Ed Glasscock, Matthew, Moody Gospel Commentary (Moody Press, 1997), p. 70; D. A. Carson, Matthew, Expositor's Bible Commentary, vol. 1 (Zondervan, 1995), p. 100; Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume, ed. Geoffry Bromiley (Eerdmans 1985, reprinted 1992), s.v. basileia.
363 Bauer, Gingrich and Danker call the kingdom [1] “kingship, royal power, royal rule” and [2] “the territory ruled over by a king.” See Bauer, Walter, Gingrich, F. Wilbur, and Danker, Frederick W., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (University of Chicago Press, 1979), s.v. basileia.
364 Stott, p. 18.
365 George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Eerdmans, Revised Edition, 1993), p. 91.
366 This three-phase view of the kingdom is discussed in D. Matthew Allen, The Kingdom of God in Matthew, http://bible.org/article/kingdom-matthew . For more on the kingdom of God, Ladd, pp. 54-117.
367 William Hendriksen, The Gospel of Matthew (Baker Book House, 1973), p. 260.
368 S. Lewis Johnson, The Beatitudes (1): From Poverty to Royalty, Believer’s Bible Bulletin, n.d. Lesson 9, p. 2.
369 E.g., Jesus equates entering the kingdom with entering life in Mark 9:45-47.
370 Warren Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the New Testament (Victor Books, 1992), p. 36.
371 Stott, p. 213.
372 Lloyd-Jones, p. 28.
373 J. Denny as quoted in The New Bible Dictionary, s.v. Sermon on the Mount.
374 Bob Deffinbaugh, Highlights in the Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ, Lesson 20, Biblical Studies Foundation, www.bible.org/docs/nt/topics/l&m/toc.htm.
375 Stott, p. 29.
376 Lloyd-Jones, p. 29.
377 As quoted by Sinclair B. Ferguson, Kingdom Life in a Fallen World (NavPress, 1986), p. 21.
Shortly after John baptized Him and just before He announced the good news of the Kingdom of God, Jesus acquired six men as traveling companions. Simon and Andrew were brothers and partners in a fishing venture with brothers James348 and John. Philip and Nathanael son of Tolmai (i.e., Bartholemew) were good friends. Some time later, brothers Matthew and James (both sons of Alphaeus) joined the group. There is reasonable speculation that Thomas was a third brother, and perhaps Judas the son of James was the nephew of Matthew and Thomas. Given the pairings of family and friends among these ten, perhaps we can speculate that Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot also knew each other before they joined the disciples who followed Jesus around Galilee. These are the twelve men that Jesus chose to be His closest disciples and the ones to whom He gave intensive training. They had an extraordinary and enviable opportunity.
Discipleship is a process. Although the gospels depict scenes in which Jesus seemingly walked up and called strangers into His entourage, an examination of all the data shows otherwise. Regardless of such data, such a conclusion flows out of common sense. Simon Peter once asked Jesus, “Look, we have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” (Matthew 19:27). It is not likely that these twelve men left homes, jobs, and families without thoughtful consideration. Later, Jesus Himself advised potential followers to count the cost:
Now large crowds were accompanying Jesus, and turning to them he said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t sit down first and compute the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish the tower, all who see it will begin to make fun of him. They will say, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish!’ Or what king, going out to confront another king in battle, will not sit down first and determine whether he is able with ten thousand to face the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot succeed, he will send a representative while the other is still a long way off and ask for terms of peace. In the same way therefore not one of you can be my disciple if he does not renounce all his own possessions. Salt is good, but if salt loses its flavor, how can its flavor be restored? It is of no value for the soil or for the manure pile; it is to be thrown out. The one who has ears to hear had better listen! (Luke 14:25-35).349
This paper is about the choosing and the training of these twelve men. It will tell the whole story of the choosing of Peter and his friends. It will draw comparisons between some of the disciples to show the diversity of the group. The paper will then turn to “Kingdom Leadership Training” whereby Jesus took this band of men and used them to change the world.
John’s Gospel takes us closer to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry than the other Gospels. John’s beginning shows Jesus still in the presence of John the Baptist, and we can assume that either Jesus had just been baptized or that He had returned from His wilderness temptation. Either way, we get a glimpse of the very beginning:
Again the next day John was standing there with two of his disciples. Gazing at Jesus as he walked by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” When his two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Jesus turned around and saw them following and said to them, “What do you want?” So they said to him, “Rabbi” (which is translated Teacher), “where are you staying?” Jesus answered, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two disciples who heard what John said and followed Jesus. He found first his own brother Simon and told him, “We have found the Messiah!” (which is translated Christ). Andrew brought Simon to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, the son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter) (John 1:35-42).
I conjecture that Peter, Andrew, and John had gone on a retreat to see and hear John the Baptist. They were John’s disciples in the sense that they heard and followed his teaching. However, the Synoptic Gospels show that they continued to fish for their livelihoods. Consequently, they were not with John all the time.
They had the good fortune to be there when Jesus returned from the wilderness. John the Baptist, whose prophetic calling was to proclaim the coming Messiah, directed John and Andrew to the “Lamb of God.” So they left John and tailed Jesus. Shortly afterwards, Andrew introduced his brother, Simon, to Jesus. Jesus gave Simon a new name, Cephas = Peter = Rock. Apparently Jesus had already chosen Simon Peter for foundational work, but Peter, as we will see, had not yet chosen Jesus in return.
It would seem that sometime after the wedding at Cana, Simon, Andrew, and John returned home and resumed their fishing. This is not an unreasonable supposition. They had work to do, and their vacation was over. Consequently, we read in Mathew’s Gospel about a second encounter:
As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon (called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishermen). He said to them, “Follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people.” They left their nets immediately and followed him. Going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. Then he called them. They immediately left the boat and their father and followed him (Matthew 4:18-22).
Knowing about the earlier encounter that John recorded gives greater sensibility to this passage. We know, for example, why Simon was also “called Peter.” We also can better surmise why they immediately left their nets to follow Jesus, since they had already spent time with Him and had heard Him teach. They had seen Him turn water into wine to rescue a wedding party. The timing of this meeting was still pretty early in Jesus’ ministry, because He does not seem to be among a crowd. In this encounter, Jesus told them that He had a career change in mind for them. They left their nets and followed Him on a tour of Galilee:
Jesus went throughout all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of disease and sickness among the people (Matthew 4:23).
However, at some point during this tour, Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John again left Jesus and returned to their fishing. This may seem surprising, but a close comparison of Matthew and Mark against Luke shows that two superficially identical stories are most definitely separate events. John recorded the first meeting between Jesus and these men; Matthew and Mark recorded a second, and Luke recorded a third, different, and final call. We must conclude that Peter and his friends left Jesus during the first Galilean tour. Here is Luke’s account of the third meeting:
Now Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing around him to hear the word of God. He saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing! But at your word I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets started to tear. So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they were about to sink.
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For Peter and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s business partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” So when they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him. (Luke 5:1-11)
The following table records the unique differences between Luke’s story and Matthew and Mark’s story:
Matthew and Mark |
Luke |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So this is a third encounter, which means that Peter and the others had followed Jesus for a while and, at some point, returned again. Why they may have done this is a matter of speculation. Had Peter gotten word that his mother-in-law was sick? Did the fishing business need tending? Was Peter unsure about Jesus, the ministry, and the place he had in it? Peter’s response to the catch of fish contains a clue:
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees350, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8).
Peter was undone. He had seen Jesus turn water into wine. He had heard Him teach and heal and cast out demons. He understood that the power and wisdom of God resided in Him. The power that Jesus demonstrated and the righteousness of His life threatened Peter. On the two previous excursions, Peter got relief by leaving. Here in the boat, Peter sought relief by asking Jesus to leave, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Peter felt unworthy before the Messiah. Being around Him was a constant reminder of sin and imperfection. On the one hand, Peter loved what he saw, but on the other it ate him up from the inside.
So Jesus addressed Peter’s heart, “Do not fear. . . .” With these words, Jesus communicated His love and mercy and lifted the specter of judgment that had perhaps fallen on Peter. Jesus once more advised Peter of a career change. Peter, his brother, and his two friends then left everything for good and followed Jesus.
What this pieced-together story tells us is that hiding behind every terse story of Jesus’ call was probably a string of encounters by which the person perceived the value of knowing and following Jesus. The Gospels have a portrait of Jesus to convey. Details about His followers would get in the way, and they are not offered. Only the three-fold account that we have between John, Matthew/Mark, and Luke give us a richer story in Peter’s case. This also tells us that our call to follow Jesus is also a process of getting to know Him, perceiving His value, and coming to a place where we can leave everything and follow Him.
Actually the only other member of the twelve for which we have any details is Matthew, or Levi as he is also called. This is made more interesting by the fact that all three of the Synoptic Gospels record the event. Here is Luke’s account:
And after that He went out, and noticed a tax-gatherer named Levi, sitting in the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow me.” And he left everything behind, and rose and began to follow Him. And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax-gatherers and other people who were reclining at the table with them (Luke 5:27-29).
So why is Matthew’s call recorded? I believe that it is because his background was a bit tainted. Each account tells us that he was a tax gatherer, which suggests a love of money over community. Each account tells of the dinner party and what kind of people attended. He hung around a crowd of “sinners.” It is well known that the religious community did not approve of Jesus’ attending Matthew’s dinner party, although there is no indication that Jesus was an unwelcome guest or that He did not enjoy the event.
So the key message behind Matthew’s call is who he was before. Let’s compare him with Peter:
Peter |
Matthew |
· Reputable business · Reputable friends · Asked Jesus to leave because of sin · Discovered that he was lost |
· Disreputable business · Disreputable friends · Invited his friends because of sin · Knew that he was lost |
Matthew may have been the first to fully appreciate Jesus’ mission to “seek and save that which is lost.” On earth, Jesus never compromised the highest standard of righteousness. He did not compromise it with His life. He did not compromise it with His teaching. Peter, full of the traditional teaching of the day, heard Jesus’ words and condemned himself, even if Jesus did not. Matthew and his friends heard Jesus’ words and found hope for a new life. Jesus diagnosed the sickness and offered the cure. Matthew heard something new. He heard that the Father loved him. He invited his friends to hear the same message, and then followed Jesus to learn more.
Quick side note: The church today must emulate Jesus’ way on earth. It seems as if many churches preach the righteous standard but are not hospitable to “unclean” newcomers. Other churches seem to be more open, but often at the expense of lowered standards. In the first case, sinners are driven away. In the second case, they are not challenged to mature. We must find the way to call out sin while communicating acceptance and offering hope of change. If we succeed, our churches must meet the new challenges such success will bring. Imagine the Sunday school classes with children from Christian homes and “other” homes. How will the Christian parents react? How do you prepare them to face their fears about the influences the church leadership has allowed into the church? This is a deep and complicated subject, and I must postpone its development for another time. I will say, however, that the answer is to understand what Paul means by “power” when he says that the gospel is the “power of God for salvation.” Examine Paul’s use of this word “power,” and see if you do not long for something more than you are used to seeing.
Out of hundreds of disciples, Jesus one day chose twelve to receive intensive training. Except for picking pairs based on family and friendship, we do not know what criteria He used. All we know is that He prayed all night before announcing His decision:
It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles: Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James and John; and Philip and Bartholomew; and Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot; Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor (Luke 6:12-16).
The brothers were Peter and Andrew, John and James, Matthew and James and maybe Thomas. The friends were Philip and Bartholomew. Add to this that Judas the son of James may have been the nephew of his uncles Matthew and Thomas. We might conjecture that Simon the Zealot and Judas had some previous connection. Then again, Simon was designated the Zealot, which implies that he came as an individual as then did Judas, who became a traitor.
Judas Iscariot, of course, is an interesting study. None of the Gospels ever mention his name without immediately identifying him as the one who betrayed Jesus. He bears the scorn of the ages. One might have expected betrayal from the likes of Matthew, whose former profession might suggest a disposition to betrayal for gain. For this reason, let us compare Matthew and Judas in the same way we compared Peter and Matthew:
Matthew |
Judas |
· Disreputable background · Stole money before meeting Jesus · Knew he was lost and found salvation |
· Reputable background351 · Stole money after meeting Jesus · Never found salvation |
After praying all night, Jesus chose twelve men to receive more intensive training. Among these was Judas Iscariot, who would betray Jesus. With Judas, we have another ironic twist. The entourage trusted him with the moneybox, whereas they may not have trusted Matthew. In the end, it was Judas who betrayed Jesus.
It may be the same for many of us. We will finally leave everything to follow Jesus after we have known Him long enough to recognize His great worth. For many of us, Jesus will choose us from shady pasts. All of us must choose Him as our highest good, lest we become as Judas and later betray Him. Salvation is open to all, but discipleship is a demanding road. For this reason, the next section will cover the training the twelve receive. I will be using a college metaphor. As such, I will discuss the tuition, the core curriculum, and the “Master’s” program.
Salvation is free. Along with salvation comes a plethora of continuing education courses that help us lead quiet and peaceful lives. These courses are also free. The Master’s Discipleship program is different. The tuition, which requires payment on the installment plan, is quite steep as these passages show:
Now large crowds were accompanying Jesus, and turning to them he said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t sit down first and compute the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish the tower, all who see it will begin to make fun of him. They will say, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish!’ Or what king, going out to confront another king in battle, will not sit down first and determine whether he is able with ten thousand to face the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot succeed, he will send a representative while the other is still a long way off and ask for terms of peace. In the same way therefore not one of you can be my disciple if he does not renounce all his own possessions (Luke 14:25-33).
Then Peter said to him, “Look, we have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth: in the age when all things are renewed, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And whoever has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life (Matthew 19:27-29).
The tuition for the Master’s Discipleship program is your life. We are to take up our cross, and we are to renounce our possessions. This does not necessarily mean that we must sell all and give to the poor, because the Old and New Testaments show godly and devoted men and women who retained great wealth. It does mean that such possessions as we have must not have our heart. This is best achieved by focusing on the Person and ministry of Jesus.
Such a focus is important. I became aware of this 23 years ago when I attended an advanced motorcycle riding school. I have never been all that coordinated, being the subject of many team picking arguments (“You take him.” – “No, you.”). But after two weeks, I was doing tight figure eights while riding a large bike. The key was to focus my eyes ahead of the bike to where I wanted it to go. The brain, I was told, knows how to take eye focus and translate it into what the bike needs to do now to get there then. Ten years after that, I bought my first softball glove ever and joined our church’s softball team. I asked myself, what happens if I just watch the ball? A marvelous thing happened over and over again. I would watch the ball, and my glove would be in the right place to catch it. This demonstrated again that the brain knows how to take eye focus and translate it into what the gloved hand needs to do now to get there then.
If we look at our sin, or the sins of others, we will tend to move in the direction of sin. At best, we will only be able to put on the brakes and say, “I am not going there.” Looking in that direction will never lead us on the paths of righteousness. Let me illustrate this: “When is a thief not a thief?” I love asking this question. Every time I have asked this, I have heard this answer, “When he is not stealing.” Sometimes I get the same answer with different punctuation, “When he is not stealing?” The question mark comes from those who see a trap on the path. Here is my answer, “A thief who is not stealing is a thief out of work.” Now consider these words from Paul, “The one who steals must steal no longer; rather he must labor, doing good with his own hands, so that he may share with the one who has need” (Ephesians 4:28). A thief is not a thief when he labors in order to have something to give. Spiritual eye focus on sin keeps you in the “not stealing” frame of mind, and you fail to see the movement of soul needed to become generous.
If, however, we read the Gospels and the Scriptures and focus on Jesus’ life and character, we will move toward Him. We will find Him to be of great worth. There is pain in even this simple step because we will never be where He is in terms of character, Spirit, and power. But that is just the point. Our spirit, with our eyes on Him, powered and directed by His Spirit within, knows what we need to do now to get us closer then. As we find Him to be of increasing value, the value of our earthly things and endeavors shrinks. We learn to take up our cross and lay down our lives.
In this way, we pay our tuition each day for the rest of our lives. Of course, let us also remember the endowment that made opening this school possible. It cost Jesus everything He had, too.
The core curriculum of the twelve disciples was that which was open to all the disciples. What an extraordinary opportunity the men and women who followed Jesus had! The one thing they had which we will never have is His physical presence. We have His words, but they had His body language. They had His tone of voice. They saw the full context of His words. We have the writings, but they had the speaker. What a great gift!
They had His teaching and marveled at the authority that He had. Jesus did not quote the Rabbis. He was bold, “You have heard that it was said. . ., but I say to you.” You had to trust that Jesus was for real, and let us not think that was easy. To trust Him then was to hear His wisdom and watch Him live it out. By word and model, He taught the people who would hear.
When the Jewish leadership rejected Him, Jesus began to speak in parables to hide His message. To be one of His disciples meant having the inside scoop. The Gospel of Mark describes both of these notions:
When he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. He said to them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those outside, everything is in parables, so that although they look they may look but not see, and although they hear they may hear but not understand, so they may not repent and be forgiven” (Mark 4:10-12).
The disciples had the secrets of the Kingdom given to them by trusting Jesus enough to be with Him. They got to hear the parables explained.
The disciples also had ministry internships. First the twelve were sent out two-by-two. At a later time, seventy-two were sent out. They heard Jesus teach, heal the sick, and cast out demons. Jesus taught the teachers, and now they went forth on their practice runs.
For all this, and it must have been extraordinary, the twelve had more. They had Master’s courses in Servant Leadership, Advanced Faith, and great intimacy with the Teacher.
Luke records this event during the Passover before Jesus’ arrest:
A dispute also started among them over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest (Luke 22:24).
By this we know that the twelve discussed and disputed rank among themselves up to the very day of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. Being in the inner circle can go to one’s head. Those years that they spent alongside Jesus were full of the expectation of an emerging Kingdom. Jesus would sit on His throne in glory, and they would be the upper crust of His administration. But only one of them could sit at His right; one more could sit at His left; and the remaining ten would have lesser positions. They argued, seemingly often, about who would claim the most honorable positions. Even proud parents entered the fray:
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling down she asked him for a favor. He said to her, “What do you want?” She replied, “Permit these two sons of mine to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” Jesus answered, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink the cup I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.” He told them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right and at my left is not mine to give. Rather, it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” Now when the other ten heard this, they were angry with the two brothers (Matthew 20:20-24).
You can bet they were angry about this underhanded move. It is remarkable that this band of twelve men does not come apart at the seams. But who was going to leave with such opportunity looming?
In the meantime, Jesus taught and modeled a better way. Even though it did not connect before His death, it certainly became evident after His resurrection. To see this, let’s continue the story of John, James, the meddling mother, and the disgruntled ten:
But Jesus called them and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them. It must not be this way among you! Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28).
This is the course on “Servant Leadership.” This is leadership that oversees the welfare of those entrusted to you. John Haggai defines leadership this way:
Leadership is the discipline of deliberately exerting special influence within a group to move it toward goals of beneficial permanence that fulfill the group’s real needs.352
Contrast John Haggai’s definition of leadership with Jesus’ words, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them.” Compare Haggai’s words with “whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant.” Servant Leadership is not the way the world sees things. Servant Leadership lays down its own life for the sake of the followers.
Godly leadership is sacrificial from the top down. A leader is responsible for the welfare of a group. Authority is given as a tool to bring about that welfare. Any other use of authority is corrupting. Note John Haggai’s notion that a leader “exerts special influence within a group to move it.” He uses the words “influence” and “within” to describe the kind of leadership the world desperately needs.
In spite of Jesus’ teaching, the disciples argued over who was the greatest up to the Last Supper. At that time, Jesus demonstrated Servant Leadership principles in an extraordinary way:
Because Jesus knew that the Father had handed all things over to him, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, he got up from the meal, removed his outer clothes, took a towel and tied it around himself. He poured water into the washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel he had wrapped around himself. Then he came to Simon Peter. Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus replied, “You do not understand what I am doing now, but you will understand after these things.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus replied, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head!” Jesus replied, “The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you disciples are clean, but not every one of you.” (For Jesus knew the one who was going to betray him. For this reason he said, “Not every one of you is clean.”) So when Jesus had washed their feet and put his outer clothing back on, he took his place at the table again and said to them, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and do so correctly, for that is what I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example: you should do just as I have done for you. I tell you the solemn truth, the slave is not greater than his master, nor is the one who is sent as a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand these things, you will be blessed if you do them (John 13:3-17).
I love how this section begins, “Because Jesus knew that the Father had handed all things over to him.” Astounding! Because Jesus had all authority, He stripped to His undergarments to wash the feet of those entrusted to His care. He did what those clamoring for position expected someone else to do. This is the example Christian leaders must follow. This is the example that fathers must have in their homes. This is the example that pastors and elders must follow in their churches. We are to lay down our lives as Christ laid down His life for the Church. Godly leadership is sacrificial from the top down.
Jesus taught and modeled Servant Leadership, but at the Last Supper it looked like every student in the class was going to fail. They still argued about who was greatest. Did it ever change and, if so, what brought it about? Change it did for several reasons. First of all, none of the twelve made a good showing the night of the arrest. Judas Iscariot betrayed Him. Peter denied knowing Him, and all but John ran away and hid. Who was going to claim a right hand seat after that? Second, Jesus appeared to several people the day of His resurrection. The women saw Him first, and two disciples walking to Emmaus spent an afternoon in conversation. Ten of the eleven remaining disciples did not see Him until the evening. On the day that would change the world, Jesus refused to give the inner circle inner privilege. Third, Jesus’ death and resurrection showed them in stark terms their destiny as leaders. Jesus had asked James and John, “Can you drink the cup that I will drink?” Now they knew of what they must drink. Fourth, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost gave them power and enabled them to walk the Servant Leader path.
Jesus taught and modeled the kind of leadership needed in life. As he surrendered His life, the flimsy foundation on which His disciples based their claims to greatness crashed and lay in shambles. When He rose from the dead, He only sent news to them of this great event and, thus, left them to wonder about their place and position. These two actions made them teachable and, by the Holy Spirit, able to lead as those who lay down their lives for those in their care.
Godly leadership is sacrificial from the top down. To those with a mind and heart to do so, lay down your life, and lead on.
Perhaps you have heard, as I have, teachings that poke fun at the twelve disciples of Jesus. They are always bickering among themselves, and Peter is always sticking his foot in his mouth. What such teachings really say is that these twelve men came from simple and common backgrounds. The time has come, however, to set the record straight that these were great men of faith before Jesus took them to a new level. Consider these facts:
As you can see, these twelve men demonstrated a remarkable faith, a faith beyond what we commonly see. Jesus was not satisfied with this level. Here is the level He wanted from them:
When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, because he is epileptic and suffers terribly, for he often falls into the fire and into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they were not able to heal him.” Jesus answered, “You unbelieving and perverse generation! How much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I endure you? Bring him here to me.” Then Jesus rebuked the demon and it came out of him, and the boy was healed from that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why couldn’t we cast it out?” He told them, “It was because of your little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:14-20).
Note Jesus’ words, “the littleness of your faith.” He was saying this to men who left everything to be there and who had already seen and done powerful things. Jesus was holding them to a higher standard. Look at this story:
On that day, when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So after leaving the crowd, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat, and other boats were with him. Now a great windstorm developed and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was nearly swamped. But he was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. They woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?” So he got up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Be quiet! Calm down!” Then the wind stopped, and it was dead calm. And he said to them, “Why are you cowardly? Do you still not have faith?” They were overwhelmed by fear and said to one another, “Who then is this? Even the wind and sea obey him!” (Mark 4:35-41, emphasis mine).
Again note Jesus’ words, “Do you still not have faith?” Jesus was never satisfied with the faith the disciples showed. This was not because He was being overly critical, but that He wanted them to do great things. This was Jesus’ goal:
Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, but if you do not believe me, believe because of the miraculous deeds themselves. I tell you the solemn truth, the person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it (John 14:11-14).
The disciples demonstrated great faith in leaving everything and sticking beside Jesus in good times and bad. If Jesus had praised that, it would have ended there. Instead, He counted it almost as nothing, and merely the starting point. Instead, He challenged them to believe truly great things.
The message for us is obvious. Let us consider the faith we have today as nothing, and ask Him to create in our inner selves, a faith that can do anything in His name.
Before His arrest, Jesus spoke these words to the remaining eleven:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you. My Father is honored by this, that you bear much fruit and show that you are my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my love. If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete. My commandment is this—to love one another just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that remains, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. This I command you—to love one another” (John 15:5-17).
Jesus made it clear that these words were for all who believe all through the centuries, but His closest associates heard it first. Certainly there are aspects of Jesus’ words here that apply most to the eleven, “I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father.” This is their diploma for leaving everything and pressing on for more faith: an intimate friendship with Jesus, and through Jesus, with the Father.
Obviously, my goal for this paper is to nudge contemporary Christians to lay down more of their lives and press towards greater faith. You may be someone like Peter, brought up in a believing home, living a good life, but fearful of His holiness. You may be someone like Matthew with a lot in life for which you are ashamed. He calls you both. It is only those who claim worth before Him that have cause to fear. Get to know Him, and get to know His worth. Lay aside everything He asks you, and follow His leading. Let Him challenge you to greater faith. Seek His voice and listen.
The disciples in Jesus’ day had an enviable opportunity. They could hear the tone in His voice, watch His hand gestures, and react to His posture and other body language cues. We do not have that today, and that actually is a better thing. On earth, Jesus was limited by geography. After His ascension, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to fill and empower us to serve His Kingdom on earth. As Luke writes in the opening words of Acts, “I wrote the former account, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1). Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus continues “to do and teach,” and that means through us.
347 This is the edited manuscript of a message delivered by Donald E. Curtis at Community Bible Chapel, on January 20, 2002. Don is an elder at Cobb Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kennesaw, Georgia. You can e-mail comments and questions to his weblog at http://nbchesed.blogspot.com
348 The Greek word is “jacobo” and would normally be translated as the name Jacob. Indeed, whenever this name refers to an Old Testament figure, it is translated as Jacob. Only for the New Testament is the name changed to read “James.” In all other language translations, the name is translated as Jacob or its equivalent. I have been unable to find the genesis of this convention in the English Bible.
349 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
350 The Greek word here means “knees,” but some translations read “feet.” Peter would have been at Jesus’ feet were the boat not full of fish. Peter was face-on-fish as low as he could get to express his dismay over the miracle and Jesus’ presence.
351 Predicated on the fact that he was trusted to keep the money for the band.
352 John Haggai, Lead On (Waco: Word Books, 1986), p. 4.
This past year was a disaster for the employees of a major U.S. company. Their retirement funds were totally invested in company stock. According to the reports they received from the company, everything was going very well. One can only imagine what plans some employees had for their retirement. And then, suddenly, it was revealed that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. The company stock was worthless, their retirement funds were wiped out, and they were out of a job. To add insult to injury, some of those who managed these funds (or had access to them) ended up with millions of dollars. You can imagine the disappointment and the sense of loss these employees felt. Many were wiped out financially, and some were too old to start over.
The disillusionment of these employees is nothing compared to that of the disciples after the crucifixion of their Master, Jesus Christ. Jesus had promised them great rewards in heaven, and they had forsaken almost everything to follow Him:
23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 The disciples were astonished at these words. But again Jesus said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 They were even more astonished and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and replied, “This is impossible for man, but not for God; everything is possible for God.” 28 Peter began to speak to him, “Look, we have left everything to follow you!” 29 Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, there is no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel 30 who will not receive in this age a hundred times as much—homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fields, all with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life (Mark 10:23-30).379
The disciples had given up their jobs and left friends and family behind to follow Jesus. They had invested three years of their lives in Jesus, assuming that their sacrifices would pay off before long. They had not only entrusted their lives to Jesus in terms of temporal blessings, they had cast their lot with Jesus for their eternal future. Then, suddenly, Jesus was dead; betrayed by Judas, condemned unjustly by the Sanhedrin, and executed by the Rome. We can sense their utter discouragement in Luke’s account:
17 Then he said to them, “What are these matters you are discussing so intently as you walk along?” And they stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 He said to them, “What things?” “The things concerning Jesus the Nazarene,” they replied, “a man who, with his powerful deeds and words, proved to be a prophet before God and all the people; 20 and how our chief priests and rulers handed him over to be condemned to death, and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. Not only this, but it is now the third day since these things happened. 22 Furthermore, some women of our group amazed us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23 and when they did not find his body, they came back and said they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him” (Luke 24:17-24).
The disciples’ response to the Savior’s death is somewhat surprising because we expect them to anticipate the resurrection of their Master. Why would they not possess at least the same measure of the “resurrection faith” that we see in the Old Testament saints? We know, for example, that Abraham’s faith was a “resurrection faith”:
16 For this reason it is by faith so that it may be by grace, with the result that the promise may be certain to all the descendants—not only to those who are under the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all 17 (as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”). He is our father in the presence of God whom he believed—the God who makes the dead alive and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do. 18 Against hope Abraham believed in hope with the result that he became the father of many nations according to the pronouncement, “so will your descendants be.” 19 Without being weak in faith, he considered his own body as dead (because he was about one hundred years old) and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. 20 He did not waver in unbelief about the promise of God but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. 21 He was fully convinced that what God promised he was also able to do. 22 So indeed it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. 23 But the statement it was credited to him was not written only for Abraham’s sake, 24 but also for our sake, to whom it will be credited, those who believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was given over because of our transgressions and was raised for the sake of our justification (Romans 4:16-25).
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He had received the promises, yet he was ready to offer up his only son. 18 God had told him, “Through Isaac descendants will carry on your name,” and he reasoned that God could even raise him from the dead, and in a sense he received him back from there (Hebrews 11:17-19).
Abraham was not the exception in this matter of “resurrection faith;” he was the rule. Both Job and Daniel believed in the resurrection of the dead:
25 As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that as the last he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God, 27 whom I will see for myself, and whom my own eyes will behold, and not another. My heart grows faint within me (Job 19:25-27).
2 Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake— some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence. 3 But the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavenly expanse. And those bringing many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever (Daniel 12:2-3).
Many Old Testament texts teach or imply that there will be a resurrection of the dead.380 As we shall see, the apostles would later on teach that the Old Testament not only foretold the resurrection of our Lord, but actually required it. This text in Psalm 16, for example, foretold the resurrection of our Lord:
10 You will not abandon me to Sheol;
you will not allow your faithful follower to see the Pit.
11 You lead me in the path of life;
I experience absolute joy in your presence;
you always give me sheer delight (Psalm 16:10-11).
As a result, many of the Jews of Jesus’ day believed in the resurrection of the dead. We see this resurrection faith in the words of Martha, spoken while she was mourning the death of her brother Lazarus:
23 Jesus replied, “Your brother will come back to life again.” 24 Martha said, “I know that he will come back to life again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies” (John 11:23-25).
6 Then when Paul noticed that part of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, he shouted out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead!” 7 When he said this, an argument began between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.) 9 There was a great commotion, and some experts in the law from the party of the Pharisees stood up and protested strongly, “We find nothing wrong with this man. What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” (Acts 23:6-9)
Hard as it may be to believe, wicked Herod believed in the possibility of the resurrection of the dead:
1 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard reports about Jesus, 2 and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead! And because of this, miraculous powers are at work in him” (Matthew 14:1-2).
It was not just a few Old Testament saints who believed in the resurrection; it was all of them. Biblical faith, saving faith (Old Testament or New), is a resurrection faith:
13 These all died in faith without receiving the things promised, but they saw them in the distance and welcomed them and acknowledged that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth. 14 For those who speak in such a way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 In fact, if they had been thinking of the land that they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they aspire to a better land, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:13-16).
It is crystal clear in the Gospels that Jesus believed in the resurrection of the dead, and that He taught that the dead would be raised. In Matthew 22, we read:
23 The same day Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to him. And they asked him, 24 “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children he left his wife to his brother. 26 The second did the same, and the third, down to the seventh. 27 Last of all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her.” 29 Jesus answered them, “You are deceived, because you don’t know the scriptures or the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 31 Now as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” 33 When the crowds heard this, they were amazed at his teaching (Matthew 22:23-33). 381
It is important to observe that while the Sadducees asked Jesus a question about the resurrection, they did not personally believe in the resurrection. Jesus points out their hypocrisy. We should see, however, that the only reason the Sadducees would ask a question about the resurrection (while not believing in it themselves) is because they knew that Jesus believed and taught that there was a general resurrection of the dead. When Jesus answered their question, He rebuked them for their hypocrisy, and for their unbelief and ignorance about the nature of the resurrection (i.e., when we are resurrected, we will not marry nor give in marriage). Jesus told them that they were deceived, “not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God” (verse 29). In other words, Jesus affirmed the fact that there would be a resurrection of the dead, whether the Sadducees believed it or not.
Jesus also taught that there would be a future resurrection, at which time the righteous would be rewarded:
12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you host a dinner or a banquet, don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors so you can be invited by them in return and get repaid. 13 But when you host an elaborate meal, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 Then you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14, emphasis mine).
Jesus taught that the resurrection was a time for rewards for the righteous, but it was also a time of judgment for the wicked:
28 “Do not be amazed at this, because a time is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and will come out—the ones who have done what is good to the resurrection resulting in life, and the ones who have done what is evil to the resurrection resulting in condemnation” (John 5:28-29).
Jesus could certainly teach on the resurrection with authority because He raised the dead. Jesus was regarded as one who “taught with authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:29), and rightly so. He raised the widow’s dead son (Luke 7:12-15) and the synagogue official’s dead daughter (Matthew 9:18-26).
When Jesus sent His twelve disciples out, He commanded them to raise the dead:
7 As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give” (Matthew 10:7-8).
When John the Baptist entertained doubts and sent some of his disciples to Jesus, seeking confirmation that He was the promised Messiah, Jesus responded:
4 Jesus answered them, “Go tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news proclaimed to them” (Matthew 11:4-5).
The most spectacular raising was that of our Lord’s friend, Lazarus, just a few days before His final appearance in Jerusalem (John 11:1-44). I think it is therefore safe to say that Jesus underscored His teaching on the resurrection of the dead with numerous “raisings” during His earthly ministry. No wonder people found the doctrine of a future resurrection believable.
Jesus not only taught that there would be a future general resurrection of the dead, He foretold His own death and resurrection after three days. He gave a veiled announcement of His resurrection very early in His ministry at the time He cleansed the temple in Jerusalem:
18 So then the Jewish leaders responded, “What sign can you show us, since you are doing these things?” 19 Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” 20 Then the Jewish leaders said to him, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and are you going to raise it up in three days?” 21 But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 So after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the saying that Jesus had spoken (John 2:18-22).
After the great confession, Jesus spoke very plainly of His arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection:
21 From that time on Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised (Matthew 16:21).
“They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised.” And they became greatly distressed (Matthew 17:23).
27 Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ 28 But after I am raised, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” 29 Peter said to him, “Even if they all fall away, I will not!” (Mark 14:27-28)
“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22).
“They will flog him severely and kill him. Yet on the third day he will rise again” (Luke 18:33).382
I find it interesting that in Matthew 17:23 we are told that when Jesus spoke of His death and resurrection three days later, the disciples “became greatly distressed.” In Mark 14:27-28, Jesus spoke again of His death and resurrection. One might expect that the disciples would find Jesus’ words concerning His resurrection comforting. Instead, we find that this prophecy of His resurrection is virtually ignored. The disciples (Peter at the very least) fastened on the Savior’s prophecy of His death and of their being scattered. I think the first words of Jesus’ prophecy were so shocking, so distressing, that they failed to hear the rest of what the Lord spoke. Had they believed Jesus would rise three days after His death, they would probably have responded differently. At this point, I do not think they refused to believe Jesus; they simply did not hear what He was saying.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is even more specific about His death and resurrection. He says that it is He who will lay down His life, and it is He who will raise it up again, and this in obedience to the “commandment” of the Father.
“No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down of my own free will. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back again. This commandment I received from my Father” (John 10:18).
What Jesus told His disciples privately, He also openly told those who opposed Him. When Jesus was challenged to give a sign to prove His authority, He spoke of His resurrection. The first time, He did so in a veiled statement that neither His enemies nor His disciples understood at the time (John 2:13-22). But as time passed, Jesus became much more direct in speaking of His resurrection. In Matthew 12, Jesus staked His identity and authority as Messiah on His ability to rise from the dead:
38 Then some of the experts in the law along with some Pharisees answered him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:38-40).
There is no doubt that the enemies of our Lord understood that He claimed He would rise from the dead in three days:
62 The next day (which is after the day of preparation) the chief priests and the Pharisees assembled before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember that while that deceiver was still alive he said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give orders to secure the tomb until the third day. Otherwise his disciples may come and steal his body and say to the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “Take a guard of soldiers. Go and make it as secure as you can.” 66 So they went with the soldiers of the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone (Matthew 27:62-66).
This text forces us to acknowledge that there are times when some unbelievers may grasp things that some Christians may not. How is it that the enemies of our Lord can be more perceptive concerning our Lord’s resurrection than the disciples? We should be clear about just what the enemies of our Lord believed. They believed that Jesus claimed He would rise from the grave in three days. This in no way suggests that they believed He would actually do so! Their fear was that His disciples would steal Jesus’ body, so that it would appear that He had risen from the dead, thus fulfilling His prophecy. Sometimes it is easier for unbelievers to grant that the Bible teaches a particular doctrine than it is for Christians. Part of the reason is that while unbelievers may grant that the Bible teaches something, they feel no obligation to believe it. Christians are sometimes reluctant to “see” certain teachings in the Bible because they know that they must not only believe them, but also act on them.
What is most troubling for me is the realization that while our Lord’s enemies remembered and understood Jesus’ claim to rise again, His own disciples seemed to completely forget His words concerning His resurrection. There is an amazing dullness on the part of the disciples at this point:
9 Early on the first day of the week, after he arose, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had driven out seven demons. 10 She went out and told those who were with him, while they were mourning and weeping. 11 And when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe. 12 After this he appeared in a different form to two of them while they were on their way to the country. 13 They went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. 14 Then he appeared to the eleven themselves, while they were eating, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen him resurrected (Mark 16:9-14, emphasis mine).
John explains to us why the disciples were so reluctant to believe the reports of Jesus’ resurrection:
8 Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first came in, and he saw and believed. 9 ( For they did not yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.) 10 So the disciples went back to their homes (John 20:8-10, emphasis mine).
The disciples’ dullness is providential. Their reluctance to believe in the Lord’s resurrection reminds me of Elijah pouring more water on the altar, so that when God sets the sacrifice ablaze it will clearly be recognized as God’s work (see 1 Kings 18:16ff.). The fact that the disciples themselves were reluctant to believe in our Lord’s resurrection makes the reality of the resurrection all the more forceful. This is not something the disciples wanted to believe and were quick to believe; they thought His resurrection impossible, and yet they were finally overwhelmed by the evidence. The disciples’ dullness and refusal to believe in the Lord’s resurrection is further proof that the resurrection did occur.
The disciples were not psychologically predisposed to believe Jesus had risen from the dead. All the evidence shows that they were completely devastated by the Savior’s death, with no thought of His resurrection. The disciples were just like Thomas in that they had to be convinced that Jesus was indeed alive:
24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he replied, “Unless I see the wounds from the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the wounds from the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will never believe it!” 26 Eight days later the disciples were again together in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and examine my hands. Extend your hand and put it into my side. Do not continue in your unbelief, but believe.” 28 Thomas replied to him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:24-28)
The only difference between Thomas and the other ten was that he had not been present when Jesus had appeared to the ten earlier (see John 20:19-23).
We have already seen that the refusal of the disciples to believe Jesus had been raised was due to the fact that they did not as yet believe the Scriptures concerning the necessity of His resurrection (John 20:9). Luke’s words enable us to understand the basis for the disciples’ change of mind – they came to see the resurrection as an Old Testament prophecy, and thus as a necessity:
45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it stands written that the Messiah would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:45-47, emphasis mine).
The scriptural necessity of the Lord’s resurrection was underscored by “many convincing proofs,” witnessed by many, taking place over many days:
To the same apostles also, after his suffering, with many convincing proofs he presented himself alive. He was seen by them over a forty-day period and spoke about matters concerning the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).
3 For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as though to one born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).
One is struck by the dramatic change that occurs in the disciples of our Lord after they are convinced of His resurrection. Peter demonstrates this amazing “about face” when we compare his denial of our Lord before His crucifixion and his declaration of the gospel after Christ’s ascension and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost:
54 Then they arrested Jesus, led him away, and brought him into the high priest’s house. But Peter was following at a distance. 55 When they had made a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. 56 Then a slave girl, seeing him as he sat in the firelight, stared at him and said, “This man was with him too!” 57 But Peter denied it: “Woman, I don’t know him.” 58 Then a little later someone else saw him and said, “You are one of them too.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” 59 And after about an hour still another insisted, “Certainly this man was with him, because he too is a Galilean.” 60 But Peter said, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” At that moment, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. 61 Then the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter, and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before a rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” 62 And he went outside and wept bitterly (Luke 22:54-62).
18 And they called them in and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, “Whether it is right before God to obey you rather than God, you decide, 20 for it is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:18-20)
Once they were convinced, the apostles looked upon themselves as “witnesses of Christ’s resurrection”:
“This Jesus God raised up, and we are all witnesses of it” (Acts 2:32).
“You killed the Originator of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this fact we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15).
30 “The God of our forefathers raised up Jesus, whom you seized and killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him to his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses of these events, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:30-32).
39 “We are witnesses of all the things he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him up on the third day and caused him to be seen, 41 not by all the people, but by us, the witnesses God had already chosen, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to warn them that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:39-42).
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead became a central and indispensable part of the gospel they proclaimed:
22 “Israelite men, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man clearly attested to you by God with powerful deeds, wonders, and miraculous signs that God performed through him among you, just as you yourselves know— 23 this man, who was handed over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you executed by nailing him to a cross at the hands of Gentiles. 24 But God raised him up, having released him from the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held in its power (Acts 2:22-24).
36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know beyond a doubt that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.” 37 Now when they heard this, they were acutely distressed and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “What should we do, brothers?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.” 40 With many other words he testified and exhorted them saying, “Save yourselves from this perverse generation!” (Acts 2:36-40)
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a transforming truth for the disciples and for those who believed their message. It is no less important for men today. Let us conclude by considering some of the implications of the resurrection for men today.
(1) The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the verification and vindication of Jesus’ message and ministry – it proved that Jesus is God’s promised Messiah, Who came to forgive men of their sins, and to provide them with the gift of eternal life. If the resurrection is not true, then our faith is vain:
12 Now if Christ is being preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty. 15 Also, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified against God that he raised Christ from the dead, when in reality he did not raise him, if indeed the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. 18 Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. 19 For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).
(2) The resurrection is an essential part of the gospel. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation.
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we preach), 9 because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:8-9).
(3) The resurrection is foolishness to the unbeliever, and thus there will be those false teachers who deny the resurrection.
17 So he was addressing the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles in the synagogue and in the marketplace every day those who happened to be there. 18 Also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him, and some were asking, “What does this foolish babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods.” (They said this because he was proclaiming the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) (Acts 17:17-18)
30 Therefore, although God has overlooked such times of ignorance, he now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he designated, having provided proof to all by raising him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We will hear you again about this” (Acts 17:30-32).
16 But avoid profane chatter, because those occupied with it will stray further and further into ungodliness, 17 and their message will spread its infection like gangrene. Hymenaeus and Philetus are in this group. 18 They have strayed from the truth by saying that the resurrection has already occurred, and they are undermining some people’s faith (2 Timothy 2:16-18).
(4) The resurrection of Jesus Christ is foundational to the spiritual life of the Christian. The central passage here is Romans 6-8. In Romans 6 Paul argues that the death and resurrection of our Lord necessitates that we die to our old way of life, and that we live a new life in Christ:
1 What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in new life. 5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 (For someone who has died has been freed from sin.) 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he is never going to die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:1-11).
The death and resurrection of Christ requires that we die to sin and live to righteousness, as we see above. The problem with this is that we are incapable of living a righteous life in the power of the flesh. Paul makes this clear in Romans 7:
14 For we know that the law is spiritual—but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin. 15 For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate. 16 But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. 18 For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me. 21 So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. 23 But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:14-24)
The solution to the Christian’s dilemma is to walk in the Spirit. As Paul puts it, the Christian’s problem is not in being willing to obey God and live a righteous life; the problem is that sin is more powerful than our flesh, and so we experience constant defeat when we walk in the flesh. The answer to Paul’s question, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24), is found in Romans 8:
1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit. 6 For the outlook of the flesh is death, but the outlook of the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is your life because of righteousness. 11 Moreover if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies alive through his Spirit who lives in you (Romans 8:1-11, emphasis mine).
We are dead insofar as our ability to live the Christian life is concerned. Our flesh will always be overpowered by sin. But God has provided the means by which we can live a new kind of life. His provision is the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit Who raised the dead body of Jesus Christ to life, and it is the same Spirit Who indwells every Christian. The Holy Spirit will raise our dead bodies to life, so that we can live a life that is pleasing to God. Who can deliver us from our “body of death”? The same Spirit that delivered the dead body of our Lord from death.
(5) The resurrection of Jesus Christ plays an important role in evangelism. We have seen that the doctrine of the resurrection is foolishness to unbelievers. In spite of this, the Holy Spirit uses the resurrection of Christ to play a powerful role in convincing and converting the lost:
7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I am going away. For if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong concerning sin and righteousness and judgment—9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; 11 and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned” (John 16:7-11, emphasis mine).
The empty tomb of our Lord is a powerful witness to the validity of His claims and of the gospel He preached. Jesus told His disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit, who would convince the lost of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He convicts of sin because men do not believe in Jesus. He convicts of Christ’s righteousness because the grave of our Lord is empty, and because Jesus is now in heaven. God would not allow Jesus into heaven unless He were righteous. And so the Holy Spirit drives home the message of the empty tomb. The resurrection of Jesus is a powerful witness to the truth of the gospel.
(6) The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is our assurance that we, too, will rise from the dead and live eternally in heaven with Him. Thus, we need not fear death, and we can be bold in proclaiming the good news of the gospel.
Now God indeed raised the Lord and he will raise us by his power (1 Corinthians 6:14).
13 But since we have the same spirit of faith as that shown in what has been written, “I believed; therefore I spoke,” we also believe, therefore we also speak. 14 We do so because we know that the one who raised up Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus and will bring us with you into his presence (2 Corinthians 4:13-14).
14 Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), 15 and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15).
(7) The resurrection of Jesus Christ is also our assurance that we will be reunited with our believing loved ones, in the presence of our Lord.
13 But since we have the same spirit of faith as that shown in what has been written, “I believed; therefore I spoke,” we also believe, therefore we also speak. 14 We do so because we know that the one who raised up Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus and will bring us with you into his presence (2 Corinthians 4:13-14, emphasis mine).
13 Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. 15 For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord always. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).
Our Lord has risen from the grave, and He now is in heaven, at the right hand of the Father. But He is going to return for His own, and when He does, we will be caught up in the air to spend all eternity with our Lord, and with those whom we love who love Him.
(8) The resurrection of our Lord is also a strong word of warning for those who have rejected Him as the Savior of the world. Peter boldly stood before those who had crucified His Lord, warning them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. This same Jesus, Peter preached, would return to judge His enemies. It is a sobering thought. The day of salvation is now. If you have never trusted in Jesus Christ as God’s Son, and His only provision for your sins, I urge you to call upon Him now for the forgiveness of your sins and the gift of eternal life.
378 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 78 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Robert L. Deffinbaugh on May 5, 2002.
379 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
380 See, for example, Deuteronomy 32:39; 2 Kings 13:20-21; Isaiah 26:19; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Hosea 13:14.
381 See also Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40.
382 See also Matthew 20:19; 21:38-42; 26:32; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 14:28.
Chuck Swindoll shared this story in one of his messages. In the northeastern United States, codfish are a big commercial business. There is a market for eastern cod all over, especially in the sections farthest removed from the northeastern coastline. But the public demand poses a problem for the shippers. At first, they froze the cod, then shipped them elsewhere, but freezing them takes away much of the flavor. So they experimented with shipping them alive in tanks of seawater. But that proved even worse. Not only did the cod still lose their flavor, but they became soft and mushy. The texture was seriously affected.
Finally, some creative person solved the problem in a most innovative manner. The codfish were placed in the tank of water along with their natural enemy – the catfish. From the time the cod left the East coast until it arrived at its western-most destination, those ornery catfish chased the cod all over the tank. And, you guessed it, when the cod arrived at the market, they were as fresh as when they were first caught. There was no loss of flavor nor was the texture affected. If anything, they were better than before.
What is true about the codfish is also true about the group of people who call themselves disciples of Christ. The group is known as “the church.”
Have you ever wondered what the dictionary meaning of the word “church” is? I suppose being a native English speaker you have always known the meaning of that word and have never felt the need to look it up in a dictionary. But not having English as my mother tongue, I often need to use the dictionary. If you look up the word in a dictionary, yes, even a secular dictionary, it will tell you that the word “church” is derived from the Greek word “kyriako,” meaning “of the Lord,” “belonging to the Lord,” or “a group of people that belong to the Lord.”
Now, if the church belongs to the Lord, He could have arranged it in such a way that the church could have thrived in very friendly environments and could have lived happily ever after until taken up to be with Him for eternity.
But for obvious reasons, the Lord put the church in a hostile environment in the world. And from the very inception of the church, she has faced opposition and has gone through, and continues to go through, some extremely difficult circumstances. And through it all, not only has she survived, but she has thrived and grown by leaps and bounds, and the gates of hell have not been, and will never be able to, prevail against her.
Even before the inception of the New Testament church, the Old Testament group of the faithful went through the same experience. The author of the Book of Hebrews provides a summary statement of that fact:
… and others experienced mocking and scourging, yes also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground (Hebrews 11:36-38).384
Jesus often talked about the persecution of the Old Testament saints, “Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them” (Luke 11:47).
Similarly, Stephen laid the same charge on the Jews who stoned him to death:
…You are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become (Acts 7:51-52).
Jesus repeatedly warned His disciples that they would be persecuted and face severe opposition to their witnessing. Right at the onset of His ministry, He told them:
Blessed are you when men revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:11-12).
Speaking about the things to come, He told the disciples:
But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for My name’s sake (Luke 21:12).
And to His disciples in the Upper Room discourse:
Remember the word that I said to you, “A slave is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. These things I have spoken to you, that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogues; but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God (John 15:20; 16:1-2).
And so, now it comes just as they were forewarned, just as it happened in the Old Testament. The heart of the man is the same throughout all generations. They embrace the evil and oppose the good, and as Jesus said: “And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me” (John 16:3).
The first recorded incident of the opposition of the gospel is the arrest and trial of Peter and John for preaching the gospel, after they healed the lame beggar who was begging in front of the temple gate.
The Holy Sprit had come, and the disciples were filled with power and with a burning zeal to preach the gospel. Thousands had been saved, and all the people were filled with awe; the disciples were praising God and finding favor with all the people. “Many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles” (Acts 2:41, 42, 47).
A particular miracle noted is that of healing the lame beggar. Notice Peter’s words: “I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you; in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene walk” (Acts 3:6). “And with a leap, he stood upright and began to walk; and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God” (Acts 3:8). And people “were filled with wonder and amazement at what happened” (Acts 3:10). This leads in to Peter’s second sermon and Peter and John’s arrest in chapter four.
Why are they arrested? As Peter mentioned “… for a benefit done to a sick man” (Acts 4:9). This reminds us of the similar situation that Jesus was in. When Jesus asserted His deity and the Jews took up stones to stone Him, He asked, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning me?” (John 10:31-32).
This shows that persecution of the church is usually not for the bad things done. Most of the time it is good things that bring opposition. One of the reasons for this is that the evil works of the world are put in the light of the righteous works of the church. As Jesus said:
And this is the Judgment that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed (John 3:19-20).
Of course, the other main reason for the world persecuting the church is that they have not known the Savior or the Father Who sent Him to the world. As Jesus told His disciples:
But all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me (John.15:22).
And,
These things I have spoken to you, that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue; but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me (John.16:1-3).
Why do you think the United States is hated by many of the nations around the world? Are they jealous of our prosperity? Many of the nations that hate us most are some of the richest nations in the world. The Muslim nations in the Middle East wallow in luxury. They import labor from countries like India and technology from countries like the United States and get all their work done while they spend most of their time merry making and partying. The lavish lifestyle of many of the people in these oil-producing nations is probably not much different from that of King Solomon.
Or, do they hate us because, like Big Brother, we go around the world doing good? No, they like our billions of dollars of foreign aid. Many of the people from the United States are involved in foreign nations working in community development projects and running leprosariums. The natives love to receive all the help they can get and at the same time hate the people who give it. Why?
The main reason the United States is hated by many nations around the world is that in spite of our spiritual and moral bankruptcy, most of the people around the world consider this nation a Christian nation. They don’t hate us for the good we do, but they hate us because, from their perspective, it is done in the Name of Jesus, for our love for the Lord, and as Jesus spelled out, “these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me” (John.16:3).
The response to the arrest of Peter and John is noteworthy. First of all, they respond to the authorities in boldness. When Peter and John are summoned before the authorities and commanded not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, their response is: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the Judge, for we cannot stop speaking what we have heard and seen” (Acts 4:18-20).
During another incident, Peter and the apostles are arrested and the Sanhedrin tells them: “We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name, and behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us” (Acts 5:28). Peter’s response is: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). This is the kind of response of the church throughout the Book of Acts.
Secondly, they prayed (Acts 4:24-30). First, they praised God for fulfilling His plan of man’s salvation through Jesus and then their prayer was: “And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Thy servants many speak Thy word with all confidence” (Acts 4:29).
Their prayer is not that the opposition would stop and they could live a peaceful life. Instead their prayer is that God will grant them boldness and confidence to speak His Word in spite of the opposition.
Another major event, and one of the most noteworthy concerning persecution, is Stephen’s death by stoning. Stephen’s sermon before he is killed reviews the extensive history of Israel’s rebellion and proofs from the Old Testament Scriptures about Jesus being Messiah. In no uncertain terms, he tells the Jews about their history of rebellion:
You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you now have become; you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it (Acts 7:51-53).
And immediately Stephen is stoned to death.
There is violent and widespread persecution of the church by Saul. After Stephen’s martyrdom, “a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem,” and “Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison” (Acts 8:1-3).
Saul’s hatred for Christians is seen in his determination to kill anybody associated with the name of Jesus:
Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem (Acts 9:1-2).
The disciples were fully aware of Saul’s intent and of the fact that he had official permission from the Jewish authorities (Acts 9:14, 21). Later Paul himself tells about his violent intent against Christians (Acts 22:5; 26:9-11).
After the Damascus road conversion experience, the violent persecutor Saul becomes a zealous supporter of the cause of Christ, and he becomes the persecuted Paul. Paul probably was one of those early Jewish Christians who suffered the most, and most of the persecution came from his own Jewish “brethren.” He himself later recounts in one of his letters:
Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as if insane) I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten time without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure (2 Corinthians 11:23-27).
Much of these are physical hardships and natural disasters that he had faced. But he does mention imprisonments, repeated beatings, and receiving lashes, and being stoned by Jews and “false brethren.” Some of these incidents are found recorded in the Book of Acts (Acts 9:23; 16:22-23; 19:23ff)
It is interesting to note that much of the opposition to the church in the Book of Acts came from the Sadducees, through the Sanhedrin. Although there were Pharisees as members in the Sanhedrin, it was controlled by the Sadducees. Along with the priests and the captain of the temple, they arrested Peter and John and put them into prison (Acts 4). A little later they arrested Peter and other apostles and took counsel to kill them (5:17, 33). Their hostile attitude persisted throughout the Book of Acts. Sadducees were the ones who were involved in much of the opposition and persecution of Paul.
Although there were several leading Pharisees who became believers (e.g., Gamaliel), there is no record of a Sadducee being joined to the church.
One of the main reasons for their opposition was that the apostles preached the resurrection. Luke notes about the first incident of the apostles’ arrest: “being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Luke 4:2). But even after the arrest and threat from the Sanhedrin, “with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4:33).
Paul’s main theme of preaching was “Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18). In his sermon on Mars Hill, he said that God, “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” which created an uproar and division: “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer…” (Acts 17:32).
Testifying before the Sanhedrin, Paul said, “I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23:6), which created a big division in the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:7-9).
Testifying before Felix, Paul had the same theme of resurrection in focus:
But this I admit to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the Law, and that is written in the prophets; having a hope in God which these men cherish themselves, that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked (Acts 24:14-15).
Paul tells Felix that the Sanhedrin would not find anything else against him:
Other than for this one statement which I shouted out while standing among them, “For the resurrection of the dead I am on trial before you today” (Acts 24:21).
The attitude of the Roman government toward the church in the early history was out of indifference, at least most of the time. The main reason for this was that the Roman government in the early stages treated Christianity as a sect of Judaism and so it received an official sanction.
There is no involvement of the Roman authorities in the arrest of Peter and John (chapter 4) and subsequently in the arrest of Peter and other apostles (Acts 5:17-22). The Roman authorities are conspicuously absent in the incident of the great riot, which resulted in the death of Stephen even though under the Roman law the Sanhedrin did not have the authority to condemn someone to death (John 18:31).
In Paul’s case, there are many examples where the Roman authorities rescued him from the Jewish mob and in many places directly or indirectly helped him to carry out his missionary activities. Their attitude towards him is summed up in the statement Festus made to King Agrippa: “Jews appealed to me, both at Jerusalem and here, loudly declaring that he ought not to live any longer. But I found that he had committed nothing worthy of death” (Acts 25:24-25). Similarly, the Roman commander Claudius Lysias had written to Felix: “I found him to be accused over questions about their Law, but under no accusation deserving death or imprisonment” (Acts 23:29). Even when Paul is in the Roman prison he is given full freedom to meet with anybody he wants, and the Book of Acts ends with this note:
And he stayed two full years in his own rented quarters, and was welcoming all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered (Acts 28:30-31).
The persecution of the church under the brief rule of Herod Agrippa I was an exception to the general attitude of indifference by the Roman authorities (Acts 12:1-25). However, as Luke clearly indicates this was a gesture of favor to the Jewish authorities (Luke 12:1-3).
The untimely and unusual death of King Herod Agrippa I provides a good summary statement to what happens when the church is persecuted:
And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died. But the Word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied (Acts 12:23-24).
The persecution of the church in the beginning of church history took the church to the uttermost parts of the world. The church began in Jerusalem but did not remain confined there.
The initial persecution in chapters 4-7 took the church from Jerusalem to Samaria:
Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison. Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word. And Philip went down to the city of Samaria and began proclaiming Christ to them (Acts 8:3-5).
And then to the uttermost parts of the world; not only to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles:
So then those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose in connection with Stephen made their way to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except the Jews alone. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord (17:19-21).
French Arrington, in his commentary in the Book of Acts, notes:
Already persecution was making the church truly a missionary church. Rather than being by design, the first missionary work was the by-product of the persecution. The stoning of Stephen ushered in a fearless persecution of the church that scattered all the believers “throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles”. The fortunes of the church within Palestine can be traced in Acts 8:4-11:18 and then outside in Acts 11:19-28:31. So the church reached beyond Palestine proper and beyond Judaism and preached the gospel to the Samaritans, to the Ethiopian eunuch, and to Cornelius and his friends. These were the steps toward the wide inclusion of Gentiles, especially marked by the labors of believers who traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch (Acts 11:19).
As the church moved out from the confines of Jerusalem, it began to fulfill the Great Commission. The enemies of Christ sought to destroy the church but persecution only led to wider and fuller proclamation of the gospel. The believers could have been satisfied to settle down in Jerusalem, but God forced the church’s hand and used persecution to fulfill Acts 1:8.385
The repeated refrain in the Book of Acts is, “And the word of God kept on spreading and the number of the disciples continued to increase…” (6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20; 28:31).
And it continues to grow even today. There is no nation on the face of the earth where the gospel has not reached. Nothing can stop the progress of the church. John Rutherfurd writes:
Persecution showed that the Christian faith is immortal even in this world. Of Christ’s kingdom there shall be no end. “Hammer away, ye hostile bands, your hammers break, God’s altar stands”. Pagan Rome, Babylon the Great, as it is called by the apostle John in the Apocalypse, tried hard to destroy the church of Christ; Babylon was drunk with blood of the saints. God allowed this tyranny to exist for 300 years, and the blood of His children was shed like water. Why was it necessary that the church should have so terrible and so prolonged an experience of suffering? It was in order to convince the world that though the kings of the earth gather themselves against the Lord and against His Christ, yet all that they can do is in vain. God is in the midst of Zion; He shall help her, and that right early. The Christian church, as if suspended between heaven and earth, had no need of other help than that of the unseen and Divine hand, which at every moment held it up and kept it from falling. Never was the church more free, never stronger, never more flourishing, never more extensive in its growth, than in the days of persecution.386
Remember the definition of the word “church”? It is “belonging to the Lord.” If the church is the group of people that belongs to the Lord, there is no power that can destroy it. As Jesus Himself said to His disciples: “the gates of Hades shall not overpower it” (Matthew 16: 18), because as Nehemiah reminded his fellow wall-builders: “Remember the Lord who is great and awesome” (Nehemiah 4:14). Or, as Gamaliel advised the Jewish council: “If this plan or action should be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them; or else you may even be found fighting against God” (5:38-39). Paul encourages believers in his letter to the Romans, “If God is for us, who is against us?” and,
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:31, 38, 39).
1. Stand firm and continue to proclaim the gospel.
2. Keep in prayer and depend on the Lord’s power.
3. Be prepared with our spiritual armor, because:
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).
The church will stand, no matter what. But when the Son of Man comes, will He find us faithful in doing the work that He has left His church to do?
383 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 80 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Imanuel G. Christian on May 26, 2002.
384 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, ÓThe Lockman foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, La Habra, California.
385 French L. Arrington, The Acts of the Apostles: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988, pp.84-85).
386 John Rutherfurd, “Persecution” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1939, 1956, 4:2328).
We all are familiar with the term “pharisaism.” What is pharisaism? Let me tell you a story before I give you my own definition.
A teacher in a public school was teaching her third grade students about mammals in the sea. She mentioned that the whale is a large animal living in the sea. Even though it is one of the largest sea creatures, it has a very narrow throat, and so it cannot swallow an adult human being.
A girl in the class spoke up, “But it swallowed Jonah!”
“No,” the teacher said, “It just cannot swallow an adult human being. Because, as I said, even though it is a large animal, it has a very narrow throat and so cannot swallow an adult human being.”
The girl persisted, “Well, when I go to heaven, I will ask Jonah.”
“What if Jonah is not in heaven; what if he is in hell?” the teacher asked.
The girl’s response, “Then you ask him!”
You laughed, didn’t you? Why? Because you made a value judgment on that teacher. You made a value judgment that the girl was going to heaven, the teacher was going to hell and, more important than that, you will be in heaven, because unlike that teacher, you believe the Word of God.
This gives us the definition of pharisaism. Pharisaism is making a value judgment on someone else based on one’s own assumed secure position.
Of course, making a value judgment is not always wrong. We have to make value judgments all the time. Our value judgment on that teacher may not be wrong either. Because of the cultural environment we live in, because of the strong, humanistic philosophy in the field of education today, and because of the strong opposition towards evangelical Christianity today, we are probably safe to make such a value judgment.
However, what we have to be aware of is that before we make any value judgment on someone else, we have to examine how secure our own assumed position is. When it comes to pharisaism, sincerity really does not matter. You can be extremely sincere, and yet sincerely wrong!
The best examples of this, of course, are the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, the chief among them being the Pharisees, from whom the word “pharisaism” is coined.
Pharisees - The most known of the religious leaders were the Pharisees. They were a religious party. The word “Pharisee” literally means “Separatist,” the name given to them by their opponents because of their “holier than thou” haughty attitude. Their supreme aim was to strictly follow both the written and oral law.
They looked down upon the common people who did not have the slightest chance of fulfilling the complex requirements of the Law. However, the common people admired the Pharisees as representing the ideal followers of Judaism. The Pharisees had such a hold on the common people that no governing power could afford to disregard them.
However, not all Pharisees were bad. Many of them actually tried to promote true spirituality and piety. Some of the well known men of the New Testament were Pharisees such as, Nicodemus (John 3), Gamaliel (Acts 5:34), and Paul himself (Philippians 3:5). Some of them became members in the early church (Acts 6:7). Paul used the title of Pharisee with great respect and as a title of honor (Philippians 3:5).
What Jesus condemned was their hypocrisy, as evidenced by their pride in their outward observance of the law but inward spiritual void, and their arrogant belief that they were more religious than the rest. They in return accused Jesus of blasphemy (Luke 5:21), in league with the devil (Matthew 9:34), and of breaking the law (Matthew 12:2) which prompted them to seek to destroy Him (Matthew 12:14).
Scribes - Their job was to study and expound the law. The Pharisees were a religious party, whereas the scribes held religious office. Most of the scribes belonged to the Pharisaic party, whereas not all Pharisees were scribes.
Scribes claimed positions of first rank, sought public acclaim of the people and wore long and expensive robes.
They were the strongest opponents of Jesus because He refused to be bound by the letter of the law (John 5:10; Mark 7:7-13). They kept close watch over whatever He said and did (Mark 2:16; Luke 5:30; 15:2).
Sadducees - Unlike the scribes and Pharisees, the Sadducees were a political party favorable to the Roman government. They were priests of Jewish aristocratic class. All Sadducees were priests, but not all priests were Sadducees. They accepted only the written law and rejected the traditions of the Pharisees. They denied bodily resurrection (Mark 12:18; Luke 20:27; Acts 4:1-2; 23:8), the existence of the angels (Acts 23:8), and the sovereignty of God over human affairs, and believed that man is the master of his own destiny.
Because of these theological differences, they did not have a cordial relationship with the Pharisees. However, they joined with the Pharisees in confronting Jesus to show them a sign from heaven (Matthew 16:1). They also raised a question to Jesus about the resurrection (Matthew 22:23).
Most of the criticism of Jesus was directed against the Pharisees, except on one occasion when He warned the disciples of the leaven of the Sadducees (Matthew 16:6, 11).
Herodians - The Herodians were neither a religious sect nor a political party. They were Jews who supported the Herodian dynasty. They also joined with the Pharisees to oppose Jesus and attempted to trap Him by asking Him whether it was proper to pay tribute to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22 and Mark 12:13-17; 3:6 are the only mention of them in the New Testament.).
Although there were many theological and political differences among these four groups and they hated each other strongly, they united in a common cause against Jesus. However, Jesus’ most scathing rebuke was reserved for the scribes and the Pharisees who joined together as a group in hatred and strong opposition of Him.
Jesus’ major encounter with the Sadducees was only on one occasion when they raised the question about the resurrection and marriage (Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-38). Similarly, His only encounter with the Herodians was when they were incited by the Pharisees to raise the question about paying taxes to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17). There is no mention of the Herodians acting by themselves to oppose Jesus. But as mentioned above, His most scathing rebuke was reserved for the scribes and Pharisees.
Why? Humanly speaking, if anybody needed the message of God’s salvation, it would have been the Sadducees. Sadducees were the modern-day rationalists who did not see any need of God or the supernatural. Following a humanistic philosophy, they put man in the center of the universe as the master of his own destiny. If anybody needed the convincing proof of God and His revelation, it would have been the Sadducees.
Or, Jesus could have picked a fight with the Herodians. Like the present-day civil libertarians, they always argued for the separation of the state and organized religion. Or, like the modern day politicians, they tried to solve all the social and moral problems by the involvement of the government. If anybody needed to be taught that only God can solve the social problems and take care of the need of the human heart, it would have been the Herodians.
But Jesus reserved His most scathing rebukes for the Pharisees and the scribes who without doubt were the most religious people of His time. They followed the law extremely carefully and were guardians of the religious establishment of Jesus’ time. Like Paul before his conversion, they lived according to the strictest code of the Jewish religious system (Acts 26:5; Philippians 3:5).
However, in their close scrutiny of the Law and in their best human efforts to keep the minutest details of the Law, they became blind even to the clearest revelation of the living Word of God. They were very sincere, but sincerely wrong in the value judgments they made about Jesus.
In their confrontation with Jesus, two basic issues were involved: 1) His relation with God the Father; His claims of being equal with the Father, and 2) His relationship with man; His mingling with the lowest class of people in the society; He came to serve and not to be served.
The scribes and Pharisees opposed Jesus in relation to His claims of being equal with God, and they objected to every claim that He made about His being equal with the Father:
1) They objected to His use of the title “Son of God” for Himself. The Pharisees and scribes knew their theology well. When Jesus called God His Father, they knew what He meant was being of the same nature as God; i.e., equal with God, or God Himself:
But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:17-18).395
John MacArthur states in his Study Bible notes on John 1:17-47:
These verses reveal the ultimate reason Jesus confronted the Jews’ religious hypocrisy, i.e., the opportunity to declare who He was. This section is Christ’s own personal statement of His deity. As such, it is one of the greatest Christological discourses in Scripture. Herein Jesus makes 5 claims to equality to God: 1) He is equal with God in His person (vv. 17,18); 2) He is equal with God in His works (vv. 19, 20); 3) He is equal with God in His power and sovereignty (v. 21); 4) He is equal with God in His judgment (v. 22); and 5) He is equal with God in His honor (v. 23).396
At another occasion where Jesus again asserted His deity by calling Himself equal with God, the Jews picked up stones, accusing Him of blasphemy:
“My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?” The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God” (John 10:29-33).
2) They also objected to His using the title “Messiah” or “Christ.” Again, they knew their theology and rightly understood that by using this title Jesus was claiming Himself to be the promised heir of David, who will sit on David’s throne and rule for eternity. As the Gospel of Mark notes:
Again the high priest was questioning Him, and saying to Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” And Jesus said, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with clouds of heaven.” And tearing his clothes, the high priest said, “What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy; how does it seem to you?” And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death (Mark 14:61-64; also Matthew 26:63-66; Luke 22:67-71).
Another Messianic title that has been used for Jesus is “the Son of David.” It has been used 15 times in the 3 Synoptic gospels. Although Jesus Himself never used this title for Himself, the Pharisees and the scribes objected to other people using it for Him. During the triumphal entry, the crowd shouted “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord” (Matthew 21:9). Then Matthew notes,
“But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were crying out in the temple and saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they became indignant and said to Him, ‘Do You hear what these are saying?’” (Matthew 21:15, 16a).
What they meant to tell Him was that calling You the Son of David is blasphemy; why don’t You stop them?
3) The Pharisees and scribes objected to His claim of supremacy over and existence before Abraham. This was another occasion when they picked up stones to stone Him:
“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad.” The Jews therefore said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM.” Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the temple (John 8:56-59).
4) They objected to Jesus’ claim to have authority to forgive sins. Again, the scribes and the Pharisees knew their theology well. They rightly understood that only God, against Whom every sin has been committed, has the right to forgive sins and anyone who claims to have that right, or who tries to exercise that right, makes himself equal with God.
In the incident of the healing of the paralytic man, instead of telling him to rise up and walk, Jesus told him, “Your sins are forgiven you.” At this the scribes and the Pharisees began murmuring, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” And Jesus’ response was, “But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins ” (Matthew 9:6; also Mark 2:7-10; Luke 5:21-24).
5) Because Jesus kept asserting His deity and making claims about His being equal to God the Father, the scribes and the Pharisees demanded that He provide them some proofs, some miraculous signs that would undoubtedly show that He was really who He was claiming Himself to be: God incarnate.
As Matthew, Mark, and Luke note:
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given to it but the sign of Jonah, the prophet” (Matthew 12:38-39; also Matthew 16:4; Mark 8:11-12; Luke 11:29).
Similarly, John notes:
They said therefore to Him, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” They said therefore to Him, “What then do You do for a sign, that we may see, and believe You? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness; as it is written, He gave them bread out of heaven to eat” (John 6:28-31).
Like most of us, they wanted to see God in great and miraculous things, so when they saw God in the humble servant, even the great miracles Jesus performed did not matter, and they missed the blessing. And so they committed the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit:
Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Sprit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come (Matthew 12:31-32; also Mark 3:28-30; Luke 12:10).
So, the first of the two basic issues raised by the scribes and the Pharisees in their opposition to Jesus was their denial of the deity of Christ. They would not accept Christ’s claims as being equal to or one with God, the Father.
The second of the two most basic issues was about the way Christ related Himself to man.
1) He became a friend of “sinners.” Luke notes:
“Now all the tax-gatherers and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1-2).
This is where Jesus gave them various parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (prodigal) son, and spoke about “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).
All three of the Synoptic Gospels note the incident about Jesus having a feast at the house of Matthew, the tax collector turned disciple, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled about that:
And it came about that He was reclining at table at his [Matthew’s] house, and many tax-gatherers and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. And when the scribes and the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax-gatherers, they began saying to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax-gatherers and sinners?” And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:15-17; also Matthew 9:10-12; Luke 5:29-30).
2) He did not observe their traditions. Another issue the Pharisees and the scribes raised in opposition to Jesus was that in His social relations He did not observe their traditions. When they saw some of the disciples eating bread without first washing their hands according to the Jewish tradition, the Pharisees and the scribes questioned Jesus, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?” (Mark 7:5).
On one occasion when Jesus was invited to the home of a Pharisee and He began to eat without first washing His hands, “when the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that He had not ceremonially washed before the meal” (Luke 11:37-38).
3) He violated their Sabbath views. Many of His miracles of healing were performed on Sabbaths, and the religious leaders saw in it the blatant disregard to the sacred Law.
When the Pharisees saw the disciples pick heads of grain and eat on a Sabbath day, they questioned Jesus, “Behold Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath” (Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5).
When they saw a man with a withered hand in the synagogue, they asked Jesus, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? – in order that they might accuse Him” (Matthew 12:10). Jesus’ answer was:
What man shall there be among you, who shall have one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it, and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:11-12).
On another occasion when Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on a Sabbath day and healed a woman, “who for eighteen years had a sickness caused by a spirit; and she was bent double and could not straighten up at all,” Luke notes:
And the synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the multitude in response, “There are six days in which work should be done; therefore come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day. But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall, and lead him away to water him? And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:14-16).
At one time Jesus healed a man on a Sabbath day even at the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees:
And it came about when He went into a house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat break, that they were watching Him closely. And there, in front of Him was a certain man suffering from dropsy. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they kept silent. And He took hold of him, and healed him, and sent him away. And He said to them, “Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?” And they could make no reply to this (Luke 14:1-6).
The man lying sick at the pool of Bethesda was also healed on a Sabbath day and John notes, “For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath” (John 5:16).
The healing of the man born blind was performed on a Sabbath day (John 9:14), and some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath” (John 9:16).
It seems that Jesus intentionally performed many of the miracles of healing on the Sabbath day just to make a point with the religious leaders about their blindness of keeping the letter of the Law at the cost of what the Law really required. Jesus told the religious leaders in the context of the Sabbath dispute, “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent’” (Matthew 12:7 with Hosea 6:6). And, “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:12). He asked them,
“If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath that the Law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath? Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:23-24).
Another point Jesus wanted to make by repeatedly “breaking” the Sabbath is that He was above the Sabbath: “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5). By continuing His work on the Sabbath, He wanted to show Himself as equal with God. When the Jews were persecuting Him because He was doing these things on the Sabbath, His answer was:
“My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:17-18).
So, they questioned His deity, and they objected to His service to humanity. Thus they violated the “golden” rule:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37-40).
Prophesying to be wise, they became fools. Prophesying to be religious, they became godless. Prophesying to be righteous, they became evil. And the result was their outward show of religiosity with an inward void of spirituality.
For this reason Jesus condemned all their good works: their almsgiving (Matthew 6:2), their prayers (Matthew 6:5), their fasting (Matthew 6:16-18) and their tithing (Matthew 23:23). All these good works were performed for one purpose—to show off. All these practices brought pride for self and contempt for others, as seen in the incident of the tax-gatherer and the Pharisee praying together (Luke 18:9-14). But inside they were like white-washed tombs:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:27-28, and the rest of the chapter).
You see, all of us live with a Pharisee! It is not your spouse, not your neighbor, or a friend or a co-worker. No, it is not even your church leaders. The Pharisee we all live with is the capital “I.”
As we condemn pharisaism, let us be careful to see the log in our own eyes. What is our attitude in worship? In good works? What is our attitude towards others? Is it judgmental? Am I putting myself first in everything? Am I always finding faults in others and never accepting my own? Am I always critical and negative, or, loving, kind, and understanding?
The golden rule of the Old Testament, to love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself, was reiterated by Jesus in stark contrast to the pharisaism of the day (Matthew 22:37-40).
Remember the definition of pharisaism? It is making a value judgment on someone else based on my own assumed secure position. But before we make a value judgment on someone else, we need to check our own position to see how secure it is, because you may be very sincere, and yet sincerely wrong.
394 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 65 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Imanuel Christian on February 10, 2002.
395 Unless otherwise indicated, all the Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, ÓThe Lockman foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, La Habra, California.
396 John MacArthur, The John MacArthur Study Bible, (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1997) p. 1587.
On Paul’s second missionary journey, he had been divinely directed to Philippi, where a church was founded (Acts 16:11-40). From there Paul went to Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9), and then on to Berea (17:10-15). Next Paul journeyed to Athens (17:16-34), where his ministry was not as fruitful as it had been elsewhere, so after a time he moved on to Corinth, where he had a lengthy and fruitful ministry (18:1-18a).
When Paul arrived in Corinth, Silas and Timothy were not with him (18:5), but he did find a couple who were Jewish refugees from Rome – Aquila and Priscilla.388 Aquila was a tentmaker, like Paul, and so the two worked together at their trade. This seems to have limited the time and energy Paul could devote to preaching the gospel. Every Sabbath he would go to the synagogue and seek to persuade those attending to trust in Jesus as their Messiah. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia (18:5), they must have brought a contribution from the saints there (Philippians 4:15-16) because Paul was now able to devote himself completely to preaching the word.
Opposition to Paul’s preaching seems to have increased proportionately with the time he spent at the synagogue, and with the number of Jews and God-fearers who were coming to faith. When the Jews strongly opposed Paul’s teaching at the synagogue, he shook the dust from his garments and moved next door to the house of Titius Justus, a Gentile God-fearer, who seems to have come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah. Even so there were a number of Jewish converts, including Crispus, the president of the synagogue, who believed, along with his entire household.389
As the opposition to Paul and his ministry became more intense, the apostle must have wondered when it would be time to leave Corinth and to press on to other cities. It was at this critical moment in time that God gave Paul direct guidance by means of a night vision. This vision must have been similar to the night vision God gave to Paul in Troas, when He directed him to Macedonia (Acts 16:9-10). In this “Corinthians vision,” God encouraged Paul and instructed him to remain on in Corinth:
9 The Lord said to Paul by a vision in the night, “Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent, 10 because I am with you, and no one will assault you to harm you, because I have many people in this city.” 11 So he stayed there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them (Acts 16:9-11).390
Luke’s account of Paul’s ministry in Corinth is not strictly chronological. Verses 12-17 of Acts 18 come earlier in Paul’s 18-month ministry, rather than at the end. The incident with Gallio does not necessitate Paul’s departure (which occurs some time later, see 18:18); rather, it is the means by which God fulfills His promise in the night vision to protect Paul and to give him a fruitful ministry in Corinth. Gallio’s ruling enabled Paul to remain on in Corinth without being harmed, under Rome’s protection. I believe this is why Luke includes this historic decision in Acts.
Because of the success of the gospel in Corinth, the Jews were beginning to feel threatened. No doubt a number of them severed their ties with the synagogue and identified themselves with Paul, who had moved his headquarters next door. Finally, the Jews determined to solve their problem legally, taking their case before Gallio, ruler of the province of Achaia. Their strategy was to persuade Gallio to make a legal distinction between Paul’s gospel and Judaism, in effect declaring Christianity to be a cult. If Christianity were to be divorced from Judaism, then it would no longer enjoy the protection of the Roman government. Christians could then be persecuted and driven out of Achaia, with no interference from the Roman government.
It all seemed like a brilliant scheme. The Jews brought Paul before Gallio and accused him of preaching a gospel that was contrary to the law, presumably Jewish law (see verse 15), but if so, then also contrary to the protections afforded by Roman law. The charges against Paul were similar to the charges the Jewish religious leaders brought against our Lord (see Luke 23:1-2, 13-14). The case against Paul was formally presented, and the time had come for Paul to speak in his defense. But before Paul could speak a word, Gallio interrupted. He is a man who seems to dislike Jews, and so Paul’s accusers found no favor with him. Gallio could see through the whole scheme, and he wanted to have no part of it. To him this was just one more squabble among Jews about the interpretation of their laws. He refused to take sides or to give a ruling; he just drove them out of his court. In effect, he refused to hear the case, albeit not until after the prosecution had its chance to make its case. Frustrated and angry, the Jews turned on Sosthenes, the president of the synagogue. It must have been his idea to seek a ruling from Gallio, and it had completely backfired. The Jews had lost ground by this maneuver. As Sosthenes was being beaten by the others, Gallio looked on, without any sympathy for Sosthenes or for the rest of them.
Gallio’s refusal to grant the Jews’ request established a very important legal precedent. It was similar to the United States Supreme Court refusing to hear a case on appeal. The effect of refusing to hear a case is to uphold the decision of the lower court. Thus, Gallio’s decision established the gospel Paul preached as a sect of the Jewish faith, a religion approved and protected by Roman law. Paul was a Roman citizen, and one who practiced (and preached) a religion Rome recognized and protected. Consequently Paul and others who went about preaching the gospel did so with Rome’s protection. Notice how Paul’s Roman citizenship protected him later on in Acts:
22 And they [the hostile Jewish crowd] listened to him [Paul] up to this statement, and then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!” 23 And as they were crying out and throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust into the air, 24 the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, stating that he should be examined by scourging so that he might find out the reason why they were shouting against him that way. 25 And when they stretched him out with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned?” 26 And when the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and told him, saying, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman.” 27 And the commander came and said to him, “Tell me, are you a Roman?” And he said, “Yes.” 28 And the commander answered, “I acquired this citizenship with a large sum of money.” And Paul said, “But I was actually born a citizen.” 29 Therefore those who were about to examine him immediately let go of him; and the commander also was afraid when he found out that he was a Roman, and because he had put him in chains (Acts 22:22-29).
Isn’t it amazing the way God fulfills His promises? He promised Paul that he would not be harmed, and that there were many souls in Corinth who would come to faith. Who would have ever imagined that God would fulfill His promise by allowing the opposition to take Paul to court, and by the legal ruling of a Gentile ruler who despised Jews? This is nothing other than the handiwork of a sovereign God:
The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord like channels of water;
he turns it wherever he wants (Proverbs 21:1).
Luke tells us in Acts 18:18 that Paul remained on in Corinth “many more days.” It was this ruling that enabled him to do so.
Paul spent at least 18 months in Corinth (Acts 18:11). When he left Corinth the apostle to the Gentiles made his way to Ephesus, where his initial ministry was very brief (Acts 18:19-21). Paul later returned to Ephesus where he stayed for three years (Acts 19:8-10; 20:31). It was during Paul’s second stay in Ephesus that he seems to have received a report that things were not going all that well in the church at Corinth. In response, Paul wrote his first (“lost”) letter to the church at Corinth, but it was never recorded in Scripture.
9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 In no way did I mean the immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters, since you would then have to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who calls himself a Christian who is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or verbally abusive, or a drunkard, or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person (1 Corinthians 5:9-11, emphasis mine).
While still in Ephesus, Paul heard from “some of Chloe’s people” (1:11) that there were divisions and quarrels in the church at Corinth. Paul also heard that there was a serious case of immorality in the church (5:1), and that some of the Corinthian saints were taking their brothers to court (6:1ff.). In addition, Paul received questions concerning marriage (7:1), virgins (7:25), foods sacrificed to idols (8:1ff.), spiritual gifts (12:1ff.) and more. While still in Ephesus (16:8), Paul wrote this first preserved letter to the Corinthians. It seeks to address some of the major problems in the church.
10 I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree together, to end your divisions, and to be united by the same mind and purpose. 11 For members of Chloe’s household have made it clear to me, my brothers and sisters, that there are quarrels among you. 12 Now I mean this, that each of you is saying, “ I am with Paul,” or “ I am with Apollos,” or “ I am with Cephas,” or “ I am with Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:10-12, emphasis mine).
It would appear from Paul’s words here that the schisms actually involved some the apostles, or at least their followers. I believe that this is not the case at all. We can see this from Paul’s words in chapter 4:
6 I have applied these things to myself and Apollos because of you, brothers and sisters, so that through us you may learn “not to go beyond what is written,” so that none of you will be puffed up in favor of the one against the other (1 Corinthians 4:6, emphasis mine).
Some of the other translations make this more apparent:
6 Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might become arrogant in behalf of one against the other (1 Corinthians 4:6, NASB, emphasis mine).391
Paul supplied the names of his fellow-apostles to make his point without naming the real culprits at the moment. He may have decided to do this for several reasons. First, Paul wanted the Corinthians to identify these men themselves. Secondly, there might be others that Paul did not know of, or who might emerge after Paul wrote this letter. Perhaps, too, he was giving some of these folks the benefit of the doubt at this time.
Paul rebukes the Corinthians because there are divisions and quarrels in the church. This is the result of a religious snobbery associated by cliques that produced pride and conflict. Religious snobs want to be a part of a small group who think of themselves as the spiritual elite. They are proud and smug because of their associations, especially with their leader, and they look down upon those who are not in their group. The elitism evident in Corinth was based upon two things: (1) who they followed – who their leader was; and, (2) the message and method of their leader.
So then, no more boasting about mere mortals! For everything belongs to you (1 Corinthians 3:21).
I have applied these things to myself and Apollos because of you, brothers and sisters, so that through us you may learn “not to go beyond what is written,” so that none of you will be puffed up in favor of the one against the other (1 Corinthians 4:6, emphasis mine).
Note the element of pride here and also the element of divisiveness. The Corinthians were boasting of their close association with certain men, men they considered superior to others. By associating with them, the Corinthians felt superior to those who followed others. Taking pride in mere men was evil. If there was any boasting to be done, Paul reminded his readers that their boasting should be “in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31).
The Corinthians had come to think too highly of themselves and of their newly discovered gurus with their sophisticated message and methods. In their elitist snobbery, they had begun to look down upon Paul and the other true apostles:
8 Already you are satisfied! Already you are rich! You have become kings without us! I wish you had become kings so that we could reign with you! 9 For, I think, God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to die, because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to people. 10 We are fools for Christ, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, we are dishonored! 11 To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, poorly clothed, brutally treated, and without a roof over our heads. 12 We do hard work, toiling with our own hands. When we are verbally abused, we respond with a blessing, when persecuted, we endure, 13 when people lie about us, we answer in a friendly manner. We are the world’s dirt and scum, even now (1 Corinthians 4:8-13).
It was not just the men (and their magnetic personalities) in whom the Corinthians boasted; it was also their message and their style of presentation. From the broader context we can infer that these charmers proclaimed a modified message, one that would eventually be exposed as a false gospel (see 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 11). In stark contrast, Paul’s message was simple: Christ crucified. His method was to proclaim in clear and simple words the truths of the gospel, rather than to use sophisticated trickery or manipulation:
21 For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching. 22 For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, 23 but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. 24 But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength (1 Corinthians 1:21-25, emphasis mine).
1 When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come with superior eloquence or wisdom as I proclaimed the testimony of God. 2 For I decided to be concerned about nothing among you except Jesus Christ, as one who had been crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 4 My conversation and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).
In contrast to Paul’s message, method, and motives, the “charmers” attracted their followings by employing very different methods than those used by Paul and his fellow-apostles:
For we are not like so many others, hucksters who peddle the word of God for profit, but we are speaking in Christ before God as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God (2 Corinthians 2:17).
1 Therefore, since we have this ministry, just as God has shown us mercy, we do not become discouraged. 2 But we have rejected shameful hidden deeds, not behaving with deceptiveness or distorting the word of God, but by open proclamation of the truth, we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience before God (2 Corinthians 4:1-2).
The Corinthians would do well not to prematurely appraise themselves and others, and wait until the coming of the Lord:
1 People should think about us this way—as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 2 Now what is sought in stewards is that one be found faithful. 3 So for me, it is a minor matter that I am judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not acquitted because of this. The one who judges me is the Lord. 5 So then, do not judge anything before the time. Wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the motives of hearts. Then each will receive recognition from God (1 Corinthians 4:1-5).
If the Corinthians thought of themselves as “the elite,” then they had certainly forgotten their origins and the true source and object of their boasting:
26 Think about the circumstances of your call, brothers and sisters. Not many were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were members of the upper class. 27 But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, 29 so that no one can boast in his presence. 30 He is the reason you have a relationship with Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).
How could one boast in anything or anyone else? Whatever we are or have, we have received it from Him:
For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? (1 Corinthians 4:7)
Paul ends this first section by informing the Corinthians that he is sending Timothy to them, who will remind them of Paul’s ways and teaching (1 Corinthians 4:16-17). Soon, Paul will also be coming to Corinth. They would do well to deal with these matters before he arrives, so that he will not have to correct these problems himself:
18 Now some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. 19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant, but their power. 20 For the kingdom of God does not consist in words, but in power. 21 What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? (1 Corinthians 4:18-21)
There is one thing about these sinful divisions that can be positive. Divisions provide the occasion for those who are wise and godly to stand out. Divisions may be caused by corrupt leaders, but they also tend to expose true leaders:
For there must in fact be divisions among you so that those of you who are approved may be evident (1 Corinthians 11:19).
The Corinthians divided when they should have preserved Christian unity, and they were united when they should have divided. The main topic in chapters 5-7 pertains to sexual conduct. In chapter 5, Paul calls the church’s attention to the man in their midst who is living in an incestuous relationship with his father’s wife. This situation called for separation, for a kind of division. The man carried on his sin publicly, before the church (Did he bring this wife to church?) and before the unsaved in Corinth. The heathen Corinthians were shocked by this kind of conduct, and yet the man did not repent. What is even worse, the saints in the church had apparently not even rebuked him. Somehow, instead of grieving over this terrible sin, they were puffed up with pride about it:
1 It is actually reported that sexual immorality exists among you, the kind of immorality that is not permitted even among the Gentiles, so that someone is cohabiting with his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you have been deeply sorrowful instead and removed the one who did this from among you? (1 Corinthians 5:1-2)
Paul exercises discipline from a distance, and then reminds the church that separation is not to be from the world, but from those who profess Christ while persisting in the willful practice of sin (1 Corinthians 5:9-13). In short, the Corinthians were not responsible for judging unbelievers outside the church, but they should have judged this sinner in their midst.
It is no accident that Paul moves from the man who went unjudged in chapter 5 to those saints who were taking each other to court in chapter 6:
1 When any of you has a legal dispute with another, does he dare go to court before the unrighteous rather than before the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you not competent to settle trivial suits? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? Why not ordinary matters! 4 So if you have ordinary lawsuits, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame! Is there no one among you wise enough to settle disputes between fellow Christians? 6 Instead, does a Christian sue a Christian, and do this before unbelievers? 7 The fact that you have lawsuits among yourselves demonstrates that you have already been defeated. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 But you yourselves wrong and cheat, and you do this to your brothers and sisters! (1 Corinthians 6:1-8)
The Corinthian church would not fulfill its responsibility to pass judgment on a man whose conduct shocked the pagan Corinthians (chapter 5), and yet they were going to court with one another, before the eyes of unbelievers. In both chapters 5 and 6, sin in the church was being practiced before the eyes of the unbelievers in Corinth. Here were divisions that reached the level of civil suits. Paul indicates that these differences between believers could have, and should have, been settled privately in the church. If that could not happen, it would have been better for the brother who was wronged to take the loss, rather than to seek compensation in court.
The hypocrisy in Corinth is mind-boggling. In chapter 5, sin is boldly practiced in church and in society, and no one bothers to rebuke or correct this man. Indeed, the Corinthians are proud of themselves for doing nothing about it. But when one saint takes the least advantage of another, they are quickly taken to court to be judged for their wrongdoing. It is not that the Corinthians refused to judge; it is that they only sought judgment when it served their own interests.
Paul reminds the Corinthians saints of the severe eternal consequences of sin and of the fact that when they were saved, they were cleansed and delivered from their bondage to sin (6:9-11). He now lays down a very important principle:
“All things are lawful for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “All things are lawful for me”—but I will not be controlled by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Paul cannot be saying here that everything is lawful. He is not saying, for example, “Murder is lawful, and so is robbery and using cocaine.” He has just given a list of some of the sins which condemn the one who persists in practicing them:
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
Certainly these things are not right! I believe that Paul is saying, “True, everything that is lawful I could (in theory) practice within the law. I could drink alcohol, and I could smoke a cigarette.” The question the Christian should ask is this, “Is this practice beneficial? Will it prove to be spiritually profitable?” Or, put another way, “Will this practice bring me under bondage?” Just because I can do something (legally, or biblically) does not mean that I should do it. Even marriage, Paul will soon show, is something that some saints might choose to forego, for the sake of God’s kingdom.
In the remaining verses of chapter 6, Paul mentions some of the bodily appetites which we all have. Humans desire and require nourishment. We should remember that both food and our bodies are temporal, and thus temporary. Just being hungry is not a compelling reason to eat, especially if it is not profitable. This is why our Lord refused to yield to Satan’s temptation to command stones to become bread:
3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:3-4).
Humans also have a built-in sexual appetite. This appetite does not mean that we are right to satisfy it any way we wish. Specifically, we are not free to practice immorality. This is a sin against our body, and a sin against the Spirit Who indwells us. It is also a sin against Him Who bought us with the blood of His Son:
18 Flee sexual immorality! Every sin a person commits is outside of the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God with your body (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).
If the last part of chapter 6 deals with sex and immorality, in chapter 7 Paul answers questions concerning sex and marriage. Apparently there were those who concluded that sex was dirty, no matter what the context. He begins by warning married couples about unnecessary sexual abstinence, because it will become a source of sexual temptation. Their lack of self-control will get them into trouble, Paul says. Unnecessary abstinence will become a source of temptation for us to engage in illicit, extramarital sex. Sex in the confines of marriage is healthy and advantageous; sex outside of marriage is sinful and dangerous.
4 Marriage must be honored among all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for sexually immoral people and adulterers God will judge (Hebrews 13:4).
Paul then moves to the subject of divorce. Apparently there were those who were tempted to pursue happiness by seeking to change their circumstances, in this case by changing their marriage partner. Paul gives married couples clear instruction to remain in their marriages, with only rare exceptions (7:10-16). In general, one should stay in the circumstances in which Christ found them and saved them (7:17-24). Given the difficult circumstances of that day, Paul encourages the saints not to be so distracted by earthly matters (including family) that heavenly things are given second place (7:25-31). There may be some who have sufficient self-control that they will be able to remain single and sexually pure. If so, Paul encourages such people to remain single, so that they may be free to devote themselves more fully to serving Christ (7:32-35).
Chapters 8 through 10 of 1 Corinthians deal with the question of meats offered to idols. In truth, there is no question at all. That matter had been settled at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, and this decree would have been conveyed to all the churches, including Corinth:
28 For it seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us not to place any greater burden on you than these necessary rules: 29 that you abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from doing these things, you will do well. Farewell (Acts 15:28-29; see also 21:25).
Nevertheless, we find that the issue does come up at Corinth:
1 With regard to food sacrificed to idols, we know that “we all have knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If someone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know to the degree that he needs to know. 3 But if someone loves God, he is known by God. 4 With regard then to eating food sacrificed to idols, we know that “an idol in this world is nothing,” and that “there is no God but one.” 5 If after all there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we live, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live (1 Corinthians 8:1-6).
Here is an example of the kind of “wisdom” that was prized and practiced by the would-be elite in the Corinthian church. Their reasoning went like this:
There is but one God, and no others. Thus, idols, which represent other gods, are really nothing. Therefore meats sacrificed to idols can hardly be contaminated, so I am free to eat these meats.
The argument sounded profound and compelling to some of the Corinthians. For one thing, it sounds so spiritual. They are professing faith in only one God, and acknowledging that all the other Greek gods are not gods at all. Better yet (for the meat-loving Corinthians), it is an argument that seems to skillfully set aside the decree set down by the Jerusalem church leaders.
Why doesn’t Paul squelch this line of reasoning immediately? Why does he let their argument stand? Paul allows their reasoning to stand momentarily to show how the “wisdom” of some in the church worked itself out. It sounded good. It justified eating forbidden meats. And it seemed to set aside the very “narrow” ruling of the Jerusalem church leaders. But in the end, it was merely sophisticated reasoning which justified disobedience.
It is not until chapter 10 that Paul exposes this error for what it is. For the moment, however, he allows their reasoning to go unchallenged. They have concluded that it is acceptable for them to eat meats offered to idols.
“Fine,” Paul responds, “let’s grant your premise for a few moments.” “Even if you had the right to eat meats offered to idols, that right should not be exercised if doing so would cause a weaker brother (who believes eating these meats is sin) to stumble.” “Even if this practice were lawful (which, in truth, it is not), you should not do it because of others.”
I wonder here if Paul is taking up the principle he set down in chapter 6, and which is taken up again in chapter 10:
12 “All things are lawful for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “All things are lawful for me”—but I will not be controlled by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12).
23 “Everything is lawful,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is lawful,” but not everything builds others up (1 Corinthians 10:23).
Using the fancy logic of the all-wise teachers they have chosen to follow, everything does seem to be lawful, even the things that are clearly not lawful (like eating meat offered to idols). Even if something were lawful, it is not necessarily beneficial, for the one who does it, or for the one who sees it done.
Now, in chapter 9, Paul seeks to illustrate the kind of spirit the Corinthians should have toward their “liberties.” He demonstrates how a Christian can sacrifice his liberties for the sake of the gospel, and for the sake of others. Paul chooses himself and Barnabas as examples, and uses the right to be supported in ministry as the right they will surrender. The Bible clearly teaches that those who devote themselves to ministry have the right to be supported in their ministry. The other apostles – except for Paul and Barnabas – chose to exercise that right. Paul sets his right to support aside, not because it is wrong, but because it will further the cause of the gospel. (No one can ever accuse Paul, or Barnabas, of preaching for their own gain, thus giving credibility to their message and ministry.) The Corinthians should imitate Paul and Barnabas in surrendering their liberties when it will benefit others and advance the cause of the gospel.
It is not until chapter 10 that Paul challenges the Corinthians’ “right” to eat meat offered to idols. He does not cite the decree of the Jerusalem Council. Instead, he points out the incompatibility or incongruity of the “table” of the pagan ritual with the Lord’s Table:
14 So then, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. 15 I am speaking to thoughtful people. Consider what I say. 16 Is not the cup of blessing that we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread that we break a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all share the one bread. 18 Look at the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? 19 Am I saying that idols or food sacrificed to them amount to anything? 20 No, I mean that what people sacrifice is to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot take part in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Or are we trying to provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we really stronger than he is? (1 Corinthians 10:14-22)
For the “liberated” Corinthians, to partake of meats offered to idols was to participate in the heathen ritual – the worship of heathen gods – in which the meat was sacrificed. Paul reminds us that while there may not be other gods, there are demons, and they are very much involved in heathen worship. Christians who sit weekly at the Lord’s Table should have no part in the heathen rituals in which meat is offered to idols. The “liberty” so cleverly reasoned out in chapter 8 is no liberty at all. Eating meats offered to idols is strictly forbidden if it involves participation in the heathen ritual itself.
But what about merely eating meat that was offered to idols, without attending or participating in the heathen worship ritual? Paul tells the Corinthians that they are not to be obsessed with the fear of unwittingly eating such meats, either (1 Corinthians 10:25-30). Eat what is sold in the marketplace, without interrogating the butcher about the origin of the meat. If you go to a neighbor’s house and meat is served, eat it without raising agonizing questions. But if someone troubles himself to tell you that the meat was offered to an idol, then abstain from eating it, more for that person’s sake than for your own.
In chapters 11-14, Paul deals with problems in Corinth that have to do with the gathering of the saints for church. In chapter 11, Paul deals with two major problems. The first has to do with the different roles of men and women in the church. The second has to do with misconduct at the Lord’s Table.
I believe that the Corinthian culture, like our own, resisted and rejected the roles that were assigned to men and women in the church. The main principle in the first 16 verses of chapter 11 is that of spiritual headship. Just as God is the head of Christ and Christ is the head of every man, so the husband has been given headship over his wife. The wife is not to conduct herself in a way that draws attention to herself and thus deprives her husband of his glory. The wife is to be her husband’s glory, and she is not to seek glory for herself. In the context, she is to cover her head, which is her glory.
The second half of chapter 11 deals with misconduct at the Lord’s Table. When the early church met to observe the Lord’s Table, they did so in the midst of a shared (potluck?) meal. It would seem that the rich arrived at church earlier than the poor. Instead of waiting for the poor to arrive before beginning the meal, some of the Corinthians began to gorge themselves with food and wine. By the time the poor arrived, the food was gone, and those who arrived early were drunk. The result was that the Lord’s Table – the most solemn event of the church’s gathering – was conducted in a way that must have been similar to the heathen rituals the Corinthian saints were forbidden to attend. Because of the seriousness of this sin, a number of the Corinthians had become ill, and some had died (11:30). Paul instructs the Corinthians to wait for one another, to search their hearts, and to commemorate the Lord’s Supper in a manner befitting the body and blood of our Lord.
Chapters 12 through 14 focus on the subject of spiritual gifts. In chapter 12, Paul teaches that every Christian is given at least one spiritual gift. These gifts are sovereignly bestowed, as He wills (not by our manipulation, or in accordance with our fleshly desires). No one possesses all of the spiritual gifts, and no gift is possessed by all. These gifts give every Christian a unique and vital role to play as a member of the body of Christ. Each gift is designed to contribute to the health and growth of the body, so that whenever anyone fails to exercise their gift(s) the whole body suffers.
In the Corinthian church, certain gifts were valued above others. In particular, the gift of tongues seems to have been viewed as the greatest gift, so that all were striving to get it, and those who did not have it felt inferior and useless to the body. Paul turns the tables on those who sought to elevate the gift of tongues above all others by declaring that it was the lesser gifts that were given “more honor” to compensate for their apparent insignificance. In so doing, Paul turned their spiritual scale of values upside-down. It is the less visible gifts that are the most valuable, just as it is the invisible organs of our bodies (kidneys, liver, heart, brain) that are most valuable to us.
In chapter 13, Paul turns to the essential ingredient of love. It is love that makes our gifts and service beneficial to others. Gifts that are not exercised in love are not only useless, but annoying (“a clanging cymbal” – 13:1). Love causes us to seek to employ our spiritual gifts for the edification of others, rather than for the exaltation of self.
Chapter 14 returns to the subject of spiritual gifts and their use in the church meeting. Paul shows that the gift of prophecy is superior to the gift of tongues, unless tongues are interpreted. Unless tongues are interpreted, their value is minimal to the speaker personally, or to the church. If tongues are uninterpreted, then those who hear cannot understand what was said, and thus they cannot be edified. Only the speaker is edified, and if he or she cannot interpret what was said, they gain little as well.
Paul now lays down the guiding principle for the exercise of spiritual gifts in the gathering of the church, the principle of edification:
12 It is the same with you. Since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, seek to abound in order to strengthen [edify] the church. . . . 26 What should you do then, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each one has a song, has a lesson, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all these things be done for the strengthening [edification] of the church (1 Corinthians 14;12, 26; see also Ephesians 4:29).
There is another guiding principle set down in 1 Corinthians 14:
And do everything in a decent and orderly manner (1 Corinthians 14:40; see also 14:33).
An orderly meeting is one in which there is a balance of participation and a decorum that is maintained. There is to be no interrupting or clamoring for the podium. There is not to be an imbalance in the kinds of participation (two or no more than three in any category of speaking). There is to be silence when the saints will not be edified (as in the speaking of tongues without an interpreter, or when the same gift has been repeatedly exercised). The women are to remain silent in the church meeting. They are not to exercise headship, and thus they are not to “take the floor” to speak or to lead.392 They are to remain quiet. And if any would quibble with these restrictions, Paul wants his readers to know that this is his consistent teaching and practice:
17 For this reason, I have sent Timothy to you, who is my dear and faithful son in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. 18 Some have become puffed up, as if I were not coming to you (1 Corinthians 4:17-18).393
If anyone intends to quarrel about this, we have no other practice, nor do the churches of God (1 Corinthians 11:16).
As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says (1 Corinthians 14:33b-34).
The doctrine of the resurrection, as Paul shows, is an essential part of the gospel. You cannot set aside this doctrine without undermining the entire gospel. It is one of the essentials we must believe in order to be saved:
1 Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as though to one born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also (1 Corinthians 15:1-8; see also Romans 10:9-10).
Paul goes to great lengths to show that the resurrection of Christ was a historical reality. Jesus literally, bodily, rose from the dead. If the first Adam brought on mankind the sentence of death, the last Adam has triumphed over death. This is the basis for our hope as Christians.
Paul’s lengthy treatment of the doctrine of the resurrection also points us to the core of all the problems of the church at Corinth – human pride and fleshly self-indulgence. What are the practical implications of believing that there is no resurrection of the dead? Paul tells us:
If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. 33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.” 34 Sober up as you should, and stop sinning! For some have no knowledge of God—I say this to your shame!
To deny the resurrection of the dead means that there is no future hope; it also means that there will be no future judgment. If this were the case, one should certainly not live dangerously, as did Paul and the true apostles. To the contrary, one might as well “eat, drink, and be merry” because there may be no tomorrow. If “we only go around once,” as the television commercial used to put it, “then we’d better grab all the gusto we can get.”
Smug pride and self-indulgence is found everywhere in the Book of 1 Corinthians. Chapters 1-4 dealt with divisions in the church. What was the basis of these divisions? People sought to indulge themselves with status and significance by identifying with leaders who made them feel good, and proud. They boasted in men, rather than in God. They found the teaching of these men to be more exciting and attractive than the simple message of the cross. They loved the appearance of worldly wisdom through philosophical reasoning and homiletical rhetoric. Their new cliques puffed them up, and they indulged themselves in their newly found status (4:7, 18). The problem is that they looked with pride on false apostles, while they looked with disdain on the sufferings and humble service of men like Paul (1 Corinthians 4:9-13).
Smug self-indulgence was also the underlying factor in chapters 5-7. The Corinthians did not hesitate to take one another to court in chapter 6, but they failed to discipline one of their own for living in a way that shocked the heathen. Paul tells us that they were proud of the fact that they were not disciplining him (5:6). What was there to be proud about? All we need to do is to look around today. Some churches are proud that they have cast aside the fetters of apostolic teaching, and they revel in the feminism they have embraced in its place. Some churches boast that they perform homosexual marriages along with heterosexual unions. Their “new theology” permits them to “practice what they preach,” and what they preach is self-indulgence. No wonder Paul condemned divorce and immorality, while churches then and today support people in their sin, and as they sin.
Self-indulgence is at the center of the issue concerning meats offered to idols in chapters 8-10. Knowing the apostolic decree that the Gentiles should abstain from meats offered to idols, some of the Corinthian “new school of wisdom and rhetoric” concocted the teaching we see in chapter 8 that permitted (in their minds) the eating of meats offered to idols. Paul responded by reminding them of their responsibility to set aside their rights for the sake of their weaker brother. He then pointed out that even the heathen denied certain bodily appetites for some goal like winning a race:
24 Do you not know that all the runners in a stadium compete, but only one receives the prize? So run to win. 25 Each competitor must exercise self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. 26 So I do not run uncertainly or box like one who hits only air. 27 Instead I subdue my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
Then Paul followed up with a brief review of Israel’s failures in the Old Testament in the early verses of chapter 10. God was displeased with most of the Israelites because they resisted self-denial and pursued self-indulgence:
1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were cut down in the wilderness. 6 These things happened as examples for us, so that we will not crave evil things as they did. 7 So do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” 8 And let us not be immoral, as some of them were, and twenty-three thousand died in a single day. 9 And let us not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by snakes. 10 And do not complain, as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them as examples and were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 So let the one who thinks he is standing be careful that he does not fall. 13 No trial has overtaken you that is not faced by others. And God is faithful: He will not let you be tried too much, but with the trial will also provide a way through it so that you may be able to endure (1 Corinthians 10:1-13).
The problems in the church meeting described in chapters 11-14 were also rooted in self-indulgence. Look, for example, at chapter 11. The first half of the chapter deals with the roles of men and women. The reason Paul had to reiterate his teaching on the conduct of women is because women sought to indulge themselves in glory that should have gone to their husbands, and ultimately to Christ. The last part of chapter 11 is clearly a problem of self-indulgence. Some of the saints refused to wait for others, so that they gorged themselves with food and drink, and the Lord’s Table began to resemble a heathen idol-worship ritual.
The same self-indulgence can be seen in the practice of spiritual gifts, which is described in chapters 12-14. Certain gifts attracted more attention and were more highly esteemed then others, so the Corinthians all sought to abandon their sovereignly bestowed gifts in order to acquire the “better gifts.” The problem is that they did not understand which the better gifts were. The better gifts were not those that made them feel better and look more spiritual than others; they were the unseen gifts that edified the whole body. The church meeting was chaotic because of the frantic efforts of the Corinthians to indulge themselves by their attention-seeking participation in the church meeting. No wonder Paul devoted one chapter of the epistle (13) to the essential ingredient of love. It is love that prompts one to deny himself and to serve others sacrificially.
Finally, as we noted, a denial of the doctrine of the resurrection inclines us to cease to live for eternity and to endeavor to fill the cup of earthly pleasure to the brim: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.”
What does Paul’s letter to the Corinthians have to say to Christians today? It is difficult not to see that the church today (at least in America) is a very self-indulgent church. There are many divisions in the church, and a great deal of boasting in things other than our Savior. People choose the church they attend for very self-indulgent reasons. We tend to find our status and our identity in terms of the leader we follow, all the while looking down on those who follow another.
As we leave this great epistle of 1 Corinthians, let me underscore some of the guiding principles which Paul has highlighted in the course of this letter:
(1) No teaching, no matter how amazing it may seem, should ever take us outside the boundaries of the Word of God:
I have applied these things to myself and Apollos because of you, brothers and sisters, so that through us you may learn “ not to go beyond what is written,” so that none of you will be puffed up in favor of the one against the other (1 Corinthians 4:6, emphasis mine).
(2) Our boasting must never be in men, but only in God.
So that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31).
(3) We should not seek our own glory, but the glory of God.
So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).
(4) We should not seek our own good, but the good of others.
Do not seek your own good, but the good of the other person (1 Corinthians 10:24).
32 Do not give offense to Jews or Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I also try to please everyone in all things. I do not seek my own benefit, but that of many, so that they may be saved (1 Corinthians 10:32-33).
12 If you sin against your brothers or sisters in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 For this reason, if food causes my brother or sister to sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I may not cause one of them to sin (1 Corinthians 8:12-13).
(5) Just because something is lawful, does not mean that it is profitable, to me or to others.
“All things are lawful for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “All things are lawful for me”—but I will not be controlled by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12).
“Everything is lawful,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is lawful,” but not everything builds others up (1 Corinthians 10:23).
387 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 98 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Robert L. Deffinbaugh on October 13, 2002.
388 Priscilla is also called Prisca in 1 Corinthians 16:19.
389 See Acts 18:8. It is interesting to notice that in Acts 18:17 it is Sosthenes who is the president of the synagogue. It would appear that Crispus was replaced by Sosthenes. Perhaps this was because Crispus became a believer and chose to continue to associate with Paul.
390 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
391 See also KJV and NKJV. The term is used by Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:13 and 15 to describe the false apostles who disguise themselves as true apostles, and in 2 Corinthians 11:14 to describe Satan, who disguises himself as an angel of light.
392 In 1 Timothy 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:3-4, women are instructed not to dress in a way that makes them the center of attention. This is also dealt with in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul gives instructions regarding head coverings.
393 There are those who would assert that Paul’s words to women in 1 Corinthians are addressed only to these “Corinthian women,” and not to women in general. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 4:16-17; 11:14; and 14:33b-37 indicate otherwise, in the clearest of terms.
When Paul passed through Lystra on his second missionary journey, the brethren highly commended a young man named Timothy (Acts 16:1-2). Paul circumcised Timothy and took him along with him as he went his way (16:3). This was the beginning of a long and fruitful association. Timothy became one of Paul’s most trusted colleagues:
19 Now I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you quickly, so that I too may be encouraged by hearing news about you. 20 For there is no one here like him who will readily demonstrate his deep concern for you. 21 Others are busy with their own concerns, not those of Jesus Christ. 22 But you know his qualifications, that like a son working with his father, he served with me in advancing the gospel (Philippians 2:19-22).398
Paul and Timothy became so close that Paul spoke of himself as Timothy’s spiritual father (Philippians 2:22), and of Timothy as his “son” in the faith (see, for example, 1 Timothy 1:2, 18). Paul frequently sent Timothy to churches as his personal emissary (e.g. 1 Corinthians 4:17; 16:10; 1 Thessalonians 3:2). In no less than six of Paul’s letters, Paul includes Timothy in his greeting (2 Corinthians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1; Philemon 1:1).
The Book of Acts ends with Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. From Paul’s words in the first chapter of Philippians, we assume with some assurance that he was found innocent, and thus was able to resume his ministry. After Paul’s release around A.D. 62, it would seem that he made a fourth missionary journey. As Paul made his way toward Macedonia, he left Timothy behind in Ephesus, and Titus in Crete.
Paul knew well that the church at Ephesus needed a man like Timothy. He had earlier warned of those who would arise – even from among the elders – who would turn from the truth and teach false doctrine in order to gain a personal following:
29 I know that after I am gone fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Even from among your own group men will arise, teaching perversions of the truth to draw the disciples away after them (Acts 20:29-30).
Apparently this had already begun to happen, and so Paul found it necessary to leave Timothy behind in Ephesus as he made his way to Macedonia:
3 As I urged you when I was leaving for Macedonia, stay on in Ephesus to instruct certain people not to spread false teachings, 4 nor to occupy themselves with myths and interminable genealogies. Such things promote useless speculations rather than God’s redemptive plan that operates by faith. 5 But the aim of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. 6 Some have strayed from these and turned away to empty discussion. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not understand what they are saying or the things they insist on so confidently (1 Timothy 1:3-7).
One of Paul’s reasons for writing his First Epistle to Timothy was to instruct him how to recognize and deal with these false teachers. But more broadly Paul’s purpose was to instruct the saints through Timothy as to how they should behave as members of the household of God:399
14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you 15 in case I am delayed, to let you know how people ought to conduct themselves in the household of God, because it is the church of the living God, the support and bulwark of the truth (1 Timothy 3:14-15).
The church, Paul wrote, is “the support and bulwark of the truth.” While the false teachers sought to deceive the Ephesian saints, it was the church that was to uphold the truth; the church was the key to dealing with these deceivers, just as they were to uphold and proclaim the truth. First Timothy is God’s instruction manual for the conduct of the church.
Many books are available in the bookstore that deal with the subject of the church, but 1 Timothy contains God’s divinely inspired, inerrant, infallible instructions regarding the church. Seldom does one find contemporary works on the church dealing with the subject matter that we find in 1 or 2 Timothy. This is a vitally important book, one which we should hear and heed. Let us listen well, then, and ask God’s Spirit to enable us to think our way through the message of this great letter from the Apostle Paul to his spiritual son, and thus to the church at Ephesus.
Paul’s introduction in the first two verses is meant as much for the Ephesians as it is for Timothy. It is almost as though Paul knows that the Ephesians will be reading this letter over Timothy’s shoulder. Timothy did not need to be reminded of Paul’s apostleship. Paul makes a point of addressing Timothy in a way that conveys his confidence in Timothy. He writes so that the Ephesians will recognize that when Timothy speaks or takes action, he does so with Paul’s authorization and authority:
1 From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, 2 to Timothy, my genuine child in the faith. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord! (1 Timothy 1:1-2)
In verses 3-7, Paul quickly gets to the point. Paul instructed Timothy to stay on at Ephesus in order to silence those who were false teachers. In these verses Paul describes the false teachers, contrasting their message, motivation, and goals with genuine apostolic instruction:
3 As I urged you when I was leaving for Macedonia, stay on in Ephesus to instruct certain people not to spread false teachings, 4 nor to occupy themselves with myths and interminable genealogies. Such things promote useless speculations rather than God’s redemptive plan that operates by faith. 5 But the aim of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. 6 Some have strayed from these and turned away to empty discussion. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not understand what they are saying or the things they insist on so confidently (1 Timothy 1:3-7).
The false teachers did not merely read “between the lines;” they read “outside the lines.” As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 4:6, they “went beyond what is written.” Paul speaks of their content as “false teachings,” based upon “myths and interminable genealogies” (1 Timothy 1:3-4). Ostensibly these teachers were using the Old Testament law as their text, but the Scriptures were set aside. The end result of this teaching was empty speculation which did not promote God’s redemptive plan – it did not advance the cause of the gospel. Their teaching was as fruitless as the fig tree which our Lord cursed. These teachers spoke with great confidence and with an air of authority, but in reality they didn’t understand what they were talking about.
In verse 5, Paul contrasts this false teaching with the authentic instruction of the apostles. The goal of apostolic, biblical teaching is love. Those who teach a genuine message do so out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere or genuine faith. Their motivation is pure. Their conscience is clean because their practice conforms to their preaching (contrast 1 Timothy 4:2; Matthew 23:3). Their faith is genuine, because it is rooted and grounded in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
These false teachers are Jewish (compare 2 Corinthians 11:22). They claim to teach that which the Old Testament law did not make clear, but which they have somehow come to understand, while others remain unenlightened (compare 6:20). They interpret and apply the Old Testament law so as to make themselves look good. Paul counters with verses 8-11:
8 But we know that the law is good if someone uses it legitimately, 9 realizing that law is not intended for a righteous person, but for lawless and rebellious people, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 sexually immoral, practicing homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, perjurers—in fact, for any who live contrary to sound teaching (1 Timothy 1:8-10).
The law indeed is good (see Romans 7:12, 14). But the law was not given to make men feel righteous. The law was given to condemn all mankind as sinners:
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For no one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:19-20; see also Romans 7:7-8).
The law was given to condemn and convict us of our sin and to show us that salvation cannot be earned by law-keeping or good works, but must be provided for us by God, on the basis of grace through faith. As Paul put it in Romans:
21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God (which is attested by the law and the prophets) has been disclosed— 22 namely, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 24 But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 25 God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed (Romans 3:21-25).
Paul says the same thing in 1 Timothy, but in a slightly different way. Paul gives his own personal testimony to demonstrate the same truth:
11 This accords with the glorious gospel of the blessed God that was entrusted to me. 12 I am grateful to the one who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me faithful in putting me into ministry, 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor, and an arrogant man. But I was treated with mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and our Lord’s grace was abundant, bringing faith and love in Christ Jesus. 15 This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them! 16 But here is why I was treated with mercy: so that in me as the worst, Christ Jesus could demonstrate his utmost patience, as an example for those who are going to believe in him for eternal life. 17 Now to the eternal king, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever! Amen (1 Timothy 1:11-17).
The gospel authenticates Paul’s message, and indeed the gospel is Paul’s message. The gospel declares that men are not saved by law-keeping or good works, as the false teachers maintain, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Paul gives his personal testimony to underscore this point. Do these Jewish false teachers think that their twisting of the Old Testament law proves them to be pious? Paul once thought the same way, when he was lost in his sins. But he was wrong, dead wrong! His teaching and ministry before his conversion were worthless. He, like the false teachers in Ephesus, “acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13). He was not just a sinner; he was the chief of sinners (verse 15). When Paul was saved, he received mercy (verse 16). He was saved by grace, so that the glory must go to God alone (verses 16-17). When Paul came to faith he renounced his smug self-righteousness, and clung to God’s mercy and grace (see Philippians 3:1-11).
In the final verses of chapter 1, Paul gets pretty specific and applicational:
18 I put this charge before you, Timothy my child, in keeping with the prophecies once spoken about you, in order that with such encouragement you may fight the good fight. 19 To do this you must hold firmly to faith and a good conscience, that some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck in regard to the faith. 20 Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme (1 Timothy 1:18-20).
Timothy is urged to act according to Paul’s instructions. He needs to do so, encouraged by the memory that at the outset of his ministry prophecies were uttered which confirmed his calling. He must, like his spiritual father, “contend earnestly for the faith” (compare Jude 1:3). In Paul’s words, he must “fight the good fight” (verse 18). Unlike the false teachers, he must “hold firmly to the faith” and to a “good conscience.” The false teachers have not done so. They have forsaken the faith and a good conscience. Two men – Hymenaeus and Alexander – are identified as false teachers. Paul has already “handed them over to Satan” (verse 20); let Timothy deal with them accordingly (compare 1 Corinthians 5:1-5).
I have always struggled with this chapter, not because of Paul’s teaching on the role of women in the church, but because I could not see the connection between verses 1-8 and verses 9-15. The most difficult word in the second chapter is the first word of verse 9, “likewise.” In what way is Paul’s instruction to women in verses 9-15 “like” his instruction in verses 1-8? I think I have found the connection. Let’s begin by looking at verses 1-8:
1 First of all, then, I urge that requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanks be offered on behalf of all people, 2 even for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. 3 Such prayer for all is good and welcomed before God our Savior, 4 since he wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, revealing God’s purpose at his appointed time. 7 For this I was appointed a preacher and apostle—I am telling the truth; I am not lying—and a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. 8 So I want the men to pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute (1 Timothy 2:1-8).
Verses 1-7 are Paul’s general words of instruction to the church. As a matter of priority (“first of all, then,” verse 1), the church is to devote itself to prayer. In particular, the church is to devote itself to prayers of petition, intercession, and thanksgiving on behalf of all people. When my neighbor goes to the hospital for surgery, I should pray for his recovery. When my neighbor starts a new business, I should pray that he succeeds (if, indeed, that business is an honorable one). I am to pray for the well-being of my neighbors.
More specifically and, I might add, with much greater difficulty, I am to pray for those in leadership over me and over my nation. If I happen to be a Republican and a Democrat becomes president, I am to pray for the well-being of this man (or woman). Among those things I should pray for is the salvation of those who are lost in their sins. This is consistent with God’s desire (though not necessarily with His decree – since not all are chosen). It is consistent with the saving work of our Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary. Our intercessory prayers for men are consistent with the mediatorial role of the Savior. This is also consistent with Paul’s conversion and calling as an apostle of Jesus Christ. To pray for the salvation of the lost is consistent with Paul’s evangelistic ministry to the lost.
Our benevolent prayers for “all men,” including political leaders, is a practical manifestation of true godliness. If we devote ourselves to pray for the well-being of all men, including those civil leaders who are in authority over us, then we are pursuing the goal of leading a “peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity” (2:2). Christians, as I understand this text, are not to be revolutionaries, but peacemakers. We are not to seek the unlawful downfall of those in authority; instead, we are to submit to their authority, and to pray God’s blessings upon them.
We dare not overlook the fact that the civil leaders of Paul’s day were not the kind of men to whom we would prefer to submit, or to support in prayer. The Roman emperors were cruel and wicked men. Nevertheless, Paul instructs the church to pray for God’s blessings upon them. I am reminded of the example of Daniel, who genuinely cared for Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon:
19 Then Daniel (whose name is also Belteshazzar) was briefly appalled; his thoughts were alarming him. The king said, “Belteshazzar, don’t let the dream and its interpretation alarm you.” But Belteshazzar replied, “Sir, if only the dream were for your enemies and its interpretation applied to your adversaries! (Daniel 4:19)
The general principle, then, is that Christians are to be good citizens, men and women who not only submit to earthly authorities, but who actively seek to live peaceful and quiet lives, and who pray for God’s blessings on our fellow men. This principle of seeking to live a peaceful and quiet life applies to both men and women, though its outworking is not the same. The differences in outworking are demonstrated in verses 8-15:
8 So I want the men to pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute.
9 Likewise the women are to dress in suitable apparel, with modesty and self-control. Their adornment must not be with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive clothing, 10 but with good deeds, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. 11 A woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man. She must remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first and then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But she will be delivered through childbearing, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control (1 Timothy 2:8-15, emphasis mine).
As I understand the apostle’s words, he is not referring to private prayers here, but to public prayers. Men are to pursue a peaceful and quiet life by devoting themselves to prayer “in every place.” This could mean that Paul wants Christian men everywhere to pray in obedience to the principles set down in verses 1-7. The words “in every place” may also suggest that men are able to publicly pray in some places where it would not be appropriate for women to do so (such as publicly, in the church – see 1 Corinthians 14:33b-35). Paul’s emphasis, however, does not seem to fall on the “place” where men pray, but rather on the spiritual climate in which these prayers are being offered up. The teachings of the false teachers did not promote love (as did apostolic teaching, see 1:5), but rather strife and contention (1 Timothy 6:3-5; 2 Timothy 2:23). If a lack of tenderness and sensitivity can hinder the prayers of a husband and his wife (1 Peter 3:7), then surely division and strife among the saints will also hinder their prayers. Thus Paul instructs the men to pray, “lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute.” Living a peaceful and quiet life begins at church. The principle of living a quiet life is reiterated in 2 Thessalonians:
Now such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and so provide their own food to eat (2 Thessalonians 3:12).
When we come to the word “likewise” in verse 9, we must recognize that Paul is indicating a connection between verses 9-15 and the first part of chapter 2.400 I believe that the connection is the principle Paul has just set down in verses 1-7, namely, that all the saints should submit to those in authority over them, and seek to lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. In verses 9-15, Paul gives several specific applications of this general instruction as it relates to women. To begin with, Paul applies the principle of a peaceful and quiet life to a woman’s’ appearance in public.
A woman’s appearance and apparel is an indication of her submission to her husband, or the lack of it.401 In 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, Paul teaches that the wife’s submission to her husband is evident in her appearance, specifically by the covering of her head in public worship.402 The wife is to strive to give glory and preeminence to her husband, her spiritual head, rather than to attract attention to herself. Since the woman’s hair is her glory, Paul instructs wives to cover their heads, so as not to distract from their husbands’ glory. Quietness, then, is not just a matter of speech, or the lack of it. It is a disposition that is reflected, in part, in one’s demeanor and dress. Even today we speak of “loud” colors. Some women are not “quiet” in the way that they dress. If there ever was a place where quietness in dress is appropriate, it is in the meeting of the church.403 As we would expect, Peter fully agrees with Paul’s teaching:
1 In the same way, wives, be subject to your own husbands. Then even if some are disobedient to the word, they will be won over without a word by the way you live, 2 when they see your pure and reverent conduct. 3 Let your beauty not be external—the braiding of hair and wearing of gold or fine clothes— 4 but the inner person of the heart, the lasting beauty of a gentle and tranquil spirit, which is precious in God’s sight. 5 For in the same way the holy women who hoped in God long ago adorned themselves by being subject to their husbands, 6 like Sarah who obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. You become her children when you do what is good and have no fear in doing so (1 Peter 3:1-6).
“Quietness” in the church meeting also requires restraint from certain kinds of verbal participation in the public meeting of the church. Let me be very clear at this point. I do not believe that Paul here calls for absolute silence on the part of women in the church meeting. Women can certainly participate verbally in worship as a part of the congregation. What Paul forbids is speech that usurps the authority of the men and of male leadership in the church. Thus, women are specifically instructed to be learners, and not teachers, in the church meeting. They are not to exercise authority over men in the church. In this regard, women are to be quiet (verse 12).404
Paul’s reasons for requiring this quietness have nothing to do with male chauvinism. They have everything to do with submission to the divine order God has created, and which He expects to be practiced in the meeting of the church. Thus, in verses 13 and 14 Paul’s explanation goes all the way back to the relationship of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, at the time of the fall of man. Adam was created first, and then Eve (from Adam’s rib). In this manner Adam was designated as the head of his wife (see here 1 Corinthians 11:8-10). Furthermore, it was at the fall of mankind that the order was reversed. Eve led, and Adam followed. More than this, Eve was deceived, while Adam was not. He willfully acted in disobedience. The conduct of men and women in the church is thereby linked first to God’s order in creation and second to man’s disregard of this divine order in the events of the fall.
For some, these restrictions for women may seem to be a burden too great to bear. As I understand Paul’s words in verse 15, he finds a partial cure in the same biblical context as the curse:
But she will be delivered through childbearing, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control (1 Timothy 2:15).
When God pronounced the curse on the serpent, He also pronounced the promised cure through the seed of the woman:
14 And the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly shall you go, And dust shall you eat All the days of your life; 15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:14-15, NASB).
Eve, and all women after her, would experience pain in childbirth (Genesis 3:16), but in that pain there was hope. It was the “seed of the woman” that would crush the head of the serpent. It was the “seed” of Eve who would be the promised Messiah, and while Satan would “bruise His heel,” the Messiah would crush Satan’s head. Eve’s deliverance from the curse came through the bearing of children. From her offspring, the promised “seed” would come. And come He did (see Galatians 3:16).
Childbearing is not the only significant contribution a woman can make, as Paul’s later words will clearly indicate. But childbearing is a most significant contribution. A woman may not take a prominent leadership role in the church, but she most certainly plays a vital role in the home, as she bears and raises up godly children.
One must wonder why Paul found it necessary to address the issues of dress and the public participation of women in a book that seeks to correct false teaching and to curb false teachers. Is it possible that among the false teachers some were women? We do know that women were particularly being targeted by the false teachers:
5 They will maintain the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power. So avoid people like these. 6 For some of these insinuate themselves into households and captivate weak women who are overwhelmed with sins and led along by various passions. 7 Such women are always seeking instruction, yet never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:5-7).
Neither time nor the purpose of this message permits us to go into detail about the qualifications for church leaders that Paul sets down in 1 Timothy 3.405 What we should note is that by laying down these character qualifications Paul indirectly deals with the false teachers who have made their appearance in the church at Ephesus. There are two ways to detect false teachers: (1) by their doctrine; and, (2) by their conduct. This is why Paul exhorts Timothy to be diligent about both in his personal life:
Be conscientious about how you live and what you teach. Persevere in this, because by doing so you will save both yourself and those who listen to you (1 Timothy 4:16).
The church at Ephesus already had elders (Acts 20:17-35). Paul has already indicated that some of these elders would depart from the faith and become false teachers (Acts 20:29-30). I would understand that while these qualifications surely were meant to be used as standards for all new elders and deacons, they were also to be applied to existing elders and deacons. If any leader at Ephesus failed to meet these standards, it would obligate him to step down, or the church to remove him from office. My main purpose here is to show how these qualifications fit into the overall message and purpose of Paul’s first letter to Timothy.
The final verses of chapter 3 make it crystal clear that Paul’s purpose in writing this letter to Timothy was to set down instructions regarding the conduct of men and women in the church:
14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you 15 in case I am delayed, to let you know how people ought to conduct themselves in the household of God, because it is the church of the living God, the support and bulwark of the truth. 16 And we all agree, our religion contains amazing revelation:
He was revealed in the flesh,
Vindicated by the Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Proclaimed among Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Taken up in glory (1 Timothy 3:14-16).
The instructions Paul gives in 1 Timothy are instructions regarding conduct in the church. These are to be understood as Paul’s authoritative teaching through Timothy, due to his absence. We can certainly say that for the centuries that Paul has been absent because of his martyrdom, his words of instruction live on, with the same authority they had for the church in Ephesus.
I’m inclined to understand verse 16 as a very concise doctrinal creed. It may have been a portion of an ancient hymn. It may have been written by someone else at an earlier date. But it is nonetheless a concise summary of Christian doctrine. It declares the incarnation of our Lord (“He406 was revealed in the flesh”). It states that the claims of our Lord were vindicated by the miraculous works He accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit. The gospel of salvation through faith in His atoning work was proclaimed to the Gentiles (something the Jewish extremists did not like at all – see Luke 4:16-30; Acts 22:21-22), and He was believed on in the world. He was raised from the dead,407 and He ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of God.
Paul turns once again to the false teachers in Ephesus, further exposing the error of their teaching:
1 Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will desert the faith and occupy themselves with deceiving spirits and demonic teachings, 2 influenced by the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared. 3 They will prohibit marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For every creation of God is good and no food is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. 5 For it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer (1 Timothy 4:1-5).
The error that is exposed here is asceticism. This false teaching should come as no surprise. The Spirit of God had explicitly revealed that some would forsake the faith and devote themselves to doctrines whose origins are demonic and their outcomes deceptive (4:1). The deceivers are both liars and hypocrites. They believe and teach lies. They are hypocrites in the sense that while they teach abstinence and self-denial, they do not practice it.
3 If someone spreads false teachings and does not agree with sound words (that is, those of our Lord Jesus Christ) and with the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing, but has an unhealthy interest in controversies and verbal disputes. This gives rise to envy, dissension, slanders, evil suspicions, 5 and constant bickering by people corrupted in their minds and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a way of making a profit. 6 Now godliness combined with contentment brings great profit. 7 For we have brought nothing into this world and so we cannot take a single thing out either. 8 But if we have food and shelter, we will be satisfied with that. 9 Those who long to be rich, however, stumble into temptation and a trap and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains (1 Timothy 6:3-10, emphasis mine).
10 For there are many rebellious people, idle-talkers, and deceivers, especially those with Jewish connections, 11 who must be silenced because they mislead whole families by teaching for dishonest gain what ought not to be taught. 12 A certain one of them, in fact, one of their own prophets, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:10-12).
Although these false teachers promise such people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to immorality. For whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved (2 Peter 2:19).
These men forbade marriage, and they required abstinence from certain foods, but it seems apparent that they did not really abstain themselves. These were not forbidden foods (i.e. meats offered to idols; see Acts 15:28-29), nor were these unbiblical marriages (e.g. 1 Corinthians 7:39; see also 2 Corinthians 6:14-18). What was forbidden was a good gift from God, meant to be gratefully enjoyed. Just as Satan sought to create the impression that God was withholding good things from man in the garden (see Genesis 3:1), these men taught demonically-inspired doctrines that forbade good things from the saints. This made the saints who observed these prohibitions even more vulnerable to sin (compare 1 Corinthians 7:5).
Through these false teachers, Satan sought to rob the saints of their joy and of the good things God had provided for their enjoyment (4:4-5). God does not wish His children to constantly “punch their martyr card” by denying themselves the legitimate pleasures of good food and sex within marriage. He provides us with all things for our enjoyment (1 Timothy 6:17). We should receive these with gratitude and thanksgiving (4:4). They are sanctified by the Word of God (which declares all things clean; see Mark 7:19; also Acts 10), and by prayer. What God has called clean, let no man call unclean (Acts 10:15).
Speaking of foods, Paul goes on with these words of advice concerning that which is truly nutritious and that which is not:
6 By pointing out such things to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, having nourished yourself on the words of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. 7 But reject those myths fit only for the godless and gullible, and train yourself for godliness (1 Timothy 4:6-7, emphasis mine).
Spiritual nourishment comes from the teachings of the Word of God, not from the myths and empty speculations of false teachers. It is their teachings which should be avoided, not good food or marriage.
The false teachers have wrongly associated godliness with abstinence from those things that are good and provided by God for our enjoyment. We know from Colossians that such ascetic abstinence does not contribute to godliness:
20 If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit to them as though you lived in the world? 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” 22 These are all destined to perish with use, founded as they are on human commands and teachings. 23 They have the appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship and false humility, by an unsparing treatment of the body, but they are thoroughly useless when it comes to restraining the indulgences of the flesh (Colossians 2:20-23).
Paul gives us this very helpful principle, so that we can keep these matters in perspective:
8 For “physical exercise has some value, but godliness is valuable in every way. It holds promise for the present life and for the life to come.” 9 This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance. 10 In fact this is why we work hard and struggle, because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers (1 Timothy 4:8-10).
Spiritual discipline which strives for godliness is far superior to mere physical discipline. The disciplines advocated by the false teachers were of no value. They only robbed the saints of God-given pleasures. But there are some physical disciplines that are of some profit. Watching our diet and maintaining physical exercise are beneficial to the physical body. But spiritual disciplines are better. Just what are these spiritual disciplines? I believe that at least some of the disciplines which promote godliness are outlined in verses 11-16:
11 Command and teach these things. 12 Let no one look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in your speech, conduct, love, faithfulness, and purity. 13 Until I come, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. 14 Do not neglect the spiritual gift you have, given to you and confirmed by prophetic words when the elders laid hands on you. 15 Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that everyone will see your progress. 16 Be conscientious about how you live and what you teach. Persevere in this, because by doing so you will save both yourself and those who listen to you (1 Timothy 4:11-16).
Timothy (and all other youthful saints) should exercise discipline over their youthful desires and inclinations. This sounds foreign in our culture, where youth feels compelled to experience every pleasure and indulgence. Discipline is necessary for godliness in matters of speech, conduct, love, faithfulness, and purity. Discipline needs to be exercised in ministry. Timothy is instructed to “give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching” (4:13).
Discipline is likewise needed to develop our spiritual gift(s):
6 Because of this I remind you to rekindle God’s gift that you possess through the laying on of my hands. 7 For God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control (2 Timothy 1:6-7).
Paul reminds Timothy of the time when his ministry was confirmed by prophetic words and when the elders laid their hands on him, which appears to have been accompanied by certain spiritual gifts (4:14). These are matters which require Timothy’s commitment and personal discipline. Paul urges his spiritual son to give careful attention to both his doctrine and his practice. In doing this, Timothy will be spared from a wasted life and ministry. He will likewise deliver those who listen to him from the pitfalls of an undisciplined life.
This section is both fascinating and convicting to me personally. Paul gives specific instructions to Timothy as to how various categories of people are to be shown respect and honor. He begins with some very general guidelines governing Timothy’s relationships with others:
1 Do not address an older man harshly but appeal to him as a father. Speak to younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters—with complete purity (1 Timothy 5:1-2).
Older men are to be treated with the respect and deference that they deserve. One should not speak to an older man sharply, as you would, for example, to a wayward or foolish child. Younger men should be dealt with as though they were brothers. Older women should be treated with the same respect we would show our mother. Timothy, a young man himself, should relate to the younger women as if they were his sisters. The point here is that the relationship should be one that avoids improper sexual connotations. Our every relationship should manifest honor and respect.
Having briefly covered a wide range of relationships in verses 1 and 2, Paul moves on to the topic of widows. He devotes 14 verses to this subject, while the following section dealing with elders is but 9 verses in length. Obviously this is a very important subject in Paul’s mind, and it should well be so:
Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world (James 1:27; see also Acts 6:1-7).
Paul does not lump all widows into one general category. Instead, he distinguishes various types of widows. First, there are the younger widows. These are widows who are still young enough to remarry. Paul does not want to see these younger widows supported by the church. This would be an unnecessary, long-term burden on the church. In order for a younger widow to be “put on the list” for support, she would apparently need to take a vow to remain single. A young widow might meet an eligible man and regret her vow, and forsake her vow (5:12). Furthermore, a young widow who is supported by the church might waste her time going about from house to house, gossiping (5:13). Consequently, younger widows are to be encouraged to remarry (5:14).
Second, there are widows who are truly widows. 408 Paul calls them “widows indeed” (NASB), or “widows who are truly in need” (NET Bible). These are widows who have no apparent means of support. In particular, these are widows who have no family members to look after them. If a widow has other family, it is their duty to care for her, and thus to relieve the church of an unnecessary burden (5:4, 8, 16).
Third, there are the older widows who should be supported by the church, or as Paul expresses it, they should be “put on the list” (5:9). The standards for a widow who is put on the list are very high:
She must be at least 60 years old (5:9).
She must have been the wife of one man (5:9).
She must be a “widow indeed,” without other means of support (5:3-4).
She must have demonstrated valuable ministry to the church over time (5:10).
She should be a woman who has set her hope on God, and who devotes herself to prayer (5:5).
Paul is not suggesting that the church should excuse itself from helping widows in a time of need, even though they don’t meet all the qualifications listed above. The qualifications he sets down are for those few widows whom the church will support consistently.
As I understand Paul, the widows who are “put on the list” are shown honor just like the elders are given honor (5:17-18), by being supported financially. This financial support is not based solely on need alone, but also on the valuable contribution these widows make to the church. These are paid prayer warriors, whose ministry is so valuable that they are taken care of (apparently) until their dying day.
I believe that a woman like Anna would have been a perfect candidate for such a position in the church, and indeed it would seem that she was supported financially, perhaps by temple funds (Luke 2 :36-38). In all the churches I have ever attended, I have not yet seen a prayer warrior widow that was supported in this manner by the church. What I have seen, however, is a number of godly, older widows who have carried out this valuable function, even though they were not financially supported. In each case, these women were supported by their family. In some cases, the godly widow is supported by the funds that her husband wisely set aside, either in savings or insurance, or both.
I cannot overstate how much I have come to appreciate the contribution of these women prayer warriors. Until her death recently, one godly widow prayed specifically for our family and for my ministry daily. I know that others faithfully carry on this task, not only for me and my family, but for many others. I believe it is only when we get to heaven that we will fully grasp how much such women have contributed to God’s work in and through the church.
The second category of those who are in need of protection (from unfounded accusations) and provision (financial support) is that of elders or overseers:
17 Elders who provide effective leadership must be counted worthy of double honor,409 especially those who work hard in speaking and teaching. 18 For the scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and, “The worker deserves his pay.” 19 Do not accept an accusation against an elder unless it can be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 20 Those guilty of sin must be rebuked before all, as a warning to the rest. 21 Before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, I solemnly charge you to carry out these commands without prejudice or favoritism of any kind. 22 Do not lay hands on anyone hastily and so identify with the sins of others. Keep yourself pure. 23 (Stop drinking just water, but use a little wine for your digestion and your frequent illnesses.) 24 The sins of some people are obvious, going before them into judgment, but for others, they show up later. 25 Similarly good works are also obvious, and the ones that are not cannot remain hidden (1 Timothy 5:17-25).
It sounds strange to think of widows (indeed) and elders in a similar way. Why would elders need to be provided for (“double honor,” 5:17) and protected? For one thing the care of a church is very time-consuming. One cannot spend many long hours caring for the flock and earning a salary at the same time. This is especially true for those who “work hard in speaking and teaching.” Consequently, they may need to be fully supported (“double honor”), or merely have their income supplemented. While the false teachers seek financial gain, authentic elders live sacrificial lives. They may not ask for funds for themselves. In addition to this, the false teachers may very well be bilking the saints of their hard-earned funds. I would suspect that while the false teachers were “lining their own pockets,” the authentic elders had empty pockets. It is difficult to give your full attention to the flock of God when your family is doing without necessities.
The second thing Paul deals with in relation to honoring elders is to shield them from unfounded accusations and criticism. Paul requires two or three witnesses for any accusation that is made against an elder. In reality, this is not a higher standard than normal; it is the same standard that the Scriptures apply to all accusations:
15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault when the two of you are alone. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others with you, that at the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him like a Gentile or tax collector. 18 “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven. 19 Again, I tell you the truth, if two of you on earth agree about whatever they ask, my Father in heaven will do it for them. 20 For where two or three are assembled in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:15-20).
An elder should be entitled to the same assumption of innocence that any other individual must be granted. I would imagine that Paul’s guidelines, if applied, would greatly reduce the number of accusations against elders (not to mention others). Those elders who are found to be guilty need to be rebuked publicly, since their ministry, and their sin, has a very public impact (5:20).
The final verses of chapter 5 begin with Paul’s exhortation to maintain the principles he has set down without bias or prejudice (5:21). Paul warns Timothy about assigning leadership tasks too hastily. If you appoint someone to a task prematurely, this causes you to share in the wrongs that might be committed (5:22). Paul’s advice that Timothy “take a little wine for his stomach’s sake” (5:23) suggests that even Paul was not able to “heal on demand.” While we can pray for divine healing, sometimes we simply need to take advantage of the ordinary remedies that are available to us.
Paul reminds Timothy that the “fruits” of a person’s deeds are not always immediately apparent (compare Matthew 12:24-30), so that we should be careful not to make premature judgments. Is this not why Paul told Timothy not to “lay hands” on someone too quickly? The fruit of righteousness may not always be immediately evident; likewise, the fruit of sin may take some time to manifest itself. In time, however, the fruit of one’s deeds will generally become apparent.410
I include the first two verses of chapter 6 with Paul’s teaching in chapter 5. It seems that a new paragraph and subject are introduced in verse 3 of chapter 6.411 If I understand Paul’s argument correctly, he is instructing slaves to “honor” their masters, in a manner similar to the way we are instructed to honor widows and elders:
1 Those who are under the yoke as slaves must regard their own masters as deserving of full respect.412 This will prevent the name of God and Christian teaching from being discredited. 2 But those who have believing masters must not show them less respect because they are brothers. Instead they are to serve all the more, because those who benefit from their service are believers and dearly loved (1 Timothy 6:1-2, emphasis mine).
It would be very easy for a slave to think little of his master. Nevertheless, we are to honor those to whom honor is due (Romans 13:7); indeed, we are to honor all men (1 Peter 2:17). Slaves were to respect the position held by their masters, and to submit to them. They were to consider them “deserving of full respect” (6:2). But what about believing masters? Would it not be easy to despise a believing master, wondering how he could practice slavery and even possess slaves? Paul makes no exceptions. Believing masters are to be shown no less respect; rather, a believing slave should serve his believing master with even more diligence. In so doing, he will be honoring his master. Here, “honor” once again has a financial or monetary aspect, just as it did in the case of widows (some of whom were financially supported) and elders (some of whom were to receive “double honor”). By working hard for one’s believing master a slave would contribute to his master’s prosperity (in addition to having prayed for it – see 1 Timothy 2:1-7). Here are words that could only be of divine origin. What mere mortal would have ever conceived of a slave honoring his master in this manner?
As he prepares to conclude this letter Paul turns for one last time to the false teachers:
3 If someone spreads false teachings and does not agree with sound words (that is, those of our Lord Jesus Christ) and with the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing, but has an unhealthy interest in controversies and verbal disputes. This gives rise to envy, dissension, slanders, evil suspicions, 5 and constant bickering by people corrupted in their minds and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a way of making a profit (1 Timothy 6:3-5).
In some ways Paul is simply recapping what he has already indicated about the false teachers in Ephesus. Their teachings do not square with sound doctrine, nor do they lead to godly living. Such teachers are arrogant, but in truth they understand nothing. They have a preference for things that are controversial, and this leads to all kinds of conflict and strife. The new element, which Paul intends to explore further, is found in the last words of verse 5:
“. . . who suppose that godliness is a way of making a profit.”
In short, false teachers are often in it for the money. No wonder Paul contrasted his financial practices with the false teachers who would arise in Ephesus:
33 I have desired no one’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine provided for my needs and the needs of those who were with me. 35 By all these things, I have shown you that by working in this way we must help the weak, and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’” (Acts 20:33-35).
Paul closes his letter to Timothy by focusing on a proper Christian perspective of prosperity. The false teachers believed that godliness was the means to making a profit. Paul differs from this twisted view of ministry and godliness. Paul does grant that godliness is “profitable” when prosperity is rightly understood (6:6). Godliness that is combined with contentment is very profitable, even if not in a monetary way. Since we didn’t bring material prosperity with us at our birth, and we can’t take it with us when we die, we should not be obsessed with it. We should be content when our daily needs are met (see Philippians 4:10-13).
Paul wants to be very clear on this matter of prosperity. Godliness does not guarantee material wealth, but neither is it sinful to possess material wealth. It is not being rich that is evil, but being obsessed with a desire to accumulate wealth. This is a sin that can be committed by the poor, if they are obsessed with becoming rich. Those who desperately desire to be rich may succumb to temptations to cut corners in order to get there. So then, it is the love of money which Paul condemns, and not the mere possession of wealth:
For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains (1 Timothy 6:10).
Timothy is urged not to become caught up in the pursuit of wealth, but rather to pursue godliness:
11 But you, as a person dedicated to God, keep away from all that. Instead pursue righteousness, godliness, faithfulness, love, endurance, and gentleness. 12 Compete well for the faith and lay hold of that eternal life you were called for and made your good confession for in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I charge you before God who gives life to all things and Christ Jesus who made his good confession before Pontius Pilate, 14 to obey this command without fault or failure until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ 15 —whose appearing the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will reveal at the right time. 16 He alone possesses immortality and lives in unapproachable light, whom no human has ever seen or is able to see. To him be honor and eternal power! Amen (1 Timothy 6:11-16).
In other words, Timothy is challenged to engage himself in the pursuit of true (spiritual and eternal) riches, rather than the mere earthly appearance of wealth. To sum it up, true riches are obtained only in the pursuit of Jesus Christ and in the joy of knowing Him intimately.
There is one who pretends to be rich and yet has nothing;
another pretends to be poor and yet possesses great wealth (Proverbs 13:7).
A faithful person will have an abundance of blessings,
but the one who hastens to gain riches will not go unpunished (Proverbs 28:20).
While it is not wrong to be wealthy, there are certain temptations that the wealthy encounter. Paul therefore gives Timothy some good words of exhortation to convey to those who are rich in this world’s goods:
17 Command those who are rich in this world’s goods not to be haughty or to set their hope on riches, which are uncertain, but on God who richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous givers, sharing with others. 19 In this way they will save up a treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the future and so lay hold of what is truly life (1 Timothy 6:17-19).
Those who are rich in worldly goods need to beware of the arrogance that often accompanies wealth:
A rich person is wise in his own eyes,
but a discerning poor person can evaluate him properly (Proverbs 28:11).
The rich are likewise tempted to place their trust in their wealth, rather than in God:
The wealth of a rich person is like a strong city,
but the poor are brought to ruin by their poverty (Proverbs 10:15).
The wealth of a rich person is like a strong city,
and it is like a high wall in his imagination (Proverbs 18:11).
Paul directs Timothy to instruct those who are rich to trust in God, and not in their wealth. He further urges Timothy to teach the rich to invest their worldly goods wisely by being rich in good deeds, and thereby laying up treasure in heaven.413
Paul closes his letter with one final word of exhortation related to the false teaching which has surfaced in Ephesus:
20 O Timothy, protect what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and absurdities of so-called “knowledge.” 21 By professing it, some have strayed from the faith. Grace be with you all (1 Timothy 6:20-21).
Timothy is to guard the truth, the sound doctrine that has been entrusted to him. At the same time he is to avoid the empty words of the false teachers, which they mislabel as “knowledge.” Some have already gone astray by embracing this “knowledge.” With this last word of exhortation and admonition, Paul commends Timothy, his spiritual son, and the saints in Ephesus to the grace of God.
Let’s suppose that you were Timothy, and that you had just finished reading Paul’s first epistle to you while at Ephesus. What would you think? How would you feel?
I suspect that Timothy would feel about the way you do when you receive a letter (or today, an e-mail) from a close friend who lives some distance away. Paul was a spiritual father to Timothy. They had spent years together in ministry. Often, they were together, but for a time they were separated. Timothy was given a challenging assignment. He was to act on Paul’s behalf, with Paul’s authority. He was to identify false teachers and to silence them. He was undoubtedly experiencing resistance, and perhaps open attack, by those who had departed from the gospel. He was a young man, and he may well have questioned whether or not he was up to the task.
Paul’s letter was a word of encouragement from a dear and trusted friend and mentor. Paul’s confidence in Timothy must have warmed this young man’s heart. Paul’s written expression of love and confidence must have served to bolster Timothy’s standing in the church at Ephesus. If Paul was aware of the opposition Timothy faced, his words were probably right on target, probing to the heart of the issues Timothy was facing.
Most of all, Timothy was assured of Paul’s love and affection. Paul was very likely the instrument through whom Timothy came to faith. Paul was the one who selected Timothy to accompany him on his missionary journeys. Paul was the one who trusted Timothy, sending him to various churches to act as his personal spokesman. While Paul was concerned about the Ephesian church and the false teachers who had emerged, he was greatly concerned about Timothy, his son in the faith, and he let him know it.
Paul was likewise committed to the Ephesian church. It was through Paul that many of the saints in Ephesus came to faith. Paul had nurtured them and had taught them the truths they needed to know. Even in his absence Paul cared much for this church, and sending his very finest and most trusted colleague proved it.
Paul’s epistle to Timothy at Ephesus is evidence of Paul’s love for and commitment to the church of Jesus Christ. He saw the church as the “support and bulwark of the truth” (3:15). While parachurch organizations are certainly a part of the church, and have a contribution to make, let us be reminded that the church was Paul’s priority. He loved the church, and he made incredible sacrifices for its well being.
For me, this study of First Timothy has given me a deeper realization of Paul’s love for and appreciation of women. Some would condemn Paul because of his words in chapter 2, but let us recall that Paul’s instructions are the Lord’s command:
33 for God is not characterized by disorder but peace. As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says. 35 If they want to find out about something, they should ask their husbands at home, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. 36 Did the word of God begin with you, or did it come to you alone? 37 If anyone considers himself a prophet or spiritual person, he should acknowledge that what I write to you is the Lord’s command. 38 If someone does not recognize this, he is not recognized (1 Corinthians 14:33-38, emphasis mine).
Beyond this, think about what the entire book of 1 Timothy teaches us about Paul’s regard for women, and the value of their ministry to the church. In chapter 2, he includes women in his instructions; he does not ignore them, as though they had no contribution to make at all. Paul clarifies what ministries women may have (and not have) in the church, but in including his instructions regarding women, he indicates that he considers them a part of the church and its ministry.
In chapter 3 we once again find that women play a key role in ministry. In verse 11 Paul writes,
Likewise also their wives must be dignified, not slanderous, temperate, faithful in every respect (1 Timothy 3:11).
I believe that this verse applies both to the wives of the deacons and of the elders as well. The character of a man’s wife may make or break him as a church leader. Paul’s words imply that a leader’s wife plays a key role in her husband’s ministry.
In chapter 5, Paul spends a good portion of the chapter giving instructions related to women. Paul tells Timothy (and thus, all other men) to respect older women and younger women. The older women are to be treated as mothers (great respect here), and the younger women as sisters. The plight of widows is taken very seriously by Paul. While women have a great contribution to make in relation to child-bearing and child-rearing (1 Timothy 2:15), they also have a great contribution to make to the church as prayer warriors and as those who provide hospitality to those who pass their way (1 Timothy 5:5-10). Some widows are of such value that they are to be placed “on the list,” to be fully supported in their ministry.
Going beyond 1 Timothy, we see other evidences of Paul’s great love for and appreciation of women in the church. Paul reminds Timothy of the role his mother and grandmother played in his spiritual life (2 Timothy 1:5). At the end of Paul’s epistles, he calls special attention to the women who have made a significant contribution to the church (e.g. Romans 16). In addition to this I recall that Luke was Paul’s traveling companion. In his Gospel and in Acts, Luke pays tribute to a number of significant women, so far as the gospel is concerned. Surely Luke is reflecting Paul’s attitudes here.
What a great book! How much more there is for us to learn. Let this only be the beginning of a life-long study of 1 Timothy. May God grant that we take Paul’s heartfelt words to our own hearts and lives.
397 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 102 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Robert L. Deffinbaugh on November 10, 2002.
398 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
399 I believe that Paul organizes this epistle by alternating and intertwining these two themes: (1) the false teachers and their teachings; and, (2) the way the church should conduct itself as the household of faith. The false teachers and their teachings are contrasted with Paul’s general instructions regarding the conduct of the church.
400 This is similar to the way Peter begins 1 Peter 3 with the words, “in the same way, wives be subject to your own husbands.” Peter has been writing about the silent suffering of the Savior in the final verses of chapter 2, about submission to governing authorities in 2:13-17, and about the need for slaves to silently suffer under the hand of cruel masters in 2:18-20. In a similar spirit of submission, Peter writes, wives are to submit to their husbands, sometimes doing so by their silence.
401 When the apostles instruct women regarding their dress, it is in the context of submission. This can be seen in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16; 1 Timothy 2; and 1 Peter 3:1-6.
402 I should note that not all would agree with my interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11. For a more thorough interpretation of this passage, see my study of 1 Corinthians 11: http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/1co/deffin/1cor-21.htm.
403 When I preached this lesson, two women in the congregation happened to be wearing a “hot pink” (or something close to it – colors are not my strength) dress. Neither dress was inappropriate, in my opinion. I do not wish to be understood to say that women must wear only bland colors. I am saying that women can dress in a way that shouts, “look at me!” It is not just a matter of color, either, but of fit, of length, of exposure. Our culture lets us know what its view of a woman’s glory is, and it encourages women to flaunt it. The Bible teaches otherwise.
404 The adjective “quiet” (life) in 2:2 has the same root as the noun rendered “quietly” in 2:11 and “quiet” in 2:12. Thus, I understand the quiet demeanor of women in 2:12 to be an application of the general principle to live a “peaceful and quiet life” in 2:2. In my opinion this explains the “likewise” in 2:9.
405 See also Titus 1:5-9.
406 An argument has been made for the fact that the Greek pronoun, here rendered “He,” is really an abbreviated form of the term used for God. If this is the case then the translation of the King James Version has it right: “God was manifest in the flesh.”
407 The very thing some denied (1 Corinthians 15:12; see also 2 Timothy 2:18).
408 As a matter of personal conviction and practice, there are some women whom I consider to be very close to the category of “a widow,” even if they don’t meet all of the criteria. Some women have been abandoned by their husbands, and thus find themselves virtual widows. While I would not advocate that all such women be financially supported by the church on a regular basis, I do think that the church needs to look after those who are in need and vulnerable.
409 “Honor” in 5:3 is a verb, an imperative (a command); “honor” in 5:17 is a noun, but it has the same root as the verb in 5:3. Thus, both widows and elders are to be honored. This “honor” has a monetary dimension in both cases.
410 We must bear in mind that some judgments should be left to the Lord (see 1 Corinthians 4:1-5).
411 I am pleased to note that the NET Bible sees it this way as well.
412 Often translated “honor.” This term has the same root that we find in 1 Timothy 5:3 and 5:17.
413 See Matthew 6:19-20.
Danger and the likelihood of imminent death were no strangers to Paul. As Paul’s associate Timothy saw this first hand, and from the very beginning. It would seem that Timothy came to faith through Paul’s first missionary journey. Paul’s first visit to Lystra, Timothy’s hometown, was accompanied by some most unusual events. Paul’s ministry begins with the healing of a lame man, which prompts the people of Lystra to worship Paul and Barnabas as gods (14:8-13). With great difficulty, they finally persuade the townspeople to cease worshipping them. Then, something just as amazing happens:
19 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and after winning the crowds over, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, presuming him to be dead. 20 But after the disciples had surrounded him, he got up and went back into the city. On the next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe. 21 After they had proclaimed the good news in that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch. 22 They strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, “We must enter the kingdom of God through many persecutions.” 23 When they had appointed elders for them in the various churches they prayed and fasted, entrusting these new believers to the protection of the Lord in whom they had come to trust (Acts 14:19-23).415
Jewish unbelievers from Antioch and Iconium (where Paul had just visited) came to Lystra, won the crowds over, and proceeded to stone Paul and leave him for dead. Whether Paul actually died or not is the subject of debate, but it is certainly possible as we see from Paul’s remarks in 2 Corinthians 12:1-7. Without attempting to embellish or even to draw attention to this amazing incident, Luke simply informs us that Paul got up and went back into the city. The next day Paul and Barnabas left for Derbe, but it was not long before Paul returned to Lystra, on his return to Antioch. Along the way Paul encouraged the new believers, reminding them that, “We must enter the kingdom of God through many persecutions” (Acts 14:22).
It was not until Paul’s second missionary journey that he took Timothy along with him (Acts 16:1-3). But Paul’s words to Timothy strongly suggest that Timothy was well aware of what had happened to Paul on his first visit to Lystra:
10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love, my endurance, 11 as well as the persecutions and sufferings that happened to me in Antioch, in Iconium, and in Lystra. I endured these persecutions and the Lord delivered me from them all (2 Timothy 3:10-11).
For many years, Timothy accompanied Paul and experienced danger with Paul first hand. I am not aware of anyone who knew Paul more intimately, nor served with him so faithfully.
After Paul left Timothy behind in Ephesus, he wrote him regarding conduct in the household of faith. This letter we know as 1 Timothy. But between the writing of this first letter and Paul’s subsequent letter to Timothy many things have changed, as we see from a reading of 2 Timothy. In 1Timothy, Paul instructed Timothy to remain on at Ephesus in order to deal with false teachers (1 Timothy 1:3); in 2 Timothy, Paul tells Timothy he is sending Tychicus to Ephesus and urges him to come to his side as soon as possible (2 Timothy 4:9, 12). When Paul wrote 1Timothy, he had been freed from his first Roman imprisonment and was carrying on his ministry (in Macedonia? – see 1 Timothy 1:3); as Paul writes 2 Timothy, he is once again in prison, and this time he is not nearly as optimistic about the outcome (2 Timothy 1:16; 2:9). Some have even suggested that Timothy may not have arrived before Paul was executed. Paul’s last words to Timothy sound very much like a farewell address (2 Timothy 4:6-8). One definitely gets the feeling that Paul is passing the torch of leadership to Timothy, and to those who will succeed him. In 1 Timothy, Paul instructs Timothy how he should conduct his ministry in Ephesus; in 2 Timothy, Paul instructs Timothy how he should conduct himself and his ministry in the last days, in Paul’s absence.
Things have definitely changed by the time Paul writes 2 Timothy. The future does not look good for Paul, and this great apostle knows that things will only get worse for Timothy as well. Unlike Paul’s first imprisonment, when the apostle was optimistic about his release (Philippians 1:19-26), Paul seems to know that the time of his departure is drawing near. Paul seems to sense that these are his last words. Therefore, Paul has a two-fold purpose for writing Timothy:
(1) To urge Timothy to come to him quickly.
(2) To encourage and exhort Timothy to stand firm in the difficult days that lie ahead.
Well-known texts are found in all four chapters of this powerful letter. It is without a doubt one of the most important New Testament letters. Let us listen prayerfully and carefully to what God has to say to us through Paul.
I understand the Book of 2 Timothy to fall into the following divisions:
1:1-2 |
Greeting |
1:3—2:13 |
Paul’s Challenge to Timothy |
2:14—3:9 |
Instructions Regarding False Teachers |
3:10—4:8 |
Following Paul’s Example |
4:9-22 |
Paul’s Final Instructions for Timothy |
In this lesson, we will briefly consider these five segments of the book, seeking to identify the major points of emphasis.
We will focus on the one unique element in this greeting, which is found in verse 1:
From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, to further the promise of life in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 1:1, emphasis mine).
One of the things that distinguishes 2 Timothy from Paul’s first letter is the emphasis we find on the return of our Lord and the promise of eternal life.
But now made visible through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus. He has broken the power of death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel! (2 Timothy 1:10, emphasis mine)
May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day! And you know very well all the ways he served me in Ephesus (2 Timothy 1:18, emphasis mine; see also 2:10, 12; 4:1, 8, 18).
Paul is an elderly man, a man who is in prison, facing the death penalty. His days are numbered, and he knows it. We should expect Paul to be thinking in terms of eternal life and immortality. No wonder he begins his letter with a reference to “life and immortality.” This was Paul’s hope, his comfort, and his assurance. One need not face imminent death to appreciate the blessing of eternal life. It should be our focus as well.
Paul’s letter to Timothy is filled with commands. This section alone contains seven.416 As I have indicated by the title to this section, these verses contain Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to persevere in the faith, and by so doing to fulfill his calling. In this passage Paul specifies several areas of application.
(1) Hold fast to sound doctrine, defending it against false teaching (1:13-14; 2:1).
(2) Pass this faith on to the next generation, to perpetuate the faith (2:2).
(3) Don’t be ashamed of the gospel, or of faithful men like Paul, but rather willingly accept his share of suffering for the sake of the gospel (1:8; 2:3).
(4) Devote yourself to your ministry, and in particular rekindle your spiritual gift (1:6; 2:3-7). Paul gives Timothy three illustrations of the kind of devotion that is required of him in 2:3-7. First, like a soldier, Timothy must not be distracted by worldly pursuits, but must devote himself to his mission. Second, like an athlete, Timothy must discipline himself to keep the rules of the race. Third, like a farmer, Timothy should expect to participate in the fruits of his labors. This third example appears to provide the means to fulfill the first.417
Paul’s call for Timothy’s continued faithfulness is not without godly incentives and motivations. First and foremost is Timothy’s personal faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ (1:5, 9-10). Then there is the presence and power of the Spirit (1:6-7). There is also the security of every saint, assuring him of eternal life, immortality, and participation in the kingdom of God (1:1, 10, 12; 2:11-12a). God is the One Who protects and preserves that which He has entrusted to us (1:12, 14).418 There is the example of godly men like Onesiphorus, who at great personal risk sought to minister to Paul in his imprisonment (1:16-18).
Finally, Paul encourages Timothy on the basis of his godly heritage:
3 I am thankful to God, whom I have served with a clear conscience as my ancestors did, when I remember you in my prayers as I do constantly night and day. 4 As I remember your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. 5 I recall your sincere faith that was alive first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I am sure is in you (2 Timothy 1:3-5, emphasis mine).
I have to admit I was puzzled by Paul’s reference to his clear conscience, which he likened to that of his ancestors. What was this all about? I recall Paul speaking of his “clear conscience,” as he did, for example, when he stood before the Sanhedrin in Acts 23:1. But why this reference to his ancestors? What is the difference between “Paul’s ancestors” in 2 Timothy 1:3 and the “fathers” of unbelieving Jews who are mentioned in Acts 7:51-52; 28:24-28; Hebrews 3:8-10?
I believe that Paul is acknowledging his relationship with the faithful “fathers” of the past, those who trusted in God and obeyed His word. These “fathers” would be people like those named in the “hall of faith” in Hebrews 11. These “fathers” paid for their faith and obedience by enduring suffering and affliction. These “ancestors” would include men like Moses and many others:
24 By faith, when he grew up, Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to be ill-treated with the people of God than to enjoy sin’s fleeting pleasure. 26 He regarded abuse suffered for Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for his eyes were fixed on the reward. . . . 35 . . . But others were tortured, not accepting release, to obtain resurrection to a better life. 36 And others experienced mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated 38 (the world was not worthy of them); they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and openings in the earth. 39 And these all were commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. 40 For God had provided something better for us, so that they would be made perfect together with us (Hebrews 11:24-26, 35b-40).
In any one generation, the number of the faithful may not be that great, but Paul looks beyond his own generation for a moment and considers his suffering in the context of the history of the faithful, from the beginning of time until the present. Paul is a man who is about to die, a man who has been forsaken by many of his friends and associates (2 Timothy 4:5-18). In the midst of his adversity, Paul sees himself as a part of the community of the faithful and regards himself as being in good company. Paul stands in a long line of faithful men and women. This “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) now cheers him on, urging him to finish his race.
Timothy, too, stands in this same company of the faithful. Paul is finishing his race, and he is passing the baton on to Timothy, who must run his course to completion. In addition to the saints of the past, Timothy has had a long association with Paul, and before that Timothy was nurtured in the faith by his mother and grandmother.419 This godly heritage should inspire Timothy to complete his course.
It was not enough for Timothy to carry the baton and to finish his course. He, like Paul, must pass it on, so that the heritage of a faithful remnant is maintained until the coming of our Lord:
1 So you, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2 And what you heard me say in the presence of many others as witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be competent to teach others as well (2 Timothy 2:1-2).
Just as Lois and Eunice passed the faith on to Timothy, so Timothy must pass his faith on to the next generation. As Paul reminded Timothy of the things he had learned (2:8), so Timothy must remind others (2:14). Timothy is to pass the torch by committing himself to men who have proven faithful, and instilling the truths of the faith in them. They, in turn, are to teach these truths to others.
In verses 8-13, Paul enumerates some of the elements of the doctrine which he had passed on to Timothy in the presence of many witnesses:
8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David; such is my gospel, 9 for which I suffer hardship to the point of imprisonment as a criminal, but God’s message is not imprisoned! 10 So I endure all things for the sake of those chosen by God, that they too may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus and its eternal glory. 11 This saying is trustworthy:
If we died with him, we will also live with him.
12 If we endure, we will also reign with him.
If we deny him, he will also deny us.
13 If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:8-13).
Here is a further installment420 in Paul’s declaration of the gospel for which he is in chains. Jesus is the Christ (2:8), the promised Messiah, Who was crushed for our sins (see Isaiah 52:13—53:12). He is the One Who was raised from the dead (2:8), which assures us of our resurrection and rewards (or punishment – 2:11-13). It was Christ that Paul preached, and it was for this preaching that he suffered imprisonment. He did so for those who were chosen for salvation, knowing that they will obtain salvation and eternal glory (2:9-10). The words of verses 11-13 are perhaps the words of a hymn, and they speak of this glory.
These verses are somewhat problematic to the reader, because they may appear to contradict other Scriptures. I am speaking particularly of the second half of verse 12, which reads, “If we deny him, he will also deny us.” Does this mean that a Christian can lose his or her salvation? Too many verses tell us that this cannot be the case.421 What, then, is this verse saying?422
I understand this poem or hymn to have two main parts, which should be divided in this way:
Part I: Reassurance for Saints:
If we died with him, we will also live with him.
If we endure, we will also reign with him (verses 11b-12a).
Part II: Warning for Unbelievers:
If we deny him, he will also deny us.
13 If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself (verses 12b-13).
All believers have died with Christ, and they have also been raised to new life in Him (Romans 6:1-11). Thus, those who have died with Christ have the assurance that they will also live with Him. This assumes the perseverance of the saints, which is reinforced by verse 12a: “If we endure, we will also reign with him.” Christians are those who have died and risen from the dead in Christ, and because they are Christians they will endure. Even in times of suffering this gives us the assurance that we will also reign with Him when He returns to establish His kingdom.423
The second half of the hymn turns to a word of warning for all those who are not true believers. If someone denies Him, our Lord will deny them (verse 12b, emphasis mine):
8 “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before God’s angels. 9 But the one who denies me before men will be denied before God’s angels” (Luke 12:8-9, emphasis mine).
The term “denies,” found in Luke 12:9, employs the same verb that Paul uses in 2 Timothy 2:12b. The one who “denies” Christ is the one who does not believe.
In my opinion, verse 13 is where we are tempted to get confused. We read this verse in the following manner:
If we, as Christians, are not faithful to God (at some point in our lives),
God remains faithful to us, because He cannot deny Himself.
The term which is rendered “unfaithful” in 2:13 is found 8 times in the New Testament.424 The term is used to describe the disciples “unbelief” with reference to our Lord’s resurrection (Mark 16:11; Luke 24:11, 41). In the other texts, excluding 2 Timothy 2:13, the term is used to depict the unbelief of the lost:
The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned (Mark 16:16, emphasis mine).
Some were convinced by what he said, but others refused to believe (Acts 28:24, emphasis mine).
7 So you who believe see his value, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone (1 Peter 2:7, emphasis mine).
The meaning in all cases is unbelief (whether in Christ as Savior, or in Christ’s resurrection); the term is never used of unfaithfulness, or of a lapse in faith (as we see, for example, in our Lord’s disciples). The last half of verse 12 and verse 13 refer to the same people – unbelievers.
I believe that the point of Paul’s words in verse 13 is clearly conveyed in another Pauline passage:
3 What then? If some did not believe, does their unbelief nullify the faithfulness of God? 4 Absolutely not! Let God be proven true, and all mankind shown up as liars, just as it is written: “so that you will be justified in your words and will prevail when you are judged” (Romans 3:3-4, emphasis mine).
In the context in Romans, Paul has just shown that the Jews failed to live up to the law that they professed to esteem and uphold (Romans 2:17-29). The question he raises is this: “If the Jews have refused to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, does this mean that God’s promises are null and void?” “Does Israel’s lack of faith undermine and nullify the faithfulness of God?” Paul’s answer is very clear. “No!” Israel’s unbelief does not, in any way, undermine God’s covenant promises, or His faithfulness to these promises. God will show Himself true, even if all men prove to be liars (which they are). This is precisely the point Paul is making in 2 Timothy 2:13. Men who deny the Savior will be denied by the Savior; they won’t get into heaven. Put differently, even though men don’t believe in Him, God will still remain faithful to Himself, and to His promises (and these promises include the threat of eternal torment, as well as His promises of blessing).
I believe that this way of interpreting this hymn is consistent with the overall message of 2 Timothy. On the one hand Paul encourages his “spiritual son” Timothy to endure in his (true) faith. On the other hand Paul warns of the condemnation of those false teachers who may very well be outside the faith (see, for example, 2 Timothy 2:23-25). One might not be certain whether such folks are saved or not, which explains why Paul would say,
However, God’s solid foundation remains standing, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from evil” (2 Timothy 2:19).
Let me make one last comment about the hymn Paul cites in 2:11-13. The essence of this hymn is to stress the outcome of one’s faith or unbelief. Those who are saved and who endure in their faith (as Paul has exhorted Timothy to do) are assured of eternal life and a place of honor and authority in His kingdom (2:11-12a). Unbelievers who deny the Savior are assured of rejection; they will have no part in the kingdom (2:12b-13). These two destinies take place after the resurrection of the dead, the very thing the false teachers seek to deny in one way or another (see 1 Corinthians 15:12; 2 Timothy 2:18).
In the first part of this epistle, Paul has focused on Timothy, urging him to be faithful to his calling, following the teaching and the examples of those faithful who have gone before. Now, Paul turns to the false teachers, whom Timothy has been instructed and authorized to correct and silence (see 1 Timothy 1:3ff.). Paul continues to exhort Timothy to maintain sound doctrine and godly living, but now he does so by contrasting the doctrines and conduct of the faithful with the teaching and lifestyle of the false teachers. Timothy is to protect and practice the faith by dealing rightly with those who contradict sound teaching and conduct.
In verses 14-19 of chapter 2, Paul contrasts the sound doctrine Timothy is to proclaim with the false teaching of the deceivers:
14 Remind people of these things and solemnly charge them before God not to wrangle over words. This is of no benefit; it just brings ruin on those who listen. 15 Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven worker who does not need to be ashamed, teaching the message of truth accurately. 16 But avoid profane chatter, because those occupied with it will stray further and further into ungodliness, 17 and their message will spread its infection like gangrene. Hymenaeus and Philetus are in this group. 18 They have strayed from the truth by saying that the resurrection has already occurred, and they are undermining some people’s faith. 19 However, God’s solid foundation remains standing, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from evil” (2 Timothy 2:14-19).
Timothy is to be a diligent student of God’s Word, interpreting it in a sound manner, and proclaiming it without dilution or distortion (2:15). He is to avoid “word wrangling,” which does not edify, but undermines men’s faith. Their teaching does not rest on the solid study of God’s word, but on myths and speculation, resulting in “empty chatter” (2:16, 23; see 1 Timothy 1:4; 4:7). This teaching departs from the truth, even to the point of functionally denying the future resurrection of men (2:18).
The second thing that characterizes (and betrays the identity of) false teachers is their conduct (see Matthew 7:15-20; Philippians 3:17-21; 2 Peter 2). That is why Paul concludes verse 19 with the statement, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from evil.” Verses 20-26 contrast the ungodly lifestyle of the false teachers with the godly lifestyle of the faithful servant. I must confess that until now I have always understood verses 20-21 to refer to Christians – those who keep themselves pure, and those who don’t:425
20 Now in a great house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also ones made of wood and of clay, and some are for honorable use, but others rather ignoble. 21 So if someone cleanses himself of such behavior, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart, useful for the Master, prepared for every good work (2 Timothy 2:20-21).
I now see these verses differently. To begin with, the verse which precedes these verses states, “The Lord knows those who are his.” He then goes on to add, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from evil.” Paul does not put forth a dual standard for Christians – the “high road” of purity and the “lower road” of impurity. I believe Paul is saying that the true believer must be characterized by purity in life, while the unbeliever will be evident by impurity. To give a biblical example, Pharaoh was a “common” vessel. Moses, on the other hand, was a clean vessel (clean, not perfect). God used Pharaoh to glorify Himself through his unbelief and rebellion, while He used Moses to glorify Himself through obedience.426 Moses was a vessel to honor; Pharaoh a vessel to dishonor.
In verses 22-26, Paul further clarifies what he means by being a vessel of honor. It means the avoidance of youthful passions and the pursuit of godliness (2:22). It means maintaining a pure heart and living in peace with others. This is in stark contrast with the false teachers who love to argue. The honorable vessel avoids senseless controversies because he knows where they lead – to fights (2:23). Instead, the Lord’s servant is to be characterized by a peaceable spirit, even when engaging those who hold and promote false doctrine:
23 But reject foolish and ignorant controversies, because you know they breed fights. 24 And the Lord’s slave must not be a fighter but kind toward all, an apt teacher, patient, 25 correcting opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God will grant them repentance and then knowledge of the truth 26 and they will come to their senses and escape the devil’s trap where they are held captive to do his will (2 Timothy 2:23-26).
I find here a very different spirit. The faithful teacher is one who seeks to win converts; the word wrangler is one who seeks to win arguments. There are some people who just love the fight, or more accurately, they love to fight. Those who strive to win arguments often lose. How many times I have watched men “contend for the faith” in a way that makes me angry with them, even though I hold to the doctrines they seek to defend. If we truly believe that it is the Spirit of God and the Word of God that convinces, convicts, and converts, then we need to lay aside our combative ways.
13 Which of you is wise and understanding? By his good conduct he should show his works done in the gentleness that wisdom brings. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfishness in your hearts, do not boast and tell lies against the truth. 15 Such wisdom does not come from above but is earthly, natural, demonic. 16 For where there is jealousy and selfishness, there is disorder and every evil practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, accommodating, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and not hypocritical. 18 And the fruit that consists of righteousness is planted in peace among those who make peace (James 3:13-18).
In chapter 3, verses 1-9, Paul continues to play out the contrast between godly teachers (as Timothy is being challenged to be) and ungodly deceivers:
1 But understand this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, savage, opposed to what is good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than loving God. 5 They will maintain the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power. So avoid people like these. 6 For some of these insinuate themselves into households and captivate weak women who are overwhelmed with sins and led along by various passions. 7 Such women are always seeking instruction, yet never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people—who have warped minds and are disqualified in the faith—also oppose the truth. 9 But they will not go much further, for their foolishness will be obvious to everyone, just like it was with Jannes and Jambres (2 Timothy 3:1-9).
Whereas Timothy was urged to gently teach and correct those who are in error, so that they might be convicted of their sins and converted, Paul describes the false teachers as preying upon the weak and vulnerable, taking advantage of their sins.
These verses supply us with a very important explanation. Up to this point the emphasis has been on false teachers. The question must arise, however, “Just why are false teachers so popular?” “Why is it that these folks can gather such a following?” Paul’s answer is simple and clear: The false teachers have a following because they market their message to the sensual whims and desires of their audience (compare 2 Corinthians 2:17; 4:2). While some may be unwittingly deceived and led astray, many of their followers want to be led astray, because they are looking for some way to justify their sin. False teachers have given them the pious sounding excuses they want, teaching they are most willing to pay for! Paul informs us that this tendency will only increase as the last days approach.
I need to say something about the “weak” or “silly” (KJV) women in verses 6 and 7:
6 For some of these insinuate themselves into households and captivate weak women who are overwhelmed with sins and led along by various passions. 7 Such women are always seeking instruction, yet never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:6-7, emphasis mine).
I do not think that Paul is suggesting that women, in general, are more gullible and vulnerable than men. He certainly is not saying that women – as opposed to men – are burdened and made more vulnerable by their guilt.427 I do not believe that Paul is selectively picking on women. Rather, Paul is showing the cowardly and wicked character of false teachers. These folks weasel their way into homes by way of the back door. They appeal to the weaknesses and felt needs of women who are vulnerable.428 And in this way the entire home is corrupted.
The false teachers prey upon the weak and vulnerable. He now gives a specific example, which does not exclude all others. Just as Satan sought to bring about Adam’s fall by taking advantage of Eve’s weaknesses429 (she was utterly deceived, Paul says, not Adam – 1 Timothy 2:14), these cunning wolves prey upon the weakest victims they can find. This is not restricted to the unprincipled folks of Paul’s day; we see it today as well. We often read in the paper of those who prey on the elderly, bilking them out of their hard-earned money by all kinds of cunning scams. This is not an indictment on the elderly, but on those who would take unfair advantage of the vulnerable.
As I was thinking of Paul’s words about these teachers and the way they victimized weak women, I happened to be reading through the Gospel of Luke, where I came upon these words:
1 Sometime afterward he went on through towns and villages, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and disabilities: Mary (called Magdalene), from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Cuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their own resources (Luke 8:1-3).
As I read these words I realized that, in one sense, the women the false teachers preyed upon and these women who ministered to our Lord are similar. Jesus loved these women, delivered them from their maladies, and forgave their sins. Jesus ministered to women (and men, too) in lowly circumstances and elevated them to a place of purity and honor. They loved Him for it, and gratefully followed Him. What a Savior! What a contrast to the false teachers, who take advantage of the weaknesses of their victims and use them for their own evil purposes. These men may creep in and be undetected for a time, but eventually (as was the case with Jannes and Jambres), their sin and foolishness will be evident to all.
In the early verses of chapter 3, Paul spoke of the unscrupulous false teachers. In verse 10, Paul praises Timothy for following him, and not the false teachers described above:
10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love, my endurance, 11 as well as the persecutions and sufferings that happened to me in Antioch, in Iconium, and in Lystra. I endured these persecutions and the Lord delivered me from them all. 12 Now in fact all who want to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:10-12).
Following Paul’s example means following his lifestyle, pursuing the same goal, holding the same faith, being patient and loving. It means enduring in the midst of persecutions and tribulation. Here Paul refers to the persecutions he experienced on his first missionary journey, on his way to Lystra, Timothy’s home town. God delivered him through all his adversities. Paul’s life was not the exception, but the rule. All who desire to live a godly life will suffer persecution for their faith (compare 1 Peter 4:12-19).
The wicked false teachers will escape such persecution because they appease their audience and appeal to their lower natures. And so the false teachers will appear to prosper as they progress from bad to worse. They deceive others, while at the same time they deceive themselves (3:13). What a contrast Timothy’s life and ministry is to be! Timothy is to continue in the doctrine he has received. He is to remember not only what he was taught, but who taught him (this seems to include Paul, as well as his mother and grandmother). He was to be a man of the Scriptures. Rather than myths and genealogies, “word wrangling” and speculation, Timothy was to rely on the Scriptures as completely sufficient for his life and ministry:
14 You, however, must continue in the things you have learned and are confident about. You know who taught you 15 and how from infancy you have known the holy writings, that are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:14-17).
When it comes to things spiritual, the Scriptures are all that we need:
3 I can pray this because his divine power has bestowed on us everything necessary for life and godliness through the rich knowledge of the one who called us by his own glory and excellence. 4 Through these things he has bestowed on us his precious and most magnificent promises, so that by means of what was promised you may become partakers of the divine nature, after escaping the worldly corruption that is produced by evil desire (2 Peter 1:3-4).
Paraphrasing the words of Professor Zane Hodges, from a seminary class in years gone by, “Nothing needs to be taught, for which the Scriptures do not provide the text; nothing needs reproving which the Scriptures do not reprove; nothing needs improving which the Scriptures do not seek to improve.” False teachers always place the emphasis on their own unique teachings, teachings which go beyond the written Word of God (see 1 Corinthians 4:6). True teachers never feel the need to go beyond the Bible.
And so Paul solemnly charges Timothy to make the proclamation of God’s Word his passion:
1 I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 Preach the message, be ready whether it is convenient or not, reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and instruction (2 Timothy 4:1-2).
Timothy is to continue to faithfully proclaim the Word of God. He is to “preach the message, whether it is convenient or not” (4:2). What does this mean? I don’t think that it means that we preach, regardless of the readiness of our audience, or the appropriateness of the moment. Too many texts tell us that there is a time and a place, and a proper presentation of the truth:
5 Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunities. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer everyone (Colossians 4:5-6).
I think that here Paul is telling Timothy that he is to be faithful in proclaiming the truth of God’s Word, whether it is convenient for him or not. How many times do our children (for me, now my grandchildren) come and ask us to read a book to them in the middle of an exciting football game, or in the middle of my studies? How often do our children misbehave just at the time we least want to trouble ourselves to deal with their sin? Paul instructs Timothy to be disciplined enough to seize every opportunity to proclaim the Word of God.
There is a good reason for Paul’s sense of urgency:
3 For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. 4 And they will turn away from hearing the truth, but on the other hand they will turn aside to myths. 5 You, however, be self-controlled in all things, endure hardship, do an evangelist’s work, fulfill your ministry (2 Timothy 4:3-5).
Paul is well aware that his days are numbered. He is in prison and soon to be executed. Further, he is an old man. But Paul is not thinking of himself here; he is calling attention to the times in which he and Timothy are living. The days are growing more and more evil. Men are not eager to hear the truth. In fact, they seek out those who will teach them “truth” the way they want to hear it. Timothy needs to “make hay while the sun shines;” he needs to take advantage of every opportunity, because as time passes these opportunities will become fewer and fewer. There was no time to waste.
While Timothy has much work yet to do, Paul’s ministry is drawing to a close. That ministry has been a faithful and fruitful one, one which Timothy would do well to imitate:
6 For I am already being poured out as an offering, and the time for me to depart is at hand. 7 I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith! 8 Finally the crown of righteousness is reserved for me. The Lord, the righteous Judge, will award it to me in that day—and not to me only, but also to all who have set their affection on his appearing (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
Here is a sermon in and of itself. Paul knows that the time of his departure is near. His life has been a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1-2). He has the comfort of knowing that he has faithfully carried out his mission. His work lies behind; his reward awaits him. His Lord, the righteous judge, will reward him with “the crown of righteousness.” And this reward is not only awaiting Paul, but all of those who have fixed their affections on the Lord’s return.
In some ways we need to know what Paul writes here in order to rightly understand this letter. Paul summons Timothy to come to him from Ephesus as quickly as possible. Tychicus is on his way to relieve Timothy at Ephesus. Paul wants his spiritual “son” to be with him at this time. His presence will be particularly precious because others have forsaken Paul:
9 Make every effort to come to me soon. 10 For Demas deserted me, since he loved the present age, and he went to Thessalonica. Crescens went to Galatia and Titus to Dalmatia. 11 Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is a great help to me in ministry. 12 Now I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. 13 When you come, bring with you the cloak I left in Troas with Carpas and the scrolls, especially the parchment ones. 14 Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him in keeping with his deeds. 15 You be on guard against him too, because he vehemently opposed our words. 16 At my first defense no one appeared in my support; instead they all deserted me—may they not be held accountable for it. 17 But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message would be fully proclaimed for all the Gentiles to hear. And so I was delivered from the lion’s mouth! 18 The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed and will bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever! Amen. 19 Greetings to Prisca and Aquila and the family of Onesiphorus. 20 Erastus stayed in Corinth. Trophimus I left ill in Miletus. 21 Make every effort to come before winter. Greetings to you from Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brothers and sisters. 22 The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you (2 Timothy 4:9-22).
Some of those who left Paul seem to have been sent; others just went. They seem to have realized that Paul’s death by execution was imminent, and they did not wish to be identified with him at this time, especially if the charge was insurrection. Paul asks Timothy to bring his cloak and writing materials when he comes (4:13). It seems to me that as the day of their departure drew near, both Peter and Paul had a growing sense of the importance of the written word, and thus had a strong inclination to leave written instructions behind, for men to read after they were gone (see, for example, 2 Peter 1:12-15). Thus the urgent request that Timothy bring writing materials with him.
Paul warns Timothy about Alexander (4:14-15). He assures Timothy that while many have forsaken him, the Lord has faithfully stood by Him. So it was that he was delivered from his first imprisonment. Paul was certain that the Lord would deliver him from every evil deed and would bring him into His kingdom at the proper time (4:18). Giving his greetings to the saints, Paul urges Timothy to arrive in Rome before winter sets in. Time is short. And with this Paul commends Timothy to the Lord. Days, or perhaps weeks separate these words from the hour of his death (as tradition would have it) at the hand of Rome.
A survey of this kind does not permit extensive application, but allow me to close by highlighting several important areas to consider.
Paul challenges us to be faithful in the proclamation and the practice of the truth in our generation. Paul knew that in his days men were becoming increasingly hostile and resistant to the gospel and the truths of God’s Word. He knew that Timothy, as a Christian, would have to oppose the culture. How easy it would be to compromise the message, or to simply keep quiet. Timothy was to stand firm in his faith and practice.
Can we not see that our times are very much like those of Paul? In days gone by our laws protected us when we sought to practice or to proclaim our faith. Now, it would seem, the tables are being turned. Paul felt the same way about his own times. We need to faithfully hold to the truths of God’s Word, and to both proclaim and practice them.
Paul challenges us to pass the faith on to the next generation. Paul’s life was almost over. He was soon going to be with the Lord. The apostle is clearly passing the torch on to Timothy, and likewise he is urging Timothy to pass the torch on to others, who in turn will pass it on to others. Here is a most vital duty and privilege – to preserve the faith and to pass it on, intact, to others. Let us not fail to pass it on to others as Timothy did, and as others have done throughout church history.
Paul seeks to prepare us for the persecution that is coming, especially as the last days draw near. Timothy had seen his share of persecution in his travels with Paul. Nevertheless, Paul seems to sense that even more difficult times lie ahead for Timothy and others. He knows that he will suffer, and (perhaps as a result) others will suffer as well, if they hold fast to the faith. Paul tells us to “toughen up” as we prepare for the hard times ahead. I cannot help but see Paul’s words to Timothy as having a very prophetic message for saints who live in America today. We have known peace and prosperity as Christians, but we must acknowledge that we are the exception, and not the rule. Since suffering for the faith is the rule, we had better be prepared for hard times.
Paul challenges us to find the Scriptures absolutely accurate, authoritative, and sufficient for ministry to others (as well as to ourselves). When Paul first left the Ephesian elders on their own he commended them to God and to the word of His grace:
And now I entrust you to God and to the message of his grace. This message is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified (Acts 20:32).
As Paul prepares to leave this earth and to leave Timothy behind, he once again commends the Word of God as sufficient for all our spiritual needs. Many today would affirm that they believe the Bible is God’s Word, and that it is inspired. A number would acknowledge that it is not only inspired, but inerrant. But all too few find it sufficient. It is, as Paul reminds us.
Finally, Paul warns us about the dangers of “word wrangling.” “Word wrangling” is not wrestling with the Scriptures, seeking to “rightly divide the word of truth.” It is a departure from the Word, by engaging in speculation and theoretical discussions which are not rooted in the Bible, which do not promote the gospel and God’s kingdom, and which do not promote godly living. It is, in Jesus’ words, all about “straining gnats while swallowing camels” (Matthew 23:24). It is about unprofitable debates and arguments over trivialities, or even speculative myths. It is about winning arguments rather than winning lost sinners to Christ. It is about ego and self-indulgence, rather than about humble service and self-denial. Let us beware of “word wrangling.”
In the “Religion” section of yesterday’s Dallas Morning News430 I came across two feature articles, both of which illustrated “word wrangling.” The article quotes Annie Solomon as saying,
“If the main symbol had been bread or fish, maybe the emphasis wouldn’t have been placed on Christ’s death and there wouldn’t have been the need to blame someone for it.”
Elsewhere on this page we read,
“Last winter, Bible scholar Robert W. Funk called for new symbols to represent a new kind of movement. By spring, scholars at his Westar Institute were coming up with ideas. The Lord’s Supper would stay, but it would omit any mention of sacrifice. Consuming the blood and body of Jesus would probably be out. Instead, he envisioned a dinner, open to everybody, representing the kinship of all humans. Dr. Funk is the founder of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars who use historical records and ancient texts in an attempt to separate what the human or historical Jesus actually did or said from what his followers later attributed to him for spiritual or political reasons.”
Here, these “word wranglers” are suggesting that we take two of the symbols of the Christian faith (and the terms which depict them) – a cross and the Lord’s Supper (Communion) and change their meaning. What a dreadful thought. Old, biblical, words, are invested with new (and very different) meanings.
I have found John Piper’s tape series, “Men of Whom the World Is Not Worthy,” most profitable. In his study of the life of J. Gresham Machen, Piper writes these powerful words pertaining to “word wrangling” (Piper does not use this expression, but his words seems to deal with exactly what Paul condemns as “word wrangling.”):
Machen’s life and thought issue a call for all of us to be honest, open, clear, straightforward and guileless in our use of language. He challenges us, as does the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 2:17; 4:2; Eph. 4:25; 1 Thess. 2:3-4) [to] say what we mean and mean what we say, and repudiate duplicity and trickery and shame and verbal manipulating and sidestepping and evasion. Machen alerts us to the dangers of the utilitarian uses of moral and religious language. For example, in Christianity Today, Nov. 9, 1992, (36/13) p. 21, Roy Beck quotes Gregory King, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation's largest homosexual advocacy group, who told the Washington Times in August, “I personally think that most lesbian and gay Americans support traditional family and American values,” which he defined as “tolerance, concern, support, and a sense of community.”
This is an example of how words with moral connotations have been co-opted by special interest groups to gain the moral high ground without moral content. They sound like values, but they are empty: “Tolerance” for what? All things? Which things? The standards are not defined. “Concern” for what? Expressed in what way? Redemptive opposition, or sympathetic endorsement? The standard is not defined. “Support” for what? For the behavior that is destructive and wrong? Or for the person who admits the behavior is wrong and is struggling valiantly to overcome it? The object is not defined. “Community” with what standards of unification? Common endorsements of behavior? Common vision of what is right and wrong? Common indifference of what is right and wrong? Again the standards are not defined.
Yet the opposite of each of these four family values (intolerance, unconcerned, oppressive, self-centered) all carry such negative connotations that it is hard in sound bites to show why the four “values” asserted by the homosexual community are inadequate and even may be wrong as they use them.
All you have is words driven by a utilitarian view of language where honesty and truth are not paramount. Machen shows us that this is not new and that it is destructive to the church and the cause of Christ.431
Paul’s words to Timothy not only inform us that the great apostle was prepared for his death, they give us comfort as we face the certain reality (unless the Lord returns) of our own death. Much more than in 1 Timothy, Paul dwells on the “blessed hope” of the believer. He assures us of our resurrection with Christ and of our blessed hope in Christ. This gives us courage and boldness in the face of opposition and death.
Paul’s last recorded words urge us to finish well the course that God has laid out for us. How sad it is to see people give in and collapse toward the end of their lives. Sometimes we label this “retirement.” For some, it is not so much a collapse as it is a “relax.” We think that we have somehow earned the right to retire, basking in comfort and self-indulgence, when we should, like Paul, be furthering the cause of the gospel. Let us not slack up as our departure draws near, but let us press on to the end of the race.
May God take Paul’s powerful farewell and challenge to Timothy and apply it to our hearts and lives as the day of His return draws near.
414 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 103 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Robert L. Deffinbaugh on November 17, 2002.
415 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible. The NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION, also known as THE NET BIBLE, is a completely new translation of the Bible, not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The translation project originally started as an attempt to provide an electronic version of a modern translation for electronic distribution over the Internet and on CD (compact disk). Anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection will be able to use and print out the NET Bible without cost for personal study. In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print unlimited copies and give them away free to others. It is available on the Internet at: www.netbible.org.
416 Imperatives are found in 1:8, 13, 14; 2:1, 2, 3, 8. In addition there are what I would call “virtual imperatives.” These are commands that are not expressed by the imperative mood. We can see one such command in 1:6 (“I remind you to rekindle God’s gift. . .”). Imperatives in the rest of 2 Timothy can be found in 2:14, 15, 16, 19, 22 (twice), 23; 3:1, 5, 14; 4:2 (five times), 5 (four times), 9, 11, 13, 15, 19, 21.
417 If Timothy lives from the fruit of his labors, he will not need to occupy his time “making a living.” This is especially interesting to me, because Paul is not encouraging Timothy to follow his own example of “working with his own hands to provide for himself and others” (e.g. Acts 20:34-35; 1 Corinthians 9:1-22; 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-9). It was not that Paul did not have the right to be supported (1 Corinthians 9:1-12), but rather that he frequently opted not to make use of it. In Timothy’s case, however, this right should be exercised, so that he could devote himself entirely to his ministry (compare Acts 18:2-3).
418 The command in 1:14 is based upon the assurance in 1:12. I should note that there is a different reading in some Greek manuscripts, so that the KJV speaks of God keeping what we have committed (our lives, our eternal destiny) to Him. The study note in the NET Bible reads, “What has been entrusted to me (Grk ‘my entrustment,’ meaning either (1) ‘what I have entrusted to him’ [his life, destiny, etc.] or (2) ‘what he has entrusted to me’ [the truth of the gospel]). The parallel with v. 14 and use of similar words in the pastorals (1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 2:2) argue for the latter sense.”
419 Since Paul refers to Timothy as his “genuine child in the faith” (1 Timothy 1:2), it would appear that Timothy may have been converted on Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 14:5-23). How, then, can Timothy’s faith be linked to his mother and grandmother? I would be inclined to look upon Timothy’s mother and grandmother as Old Testament saints, who quickly embraced the glorious news of the gospel that the promised Messiah had come. In this way, they raised Timothy in the (Old Testament) faith, a faith that came to full bloom in a personal relationship with Christ at the time of Paul’s ministry in Lystra.
420 The first installment in this epistle came in 1:9-11.
421 See, for example, John 10:27-29; Romans 8:28-39.
422 My friend, Hampton Keathley IV, has proposed another possible solution, by appealing to the chiastic structure of this poem: http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/2ti/2tim2-12.htm
423 See also Romans 8:18-25.
424 Mark 15:11, 16; Luke 24:11, 41; Acts 28:24; Romans 3:3; 2 Timothy 2:13; 1 Peter 2:7.
425 As though these were “spiritual” and “carnal” saints.
426 See also Romans 9:20-24.
427 Unless he means that women are more sensitive to sin and its resulting guilt than men.
428 This should serve to caution those of us who seek to shape or structure the church according to the desires or expectations of men, particularly those who are lost. What we feel we need while still in our sins is not what we really need.
429 Part of this weakness may include the fact that only Adam heard the prohibition directly, while Eve heard it indirectly from Adam.
430 “At Cross Purposes,” “Are Christian Symbols Ripe for Change?” and “Examining the dark side of an icon,” by Christine Wicker. The Dallas Morning News, November 16, 2002. Page 3G.
431 John Piper, “J. Gresham Machen’s Response to Modernism,” Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, January 26, 1993. http://www.desiringgod.org/library/biographies/93machen.html
My wife and I are from India; we are aliens and foreigners in this country. No matter how long we live here, because of our skin color and the way we speak, we will always be treated as foreigners. Living as foreigners and aliens in a foreign culture has its own typical problems.
For example, you always face the food problem, at least in the initial stage. I cannot forget the first time I took a bite out of a hamburger. A friend took me for lunch and bought me a hamburger. I asked, “What do you call this?” He said, “A hamburger.” I had to take a big gulp of water to swallow it, and the rest went in the trash. You see, in India, pigs are raised in very dirty places, and people don’t eat ham. Of course, I did not realize that there is no ham in a hamburger. Well, knowing it has beef would not have helped much. It took me at least six months before I could eat hot dogs, for the obvious reason – we don’t eat dogs in India!
Then many a time you come across some ethical dilemma. Once I was traveling to Cameroon, a small country in West Africa. As a rule, I had to have with me a valid certificate of having had my yellow fever shots. I had taken the shots but was not carrying the certificate with me. At the airport going through the check-in, the man told me something in French. I did understand the words, “yellow fever certificate,” but did not know what he was saying, so I asked, “What?” He repeated the same thing, and I repeated the same question. Finally, now in English, he said, “Give me some money, and I will let you go.” This time with a big surprise, I almost shouted, “Wha...t?” The man, obviously frustrated, said, “You don’t understand, I’ll let you go” and stamped my passport!
Then many times you face the language problem. Many of you have traveled to other countries and know what it is like. Even if they speak English, you cannot understand, just as when I speak here! In a Paris hotel elevator, a sign read, “Please leave your values at the front desk.” A sign in a hotel in Athens read, “Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. daily.” In a Zurich hotel, a sign read, “Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.” In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a monastery, a sign read, “You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily except Thursday.” An ad by a Hong Kong dentist read, “Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists.” A Copenhagen airport sign announced, “We take your bags and send them in all directions.” Posted in a Budapest zoo was this: “Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.” An Acapulco hotel sign bragged, “The manager has personally passed all the water served here.”
All of this is very funny. However, it is no joke when you are living as a small minority in a foreign culture that is totally hostile to you. Imagine that as a missionary couple you are living in a small remote town. After trying for a long time, you find a small rent house. One evening your landlord comes home from the market and without saying a word, throws your stuff outside the house, and tells you to leave because he has been threatened by the villagers that nobody in the village would relate to him unless he threw you out of his house. Or you are a foreign missionary living with your husband and a young son. Your husband has taken a short trip with your son. Late in the evening as you wait for your husband’s and son’s return, you get a message from a villager that your husband and son were stopped by a large crowd, they were tied up in the jeep, people poured gas and burned the jeep, and they were burned alive.
Of course, these are real examples. How would you like to live in such situations? How would you live under the constant threat of your life? The people to whom Peter addressed his letter were living in exactly the same situation, and even worse.
The Christians during Peter’s time were going through intense persecution. Socially they were ostracized, abused, insulted and ridiculed. Politically they had no civil rights. And Peter realized that the situation was getting worse. So, before the time of the Roman Emperor Nero when the severe persecution broke out, Peter wrote this letter to encourage and prepare the Christians scattered in the Asia Minor area. As we know from history, later during the time of the infamous Nero (54-68 A.D.), it did become worse. During Nero’s time, Christians were nailed to crosses, were sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and left in the sun to die a horrible and painful death. They were used as torches to illumine Nero’s parties.
Those Christians were mistreated and insulted (1 Peter 3:9); they were slandered and reviled for their good behavior (1 Peter 3:16) and maligned because they did not participate in the “flood of dissipation” of the non-believers. Peter wrote to them, “They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you” (1 Peter 4:4)433. And all this was “because of the name of Christ” (1 Peter 4:14). The main reason for their persecution was their life-style as aliens and foreigners in the heathen culture.
Peter basically tells them two things: One, their position as aliens and foreigners in this world (1 Peter 1:1-12), and two, their practice as aliens and foreigners in this world (1 Peter 1:13-5:14).
As to our position in this world, we Christians are aliens and foreigners in this world, because we are “called out” from this world to be God’s own people. Peter uses the word “chosen” or “God’s elect” (Eklektois, 1 Peter 1:1) which has a sense of choosing out as a group of people to make them His own people. As Peter later says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).
They are God’s own possession, God’s property, because they were bought “not with perishable things such as silver and gold. . .but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18,19). As Paul said, “You are not your own; you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
As to our practice as foreigners and liens in this world, there is so much that Peter has to tell these people as to the instructions about how they should live among the people who do not know God and who live a life that is not pleasing to God. But Peter’s instructions can be summed up in three “do not’s”:
1. Do not be like them, but be like your Father who has called you.
2. Do not be surprised when you are mistreated, but live an exemplary life.
3. Do not be at home here, but look forward to your home in heaven.
Look at my wife and me! We look different, we dress different – at least my wife does. We speak differently. We sometimes act strange. We eat a different kind of food. No matter how long we both live here, we will always be different and treated as foreigners and aliens in this country because we are from a different country, a different culture. We are like our parents who are Indians.
And that is exactly what Peter tells his readers here. You are now born into a different family (1 Peter 1:3). And so now you have to be like your new Father; “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:14-17). Now you eat different food; you are to crave the pure spiritual milk of His Word so that you can grow in your salvation (1 Peter 2:2). You now have to live for a different purpose in life, “to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).
Now you have a different culture. You do not choose to do what the others choose:
He does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry (1 Peter 4:2-3).
One thing that Peter would never advise his readers is “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Today what has happened is that when we are in the world, we do what the world does. Instead of the church penetrating the world, the world culture has penetrated the church. We have the same, if not higher, divorce rate and family breakdown as the world does. We have the same rate, if not higher, of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind as in the secular world (1 Peter 2:1). Peter says, “Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:15-16).
No wonder the outside world does not see us Christians as any different than them. According to the recent Barna research, less than one-fourth of non-Christians surveyed think of their Christian neighbors with high respect.
How about our goals and priorities in life? Are we not running after material things just as the people of the world are? Let us take the Christmas celebration as an example. Have you started Christmas shopping yet? If not, you are in the minority. We spend weeks, and sometimes months, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” buying gifts for those who don’t need anything and don’t like what we give, and who have to spend days waiting in exchange/return lines afterwards. Whose birthday is it anyway? Why should I get any gifts? In all this running around, does anyone ever pause and think where is the birthday Boy? Instead of giving gifts to one another, why don’t we give it to Jesus, in His Name, to someone who really needs it and will really appreciate it?
And how about our food? Do we not feed on the same food of violence, sex, and a perverted life-style that has been dished out through most of our TV shows? Do we not devour that for hours like hungry dogs? Or, do we, like newborn babes, crave the pure spiritual milk, so that by it we may grow up in our salvation (1 Peter 2:2)?
Speaking about pure spiritual milk, what kind of spiritual food do we demand from our preachers today? Paul said,
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
You must have seen the article that came out a few days ago in the Dallas Morning News.434 The author in this article mentions that because the cross is offensive to modern people, Robert W. Funk and other scholars of Westar Institute have been looking for new symbols to represent Christianity:
The Lord’s Supper would stay, but it would omit any mention of sacrifice. Consuming the blood and body of Jesus would probably be out. Instead, he (Funk) envisioned a dinner, open to everybody, representing the kinship of all humans. . . .Salt might replace the cross as a central symbol because followers of the historical Jesus typically don’t believe that Jesus died for humanity’s sins and was physically resurrected. Salt has ancient spiritual meanings in many faiths, which would meet Dr. Funk’s goal to form a faith that could communicate across cultural boundaries. . . .Most often the search for new symbols arises among mainline Christians and those who might like to follow Christ’s teachings but feel constrained by church doctrines that they don’t accept. . . .Even some evangelical churches are engaging new images and giving old ones less prominence. Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago left the cross out of the church sanctuary because its presence might intimidate newcomers not raised in a church setting. Another ministry attempting to attract postmodern converts allows worshippers to write their sins in a bowlful of sand and then wipe them away.
You cannot call yourself a born again Christian and accept the prevalent culture.
We are aliens and foreigners here,
We cannot do what the Romans do.
We have a different Father,
We cannot act like Satan’s brood.
We are members of God’s family,
We cannot follow the norms of the world.
We grow by a different kind of food,
We cannot feed ourselves on junk.
We now serve a different Master,
We now follow His commands.
His Kingdom is our priority,
His service and glory is our goal.
So the first thing Peter tells his readers, and us, is, “Do not be like them, but be like your Father who has called you.”
Because we are different, we are aliens and foreigners in this culture, and we will be ridiculed. “They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you” (1 Peter 4:4). Either conform to the world, or be ridiculed. As Jesus told His disciples,
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world. . . That is why the world hates you (John 15:19).
Of course, Christians should never give outsiders just cause for mistreatment. They should never use the freedom as a cover-up for evil: “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God” (1 Peter 2:16). It should never be “as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler” (1 Peter 4:15). The Christians have to live as law-abiding citizens (1 Peter 2:13-17). They have to be faithful to their employees and masters even when they are harsh and unfair (1 Peter 2:18-20). Wives have to be faithful and submissive to their husbands even when they are not Christians (1 Peter 3:1-6).
Peter uses none other than Christ as our example in this: “Because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). He gave His life for those who ridiculed Him, mistreated Him and hung Him on the cross (1 Peter 2:24-25). Peter says, “Therefore, since Christ suffered in His body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude” (1 Peter 4:1).
In Christ’s suffering, one of the things that Peter points out is that “Christ suffered for you” (1 Peter 2:21). He says,
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray (1 Peter 2:24-25).
In a sense, what Peter is saying is that we were the ones who inflicted suffering on Him. As one hymn puts it, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord. . . .Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” 435
In suffering, even while doing right, the goal is the glory of God. As the Westminster Confession tells us, “The chief aim of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” That is a very lofty goal, and we as Christians want to live our life with that aim. However, Peter gives an even loftier aim for the Christian’s life. He is not speaking of just Christians glorifying God. He is speaking of unbelievers, those who persecute Christians now, glorifying God:
Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits (1 Peter 2:12).
What Peter means is that, because of your testimony for Christ, these people will have accepted Jesus as their own Lord and Savior, so at the time of Jesus’ coming, they will be rejoicing and glorifying God. Peter cannot forget the words His Master told him and other disciples, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).
And that is why Peter tells his readers,
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).
One of the main blessings of the Christian life is the salvation of souls. But you have to be prepared to give an explanation when they ask.
Do you know the difference between belief and conviction? Belief is knowing what you believe. Conviction is not only knowing what you believe, but also knowing why you believe. The vast majority of Christians today do not even know what they believe, much less why they believe. Because of this, they are swayed by every wind of doctrine. But the time has come now when you will need not just your beliefs, but also your convictions. Otherwise you will not be able to stand. Conviction is something you are ready to die for. It is something worth living for. It is the conviction, albeit misdirected, that prepares a suicide bomber to give his life. Do we have that kind of conviction today? It may not be too long that our beliefs will be questioned and our convictions will be tested.
So we have seen two “do not’s.” As aliens and foreigners here on the earth, do not be like them, but be different because we serve a different Master; we follow His standards. Secondly, do not be surprised when mistreated, but be prepared to give a reason for the hope that you have in Christ, for what you believe, so that those who persecute you today may turn to Christ tomorrow.
3. Do not be at home here, but look forward to your home in heaven.
How do you feel when you travel away from home? We like to take vacations. But within a few days, we get homesick, don’t we? That’s how we should feel about living here on earth. Homesick for our eternal home. That’s how the apostle Paul felt: “We groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling” and, “We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:2, 8). No matter how long we live here on this earth, how big of a house we live in, how much we accumulate, the world is not our home. We live here as aliens and foreigners. We are on a brief visit here and cannot wait to get back to our real home.
Peter gives an example of the people who felt at home here – the people of Noah’s time (1 Peter 3:20). Jesus described how these people felt at home here,
For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them away (Matthew 24:38-39).
Of course, we also know many examples of the people who did not feel at home here. For example, the author of Hebrews notes about Abraham,
By faith he made home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents… For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:9-10).
And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they have been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Hebrews 11:13-16).
Where is our home? Even to raise that question sounds out of place in a church like this where the Word of God is taught with sincerity and conviction. But it still is good to be reminded that this is not our home; our eternal home is in heaven. We have the living hope for inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade…kept in heaven, and that is what we rejoice in; that is what we are looking forward to (1 Peter 1:4-5).
What is included in that inheritance? A life full of glory. A life full of joy and peace. A life in the very presence of God. A life spent in worship and adoration of God our Savior. That’s where our commendations and rewards are.
During my first year at Dallas Theological Seminary some 28 years ago, I read a missionary biography as part of an assignment. I do not remember the title of the book or the names of the missionary couple. But I will never forget the end of the book. This couple had served almost all their grown up life as missionaries in Kenya. In their early 70’s, they finally retired and were headed for home in the United States. They boarded a plane in Nairobi, Kenya. Their plane stopped at Heathrow Airport in London. Some of the passengers got off there, and a group of people boarded the plane. Finally when the couple reached New York and came out of the customs check, they saw a large crowd of people outside the airport shouting, “Welcome to America!” The missionary wife, with a twinkle in her eye, told her husband, “Wow! Look, honey, what a grand welcome our church has arranged for us!”
Of course, it did not take too long for them to realize that the large crowd of people was not for them. Unknown to them, among the group of people who boarded the plane in London were the Beatles, making their first historic trip to America, and the crowd was to welcome them. Even the couple who was supposed to pick them up was delayed because of the unusual rush.
Standing by themselves in a corner of the airport, dejected and disappointed, the missionary wife told her husband, “Look, honey, we have spent all our lives serving the Lord in a very difficult situation, and when we come home, this is the kind of welcome we receive. And look at these people, the kind of welcome they are getting.” To which the missionary husband replied, “Honey, we are not home yet.” No, we are not home yet. And we should never feel at home here.
That missionary story ended there. But later I came to know something else about the Beatles’ historic visit to America. They had not come alone. They brought somebody else with them, their spiritual advisor and guru, Maharshi Mahesh Yogi. And the welcome the Beatles received was nothing compared to the welcome that was awarded to Mahesh Yogi. Within months of his arrival in the United States, he was touring all over the United States teaching his philosophy and promoting Transcendental Meditation (TM). In less than a couple of years, there were TM centers established all across America, and TM became a household word.
Seeing the welcome awarded to Mahesh Yogi and making use of the secular immigration laws of the United States, hordes of Yogis and Gurus invaded the United States, and today there is not a single major city in America where you would not find Hindu temples. The Hindus are burning churches in India and building temples all across America. What we see today — pluralism, agnosticism, humanism, making gods out of trees and birds and sea creatures and forests in the name of environmental concerns, anything and everything that is antagonistic to the Christian and to the Judeo-Christian worldview — all have their roots in that historic arrival in New York some 40 years ago when Christianity was pushed into a corner, and the heathen worldview was accorded a royal welcome.
What Peter was writing to his contemporaries has never been truer for modern history than right now, right here in the United States of America. You will be swept away in the whirlwind of doubts and worldly thinking and the headlong rush into heathen beliefs and practices if you are not prepared. If ever, now is the time when your beliefs will be questioned and your convictions will be tested, even to the point of death.
What are you living for? Where is your heart set? How are you living? When in Rome, do you do as the Romans do? Or, “just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do” (1 Peter1:15)?
[We] are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that we may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9).
We know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that we were redeemed from the empty way of life that we see all around us, but with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish or defect (1 Peter 1:18).
The Book of First Peter, more than any other book in the whole Bible, tells us as much as it did its original readers that now is the time to wake up from our complacency. Because,
In the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:38-39).
Paul summarizes the letter of First Peter well (of course, Paul wrote his letters before Peter did, 2 Peter 3:15-16):
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good (Titus 2:11-14).
That is what the Christian life is all about. Sometimes it takes a faithful and suffering saint like Stephen to produce a serving saint like Paul.
432 This is the edited manuscript of Lesson 106 in the From Creation to the Cross series prepared by Imanuel Christian on December 8, 2002.
433 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright Ó 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission.
434 Christine Wicker, “At Cross Purposes: Are Christian Symbols Ripe for Change?” Dallas Morning News, November 16, 2002.
435 Words and tune “Were You There?” Traditional Negro spiritual; adapted, John W. Work, Jr., and Frederick J. Work, 1907.