Is Balance Biblical?

Seems to me it's very British to be pro-balance. We like to take the middle ground, whether in politics or theology or in whatever area of life you look at. We Brits do not like extremism. We don't like to talk things up too much. Our football team usually does well but not brilliantly. Somehow we are now in the Euro finals without having played an outstanding game. How did that happen? It's all part of the British malaise.

In contrast the Bible tends to put down two extremes and let us try to work out how to live. For instance Paul tells us to work and rest in one breath:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed–not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence–continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Php 2:12-13

How can you work out your own salvation while trusting that is God who works in us? There is something of a conundrum there.

Even more striking are some of the 'hard sayings' (as FF Bruce called them) of Jesus:

“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. Luk 14:26

How can it be right to hate your family? It seems against all cultural good sense even now, and at that time and in that culture it must have been even more shocking. Here's another one:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. Mat 5:43-45a

Now this is just hard to do. It is also against all common sense, but we know that Jesus himself practised it, and passed it onto those who came after him.

So balance may not be as biblical as we might think. A more important value is zeal:

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Rom 12:11

How can we keep our zeal in these lackadasical, apathetic, post-modern times when each of us keeps our beliefs as privately as possible for fear of offending others (the biggest crime out there)? The answer is not to be afraid to confront wrong, but do so quietly and confident of the Lord's approval of our actions. We also need to know that God is in charge, and we are, with the rest of humankind, answerable to Him. It is not our job to judge. God is just, and he will decide all things in the future. He is also patient with us, and allows us to stray from Him at times so that it will be our love for Him (and a sense of His love for us) that draws us back. That is why we see so many problems in the world. It is not that God is far off, but that He loves to woo us rather than hit us over the head with the truth. May we have the grace to mirror this in our behaviour to others!

For further reading: FF Bruce 'The Hard Sayings of Jesus' http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+hard+sayings+of+jesus&tag=googhydr-21&index=stripbooks&hvadid=7880267329&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7889344151829630944&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_35pyhmjbvc_b 

All Nations

1 May God be merciful and bless us.

May his face smile with favor on us. Interlude

2 May your ways be known throughout the earth,

your saving power among people everywhere.

3 May the nations praise you, O God.

Yes, may all the nations praise you.

4 Let the whole world sing for joy,

because you govern the nations with justice

and guide the people of the whole world. Interlude

5 May the nations praise you, O God.

Yes, may all the nations praise you.

6 Then the earth will yield its harvests,

and God, our God, will richly bless us.

7 Yes, God will bless us,

and people all over the world will fear him. (Psalm 67 NLT)

The main purpose God wants to achieve in the OT is not the blessing of Israel – but the blessing of All Nations through Israel.

 ‘All Nations’ goes back to Gen 12:1-3 (v3 it is mishpahah ‘all families’ or ‘all clans’). Often the word for nations is goyyim. It can be negative (= ‘gentiles’) or positive, as in those God wants to draw to Himself, through His covenant people Israel.

There is a strong link between mission and blessing. ‘…make his face to shine’ from Numbers 6. Means to show favour. ‘Two men reported that Rabbi Abbahu had found a treasure. When they were asked how did they know, they replied: "Because his face shines".' To make one’s face shine for the towards another person means to show him favour, as in Pro 16:15.

The ultimate goal is believers v7; worshipers Jhn 4:23 (those worshiping in spirit and truth).

Mission in the OT is to do with drawing other nations towards Jerusalem to worship Yahweh, the one true God Isa 56:6-7. The foreigners actually become servants i.e. priests! The Old Testament context is important. We find ‘gods’ in Psa 95:3; 96:4-5. Each nation had their own ‘god’. Yahweh is King above all the gods, which are only idols. So the ancient Israelites had a belief based on Monolatry not Monotheism. Monolatry is 'the exclusive worship of one god without excluding the existence of others' (online dictionary). The gods of other nations were real to them even if considered merely idols by true believers in Israel.

Mission is centrifugal in the NT. Philip and Ethiopian. There are ripples outwards in Acts as first Jews, then God-fearers, then Gentiles are converted and filled with the Holy Spirit.

It’s not about us, it’s about Mission and the Kingdom of God!

Reinvention

1.       God is continually reinventing. Our kids are growing up. What was good then is no longer ok with them. For example on Fridays we used to have ‘pizza and video’ nights. Now only our youngest child is interested in those, and then only sometimes. As we grow we change. Food was different before and after the flood – we went from being vegetarians to carnivores. Abraham was told to be a blessing to the nations, but the descendants of Jacob/Israel often forgot this. Eventually they asked for a king, not something that was at all part of God’s perfect plan. Having had a bad king they eventually had King David on the throne, who united the North and the South and expanded the territory of the nation. He was promised that a son of his would always be on the throne, but this went wrong and it was reinvented to being fulfilled in the ‘son of David’, Jesus the Messiah, whose kingdom is the Kingdom of God. Peter was very surprised, on meeting Cornelius, to see a dream where he was told to kill and eat all kinds of non-kosher animals (Acts 10). Once the gentiles had been baptised in the Spirit his (actually the apostles’) view of them had to be reinvented. Paul had a ministry to the gentiles, despite the fact that his real heart was for his own people to the Jews (his ministry had to be reinvented). The gospel is reinvented between the Old Testament and the New, it is a secret now revealed (1Cor 2:6, 4:1). 

2.       We continually need to adapt ourselves to new environments. We used to live in Central Asia, then we lived in St Petersburg Russian for a few years, and now we live in the UK. The customs, lifestyles, and how relationships work are different. Paul had to adapt his ministry to the audience he was communicating with. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.   To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law.  To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.  1 Cor 9:20-22. Notice he also had to reinvent his view of the law (the teaching found in the first five books of the Bible). It is now teaching, not about how to be Jewish, but how to be at peace with God through Jesus the Messiah, and part of God’s new covenant people, made up of both Jews and Gentiles (‘people from every tribe, nation, people and tongue’ Rev 7:9).

3.       This puts us in the firing line, but God’s grace is always there whenever we need it. ‘He gives us more grace.’ Jas 4:6. Without God’s grace we would never survive. Change can be tiring. Actually it is exhausting, particularly to those who value stability and cherish the status quo (I’m not one of these, by the way). We need God’s grace to make it through the hard times.

War in the Old Testament

What about the Canaanites?

Introduction

Those of us who adhere to a classic form of belief in God — God is good, holy, loving, sovereign — have a problem: evil. Evil is a problem for any thinking Christian — a serious problem. Simply put: if God is good, we have to ask why there is evil. If God is sovereign, we have to ask why there is evil. And if God is good we have to ask if God is sovereign.

False Views

1. Setting the Two Testaments Against Each Other

This view goes back to Marcion, 2^ndCentury:

‘All these nasty things happened in the OT, but now we are NT Christians we know God was never like that (though the primitive Israelites thought he was) or God has changed in the way he engages with us as seen in Jesus.’

This won’t do:

It is a caricature of the OT which has much to say about the love of God.

It is a caricature of the NT which has much to say about the judgement of God.

It caricatures Jesus and the NT writers who do not reject the OT but fulfil it.

Bono on OT vs. NT

There's nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable.

But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend.

When you're a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules.

But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

OT vs. NT

There probably are some differences between the OT and the NT

But God is the same throughout the Bible

The New Covenant does not replace the Old Covenant, rather it fulfils it

2. The Israelites Misunderstood God

Israel did the violence and attributed their actions to God’s will. In other words, the ‘God told me to do it’ defence of the indefensible.

Alternatively God spoke the words as hyperbole but the Israelites took them literally e.g. ‘We’re going to kill the opposition’ (before a game of basketball).

This neatly gets God off the hook and the Israelites on it.

The problems are:

There is no hint anywhere that the conquest of Canaan was a ‘mistake’. In fact the opposite is true, the refusal of the Exodus generation to go ahead are acts of disobedience

All through the Bible the Promised Land is celebrated as just that – a fulfilled promise of God to his people.

3. It Should All Be Interpreted as an Allegory on Spiritual Warfare

To dilute the reality of the Canaanite conquest by spiritualising the whole event. The story becomes a reservoir of spiritual lessons:

Victory over spiritual enemies

Release from slavery to sin

Overcoming a wilderness experience

God fulfilling his promises

The arrival of Israel in Canaan is not an allegory but a historical narrative. ‘It was not allegorical Israelites who attacked or allegorical Canaanites who died.’ Chris Wright

 “There are days I wish,” he says, “this narrative were not in the Bible at all.” Wright’s approach is to examine this issue in the context of three biblical frameworks — frameworks that do not “explain away” but do “set in context.”

Framework of the OT story

‘Yahweh war’ not holy war

Unique event in history

Framework of God’s sovereign justice

Canaanites were sinful

This doesn’t mean Israel was altogether righteous

Framework of God’s plan of salvation

Peace

Blessing the Nations

The Nations will Praise God

Conclusion

It is hard to reach firm conclusions

Any easy answers in this area (or in the area of suffering/evil) will just sound pat

Is it possible that we aren’t able to comprehend this issue from God’s point of view? We are finite, He is infinite. We are limited, He is limitless…

Bibliography

C.J. Wright ‘The God I Don't Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith’ Zondervan 2008 (and available on Kindle)

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2008/12/hard-questions-for-the-bible.html#ixzz1ilY6qKaU

http://faithinireland.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/chris-wright-the-god-i-dont-understand-6/

http://www.thepoachedegg.net/the-poached-egg/2010/09/bono-interview-grace-over-karma.html

Exuberance and Extravagance

Sometimes we get the idea that our devotional life needs to be quiet. The still small voice. Candles. Hushed voices. Songs sung unaccompanied, in unison during worship. And that’s all true, but our experience of God can also be exuberant and our giving of ourselves to Him extravagant:

·         God is our model. He is exuberant in all He does:

• In creation (Gen 1). Gen 1:20-22  
• In mercy and grace Exo 20:6 showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exo 34:5-7  ⁵ Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD.  ⁶ And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,  ⁷ maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin…"
• In his relationship with His people – His covenant with us, His faithful love.

Also God gave himself extravantly in Christ for us Gal 1:3; 2:20; Eph 5:25-26. (See also 1Ti 2:6,14; Philippians 2 ‘Who being in very nature God…’).

·         We are extravagant in our giving and exuberant in our worship because that is how we have been made. If we weren’t those things in worship we would be in something else that matters to us (cycling, golf, football…)

o    A mission worker, single lady, was retiring to the UK after many years of service in the Bhutan. It became known that she didn’t know where she would live, but someone in the church gave her a house. A whole house to live in!

o   Gifts needn’t be large – they can still be extravagant and life-changing. John Bechtel, a missionary in Hong Kong, wanted to start a Christian camp to reach people for Christ. A bankrupt multimillion-dollar hotel and conference center became available for sale. He made an offer to purchase the property and then traveled around the world to raise the millions he would need. But no one was willing to help and he returned to Hong Kong discouraged. Then one day he got a letter from a young girl that included $1 and a note saying she wanted him to use this to buy the camp. John Bechtel prayed and took the girl’s $1 to the real estate closing and the corporation decided to accept the $1 as full payment! Since the camp first opened, over a million people have come and over 100,000 have accepted Christ.

o   Here's an example of some football supporters showing some exuberance! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSbro76eX9s&feature=related

·         Prayer and worship are spiritual warfare – hence the ‘battle-cry’ (Teru`a) in Psalms:

6 Then I will hold my head high

above my enemies who surround me.

At his sanctuary I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy,

singing and praising the LORD with music.

3 Sing a new song of praise to him;

play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy.

5 God has ascended with a mighty shout.

The LORD has ascended with trumpets blaring.

15 Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship,

for they will walk in the light of your presence, LORD.

5 Praise him with a clash of cymbals;

praise him with loud clanging cymbals.

o    PSA 27:6; 33:3 ;47:6; 89:16; 150:5 respectively (Hebrew verse no.s) all from NLT. Amazing that each is translated differently because of the different contexts.

o   Psa 41:12; 47:2; 60:10; 65:14; 66:1; 81:2; 95:1f; 98:4, 6; 100:1; 108:10 have the word rawa` which is a shout with joy or triumph. Likewise rina and ranan.

o   So lots of words for loud shouting, and I think these need to be taken into account when we lead worship, however unpopular it may be with some folk who aren’t used to it.

Conclusion: let’s be extravagant in all we do in service of God. Worship should be loud. Joyful. Giving (time and money) extravagant. Our times with God should be as envigorating as a 5-mile run. You should feel pumped afterwards. If you don’t, maybe it’s time to up your game!

Human Rights or Justice?

In our modern or post-modern Western cultures we tend to view human rights as the highest value, which means we like to fight for our rights, even though we mostly live in countries that are very free, and where there is little real poverty. This is not the case elsewhere in the world, and it is worth taking a moment to ask how the Bible addresses issues like the woman who was imprisoned as a result of having been raped:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-16202577

Rather than talking about human rights, the Bible discusses such issues in terms of justice. God is righteous (has right actions) and just (fair) and expects us to behave in the same way. "Always judge your neighbors fairly, neither favoring the poor nor showing deference to the rich' (Lev 19:15). In the Psalms it is common for the oppressed to cry out to God for vindication:

They gape at me and say, "Aha! Aha! With our own eyes we have seen it."  O LORD, you have seen this; be not silent. Do not be far from me, O Lord.  Awake, and rise to my defence! Contend for me, my God and Lord.  Vindicate me in your righteousness, O LORD my God; do not let them gloat over me.

Psalm 35:21-24  

In Isaiah justice is emphasised in a new way:

When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood;  wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong,  learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.

Isaiah 1:15-17  

What we need today is not human rights, but a fear of God who is just, and who carries out his just judgments against oppressors of the poor and weak and needy.

Is the God of the Old Testament a God of Wrath (Part 3)

3. The God of the Old Testament
 There aren’t that many statements about God’s nature in the Bible, actually. We usually find out about what God is like by what he does. He rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt – our God is a rescuer. But there are some statements in the Old Testament about what God is like. One can be found in the Psalms:

‘Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.’ Psalm 89:14, NIV.

The word used for ‘love’ is, of course hesed.

Even this verse, once unpacked, comes out to explain God’s activity. Righteousness is right living, right behaviour. Justice is right judgment, good decisions. Love and faithfulness describe God’s constant, faithful love, the love that will not let us go. Take a minute to read Psalm 89. Is it describing what God is like, His nature, or is it describing God’s actions? Surely it is the latter. And it is a well-known song about God’s covenant-agreement with David, that God would always allow a descendant (‘son’ or ‘seed’ in Hebrew) of David to sit on the throne. When David wanted to build a temple, a house of God, he was told that it wasn’t his job. In a brilliant piece of irony, God replied by saying ‘you will not build my house, I will build your house’ in other words God was promising David a dynasty, a line of kings that would always sit on the throne of Israel (2Sa 7). Or a king, the son of David, that would sit on the throne of the kingdom for ever.

Now you’re going to say to me, ‘It’s all very well talking about God’s faithfulness to David and to his people Israel, but what about his commands to kill all the foreign tribes living in the promised land at the time of Joshua?’ Of course we find such things difficult. Not that life has changed that much – we only need look at Ruanda, Iraq, or even Easter Europe to see that. But for God to actually command the genocide of the peoples living in Canaan seems much more extreme. Why would God do that? Well, I think we need to understand that God, in the Old Testament, is seen as the God of all the nations, not just the God of Israel. He has the right to sit in judgment on any nation. So if a nation were to disobey him, and oppose the Israelites, or begin to carry our terrible practices like human (or even child) sacrifice, then God’s wrath is bound to fall on that nation. Just look at the Amorites. Way back at the time of Abraham the Amorites were beginning to turn against God:

‘Then the LORD told Abram, "You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, and they will be oppressed as slaves for four hundred years. But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. (But you will die in peace, at a ripe old age.) After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, when the sin of the Amorites has run its course." As the sun went down and it became dark, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. So the LORD made a covenant with Abram that day and said, "I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River-- the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites."’ Genesis 15:13-21 NLT

The conclusion of this story is found in Numbers 21. The Israelites ask to pass peacably through Amorite territory. The Amorite leader refuses, and the Amorites march out in battle against the Israelites, who defeat them and occupy their land. That’s not to say that we expect to occupy land in the same way today. How terrible would that be? No, we know that the kingdom of God is not that kind of kingdom. It is a kingdom advanced by prayer, and built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. But those who read parts of the Old Testament and judge them according to Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom or on loving our enemies are being anachronistic (out of time sequence). We don’t expect to find motorbikes in the Bible, or digital watches on the arms of Roman centurions. Neither should we expect to find Old Testament leaders following Jesus’ teaching. There was one Central Asian Bible published that only had the New Testament, Psalms, and Genesis – in that order. One old man was reading it through, got to Genesis, and said ‘Abraham was a bad prophet. He didn’t follow Jesus’ teaching!’

The other thing about the Bible is that it contains a whole range of genres, as I explained in part 1. When we read expressions of hate against the Babylonians (in the Psalms), these do not necessarily represent God’s view of those peoples. On the other hand anyone who unjustly oppresses another people, wipes out part of them, and marches the rest into captivity in their own country is bound, sooner or later, to find that they have been opposing God not man. They may find that God raises up another leader, or another people, to replace them. I’m talking about the Persians, who took over the Babylonian empire, and allowed God’s people back into Jerusalem to rebuild the city and the temple.

Well, what can we learn from all of this? It can be hard to understand all of God’s actions, but we have to trust that He knows what is right, and will always be true to those who follow Him. Those who turn against Him and start to carry out wrong or even evil behaviour will, sooner or later, find that they come up against the Judge of all the earth, who will do right (Gen 18:25).

More to follow…