Christianity – Page 44 – LOVE | ACCEPT

Gideon’s First Step of Obedience II

The smoke was probably still rising when, as the Bible records,

In the morning when the men of the town got up, there Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar! (Judges 6:26)

In the fog of their dual allegiances, the men of the town were angered and fearful of this affront to Baal. Who would do such a thing they cried, the author answering emphatically, Gideon. This made the act even more heinous in their eyes; the citizens shocked that someone in the caretaker’s family would commit this desecration. Reading from our distance, we’re left to wonder why Israel couldn’t see how their worship of Baal had broken the covenant with Yahweh. Is it possible that, despite all of our sophisticated understanding of our faith, we could find ourselves similarly spiritually blind?

The answer is yes, of course we could. Modern Christianity often allows us to live other than fully committed in a life that spreads our allegiance and worship between multiple ‘gods.’ We find ourselves becoming more ‘of’ the world, thinking that our covenant with God enables Him to look the other way. We should learn from history.

Joash, Gideon’s father, ends the scene with a theological lesson. If Baal were a real god, he suggests, why must we take action on his part? A real god can certainly take care of himself and Gideon will be properly punished. But, if Baal is not the god that we think he is…

Gideon’s First Steps of Obedience

The divine fire that consumed Gideon’s offering reignited his fear as well. Suddenly realizing who he he was facing, Gideon wailed about his imminent destruction upon seeing the face of the Lord. God’s response expresses his desire, saying “Shalom!” Be at peace and without fear. Gideon’s response is worship, building an altar and giving it the name that we can hang on to this day, the Lord is Complete Shalom.

The Lord wastes no time in revelry of the worship. He calls and Gideon obeys. While his response to the appearance of the Lord is to be properly pious, the fear in his heart remains. The first steps of obedience that he must take are to follow the Lord’s instructions in destroying the altar to Baal and the Asherah pole that stands beside it. Not just any altar, but one constructed by his own father.

It would be one thing of God to ask him to challenge the status quo in an anonymous fashion, you know, go knock down some stranger’s altar; cut down the pole in some distant faceless village. It is another thing entirely to confront those closest to you and stand up in obedience to their beliefs and behaviors. We’re called to act in this same obedience even when confronted by our family and friends. There may be an enormous cost to pay but what choice do we have? We can attempt to evade the responsibility much as we saw Gideon do. Will God give up? No. We can claim fear and weakness. Will God give up and move on? No. We can even go so far as to demand a sign in our ferret-like attempt to squirm away from the call but God will not be deterred in His purpose. Yes, there may be an enormous cost to pay but in light of the cost that was paid on our behalf, can you argue any further?

Gideon acts in obedience, carrying the theme of the entire book of Judges. He demolishes the altar and topples the Asherah pole, using it as fuel for another sacrificial fire. He is still fearful, acting in the dark of night, but he takes those first few important steps. He has counted the cost and decided for the Lord. He has decided to cut through the duality of Israel – calling out to God for redemption while continuing the Baal worship in its midst – and at personal risk, follow God in obedience. What will the morning bring?

Gideon’s Call From Weakness III

Judges 6:19 reads “Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.” Using his distorted memory of proper sacrifice, Gideon had prepared a sacrifice suitable for many times the number of angels that he faced. It would be up the Lord to help him through it which he does by pointing to a rock that would become an altar. God was willing to find the positive in Gideon’s heart and accept the worship offering.

The acceptance of the offering and the offering itself were both first steps toward a renewal of the covenant. The second step was Gideon’s realization before whom he had just made this covenant offering. Such was the reason behind Gideon’s naming the altar Yahweh-Shalom “The Lord is Peace”, the reconciled condition of Shalom that would ensue from the restoration.

So Gideon is called as a Judge, to be the agent of restoration between God and His people. He is hesitant to initially take the responsibility but he does upon receiving the sign from God. Is this a pattern he will repeat? Is it a pattern that we continue to repeat?

Gideon’s Call from Weakness II

Even the most devout among Christian believers will have moments of struggle and doubt. While our minds may fully grasp the promise that God does indeed hear our prayers, we are challenged by the silences that we encounter from time to time. There may be longer periods – ‘seasons’ is the popular way to refer to them – where we perceive God to be silent on all things. We feel overwhelmed by life and its inherent challenges and wonder why God doesn’t step in and alleviate some or all of them. In extreme moments of despair, we may look around and consider the possibility that God has abandoned us. Such was the fuel for Gideon’s doubt and his question to the Lord, “…why has all this happened to us?”

Israel had devolved into an apostasy of previously unheard of depths explaining God’s distance from His people. The cycles in Judges of apostasy and repentance are demonstrated by the repeated chastening that God allows to be visited upon the land. True to human nature, the Israelites fail to consider their personal contributions to the times of silence and simply point out that maybe, perhaps, God has just given up on them despite the Covenant. Being able to consider the scriptures from our distance of time, the source of their troubles is obvious but to the Israelites living in the middle of it, not so much.

The problem with apostasy is one of degree, as we see with the Gideon cycle. Where brief periods of separation bring us to repentance, longer periods bring on bigger problems. Israel’s apostasy in the Gideon cycle is so deep and prolonged that even the proper method of worship has been forgotten. Gideon demands a sign as proof of the legitimacy of his calling and he will prepare an offering to see if it is accepted in a divine fashion. Gideon’s struggle with proportion makes its first appearance as he goes about preparing his test offering.

Forgetting the proper forms of worship offering spelled out in the Law, Gideon’s preparations are based solely on his own evaluation of what is appropriate. He prepares bread, for example, from nearly a bushel of wheat. He brings this and a goat to the Lord as his offering to which God shows patience. This could have gone two ways as we look at it now. God could have refused the flawed, human oriented offering or He could do as He did and sanctify the offering but creating an altar for it’s proper presentation. The consuming fire convinces Gideon of exactly who stands before him.

We talk much about proper worship today, perhaps banking on the fact that God will accept just about anything as a form of worship. I wonder if our own apostasy leads us to believe this and stretch the boundaries of worship further and further from God and closer to ourselves. We trust in God to know what’s in our hearts and ignore the outer trappings that we bring Him as worship. Gideon certainly did and God demonstrated patience with him. Is there a point where we take it too far?

Wesley on Wednesday ~ Purity of Heart

John Wesley comments on what it means to be pure of heart from one of his sermons on the Sermon on the Mount.

“The pure in heart” are they whose hearts God hath “purified even as he is pure;” who are purified, through faith in the blood of Jesus, from every unholy affection; who, being “cleansed from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfect holiness in the” loving “fear of God.” They are, through the power of his grace, purified from pride, by the deepest poverty of spirit; from anger, from every unkind or turbulent passion, by meekness and gentleness; from every desire but to please and enjoy God, to know and love him more and more, by that hunger and thirst after righteousness which now engrosses their whole soul: So that now they love the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their soul, and mind, and strength.

Gideon’s Call from Weakness

Many people, maybe most people, have had the experience of crying out to God for an answer. Why has all this happened to me? Perhaps our eyes and voice have been pointed skyward where we exclaim, I thought you loved me! Often, we sense a silent response, our own voice echoing and fading away. When Gideon rehearsed the lamentations of Israel to the Angel who had appeared to him (Judges 6:13), the response he received was anything but.

He was commissioned to save Israel.

Similar to the calling of Moses, God again selects the weak and unsure to serve his purposes. The call does not invite a decline — “Go in the strength you have…Am I not sending you?” – yet Gideon like Moses before him demurs, citing his weakness. Don’t read past this. Note that God has anticipated the negative response that Gideon will attempt and defers it before he even voices the words. The Lord sends him in his own strength.

How many times have we failed to move on a divine initiative and failed to fulfill our purpose because we refused to move in our own strength? When the Lord calls he supplies. When He calls us to service in any capacity he supplies all the strength we need, often before we even sense the call. Did Moses and Gideon simply want to avoid getting involved or did they genuinely feel inadequate? The text suggests the former but we shouldn’t discount the latter. Certainly God may call us to a serve a purpose that we find distasteful and would like to avoid. Thinking once again that God doesn’t know our hearts, we attempt to evade the call by proclaiming our weakness. God knows and simply says “god in the strength you have.”

He doesn’t leave it there however. The Lord promises that He “will be with you.”

Have we not received the same promise in the form of the Holy Ghost? Does not God’s Spirit indwell us morning, noon, and night imbuing us with strength, wisdom, and assurance as take the first steps in fulfilling our calling? We know the answer to be true and yet we continue discover the depths of our own Gideon-like doubt when we demand signs that God is truly calling us to the vocation ahead of us. Will a sign fortify us or is there another reason that seek to avoid the mission?

Which God is He Praying To?

Though much has been written about Donald Miller’s prayer at the DNC last week, we can suffer one further look at his continued attempt to erode Christianity and make it palatable to the masses. For those of you who don’t know, Miller is a hero of the pomo-emergent church who, true to postmodern philosophy, construct their own truth as they see fit. Given his lack of theological depth, it seems improper of him to offer a covering prayer as a representative of the (capital C) Church that the Lord gave His life for. Since he addresses the prayer to the “Father” we can assume he is attempting to gain a hearing by the God that Christians worship so let’s see how he brings glory to the Father through his words. Here is a transcript of the prayer:

“Father God,

This week, as the world looks on, help the leaders in this room create a civil dialogue about our future. We need you, God, as individuals and also as a nation. We need you to protect us from our enemies, but also from ourselves, because we are easily tempted toward apathy. Give us a passion to advance opportunities for the least of these, for widows and orphans, for single moms and children whose fathers have left. Give us the eyes to see them, and the ears to hear them, and hands willing to serve them. Help us serve people, not just causes. And stand up to specific injustices rather than vague notions.

Give those in this room who have power, along with those who will meet next week, the courage to work together to finally provide health care to those who don’t have any, and a living wage so families can thrive rather than struggle. Help us figure out how to pay teachers what they deserve and give children an equal opportunity to get a college education. Help us figure out the balance between economic opportunity and corporate gluttony. We have tried to solve these problems ourselves but they are still there. We need your help.

Father, will you restore our moral standing in the world? A lot of people don’t like us but that’s because they don’t know the heart of the average American. Will you give us favor and forgiveness, along with our allies around the world? Help us be an example of humility and strength once again.

Lastly, Father, unify us.

Even in our diversity help us see how much we have in common. And unify us not just in our ideas and in our sentiments—but in our actions, as we look around and figure out something we can do to help create an America even greater than the one we have come to cherish.

God we know that you are good. Thank you for blessing us in so many ways as Americans. I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice. Let Him be our example.

Amen.”

Jesus taught us the proper way of prayer and it is identified by a desire on our part to see the will of God being done, not our own (Matthew 6:10). Does this prayer succeed?

“Give us a passion to advance opportunities for the least of these, for widows and orphans, for single moms and children whose fathers have left. Give us the eyes to see them, and the ears to hear them, and hands willing to serve them.”

What, Donald, of the 1.3 million children that will be aborted this year? This a foundation of the Democratic party platform that you are praying for God to endorse and support. Does this align with His will? I would suggest No, Don. I would suggest that each of these lives was a creation of the Father you addressed (Ps 139:13-14) and that He would desire that they be given a chance at life and the fulfillment of the purpose for which they were created. Wouldn’t these be the least of these?

“Help us serve people, not just causes. And stand up to specific injustices rather than vague notions.”

This sounds noble, Mr. Miller, like much of your writing but what does it mean? While I am a huge proponent of the ministry that Jesus describes in Matthew 25:31-46, the service is in furthering the will of the Lord. Does service to people only take the form of accommodation to the problems that people face without confronting the spiritual paucity that lies at the core of those problems? Liberal practice teaches that we cannot point out the true problems that a person suffers, we can only offer comfort for them while allowing them to remain mired and dependent in the problem that is consuming them. How does this demonstrate God’s love?

“Give those in this room who have power, along with those who will meet next week, the courage to work together to finally provide health care to those who don’t have any, and a living wage so families can thrive rather than struggle. Help us figure out how to pay teachers what they deserve and give children an equal opportunity to get a college education. Help us figure out the balance between economic opportunity and corporate gluttony. We have tried to solve these problems ourselves but they are still there. We need your help.”

We do indeed need your help God. Mr. Miller, we finally find some agreement! Sadly, your collectivist approach to God seems far apart from the individual responsibility that we have before Him (see again Mt 25 and note the goats and the sheep). God has a specific purpose for each of His creatures, unique from the others. While He does see people as “His people”, he also counts the few remaining hairs on my head and knows my name. I am responsible before Him to live UP to the purpose he assigns me. (BTW, Don, every human being in this country has “health care”. They simply need to purchase it. No one who appears at an emergency room can be turned away, even though the losses to hospital system are huge. So, what you meant in your coded language, is God, give everyone free health care.)

“Lastly, Father, unify us. Even in our diversity help us see how much we have in common.”

Mr. Miller, did you remember that this was an interfaith service? Were you aware that the Lord you were addressing said that He was the only way to the Father? (John 14:6-7) Not one of the ways, not one of many alternate paths, the only way. So, Don, how do you propose to find unity? In seeking the Christian God’s will or by discarding it in favor of your new Humanism? It seems to be the former might be better than the latter. Perhaps, you and I won’t find unity on this front.

“I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice.”

So that’s why Jesus gave His life? Mr. Miller, I would dare say that even the First and Second grade Sunday school classes would be able to help you out with the theology of the crucifixion. It was not against the “forces of injustice”, it was against the forces of total human depravity and the sin that infects our fallen world. The injustices that we see are a byproduct of this sin. Jesus gave His life so that you and I might be redeemed from this condition, discover God’s purpose for our lives, and through us, He could address the corruption that creates the injustices.

—

Mr. Miller’s attempt to make the Democratic talking points appear as God’s agenda, they are not. It seems as though others agree. Steven Camp speaks to this here and Dr. Douglas Groothuis offer comment here.

More Clueless Politicians Rejoice in God

At worship this morning, countless prayers will be lifted to the Father for the lives of those in the path of the oncoming hurricanes. There have been many proclamations of how much God loves us [ as in a particular political party ] by timing the hurricane such that it coincides with [another political party] a political convention. Apparently the cost in lives and homes and belongings is much less important than political victory. Check out these two rooting for the hurricane.

God forgive our descent into apostasy.

Gideon’s Call III

Surely when God’s prophet voiced His indictment of the Israelites, punctuating it with the damning statement “But you have not listened to me” (Judges 6:10), the people of Israel must have been in shock. Had they finally pushed the Lord too far? The unforgiving rebuke indicated the possibility. We are given no indication of the Israelites response but feelings of abandonment would not have been out of the question.

The answer is not long in coming. Gideon, the son of Joash the Abiezrite, is furtively threshing wheat to keep its existence a secret from his oppressors when the answer arrives in the form of the Lord himself. He greets his soon-to-be judge by calling him a “Mighty Warrior.” We should read and reread this short collection of sentences. In response to their fear of being finally abandoned by Yahweh, the Lord responds by personally interceding in the lives of His people. This intercession brings with it a promise for the future as God identifies with “what can and will be” in Gideon rather than what is. Gideon is hiding from the Midianites and will soon demonstrate his hesitance and fearfulness but God knows him better as His Mighty Warrior.

Where the Lord announces his immediacy and support, Gideon responds in light of his current humiliating position by questioning Him. “If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?”

Haven’t we all been here, maybe more than once?

But then, as Gideon continues his diatribe directed at the Angel of the Lord, we discover either an ignorance of the true spiritual condition of Israel on Gideon’s part or a more troublesome denial that Israel was [doing] “evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Gideon selectively remembers the long picture of history as his people were redeemed out of Egypt but neglects more recent history in the great things that God had done through the preceding Judges.

One of the most highly developed human skills that we possess is our ability to deny our own contribution to our condition. We insist that God live up to his assurances that He will hear our prayers and respond when we are in need, but we often overlook how our own behaviors may have led us right to this very spot. God is not deceived by our hearts but we can count on the same first lesson that Gideon learns; God knows what we can be.

And He will not stop working in us until we have achieved that purpose.

Gideon’s Call II

“Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.” And how did He respond in this Judges cycle to the cries of his wayward people? He might have supernaturally repelled the oppressors or even moved his people to a new land and safety. But He doesn’t, he sends prophet with a word for the Israelites. As we see in his words, the prophet does not bring a comforting word. Instead, he brings a fiery reminder of what the Lord has already done for the people.

The prophet reminds Israel of their previous bondage to the oppressor Egypt and how the Lord lifted them from this slavery to free them into a land of their own. Implicit in this reminder is the ever present reminder of their being sustained by this same Holy Hand. In case the Shema had been forgotten, the prophet further reiterates the loyalty requirement of their covenant. The Israelites are to worship Him alone and have no other gods, specifically taking the gods of the land they now inhabit. Through lowered eyes, Israel listened to this prophet but his final words caused them to pause and lift their gaze directly to him. God’s words were foreboding,

“But you have not listened to me.”

This was not the response they wanted or expected. Rather than deliverance, God has sent an indictment for their breach of the covenant. The duality of the human nature expects the scolding while justifying the behavior that has brought about the rebuke. God’s word has shaken this foundation though. In his statement of their refusal to listen to His commands He is stating that they have sacrificed their right to be delivered from their current travails.

Has God finally wearied of His people? Is God’s patience finite with respect to this hard headed people? What of us? Modern idolatry may take different forms but it is no less an affront to our Holy God who demands single minded devotion. Many a Christian may wonder why the response to their prayers is silent when they continue to chase after the alluring things of this world. We would do well to examine our end of the covenant rather than wonder why God does not respond as we expect. If we “have not listened” and have gone our own way, do we have the right to expect that God will automatically respond to our cries? Our relationship with God is never automatic.