R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 73

Righteousness

These are the last words

of David the son of Jesse.

The God of Jacob chose David

and made him a great king.

The Mighty God of Israel

loved him.

When God told him to speak,

David said:

The Spirit of the LORD

has told me what to say.

Our Mighty Rock,

the God of Jacob, told me,

“A ruler who obeys God

and does right

is like the sunrise

on a cloudless day,

or like rain that sparkles

on the grass.”

I have ruled this way,

and God will never break

his promise to me.

God’s promise is complete

and unchanging;

he will always help me

and give me what I hope for.

But evil people are pulled up

like thornbushes.

They are not dug up by hand,

but with a sharp spear

and are burned on the spot. (2 Samuel 23:1-7)

God doesn’t love us because we’re good. David was good at killing Philistines, but he was not good at raising his children: Amnon raped his sister Tamar; Absalom killed Amnon. Then Absalom rebelled against David, precipitated a civil war, and both he and many Israelites on both sides of the issue died in battle. David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then saw to it that her husband was killed in battle. Just before he died, like a mob boss, he told his son, Solomon—the crown prince born to the woman he had committed adultery with—to settle accounts—old grudges—with everyone who had wronged him. But the end of his life, David looked back on it all and said that he had been a king who obeyed God and did what was right.

How can we reconcile David’s life with his claim to righteousness? By remembering that all human righteousness is nothing but filthy rags and that salvation is by grace: the consequence of Jesus’ death on the cross. David did not need to fear the wrath of God because God’s wrath had been—or in David’s case—would be directed at the ultimate sacrifice. David was forgiven and declared righteous by God. That’s how David could know he was a good man: his goodness was in Jesus, not in himself. It’s the same way we know we’re righteous today.

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Rosetta

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration.

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Practice

To this day they do according to the earlier customs: they do not fear the LORD, nor do they follow their statutes or their ordinances or the law, or the commandments which the LORD commanded the sons of Jacob, whom He named Israel; with whom the LORD made a covenant and commanded them, saying, “You shall not fear other gods, nor bow down yourselves to them nor serve them nor sacrifice to them.

“But the LORD, who brought you up from the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm, Him you shall fear, and to Him you shall bow yourselves down, and to Him you shall sacrifice.

“The statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment which He wrote for you, you shall observe to do forever; and you shall not fear other gods.

“The covenant that I have made with you, you shall not forget, nor shall you fear other gods.

“But the LORD your God you shall fear; and He will deliver you from the hand of all your enemies.”

However, they did not listen, but they did according to their earlier custom.

So while these nations feared the LORD, they also served their idols; their children likewise and their grandchildren, as their fathers did, so they do to this day. (2 Kings 17:34-41)

Practice makes perfect, but what if you’re practicing the wrong way? You can get very good at swinging the bat with the wrong stance, the wrong grip, the wrong time. Bad habits become hard to break. Perseverance, for good or ill becomes hard to stop.

Like father like son is not necessarily a good thing. Perseverance is not necessarily a good thing. There are some things that we keep on doing that God would like to see us stop. Like sinning. The Israelites, like all human beings, never stopped being sinners and never would. The specific sins that God was concerned with getting them to quit on were idolatry and hatred. He wanted them to become perseverant about the law he had given them which could be summarized in two statements: “love God” and “love each other.”

But bad habits seem to be harder to give up than good ones. It is easier to keep doing the wrong thing than to keep doing the right thing. We seem mostly tempted to become “weary in well-doing” than in “ill-doing.” Few people would find it hard to give up boiled goat liver for Lent. Generally you don’t want to be a quitter. But sometimes being a quitter is just what God wants.

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Moved In

But now hear, O Jacob my servant,

Israel whom I have chosen!

Thus says the LORD who made you,

who formed you in the womb and will help you:

Do not fear, O Jacob my servant,

Jeshurun whom I have chosen.

For I will pour water on the thirsty land,

and streams on the dry ground;

I will pour my spirit upon your descendants,

and my blessing on your offspring.

They shall spring up like a green tamarisk,

like willows by flowing streams.

This one will say, “I am the LORD’s,”

another will be called by the name of Jacob,

yet another will write on the hand, “The LORD’s,”

and adopt the name of Israel. (Isaiah 44:1-5)

God has moved in with his people for good. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit of God came upon believers in a new way, as part of the New Covenant that God was making with them. Jeremiah would later say that in doing this, God was writing his law on the hearts of his people. When the Spirit took up residence in them, it had a tremendous impact on their lives. They couldn’t help but become fruitful and abundant. God compared that new life to lush willow trees growing by a flowing stream.

Writing the words “The Lord’s” on a hand was a reference to the original covenant between Israel and God, when he had told the people that they would write his law on their hands and forehead. In Jewish practice, this led to the phylacteries: little boxes that were tied about the hands and head when they prayed. God’s point, however, was not that people should scribble on their bodies. Rather, God was drawing a picture: he wanted to be the center of their lives. Before the captivity, the people worshipped other gods and were distracted by everything else around them. After the captivity, his people would have God as their focus. At last they would be able to love both God and their neighbors as themselves. With God living inside of us, our lives have been changed from what they would have been without him there.

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Your Punishment Is Over

Our God has said:

“Encourage my people!

Give them comfort.

Speak kindly to Jerusalem

and announce:

Your slavery is past;

your punishment is over.

I, the LORD, made you pay

double for your sins.”

Someone is shouting:

“Clear a path in the desert!

Make a straight road

for the LORD our God.

Fill in the valleys;

flatten every hill

and mountain.

Level the rough

and rugged ground.

Then the glory of the LORD

will appear for all to see.

The LORD has promised this!”

Someone told me to shout,

and I asked,

“What should I shout?”

We humans are merely grass,


and we last no longer

than wild flowers.

At the LORD’s command,

flowers and grass disappear,

and so do we.

Flowers and grass fade away,

but what our God has said

will never change. (Isaiah 40:1-8)

The stain of sin has been washed clean for good. John the Baptist was identified as the one calling in the wilderness, to make a straight way for God. The one that John made a straight way for was Jesus: the Messiah and the Son of God whom the Gospel writers and John, by the use of this passage from Isaiah, identified with Yahweh, the God of Israel.

In the context of Isaiah’s original prophesy, God was offering comfort to the Israelites: he was letting them know that their time in captivity was over and that they could now return to their land. Their sins were paid for; their punishment was completed.

How could that prophesy be applied by the New Testament authors to Jesus? Jesus was the one who would save his people from their sins. As God had rescued his people, first from Egyptian bondage and then from Babylonian bondage, so God was going to make those mere pictures of redemption a reality: Jesus would save them from the far more serious bondage of their sin. The captives would truly and completely be set free. God has rescued us from our slavery. We have been set free.

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Problems

The LORD has sent prophets to you time after time, but you refused to listen. They told you that the LORD had said:

Change your ways! If you stop doing evil, I will let you stay forever in this land that I gave your ancestors. I don’t want to harm you. So don’t make me angry by worshiping idols and other gods.

But you refused to listen to my prophets. So I, the LORD, say that you have made me angry by worshiping idols, and you are the ones who were hurt by what you did. You refused to listen to me, and now I will let you be attacked by nations from the north, and especially by my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. You and other nearby nations will be destroyed and left in ruins forever. Everyone who sees what has happened will be shocked, but they will still make fun of you. I will put an end to your parties and wedding celebrations; no one will grind grain or be here to light the lamps at night. This country will be as empty as a desert, because I will make all of you the slaves of the king of Babylonia for seventy years.

When that time is up, I will punish the king of Babylonia and his people for everything they have done wrong, and I will turn that country into a wasteland forever. (Jeremiah 25:4-12)

Sometimes bad things happen to people, just because the world is a hard place. Bad people do bad things and sometimes they do it to good people. Sometimes tornados strike, earthquakes come, illness devastates.

When children are punished by their parents, at least ideal parents, the children are not surprised by the punishment. They know they have disobeyed and the parents have made clear why and for how long the punishment will last. The grounding lasts for a specified number of days or weeks, the phone is confiscated for a set time. Then all returns to where it was before.

When Israel was punished by God, there was no surprise involved. God had sent prophets to explain what was going to happen and why it was going to happen. He explained how long it was going to last. Israel went into captivity starting in 605 BC and Cyrus issued the decree allowing the captives to return home seventy years later in 535 BC.

When bad things happen it doesn’t automatically mean that God is punishing you. God’s discipline is not something that comes upon you unexpectedly and without warning. If something bad happens to you, it might just be because you’re still living on the wrong side of eternity.

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Distraction

Sometimes writing is both a joy and a breeze. Like an athlete “in the zone”, it seems effortless: the words pour onto the page like water. At such moments the writing process is entirely “fun” and not job-like at all.

Unfortunately, those big bangs of creation are incredibly rare. If I depended upon being “in the zone,” if I required inspiration, if I needed the muse to strike, if I loitered in anticipation for whatever image someone might use to describe authorship, I’d never get anything done. This is especially true during those weeks and months of the summer when my family is home from school.

Since I work out of my home—in a bedroom converted and dedicated to writing and nothing else—I am not always alone. Instead, my wife and all three of my daughters can poke their heads—and their entire bodies—into my office. Or, as is often the case, especially with my daughters—they can simply poke their voices into it. From a distant room I’ll hear “Daddy!” Or my cellphone will suddenly ring (yes, they are that lazy). Then I lift my hands from my keyboard, rise from my broken chair, and wander to wherever they are so that I might help them with their crisis. Too often that crisis can be described with some variant of the phrase “I’m hungry.”

Getting these poked heads and voices intermittently—sometimes every ten minutes—plays havoc with the writing process. Writing, most of the time—since the zone rarely appears—is like ditch digging: a task one forces oneself to do. But it is unlike ditch digging in that while being interrupted from making a hole in the ground doesn’t cause you to lose your train of thought or anything else, when you’re in the middle of a sentence an interruption can be catastrophic. When I return to my computer I stare at the page and wonder: what was it that I was doing here? I have to reread the paragraph, reread the page—or two—desperately attempting to remind myself what I was thinking about and where I thought I was heading. Then, just as the light comes on, another head pokes in, or another voice intrudes, and I’m lost again. And so it goes.

All day long.

It’s amazing that I ever put together a paragraph that is even half-way comprehensible. But somehow I manage.

And between the period on that previous sentence and the beginning of this one, my wife called out to me and said, “you need to check out the YouTube video I just posted on Facebook!” And then I became aware of the extra noises in my house—like the sound of the television program that my wife is watching while she was sharing that funny cat video.

I suppose I could close the door to my office, but that wouldn’t keep them out. The dog and the cat do not know how to turn a doorknob (and in fact lack thumbs that make it possible, though the cat has figured out how to open doors that have handles instead of knobs: she simply puts her paws on top of it and pushes, assuming she can figure out a way to get up to where the handle is; somehow she usually manages that. But in any case, the door to my office has a knob, not a handle). However, my wife and children are not so handicapped and in fact have mastered the knob-turning technique. And even a locked door would not prevent them from texting me or calling my cellphone, or instant messaging me over my computer, or just yelling loudly.

I suppose I could go to the nearby coffee shop. But all that would do for me is make the interruption that much longer when I had to go help whichever family member suddenly needed my attention. When I’m not home, the cellphone still lets them reach out to me. I suppose I could “forget” and leave it behind, but then they’d be angry at me when I finally returned. And chances are I’d be worried—what if something awful happened? What if they really needed me? What if a pipe burst? What if the cat needed its litter box cleaned? Seriously: both my oldest and youngest daughters have significant mental health issues. I’m constantly concerned about them and if they are okay. How could I go away without my cellphone? What sort of monster am I?

I don’t get away often. My sense of direction is poor anyhow and so it’s probably safer if I just stay home. Besides, I’ve forgotten where the cinema is. The family would probably call me in the middle of the film, anyhow. And besides, can I really afford to go to the movies? Have you seen ticket prices lately!?

Where was I? Yes, my wife posted another YouTube video. And the youngest daughter had a sudden need for popcorn. What was I writing about?

Focus. It is very difficult to focus when everyone is home. Of course, when they’re gone and I’m alone, there’s all those cat videos my wife posted that I should be watching.

I like cats.

My cat is meowing. What does she want? Is her food dish not quite full enough?

What was I writing about?

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Unending

You understand, O LORD;

remember me and care for me.

Avenge me on my persecutors.

You are long-suffering—do not take me away;

think of how I suffer reproach for your sake.

When your words came, I ate them;

they were my joy and my heart’s delight,

for I bear your name,

O LORD God Almighty.

I never sat in the company of revelers,

never made merry with them;

I sat alone because your hand was on me

and you had filled me with indignation.

Why is my pain unending

and my wound grievous and incurable?

Will you be to me like a deceptive brook,

like a spring that fails?

Therefore this is what the LORD says:

“If you repent, I will restore you

that you may serve me;

if you utter worthy, not worthless, words,

you will be my spokesman.

Let this people turn to you,

but you must not turn to them.

I will make you a wall to this people,

a fortified wall of bronze;

they will fight against you

but will not overcome you,

for I am with you

to rescue and save you,”

declares the LORD.

“I will save you from the hands of the wicked

and redeem you from the grasp of the cruel.” (Jeremiah 15:15-21)

Sometimes, no matter how carefully you follow the instructions, it still won’t work. Jeremiah found joy in God, but not in how his life has gone. Ever since he became God’s spokesperson, he he’d had nothing but unrelieved pain and suffering. No one believed him, the political and religious establishment not only didn’t pay attention to what he told them, they worked against him and threatened him and sometimes followed through on their threats. He wondered if God was as fickle as some of the so-called streams of the land—the wadis of Israel—that had water sometimes, maybe after it rained, but all too often offered up nothing but sand.

Jeremiah not only felt like he was alone against the world, he really was alone against the world. He felt as if not only did no one care, but that even God had abandoned him, leaving him to twist in the wind. But God brought reassurance, though perhaps not what Jeremiah was looking for. He told Jeremiah that the people opposed to him would continue to oppose him; but their opposition would be ineffective. When Jeremiah thought about being delivered from his problems, he was thinking more in terms of them going away—not that he would simply learn to bear up under them. But whether a problem vanishes, or whether we survive beneath its heavy weight, either way, we have victory. God always takes care of his servants; just not always the way the servants imagine it would be or the way they might want.

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God Doesn’t Give Up

“Nevertheless in those days,” says the LORD, “I will not make a complete end of you. And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the LORD our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours.’

“Declare this in the house of Jacob

And proclaim it in Judah, saying,

‘Hear this now, O foolish people,

Without understanding,

Who have eyes and see not,

And who have ears and hear not:

Do you not fear Me?’ says the LORD.

‘Will you not tremble at My presence,

Who have placed the sand as the bound of the sea,

By a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass beyond it?

And though its waves toss to and fro,

Yet they cannot prevail;

Though they roar, yet they cannot pass over it.

But this people has a defiant and rebellious heart;

They have revolted and departed.

They do not say in their heart,

“Let us now fear the LORD our God,

Who gives rain, both the former and the latter, in its season.

He reserves for us the appointed weeks of the harvest.”

Your iniquities have turned these things away,

And your sins have withheld good from you. (Jeremiah 5:18-25)

People can tell God no. When God created the heavens and the earth, the physical objects had no choice in what they did. The earth rotates on its axis. It doesn’t get the option to chose not to or to start rotating the other way. Gravity can’t just decide one morning to stop working. The sky can’t suddenly turn green.

God contrasts his people with the waves of the sea. The waves are constrained. They have no choice but to obey God. But his people go and do whatever they want. They have simply disappeared; they no longer come to God. They don’t even consider the possibility of repenting because they don’t understand that there’s any need. So far have they gone astray, so deep is their rebellion against God, that they can’t even recognize a problem.

The prophet’s job is to try to inform the people about why they are suffering and what they can do to fix it. Unfortunately, they just don’t get it. Not yet, anyway.

But God has not given up on them. In fact, he promises that they will, someday, come back to him. When it comes to his people, God won’t take no for an answer.

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God Does Intervene

How can I pardon you?

Your children have forsaken me,

and have sworn by those who are no gods.

When I fed them to the full,

they committed adultery

and trooped to the houses of prostitutes.

They were well-fed lusty stallions,

each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.

Shall I not punish them for these things?

says the LORD;

and shall I not bring retribution

on a nation such as this?

Go up through her vine-rows and destroy,

but do not make a full end;

strip away her branches,

for they are not the LORD’s.

For the house of Israel and the house of Judah

have been utterly faithless to me,

says the LORD.

They have spoken falsely of the LORD,

and have said, “He will do nothing.

No evil will come upon us,

and we shall not see sword or famine.”

The prophets are nothing but wind,

for the word is not in them.

Thus shall it be done to them! (Jeremiah 5:7-13)

Denial is a common human choice. Like the man falling from a high building, it is easy for him to fool himself into thinking that since nothing bad has happened during the first several seconds of his plunge, then perhaps that means that nothing bad will ever happen. In the case of Israel, not only did the people delude themselves into believing that God’s mercy and forbearance meant that they could just keep on behaving abominably, they had so-called prophets who encouraged them to continue living in their deluded state.

The delusion that God would do nothing, that he would not act to punish them, went hand in hand with their worship of false gods who they continued to worship, even though they never did anything to bless them. If Baal and Asherah did not bring blessings then why should they believe that Yahweh could bring them punishment? Life went on as it always had. Every day, the sun came up and the sun went down; the years passed, the seasons came at their appointed times, the crops yielded their harvests the same as always. People behaved well and people behaved badly and the rain fell on both of them just the same.

The people came to pay as little attention to Yahweh and his true prophets as they did to their other gods and their false prophets. Both were equally meaningless in their minds. But God, unlike the idols, was real. At the right moment, he intended to act. God does not ignore his people.

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