R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 85

Wrestling

Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.”

But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”

So He said to him, “What is your name?”

He said, “Jacob.”

And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Then Jacob asked, saying, “Tell me Your name, I pray.”

And He said, “Why is it that you ask about My name?” And He blessed him there.

So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” Just as he crossed over Penuel the sun rose on him, and he limped on his hip. Therefore to this day the children of Israel do not eat the muscle that shrank, which is on the hip socket, because He touched the socket of Jacob’s hip in the muscle that shrank. (Genesis 32:24-32)

Wrestling with God in prayer became more than just a metaphor for Jacob. On the dark night when he ran from his brother, Jacob had strange dreams of angels going up and down a ladder. God promised him then that he would always be with him.

After spending more than twenty years with his uncle Laban, after gaining four wives and nearly a dozen sons, Jacob ran from his uncle much as he’d run from his brother.

In that context, on another dark night, he found himself wrestling a man who wouldn’t give up his name. The man beat him in the struggle by putting Jacob’s hip out of joint. As the sun was starting to rise, the man asked Jacob to let him go, but Jacob refused unless he blessed him. So the man blessed him and gave him a new name. “Israel” means, “he wrestles with God.” Jacob had a lot to be worried about, a lot to struggle with God over. And God was okay with that.

In the morning, Jacob called the place where he had wrestled “Peniel.” It meant “face of God.” Jacob realized that it wasn’t just a man he’d fought, but God himself. He had discovered that it was okay to fight with God because God always wins. And that’s what we really need and desire: a God who can overcome our fears and problems.

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Thirty Pieces of Silver

In one month I disposed of the three shepherds, for I had become impatient with them, and they also detested me. So I said, “I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die; what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let those that are left devour the flesh of one another!” I took my staff Favor and broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples. So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep merchants, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the LORD. I then said to them, “If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” So they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. Then the LORD said to me, “Throw it into the treasury”—this lordly price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury in the house of the LORD. Then I broke my second staff Unity, annulling the family ties between Judah and Israel.

Then the LORD said to me: Take once more the implements of a worthless shepherd. For I am now raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for the perishing, or seek the wandering, or heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs. (Zechariah 11:8-16)

Don’t trust the smiling man. No matter how well-intentioned he might be, in the end, he’s going to disappoint you. Matthew quoted Zechariah’s words and applied them to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, the average price of a slave (Matthew 27:6-10 See also Solving a Theological Problem). God also warned that the breaking of staffs and the casting away of the money were images of the captivity of Israel and Judah in Assyria and Babylon respectively—and of the scattering that would follow the Roman destruction of Jerusalem barely a generation after Jesus’ resurrection.

People look to the rulers of the world to solve their problems, imagining that a king, a prince, some government official, some elected representative, some religious leader, some new law or regulation, is going to fix all the problems in their world. But in reality, such shepherds cannot care for the perishing or heal the maimed: they care only for themselves and only serve their own ends.

Only God can genuinely fix a life. Only God is unselfish in all his actions. Only God can satisfy us. Only God can make our lives better. Looking to powerful people, looking to material things, is always going to disappoint us in the end.

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Destruction

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, “Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’

“I will send an angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite.

“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way.”

When the people heard this sad word, they went into mourning, and none of them put on his ornaments.

For the LORD had said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are an obstinate people; should I go up in your midst for one moment, I would destroy you. Now therefore, put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what I shall do with you.’ ”

So the sons of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward. (Exodus 33:1-6)

Even God needs to count to ten sometimes. After Moses had gone to get the Ten Commandments the first time, he returned to discover that the people, with Aaron, his brother’s help, had built for themselves golden calves to worship. God was angry, but he promised that he’d fulfill the promises to the Israelites. He’d send an angel to get rid of the troubling inhabitants of Canaan. But God was so furious he didn’t want to travel with them himself, because if he went with them he might destroy them all. So God told them to mourn while he considered what he was ultimately going to do with them. God needed time alone to consider his options.

Mourning was an appropriate response to sin, because in sinning we harm ourselves—the people whom God loves. It made God unhappy—and angry—when his people hurt themselves. In mourning, we come together with God and agree with his feelings. God subsequently replaced the commandments he had given Moses and forgave the people, so he continued on with them. Although God could destroy us for our sins, he instead forgives us because he destroyed Jesus in our place.

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Edible Rain

The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Then the LORD said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.” So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your complaining against the LORD. For what are we, that you complain against us?” And Moses said, “When the LORD gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the LORD has heard the complaining that you utter against him—what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the LORD.” (Exodus 16:2-8)

It’s easy to have a bad attitude. After four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, after ten plagues, after passing through the Red Sea, as soon as they felt the barest hint of hunger, the people of Israel told Moses and Aaron that they wished they were back in Egypt. They were certain that the only thing left for them was a miserable death by starvation.

God didn’t get mad. He simply took care of their needs, since he had never intended for them to die in the wilderness by starvation. In fact, the food they had so worried about getting continued to show up, day after day, for the next forty years.

We worry so much about our circumstances, that like the Israelites, we doubt that God will actually take care of us. It’s far easier for us to believe instead that he intends to maximize our misery. Despite our irrational ingratitude, despite our nasty attitudes, God will still take care of us, just as he took care of the Israelites. Why? Because that’s God’s actual intent. God does not depend on our good mood, our ephemeral emotions, to care for us.

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Covering Up Sin

God told Jacob, “Return to Bethel, where I appeared to you when you were running from your brother Esau. Make your home there and build an altar for me.”

Jacob said to his family and to everyone else who was traveling with him:

Get rid of your foreign gods! Then make yourselves acceptable to worship God and put on clean clothes. Afterwards, we’ll go to Bethel. I will build an altar there for God, who answered my prayers when I was in trouble and who has always been at my side.

So everyone gave Jacob their idols and their earrings, and he buried them under the oak tree near Shechem.

While Jacob and his family were traveling through Canaan, God terrified the people in the towns so much that no one dared bother them. (Genesis 35:1-5)

Love really does cover over a multitude of sins. God takes care of his people even if they don’t believe the right things or do the right things. Jacob and his family had left Jacob’s uncle Laban and returned to the land of Canaan. Jacob had wrestled with God and had met his brother Esau. He had settled down near Shechem, where he had purchased some land.

Jacob had prospered. And yet, after all that time with his uncle Laban, after all his prosperity near Shechem, Jacob and his family remained less than fully devoted to God. His family—his wives and children and his servants—were worshipping gods other than Yahweh—and Jacob had allowed them to do so for years. But when God told Jacob to visit Bethel and build an altar to him, Jacob got an idea. He finally decided that his family needed to get rid of their idols as part of a purification process for going to worship the God of his fathers—the God that he had met so many years before at Bethel when he was fleeing from Esau. Jacob had always been grateful for how God had taken care of him through all the hard times in his life to that point. But apparently, until that moment, it had never occurred to him to worship God exclusively.

God had been merciful to Jacob and took care of him, despite how little he understood about God and how poorly he behaved or how inadequately he had worshipped him. Despite Jacob’s failings, God still had a relationship with him. God loves us and takes care of us no matter how far short of being right—even about the basics—we may be.

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Oppression

“I, even I, am He who comforts you.

Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies

And of the son of man who is made like grass,

That you have forgotten the LORD your Maker,

Who stretched out the heavens

And laid the foundations of the earth,

That you fear continually all day long because of the fury of the oppressor,

As he makes ready to destroy?

But where is the fury of the oppressor?

“The exile will soon be set free, and will not die in the dungeon, nor will his bread be lacking.

“For I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar (the LORD of hosts is His name).

“I have put My words in your mouth and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, ‘You are My people.’ ” (Isaiah 51:12-16)

Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last! God pointed out a contrast for the Israelites, a contrast between their perception of things and the reality of those things. Where they cringed in fear before their oppressors, God wondered why. Had they forgotten that their oppressors were merely human? Humans who were weak and mortal? But, the Israelites would likely have pointed out, that description of the oppressors fit them as well.

But God went on and reminded them that it wasn’t just them, mere humans who might oppose their oppressors. God was part of the mix, and that’s always a game changer. God reminded his people that he would, indeed, release them from their captivity in Mesopotamia. Those who oppressed them would not keep them from eating. They would not die in dungeons. Everything really would be okay because the same God who had created the universe was the God who was standing with them.

It is so easy, in the midst of hard times, to lose sight of reality: we are God’s children, created in Christ Jesus, who will spend an eternity with him in paradise. From the perspective of eternity, any troubles in our temporary, temporal existence are microscopic.

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Human Sized Problems

Thus says the LORD,

“Where is the certificate of divorce

By which I have sent your mother away?

Or to whom of My creditors did I sell you?

Behold, you were sold for your iniquities,

And for your transgressions your mother was sent away.

“Why was there no man when I came?

When I called, why was there none to answer?

Is My hand so short that it cannot ransom?

Or have I no power to deliver?

Behold, I dry up the sea with My rebuke,

I make the rivers a wilderness;

Their fish stink for lack of water

And die of thirst.

“I clothe the heavens with blackness

And make sackcloth their covering.” Isaiah 50:1-3)

If you’re in time out you probably know why you’re there. In the midst of their punishment, the Israelites had started to think that God had abandoned them forever. God asked them a series of pointed questions to let them know that there was a good reason for their suffering: they were being disciplined.

The break in the relationship between God and Israel was not because God had sent them away, but because they had turned away from him. What part of infidelity did they not get? Were they not paying attention? Were they not listening to the prophets who compared Israel to an adulterous wife chasing after other men in her insatiable lust? They were in the mess they were in, far from God, because they had put themselves there. They had done all of this on their own.

But, to imagine that God was unable to save his people regardless of the mess they had created for themselves, was just as silly. He reminded them of past care –when they had faced the impossible and God had come through for them. Drying up the sea references the Red Sea crossing by Moses and the Israelites. Turning rivers into a wilderness likely refers to the time when the Israelites, under Joshua, crossed the blocked up Jordan River to go conquer the Promised Land. There was nothing that was too hard for the God who made everything and keeps the universe functioning. Even though the ancient Israelites had but a limited understanding of how big the universe was, or how it worked, they knew enough to recognize that it was far beyond anything that human beings could accomplish. Thus, if their problems were all but human sized, then God, who does God sized things, would find their problems easy to handle. No problem we create, no matter how large it seems to us, is large to God.

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Pain

“Before she travailed, she brought forth;

Before her pain came, she gave birth to a boy.

“Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?

Can a land be born in one day?

Can a nation be brought forth all at once?

As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons.

“Shall I bring to the point of birth and not give delivery?” says the LORD.

“Or shall I who gives delivery shut the womb?” says your God.

“Be joyful with Jerusalem and rejoice for her, all you who love her;

Be exceedingly glad with her, all you who mourn over her,

That you may nurse and be satisfied with her comforting breasts,

That you may suck and be delighted with her bountiful bosom.” (Isaiah 66:7-11)

God can fix problems in unexpected ways. A common human failing is to imagine we know how things are going to work out, how a given problem is going to be fixed. Israel had gone into Babylonian exile. As a nation, it had been destroyed. It had ceased to exist. Now, God promised that the nation would be restored all at once. That was precisely what happened when Cyrus issued his decree around 536 BC that the people of Israel were to return and rebuild their shattered homeland—only seventy years after the first deportation in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. With that decree, on a single day, the nation had been restored. All at once, upon the arrival of thousands of refugees sent back home, the depopulated capital was suddenly crowded.

Just as the people of Israel had mourned the destruction of their capital, their temple and their homeland, so they would rejoice when they were at last able to return and restore their fortunes.

God does not punish endlessly. Suffering does not endure without end. Someday, too, the current crisis, the current moment of pain will end and we will once again be happy. If nothing else—and it is far more than nothing—we have an eternity with God to look forward to.

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Justice

“For I, the LORD, love justice;

I hate robbery for burnt offering;

I will direct their work in truth,

And will make with them an everlasting covenant.

Their descendants shall be known among the Gentiles,

And their offspring among the people.

All who see them shall acknowledge them,

That they are the posterity whom the LORD has blessed.”

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD,

My soul shall be joyful in my God;

For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation,

He has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments,

And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its bud,

As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth,

So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:8-11)

God loves justice. But how does that work with the fact that he keeps offering—and giving—mercy to the evil? God often forgives, often spares, often offers hope to those who most deserve to be squashed like bugs.

So how can God say he loves justice? Because he loves it when the good get what they deserve. But wait, God said there are no good people, only evil people. So how does that work? God transforms the evil into the good. He destroys the wicked when he makes them righteous. Justice comes to the bad guys in their transformation into good guys. Rather than explosions and body parts sent flying, God blows up their sins, he destroys the wickedness in their hearts. He delivers justice to the wicked heart when he replaces it with his own heart of righteousness.

God’s justice against the wicked happened when Jesus took their sins and died with them. Justice was served more thoroughly in that moment than any explosion sending bad guys to oblivion at the end of any movie. Human justice, the justice we think of, results in the destruction of sinners. God’s justice results in the destruction of sin and the rescue of sinners.

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God Will Take Care of You

Lift up your eyes and look around;

they all gather together, they come to you;

your sons shall come from far away,

and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.

Then you shall see and be radiant;

your heart shall thrill and rejoice,

because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,

the wealth of the nations shall come to you.

A multitude of camels shall cover you,

the young camels of Midian and Ephah;

all those from Sheba shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense,

and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.

All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you,

the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you;

they shall be acceptable on my altar,

and I will glorify my glorious house.

Who are these that fly like a cloud,

and like doves to their windows?

For the coastlands shall wait for me,

the ships of Tarshish first,

to bring your children from far away,

their silver and gold with them,

for the name of the Lord your God,

and for the Holy One of Israel,

because he has glorified you. (Isaiah 60:4-9)

It is hard to see our lives from God’s point of view. Our memories are colored by our assumptions and incomplete information. We see tomorrow only in terms of what little we know today. Today seems long, while the past is fleeting and tomorrow never comes.

But God reassured his people in their captivity in Babylon, a captivity that was still a hundred years in the future when he was speaking through Isaiah, that God was going to restore their fortunes, that the future was bright and all would be well.

God promised them a restoration of normal commerce with their neighbors. Ephah was one of the five sons of Midian, a grandson of Abraham and his wife Keturah. Midian became a nation to the east of the Dead Sea, while Ephah was one of the cities in that nation. There were many places throughout the Mediterranean world called Tarshish where ore was refined into metal. The “ships of Tarshish” were refinery ships carrying the refined metals. Both Kedar and Nabaioth were sons of Ishmael, Isaac’s half brother. Keder referred to a confederation of Arab tribes in the northern part of the Arabian peninsula that traded mostly sheep. The same with Nabaioth.

We belong to God. He will take care of us and we will be with him forever. A human life time is a very tiny speck on the face of eternity. But it’s all we can see just now. We need to seek God’s perspective on it all.

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