R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 9

When God Got a Divorce

The LORD said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: “Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot. And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also. So it came to pass, through her casual harlotry, that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to Me with her whole heart, but in pretense,” says the LORD.

Then the LORD said to me, “Backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say:

‘Return, backsliding Israel,’ says the LORD;

‘I will not cause My anger to fall on you.

For I am merciful,’ says the LORD;

‘I will not remain angry forever. (Jeremiah 3:6-12)

God sometimes gives people exactly what they want. Of course, it usually doesn’t take them long to realize that they didn’t really know what they wanted after all. Eve desperately wanted a certain fruit that for some inexplicable reason God was cruelly withholding from her. Only after she got it, were her eyes opened to just how big a mistake she had made.

God’s words to Jeremiah arrived during the reign of Josiah, one of the most righteous kings Judah ever had. He restored the temple. He got rid of the idols and high places. He worshipped Yahweh exclusively. But, quite obviously, nothing much had really changed. Josiah’s reforms were barely skin deep. With his death, his son Jehoiakim reverted to idols, idols everywhere.

Israel and Judah wanted to worship other gods. They didn’t care about Yahweh any more. So God gave them up, sent them away, left them to their own devices. But unlike human beings, who are willing to write off those who betray them, God was always willing to take her back. In fact, the “divorce” was really part of his plan, the final discipline that he knew she needed in order for true repentance to take place. God knows exactly what his people need, even if they don’t see it themselves. His discipline is always perfect, and always achieves his goal: the restoration of the relationship.

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Horny Camel

How can you say, “I am not defiled,

I have not gone after the Baals”?

Look at your way in the valley;

know what you have done—

a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,

a wild ass at home in the wilderness,

in her heat sniffing the wind!

Who can restrain her lust?

None who seek her need weary themselves;

in her month they will find her.

Keep your feet from going unshod

and your throat from thirst.

But you said, “It is hopeless,

for I have loved strangers,

and after them I will go.”

As a thief is shamed when caught,

so the house of Israel shall be shamed—

they, their kings, their officials,

their priests, and their prophets,

who say to a tree, “You are my father,”

and to a stone, “You gave me birth.”

For they have turned their backs to me,

and not their faces.

But in the time of their trouble they say,

“Come and save us!”

But where are your gods

that you made for yourself?

Let them come, if they can save you,

in your time of trouble;

for you have as many gods

as you have towns, O Judah.

Why do you complain against me?

You have all rebelled against me,

says the LORD. (Jeremiah 2:23-29)

God compares his people to animals governed by their instincts, but the animals look more reasonable than his people do. First, the people try to pretend that they haven’t forsaken God, even when the evidence is obvious. Then they claim that they can’t help themselves, that they are helpless to their love for “strangers.” The “strangers” are the gods they have turned to instead of Yahweh.

People sometimes ignore friends who have stood by them in the past, who have been there for them during previous crises. Instead, they turn to those who are actually leading them astray. But then, as soon as soon as the bottom drops out, as soon as they become desperate, they turn back again to those they had scorned. God asks his people, so why turn to me now?

God is quickly blamed for the problems they caused themselves. They depended on what was undependable and so they suffered the consequences. Nevertheless, like the father with his prodigal son, God is willing to forgive. All they need do is ask.

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Trash for Treasure

Cross over to the coasts of Kittim and look,

send to Kedar and observe closely;

see if there has ever been anything like this:

Has a nation ever changed its gods?

(Yet they are not gods at all.)

But my people have exchanged their Glory

for worthless idols.

Be appalled at this, O heavens,

and shudder with great horror,”

declares the LORD.

“My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Is Israel a servant, a slave by birth?

Why then has he become plunder?

Lions have roared;

they have growled at him.

They have laid waste his land;

his towns are burned and deserted.

Also, the men of Memphis and Tahpanhes

have shaved the crown of your head.

Have you not brought this on yourselves

by forsaking the LORD your God

when he led you in the way? (Jeremiah 2:10-17)

People do not easily change their minds about things like religion or politics. For hundreds, if not thousands of years the people of Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt continued worshipping all their multiple gods—gods that didn’t even exist. They never even thought about changing their religion. So, God wonders what to make of his people, who turned their backs on him. He’s real; they’ve seen evidence of his power repeatedly, unlike say Babylon, where no one had ever seen Marduk do anything but they faithfully worshipped him all the same.

Some identify Kittim with Syria. Others with the Philistines or all the islands of the Aegian. Kedar refers to a confederation of Arab tribes in northern Arabia. Memphis and Tahpenis refer to the two cities in Egypt. Memphis was Egypt’s capital, while Tahpenhes is where Jeremiah would be taken by those who fled the Babylonians (see Jeremiah 43:7). God’s point: no matter where you look, can anyone find people that have abandoned their own gods?

Sin is irrational. They turn from a God who is real, to gods who are fake. They turn from a God who is demonstrably powerful to things that are demonstrably ineffectual. As their lives spiral down, why do they exchange a treasure trove for a trash?

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Returning Evil for Good

Listen to the word of the LORD, people of Jacob—all you families of Israel! This is what the LORD says:

“What did your ancestors find wrong with me

that led them to stray so far from me?

They worshiped worthless idols,

only to become worthless themselves.

They did not ask, ‘Where is the LORD

who brought us safely out of Egypt

and led us through the barren wilderness—

a land of deserts and pits,

a land of drought and death,

where no one lives or even travels?’

“And when I brought you into a fruitful land

to enjoy its bounty and goodness,

you defiled my land and

corrupted the possession I had promised you.

The priests did not ask,

‘Where is the LORD?’

Those who taught my word ignored me,

the rulers turned against me,

and the prophets spoke in the name of Baal,

wasting their time on worthless idols.

Therefore, I will bring my case against you,”

says the LORD.

“I will even bring charges against your children’s children

in the years to come. (Jeremiah 2:4-9)

People just take God for granted during the good times. He’s easy to ignore. Jeremiah began prophesying to the Israelites in the few years left before they would go into captivity in Babylon. God dares his people to try to justify their behavior. What, exactly, he wonders, can they say against him?

But no. They continued with the same behavior, ignoring everything Jeremiah said. God told them how they were mistreating him. He told them that how they were acting made no sense. When someone is kind and helpful, when someone gives gifts, the normal human response is gratitude. Even the worst of human beings are usually nice to those who are nice to them, if for no other reason than a selfish desire to keep the gravy flowing.

Loving regardless of how someone treats you is rare. But tit-for-tat is common. But God’s people can’t even muster that. In the face of God’s goodness, they respond by chasing after other gods instead. Like a wife inexplicably cheating on a good and loving husband, heaping insults upon him even as she throws herself at her lovers. Those entrusted with leading the people: the priests and the rulers—they were first in the line leading away from God.

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Bed

“But come here, you sons of a sorceress,

Offspring of an adulterer and a prostitute.

“Against whom do you jest?

Against whom do you open wide your mouth

And stick out your tongue?

Are you not children of rebellion,

Offspring of deceit,

Who inflame yourselves among the oaks,

Under every luxuriant tree,

Who slaughter the children in the ravines,

Under the clefts of the crags?

“Among the smooth stones of the ravine

Is your portion, they are your lot;

Even to them you have poured out a drink offering,

You have made a grain offering.

Shall I relent concerning these things?

“Upon a high and lofty mountain

You have made your bed.

You also went up there to offer sacrifice.

“Behind the door and the doorpost

You have set up your sign;

Indeed, far removed from Me, you have uncovered yourself,

And have gone up and made your bed wide.

And you have made an agreement for yourself with them,

You have loved their bed,

You have looked on their manhood.

“You have journeyed to the king with oil

And increased your perfumes;

You have sent your envoys a great distance

And made them go down to Sheol.

“You were tired out by the length of your road,

Yet you did not say, ‘It is hopeless.’

You found renewed strength,

Therefore you did not faint. (Isaiah 57:3-10)

God graphically describes the disloyalty of his people, trying to get them to understand just how much they have hurt him, how his heart had been broken. “Uncovering” yourself and “looked on their manhood” or literally, “looked at their nakedness” are Hebrew idioms indicating sexual activity. Israel’s worship of other gods is described in terms of sexual infidelity; Israel is portrayed as a wife who has traveled far for her affairs with other men only to find that nothing cooled her ardor or made her rethink her infidelity.

Israel worshipped a wide variety of gods and goddesses. Molech, an Ammonite god, was worshiped by sacrificing children to him. Ashera was a popular deity among the Israelites as well, a fertility goddess whose wooden poles—phallic symbols—stood on hills and other high places throughout the land, while those who worshipped her engaged in sympathetic magic: sleeping with the priestesses devoted to her.

And yet the Israelites felt no shame; in fact, they ridiculed those who insisted on worshipping God alone, and laughed in God’s face. Arrogantly they insisted on their own ways, doing what they wanted to do regardless of the pain they caused God, feeling no guilt over their betrayal.

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Strong and Righteous

“Look to Me, and be saved,

All you ends of the earth!

For I am God, and there is no other.

I have sworn by Myself;

The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness,

And shall not return,

That to Me every knee shall bow,

Every tongue shall take an oath.

He shall say,

‘Surely in the LORD I have righteousness and strength.

To Him men shall come,

And all shall be ashamed

Who are incensed against Him.

In the LORD all the descendants of Israel

Shall be justified, and shall glory.’ ” (Isaiah 45:22-25)

“I swear to God,” some people will say when they want to convince you that they are telling the truth. God simply swears by himself: his own word is trustworthy. He doesn’t need to try to convince anyone that he’ll do what he says.

A time is coming when everyone will agree that God can be counted on. Although Israel was going into captivity in Babylon, they would not have to stay there forever. They would be sent back to their homeland to rebuild it, and at that time, the Israelites who might have wondered if God had forgotten them, would finally praise him and thank him. God said that “every knee shall bow” and “take an oath.” In context, God is speaking to the people of Israel, letting them know that despite their suffering, they would once again acknowledge God and respond to him, reaffirming the contract that he had with them. They may not have been loyal to God, but God’s loyalty to them never wavered.

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Gods Don’t Die

The LORD God said:

Ezekiel, son of man, tell the king of Tyre that I am saying:

You are so arrogant that you think you’re a god and that the city of Tyre is your throne. You may claim to be a god, though you’re nothing but a mere human. You think you’re wiser than Daniel and know everything.

Your wisdom has certainly made you rich, because you have storehouses filled with gold and silver. You’re a clever businessman and are extremely wealthy, but your wealth has led to arrogance!

You compared yourself to a god, so now I, the LORD God, will make you the victim of cruel enemies. They will destroy all the possessions you’ve worked so hard to get. Your enemies will brutally kill you, and the sea will be your only grave.

When you face your enemies, will you still claim to be a god? They will attack, and you will suffer like any other human. Foreigners will kill you, and you will die the death of those who don’t worship me. I, the LORD, have spoken. (Ezekiel 28:1-10)

God sometimes gets sarcastic. The king of Tyre, like so many monarchs of the ancient world, believed that he was a god. Reality would have an unpleasant way of clarifying things for him. Mortality has a habit of reminding people that they really aren’t divine beings, no matter how prideful, rich, and powerful they might be. And certainly the city of Tyre was wealthy, powerful and prosperous thanks to its widespread Mediterranean trade.

The king of Tyre betrayed the trust of his people, amassing wealth and power while doing nothing for the poor and disadvantaged. The sacrifice of children as burnt offerings was common in Tyre. Worse, the upper classes did not sacrifice their own children. Instead, they purchased the children of the poor.

During the time of Alexander the Great, the city of Tyre was flattened. But many of the inhabitants fled and established a new city on the northern coast of Africa: Carthage. Some years later the Romans attacked. As they lay under the Roman siege, the upper classes decided that their sacrifices of poor children were not enough and so they started sacrificing their own. But the Romans destroyed them anyway.

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Increasing Promiscuity

‘Woe! Woe to you, declares the Sovereign LORD. In addition to all your other wickedness, you built a mound for yourself and made a lofty shrine in every public square. At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by. You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, and provoked me to anger with your increasing promiscuity. So I stretched out my hand against you and reduced your territory; I gave you over to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were shocked by your lewd conduct. You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too, because you were insatiable; and even after that, you still were not satisfied. Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia, a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied.

“‘How weak-willed you are, declares the Sovereign LORD, when you do all these things, acting like a brazen prostitute! When you built your mounds at the head of every street and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were unlike a prostitute, because you scorned payment.’” (Ezekiel 16:23-31)

Sometimes people need shock therapy. Ezekiel had problems with getting the people of God to actually hear what he was saying. They paid as much attention to his words as the average person pays to the lyrics of a song (see Ezekiel 33:32). God wanted his people to understand how their worship of other gods was making him feel. So he made use of explicit language; he wanted his people to recognize just how vulgar they had become. The underlying Hebrew that is translated “offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by” is very graphic. Literally, it says, “You spread your legs for everyone who comes by.”

God is shocked by what Israel and Judah are doing, how badly they have betrayed him. They are like an adulterous wife turned to prostitution. They have fallen into the arms of every other god but him. God is hurt. God’s heart is broken. And God is furious. He hopes his people can understand why, and he hopes by shocking them with graphic images that he can finally get their attention.

People forget that God has feelings. When he says that he loves us, he really means it. If betrayal hurts us, how can we imagine that it is any less painful for God?

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The Only God

For thus says the LORD,

who created the heavens

(he is God!),

who formed the earth and made it

(he established it;

he did not create it a chaos,

he formed it to be inhabited!):

I am the LORD, and there is no other.

I did not speak in secret,

in a land of darkness;

I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,

“Seek me in chaos.”

I the LORD speak the truth,

I declare what is right.

Assemble yourselves and come together,

draw near, you survivors of the nations!

They have no knowledge—

those who carry about their wooden idols,

and keep on praying to a god

that cannot save.

Declare and present your case;

let them take counsel together!

Who told this long ago?

Who declared it of old?

Was it not I, the LORD?

There is no other god besides me,

a righteous God and a Savior;

there is no one besides me. (Isaiah 45:18-21)

God is not living in the dark. He is not invisible. He is not unorganized. He is not hard to find. His words are not so complex and difficult that no one can understand them. There are no secret mysteries, quests, maps, or complicated ideas that need to be discovered in order to get God’s love or blessing. There is no secret handshake or magical ritual.

God stands in the open, easily accessible, pouring out his blessings upon all who come. But oddly, people run away from him. They seek him in dark places, they pray to everything else but him, worshipping inanimate objects, muttering at the rocks and sticks of wood and behaving like complete idiots, all the while imagining themselves to be deep, spiritual, and holy. They think that finding God and knowing God intimately has to be deserved: that it is granted only to those who strive hardest, or who make the most pilgrimages.

But there is only one God. And he alone can save. That means, no one else can rescue you: not your neighbor, not a special ritual, and not yourself. Only the obvious God.

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Wearing the Crown

God gave David his word,

he won’t back out on this promise:

“One of your sons

I will set on your throne;

If your sons stay true to my Covenant

and learn to live the way I teach them,

Their sons will continue the line—

always a son to sit on your throne.

Yes—I, God, chose Zion,

the place I wanted for my shrine;

This will always be my home;

this is what I want, and I’m here for good.

I’ll shower blessings on the pilgrims who come here,

and give supper to those who arrive hungry;

I’ll dress my priests in salvation clothes;

the holy people will sing their hearts out!

Oh, I’ll make the place radiant for David!

I’ll fill it with light for my anointed!

I’ll dress his enemies in dirty rags,

but I’ll make his crown sparkle with splendor.” (Psalm 132:11-18)

Treaties and other contracts are simple things: they lay out the expectations that two parties have for one another. Assuming that both parties are honest, everything will go smoothly. In a treaty with God, there should be great confidence that he’ll do exactly what he says he’ll do. His promise regarding Zion—another name for Jerusalem—should have put the people at ease. All they had to do was love God—and how hard was that when all he offered them was prosperity and happiness?

And yet, human beings are perverse creatures. We love ourselves, but we’re afraid no one else does and so we devote ourselves to looking out for our best interests, or what we think are our best interests. God’s people only trusted themselves, and so they went off on their own, forgetting what God had promised.

He had not promised them only happiness, no matter what. He had promised them happiness in exchange for their loyalty. If they betrayed him—well, he had made a promise about that, too: the opposite of happiness. And God keeps all his promises, both good and bad.

No matter how far the people strayed from him, he guaranteed them that he would bring them back and fulfill every good thing he had ever promised. Ultimately, no matter how far they ran, no matter how hard they tried to get away, God would hunt them down and bless them.

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