Bold, Unafraid, and Clever

Joshua 2

Joshua sent spies secretly to check out the land God had promised and they sought refuge with Rahab, the harlot - absolutely the last gal two religious guys would expect to get or want help from. Rahab boldly believed they were from Jehovah God and fearlessly put that faith into action, risking her life to hide them. Rahab was clever; she understood that Jehovah had given the Israelites the land and she asked for safety for her entire family in return for hiding them and fooling the King’s messengers.

The spies agreed.  Does the scarlet thread the spies told her to put out her window (so that she and her family would be saved) remind you of the lamb's blood over the door's in Eqypt for the Passover, and the blood of Christ which can save us and our "whole household?”  

I love that Rahab was a harlot because later she is mentioned in the New Testament in the lineage of Jesus (Matt 1:5) and that tells me that even a prostitute can bear great things - it's kind of like a smack of the reality of God's love and acceptance that he uses the "unloveable" and the lowly to further His Kingdom. This shows me that God is not prejudiced or "religiously” correct. 

Rahab’s freedom to act with faith, not in fear is inspiring.  She is bold, unafraid, and clever in her decision to help God’s people. In the list of the faithful (Hebrews 11) only Rahab, the harlot, and Sarah, Abraham’s wife are the women listed by name. A harlot and the mother of Isaac on the same level. This means that even I, as sinful as I am, because of Jesus, can put my faith into action and God can use me. If Rahab could do it, so can we! I hope this story encourages you to freely do the same, regardless of the danger or your past.  

Click on the title above and let us all know what you got from this reading!

Posted by Allyson Good

Transition to Freedom

Deuteronomy 34 and Joshua 1

Transitions are opportunities and transitions are threats. Our freedom is most threatened in the face of transition, be it a move, a new school, a new environment or a new relationship. With the death of Moses, the Israelites and their freedom were threatened by a leadership void that could set them backwards. These two chapters give us great insight into how to handle our transitions well to maintain our freedom.

Grieve well: The Israelites specifically spent 30 days grieving the death of Moses before moving forward. It is important to reflect deeply on what has our affections by what we lose in our transitions. Understanding what we deeply care about and taking the time to recognize their loss enables us discern the virtue of the things we care about. If we are not reflective in the way we leave things, there will be greater temptation to attach ourselves in our new place to new things that promise to fill the void but without the virtue of what was left behind. We see Jesus regularly pulling aside for time with his father during key ministry transitions. This is a pattern for all of us to follow.

Hand the Baton well: When Moses laid hands on Joshua, it was clear to Joshua and the entire nation where the nation’s Spiritual leadership would come from. Joshua had proven himself faithful and his character was solid. He would need this for the troubles and challenges that would lie ahead of him. Whenever we make a transition, we need to give the utmost attention to the kinds of voices we find that will guide us in our new endeavors. Jesus Christ has empowered witnesses to him and has released leadership in the church to shepherd and lead God’s people in every place and in every generation. We must always find ourselves under Jesus’ shepherding leadership through those whom he has empowered to care for us.

Focus on the Fundamentals: Joshua’s success was going to be based upon the way he handles the basics of the faith. As he is careful to understand God’s ways expressed in the law and align his life to them, through obedience, his success would follow. Jesus said it this way, “If you remain in me, I will remain in you. If you obey me, you will bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

A Loss of Freedom for Everyone

Number 12:1-16

 

How often have you seen it play out this way?  After the death of Zipporah, Moses first wife, he takes a Cushite wife and his brother and sister begin questioning his leadership.  This stops everything!

 

Moses, Miriam and Aaron are called by God to meet him at the Tabernacle like three school children pulled from a fight.  God addresses this issue head on.  The real issue isn’t Moses’ wife but what kind of leader he was and in particular what kind of prophet he was.  “Hadn’t God spoken through them as well?”  That kind of division is a cancer to a leadership team.  Or should I say it is an encumbrance that restricts the freedom and impact of a leadership team.

 

The entire mission was set back because of the division at the core.  Not only did Miriam need to experience the leprosy of her divisiveness (notice the imagery between leprosy and divisiveness), but the entire community had to experience the impact of her sin.  That is the reality of leadership.  The leader’s slavery and brokenness  becomes the followers problem. 

 

Do you lead?  A family? An organization? A friend or sibling?  A ministry?   Stay clear of encumbrance, for your slavery will become slavery for those whom you lead.

Clean vs. Unclean

Leviticus 11

 

OK, this is where the distance between Biblical history and our time becomes very real.  Leviticus 11-15 discuss this Old Testament theme of unclean versus clean. 

 

Much ink has been spilled by theologians, archeologists and anthropologists trying to figure out the rationale behind why some animals were clean versus unclean.  Candidate theories draw from health reasons, to creating a basis of norms in Israel, though no theory is without their holes.  Sometimes with things such as this it is better to look for the purpose versus the reason.  The purpose is pretty clear.  The purpose of these is to establish the people of God as different and “holy” from the nations around them.  Their distinction as a people were that they were God’s special people (Ex 19:4), and they were to live in such a way as to retain that uniqueness.  It is probably true that many of these laws did contribute to their health in Ancient Near Eastern culture and they did communicate to Israel God’s concern for all things in life. 

 

Jesus apparently violated this law in the town of Nain when a widows only son was being carried to his grave.  Jesus stepped forward and touched the coffin, violating the laws of uncleanness.  Yet, Jesus didn’t take the uncleanness of the dead, for the dead took the cleanness (and life) of Jesus.  Jesus in his righteousness was clean from the inside out and was able to reverse the effects of uncleanness.  We do not need to obey the "clean" laws today, for Jesus has taken the curse of uncleanness and has made us his special people, declaring us holy, and clean (1 Peter 2:9).  The laws of clean and unclean teaches us that this is a morally corrupt world and there are unclean parts of this world that can corrupt us if we let them.  There are things that we should avoid for they will draw us into their corruption. 

 

How do you know the things that are clean or unclean in your life?  Let’s think of ourselves like Jesus.  When I interact with this controversial thing (alcohol, friends, pop culture, certain movies and music), which direction does the influence move?  Does the “thing” make me more like itself, or do I make it more like myself, and (hopefully) like Christ?

 

How have you seen this play itself out?

 

Hope for the Conscience

This week will highlight the Troubles that the people of God had on the way to "happily ever after"

Leviticus 1-2

Integral to the freedom for Israel would be the relationship of Yahweh with his people. Yet, if there is a genuine relationship, there needs to be a way to maintain that relationship. When we fail in our earthly relationships, we can simply go to the person, apologize and make amends for whatever we did wrong. But how will God’s people do that if, because of his Holiness, they cannot appear before him personally? That leads us to understand the tabernacle/temple and understand the book of Leviticus.

The tabernacle was designed to be the dominant fixture in the life of Israel, set up in the center of community, so that the community would be built with Yahweh as the central person in the life of the nation. The tabernacle was where God dwelled. It became a tangible place where an Israelite could come and interact with God through one of the priests.

Just like in our human relationships, we need to move past our offense and guilt before genuine relationship can occur, the same is true for God. That is why Leviticus offers specific instruction about sacrifices to cleanse the people of God of their guilt and to represent atonement for their sins. These two chapters offer insight into the purpose of sacrifice in the life of the Israelite worship.

1. Sacrifices required blood because atonement was costly. From the beginning, God told Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed them, they would surely die. Well, when they did, they died to God spiritually, but God in his mercy spared their physical lives and took the lives of other animals instead of the lives of Adam and Eve. Because sin is a life or death issue, only the shedding of blood can truly demonstrate the cost of sin—therefore blood sacrifice for sin.

2. Offerings provided for the Spiritual leadership of the nation. The Israelite worshippers were required to offer the best tenth of all of their earnings to bring for worship. This ten percent provided for the entire tribe of Levi (who had no allotted land in Israel) who were charged with caring for the temple and offering spiritual leadership to the people of Israel. To this day, God’s people give ten percent of their earnings to provide for the church to offer Spiritual leadership.

3. The offerings were to come with salt—this was a reminder that the covenant that God made with his people was lasting. This covenant is in a certain sense still in effect today, except Jesus has fulfilled it. He was the perfect sacrifice that could cleanse forever the conscience of all of God’s people. Because of his sacrifice, what more could any of us bring? How could we add to his perfect sacrifice? All we can do is gratefully receive it and live out of the new reality of freedom and forgiveness it offers us.

Posted by Marc

God's throne among his people

Exodus 25:1-22

Ok, true confessions. When I was first investigating the faith, I said arrogantly, “I will read the entire Bible and decide if it is true, then….” I had great ambition, I charged through Genesis and Exodus until I came to these last few chapters. When I got to this part about the tabernacle with its incredible detail, I gave up. It seemed completely irrelevant. Why so much detail about church furniture?

This is what I didn’t get. There is no such thing as a free motif. Have you ever watched a movie and noticed a clip that seemed to be a throwaway clip? No such thing! Movie producers spend $1000’s per second of final movie time. Every moment of the movie is carefully chosen--The same thing is true with scripture. God doesn’t just throw in filler to keep even spacing in the books. Each word and each subject is meaningful and is there to reveal God.

So what does this reveal about God? This chapter details the place where God will sit upon his throne among his people. Yahweh will come and sit upon the mercy seat. This was a magnificent moment in the history of the world. God himself, who dwells in heaven, will begin dwelling on earth in the presence of his Spirit at the mercy seat within the tabernacle, within the community of Israel. Here, God would receive sacrifice for sin and be a tangible picture of the truth that declares, “Yahweh is their God, and he is their people.”

Like a ring on the hand of a married person is a sign of the marital covenant, the tabernacle was a sign to Israel and to the world of God’s covenant faithfulness and commitment to be with them and to be their God as they are his people.

Jesus has superseded the tabernacle. “He came and dwelled (literally tabernacle) among us” (John 1:14). In the Old Testament, once a year on the Day of Atonement, the mercy seat would be sprinkled with blood for the atonement for sins of the people of Israel. Those who are united to Christ by faith now have their “hearts sprinkled to cleanse them” (Hebrews 10:22). So, with clean hearts from the blood of Christ, he can send his Spirit into the thrones of our hearts that he may sit there as we together represent his tabernacle and are a sign that Yahweh is God and we are his people.

A Vision for Life

Exodus 20

Sometimes when people think of religious rules they imagine a balance beam between two sky scrapers. There is a mean nasty God on one end daring you to obey the rules, forcing you to pull off a miracle by walking the balance beam. If you are not able to obey the rules, you fall helplessly into the urban abyss below while the almighty laughs a bellowing cackle! Or, people consider the rules to be a small 7x7x7 windowless room that you need to stay in, for fear that you might start enjoying yourself.

The Ten Commandments are a vision for a new life in a new place with a new freedom. The only way of life the Hebrew people knew up until then was a life of slavery under despotic leadership. They were bound to repeat it, either as slaves or as despots, unless they could learn a new way. The Ten Commandments were the new way, not just for Israel, but as they modeled it, it would become a new way of life for the world. The Ten Commandments weren’t just a moment in the life of Israel, but a moment in the course of history where law became codified and a nation was bound together not just around superstition and personality, but around a common story and a common way of living. That common way of living has held together the Jewish culture ever since. It became the foundation from which Christianity, and all of western culture for that matter, sprung.

The people were receiving from God a land that would be their own. The law was for them to enjoy the land and live the lives that God intended for them. Just like there are laws of physics that if you break them, they will break you—try to fly for instance; there are laws of morality that if you break them, they break you—try revenge or adultery, or ignoring the Sabbath. Imagine a dog receiving a new home with a new, huge yard filled with trees, flowers, hills and other animal life. An electronic fence is put in, not because the owners wants to keep the dog from enjoying life, but so that the dog may remain safe and can enjoy life even more. As long as the dog stays in the yard (a big yard, mind you—think rural, not suburban), he is safe and can enjoy all the goodness life can offer. The dog may look outside of the yard and think that the bunnies are slower outside the yard or the grass is greener outside, but they are the same bunnies and the same grass. Though things may appear differently to the dog, the only thing that is different, is that the dog is outside the safety of his owner, and is in disobedience to his owner. The bunnies are just as fast and the grass isn’t any better.

We need to make sure that we do not mistake freedom for autonomy. There is no such thing as autonomy. We are all bound to die; we are all bound to the laws of physics; we are bound to a certain place in history; we are bound to the reality that we are social creatures; and we are creatures who are shaped by generations of ancestry. No one is autonomous of these things except God. Freedom comes from placing ourselves under his ownership, and following the ways of this world that he wired into from creation. The Ten Commandments are a pretty good start.

Posted by Marc