Is it two weeks later already? How about that....
[Genesis 16:1-3]
There are a lot of interesting things happening in this section. Abram and Sarai both know that there's supposed to be a bunch babies going on, since that's the entire reason they decided to go wandering the desert and getting into wars and do all this fun stuff they've been doing. However, Abram's pushing 90 years old and, even when people are still living 150-ish years, that's pretty old. Sarai understandably gets impatient and does a couple of things to try to remedy the situation:
First, she accuses God of deliberately messing this up. Her thoughts aren't that there might be something else they need to do or that it's just not time, but that God is stopping her from having a baby just for the lulz.
Second, she comes up with a plan to let Abram also marry her maid and possibly have a baby with her instead. Also notable is that Abram was all for this plan.
For the most part, these guys have been pretty good about having faith in God to fulfill these promises. But here it seems like their patience ran out. They didn't see the promise coming fast enough to suit them so they decided to take matters into their own hands and fulfill this promise themselves. Even though God was pretty clear that the descendants would come from Sarai herself, they were tired of waiting and decided to rely on their own strength and their own plans to make this promise happen.
We often don't like God's version of a plan, so we come with a plan that's pretty similar but a lot more appealing to us. God says you're going to be a missionary and you say "Well...I'm a missionary to my business." God says you're going to be a business owner and you say "Well...I set up a separate checking account for missions donations so that's kinda like a business." God says to go give someone specific encouragement to their face and instead you poke them on Facebook and post them a funny picture.
More dangerously, this attitude is most prevalent when it comes to salvation and morality teachings. The Bible teaches that submitting your heart to God makes you a new creation; that as you grow closer to God you develop spiritual fruit and God transforms your heart to be more like Jesus. Alone, you are broken and fallen and the best works you can will yourself into doing are just rags made filthy by the pride that comes with forcing yourself to be a "good person." We know this, and yet we are not satisfied with the speed that it happens in ourselves or in other people so we feel like we have to force the matter.
You see this the most in youth sermons. The youth pastor knows that God transforms hearts, but also feels pressure to preach a sermon so good that 15-year-olds who got saved last week live with the same maturity and wisdom of a 40-year-old who has been saved since he was 17. The youth pastor knows that the reason he doesn't have sex outside of marriage is because he loves his wife, loves God, and so would never defile himself and cheapen the gift of love he has to give his wife; he knows the reason he doesn't do drugs is because he has a purpose in life that can't be achieved when he is stoned out of his mind or when his body is destroyed by these substances; he knows that he is a "good person" because God has worked on his heart throughout the years and now his desires line up better with God's, but this does not work fast enough, so he throws in other things to try and get the kids to clean up their act immediately. Love is slow, so scare them with STDs; self-respect takes time, so show them disturbing pictures and play to their pride so they'll pressure each other in a more acceptable way; spiritual maturity takes time, so we'll come with disgusting false sermons from out-of-context passages scaring kids into thinking it takes longer to get back into the presence of God than it does to "fall out" of it.
God promised us righteousness as a result of our marriage with Jesus, but we don't see it happening so we suggest our congregations take on fear as a wife and try to bear righteousness through her. We marry ourselves to pride, success, hatred, and things of the flesh to try and bear through them the fruit God promised we would bear through Christ.
Abram's faith had already been counted to him as righteousness; the plan was laid out and everything was on track before Abram and Sarai decided they could give it a push. And though we struggle with sin and watch those around us fall, we have already been declared righteous through the finished work of Jesus. You still help each other do the best you can, but when you get to the point where you think you're helping the salvation process or you start trying to modify behavior with petty fleshly incentives instead of an attitude grounded in our relationship with God, you are over-stepping your bounds and throwing a wrench of works into God's plan of Grace.
---
I was going to keep going there, but I think that's quite enough for today. The rest of chapter goes into some of the consequences of this decision, so we'll have some more fun with it next time.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
The Jibblies
I'm going to keep this up. Had two tests this week so I was busy with that, but I'm also a lazy butt. But we're pushing on!
[Genesis 15:1-3]
Riding on that cool victory of saving Lot, God decides to give Abram a pep talk, saying "See? See? Told you I'd shield you." God also encourages Abram for not taking the spoils from the jerks who ran the town, assuring Abram that the relationship they have and the promises God gave him are an even better reward than the ones he just passed up.
Abram jumps on this opportunity to go "Yeah cool thanks. About those promises..." and begin to ask God exactly when that whole promise thing was supposed to happen. Abram was obvious concerned as he had been promised that his descendants would form an entire nation, but here he was well past 70 years old with his only current heir being one of his servants that he just happened to like more than others.
Abram demonstrated to us last time with his private militia that it does not violate your relationship or your promise with God when you prepare on your side; in fact, you're expected to prepare on your side. Here he demonstrates that it's not wrong to question what's going on. Abram expected descendants, and victory in saving Lot wasn't extremely fulfilling when the first promise didn't look like it was going to be fulfilled, so he calls God out on it, and that's okay. Compared to some of the stuff David prayed, his questions were quite tame.
We never see God punishing doubts and questions. When you make inquiries for the purpose of learning more, God rewards that. We all have an aversion to people questioning our beliefs, and a sense of guilt comes when we question our own, but plenty of Bible folks weren't afraid to call God out on whether or not He was who He said He was. We freak out over things like Richard Dawkins books, but if people are asking questions we should be able to answer them. When someone refuses to let me even ask questions, I immediately begin they are manipulating me and actually have no idea what they're talking about.
[4-6]
God doesn't really give Abram any new information, but reassures him that he's going to have so many descendants that his head will spin. God later ends up fulfilling this in two different ways: the literal, physical country of Israel is a fulfillment of this promise, as well as the spiritual descendants that would come through future covenants.
A cool bit of text here says that Abram believed God, and God credited him righteousness for it. Righteousness is a tricky subject when it comes to pre-law Bible characters. They did not have the Levitical law, so their righteousness couldn't really be based on whether or not they wore polyester or covered their poop properly. Instead, in the case of Adam and Eve, He bases their righteousness on obedience with what He has told them. In Abram's case, Abram got righteousness credited to his account for his faith. Elsewhere in Scripture the covenant God has with us today is compared to God's covenant with Abram moreso than God's covenant with Moses and Israel, so this is worth paying attention to.
I'm a math major, and I like to see the world as obeying mathematical rules that God Himself laid down. One of those rules deals with equality: if we're dealing with a value and we want to switch it out for another one, we can only do that if the two values have been proven equal. If we don't like one side of an equation, we can't just say "Man, that would be a lot easier to solve without those fractions. I'm gonna switch that side out for the number 6. Done." unless we have proved somewhere that the side in question is equal to six. God could not have exchanged Abram's faith with righteousness unless faith was equal to righteousness. God doesn't cook His books. If He wrote "righteousness" in Abram's ledger, that means that, under the covenant He had with Abram and, by extension, the covenant He has with us, faith and righteousness are the same thing. In Abram's case, it was faith in God's promise for descendants. In our case, it is faith in the finished work of Jesus.
[7-20]
I'm going to be honest: this part is weird and I'm never entirely sure what to do with it.
Basically, Abram asks for proof, so he goes and cuts a goat and a cow in half, and leaves them outside along with a dead bird. He gets tired trying to fight vultures off of them, falls asleep, and gets the jibblies. After the jibblies, God tells Abram that his descendants will be captives in another land for 400 years, but it's cool because God will beat the crap out of the other guys after they get out. Then Abram wakes up and has a vision of an E-Z-Bake Oven and a flashlight moving through the dead animals.
The best explanation I've heard for this is that this mimics a covenantal ritual like the ones every culture seemed to have before we all collectively realized that handshake was a lot easier and a lot less messy. I don't remember the details, but it involves walking between the animal caracasses and getting the blood on their robes. What Abram saw was God manifesting Himself to walk through and sign the covenant for both of them (The only good explanation of the imagery I could find was that the oven was supposed to evoke the future pillar of cloud and the torch the pillar of fire that He would use to lead the Israelites through the desert.) The significant picture here being that God signed for both of them; Abram wasn't even involved. Just another picture of how God's covenant with us is Him coming down here, not us building up to Him.
[Genesis 15:1-3]
Riding on that cool victory of saving Lot, God decides to give Abram a pep talk, saying "See? See? Told you I'd shield you." God also encourages Abram for not taking the spoils from the jerks who ran the town, assuring Abram that the relationship they have and the promises God gave him are an even better reward than the ones he just passed up.
Abram jumps on this opportunity to go "Yeah cool thanks. About those promises..." and begin to ask God exactly when that whole promise thing was supposed to happen. Abram was obvious concerned as he had been promised that his descendants would form an entire nation, but here he was well past 70 years old with his only current heir being one of his servants that he just happened to like more than others.
Abram demonstrated to us last time with his private militia that it does not violate your relationship or your promise with God when you prepare on your side; in fact, you're expected to prepare on your side. Here he demonstrates that it's not wrong to question what's going on. Abram expected descendants, and victory in saving Lot wasn't extremely fulfilling when the first promise didn't look like it was going to be fulfilled, so he calls God out on it, and that's okay. Compared to some of the stuff David prayed, his questions were quite tame.
We never see God punishing doubts and questions. When you make inquiries for the purpose of learning more, God rewards that. We all have an aversion to people questioning our beliefs, and a sense of guilt comes when we question our own, but plenty of Bible folks weren't afraid to call God out on whether or not He was who He said He was. We freak out over things like Richard Dawkins books, but if people are asking questions we should be able to answer them. When someone refuses to let me even ask questions, I immediately begin they are manipulating me and actually have no idea what they're talking about.
[4-6]
God doesn't really give Abram any new information, but reassures him that he's going to have so many descendants that his head will spin. God later ends up fulfilling this in two different ways: the literal, physical country of Israel is a fulfillment of this promise, as well as the spiritual descendants that would come through future covenants.
A cool bit of text here says that Abram believed God, and God credited him righteousness for it. Righteousness is a tricky subject when it comes to pre-law Bible characters. They did not have the Levitical law, so their righteousness couldn't really be based on whether or not they wore polyester or covered their poop properly. Instead, in the case of Adam and Eve, He bases their righteousness on obedience with what He has told them. In Abram's case, Abram got righteousness credited to his account for his faith. Elsewhere in Scripture the covenant God has with us today is compared to God's covenant with Abram moreso than God's covenant with Moses and Israel, so this is worth paying attention to.
I'm a math major, and I like to see the world as obeying mathematical rules that God Himself laid down. One of those rules deals with equality: if we're dealing with a value and we want to switch it out for another one, we can only do that if the two values have been proven equal. If we don't like one side of an equation, we can't just say "Man, that would be a lot easier to solve without those fractions. I'm gonna switch that side out for the number 6. Done." unless we have proved somewhere that the side in question is equal to six. God could not have exchanged Abram's faith with righteousness unless faith was equal to righteousness. God doesn't cook His books. If He wrote "righteousness" in Abram's ledger, that means that, under the covenant He had with Abram and, by extension, the covenant He has with us, faith and righteousness are the same thing. In Abram's case, it was faith in God's promise for descendants. In our case, it is faith in the finished work of Jesus.
[7-20]
I'm going to be honest: this part is weird and I'm never entirely sure what to do with it.
Basically, Abram asks for proof, so he goes and cuts a goat and a cow in half, and leaves them outside along with a dead bird. He gets tired trying to fight vultures off of them, falls asleep, and gets the jibblies. After the jibblies, God tells Abram that his descendants will be captives in another land for 400 years, but it's cool because God will beat the crap out of the other guys after they get out. Then Abram wakes up and has a vision of an E-Z-Bake Oven and a flashlight moving through the dead animals.
The best explanation I've heard for this is that this mimics a covenantal ritual like the ones every culture seemed to have before we all collectively realized that handshake was a lot easier and a lot less messy. I don't remember the details, but it involves walking between the animal caracasses and getting the blood on their robes. What Abram saw was God manifesting Himself to walk through and sign the covenant for both of them (The only good explanation of the imagery I could find was that the oven was supposed to evoke the future pillar of cloud and the torch the pillar of fire that He would use to lead the Israelites through the desert.) The significant picture here being that God signed for both of them; Abram wasn't even involved. Just another picture of how God's covenant with us is Him coming down here, not us building up to Him.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Lot has Been Kidnapped by Canaanites!
Short hiatus due to oversleeping, homework, and general laziness. But we're back! Friday's usually NT day, but I'm gonna stick with Genesis for today just because.
[Genesis 14: 1-12]
A big long list of countries goes to war with each other and ends up capturing Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot had unfortunately decided to camp out. Oddly enough this isn't even the real reason that Lot picked a stupid place.
[Genesis 14: 13-14]
One of Lot's buddies escapes and goes to tell Abram that Lot got himself kidnapped. Abram goes into hardcore favorite uncle mode and suits up a private militia that he apparently keeps on hand at all times and trained them himself from people born in his camp. I always forget exactly how rich Abram had to have been from the Bible description and from the fact that he has a private security force with him. We like our Bible characters poor so that people with lots of money will feel bad and give it to our cause, so you don't hear Abram's wealth mentioned much.
It's also notable that Abram kept some muscle with him even though God promised protection. More than once when expressing my desire to get a concealed handgun license I've been chided for a lack of faith because the person in question "trusted God to protect them." I find this argument absurd, because I know for a fact that anyone who tells you this probably wears a seat belt and looks both ways before crossing the street. There is a dangerous, unbiblical mindset (moreso in Charismatic circles) that faith can be measured by lack of precaution and reckless behavior. This is where you get people not protecting themselves as faith in God's protection, or not preparing for their sermons as faith in God's inspiration, or not practicing decent hygiene or medicinal habits as faith in God's healing. You see it the most in the medical sense, where taking medicine or getting a flu shot is offensive to Christians who have deluded themselves into thinking that God's protection means that you don't have to take care of yourself.
Abram kept a small military force with him because he's a rich guy wandering around foreign countries and knows he's going to get jumped a time or two. This did not violate God's promise because we are expected to handle ourselves as best we can. It paid off in this respect because now he's able to go on a rescue mission and get Lot back. If he had disbanded all his security because "Well, God said I'd be successful" he probably would have not lived this long anyway and definitely would have been able to save Lot. Reckless stupidity disguised as faith can get people killed.
[Genesis 15: 16-17]
Abram wins. 'Cause Abram's a bad enough dude to rescue Lot.
[Genesis 15:18-24]
There's a casual mention here of Melchizedek, a priest to whom Abram paid a tithe of all of his earnings. Typically when God makes a covenant with man, there's a priest who mediates. There wasn't a lot of information on the period from Adam to Abram, but you could see God Himself as the priest of that time; during most of the Old Testament the Levites take the job of priest; nowadays we're back to God Himself (Jesus specifically) as the high priest with all of us being lower-ranking priests, mediating our own relationship with God. Melchizedek was the priest over God's covenant with Abram, and we don't know a lot about him. Some think he was a king of a literal Salem (though there's little to no historical evidence of this,) and some think he was a manifestation of Jesus Himself (I lean towards that interpretation, but I'm not sure.)
Regardless, Abram gave him a tenth of the spoils from the battle. There are always those who say that tithing is unbiblical because we are not under the law anymore, but here we see Abram tithing before the Levitical law came into existence. While it may not necessarily be a hard and fast "exactly ten percent or I curse your income" law like it was during the old covenant, the practice of tithing and the principle behind it are still alive and well. The tithe exists as a sign that God is first. Nothing cuts to your mind and heart quicker than money, so making sure God gets the first portion of your income keeps you in a position of acknowledging God first, and remaining aware and thankful that it all comes from Him anyway.
Also, the king of Sodom tried to thank Abram by giving him all of the spoils from the war, but Abram refused and only took enough to feed his people. His logic for this was that he didn't want the king of Sodom to get the glory of making Abram rich. The text hasn't really gotten into it yet, but Sodom was about as about as wretched a hive of scum of villainy as you could get. To have his name and wealth forever associated with the king of such an evil place would have put a sour taste to his legacy forever. Sometimes your integrity is worth taking a convenience or financial handicap.
[Genesis 14: 1-12]
A big long list of countries goes to war with each other and ends up capturing Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot had unfortunately decided to camp out. Oddly enough this isn't even the real reason that Lot picked a stupid place.
[Genesis 14: 13-14]
One of Lot's buddies escapes and goes to tell Abram that Lot got himself kidnapped. Abram goes into hardcore favorite uncle mode and suits up a private militia that he apparently keeps on hand at all times and trained them himself from people born in his camp. I always forget exactly how rich Abram had to have been from the Bible description and from the fact that he has a private security force with him. We like our Bible characters poor so that people with lots of money will feel bad and give it to our cause, so you don't hear Abram's wealth mentioned much.
It's also notable that Abram kept some muscle with him even though God promised protection. More than once when expressing my desire to get a concealed handgun license I've been chided for a lack of faith because the person in question "trusted God to protect them." I find this argument absurd, because I know for a fact that anyone who tells you this probably wears a seat belt and looks both ways before crossing the street. There is a dangerous, unbiblical mindset (moreso in Charismatic circles) that faith can be measured by lack of precaution and reckless behavior. This is where you get people not protecting themselves as faith in God's protection, or not preparing for their sermons as faith in God's inspiration, or not practicing decent hygiene or medicinal habits as faith in God's healing. You see it the most in the medical sense, where taking medicine or getting a flu shot is offensive to Christians who have deluded themselves into thinking that God's protection means that you don't have to take care of yourself.
Abram kept a small military force with him because he's a rich guy wandering around foreign countries and knows he's going to get jumped a time or two. This did not violate God's promise because we are expected to handle ourselves as best we can. It paid off in this respect because now he's able to go on a rescue mission and get Lot back. If he had disbanded all his security because "Well, God said I'd be successful" he probably would have not lived this long anyway and definitely would have been able to save Lot. Reckless stupidity disguised as faith can get people killed.
[Genesis 15: 16-17]
Abram wins. 'Cause Abram's a bad enough dude to rescue Lot.
[Genesis 15:18-24]
There's a casual mention here of Melchizedek, a priest to whom Abram paid a tithe of all of his earnings. Typically when God makes a covenant with man, there's a priest who mediates. There wasn't a lot of information on the period from Adam to Abram, but you could see God Himself as the priest of that time; during most of the Old Testament the Levites take the job of priest; nowadays we're back to God Himself (Jesus specifically) as the high priest with all of us being lower-ranking priests, mediating our own relationship with God. Melchizedek was the priest over God's covenant with Abram, and we don't know a lot about him. Some think he was a king of a literal Salem (though there's little to no historical evidence of this,) and some think he was a manifestation of Jesus Himself (I lean towards that interpretation, but I'm not sure.)
Regardless, Abram gave him a tenth of the spoils from the battle. There are always those who say that tithing is unbiblical because we are not under the law anymore, but here we see Abram tithing before the Levitical law came into existence. While it may not necessarily be a hard and fast "exactly ten percent or I curse your income" law like it was during the old covenant, the practice of tithing and the principle behind it are still alive and well. The tithe exists as a sign that God is first. Nothing cuts to your mind and heart quicker than money, so making sure God gets the first portion of your income keeps you in a position of acknowledging God first, and remaining aware and thankful that it all comes from Him anyway.
Also, the king of Sodom tried to thank Abram by giving him all of the spoils from the war, but Abram refused and only took enough to feed his people. His logic for this was that he didn't want the king of Sodom to get the glory of making Abram rich. The text hasn't really gotten into it yet, but Sodom was about as about as wretched a hive of scum of villainy as you could get. To have his name and wealth forever associated with the king of such an evil place would have put a sour taste to his legacy forever. Sometimes your integrity is worth taking a convenience or financial handicap.
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