Tag: disobedience

Divine Goodness, Despite Human Ingratitude (Psalm 78:23-29)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Quail in the Wilderness, by Caspar Luyken, 1698

Yet he commanded the skies above
    and opened the doors of heaven;
he rained down on them manna to eat
    and gave them the grain of heaven.
Mortals ate of the bread of angels;
    he sent them food in abundance.
He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens,
    and by his power he led out the south wind;
he rained flesh upon them like dust,
    winged birds like the sand of the seas;
he let them fall within their camp,
    all around their dwellings.
And they ate and were well filled,
    for he gave them what they craved. (New Revised Standard Version)

Today’s psalm is the second longest in the psalter (72 verses, with Psalm 119 the longest at a hefty 176 verses). Along with Psalms 105-106, Psalm 78 remembers and rehearses the history of Israel. This is a psalm which is meant for teaching and passing on important lessons.

The upshot of this psalm’s historical recollection is that the people’s ancestors were faithless; therefore, those reading the psalm now should live differently in a positive life of goodness, having observed how the past actors serve as a negative example of ingrates.

The psalmist, Asaph, viewed past events as highly informative for present circumstances. His purpose for crafting the psalm was explicit. He wanted the people:

 to put their hope in God—
        never forgetting God’s deeds,
        but keeping God’s commandments—
    and so that they won’t become like their ancestors:
    a rebellious, stubborn generation,
        a generation whose heart wasn’t set firm
        and whose spirit wasn’t faithful to God. (Psalm 78:7-8, CEB)

The verses for today’s lectionary reading have a unique place within the psalmist’s rehearsal of the past. They connect to the previous section (verses 9-22) which recounts the Lord’s angry response concerning Israel’s unbelief and rebellion.

In many ways, Psalm 78 has a consistent theme of human stubbornness, lack of faith, and wanting to do their own thing apart from God. Bucking God’s covenant code and moral law was ever-present in Israel’s history. And yet…

The Lord remained the same: Faithful and true. Furthermore, God stubbornly showed steadfast divine love and covenant loyalty to the people, despite their herky-jerky commitment and fickle faith.

Manna from heaven

Although the theme of human failure runs throughout the psalm, the dominant idea points to God’s gracious mercy, eternal faithfulness, and steadfast love. Most of all, the psalmist wanted his readers to remember the goodness and grace of God.

The people’s unbelief in no way stymied the promises of God. That’s because salvation and deliverance, faith and hope, do not originate and are not sustained by humans, but by the Lord God almighty who created heaven and earth.

Even though the people were faithless, and thus, had no trust in God’s power; nevertheless, the Lord opened the doors of heaven in order to meet the needs of people who did not deserve divine help.

The verses for today remember the story of God’s provision of manna and quail in the desert (Exodus 16). The Lord was gracious, merciful, and kind to the Israelites, despite their incessant grumbling. God responded to them because of their sheer need, and not because of any righteousness coming from them.

God not only provided food, but gave the manna in abundance, and the quail in superabundance. The contrast could not be any more glaring: Israel murmured, grumbled, complained, and demonstrated a lack of faith; God granted the Israelites a ridiculous amount of food, and evidenced steadfast faithfulness to the covenant.

The supreme goodness of God brings out, in stark relief, the incredible foolishness of Israel’s attitude. In the Exodus account, while the meat was still in their mouths, God’s anger flared because of the people’s recalcitrance.

On the surface, the divine response of judgment may appear out of sorts to the divine grace shown to Israel. Yet, the Lord cares about the holistic needs of people, and not only in giving sustenance.

God wants faithful and obedient people. The Lord desires goodness, righteousness, and justice to be the hallmark of the community.

To have your belly full and your spirit empty is an affront to God – because the Lord is good, right, and just, and does not tolerate impertinence, impudence, and impetuousness. Vice and ingratitude only makes a person an imbecile who is worthless to their fellow humanity.

Divine punishment – anywhere you find it in Holy Scripture – is meant to draw people back into relationship with God. Another way of phrasing this, is that God delivers people and grants them freedom, so that they will have no obstacles toward living a good, right, and just life.

No matter the response of God – whether it is by miraculous provision or by divine punishment – it’s always a response of grace; the Lord consistently acts from a place of compassion and commitment to doing what is best for the community.

Whereas the Israelites repeatedly cycled themselves through spirals of faith and unbelief, gratitude and grumbling, obedience and disobedience; God, however, constantly demonstrated the presence of grace and mercy, righteousness and justice, holiness and love.

The only reason the Israelites (and the entire human race, for that matter) are not wiped out is because God forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. What’s more, the Lord didn’t even let them destroy themselves, unwittingly by their own unawareness and foolishness. (Psalm 78:36-39)

I am profoundly glad that God is the bigger person in the relationship with humanity. The Lord is continually mindful of who we are, as well as God’s own divine essence and power.

Yet he, being compassionate,
    forgave their iniquity
    and did not destroy them;
often he restrained his anger
    and did not stir up all his wrath.
He remembered that they were but flesh,
    a wind that passes and does not come again. (Psalm 78:38-39, NRSV)

As people created in the image and likeness of God, we find our highest joy and greatest fulfillment in receiving the good things from God with gratitude; and of giving goodness to others in a spirit of love – no matter what.

Gracious and almighty God: Open wide the eyes of my soul that I may see the good in all things. Grant me today a new vision of your truth. Inspire me with the spirit of joy and gladness. Make me a cup of strength to suffering souls. Amen.

Avoid the Downward Spiral (Judges 6:1-10)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. 

They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.

When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.” (New International Version)

Frankly, the biblical Book of Judges is rather depressing. Its descriptive arc is a sad downward spiral of forgetfulness and disobedience – with the people crying out for deliverance and being saved – and then another slide, even lower than before, into memory issues, and negligence of the law.

Newer and greater levels of depravity occur, the further one reads into the Book of Judges. Indeed, early in the book we are given the reason for such an immoral and idolatrous slide:

The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel…

After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 

In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress. (Judges 2:7, 10-15, NIV)

In today’s Old Testament lesson, yet another round of disobedience brought yet another threat, in the form of the Midianites and Amalekites. Midian’s annual raids of Israelite land destroyed crops and led to the livestock eventually starving. The people were left just trying to eek-out a living and survive.

The Midianites were a nomadic people, subsisting mostly through trade. They were not farmers, and really did not need to raid Israel. It seems they came and did their damage just to keep Israel weak and under their thumb, unable to compete in the caravan markets that Midian depended upon.

The story of crop destruction, and Midianites as thick as locusts, communicates divine judgment and connects with Joshua’s warning to remember God and be faithful to the covenant law:

“If you violate the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you.” (Joshua 23:16, NIV)

The Israelites cried out in their distress to God for deliverance. They were answered by an unknown prophet who clearly connected the people’s disloyalty to their adverse situation. Although Canaanite gods may have been tolerant of worshiping other deities, the Lord, Israel’s God, is certainly not.

In the case of the ancient Israelites, the people’s disobedience caused their suffering. The prophet did not promise any sort of deliverance. And the distressed people were left wondering if they had been abandoned by God.

This entire situation is a set up for the character of Gideon, who will come on the scene as one of the dominant deliverers in the Book of Judges. And Gideon’s story further illustrates the ever-increasing relationship between Israel, Canaan, and immoral behavior.

By the time we get to the end of the book, there is a sort of morbid and depressing anarchy that has settled amongst the people, ending in the statement:

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. (Judges 21:26, NIV)

That was not a statement of freedom, but of depravity. It was almost like living in a dystopian society in which nobody was really safe.

Yet God always has had a remnant of people who are faithful and remember the great things which the Lord has done.

So, if we want to avoid the downward spiral in the Book of Judges, the believer is encouraged to keep memory of God’s works, words, and ways in this world; and to remain faithful in obeying God’s law and embracing God’s love.

We need the law of love, and the love of law, in order to rightly relate to our neighbor and be concerned for the common justice of all persons – instead of living in a bubble of supposed safety, doing only what seems right to me.

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought us in safety to this new day: Preserve us with your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Time of Woe (Isaiah 5:15-24)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
The Prophet Isaiah, by Raphael, 1512

So people will be brought low
    and everyone humbled,
    the eyes of the arrogant humbled.
But the Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice,
    and the holy God will be proved holy by his righteous acts.
Then sheep will graze as in their own pasture;
    lambs will feed among the ruins of the rich.

Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit,
    and wickedness as with cart ropes,
to those who say, “Let God hurry;
    let him hasten his work
    so we may see it.
The plan of the Holy One of Israel—
    let it approach, let it come into view,
    so we may know it.”

Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
    and clever in their own sight.

Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine
    and champions at mixing drinks,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
    but deny justice to the innocent.
Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw
    and as dry grass sinks down in the flames,
so their roots will decay
    and their flowers blow away like dust;
for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty
    and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel. (New International Version)

I’m willing to bet that you, like me, have had to contend with some rather annoying and obnoxious people from time to time in your life.

It’s the person whose head is so big, they can barely walk in and out of a room. And when they talk, it’s usually about themselves, the great things they’ve done, and what they think – not framed as opinions but as the truth.

Since this sort of person rarely listens to anyone, they have no clue about the real needs of people in front of them. Their self-inflated importance is to the degree that they don’t ask and are not curious; yet they demand of others. They see no problem with double-standards. It’s okay for them to bribe, even steal from another. But if you cross the self-important person, look out, because they’ll hunt you down like an animal.

Yes, such people exist. And there are typically some deep psychological reasons why they are so arrogant and difficult to be around. Yet the best thing to know about them is that the true Sovereign of the universe, God, is the rightful judge who will handle them.

If you see a path of destruction on the ground, you know a tornado has touched down and done its damage. And if you observe a bunch of people devastated and demoralized, you know that the haughty and self-important person has been through and laid waste to people’s lives.

The Lord almighty is not okay with such people moving about and hurting others with impunity; the wicked will have to contend with the One who knows what’s going on.

God looks and sees – and pronounces appropriate woes (curses) upon those who feign righteousness and holiness, yet in reality do anything but.

You can easily tell what God abhors by what sorts of behavior receives a disapproving woe upon it. God condemns self-indulgence and self-absorption. This shows itself in how one drinks and does business. The sheer accumulation of land, resources, and strong drink – without any sort of regard to one’s neighbor – is a foolish use of wealth.

The self-absorbed and self-important person becomes desensitized to the needs of others. They also become insensitive to God’s concerns and workings in the world. To disregard the poor and needy is to disregard God. Such injustice, resulting from only caring about oneself, is why the Lord levels divine woes upon them.

Actions and inactions both have consequences. Acting selfishly through wanton accumulation is an equal inaction against the community. As a result of so much economic disparity and carelessness in society, God displaces and deports the ones who arrogantly and smugly believed they are secure.

There is accountability in this world, even though it may not sometimes seem like it. There are ethical requirements and moral imperatives. The social laws contained in the covenant code between God and Israel were expected to be honored. So, when they were continually and habitually ignored, the Lord held the people accountable.

The selfishly proud and arrogant, who acquire all they can and become masters of small worlds, will eventually face ruin by means of divine judgment. It’s as if persons had so loaded their backpacks with sin, that it became heavy to the point of self-crushing.

Divine intervention is either a very good thing, or a very bad thing, depending upon who you are. People are expected to be self-aware enough to know the difference between right and wrong, bad and good, just and unjust. To not know this is to be self-addicted and unable to make proper discernments and decisions.

If you are reading or listening to this, you are likely a person who is concerned enough to care for others and is not lost in yourself. Yet, you likely have to contend with a few persons who are only in this life for themselves. So, watch out and do your best to avoid people who do the following:

  • Manipulate through deceptive language. There are some people in positions of authority or power who intentionally obscure, cover up, and confuse things. If you never know how things stand and are doing, then beware.
  • Independent without accountability. There is no interdependent relationships, and only obedience when it suits them. The constant caginess, and lack of vulnerability, is a warning. If you feel like you’re being micro-managed without much ability to ask specific questions and get straight answers, then look out.
  • Distort how things really are. I’m talking about gaslighting. Gaslighting is the attempt by another to accept the gaslighter’s view of reality as your own. And in the gaslighter’s quest, it seems to you as if there is continually chaos and you are off kilter. If you question it to them, then you will most likely be accused of having a problem. It’s not you. So, skedaddle the first chance you get.

The bottom line of it all is that God is rejected and there are people reneging on their commitments to the Lord. You need not be such a person, and you don’t need to live in such a way that another is in complete control of your life – other than God.

Take note of what the Lord dislikes and despises, and keep away from persons who set up themselves as being akin to God.

Grant us, Lord God, a vision of your world as your love would have it:
a world where the weak are protected, and none go hungry or poor;
a world where the riches of creation are shared, and everyone can enjoy them;
a world where different races and cultures live in harmony and mutual respect;
a world where peace is built with justice, and justice is guided by love.
Give us the inspiration and courage to build it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Prayer of Confession (Ezra 9:5-15)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
Ezra In Prayer, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Then, at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement, with my tunic and cloak torn, and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my Godand prayed:

“I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today.

“But now, for a brief moment, the Lord our God has been gracious in leaving us a remnant and giving us a firm place in his sanctuary, and so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage. Though we are slaves, our God has not forsaken us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem.

“But now, our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken the commands you gave through your servants the prophets when you said: ‘The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of its peoples. By their detestable practices they have filled it with their impurity from one end to the other. Therefore, do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them at any time, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it to your children as an everlasting inheritance.’

“What has happened to us is a result of our evil deeds and our great guilt, and yet, our God, you have punished us less than our sins deserved and have given us a remnant like this. Shall we then break your commands again and intermarry with the peoples who commit such detestable practices? Would you not be angry enough with us to destroy us, leaving us no remnant or survivor? Lord, the God of Israel, you are righteous! We are left this day as a remnant. Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence.” (New International Version)

God had made a covenant with the Israelites. The Lord graciously gave them laws and stipulations to live by before entering the Promised Land.

Yet, much of Jewish history during the times of the kings was characterized by a breakdown in morality. Cheating on workers and preying upon the weak became commonplace. The poor were fleeced for what little they had, and reduced to servitude.

Failing to obey God completely, the people intermarried with the surrounding nations. The worship of Yahweh was, at times, in severe neglect, due to worshiping the gods of other places. As a result, divine judgment brought a Babylonian captivity and an exile of the people to a foreign land.

But God, who is rich in mercy, brought many of the people back to Palestine and Jerusalem. The Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, who had a different philosophy about how to handle the nations within their empire. And they were open to Jerusalem being rebuilt and the temple restored.

Ezra was a scribe (a copier of Scripture) and one of the returning exiles. Ezra left Babylon in 458 B.C.E. with a considerable group of people. Because of Ezra’s position as a Jewish scribe, and as a descendant of Levi, the Persian king authorized him to reinforce the Torah (the Law) by reading it and setting up the necessary administrative systems to ensure it would be followed.

Under Persian rule, each subject people was allowed to live by its ancestral laws, which were enforced by the imperial government. Violations of the laws of the group to which one belonged constituted an offense against the state precisely because they led to instability.

Soon after Ezra arrived in Jerusalem, he learned of the spiritual state of the Jews there. They had intermarried freely with the non-Jewish women of the land, and had ceased to keep the Jewish holidays and other commandments.

This situation devastated Ezra. He tore his clothes and sat in mourning the entire day until evening. After the evening sacrifice was brought, he got up and began praying loudly to God, weeping for forgiveness for the sins of his people.

Ezra read the Torah publicly to the entire people. Indeed, this was a covenant‑renewal ceremony in the strict sense. To make the Torah understandable to them, he had it explained, because Hebrew was no longer in most people’s vernacular. (Nehemiah 8:1-18)

In today’s Old Testament lesson, we have Ezra’s prayer, his great confession of sin, and concern that the people not get into the same situation which brought God’s judgment and exile upon them to begin with.

It is a prayer laced with love for the covenant code, the Jewish people, and most of all, for God. A very complicated situation prompted Ezra’s prayer, and would take much courage and wisdom to confront and deal with.

Whenever things are awry, circumstances are less than desirable, and situations seem overwhelming, the place to begin is to pray. Admittedly, prayer is not everything; but it is certainly something – and something powerful – for which we have both the duty and the delight to engage in.

And in praying, there is perhaps no better way to begin, than with a heartfelt prayer of confession:

Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment.

Set us free from a past we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.