The Wonder of It All

I am reading through the Bible this year, and trying a new approach. Usually I have done the plan that has some Old Testament, a psalm or two, a proverb or two, and some New Testament every day. The end is rough (prophets and Revelation for a few weeks), but the rest of the time it's a good mix. This year I am doing it chronologically, so Old Testament only for months and months, and not even many psalms yet. A benefit I am seeing by hanging out in the Old Testament is that God is helping me to see how radical and strange and amazing Jesus was.

A few weeks ago, in Deuteronomy, I read these verses: 

 You shall have a place outside the camp, and you shall go out to it.  And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.  Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you. (Deut. 23:12-14)

Because God was so holy, the people were commanded to cover up all of their bathroom activity so that the Lord would not "see anything indecent among you and turn away from you." Rule after rule after rule in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about how to do everything, and the consequences if you do it wrong, much of it hinging on the holiness of God. People back then, I would assume, were probably a lot less squeamish than we are about personal hygiene and dirt and blood and all that "ick" of human life that was much more front and center thousands of years ago. Yet, down to the bathroom, there were directions about how to act to honor God.

No wonder the Jews accused Jesus of blasphemy. Imagine your whole life's context/story of God being how you should be oh-so-careful to try and be holy for the Lord, and then comes a man telling you He IS God. The God whose eyes were shielded from a latrine is now walking among and living with everyday people. Jesus fully participated in all human activity. He was a baby. A kid. I work with young children. They, also , are not very squeamish about basic bodily functions. He was a teenager. A man. He spoke with, laughed with, touched unclean people all the time.

Reading the story from the modern vantage point, we don't get it--at least I don't. I have intellectually seen the divide, but am just now getting a teeny glimpse of how revolutionary Jesus was. He was a game-changer. He broke all of those "don't touch, don't look, don't listen" rules. The Pharisees and other religious leaders weren't just mad because Jesus threatened their power. They couldn't even comprehend Who He was, or that God would act in such a way.

I will never be able to fully grasp how radical and amazing the coming of Jesus was. What I desire is to understand more in my heart why God acted in such a crazy, upside-down way. The God whose prophets told people to hide the latrine left His throne to be one of us. Never will any of us comprehend how Jesus, "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." (Philippians 2:6-7) bound up His deity into flesh.  The God of the universe, who spoke it into existence and sustains the earth and all that is in it voluntarily came to earth as a man. 

Why? The most simple and most profound answer lies in that God loves us. We hear that so much, but understand it so little. He wanted to be with us. He wanted us to be able to be with Him forever. He became Emmanuel, God with us, so that we could be with Him. Even the disciples who knew Him best didn't really get it, not until after the resurrection. My prayer is that I, and you, and, really, everyone everywhere, will get, really, really GET that Jesus walking among us and dying on the cross for us all boils down to God's love for us and desire to be with us.

May God Be Ever in Your Favor

"May the odds be ever in your favor" is the go-to phrase from the current movie "The Hunger Games", and the irony is, of course, that the odds most definitely are not in the favor of the tributes to whom the phrase is spoken.  In the read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan that I am following, the schedule hinges on reading some from the Old Testament, some from the New Testament, and some from Psalms and Proverbs every day.  Currently I am reading in Deuteronomy chapters 29-32, where Moses lays out for the people of Israel the blessings and the curses.  The gist is:  choose God, and you will be blessed.  Turn away and disobey and you will be cursed.  And not just theoretically cursed.  Punished.  Starved.  Killed.  I've been having a hard time reconciling the seemingly harsh God of the Old Testament with the forgiving God of the New Testament.

Last night I attended a Good Friday service at Lifepoint Church .The Lord used the message I heard to help me to understand more of Who He is and what He has been doing in history.  I will apologize in advance to Pastor Eric in case my interpretation of what he said is not exactly what he meant.  The message ought to be up soon on iTunes if you would like to listen to it (iTunes - Podcasts - The Lifepoint Connection by Eric Darst).   Following is what I gleaned out of the message:

In the Old Testament, God warns His people over and over and over again that they need to obey His commands and give Him the glory.  A main theme throughout the Bible is that God will not share His glory with another.  Isaiah 42:8 says:  "I am the Lord; that is my name;  my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols."  In God's dealings with His people, He tries to woo them to Him, they reject Him, and they are punished over and over for idolatry and disobedience.  The punishment to me has seemed harsh.  Yet, in the New Testament, if anything, the consequence for rejecting God's glory (trusting in idols, disbelief, pride. . . really, all sin) appears even more cruel, for Romans 6:23 states  "For the wages of sin is death. . . ".    Christians often avoid the use of the word Hell, but Biblically speaking,  it's pretty clear that to reject God is to choose Hell, which is an eternal separation from God and an absence of all that is good and true and right.


Hell is not a fun idea.  People often say "God wouldn't do that."  Yet, the very idea that WE are saying what God will and will not do to preserve the holiness of His Name only further belittles His glory.  My objection to the curses in Deuteronomy are MY sin of thinking that surely God's glory is not that big a deal.  So the Israelites disobey.  So they turn to idols after seeing God's glory more up-close and personal than any people in history.  So they grumble and disbelieve and sin.  Can't God just overlook it?  The Bible says clearly no, though God even in the Old Testament, even after His repeated warnings and urgings and punishments, shows His people mercy.  Psalm 78 is a wonderful picture of Israel's rebellious history and God's mercy to them:

 When he killed them, they sought him;
    they repented and sought God earnestly. 
 They remembered that God was their rock,
    the Most High God their redeemer. 
 But they flattered him with their mouths;
    they lied to him with their tongues. 
 Their heart was not steadfast toward him;
    they were not faithful to his covenant. 
 Yet he, being compassionate,
     atoned for their iniquity
    and did not destroy them;
he restrained his anger often
    and did not stir up all his wrath. 
 He remembered that they were but flesh,
     a wind that passes and comes not again.
(Psalm 78: 34-39)

 Reluctantly, I have to believe that Hell is justified because God says that it is.  However, gloriously, thankfully, amazingly, Hell is not the sole response that the Lord has to the trampling of His glory.  God's compassion and love for us is so great that He provided another way.  God really did love us so much that He sent His son Jesus, to pay the price for our sin and disregard for His glory.  God Himself bore the punishment for our sin so that we could be united with Him and in relationship with Him forever.

Why did I find this so momentous that I needed to blog about it?  Isn't this basic Christian doctrine?  What is so earth-shattering?

I needed to blog about this because, though I grew up going to church and have been a Christian for a long time now, I still do not grasp the depth of God's grace and mercy toward me.  The Old Testament people deserved death for their sin.  I deserve death for my sin.  Yet God made a way so that I don't have to die.  I don't have to be separated from God for all eternity even though I have belittled and trampled upon and not even fully grasped the extent of God's glory and holiness.  He made a way for me when I could not make it myself, and He continues to love and guide me even when my understanding is so woefully lacking.  His grace is SO much bigger than I imagine, and whenever I come even a teeny bit closer to seeing it, I want to share it with everyone!

Though my thinking that God should always be "in my favor" is false, the reality that He truly does have a heart to bestow favor upon me is true.  May you see more of God's glory this Easter!