Where is the fear of God?

I recently participated in a small group discussion on the place of prayer in the life of the individual and in corporate worship. The intent of the conversation was to discuss the purpose of prayer, the ways in which people pray, and any other aspect of prayer that surfaced out. As discussion carried on among the group of church-traditional folk, one of the women in the group made a comment that struck meaning in with me. She commented that she longed to hear a fear-filled prayer. While not in a critically negative or in a necessarily vex way, she commented that people no longer pray “in a way that sends a reverent chill down her spine.” She continued, asking where the fear of the LORD has gone. It appears that, in many contexts, the seeker-friendly movement of the church has led corporate worship to be done in a way that tends to fear the worshipper more than it tends to expressively fear God. It appears that the Teacher of Ecclesiastes may have something to say to our overly seeker-friendly mindsets as he speaks of having a certain reverent attitude before God.

In chapter five of Ecclesiastes, the author writes that a worshipper ought to guard one’s steps when entering the house of God. His writing follows that listening in silence and being slow to speak in the presence of God is better than offering sacrifice and being rash with words before God—for many words may lead to the sin of unfulfilled vows and empty promises to God; and this is something that God does not find pleasure in. It is better, then, for the worshipper not to carry on before the LORD as if living out an unreliable dream of vanity; rather, the worshipper is heeded to simply “fear God” (5:7).

The author’s attitude is that of reverence before the ineffable. When he enters into worship, he is not comfortable before the Almighty. He does not enter into worship without first thinking about the sacredness of simply being able to go before the heavenly One who ought to be completely unapproachable by humans, who are on earth, in the first place. This One whom will be worshipped is the only truly holy being. God is regarded by the Teacher as worthy of the kind of worship that acknowledges his oneness and exclusive existence—God is unlike any other. God, by God’s nature, ought to be enough to place awe, wonder, and reverential fear into the bones of the worshipper. Yet, it appears that far too often the worshipper is quick to speak and hesitant to prepare one’s heart for the worship of God.

With the revelation of God in Christ, Christians understand God to be approachable and relational. Certainly God making his dwelling among us in a way that is palpable to us is something to find comfort in; however, there is still something about the eminence and transcendence of God that ought to make us a bit uncomfortable. The worshipper ought to revere God for the very reason that one finds comfort in God. There should be something out of the ordinary about God’s making himself known in Christ that sends a chill down the spine of the reverent worshipper.

The seeker-friendly movement, while it has a positive aspect to it, tends to neglect the fear of God and replaces it with the fear of making a seeking worshipper uncomfortable. I must agree with my friend, however, that such an extreme shift in paradigm misses out on genuine worship that responds to the experience and calling of God in such a way that leaves the worshipper speechless, unable to utter a word before the indescribable. While we understand that Christ has become a friend to his disciples, this does not mean that Christ is to be treated simply as we would treat any other friend. We ought to be discomforted when God chooses to make his dwelling among us. The holy presence of God ought to find the worshipper uncomfortably sinful before it finds that one is comforted because of the undeserved mercy and grace of this God. Perhaps, if the church of this generation became more aware of the otherness of God, my friend would find that prayer that she so desires—one that speaks volumes without saying much at all; still, it is the choiceness of those few words that expresses the fear of God in the one who prays. This is the kind of prayer, I might say, that simply acknowledges God in a way that gives him praise where praise is due and worships him before ever acknowledging wants or needs of one’s own. I suppose that this is the kind of prayer that might send “a reverent chill down her spine.”

Um…Why is there bloody foreskin on me? A look at the mystery of Exodus 4:24-26

Hello friends, today we will be looking at a mystery that still is debated to this very day.  Turn to Exodus Chapter 4 verses 24-26.

“At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met {Moses} and was about to kill him. ²⁵ But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched {Moses'} feet with it. "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. ²⁶ So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)”

            This is strange because just moments before this scene, the LORD told Moses that he must go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.  If God called Moses to carry out this deed then why does he want to kill him?  Was God going to kill Moses or his son?  Was Zipporah an obedient or angry wife?  With different debates and scholarly articles written about this passage, I think we can view this passage in two ways and how it reflect on our lives as persons in ministry.

            First, we must look at Moses’ life socially.  In the beginning of Exodus, we get a look at the Israelites bound in slavery.  A wealthy nation now made poor.  Moses, born an Israelite, was sent down the river in a basket and picked-up by an Egyptian princess.  From this point until the moment when he killed a slave master, Moses is living in the Pharaoh’s palace.  After he killed the slave master he runs to Midian.  While there, he marries into the family of a Midianite priest.  Unlike today, priests were a high social position in biblical times.  Although he knows that he was an Israelite, he was raised Egyptian with the attitudes and privileges of his class and in Midian he is assimilated with the status of son-in-law of the priest.[1]

            Secondly, we must look at the spiritual side of things.  In Egypt, he was introduced to Egyptian gods until he was an adult and introduced to Midianites gods until he was old.  Fred Blumenthal says, “The culture and polytheistic religion(s) became influential to him until the age of 80.[2]”  Even if Moses was not actually 80 when he left Midian, he had years of being influenced by different gods.

            Up to this point we have looked at Moses’ life from a spiritual/social perspective.  Then comes the moment when he meets the Israelite’s God, “I AM.”  Blumenthal brings up an interesting point that Moses, who has been conditioned (with other gods), and yet to see, hear and accept the revelation at the burning bush was an accomplishment probably unequaled in the history of mankind.[3]”  You see, back then the idea of one universal God was foreign and here Moses, is encountering a God who calls himself, “I AM,” who is the one and only God of the world.  Reis mentions that at this moment, Moses can no longer be who he thinks he is or who he wishes he were; he has to recognize and become who he truly is, an Israelite.[4]  After a lengthy conversation, he accepts the call, gathers his family, and heads back to Egypt.

            After looking at some back story, we now get to our key verse.  Moses is walking towards Egypt with a staff, which he received during his conversation with God, in one hand and on the other hand he has his family.  The staff represents his calling to free the Israelites and, unknown to him, to be one of the greatest Old Testament prophets.  His family represents his high social status and his other gods he worships.  Now Moses approaches the lodging place, where God is going to kill him.  I agree with Shankman when he says,

“Moses has clung to his old self in the face of the Lord’s summons; such stubbornness can bring death.  On the other hand, to answer the call, Moses must die to his old self; only death will prepare him spiritually for his God-sanctioned mission.[5]”

            Moses has a choice to make, he can give up his old-self and serve God, or he can continue to live in his former life and have his ministry be killed by God. 

            Now how does all this tie in to the circumcision by Zipporah?  The act of circumcision is an act of being tied into a covenant with God.  From this perspective, Moses (or his son) needs to be circumcised in order to proceed with his ministry.  Also the Israelites would probably not follow a man, who talked to their God, who is uncircumcised.  The best way to make sense of this in a modern setting would be if a porn star came up to someone addicted to porn and told them that porn is bad and they should not be watching it, even though this porn star continues to practice his/her profession.  In order, to continue with this ministry Moses, must embrace his original identity and make a covenant with God to be an effective minister.  But it was not Moses who did the circumcising, but his wife Zipporah.  Going down the path we are going, Zipporah is considered a hero.  I have heard the saying that behind a good man is a good woman.  That woman is Zipporah.  Moses is struggling with the two choices he needs to make and he cannot decide on which one to chose.  Zipporah, seeing her husband’s struggle, did the circumcision for her husband as an act of obedience.  She knew what was going to be good for her husband, to be identified with his own people, and to be a servant of the one and only God.

            Some of us are at a lodging place in our lives, and we need to make a choice.  Some of us may be called to serve the true God, but we also are serving other gods (money, social status, etc.)  If you are at that place, I encourage you to talk to someone.  Talk to a Zipporah in your life, weather it is your parents, church friend, pastor, wife, or others.  Looking at the rest of Moses story in the Bible, it is safe to say that he made the right choice.  If Moses was here today, he would tell us to chose, “I AM.”

---

[1] Reis, Pamela Tamarkin. 1991. "The bridegroom of blood : a new reading." Judaism 40, no. 3: 325.

[2] Blumenthal, Fred. 2007. "The circumcision performed by Zipporah." Jewish Bible Quarterly 35, no. 4: 256.

[3] Ibid, 256.

[4] Reis, Pamela Tamarkin. 1991. "The bridegroom of blood : a new reading." Judaism 40, no. 3: 325.

[5] Shankman, Ray. 1991. "The cut that unites : word as covenant in Exodus 4:24-26." Cross Currents 41, no. 2: 172.

Is the God of Peace a God of War?: Reconciling the Older and Newer Testaments

I recently wrote an exegetical paper on the Ten Teachings, which can be found in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. For those unsure, an exegesis is a fancy way of saying I wrote an extensive interpretation paper of a passage of Scripture. What I found was that the 6th teaching, which is commonly translated "do not murder" or "do not kill" (the former commonly accepted as being the more accurate translation), is an all-encompassing kind of act against another human being. Under this category, exists the act of intentional killing out of hatred or force and the act of unintentional killing of another human being. It is, yet, that God allows and seemingly ordains conquest of war and siege warfare, which entails an array of violent and murderous acts against other people groups. We often gloss over passages that say that Israel "utterly destroyed" another nation. What we do not realize is that this language implies barbaric killing of both, soldiers and innocent civilians (men, women, and children alike), the destruction, including flooding and burning, of crops and livestock, and enslaving the enemy. It often was even the cause for famines that led people to eating bird droppings and their own children in order to survive (2 Kings 6; Lamentations 2). Now, on this occasion, it is quite difficult for me to reconcile not just the Hebrew Scriptures with the Newer Testament, but also the Hebrew Scriptures with themselves. God lays out one rule and seems to have broken it all at the same time. What are we to make of this? I will submit a suggestion.

In order to reconcile these seemingly contradictory passages, I will make three important points to consider: firstly, we must agree that our human minds are finite, and what might not seem right to us is seen very differently by an infinite being, who has perfect judgment and encompasses everything that is. This is to say that what God does and allows may very well be beyond our comprehension--God is just to do whatever he sees as right (this may seem like a generic cop-out, but it remains and must remain regardless. Our humble state is that which recognizes One infinitely greater than ourselves); Secondly, while God allows and seemingly ordains violence, he never desires it; and thirdly, God has chosen to reveal himself throughout time in a progressive manner ultimately leading up to his manifestation in Christ.

The first point stands alone. We recognize that if we can understand everything about God, including what he does, says, and allows, then we cannot rightfully call him God because he would then be no greater than us whom he created. The second point is that which suggests God never wanted and still does not want violence against his creation to happen. He always desires peace. When we consider the story of Noah's ark, the first thing that we recognize is that God has done something horrible. He has destroyed nearly all of creation. We ought to recognize, however, that this story stands out in the time it was written amongst other religious stories like it. God seems to be grieved by humanity. Why is he grieved? Because "every inclination of humanity's heart was all evil all of the time..." and there were all kinds of violence in the land. God could not take it when humanity, whom he created in his very image to be like him, became hateful and anti-creation. And when he restores the created order through Noah, he makes sure that Noah knows how valuable and even sacred human life really is (Gen 9:6). And not only that, but God also puts a bow in the sky. We understand this to be a rainbow, which it is. But what the rainbow is symbolic of is peace; it is to say that God himself is hanging up his weapon (a bow) because he does not want to fight with his creation anymore. He set the example for creation by hanging up his own weapon and hoping that they would also hang up theirs and stop fighting with him and all that he created. The world that God desires according to this passage is one of an all-encompassing peace. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom and the Greek word is eirene (pronounced ay-ray-nay), which constitutes wholeness or completeness that brings order in the midst of chaos and an inner state of tranquility that pervades every area of our lives. This is how God desired for the world to be: whole, complete, and in a state of perfect peace.

Another passage where we can see this theme is in Zechariah 9. In verse 6, God speaks of taking away and destroying the chariots and horses and the bows that were used in battles and wars--all because he desires for peace to be proclaimed to all the nations. While God desires peace, he is working with a people who do not. And this is what leads me to the final point. What God does has everything to do with what humans desire and what humans do. This is not to say that God is controlled by our actions; but it is to say that he takes us seriously enough to allow us to be free to do as we so desire. And accordingly, God chooses to participate in the ongoing drama of life. The way, then, that God chooses to reveal himself to humanity, given these conditions, is according to humanity's desire to know God. It is that God revealed the fullness of who he is in relationship to humanity in a progressive way throughout time. While he told humanity that war and violence is unacceptable, he had to work with a people who accepted it not only as a part of life, but as a way of life. God eventually not only desires this to be restored but he also acts in a way that causes humans to actually make love and peace a way of life rather than war and violence.

So, as I mentioned above, God gave the Israelites a teaching that they obviously did not live by--do not murder. We understand that God gave this law because he desired them to be a peaceful people made in his image. However, God also promised Abraham that he would have many descendants and that they would have a particular land. Well, the only way that anybody in the ancient Near East understood the blessing of land was that you gain land by conquering it. This teaching and this promise are opposing each other in the minds of the ancient culture. All of the ancient Near East cultures believed that divine conquest was the way to gain land. It was understood that if a nation went to battle and won, then it was because the gods wanted them to have the land. The idea of conquest was nearly always linked to not only a battle between people, but also a battle between the gods of the people. Furthermore, when the Israelites heard that God had promised them land, they thought that it was their responsibility to go to war in the name of their God. It was the only way that they knew. They even assumed that it was the only way to act faithfully upon the promise that God gave them. God could have given them the land in another way, but the Israelites would not take the land in another way.

Remember that the entire Bible is the story of God restoring a fallen humanity. And part of being a fallen humanity is that we don't always get it. The Israelites didn’t quite get this concept of all-encompassing peace. It was so foreign to them and their culture. Perhaps they understood that the peace of God was an inner state of the heart; and certainly, they understood that times of peace in the land were better times than those of war in the land. But they also were influenced by the cultures around them that said, “the gods will fight our battles for us if we have made them happy to do so.” Israel likely believed that if they hadn’t gone to battle, then their God would never be known amongst the nations of the world. When Israel won a battle, their enemies might have believed that Israel’s God won that battle for them. Somehow, God took something that he didn’t approve of and made something good out of it. The people defeated in the battle didn’t say, “why would Israel’s God do this to us?” Rather, they would have asked, “if Israel’s God is powerful enough, then why wouldn’t he have done this to us?”

Again, God was working within a very fallen culture created by humanity. He chose to work within the realm of human fallen-ness as a testimony to the freedom he has given us to co-rule over creation. He constantly reminded them that he desired peace and a non-violent created order even if they did not completely understand this concept. God worked with the Israelites little by little to bring them to the place of knowing what he desired for human life to be called sacred and not expendable; ultimately God chose to express this in a very tangible way—the person of Christ. As Christians, we understand Jesus to be the bodily manifestation of all that is God. Jesus, in many ways, is the remedy for a fallen humanity. We must understand that when it comes to difficulties reconciling war and peace in the Bible, Christ was God’s ultimate means of expressing his love for all of humanity, paving a way that brought an all-encompassing peace to those who truly follow him and his ways. When we act violently, we are acting anti-kingdom of God as revealed by Christ. When we go to war, we are failing to follow the Prince of Peace who was God’s ultimate reminder of the reality he so desired. I am not hoping to offend anybody by this post; I am hoping, however, to stir the minds and hearts of those who truly desire to heed the words and the way of Christ. Please consider this, rebuttal my thoughts, and ask the tough questions. This is a safe place to dialogue about these kinds of things.

Did Moses really die?

1 After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' aide: 2 "Moses my servant is dead. (Joshua 1:1-2a NIV)

Reading the above verse, the issue of Moses' death has never been brought up because God himself told Joshua he is dead. However, I think that Moses did not "die."

5 And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. 6 He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. (Deuteronomy 34:5-6 NIV)

Here we have another account of Moses' death where God buried him. However, no one knows where he is buried at (except God). It's kind of like the saying, "if a tree falls and no one is around, did it make a sound?" Now before I get accused of calling God a deceiver or liar, let me continue my case and throw some of my questions regarding my case.

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. (2 Kings 2:11 NIV)

Why bring Elijah into this mess? Well he along with Enoch, were the only people in the old testament that did not die. Elijah was the one who was walking with Elisha and then got taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. However, the next point I'm about to make will show the importance of Elijah in regards to Moses death.

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. (Mark 9:2-4 NIV)

So here we have the account of Jesus' transfiguration. Jesus is talking to Elijah and Moses. Here is where I have some questions concerning my thought process

Questions:

From a Christian viewpoint, death with Christ means eternal Life where Death without Christ means death. Since Moses Did not know Jesus that would mean he would have died. Plus, I do not recall reading about Moses atoning for his sins which lead to him not entering the promise land. So if he didn't atone for his sins and died, how did he get to talk to jesus with elijah?

Second, what is the Hebrew's viewpoint of Moses' death?

I know there are some holes in my presentation but I did that on purpose to have discussion. The game of Backgammon is a game of going back and forth trying to get to the other side of the board. Thus is theology, People talking back and forth trying to figure things out regarding God and religion. The only difference is that their is a winner in backgammon but theology is always a ongoing game until death.