Yearly Archives: 2014

When the Bible is NSFW (Genesis 38)

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There are some stories that fall into the category of “Not Safe for Work.”  On the internet, people often use the acronym “NSFW” to describe websites or articles that might offend one’s employers.  It’s not always what you think.  Some sites earn the label just by containing a PG-13 level of harsh language, or—in the case of news reports—by describing events of a particularly horrific nature.

It may surprise us that not only is the Bible “not safe for work,” but neither is Jesus’ family tree.  There are a number of stories and unsavory characters embedded in Jesus’ genealogy, and much of our attention will be given to some of their stories.  Today—as with last Sunday’s sermon—we will be giving attention to the story of Tamar, from Matthew 1:3, where Matthew includes “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar.”

The book of Genesis details the story of God establishing not only the natural world, but also a people for himself.  Through a man named Abraham, God established a plan for his people—a promise of land, descendants, and blessings forevermore.  This meant that for God to keep his promises, the genetic line would have to be maintained from Abraham onward—which is actually what we see happening in Jesus’ genealogy.  So the story of Tamar is about God’s determined plan to make that happen by any means necessary.

Now mind you, the story of Genesis 38 takes place over the span of about 20 years, so if some of these events seem sudden it’s because the narration has been compressed for simplicity:

It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. 2 There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went in to her, 3 and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Er.4 She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. 5 Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah. Judah was in Chezib when she bore him.

So far, we have Judah and his three sons: Er, Onan and Shelah.

6 And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. 8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. 10 And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also. 11 Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, “Remain a widow in your father’s house, till Shelah my son grows up”—for he feared that he would die, like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father’s house.

Tamar got married to Er, but for reasons left unstated he displeased the Lord and was put to death.  Now, in that era the brother-in-law would be expected to step up and marry the widow.  Onan did just that.  But as we see from the text—and yes, this is the “NSFW” part, amiright?—Onan wanted to enjoy the benefits of marriage without the responsibility of being a Dad.  So God took him out as well.  So if Tamar was to have a child—and, in so doing, continuing Abraham’s genetic line, which was part of God’s master plan—it would have to be through Shelah.  But Judah was a little nervous.  Tamar didn’t have the best track record when it came to husbands.   So he insisted she wait until “Shelah…grows up.”

12 In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua’s daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. 13 And when Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep,” 14 she took off her widow’s garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage.    15 When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. 16 He turned to her at the roadside and said, “Come, let me come in to you,” for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, “What will you give me, that you may come in to me?” 17 He answered, “I will send you a young goat from the flock.” And she said, “If you give me a pledge, until you send it—” 18 He said, “What pledge shall I give you?” She replied, “Your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand.” So he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him. 19 Then she arose and went away, and taking off her veil she put on the garments of her widowhood.

Notice verse 14 specifies that Shelah was now grown up.  But Judah failed to keep his word.  Tamar was still single.  How would Abraham’s genetic line be preserved?  How would God maintain his promises?

Tamar exacted a plan by which she would conceive by Judah—that’s right, her father-in-law (did we mention this story isn’t quite “safe for work?”).  Doing so was her last recourse to ensure that Abraham’s line would continue through her—especially now that Judah’s wife was dead.  In his commentary on Genesis, Allen Ross notes:

“The text of Scripture does not cast any moral judgment on Tamar…It is not appropriate to judge her by Christian ethics, for in her culture at that time, her actions, though very dangerous for her, were within the law.  She had the right to have a child by the nearest of kin to her deceased husband.  She played on the vice of Judah to bear this child, and her deceptions worked.”  (Allen Ross, Creation and Blessing, p. 616-17)

In other words, we may find this a bit…icky…but Tamar basically did what she had to do.

 

20 When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the woman’s hand, he did not find her. 21 And he asked the men of the place, “Where is the cult prostitute who was at Enaim at the roadside?” And they said, “No cult prostitute has been here.” 22 So he returned to Judah and said, “I have not found her. Also, the men of the place said, ‘No cult prostitute has been here.’” 23 And Judah replied, “Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat, and you did not find her.”

 

24 About three months later Judah was told, “Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.” And Judah said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned.” 25 As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, “By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant.” And she said, “Please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff.” 26 Then Judah identified them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not know her again.

 

27 When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. 28 And when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, “This one came out first.” 29 But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. And she said, “What a breach you have made for yourself!” Therefore his name was called Perez. 30 Afterward his brother came out with the scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah.

 

Judah was busted.  His moral outrage over Tamar only revealed his own hypocrisy.  Yet the most astonishing thing is that through Tamar’s actions the genetic line was preserved.  And, as we now see, this story became woven into the story of Jesus.

 

Where do we see the gospel in such a bizarre story?  It’s simple, really.  Jesus is the true and better Shelah.  Judah had withheld his only remaining son from her, because he viewed her as an unworthy bride.  God the Father did not withhold his only Son, because he knew it was the only way to redeem the unworthy bride—that is, the Church (Ephesians 5:25-27).

 

Paul writes that God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:31).  This is the message of Christmas: that God sent his only Son into the world that his death would pay the penalty for man’s sin—and in his second coming would restore the whole world.

 

 

Jacob and the life of faith (Genesis 48)

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From left: Trent Williams, Luke Greffen, Chris Wiles, and Nathan Buchman at the Youth for Christ Scott Frey Golf Classic.

From left: Trent Williams, Luke Greffen, Chris Wiles, and Nathan Buchman at the Youth for Christ Scott Frey Golf Classic.

This past Fall, I played golf for the first time.  How’d I do?  Well, if you know me, let’s just say I did exactly as well as you might expect me to do.  And here’s the thing: if you’re an avid golfer, don’t be offended, but golf is the most boring sport in the world.  After six holes, I was like: “Are we done?”  But we weren’t.  There were twelve more to go, and friends, that’s just stupid.

It was weeks later that my friend Glenn introduced me to the phrase “course management,” which I initially mistook for economics jargon until I did a Google search.  Course management, as it turns out, refers to the way a golfer functions on a course.  Things like: what club to use (and where), whether to hit the ball over or around the sand trap, that sort of thing.  The questions that seemed foreign to me (and had to rely entirely on my teammates for) were second-nature to the seasoned pro.  And if you golf regularly, you certainly enjoy it more when you have a better idea of what you’re doing.

In many ways the spiritual life is like that.  I imagine the concept of “following God” must seem a daunting task to some.  Read the Bible?  Where do I start?  Praying—especially out loud in a small group—must feel more awkward than a bad prom date.

We grow unsatisfied—expecting instant results—and give up too soon.  We maintain some measure of faith—somewhere tucked away for safekeeping—in the hopes of passing our faith on to our children one day.  But there can be no substitute for a lifetime of spiritual devotion.

In Genesis 48, we find Jacob looking toward the future.  By now, he’s on his deathbed, but his memory is far from fading.  As he recounts the past, he expresses confidence in God to sustain his descendants for the future.

Then Jacob called his sons and said, “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come.

2 “Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob,
listen to Israel your father.

3 “Reuben, you are my firstborn,
my might, and the firstfruits of my strength,
preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.
4 Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence,
because you went up to your father’s bed;
then you defiled it—he went up to my couch!

5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers;
weapons of violence are their swords.
6 Let my soul come not into their council;
O my glory, be not joined to their company.
For in their anger they killed men,
and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.
7 Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,
and their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob
and scatter them in Israel.

8 “Judah, your brothers shall praise you;
your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;
your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
9 Judah is a lion’s cub;
from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He stooped down; he crouched as a lion
and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?
10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
11 Binding his foal to the vine
and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine,
he has washed his garments in wine
and his vesture in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes are darker than wine,
and his teeth whiter than milk.

13 “Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea;
he shall become a haven for ships,
and his border shall be at Sidon.

14 “Issachar is a strong donkey,
crouching between the sheepfolds.
15 He saw that a resting place was good,
and that the land was pleasant,
so he bowed his shoulder to bear,
and became a servant at forced labor.

16 “Dan shall judge his people
as one of the tribes of Israel.
17 Dan shall be a serpent in the way,
a viper by the path,
that bites the horse’s heels
so that his rider falls backward.
18 I wait for your salvation, O Lord.

19 “Raiders shall raid Gad,
but he shall raid at their heels.

20 “Asher’s food shall be rich,
and he shall yield royal delicacies.

21 “Naphtali is a doe let loose
that bears beautiful fawns.

22 “Joseph is a fruitful bough,
a fruitful bough by a spring;
his branches run over the wall.
23 The archers bitterly attacked him,
shot at him, and harassed him severely,
24 yet his bow remained unmoved;
his arms were made agile
by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob
(from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel),
25 by the God of your father who will help you,
by the Almighty who will bless you
with blessings of heaven above,
blessings of the deep that crouches beneath,
blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
26 The blessings of your father
are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents,
up to the bounties of the everlasting hills.
May they be on the head of Joseph,
and on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.

27 “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf,
in the morning devouring the prey
and at evening dividing the spoil.”

28 All these are the twelve tribes of Israel. This is what their father said to them as he blessed them, blessing each with the blessing suitable to him. 29 Then he commanded them and said to them, “I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30 in the cave that is in the field at Machpelah, to the east of Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place. 31 There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah— 32 the field and the cave that is in it were bought from the Hittites.” 33 When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.

I believe the relationship between God’s activity and man’s to be largely mysterious.  God’s gracious work in the lives of people like Jacob invariably says more about the greatness of God rather than the greatness of man.  God works in amazing ways through his people—including you and me.  But God still asks that we give him the chance to do so.  Life is short.  Time slips through our fingers like grains of sand.  And again, there can be no substitute for a lifetime of faith.  Grace defies our attempts to earn God’s blessing—but it provokes us toward effort to share this blessing with others.  What are you doing to share your faith?  What can you do to better partner with God?

Father Abraham Had Many Sons (Genesis 12 + 15)

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We wrote yesterday of the generations that stretched from Adam to Noah and eventually to Abram. And as Chris wrote on Monday, Matthew’s gospel delineated the generations from Abraham to Christ – demonstrating the Jewish rights of Christ through the tribe of Judah.

Today we look at this pivotal character of Abram – later named Abraham. In chapter 12 of Genesis we read of a promise of God to him that is called the Abrahamic Covenant. It is repeated in the second chapter we look at today – chapter 15 of Genesis.

God’s story of redemption will now be defined through his work in the life and lineage of one family—the family of Abraham, known soon as “Israel” through the descendants of his grandson Jacob.

The Lord’s Covenant with Abram in Genesis 12

12:1 – The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.

9 Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

The Lord’s Covenant with Abram in Genesis 15

15:1 – After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

2 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?”3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

The Abrahamic Covenant had three primary promises:

  1. That Abraham’s name would be great. And indeed it is, as he is revered by the Jews, the Arab peoples, etc.
  2. That he would make a great nation from Abraham. Yes it did happen, and it continues to this day. His descendants have been as innumerable as the stars visible in the sky.
  3. That all the earth would be blessed through him and his descendants. And this is what has special interest to us, for it speaks ultimately of the coming of Jesus Christ and his work of redemption on behalf of the world.

So there is a physical family of Abraham, but also a spiritual family as well – those who are redeemed by the work of Christ. And that spiritual family consists of all of those who are God’s people from both before the time of Jesus and down to the present day. All salvation is based upon the price paid by Christ on the cross.

So indeed, Father Abraham had many sons; many sons had Father Abraham. And I am one of them and so are you … if you base your hope and trust in the payment of redemption (which is what the word means – to loose by paying a price). We are the fruits of redemption … the roots of which go back to Abraham, and even to the determination of God in the Garden of Eden to choose to save his lost creation.

Romans chapter 4 ties it all together…

16 Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. 17 As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

Adam: The Bad Apple in the Family Tree (Genesis 5 + 11)

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My father was a mathematician / bookkeeper / accountant. And though I have his “head for numbers” in terms of doing mental calculations, I don’t have his need for everything to always add up correctly.

I distinctly remember my father with his Bible open and “running the numbers” in the book of Genesis – working to get them to add up correctly to the work of an Anglican scholar named Bishop Ussher. This Irish cleric had calculated that the time and date of the creation was the night preceding Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, using the Julian calendar.

All of this ties in with the raging debate about the confluence of Scriptural revelation and faith as it connects with modern science.

The terms “father of” in these genealogies are understood by some to mean “ancestor of.”  In that God was not precise in these matters, I do not find myself needing to know them more definitively than biblical revelation. I am content that God created the heavens and the earth and that he created man, with Adam and Eve being the first.

Ancestry from Adam to Noah

5:1 – This is the written account of Adam’s family line.

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind”  <Note – “Adam” is the word in Hebrew>  when they were created.

3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 5 Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.

6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh. 7 After he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. 8 Altogether, Seth lived a total of 912 years, and then he died.

9 When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. 10 After he became the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters. 11 Altogether, Enosh lived a total of 905 years, and then he died.

12 When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. 13 After he became the father of Mahalalel, Kenan lived 840 years and had other sons and daughters. 14 Altogether, Kenan lived a total of 910 years, and then he died.

15 When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared. 16 After he became the father of Jared, Mahalalel lived 830 years and had other sons and daughters. 17 Altogether, Mahalalel lived a total of 895 years, and then he died.

18 When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. 19 After he became the father of Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 20 Altogether, Jared lived a total of 962 years, and then he died.

21 When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. 22 After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. 23 Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. 24 Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

25 When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech.26 After he became the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. 27 Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died.

28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah <Note – the name “Noah in Hebrew sounds like the word “comfort”> and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.” 30 After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Altogether, Lamech lived a total of 777 years, and then he died.

32 After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

I know how odd it seems that people lived these hundreds of years. All we can surmise is that the world prior to the flood was a very different place that was truly “pre-historic.”

But one phrase continues to repeat over and over in these 10 generations, and that is “and then he died.”  The curse from sin was playing out.

The oldest son of Noah was named Shem, and his record and family is picked up in chapter 11, just after the story of the Tower of Babel …

The Tower of Babel

11:1  Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

You may note also from this the usage of the plural pronoun (Let us) for God – an early hint at the Trinity.

Mankind was not obeying God’s command to move out and populate the earth. Instead they were congregating together around a magnificent structure as the centerpiece. So God confounded their languages to scatter them from that singular place.

Family Tree from Shem to Abram

10 This is the account of Shem’s family line.

Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxed. 11 And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years and had other sons and daughters.

12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

14 When Shelah had lived 30 years, he became the father of Eber. 15 And after he became the father of Eber, Shelah lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.

16 When Eber had lived 34 years, he became the father of Peleg. 17 And after he became the father of Peleg, Eber lived 430 years and had other sons and daughters.

18 When Peleg had lived 30 years, he became the father of Reu. 19 And after he became the father of Reu, Peleg lived 209 years and had other sons and daughters.

20 When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. 21 And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters.

22 When Serug had lived 30 years, he became the father of Nahor. 23 And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.

24 When Nahor had lived 29 years, he became the father of Terah. 25 And after he became the father of Terah, Nahor lived 119 years and had other sons and daughters.

26 After Terah had lived 70 years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran.

Abram’s Family

27 This is the account of Terah’s family line.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. 30 Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.

31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

32 Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.

So this account and genealogy gets us now down to the pivotal character of Abraham. This has significance for the both the Jewish family and all of mankind, as we will speak about tomorrow.

But the takeaway point for today, as we consider family ancestry and genealogy – related both to Christ and to us – is that there was a bad apple that infected the whole family tree. His name was Adam, and strangely enough, he did it by eating an apple!  (Not really, but maybe? We don’t know what kind of fruit it was for sure.)

But Adam’s outright defiance of God’s clear and revealed command brought sin into the whole human family. And what a mess it has made!

Maybe you feel like you’d like to go back in time and just slap him a good one upside the head for being so stupid! If you have that feeling, just hang on for a moment, because I have a practical application for you.

I don’t want to steal Chris’ thunder in his devotional on Romans 5 that will hit on December 29th at the end of this series. But an accurate reading of the verse there that says “for as by one man sin entered the world” includes the idea that we were “in Adam” … that we were right there telling him to take a big bite. We like the passage when it says that we are “in Christ.” But we were in Adam; we were there with the bad apple in the family tree – making each of US the guilt-worthy bad apple.

So, go to the bathroom. Look into the mirror. Slap yourself soundly on the side of the head.

BUT, if we trust in Christ, we have a new ancestry and a new family. That is the big idea of this series!

Who’s your daddy? (Matthew 1; Luke 3)

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ancestry

Money may not grow on trees, but there’s big business to be had in studying people’s genealogies—that is, their family lineage.  Search terms for “ancestry” and “genealogy” have risen to the second most searched-for category on the internet—second only (sadly) to pornography.  In 2012, a European private equity offered the popular Ancestry.com 1.6 billion dollars for control of the company (the offer was declined, by the way).

Why the popularity?  Our ancestry offers us a means of answering the age-old question: “Who am I?”  Our identity might be found in our ancestry.  In an article on Salon.com, actor Don Cheadle is reported as saying: “You start feeling more grounded when you can reach back and go … ‘This is who I am all the way back.’”

This is who I am all the way back.  Imagine knowing your roots this intimately.  Matthew and Luke set out to write biographies of Jesus, they included Jesus’ family tree, revealing just who Jesus was “all the way back.”

THE STRUCTURE OF JESUS’ GENEALOGY

Matthew and Luke both include genealogies of Jesus.  Perhaps it would be helpful to see them side by side.  What do you notice that’s similar?  What do you notice that’s different?

 

Matthew 1:1-17 Luke 3:23-38
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

 

2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, 4 and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king.

 

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, 8 and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 9 and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, 11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

 

12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel,and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13 and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud,15 and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

 

17 So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

 

 23 Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, 24 the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, 25 the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, 26 the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, 27 the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, 28 the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, 29 the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi,30 the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, 31 the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, 32 the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, 33 the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, 34 the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, 35 the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, 36 the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, 37 the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan,38 the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

 

You might notice that Luke goes back waaaay further than Matthew.  Matthew goes back only to Abraham.  Luke goes back all the way to Adam.  Why?  Well, Matthew is trying to connect Jesus to both David—showing that Jesus is Israel’s true king—and Abraham—showing that Jesus is of true Jewish descent.  Luke is trying to connect Jesus not just to the Jews, but to the entire human race—something that would have been important, as Luke wrote both Luke and Acts during a time when people worried about the inclusion of Gentiles (non-Jews) in the Church.

But, you might be thinking, why don’t Matthew and Luke match up?  The genealogies given here look quite different.  Various suggestions have been made.  In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther suggested that Matthew gave Joseph’s genealogy, while Luke records Mary’s.  Unfortunately, evidence for this is sparse—limited only to arguments of Greek grammar (!).  In his commentary on Matthew, Craig Keener borrows from an ancient writer and suggests that Matthew was primarily focused on Jesus’ royal lineage, while Luke focused on Jesus’ biological history.  Since Jews did not keep accurate records of their genealogies (which helps explain why many didn’t know Jesus was of royal lineage), it’s probable that both Matthew and Luke are recording history only selectively.  Oh, you say, so the Bible contains errors?  No; it simply means that ancient biographies weren’t constructed with the level of chronological detail that we might expect from modern writers.  Additionally, the “gospel” was an unprecedented genre of literature.  They were meant to be historical, sure—but they were ultimately intended to invoke faith on the part of the reader.  Therefore all gospel writers recorded only the factual details necessary to win audiences with the gospel.

THE MEANING OF JESUS’ GENEALOGY

Of course, if you have a background in church, you may notice a few colorful characters in Jesus’ family tree.  David and “the wife of Uriah” (adultery and murder?), Tamar (who seduced her father-in-law while dressed as a prostitute), Rahab the prostitute…these aren’t the characters you might expect to find in the story about Jesus.  It’s all the more shocking when you realize that ancient peoples believed in what we might call “collective guilt.”  If a person is guilty, so is their entire community.  Yes; one bad apple really does spoil the whole bunch.

Today, while we emphasize individual responsibility, we still tend to think of guilt as contagious.  For instance, in a study conducted by Loyola University (if you listened to last Sunday’s sermon, I misspoke of the study’s origins), participants reported feeling significantly more guilty knowing that the seats they occupied were once occupied by those guilty of misconduct.  According to the report in men’s health, “whether it’s a chair, handshake, or lucky shirt, you’d be wise to seek out people and objects you want to emulate—and steer clear of stuff stained by failure, the study implies.”

But through Jesus, the righteousness of the One is enough to redeem the sinfulness of the many.  Are there some skeletons in your closet?  Do you have a past full of darkness, full of shame?  Jesus can redeem whole generations of brokenness with his lifetime of obedience, and the exchange he offers—my sin for his righteousness.   It is then that you and I might stand faultless before the throne, clothed in righteousness alone.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at a few characters from Jesus’ family tree, and seeing the various ways that the gospel can transform lives of brokenness into agents for His Kingdom.

 

 

Why Roots Matter (Ephesians 1, Romans 8)

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Sunday begins our Christmas season sermon series which will run throughout the month of December – covering not only the four Sundays, but also as a part of our theme for Christmas Eve.

Our study will be called “The Roots of Redemption: Jesus’ Family Tree.” In our series brochure, as well as on our introduction page, we set up the series with this description:

Our origins speak powerfully to our identity—and destiny.  Where we come from tells us something about who we are, where we’re going. 

But not everyone’s family tree overflows with good fruit.  Some of us have closets full of skeletons.  Sometimes even our own past seems a barrier to our future. 

When we look at Jesus’ family tree, we find a lot of broken branches and scandal.  The ancient world believed that such past blemishes could tarnish your whole reputation—that yes, one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.  But Jesus shows us that His life of purity can redeem even the darkest of family roots. 

Every family tree has some sap running through it – so goes the old saying. Yep, that’s true, and pretty much all of us don’t need to look as far back as Adam and Eve to find the sap. We’re more than a bit sticky ourselves!

I have been pretty open in recent years about my own identity search, and being adopted, I had two distinct family trees to go back through. Over the years I have known a lot about the family tree and history of the family with whom I grew up (which was biologically my mother’s side). But my father’s side was mostly a mystery with only a name and a mere handful of facts.

So with the resources of such research and computer tools like Ancestry.com, I was able to learn a great deal. I even discovered a long-lost cousin and connected with him for a visit one day. He died rather suddenly just a few months after that, so it was good I caught him. I learned a lot – much also that helped me understand myself a bit more.

But, be careful what you hope for and look to find out when you start digging through the recesses of a dark closet. I’ve only been able to get the roots (on my father’s side) as far back as three generations before me. The leads there grow cold and have been a brick wall. My best guess is that he was an orphan who was taken in by a miscellaneous family. He worked in a post office, got caught pilfering something in the mails, and spent time in a federal prison. However, it appeared that he completely changed his life for the positive after that event.

But it was certainly not what I hoped to find. I would rather that my biological history went back to the Founding Fathers of America or to an industrialist that fueled American exceptionalism and enterprise.

Yet even when there is some extraordinary individual in a family tree, as we saw with King David, there is a lot of clay in the feet of even the greatest human beings.

We all need a different sort of “additional” family tree – the family of God. And to be a part of it, we need an adoption into it. And that is what Christ came to do…………

Romans 8:14-16 – For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.  The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Ephesians 1:3-8 – Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.

We have a new family, with new roots. We are the children of the King through adoption into sonship by the redemption of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Preparing for Life’s Final Transition (1 Kings 2, 1 Chronicles 22)

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There is nothing wrong with caring about leaving a legacy. In fact, there is everything right about doing it in a way that continues your voice beyond your own generation and time and life to speak to future generations about your values regarding things eternal.

As much as David could be rightly criticized for his failures as a father to control his children and manage his family well, he really cared deeply about the issue of Solomon’s role in building an appropriate temple for the centralized presence of God in the nation. And David cared deeply that Solomon himself be consecrated in his heart to have the opportunity for such success.

Though David was not to be the one to build a magnificent temple for the Lord, rather than sulk about God not allowing such a wonderful desire to find fruition, David gets involved in the project by making practical preparations of materials. That is having a vision beyond one’s own life – a vision and passion for the Kingdom of God.

The two passages today speak about David’s preparations and also of his encouragement and words of wisdom to his son Solomon.

1 Chronicles 22:5-10

5 David said, “My son Solomon is young and inexperienced, and the house to be built for the Lord should be of great magnificence and fame and splendor in the sight of all the nations. Therefore I will make preparations for it.” So David made extensive preparations before his death.

6 Then he called for his son Solomon and charged him to build a house for the Lord, the God of Israel. 7 David said to Solomon: “My son, I had it in my heart to build a house for the Name of the Lord my God. 8 But this word of the Lord came to me: ‘You have shed much blood and have fought many wars. You are not to build a house for my Name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in my sight. 9 But you will have a son who will be a man of peace and rest, and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side. His name will be Solomon, and I will grant Israel peace and quiet during his reign. 10 He is the one who will build a house for my Name. He will be my son, and I will be his father. And I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever.’

David’s Charge to Solomon – 1 Kings 2:1-12

2:1  When the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge to Solomon his son.

2 “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, act like a man, 3 and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses. Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go 4 and that the Lord may keep his promise to me: ‘If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’

5 “Now you yourself know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me—what he did to the two commanders of Israel’s armies, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. He killed them, shedding their blood in peacetime as if in battle, and with that blood he stained the belt around his waist and the sandals on his feet. 6 Deal with him according to your wisdom, but do not let his gray head go down to the grave in peace.

7 “But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai of Gilead and let them be among those who eat at your table. They stood by me when I fled from your brother Absalom.

8 “And remember, you have with you Shimei son of Gera, the Benjamite from Bahurim, who called down bitter curses on me the day I went to Mahanaim. When he came down to meet me at the Jordan, I swore to him by the Lord: ‘I will not put you to death by the sword.’ 9 But now, do not consider him innocent. You are a man of wisdom; you will know what to do to him. Bring his gray head down to the grave in blood.”

10 Then David rested with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David. 11 He had reigned forty years over Israel—seven years in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem.12 So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established.

As I shared this past Sunday, I would challenge everyone to write their own autobiographical memoir. Think of it as a long letter – a book even – for the benefit of your immediately-surviving AND future generations. Speak of the events of your life that were so meaningful to you. Trace the hand of God through your varied experiences. Share your successes and failures, and write timeless truths and words of encouragement – your vision – for the legacy and generations of your family.

I was running so late on time this past Sunday that I did not share with you that I have begun this work, though actually I’ve not worked on it lately. But I had a lot of the early years of my life previously written about in a first draft form in my computer. I mentioned it to the portion of my family when we were on the long drive home from a summer vacation to Boston this year. The boys wanted to hear it, so I pulled it out and read from it – much of it written maybe even 8-10 years ago.  And they loved it and I could tell it meant a lot to them and was something they would like to have and pass on.

So, think generationally. That’s how we roll at TSF.

I hope our brief time on the life of David was beneficial to all of you. Some of it will appear again in coming weeks for our brief Christmas season series on Christ’s ancestry – The Roots of Faith. Our next devotional will appear just in advance of that series that begins on Sunday, December 7th.

Passive Leadership Leads to Active Rebellion (1 Kings 1:1-53)

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The passage is a fairly long one today, so I’ll be brief – just like I was on Sunday … OK, not really!

The passage today is also one that saddens me when I read it, especially to see the additional family struggles between brothers. As I know from my own home, boys from the same mother can battle with each other, let alone half brothers from a number of the different wives of David.

Beyond that, the scene is a sad one of the feeble end of David’s life. Though he is still the king, it seems that all of the affairs around him are out of his control or knowledge. There was apparently very little in the way of any plan of succession – not entirely rare in monarchies then or now.

This entire situation of Adonijah declaring himself as king developed in the absence of leadership. A vacuum will be filled, and the young man conferred with Joab, the head of the army, and Abiathar, the High Priest … apparently they too believed that something had to be done given the disengaged state of affairs. But they threw themselves in on the wrong side.

Perhaps the most telling verse in the chapter is verse six, where David’s son Adonijah is seen as acting as his does because he was never rebuked by his father or challenged in terms of his behavior. He was cursed also with the burden of being exceedingly handsome, in that he was the brother of Absolom.

But the takeover plan does not succeed, largely through the wisdom and intervention of Nathan the Prophet. The story has a humorous turn when, while Adonijah and his groupies are celebrating, news arrives that Solomon is actually sitting on the throne.

The lesson for today is that failing to take appropriate action in the leadership roles we have in our lives – be it family, or work, or church – seldom, if ever, leads to success. The ebb and flow of life needs thoughtful management in order to assure that it is all flowing in accord and in step with God’s kingdom. Just as turning up the car radio to avoid hearing the clickitty-dingy sound in your car motor may give you some temporary relief from worry, the problem in the end will always be bigger tomorrow than addressing it today will be.

Adonijah Sets Himself Up as King

1:1  When King David was very old, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. 2 So his attendants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to serve the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm.”

3 Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 The woman was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no sexual relations with her.

5 Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, “I will be king.” So he got chariots and horses[a] ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him. 6 (His father had never rebuked him by asking, “Why do you behave as you do?” He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.)

7 Adonijah conferred with Joab son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they gave him their support. 8 But Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei and Rei and David’s special guard did not join Adonijah.

9 Adonijah then sacrificed sheep, cattle and fattened calves at the Stone of Zoheleth near En Rogel. He invited all his brothers, the king’s sons, and all the royal officials of Judah,10 but he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the special guard or his brother Solomon.

11 Then Nathan asked Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “Have you not heard that Adonijah,the son of Haggith, has become king, and our lord David knows nothing about it? 12 Now then, let me advise you how you can save your own life and the life of your son Solomon.13 Go in to King David and say to him, ‘My lord the king, did you not swear to me your servant: “Surely Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne”? Why then has Adonijah become king?’ 14 While you are still there talking to the king, I will come in and add my word to what you have said.”

15 So Bathsheba went to see the aged king in his room, where Abishag the Shunammite was attending him. 16 Bathsheba bowed down, prostrating herself before the king.

“What is it you want?” the king asked.

17 She said to him, “My lord, you yourself swore to me your servant by the Lord your God: ‘Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne.’ 18 But now Adonijah has become king, and you, my lord the king, do not know about it. 19 He has sacrificed great numbers of cattle, fattened calves, and sheep, and has invited all the king’s sons, Abiathar the priest and Joab the commander of the army, but he has not invited Solomon your servant. 20 My lord the king, the eyes of all Israel are on you, to learn from you who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. 21 Otherwise, as soon as my lord the king is laid to rest with his ancestors, I and my son Solomon will be treated as criminals.”

22 While she was still speaking with the king, Nathan the prophet arrived. 23 And the king was told, “Nathan the prophet is here.” So he went before the king and bowed with his face to the ground.

24 Nathan said, “Have you, my lord the king, declared that Adonijah shall be king after you, and that he will sit on your throne? 25 Today he has gone down and sacrificed great numbers of cattle, fattened calves, and sheep. He has invited all the king’s sons, the commanders of the army and Abiathar the priest. Right now they are eating and drinking with him and saying, ‘Long live King Adonijah!’ 26 But me your servant, and Zadok the priest, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and your servant Solomon he did not invite. 27 Is this something my lord the king has done without letting his servants know who should sit on the throne of my lord the king after him?”

28 Then King David said, “Call in Bathsheba.” So she came into the king’s presence and stood before him.

29 The king then took an oath: “As surely as the Lord lives, who has delivered me out of every trouble, 30 I will surely carry out this very day what I swore to you by the Lord, the God of Israel: Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne in my place.”

31 Then Bathsheba bowed down with her face to the ground, prostrating herself before the king, and said, “May my lord King David live forever!”

32 King David said, “Call in Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet and Benaiah son of Jehoiada.” When they came before the king, 33 he said to them: “Take your lord’s servants with you and have Solomon my son mount my own mule and take him down to Gihon. 34 There have Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him king over Israel. Blow the trumpet and shout, ‘Long live King Solomon!’ 35 Then you are to go up with him, and he is to come and sit on my throne and reign in my place. I have appointed him ruler over Israel and Judah.”

36 Benaiah son of Jehoiada answered the king, “Amen! May the Lord, the God of my lord the king, so declare it. 37 As the Lord was with my lord the king, so may he be with Solomon to make his throne even greater than the throne of my lord King David!”

38 So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, the Kerethites and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon mount King David’s mule, and they escorted him to Gihon. 39 Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the sacred tent and anointed Solomon. Then they sounded the trumpet and all the people shouted, “Long live King Solomon!” 40 And all the people went up after him, playing pipes and rejoicing greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound.

41 Adonijah and all the guests who were with him heard it as they were finishing their feast. On hearing the sound of the trumpet, Joab asked, “What’s the meaning of all the noise in the city?”

42 Even as he was speaking, Jonathan son of Abiathar the priest arrived. Adonijah said, “Come in. A worthy man like you must be bringing good news.”

43 “Not at all!” Jonathan answered. “Our lord King David has made Solomon king. 44 The king has sent with him Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, the Kerethites and the Pelethites, and they have put him on the king’s mule, 45 and Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king at Gihon. From there they have gone up cheering, and the city resounds with it. That’s the noise you hear.46 Moreover, Solomon has taken his seat on the royal throne. 47 Also, the royal officials have come to congratulate our lord King David, saying, ‘May your God make Solomon’s name more famous than yours and his throne greater than yours!’ And the king bowed in worship on his bed 48 and said, ‘Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who has allowed my eyes to see a successor on my throne today.’”

49 At this, all Adonijah’s guests rose in alarm and dispersed. 50 But Adonijah, in fear of Solomon, went and took hold of the horns of the altar. 51 Then Solomon was told, “Adonijah is afraid of King Solomon and is clinging to the horns of the altar. He says, ‘Let King Solomon swear to me today that he will not put his servant to death with the sword.’”

52 Solomon replied, “If he shows himself to be worthy, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground; but if evil is found in him, he will die.” 53 Then King Solomon sent men, and they brought him down from the altar. And Adonijah came and bowed down to King Solomon, and Solomon said, “Go to your home.”

Though it is not on our reading schedule, which actually ends tomorrow for this series, in the next chapter Adonijah did not prove himself to be worthy. He cunningly attempted to gain Abishag for a wife – which would give him the appearance of being the rightful successor to the throne. This would cost him his life.

Trusting God: It’s a Big Deal (2 Samuel 24:1-25)

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So many of us who grew up in the church as kids were very early on in our lives taught to memorize the summary verses from Proverbs 3:5,6 – Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. And 50+ years after memorizing it, that passage strikes me anew again today for the totality of wisdom that is packed in a mere 28 words.

As I shared at the beginning of the sermon yesterday, this reading through the story of David in all of these chapters (and more) that we’ve been preaching on and writing about for this series has really also struck me with what a mixed bag of life experiences characterize David. There are the incredibly great moments, yet also there is more than a brief list of failures that cost David dearly in terms of his own comfort and the pain from the total dysfunction of so much of his family.

David is truly an “Exhibit A” of success when trusting God (killing Goliath, inheriting the kingdom) and disaster when functioning in his own flesh (Bathsheba, not discipling and leading his family). And today’s passage is the account of another failure of David – his census of the people to determine the number of those able to fight.

24:1 Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”

2 So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, “Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.”

3 But Joab replied to the king, “May the Lord your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?”

The wording in the first verse is a bit odd. The parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 21 attributes this situation to Satan’s intervention.

That passage also more strongly states that Joab found the order to count the people to be repulsive … but why? What’s the big deal about a census?

We can get the answer to this from Deuteronomy 17:16,17 where Moses wrote 500 years earlier in anticipation of the time when Israel would inevitably have a king …

The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

God wanted his people to trust him completely. He wanted them to trust him for their protection against evil nations surrounding them. If they would be faithful, no harm would befall them. The nation was not to invest in the collection of horses and the implements of war, for this would cause the people to trust in their own strength rather than in God to give them victory.

So David’s census was a direct violation of this principle and exhibited a pride in his own strength and resources. So Joab was overruled, so off he went around the country (“from Dan to Beersheba” is like saying “from Minnesota to Florida”).

4 The king’s word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders; so they left the presence of the king to enroll the fighting men of Israel.

5 After crossing the Jordan, they camped near Aroer, south of the town in the gorge, and then went through Gad and on to Jazer. 6 They went to Gilead and the region of Tahtim Hodshi, and on to Dan Jaan and around toward Sidon. 7 Then they went toward the fortress of Tyre and all the towns of the Hivites and Canaanites. Finally, they went on to Beersheba in the Negev of Judah.

8 After they had gone through the entire land, they came back to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.

9 Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king: In Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand.

10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”

As bad as David is on varied occasions, we may rightly note that it is the root character of his personality to be quick to admit his wrongdoing and to humbly seek God’s forgiveness and restoration. He is given three choices of outcomes, and David chooses the one that most puts him into God’s hands, rather than any hands of men.

11 Before David got up the next morning, the word of the Lord had come to Gad the prophet, David’s seer: 12 “Go and tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’”

13 So Gad went to David and said to him, “Shall there come on you three years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me.”

14 David said to Gad, “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”

15 So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. 16 When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand.” The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

17 When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the Lord, “I have sinned; I, the shepherd, have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.”

18 On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. 20 When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.

21 Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”

“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”

22 Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood.  23 Your Majesty, Araunah gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”

24 But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. 25 David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.

This apparently very good and gracious man Araunah offers to just give to David everything that was needed for the sacrifice before the Lord. But David refuses to receive it and insists that it be paid for by he himself. He understood that if it cost him nothing personally, it was not much of a sacrifice.

What we see is David taking a different attitude at the end of this chapter from that at the beginning. Here he is displaying what God wants to see – a totally dependent attitude of trust and yieldedness.

As good Americans, we like to be very independent and take care of ourselves. In terms of prudent responsibility, that is a good thing. But ultimately we cannot be in control of everything. We need God; we need to trust him fully in all things.

One Big Messed-up Kingdom (2 Samuel 16:1-14)

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Though I have read the story of David in these Old Testament narratives on many occasions in my life, this time through it I have been struck as never before about the pain and sadness that must have been terribly pervasive in David’s life. Perhaps as a younger man I saw more of David’s passions, energies and greatness, but now in my own more reflective years and with a mostly-grown family, I am struck more by the amount of trials and sorrows that befell him year after year.

The Scriptures are clear that David was a great man with a genuine heart for God. He is applauded in ways that few others are in the Bible. Yet at the same time, he is a man filled with faults and besetting sin issues. And in some fashion, this teaches us all that even at our best, in the flesh we are all still a mess in too many ways.

In this bridge chapter that we read today (before we skip quickly on Sunday to the end events of David’s life), we see the continued retreat of David from Jerusalem and the recording of two encounters with two men: Ziba and Sheba…

David and Ziba

16:1  When David had gone a short distance beyond the summit, there was Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, waiting to meet him. He had a string of donkeys saddled and loaded with two hundred loaves of bread, a hundred cakes of raisins, a hundred cakes of figs and a skin of wine.

2 The king asked Ziba, “Why have you brought these?”

Ziba answered, “The donkeys are for the king’s household to ride on, the bread and fruit are for the men to eat, and the wine is to refresh those who become exhausted in the wilderness.”

3 The king then asked, “Where is your master’s grandson?”

Ziba said to him, “He is staying in Jerusalem, because he thinks, ‘Today the Israelites will restore to me my grandfather’s kingdom.’”

4 Then the king said to Ziba, “All that belonged to Mephibosheth is now yours.”

“I humbly bow,” Ziba said. “May I find favor in your eyes, my lord the king.”

You will recall the story from two weeks ago of Mephibosheth, the son of David’s friend Jonathan … who though lame in both feet, was restored and given a place at the king’s table. Saul’s former servant Ziba, with his sons and servants, were to care for Mephibosheth while tending all the lands given to him that formerly belonged to Saul, his grandfather.

Here Ziba tells David that Miphibosheth remained in Jerusalem under the belief that the people would restore the kingdom to him. Later, in chapter 19, when David returns to Jerusalem, there is Mephibosheth with the opposite story – claiming that Ziba lied. It appears that David did not know who to believe, so he split the assets in half for each. I tend to see this as Mephibosheth being on the side of truth, though we don’t know for sure.

Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin – often a bit of a wild and crazy bunch. And Shimei is from the same clan as Saul and he curses David and pelts the group with rocks as they ignominiously retreat from Jerusalem.

Shimei Curses David

5 As King David approached Bahurim, a man from the same clan as Saul’s family came out from there. His name was Shimei son of Gera, and he cursed as he came out. 6 He pelted David and all the king’s officials with stones, though all the troops and the special guard were on David’s right and left. 7 As he cursed, Shimei said, “Get out, get out, you murderer, you scoundrel! 8 The Lord has repaid you for all the blood you shed in the household of Saul, in whose place you have reigned. The Lord has given the kingdom into the hands of your son Absalom. You have come to ruin because you are a murderer!”

9 Then Abishai son of Zeruiah said to the king, “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and cut off his head.”

10 But the king said, “What does this have to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? If he is cursing because the Lord said to him, ‘Curse David,’ who can ask, ‘Why do you do this?’”

11 David then said to Abishai and all his officials, “My son, my own flesh and blood, is trying to kill me. How much more, then, this Benjamite! Leave him alone; let him curse, for the Lord has told him to.12 It may be that the Lord will look upon my misery and restore to me his covenant blessing instead of his curse today.”

13 So David and his men continued along the road while Shimei was going along the hillside opposite him, cursing as he went and throwing stones at him and showering him with dirt. 14 The king and all the people with him arrived at their destination exhausted. And there he refreshed himself.

Again we see David taking the broader view and perspective about the hand of God being sovereign over all things good and bad. David believed that by God’s grace, the very, very bad day he was having would be turned around at a later time; and indeed it was. In fact, Shimei had to humble himself later in the story as David returned to Jerusalem, and David forgave him and the Benjamites with him. This was the beginning of an alliance between the two tribes of Benjamin and Judah – as they would together remain more true to the Lord than the split-off northern kingdom of 10 tribes in the division after the reign of Solomon.

I have to say that I’m too often like Abishai than like David. When wronged, I’d rather go over and chop someone’s head off than trust God to work circumstances over time to my vindication through his power. (Many years ago I named a pet “Abishai.”)  This was one of David’s “mighty men,” who were themselves a mixed bag of good and bad traits.

But that is what we all are; and the trick to the Christian life is to allow the Spirit to maximize our good traits and divine gifts, while yielding to God to suppress the traits of the sin nature that express themselves in self-absorption.

In the following several chapters we see that Absalom is overthrown and dies, and David is restored to the kingdom. But troubles and trials persist to David’s final days. And even in this time, we see the mixed bag of positive and negative traits in David himself … though the good traits of trust, faith, and repentance were the larger and defining reality at the foundation of David’s character and spirit.