Justice [God’s heart for good government, part 2]

Imagine you were creating a new nation, and you were responsible for writing a document that would become the guiding principles for this whole new society.  What would you include?  If you could narrow it down to just a few key ideas, what is necessary?  What is the basis of good governance?

As we saw yesterday in the first post of this series on Deuteronomy 16:18-20 and 17:8-20, God’s heart for Israel was to have good governance, starting with the people choosing wise local judges.  But how were these judges to handle their position? Look at chapter 16, verses 19-20, and we see that justice is to be primary.  The New International Version, and many other versions of the Bible translate the first phrase as, “do not pervert justice.”  I prefer the New American Standard, which translates the phrase, “do not distort justice.”  The Hebrew word here can be translated, “to stretch out” or “twist”. It is an image of changing something into what it was not meant to be. 

God wants governance where justice is clear and unchanged.  But what does that look like?  Thankfully he gives the people some examples.

First in verse 19, he says, “Do not show partiality.”  Who normally receives partiality?  Think about our day and age.  White people. Rich people.  The principle is clear.  No matter who you are, you should be treated the same. Justice is impartial

Next he says, “Do not accept bribes.”  Who do bribes favor?  Those with the ability to pay them.  The rich. Bribes also favor those in positions of power who can receive the bribes, usually government officials.  Justice should not be for sale.

He further explains this in verse 19 saying, “bribes blind the eyes of the wise and twist the words of the righteous.”  That’s an accurate image.  One scholar I read said that this could also be translated, “bribes subvert the cause of those who are in the right.”  Bribes do that.  They take a situation that is supposed to be based on justice and righteousness and twist it, and subvert it, making it unjust. 

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve had the opportunity to give a bribe?  I have, in places like Jamaica and Guyana.  Bribes were/are a part of their culture.  Go to the DMV, for example, and unless you wanted to wait in line forever, you would give a bribe.  Or what if you get stopped by the police, but you weren’t doing anything wrong?  You knew what they were looking for.  Give them a bribe and you have an easy day.  Don’t offer a bribe, and you get a ticket for a false violation.

The Lord repeats, therefore, his heart for just governance in verse 20, “Follow justice and justice alone.” So what is justice?  He has already illustrated it two ways: it is not showing partiality, and it is not taking bribes.  But what about the word itself? In these verses, there are actually two words for “justice.”  Let’s look at both.

In verse 19, he uses a word which refers to a just decision in an individual case.But in verse 20, he uses a word which is the abstract quality of justice – what is right, often translated “righteousness.”

There is a famous verse, Amos 5:24, that  includes both words: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

I know the USA is not perfect, but we do believe in justice as the foundation of society.  It is in the last line of our pledge of allegiance. “With liberty and justice for all.” Think about that.  It really matches up nicely with what we just read.

When is the last time you read the Declaration of Independence?  What you’ll find is that justice is all over the place in the text.  A major concern of our founding fathers was that the Colonies were being treated unjustly by the British King and government.  After winning independence, those same founding fathers crafted our Constitution, and the opening sentence, the preamble, says this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The United States was created on a foundation of justice. 

But remember that what we are reading in Deuteronomy is not God’s covenant with America. It is God’s covenant with the ancient people of Israel.  God doesn’t have a covenant with America.  But we can learn his heart, his desires for how his people should live. God is saying that justice is the best foundation for society, and so it is best for any nation to make justice the foundation of their land. 

Here in America, ours has been a roller coaster history of trying to live up to the idea of justice for all.  How just was it for Europeans to sail to Native American lands and take possession of the land by force or by unfair purchases?  How just was it for Americans to enslave millions of people from Africa, people who had been ripped from their homeland and shipped perilously to ours?  While we can proud of our American ideal of justice for all, we must also confess there are many ways we have allowed massive injustice to reign. 

That is why God had Israel to set up law courts in all their towns.  Because he knows there will be injustice. There will need to be wise, godly judges who have the authority to bring justice to any situation where there is injustice. 

So in Israel’s local law courts, and in their whole nation, justice rules. Check back in for the remaining posts in this series, as we will look at God’s heart for justice in our world.

Choose wise local leaders [God’s heart for good government, part 1]

The midterm elections were this week, the results are in, and now the politicians can get back to the business of governing.  That is good news for us, not least of which because the political road signs are coming down.  Postcards from candidates probably stopped arriving daily in the mail.  The TV ads are finally done. In this day and age, that means the ads on YouTube, Hulu, and other online sources, are also done.  I even got text messages from campaigns.  How did they get my number???  But those, too, have ceased.

How many of you get sick of all the money and attention given to our government elections?  Yeah, me too.  It’s pretty common to complain about elections, politicians and government.  In fact, I heard someone say this week that if you don’t vote, you can’t complain, so they voted, because they still wanted to be able to complain!

I suppose people will complain no matter if they voted or not. Why do we complain?  We complain because we’re not just sick of the election, we’re sick of government in general.  We point to all the ways government is messed up.   Have you heard the quote, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”?  It reminds us that there is so much bad government, even in systems, like democracy, which intend to be good.  It leaves us wondering if there is such a thing as good government. 

As we continue studying Deuteronomy, we arrive at a section in chapters 16 and 17 describing God’s government structure for Israel.  In this series of posts, we’re going to try to learn God’s heart for government.  Is there anything we Christians can learn from this?  Let’s find out.  Turn to Deuteronomy 16:18-20 and 17:8-20.

First, God mentions local judges in Deuteronomy 16:18-20.

For the last 40 years Israel had been together in close proximity as they traveled through the wilderness.  But now, entering the Promised Land of Canaan, they were going to spread out and occupy towns across the whole land.  Israel is the size of the state of New Jersey.  The people were not going to be close together anymore, so their governance had to change a bit.

As we see in verse 18, God is first giving them instructions about the local level of government.  He tells them to appoint judges and officials in each of the twelves tribes and in their towns.  That word “towns” is actually the Hebrew word “gates” referring the town gates, and it was customary in that culture for the elders of the towns to hold court at its city gates.

But how would they know who to appoint as judges?  Israel already had some experience with picking local leaders.  40 years earlier when Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, came to visit, he watched Moses, the top leader of the entire nation, spending all day, every day deciding all the law cases for everyone (Exodus 18).  Jethro said to Moses, “This is insane. Before you burn yourself out, appoint judges to help you.”  He further advised that these local judges were to be “capable, from all the people,” meaning that not just one tribe, but all tribes should be represented.  Additionally, the judges were to be, “men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain.”  This came up also in Deuteronomy 1:13 when we learn the judges were to be “wise, understanding and respected men.”

What we see in all these passages is that God shows a heart for his people to have wise, godly local government, and for the common person to have representation.  There were also national-level government leaders in Israel, as we will see in future posts in this series. But here in Deut. 16:18-20 we see the importance of having good local government.

This principle is very much mirrored in our American federal, state and local governance structure.  We have a governor for the whole state, but we also have local senators.  Same way for the federal government.  We have two senators for the whole state, and the House of Representatives for much smaller groups of population, and of course we have the president leading the whole country. Finally we elect leaders in our counties and towns, such as mayors, commissioners and judges. 

When you elect those those leaders, how do you choose to vote?  On the eve of the conflict 2016 general election, I preached and blogged about choosing leaders.  You can read that here.  What we see in Deuteronomy 16:18-20 (and Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1:9-18) is clear: God’s desires local leaders who are known for their wisdom, trustworthiness and character, people who will represent all people.  Do you use those traits when you consider who to vote for?  If you are a leader, elected or otherwise, how will you demonstrate and grow in these traits?

God has a heart that all would represented, and that they would be represented fairly.  In our next post, we’ll dig deeper into what that fair representation should look like.

Celebrating with aliens, the fatherless and widows [God’s heart for the holidays, part 5]

In this series of posts, we are seeking to learn God’s heart for the holidays in Deuteronomy 16, through three feasts he asks Israel to keep every year.  In the previous few posts, God expresses his heart for remembering, and in this fifth and final post, we’re going to look at two more themes. 

The second theme we see in Deuteronomy 16 is about Inclusion.

Did you notice a repeated phrase that described the Jewish feasts?  Look at verses 11 and 14.  Not only did these feasts include a person’s immediate family, but God also wanted them to include the alien, fatherless and widow!  That is astounding.  Why would God want their gatherings to include all these other people? He tells them.  In verse 12, he wants them to remember that they used to be the aliens when they were slaves in Egypt, in a land that was not their own.

Lest we think this was just a teaching for Israel, Jesus talked about this in Matthew 25:31-46 where he says in no uncertain terms that his followers are to reach out to people on the margins of life.  But the way he describes those on the margins is shocking, as he says that as much as we reach to include the stranger, the orphan, the prisoner, or the hungry, we are reaching out to him! And likewise, when we don’t reach out to those in need, we are neglecting him.  In other words, we need to see people like aliens, orphans and widows not as a threat, not as scary, not as uncomfortable, but as an opportunity to express love to Jesus!  Jesus’ brother James would write about this too, when he says in James 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” We Christians should be known for reaching out to those in need, including at the holidays.

Photo by Libby Penner on Unsplash

Who are the people on the margins you can reach out to?  Who can you invite to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas with you?  I love the photo above not only because the table is set and ready for guests, but because of the writing on the chalkboard.  Can you see it?  It is Acts 2:46, which is a Bible verse describing how the first Christians, right after Pentecost, practiced being inclusive.  It says, “they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”

I recently heard the story of a family that hosts Thanksgiving, inviting mentally disabled people from their community.  What a wonderful way to apply this this teaching.  God has a heart for people on the margins, and he wants us to include them in our lives, even in the celebrations that are traditionally focused on family.

The theme of inclusion leads right into the third theme which is Rejoicing.

We see rejoicing numerous times in Deuteronomy 16.  Look at verses 11, 14 and 15.  Three times God reveals his heart: he wanted his people to rejoice and feast.  And specifically it is a rejoicing in the Lord for the blessings he has poured out on them.  At our family holidays, then, we can purposefully focus our rejoicing on the Lord.  With all the delicious food and sharing of gifts and traditional movies and sports, it can be very easy to give the Lord barely a mention.

Families, I encourage you to think about how you can purposefully include the Lord in your holiday celebrations.  Church families can rejoice like this too.  At most worship services, Faith Church has a time for sharing how God has been at work in our lives.  I’m often a tad nervous about what people will share.  Open mics can be free-wheeling, can’t they?  But it is worth it because it gives us a chance to rejoice together!

We Christians, then, are to be people of rejoicing!  I get it, life can sometimes be hard.  It can be very easy to get grumpy, to complain.  Ask the people around you, what are you known for?  Grumpiness?  Complaining?  Negativity?  Criticism?  People of God, we are to be known for rejoicing! We are joy-filled people because God is so good.  We have received his goodness, and we remember, we include others in our remembering and we rejoice.

So may yours be a church family that celebrates, even in the dark times, because of who God is and what he has done, and because of his constant presence in our lives.  He has been faithful in the past and he is faithful in the present!

Why I observe the Christian Calendar [God’s heart for the holidays, part 4]

Does your church follow the Christian calendar?  Just as God instituted feasts for the people of Israel to follow, ancient Christians created feasts as well.  That Christian calendar, while not commanded by God in his New Covenant with the church, is designed to help Christians remember and re-enact the story of Jesus, very much like God’s feasts for the Jews were to help them remember and re-enact the story of his faithfulness and salvation in their nation.  In the previous three posts in this series we looked at three Jewish feasts mentioned in Deuteronomy 16, seeking to learn God’s heart for the holidays.  Now we attempt to apply God’s heart to the Christian church.  To do that, let’s see if those ancient Christians who created Christian holy days (holidays!) were faithful to God’s heart.

There are many variations of the Christian calendar, depending on what Christian tradition you are from.  My guess is that the vast majority of Christians observe at least some of the holidays in the Christian calendar: Christmas and Easter.  But there are many others.  I’m going to describe what we practice at Faith Church, and this would be true for most churches in our denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church.

In just a few weeks the calendar resets with the season of Advent.  Advent means “the arrival,” and thus points to a period of four weeks of spiritual preparation before Christmas, when we celebrate the arrival of or birth of Jesus, our savior.  We gather on Christmas Eve to rejoice in God’s love for us in sending his son.

The feast of Christmas lasts until January 6th, which is the day of Epiphany, a word meaning “revealing,” referring to the revealing of Jesus to the world.  Epiphany is a season marked by growth in Christ, and it lasts until Lent.

Each spring, there are 7 Sundays of Lent.  Lent is an Old English word for “length,” referring to the lengthening days of spring.  Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, and like Advent, Lent is another period of spiritual preparation, marked by fasting, including the final Sunday of Lent, Palm Sunday, when many churches re-enact Jesus’ Triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Palm Sunday kicks off Holy Week, during which we have a few other special days.  There is Maundy Thursday, remembering the Last Supper Jesus had with his disciples, when he washed their feet and gave them the practice of communion.  That Last Supper Jesus ate with his disciples was the Passover Seder is the first of two times the Jewish feasts intersect with Christian holidays.  The next special day of Holy Week is Good Friday, the day we remember Jesus’ crucifixion and death.

Then on Sunday we gather together with great joy to celebrate Jesus’ victory over sin, death and the devil through his resurrection!  Easter is the high point of the Christian calendar.  The feast of Easter, then, lasts for a few more weeks, until the Sundays of Jesus’ Ascension, remembering his return to his father, and of Pentecost, remembering the giving of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the church.  This is another place Jewish and Christian holidays intersect, as the Church began on the same day as one of the Jewish feasts, the Feast of Weeks.

From there the Christian calendar enters into the long period of growth called Ordinary Time.   Look at the calendar above, and you’ll notice that there are colors for each of the Christian seasons.  Ordinary Time, for example, is green.  At Faith Church we display those colors on our communion table up front, as well as on the back of our weekly bulletin.

The Christian calendar can be a helpful method for us, the church, to remember and re-enact the story of Jesus, just as God wanted Israel to do the same with the story of their Exodus to the Promised Land.  The church I grew up in observed Christmas and Easter, so when I was hired at Faith Church the Christian calendar was new.  But in 16 years I have come to deeply appreciate its rhythm of helping the church enter into the story of Jesus.  Many of us live overly-busy lives, distracted from the mission of the Kingdom of God.  The Christian calendar helps refocus us on that mission, and thus I commend it to you.  No, it is not a biblical practice that is commanded by God, but it does flow from his heart for the holidays!

Tomorrow, in our fifth and final post in this series on the Jewish feasts of Deuteronomy 16, we continue examining God’s heart for the holidays with two more themes that Christians can apply to our lives.

Celebrating his provision [God’s heart for the holidays, part 3]


Photo by Jony Ariadi on Unsplash

In this series of posts we are seeking to discover God’s heart for the holidays.  He truly does care about holidays!  So we have been looking at three feasts he commanded the people of Israel to observe every year, with the goal of learning his heart so that we Christians might be able to apply his heart to the holidays we celebrate.  In this post, we look at two more feasts mentioned in Deuteronomy 16 that God wants Israel to celebrate. What we’re going to discover is that these are not connected to remembering events of the past, like we saw in part 2 with Passover, but more so connected to God’s provision in harvest.

The next feast is described in Deuteronomy 16:9-12, the Feast of Weeks, also called Pentecost. As verse 9 says, the Feast of Weeks, took place seven weeks after the beginning of the grain harvest.  Pentecost is the Greek word for “50 days,” which is just about 7 weeks.  Its purpose is clearly stated in verse 10:  the Feast of Weeks is a time to thank God for the blessings he gave them, and they rejoiced by giving a freewill offering to God, in proportion to the blessings he poured out on them in the harvest.

The next holiday is also connected to harvest.  Look at 16:13-17, where he talks about the Feast of Tabernacles.  Verse 13 tells us that this feast was to take place seven days after they gathered the produce from their threshing floor and wine-press.  Then they were to be joyful!  Furthermore, through this celebration, they receive the promise of 16:15, of God’s blessing, and that their joy would be complete.  It gives the image of a people who have been hard at work harvesting and now the work is over, and they can party, thankful to God!

Now that we have surveyed all three feasts described in Deuteronomy 16, let’s survey the important themes woven through all three.  I’ll talk about the first theme in this post, and the next two themes in the rest of the series.

First, we saw the theme of regular remembering.  I talked about it already in part 2 of this series, that God has a heart for the holidays, a heart for the people of Israel to remember his faithfulness in their lives. The system of feasts created for Israel a regular yearly rhythm of focusing on the Lord.  Multiple times every year, the pilgrimages and feasts helped the people remember who they were. And who were they? 

We studied this recently when we saw in chapter14:1-2 that God declares Israel his Children, his treasured possession.  In each of these three feasts, they remember and re-enact their identity through the story of how God saved them out of slavery and how he continues to provide for them in the harvest.

We Christians can do the same!  Why? Because God has saved us too, through Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection, through the coming of the Holy Spirit, and through the life of the church.  That is why the ancient Christians also created a series of feasts which tell Jesus’ story.  Did you know we Christians have feasts too?  I want to be clear, our feasts are not a part of the New Covenant like Israel’s feasts were commanded by God in the Old Covenant.  In other words, you won’t find these Christian feasts commanded by God in the New Testament.  But because God is a God whose heart beats for his people to regularly remember and celebrate his provision, we Christians are right to make a practice of regular remembrance as well. 

That’s why the ancient Christians created these feasts and holidays or holy days as well.  What are they? Check back in tomorrow for part 4 and we’ll take a look.

Re-enacting to remember [God’s heart for the holidays, part 2]

Image result for gettysburg reenactment smoke

A few years ago the Gettysburg Battlefield celebrated the 150th anniversary of the terrible and momentous events of July 1-3, 1863 during our nation’s Civil War.  Because my family lives about an hour away, we visited the battlefield hoping to see re-enactors.  While we were there before any full battle re-enactment took place, at one point we viewed a company of soldiers perform various rifle assault formations, including firing their weapons.  It was eye-opening for me to see the variations used, as well as the amount of smoke their rifles emitted.  If the wind was low during the original battle, the smoke could have been like thick fog across the fields.  Re-enactment gave me a whole new perspective. 

In this series of posts we’re talking about God’s heart for holidays, and today we’re going to see how re-enactment is very important to God.  I don’t think I ever encountered that phrase before: God’s heart for holidays.  But as we continue studying Deuteronomy 16, God very clearly has a desire for his people to have regular holidays.  Why?  Doesn’t it seem like the God of the universe should have bigger things to fuss over than holidays?  Keep reading, and perhaps we can find out.

Yesterday we talked about how one particular ritual was embedded in many of Israel’s feasts and holidays, and that is the ritual of sacrifice.  In this post, we are going look at the first of three feasts described in Deuteronomy 16 in which Israel performed  sacrifices would take place: Passover, Pentecost (or Weeks) and Tabernacles. As we read about them, we’ll see that God gives the times of the year when these feasts are to take place.  The image below presents an annual calendar of when the various feasts take place, and you’ll notice that there are other feasts not mentioned in Deuteronomy 16.

Before continuing with this post, read Deuteronomy 16:1-8, which talks about the Feast Unleavened Bread and Passover. During the celebration of Passover, Israel was to sacrifice a firstborn animal at the place God chose as a dwelling for his name.  We already heard God, in 15:20, refer to the place he would choose as a dwelling, and he will mention it a number of times in the rest of the passage as well.  So what is this place? 

Remember that Deuteronomy is the second telling of the law.  Thus, these feasts have already been commanded of God previously.  Your Bibles most likely list the Scripture references where you can read the first time that God commanded these feasts. Passover, for example, is previously described in Exodus 12, Leviticus23 and Numbers 28.

You know what that means?  These are not new festivals.  In fact, the people of Israel have already been observing them every year for about 40 years.  So that place where God says they should come, the place that he will choose for his dwelling, that would have been the tabernacle, and eventually, hundreds of years later during the reign of King Solomon, that place would be the temple in the city of Jerusalem. Look ahead to verse 16, and we see that they were to go on a pilgrimage three times every year to this place. One pilgrimage for each of the feasts we are learning about.  That’s where they are to go with their firstborn and celebrate the Passover. 

See that word, “celebrate” in verse 1.  It literally means “prepare” or “keep” the Passover.  It has much more to do with the practice of observing the holiday.  No doubt about it, we’re going to get to the rejoicing and celebrating part.  But here in verse 1, God is instituting the habit of regular holidays.  This same word “celebrate” is repeated in verse 10 and verse 13.  It is the same Hebrew word that refers to preparing or keeping the holiday. 

That is very instructive.  God wants his people to habitually, every year, observe these feasts, these holidays, and for a reason!  What reason?

God wants them to regularly remember his amazing miraculous power that freed them from slavery in Egypt.  The word “Passover” refers to the last of ten plagues that God sent on Egypt in the process of freeing Israel from slavery. 

That final plague was the one where God said the firstborn (there’s that again) child of every family would die, unless they covered the frames of their doorways with the blood of an animal sacrifice.  That blood was the sign to God’s angel that the house was to be passed over and the firstborn inside would be saved.  All the people of Israel performed the sacrifice, used the blood to mark their doorways, and they were saved.  The Egyptians did not do this, however, and their firstborn died, leading the Egyptian king Pharaoh to finally allow Moses to lead Israel to freedom.  So the people of Israel gathered their belongings quickly, and left, beginning the long journey toward the Promised Land.

If you look through the description of the holiday in Deuteronomy 16, you see that God wants his people every year to re-enact what happened during the original Passover.  Of course it is not a total re-enactment, but there are elements of the celebration that remind them of the original story.

See how they enter into the drama and story of the event?  Every part of it is an act of remembering, as he says in verse 3.

We did this a few years ago when we had a Passover Seder dinner here.  It was so great to hear the story of Passover from a Messianic Jew, and learn of all the connections between Israel’s deliverance from slavery and the whole world’s deliverance from sin in Jesus’ death and resurrection.  What we see about God’s heart for the holidays, then, is that he wants his people to remember, and he wants them to practice remembering on a regular basis. 

In part 3 of this series we’ll look at the two other feasts mentioned in Deuteronomy 16, and as we study those feasts, we’ll continue to learn about God’s heart for the holidays.

Giving our firsts to God [God’s heart for the holidays, part 1]

Photo by Ferenc Horvath on Unsplash

In your mind, can you recite the cycle of national holidays that tell the story of America. Get out a piece of paper, or start typing in a document.  See if you can list out our holidays.  Here’s a hint: where do you think we should start?  July 4th, of course!  There would be no America without it.  Independence Day!  Now see if you can work your way around the calendar.  What comes after July 4th? Don’t peek below!  List your guesses, then come back here and see how you did.

Ready to check your work?  After July 4th, the next American holiday is Labor Day and then we have Columbus Day, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving.  A couple months later we observe Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday, then Presidents Day, and finally, Memorial Day.

How did you do?  Get them all?  Include some that I didn’t?  We’ll get to that just below.  For now, look at the holidays I listed.  Think about how these holidays describe the major events in the history of our nation. Every year, then, we have regular markers to help us remember our American story. Of course we could throw a few more in there such as Flag Day and Emancipation Day, which are not considered official federal holidays, but definitely point to important elements of our national story.  In more recent decades, we could point to D-Day and 9/11, which continue to tell that story.

But as I said above, there are a bunch of holidays I skipped!  I didn’t include them because those holidays have nothing to do with America. Instead they are holidays that could be celebrated around the world.  New Year’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s & Father’s Day, and the biggest holiday of them all, Christmas.  Even these non-American holidays are important to us because of their meaning.

So let’s step back a bit, and think: What do all these holidays tell us?  Humans are a people who love to remember and celebrate. We love to mark birthdays and anniversaries.  My congregation, Faith Church, for example, just had a wonderful celebration of our 50th anniversary.

As we continue our study through Deuteronomy, we are going to see that God also loves to celebrate special days, embedding special days into the covenant law that he had with Israel.  I encourage to open a Bible as you keep reading this post.  Turn to Deuteronomy 15:19.  In this series of posts, we’re going to study Deuteronomy 15:19 through 16:17, and it is all about holidays. Just as our American holidays tell the story of America, so Israel’s holidays tell the story of their nation.

In Deut. 15:19, notice that God doesn’t start with holidays.  Instead he starts with some instructions that will apply to the celebratory ritual included in many of Israel’s holidays and feasts, the ritual of sacrificing to God. Go ahead and read 15:19-23. Did you notice that this section is basically saying that firstborn animals are to be set aside for sacrifice.

If you have children, think about the birth of your first.  How did it feel?  My guess is that it was a day of extreme emotion.  There is a major excitement about the first of anything.  Not just the birth of children, but also your first day on the job, your first time playing on a sports team, or your first time volunteering at school or at church. You’re more nervous, more emotional, and more intense about it, because is new, just like a firstborn.

Let’s be clear, firstborns are not more special than other kids.  They are just new, they’re first, and we parents of firstborns have no idea what we’re doing, so we feel more emotional about them.  Every single step along the way is a first for the firstborn, and it is a first for their parents.  We’ve walked through the emotional firsts of the first day of kindergarten, then middle school, dances, sports, high school, driving, dating, college…and a couple months ago my wife and I experienced another first with when our firstborn got engaged! What a joyful, exciting first that has been!

But travel back with me to the moment of the birth of the firstborn.  When a first child is born, in the midst of that intense emotion, the temptation is to think, “I did that, I own that, I created that, and it is mine.” 

But what does God say to Israel?  “Dedicate the firstborn to me.” 

He isn’t talking about children, by the way.  He is talking about animals.  “Set the firstborn animals apart,” he says, “and don’t work them in the fields, but reserve them for sacrifices to the Lord during the holiday, at which time you will eat them in the presence of the Lord.”  This means Israel was to have an attitude of giving back to the Lord first.  They were not to see themselves as the creator or owner of their firstborn animals.  They were to see God as the provider, God as the one who was responsible for the blessing of a firstborn. Thus they release that firstborn to God.

We can carry this principle over to the church.  We Christians are people who give God our firsts, and not just in finances, but also in our time, in our gifts and abilities.  We see his Kingdom as the priority, because he is the foundation and the cause of all the blessings we have.  We are simply stewards, or managers, or what God owns.

Paul talked about this in 1 Cor. 10:31,when he said, “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God.”  How are you doing with living to the glory of God?  How are you doing seeing yourself as a steward?  Or do you have a too-tight hold on your life, on your children, on your possessions, on your time, on your talents? 

Check back in tomorrow as we begin to look at the special holidays God proclaimed for Israel, how sacrificing the firstborn occurred on a holiday, and how Christians can learn some important principles from Deuteronomy 15 and 16. 

Should Christians have rules for holy living? (how God’s list of clean and unclean foods in Deuteronomy 14 matters to Christians, part 5)

Image result for rules?

What are the rules for holy living?  If you had to list some rules you have heard, what would you write?  Holiness refers to purity, so maybe you would include rules about avoiding putting anything unclean into your body.  Maybe you would include rules about washing, sanitizing, and purifying the water and air.  Toxicity is a popular concept in society, relating not just to the physical elements, but also to relationships.  Holy living might mean we exclude certain toxic people or media. There is much we could potentially include in a list of rules for holy living.  But should we?  As I am writing to Christians, I am especially wondering if God has rules for Christian holy living. 

This post is number 5 of 5 is a series studying Deuteronomy 14:1-21, and we have seen that God the father desired the people of Israel to live a holy life, because he treasures them and has their best interest in mind.  If they followed his way of living, they would look very different from people in neighboring nations.  Deuteronomy 14 was all about how different Israel would look in regard to the food they ate.  But does this matter to Christians?  In part 4, we studied the New Testament passages in which God overturned Israel’s food laws for Christians.  For Christians, all food is clean.  Does that mean Christians no longer need to practice holy living? 

To answer that, let’s take a look at what the New Testament writers tell us.  In Matthew 5:48 Jesus teaches, “Be holy, as your heavenly father is holy.” Here Jesus is quoting the Old Testament passages on which Deuteronomy 14 is based, but he is not saying that holiness in God’s Kingdom must look identical to what holy living looked like for Israel.  We know this from Mark 7, which we reviewed in part 4 of this series, when Jesus himself declares a new way of looking at holy living.  What does this new Christian way of holy living look like?  Thankfully, Jesus’ first followers explain it for us.

The Apostle Paul, for example, applies Jesus’ teaching for us when he writes in Romans 12:1-2:

“Therefore I urge you in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  

Paul, additionally, in Philippians 2:14-15 takes the concept of holiness and combines with our identification as children of God, which we referred to in part 2 of this series:

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.”

What this means is that the principle of holy living does apply to Christians.  Because of who God is, a holy loving father, and because of what he has done, saved us through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, we are to live the way he wants us to live.

Loved children of God, we are to be holy like our heavenly father is holy so that many others can become children of God.

So what do Christian holy lives look like?  If it is not about eating certain foods, what do we actually do?  I am not going to try to come up with “Joel’s rules for holiness”.  Instead I encourage you to read what Jesus himself taught, and as you do, you’ll see that Christian holy living is based in love for God and love for one another.

Love is the basis of holiness.  Children of God, you are loved so deeply by your father, that you are free to live the holy life he wants you to live.  Follow him.  Follow his ways.

I would encourage you to discover that holy life on your own.  First, read the teaching of Jesus in the biblical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and as you read, even if it takes you months, prayerfully ask God, “Lord, show me how to live a holy life.”  Then keep a notebook along with you, or maybe a note-taking app on your phone, and record every place where Jesus teaches about what a holy life looks like.  Prayerfully ask him to empower you to live that life.  Then think about the followers of Jesus that you know.  Which ones would you say are attempting to live out the way of Jesus and actually doing well at it.  Ask them to help you live that way.  Get their feedback and advice.

Finally if you know now or discover anew that there is something unclean in your life, and God is speaking to you today to change that, surrender it to him, ask him to take it from you, and see what he will do.  He has the power to transform your life.  But perhaps it has been a struggle for you, for months or years, and you need help.  One amazing thing that God does for his children whom he loves is that he places them in church families to help them.  Don’t keep silent about your struggle.  Talk with someone who can help you. And for freedom from some unclean habits, seek out professional help.  Making progress in holy living is possible!

Must Christians eat kosher? (how God’s list of clean and unclean foods in Deuteronomy 14 matters to Christians, part 4)

Photo by Prudence Earl on Unsplash

As I mentioned yesterday, God details his kosher law in his covenant with Israel.  This week we are studying Deuteronomy 14:1-21, and yesterday we looked at the fairly extensive list of animals that God declares clean or unclean for Israel.  But what about Christians?  Are we to apply kosher law to our lives?  Let’s look at a few places in the New Testament that refer to kosher law.

First, Jesus mentions the cleanliness laws in Mark 7:1-23.  Go ahead and read that before continuing here.  What did you notice?  In Deuteronomy 14 we see that it was certain animals that God said made the people unclean.  Things, animals, outside the people made the people unclean.  Jesus flips that and says, “No, it’s what is already inside you that is unclean, and it is revealed when you let it out of your heart.”  See that list of evil actions in Mark 7, verses 21-22?  When you notice those actions coming out of you, that should concern you, Jesus says, not pig’s meat. 

Interesting, then, Mark’s little comment there in verse 19, saying that Jesus declared all foods clean!  Yes, we can eat pork and ham!!! 

Now turn to Acts 10, where at this point, the church is still very new, very Jewish, and very much centered in the city Jerusalem.  They’ve made little inroads outside the borders of Israel, but not much.  Because God’s mission was to reach the whole world, to accomplish that mission those original Christians needed a little push. In the Jewish mindset people were clean if they Jewish and unclean if they were anyone else.  So to this point, maybe 3-5 years old, the church hadn’t taken much initiative to follow Jesus’ command that they were to be his witnesses not only in Jerusalem and Judea, but to the whole world.  Those original Christians were thinking Jewish. Kosher. 

So God needs to step in and remind them of what Jesus already taught back there in Mark 7.  But here’s a shocker: when God steps in, who does he first reach out to?  A guy who isn’t Jewish and who isn’t Christian!  Read Acts 10:1-8 and see for yourself.  God gives a guy named Cornelius a vision telling Cornelius to find and talk to a guy named Peter.  But Cornelius isn’t a Jew.  Instead he is a Roman Centurion, a soldier, the very people that have persecuted Jews, occupying their land!  Here’s the thing though: Cornelius isn’t your average Roman soldier.  We read that he was actually God-fearing and very generous to the Jews in the area he controlled.  God’s choice, then, to reveal himself to Cornelius is perfect, and we’ll see why as the story unfolds.  God isn’t done!  Read Acts 10:9-16, and you discover that God reaches out to Peter too, also in a vision, and in that vision God specifically refers to the kosher lists in Deuteronomy 14.  It’s quite a dramatic scene, and Peter is shaken to his core.

You see what God is doing?  He is saying, “Peter, all those lists of clean and unclean animals were for a day that has come and gone.  That was kosher thinking.  You are under a new covenant.  I define holiness a different way now.”

Peter should have known this, as he would have heard Jesus talked about it a lot, like the time I mentioned above in Mark 7.  But when you are dealing with a deeply entrenched cultural value, it is hard to see things a new way.   Peter tells God that he had never, ever, in his whole life, eaten something unclean.  I don’t believe Peter is exaggerating. So for Peter to have a vision is shocking enough, but for the message of the vision to be an overturning of the practice of holiness, it seems wrong to Peter.

A few years ago at Faith Church, I had a man from the congregation approach me with an outreach idea.  He was a ballroom dance instructor in his professional life, and he felt that if the church offered beginning dance classes for free to the community, it would be a big hit, and a great way for the church to connect with the community.  He would teach a 4-week series of classes as an experiment.  Inwardly, I doubted his opinion, but I loved his creativity and initiative and said, “Let’s propose the idea to the Outreach Team!”  One of the people on the Outreach Team was extremely concerned with the idea, having a super hard time with the image of dancing in a church fellowship hall.  This person said to me that growing up, there was no dancing allowed in the church.  The perspective was very much like Peter’s, except that while Peter’s was based on actual law, the person in my church grew up with a no-dancing perspective based on tradition.  I responded to the person that it is absolutely okay to dance in a church fellowship hall, that the perspective they grew up with was actually wrong, and further, this was going to be tasteful, classy dancing.  The Outreach Team approved the idea, publicized it to the community, and to my surprise and delight, on the first night, so many couples showed up, we had to turn some away!

Over the next few years, I believe God opened the eyes of some people at Faith Church who grew up in a no-dancing tradition.  In Acts 10-11 God  opened Peter’s eyes too.  At the time, Peter was the leader of the church, and motivated by God’s vision, begins a new initiative pursuing the mission of God to love all people.  God has been using the kosher law as a metaphor, encouraging Peter not only to see that now all foods are clean, but also that all people are clean in God’s eye, “clean” in the sense that God wants Peter and his church to reach out to pagan people like Cornelius.  So for Peter it is now not just okay to eat all foods, but also to share the message of the Good News of Jesus to all people.  You can read for yourself how Peter and the church respond to this shocking news.  What I  want us to consider here is the ramification for our lives.  Because Jesus has reversed the kosher law for us, does that mean we are now free to live however we want?

Jesus himself addressed that question in Matthew 5:48 when he quoted a famous passage in the Old Covenant, “Be holy, as your heavenly father is holy.”   Originally, when he preached that, Jesus was talking to Jews who were still living under the terms of the Old Covenant between God and Israel.  At the time, Jesus himself, had not died and rose again, and thus God had not fully enacted the New Covenant with the Church.  So are we Christians to live holy lives?  Check back in tomorrow to part 5, and we’ll see!

Cutting, Shaving, and other detestable things (how God’s list of clean and unclean foods in Deuteronomy 14 matters to Christians, part 3)

In this series of posts we are studying what, at first glance, might be a strange chapter of the Bible, Deuteronomy 14.  While it starts out with a fairly familiar concept, that we are sons and daughters of God, the phrase that comes next in verse 1 is really bizarre and might be surprising: “do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead.”  What???

Here we need to dig a bit into Ancient Near Eastern culture.  I want to mention two names that you may or may not have heard before.  They are names of two gods that were worshiped by the nations in that area of the world.

Have you heard of Ba’al?  (I’ve heard it pronounced “bail” or “buh-all.”)  Then there is another god, El. (Pronounced like the letter L or “ail”.)  In the Old Testament, the name “El” is used in conjunction with other words, to describe the Lord God, such as the Hebrew name El Shaddai?  Sometimes El Shaddai is translated “God Almighty,” referring to Yahweh’s strength, power and sufficiency.  That word “El” is also the name of another Ancient Near Eastern god, like Ba’al.  Scholars tell us that in a story from ancient “Ugaritic literature, the god El gashes himself in mourning for the dead god Baal.” (McConville, Deuteronomy, 248)  Because of stories like this, some of the nations in that region incorporated self-cutting in their funeral rituals.  In 1 Kings 18, this practice shows up in the story of Elijah and prophets of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel. 

Here’s the thing, though.  Israel was not to cut themselves or shave the front of their heads, because that was what pagans did.  In other words, Yahweh was saying to Israel, that was not clean living.  Cutting and other forms of self-mutilation are still practiced today, and in American culture they have rightly been given attention for how dangerous they can be.  If you or someone you know is cutting or harming themselves in some way, I urge you to lovingly reach out to them.  I am far from an expert in these matters, so I refer you to organizations like the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding and their extensive work on cutting and self-harm.

If self harm is not acceptable in God’s eyes, what are his standards for clean living? Deuteronomy 14, verse 2 is key, as Yahweh, Israel’s father, calls his sons and daughters to live like him:

“You are a people holy to the Lord your God.  Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.” 

Clean living is a life of holiness.  Israel was to live a holy life because they were God’s children, and he treasured them.  As you read Deuteronomy 14:2, notice how intimately and how lovingly God felt about them.  Israel could look back over the last 40 years and see how God rescued them, provided for them, protected them, and so it was entirely reasonable for God to give them a new way to live, even if that way of life was totally different from the world around them.  Clean living was about living a holy life, which is another way of saying, living God’s way.

Later in part 5, we’re going to come back to this, as verse 2 is central to the passage.  For now, let’s move on, trying to observe the flow of thought into verse 3.  Here Moses introduces what the rest of this passage, verses 4-21, is about: “Do not eat any detestable thing.” 

We started the week in part 1, talking about our likes and dislikes when it comes to food.  In this chapter, Moses is not talking about gross food. Instead, that word “detestable” in verse 3 is about what is kosher or not kosher.  Kosher means “fit,” but not “fit” like a person who exercises and is in shape.  Kosher refers to what is “fitting” or “acceptable” to eat.  Another way of describing it is “clean” and “unclean”.

Still today in Judaism kosher law is a big deal.  On a package of food, you might find some symbols like the ones in the picture, indicating that food is kosher or clean.  If you’re interested in learning more about the process of how foods receive kosher approval in today’s Jewish communities, there are plenty of places online.  A few years ago I enjoyed reading AJ Jacobs’ book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which he humorously details his experiences with contemporary Judaism, as he attempted to very literally live out teachings such as Deuteronomy 14.  The heart behind kosher law is that Jews want to avoid anything that God has declared detestable.

We’ve seen the word “detestable”before in our study of Deuteronomy.  In fact,we saw it last week in chapter 12, verse 31, where God told Israel that they were not to worship like the pagans around them, because pagan worship included detestable things, especially human sacrifice.  The pagans practiced detestable religion, and Israel was to be different.

Here again, we that Israel is to be clean and holy, whereas the pagans were unclean and detestable.  Quite a stark difference! 

Verses 4-20, then, list all kinds of animals that are clean and unclean, very much related to the difference between holiness and that which is detestable.  To our modern ears, these chapters can sound bizarre.

For example, they could eat sheep and goats, but not pig or rabbits.  And they were not allowed eat insects, except for any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper, because they had jointed legs for hopping?  Huh?  In most Bibles, there is probably a text note saying that scholars don’t know the precise identification of all the animals in this list.  Some of them are educated guesses.

What gives with all these clean and unclean animals? Why does God choose some and not others?  Various Jewish and Christian commentators wonder if the unclean animals were banned by God because for hygienic reasons, because eating those animals would more likely negatively impact a person’s health.  Some wonder if the clean animals were chosen by God because they were more prevalent in the Promised Land, and thus easier for Israel to hunt.  Scholars have numerous opinions about these perspectives, but the one option they all agreed on is this:  some, if not most, of the unclean creatures were used in worship of other false gods, and of course Yahweh wants there to be no association between his people and false gods. 

McConville says that “The more important question is how this fits with the theology of Israel’s holiness.” (250)  And that theology of holiness was simple:  Israel was the loved children of God, and thus they were to live holy lives.  They were to be different from the detestable, unclean people around them.  Israel was to follow God’s way, a new clean way, called holiness.

That key word “detestable” in verse 3 is a major point God is trying to get across.  Connect it with the words “for you” in verse 7 and 10 and 19, where God says, “Israel, certain animals are unclean for you.”

When we read that, we have to remember that God had Israel’s best interest in mind.  As bizarre as this chapter looks to our modern eyes, we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God wanted Israel to thrive.  He wasn’t trying to make life difficult for them.  Instead he was trying to set them free to truly live.  That is very instructive for Christians who might find some of God’s teaching for us to also be difficult.  Even if we don’t understand how it might be in our best interest, we can trust that God wants us to flourish.

Also let us remember that these laws in Deuteronomy are part of God’s covenant with Israel.  They are not part of God’s covenant with the church.  In fact, this very concept of clean and unclean things is dramatically overturned in the New Testament.  Tomorrow we’ll look at a few places.