Posts

Online courses and discussions, plus live Bible studies!

Join the Common Sense Bible Study community!
Posted on

The Cupbearer’s Choice

Threads in a tapestry, links in a chain, cupbearers in Pharaoh’s court…

God’s plan is always convoluted. He weaves divers threads from the beginning of time knowing precisely where He will bring them together millennia later so that events will converge just so and individuals will be presented with choices that will determine their status in the world to come.

Consider the long chain of events that brought Joseph into power in Egypt. God gave him dreams and caused Jacob to give him a peculiar coat so that his brothers would be jealous and betray him in time to sell him to the Ishmaelite caravan that delivered him to Potiphar who threw him in prison where he met the baker and the cupbearer who told Pharaoh about him so that he could save both Egypt and his own people, all the while laying down patterns that foreshadowed the ministry, betrayal, death, and resurrection of the Messiah who would also save both the world (Egypt) and Israel.

Complex, convoluted, and–in the end–all wrapped up with no loose ends. Not even Hollywood could tie a plot together like God does.

Joseph isn’t the only person for whom God arranged the threads of existence.

Let’s zoom in on Pharaoh’s cupbearer for a moment. Whatever his crime had been, God needed him to be in prison so that he could meet Joseph who could interpret his dream so that he could later tell Pharaoh about it. The plot grows thicker.

Pharaoh restored the chief cupbearer to his position, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. (Genesis 40:21)

Read this verse again, paying special attention to the second half. Isn’t that an odd statement? “He placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand,” as if there was only one cup and it was a one-time event.

Throughout the Scriptures, cups are used to portray what we might call fate. God gives to one person or nation a cup of wrath and to another He gives a cup of blessing.

I will take the cup of salvation. (Psalm 116:13)
and
Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath. (Jeremiah 25:15)

So the cup that the chief cupbearer placed into the hand of Pharaoh is not just a cup, but a Cup of either curses or blessings. Whether it was one or the other depended on a series of choices:

  • Would the cupbearer remember Joseph to Pharaoh or not?
  • Would Pharaoh tell Joseph his dream?
  • Would Pharaoh believe Joseph’s interpretation and heed his advice?

If any of these had gone the wrong way, Egypt would have suffered in the coming famine while God would have saved the Hebrews some other way. As it was, the cup was full of blessing until Egypt once again forgot Joseph many years later.

Interestingly, the baker and the cupbearer foreshadow another aspect of the story of Yeshua. One of them (the cupbearer) was released and the other (the baker) condemned during a national holiday (Pharaoh’s birthday). Yeshua was arrested during a national holiday (Passover) and, after His trial, Pilate reminded the people that it was a tradition to release one prisoner every year at this time. They chose to release Barrabas (the cupbearer) and to execute Yeshua (the baker).

It makes me wonder if the cupbearer was actually a murderer and if the baker was innocent.

God’s story-telling mastery is so complete that He has done the same thing for every one of us. You are somebody’s cupbearer, choosing in each moment to deliver the truth about God, His Law, and His Messiah or to withhold that truth. If you behave or speak in such a way as to deny someone God’s Truth, you become partly responsible for the resulting curses in that person’s life, and you have no way of knowing in advance which moments, which choices will have the greatest impact. It’s your responsibility to do right when you are able, to put the cup in Pharaoh’s hand, so to speak. When you have spoken the Truth, when you have shown the love of Messiah in the world by doing good to those around you, then your cup becomes one of blessing to you, and the power to transform the contents of the cup in one way or the other devolves to the next person.

We are all threads in a continuous fabric that stretches from one end of time to the other. God sees the overall pattern and places us where He needs us. We don’t always have a lot of control over the basic circumstances in our lives. We do, however, have control over how we choose to interact with those circumstances. We can be like Joseph, speaking the Truth, doing what’s right, and forgiving those who meant to do us wrong, or we can keep silent, look after ourselves, and resent those who appear to have imprisoned us.

You can choose to drink from a cup of salvation or be forced to drink from a cup of wrath. However the world appears around you, the choice remains yours.

Choose between the cup of Salvation and the cup of Wrath.

Posted on

A Foreigner in Canaan

Genesis 37:1  And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.

David Stern translates this verse, “Ya’akov continued living in the land where his father had lived as a foreigner, the land of Kena’an.”

It was clear in last week’s Torah portion (Vayishlach) that Jacob continued the family tradition of being a stranger in his own land. That was as it should have been. Pagans filled the Land and sought either to assimilate or to destroy the Hebrews. Assimilation into the local, Canaanite culture would have been a disaster. Abraham told Eliezer that Isaac was not to marry a Canaanite woman under any circumstance, and Isaac gave Jacob the same advice. Intermarriage consistently brought more problems than it was worth. Remember Esau and Judah.

You will not be assimilated. Resistance is fundamental.

It is always difficult to live by God’s standards, and doubly so without the support of a like-minded community. It is easy to allow standards to slip, to let a little transgression slide. With no one to hold you accountable without the moral support of Torah-keeping friends and family, it’s as easy as breathing. Yet God’s consistent marker upon his people is that they are visibly different. They do not behave like the world around them. They dress differently. They speak differently. They behave differently. They keep different holy days. They are conspicuous and set apart (the literal meaning of “holy”) by God’s design. We are not called to be seeker friendly, to make citizenship in the Kingdom of God look easy. We are called to occupy a foreign and hostile land until Messiah Yeshua returns and delivers the kingdom he promised. Like Jacob, we must continue living in the land in which we and our fathers have been aliens.

The real question is not how to blend in, but what to do with our conspicuousness. I can say with absolute certainty that I have not found a satisfactory answer to that question in my own life in a way that honors God. Being different without being better is just being odd.

These must be our priorities:

  1. Mercy and service to the fatherless, the widows, the sick, the poor, and imprisoned. There is no higher good deed than doing good to those who cannot repay you.
  2. Justice to all people. Obedience to the letter of the commandment without regard to justice is not obedience to the author of the commandment.
  3. Obedience to God’s commands. You cannot preach forgiveness and repentance if you haven’t repented of your own sins.
  4. Preaching the gospel. Once your own house is in order, you can set about helping others build theirs.
Posted on

The Passion of Esau

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how Esau wanted to do the right thing but never stopped to ask what that was.

Last week, I wrote about some of Jacob’s encounters with angels and his trust in God.

This week, I’m going to beat up on Esau again, and not just Esau, but his descendants too.

Esau was a man of passion. That isn’t a bad thing. Any self-help guru worth his salt will tell you that passion is a basic ingredient of success. It just needs to be balanced with self restraint.

When he was young, Esau was ruled by his passions. His physical urges drove him to make foolish decisions that he would later regret. He was hungry, so he traded his birthright for a meal. He wanted a woman, so he went out and got himself two of them.

Edom means red. Esau was ruled by his passions. He burned hot and burned out quickly.

Fortunately, as Esau aged, he learned to reign himself in. His desires drove him to obtain the seeds of wealth, while his late learned discipline allowed him to keep and develop them into a substantial sum. By the time Jacob returned from Haran with his family, Esau had accumulated large herds and an army of servants. When they met east of the Jordan, they met peacefully. When Jacob resisted Esau’s attempts to assimilate his family into his own, Esau didn’t respond with anger or force, but went on his way.

Unfortunately, he passed his impetuous tendencies onto his children.

These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom [another name for Esau], before any king reigned over the Israelites.(Genesis 36:31 ESV)

At first reading, this verse sounds like the Edomites were a great success, and in many respects they were. While the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, Esau’s descendants became kings and their kingdom lasted for more than a thousand years. But examine the list of Edomite kings in the following verses:

  • Bela son of Beor of Dinhabah
  • Jobab son of Zerah of Bozrah
  • Husham the Temanite
  • Hadad son of Bedad of Avith
  • Samlah of Masrekah
  • Shaul of Rehoboth
  • Baal-Hanan son of Achbor
  • Hadar of Pau

These were kings, not judges in the style of Israel, yet not one of them was the son of the previous king. A scepter rarely passes from one man to another who is not close blood relative without violence. The Edomite culture was one of violence and upheaval, each regime wresting the kingdom from the one before and taking the people in a new direction. Like their father, Esau, the Edomite kings saw what they wanted and took it.

When Moses asked the King of Edom if the Hebrews could pass through their land on their way to their own homeland, their king refused and threatened to attack if they crossed the border. The people of Israel even offered to pay for any resources they might use. The Edomites responded by sending an army. One interesting aspect of this exchange is that after the initial communications, the conversation is described as happening between Israel and Edom, alternate names for Jacob and Esau (Numbers 20:21). The Edomites followed Esau’s pattern of responding to Israel’s return to the land with a show of force, but unlike Esau, the Edomites had not learned to temper their immediate passions for the sake of future material gain.

The end result is easy for us to see today. The Jews maintained themselves as a distinct people even without a homeland for thousands of years and have reestablished themselves as an independent state, while the Edomites were completely absorbed by the surrounding peoples, including the Jews, during the time of the Romans. Their land is the harshest desert now, occupied by Israel and Jordan.

All of our base physical urges–hunger, desire, ambition, etc.–are good things. God built them into us and we wouldn’t be human without them. But be careful and remember Esau. He is a warning to everyone. Don’t look for the easy way or the fast way. Seek wisdom, not gain, and gain will follow in time. Teach your children to act boldly, but always to consider tomorrow’s consequences of today’s actions. Your great grandchildren will remember the lesson.

Posted on

Why Was Jacob Always Seeing Angels?

Why di d Jacob encounter so many angels?There are angels all over in Scripture. They guard people and places. They deliver messages. They execute judgment. They guide some travelers and hinder others.

But I think, of all the angelic encounters in the Bible, Jacob’s are perhaps the most mysterious.

When Jacob fled from his brother Esau after taking his blessing from their father, he camped at Beer-sheba Bethel and dreamed of angels coming and going from Heaven (Genesis 28:10-15). As he watched these angels busy on unknown errands, God said to him, “Your offspring will be like the dust of the earth… Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:14-15) Since Jacob was running for his life to a place he had never visited before across potentially dangerous territory, especially for a man alone, this must have been very encouraging. He traveled from that place to Haran where he served Laban for fourteen years, was cheated out of wages but still came out ahead, fathered at least 11 children, and became very wealthy.

Many years later, traveling back to the Promised Land from Haran, Jacob again encountered a large number of angels, this time at a place he called Mahanaim (Genesis 32:1-2). He saw them and exclaimed, “This is God’s army!” Jacob didn’t interact with them or with God, at least not right away, but he was reminded that the last time he saw angels, he had been running from Esau. This time he was headed back to Canaan where Esau was still waiting. Although many years had past, we all know that some grudges remain hot long after the original cause.

Hoping to cool Esau’s anger, Jacob sent his own angels (Hebrew melek in verse 3, the same word used for angels in verse 1) ahead with liberal gifts. When he heard that Esau was coming to meet him, he reminded God of His promise so long ago and pointed out that his offspring weren’t yet like the dust of the earth, so shouldn’t God still be watching over him?

What Jacob might not have realized was that there wasn’t anything particularly special about Mahanaim except that it’s the place where God momentarily opened his eyes. Those angels weren’t permanently camped there. They had surrounded Jacob at Beer-Sheba and stayed with him all through the years. They were always there, even when he couldn’t see them. God had great plans for Jacob and He wasn’t about to let anything interfere with those plans. Even though Jacob couldn’t see them except once every few decades, they never left his side. They couldn’t abandon him to Esau anymore than God can break a promise.

Here’s the best news of all: God has a plan for everyone, and He sends His angels to make sure those plans are carried out. Now, I can’t promise you that you’ll like whatever God has in store for you. Jacob suffered quite a bit over the years. Having a destiny doesn’t mean having a life of ease. It might even mean suffering and dying a terrible, painful death. I know that doesn’t sound encouraging, but it should. If your trust is in God, then whatever you suffer in His service now will be reversed ten fold later, whether in this life or in the life to come.

On the other hand, if your trust is in something else, this ought to be the furthest thing from a comfort. Remember the angel that blocked Balaam’s path. He had set out to curse Israel. God not only turned his curses into blessing, but ensured that Balaam eventually met a violent and shameful end, and there was no counterbalancing reward waiting for him on the other side of death, but rather the lake of fire.

God’s promises are sure, His plans unchangeable. Don’t be on the wrong side of them.

There are angels all around us all the time, carrying messages, executing judgment, standing guard. Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Trust in God and believe in His Providence, for there is an angelic army on your side.

Truly, if God is for us, who can possibly be against us?

Posted on

Esau’s Choices

I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who learn from others’ mistakes and those who have to learn from their own. Esau represents a third type: those who don’t learn from anyone’s mistakes and blame others when things go badly.

Esau had a number of character flaws, the most obvious of which was an inability to master his base urges. This is illustrated in Genesis’ characterization of him as a hunter, as opposed to his father, Isaac, who was a farmer, and his brother, Jacob, who was a herdsman. There’s nothing wrong with being a hunter, but it is emphasized in the narrative because it is an activity through which an impetuous, yet skilled, man can easily earn a living, at least for a time. If he wants meat, he can go out and get it. A herdsman, on the other hand, tends his animals today for next year’s meat. He plans many more moves in advance than does a hunter. A wise hunter also plans in advance to learn effective techniques and to ensure conditions favorable to game, but such wisdom isn’t absolutely necessary to be a successful hunter, while, without planning and preparation, a herdsman must shortly seek a new career.

However, this Torah reading (Genesis 25:19-28:9, called Toldot) reveals another of Esau’s flaws, one that isn’t discussed quite as much.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God.Esau hated asking for directions.

He was a lot like Cain in this respect. When Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s wasn’t, Cain’s response wasn’t to ask for help, but to attack Abel. Esau was especially bad at this when it came to women.

The custom in those days–and it was a very good custom–was for parents to find a spouse for their child, or at the very least to be heavily involved in the vetting process. Esau, however, being a man of the “now” didn’t wait to ask his parents’ advice. He married not one, but two, Hittite women who “made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.” (Genesis 26:34)

Perhaps Esau misinterpreted the friendly commercial dealings between his family and the Hittites or perhaps he just fell prey to his impulsive nature. We aren’t told precisely why he chose these women. We are only told that his decision was deeply offensive to his parents.

About thirty-six years later, Jacob and Rebekah conspired to get Esau’s blessing from Isaac and seized on Jacob’s need for a wife as an excuse to send him away from Esau’s murderous rage. Rebekah told Isaac, “I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” (Genesis 27:46)

Esau learned of this and, in an attempt to regain his parents’ favor, decided to get another wife, this time from the family of Abraham. Unfortunately, he went to the wrong side of the family. Instead of going to Abraham’s nephew, Bethuel, for a wife, he went to Abraham’s half-Egyptian son, Ishmael.

Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram to take a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he directed him, “You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women,” and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan-aram. So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth.
(Genesis 28:6-9)

Instead of asking Isaac and Rebekah directly, he again tried to reason out for himself what he should do. Instead of resolving the problem, he merely added to it. He could have saved everyone trouble by asking for help in finding a good woman from the beginning. When his parents’ displeasure became obvious, again he could have saved even more trouble by asking for help. Unfortunately, Esau just wasn’t the type to ask for directions. With no map and only a hint at the proper bearing, he thought he could plot out the correct route for himself, and he failed at every turn.

I’ve been where he was. I thought I was smart enough to plot my own course. Marriage, parenthood, career… Billions of people manage these things. Surely I could figure them out too. What I failed to see is that nobody does it successfully without the active support of family and community and the advise of others who did it first. I didn’t have those things–didn’t know that I needed them–and I foundered.

The Scriptures are full of admonitions to listen to counsel.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.
(Proverbs 12:15)

Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice.
(Ecclesiastes 4:13)

But these verses leave out one important lesson that we should take away from Esau’s example: You can’t follow advice that you never received.

Esau didn’t do what his parents wanted, but it appears that he wanted to. For whatever reason, Isaac and Rebekah failed to teach Esau in a way that he understood, and he failed to ask. He was an intelligent and capable man who could learn the habits of wild game through observation and reason. Applying those skills to his relationships, he saw what his family did and heard what they said, but he drew the wrong conclusions because there were factors that he couldn’t see.

The world is full of wisdom. Some comes only by experience and some by listening, but there is wisdom that only comes by asking.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
(James 1:5)

If you find that your plans continue to end poorly no matter how hard you try to do the right thing, it’s time to ask for help. Ask your parents, brother, pastor, or rabbi. Ask God. If you ask honestly, very few will deny you, so ask them all. “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22) Nobody can figure everything out alone.

Wisdom is all around you, available for the asking, and you can’t follow advice that nobody gives you.

Posted on

The Only Enduring Legacy

Abraham married three times, had at least eight children, traveled the known world, led an army, and accumulated fantastic wealth. He interacted with kings as an equal and was a personal friend of the Creator of heaven and earth. He lived a long and eventful life and half the world calls him father today.

Genesis has something very curious to say about what he did with all that he had acquired.

Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and while he was still living he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country.
(Gen 25:5-6)

If Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac, what gifts could he have given to his other sons?

There are three ways to understand this:

  1. Abraham gave gifts to his other sons and then bequeathed all that remained to Isaac. This is possible, but based on the order of the statements, I don’t think this is what is intended.
  2. Rashi wrote that these gifts might be the things that he had acquired from Pharaoh and Abimelech after the misunderstandings over Sarah. Abraham didn’t want to be associated with them, so didn’t really consider them his. For this to be true, he would have had to keep two completely different sets of books, including segregated flocks and servants, for more than 75 years with no confusion between the two. Why wouldn’t he have just given them away during that time? This explanation also seems unlikely to me.
  3. “All he had” didn’t include tangible things at all, but spiritual things. This, I believe, is the correct answer.

Everything belongs to God. Whatever we have is only held in trust for the day God requires it from us. “I own the cattle on a thousand hills,” God says. But Abraham did have a set of possessions that was completely his. God could never recall these things, could never demand that anyone to whom He has given them, return them:

  • Covenant
  • Promises
  • Knowledge
  • Wisdom

These are things that neither God nor man nor death can ever take from you. You can’t touch them or put them in a bank, but once yours, they are yours forever. Not only that, but you can share them. You can give them away as much as you want without ever running out. They can’t be inflated, deflated, or out of stock. When you die, your relationship with the Father, your knowledge of His character, and the wisdom of His righteousness are the only things that will still belong to you. Best of all, you can pass them on to your children.

I’m sure Abraham imparted wisdom and knowledge to his other sons–whether or not they accepted these gifts–but the Covenant and associated promises he only gave to Isaac. Not because he didn’t want to give them to all of his sons–he asked God as much when he had to send Ishmael away–but because Isaac was part of God’s redemption plan, while Zimran, Jokshan, et al, weren’t. The Covenant was Abraham’s single most important possession. It was only because of the Covenant, that he received God’s promises, that he learned of God’s character, and that he adopted the wisdom of God’s righteousness. The Covenant was truly all that Abraham had and he gave it to Isaac long before he died.

I would like to be able to pass on some material goods to my son when I die, but what I really want him to take from me is a covenant relationship with our Heavenly Father. When I die, when my son dies, when we are all dead and turned to dust, Abraham’s Covenant is the only thing we will still possess. It ensures our eternal salvation, our resurrection and reunion with our Creator. It is the most important thing in the world that a father could give to his son.

It’s important to teach our children to save, to invest, and to live productive lives. But it is infinitely more important to teach them to be a friend and a son of God and a productive citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. As you gather with family and friends this week, remember to thank God for the great gift He promised us through Abraham and delivered to us through Yeshua. Especially remember to let your children see your gratitude.

Abraham considered his covenant with Adonai to be his one enduring possession.

Posted on

The Roles and Fields of Righteous Men

Every laborer has his place in God's vineyard.Four of the great patriarchs of Torah were faced with the deserved destruction of unrighteous people, and the all reacted differently.

When God told Noah that he would destroy the entire world by a great flood, he spent his days building an ark to save his family according to God’s command, but also in preaching to the lost. Even though God had told him the world was beyond saving, he meant to try it anyway. God did not rebuke him for it, and the Apostles even praised Noah for his great work as a preacher. Even so, his efforts seem pointless. I doubt that he gained anything useful from them except for a greater understanding of the debased nature of man. God killed every living person on the planet outside of Noah’s small family.

A few hundred years later, God told Abraham that he was about to destroy Sodom. The people there had never done anything for Abraham, and in fact had caused him a considerable amount of trouble. Abraham knew that Sodom was a cesspit and didn’t want anything to do with it, yet he dared to bargain with God to save the people of Sodom anyway. The remarkable thing is that God entertained this negotiation. Like Noah before him, Abraham’s efforts went unrewarded beyond the personal gain of a greater understanding of God and man. God sterilized Sodom with fire, saving only Lot, his wife, and two daughters.

Lot too, tried to save more than were only in his house. He tried to save his married daughters and their families as the angels told him, but he couldn’t even convince those whom God had told him to save. He should have been working to save the people of Sodom all along, but he waited until it was too late, and then he couldn’t even save what was once his own. Even those family members who had escaped with him would be taken away, his wife by her own disobedience, and his daughters by his own poor judgment and the infectious wickedness of Sodom that they had brought with them. Lot, too, learned something of God and human nature, but he couldn’t save anyone.

Later, Moses would be given the opportunity to save others multiple times. He tried to save Pharaoh and the people of Egypt through preaching, but he already knew that they wouldn’t listen and would be crushed beneath God’s wrath. However, the outcome in Moses’ other opportunities was different than all those previous. He called Israel out of Egypt, and they followed him and the pillar across the Red Sea to safety. He interceded on Israel’s behalf several times in the wilderness, even offering his own life, and caused God to spare them each time.

I’m not sure that Moses was such a better man than Abraham or Noah. (A strong argument could be made concerning Lot, however.) They were all great men of God. So why did Moses succeed where his ancestors had failed?

The answer is the same that must be given to the man called to be a shepherd who would rather be a traveling evangelist, to a prophet who would rather be a king, and to a hand that would rather be an eye: It wasn’t their job.

Noah’s job was to clear the land. He uprooted trees, cut sod, and tilled the soil. It didn’t matter how long he preached to the blades of grass; they would never become wheat. Abraham planted seeds in the soil Noah had prepared. He weeded, watered, and fertilized. And Lot…well, Lot tried, but in the end, all he could do was transplant a few questionable tares from one garden to another.

But Moses harvested. He arrived in just the right season, and he reaped where he hadn’t sown. That was simply his role to play. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Moses was greater than Abraham. Where would the reaper be without the sower? Moses just had a different job to do.

(Originally written for Soil from Stone, January 22, 2013.)

Posted on

The End of the Wicked

Arise, O LORD! Let not man prevail!

David begins Psalm 9 with an outline:

  • I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart;
  • I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
  • I will be glad and exult in you;
  • I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

He proceeds to describe the victories and favoritism God has granted (and will grant) him, then to invite the people of Zion to join him in singing God’s praises, and finally to make several observations about the relationship of God to men that reveals the characters of both.

In the final segment, David focuses on the futile nature of mere men thumbing their noses at an omnipotent Creator.

Psalms 9:15-20 ESV
The nations have sunk in the pit that they made;
     in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.
The LORD has made himself known;
     he has executed judgment;
The wicked are snared
     in the work of their own hands.

Meditation. Selah.

The wicked shall return to Sheol, 
     all the nations that forget God.
For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
     and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.
Arise, O LORD! Let not man prevail; 
     let the nations be judged before you!
Put them in fear, O LORD! 
     Let the nations know that they are but men!

Selah.

Scheming for relative advantage is one of the favorite activities of the wicked, and they are often very good at hiding both their actions and their motives. They set traps for the unsuspecting, hoping to tear people down to make themselves look higher, or to take advantage of someone else’s fall in order to promote their own interests.

If you are ever unsure about the character of someone, watch how he treats people who are less capable or less “sophisticated.” Does he hide the flaws of a product in order to pass the expense of future repairs on to a future owner? Does he make loud promises of gains for everyone, but somehow only ever enriches himself?

No matter what a person says or appears to do, pay attention to the end result of his personal and business dealings. If people who trust him regularly lose, while he keeps going along as if the fault is always someone else’s, watch out. Eventually he’ll fall into a trap of his own making and take with him anyone who is standing too closely. (Remember Korah!)

Death is a great magnet, pulling on men’s souls. Like iron, the evil that infects us and drives us to work toward the destruction of others inevitably pulls us back to its point of origin. David says that the wicked “shall return to Sheol,” and how can they return to something from which they haven’t already come?

Don’t, however, confuse entrapment with giving someone enough rope to hang themselves. It’s one thing to set traps for the unsuspecting. It’s another thing altogether to stand back and let someone destroy themselves by their own blundering or scheming.

The difference between these two competitive strategies draws a clear line between the character of God and the character of mere men. God doesn’t set out to destroy us, but He knows our faults, and has designed the Universe in such a way that those who seek to destroy others will eventually be destroyed by the very weapons they use against others. He knows the End from the Beginning and can never lose a game that He designed for His own purposes.

He will never abandon his faithful who are oppressed by the wicked. He is a God of Life and He will not allow those who put their trust in Him to be swallowed up by Death.

Arise, O LORD! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you! Put them in fear, O LORD! Let the nations know that they are but men!

Posted on

The Real Difference Between the Righteous and the Wicked

The Scriptures call Noah, Abraham, and David righteous men, but Paul said that “all our righteousness is as filthy rags.” The Biblical narratives of these men illustrates Paul’s point very well:

The second thing Noah did when he got off the boat was to plant a vineyard so he could get drunk. (You have to give him props for patience and long-term planning.) When push came to shove, Abraham lied and gave up his wife in order to save his own skin. And who can forget the story of David and Bathsheba? Over the preceding decades, he killed hundreds of men with his own hands and then topped it off by stealing a friend’s wife and having the friend killed to cover up his adultery.

After all that, how can Scripture call them righteous men, “a friend of God”, and “a man after God’s own heart”?

Psalm 32, written by David, is a chiastic song (see here for an explanation of chiasms) that helps us understand this seeming contradiction.

A chiasm in Psalm 32

  • A – V1-2 Blessed is the forgiven who honestly repents
    • B – V3-4 Living in unrepented, unconfessed sin is oppressive to a righteous man
      • C – V5 I determined to confess (speech) and I will be forgiven.
        • D – V6-7 Let the righteous pray to God before it is too late. God will save them.
      • C – V8 Let me tell you (speech) how to find the peace that I have.
    • B – V9 Don’t cling stubbornly to sin. Don’t prompt God to reign you in forcibly.
  • A – V10-11 Steadfast love and joy are for the righteous and upright in heart

David began by describing the reaction of a righteous man to sin in his own life. “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. Day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” He vividly described a tormented, guilty conscience. He continued by describing the antidote to his shame: confession, forgiveness, repentance. He said the same will work for every righteous person: “Let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may still be found.”

Adopting the perspective of God speaking to the penitent David, he wrote, “I will teach you how to walk and will watch over you as you go.” The wicked, to the contrary, do not repent, but cling stubbornly to their sin. If they feel shame’s call to repent, they suppress it until they can no longer hear it. Longing to be free, they reject God’s Law of life and love, and replace it with another, harsher law of death and hatred. “Many are the sorrows of the wicked,” David said, “but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in Adonai.”

David was a righteous man, yet he sinned. The difference between a righteous and a wicked man, according to David’s testimony, isn’t sin itself, but the man’s response to it. The righteous man doesn’t want to sin. He wants to be perfect, to be obedient to God’s instructions. He listens to his conscience and to God’s words. The wicked man hears the same words, feels the same shame, but trains himself to ignore it, to submit instead to a yoke of sin that can only lead to death.

Be the righteous man by confessing your sins to God, asking His forgiveness, and by endeavoring not to repeat them. In Romans 1-2, Paul describes what will happen if you ignore God’s call for too long.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
(Romans 1:28 ESV)

Eventually, it will be too late. You won’t be able to turn back, either because God won’t let you or because you have just run out of time.

(This post is about what separates the heart of the righteous from the heart of the wicked. Later this week, I’ll talk about a few outward evidences of what’s going on inside.)