I have enjoyed preaching this series of sermons on the Heroes of Faith, primarily because of the dialogue with many of you. Some of you are troubled by certain things in the lives of these heroes of faith.

Some of your were troubled that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all had more than one wife. Deuteronomy 17 said that a king should have few wives, but David had seven wives. Solomon exceeded his father 100 fold. According to 1st Kings 11: 3 Solomon was said to have over 700 wives and 300 concubines. This did not please the Lord, for these wives turned Solomon’s heart to foreign gods, yet God still permitted Solomon to build the first temple in Jerusalem. Over the years, many people have questioned me about the polygamy in the Old Testament. In my studies, I have been forced to conclude that the Bible does not have a single sexual ethic. Some have suggested this ambiguity extends even into the time of the New Testament. For instance, we read in 1st Timothy 3 that anyone who serves as a bishop (elder) or a deacon should be “ the husband of one wife.” Some commentators suggest this means that officers of the church must be a married man. Others suggest that they must not be divorced and remarried. Still others suggest that officers of the church must not practice polygamy. I would remind you that even today at least a small percentage of Mormons accept polygamy, and they can manage at least some scriptural support, especially among the patriarchs, David, and Solomon. This question is especially complicated if you read the Bible as equally inspired from Genesis to Revelation, each verse having the same measure of importance as every other. I long ago decided that Martin Luther’s understanding of scripture was better than Joseph Smith’s. Luther maintained that the Scripture is inspired in direct proportion that it preaches Jesus Christ. This means that Revelation is progressive, and Jesus is God’s last and best word, and that any future word must be in harmony with Him. Given what Jesus said in Mark 10 about a man leaving his mother and father and becoming, “one flesh” with his wife, it is difficult to imagine Jesus accepting polygamy.

Likewise, some of you are troubled by the harsher sayings of Moses. Many of you were shocked that Moses commanded that consistently disobedient children should be put before the elders of the city, and then stoned to death alongside adulterers, and homosexuals. Others would be shocked to learn that Moses barred men with crushed testicles from entering the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1). Today that would include many men who have served this nation in combat. So, too, Moses forbad any born out of wedlock from entering the assembly of the Lord, or his descendants, even to the 10th generation. (Deuteronomy 23:2) That is like saying that one of us could not come to church because we were born to a single-mother. I myself have always regarded these texts, and others like them, as not only pre-Christ, but also sub-Christ. They do not measure up to Him! I cannot imagine Jesus Christ advocating that we stone people to death—he did not offer cheap grace, but he did offer real forgiveness, and he left judgment in the hands of God. Nor can I imagine Jesus refusing to allow someone to join the church because of a mistake that his mother made, much less because of a mistake made by his great-grandparents, nine-times removed.

King David also comes in for his share of criticism. He may have ended his life, “a man after God’s own heart,” (Acts 13:22) but David did some things that cause us to blush, and other things that cause us to hang our heads in shame, especially the way he dealt with Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba whom he murdered to protect himself. (2nd Samuel 11:14-17) Indeed, David is every bit as flawed as our modern heroes. Dwight Eisenhower was a great president, my absolute favorite, because he was the first I really knew, but he let his wife Mamie down when had an affair with his driver, Kay Somersby. Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of California’s most popular governors, but he let his wife Maria down when he fathered a child by his housekeeper of twenty years. I could go on to name other prominent people who slipped—people like Bill Clinton, and several of the Kennedy’s and dozens of other politicians. In fairness I have to say that preachers have had our share of negative headlines. Jim Bakker was caught up in a sex scandal with Jessica Hahn. So, too, he defrauded a lot of people out of a lot of money. When the authorities went in to arrest him for fraud, they found him lying behind a couch in a fetal position. Perhaps, his position was a profession. Perhaps he wished he had never been born. It puts me in mind of the question of Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night: “Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be reborn when he is old?” No! But Jesus said a man can be “born from above,” or “born again” by the Spirit of God. I am happy to report that Bakker has made a confession and a comeback, and this time, he is far less concerned with fame and notoriety. I don’t agree with all that he is doing—but I am impressed that he is doing it!

What am I saying—only that the heroes of the Bible are flawed, like all our heroes are flawed, and like you and I, are flawed. The heroes of the Bible are fully heroes only when they, like the Scripture itself, reflect, and proclaim Jesus Christ.

And that brings us to Isaiah, the priest who was also a prophet. In Isaiah, at last, we have found a hero in whom there is no guile. Like just a few others before him, he is keenly aware of God’s holiness, and like almost no one before him, he is even more keenly aware of God’s grace. (Footnote: 1)

In Isaiah 6 we read about the true foundation of his faith—-it is nothing more, and nothing less, than a dramatic encounter with God.

In Isaiah 6 we read Isaiah’s personal testimony. He tells us about a powerful vision. He writes:

1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. 2 Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. 4 And the foundation of the threshold shook at the voice of him that called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am lost and undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. 6 Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged. 8 (Then) I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then said I, “Here am I; send me.”

I love that phrase, “Here am I; send me.” Oswald Chambers said that God is more interested in our availability than our ability. God can give the available all the ability they need. Isaiah was a hero primarily because he was available! Let us put Isaiah’s lasting value into context.

• The name of Moses appears 80 times in the New Testament, almost always as the Lawgiver. It is impossible to calculate the number of times the New Testament makes reference to something that Moses taught. Yet the New Testament makes a sharp contrast between the time of the Moses, and the time of Christ. In Galatians 3:24 St. Paul says that the Law of Moses was a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified through faith in him. (KJV)
• The name of King David appears 59 times in the New Testament. Jesus is often called “the son of David,” and he is to “sit upon the throne of David.” The plot thickens in the book of Revelation, which declares that Jesus is both “the root (the ancestor) and the offspring (the the progeny or descendant) of David.” (Revelation 22:16) The former in the time before the Incarnation of the Eternal Word in the Man Jesus, and the latter after the Incarnation.
• The name of Elijah is mentioned 29 times. All three synoptic gospels agree that Elijah appeared alongside Moses at the transfiguration of Jesus. Elijah stands for the Prophets as a whole as Moses stands for the Law as a whole. The Jews referred to the Hebrew Bible as “the Law and the Prophets,” as did Jesus. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus reveals a new, higher authority, greater than Moses and Elijah. Thus the voice of God declares, “This is my son, the beloved, listen to him!”
• Elijah is an important figure in the New Testament, yet, in many ways, he is overshadowed by Isaiah. Elijah is the hero of many stories, but the author of none—though he may have sent a letter to Jehoram a king of Judah. (2nd Chronicles 21) By contrast we know little about who Isaiah was, but we know a great deal of what he said. His greatest claim to fame is the book, which bears his name. Some say that one man is responsible for the whole book, but the prophecies span more than a single generation. Therefore some attribute various divisions to multiple people, all writing in the Spirit and tradition of the man we know as Isaiah. (Footnote: 2) The New Testament mentions the name of Isaiah only 22 times—fewer than it mentions Elijah, but it refers to texts from the book of Isaiah more than 60 times!

Let me give you a handful of examples.

1. In Isaiah 7:14 we read, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

In the context of Isaiah chapter 7, it is likely that Isaiah was referring to a situation in his own life; the child to be born was to be his child. However, it is hard for us to read the narratives telling about the birth of Jesus that are found in St. Luke or in St. Matthew without thinking that Jesus himself reveals the deeper, and true meaning of Isaiah’s prophecy.

2. In Isaiah 40:3-5 we read:

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all call attention to this text. And all four declare that John the Baptist was that voice crying in the wilderness who came to smooth the way for the coming of God Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.

3. In Isaiah 9:2 we read, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” Isaiah says that the light comes out of Galilee.

Matthew alone quotes this text directly, but the contrast between “light” and “dark” fills the pages of the New Testament. The word light occurs more than 120 times. The word dark and its derivatives occur more than 70 times.

In John 1 we read that Jesus was the true light who was coming into the world. In verse 5 we read:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

In John 8:12 Jesus himself says:

“I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

4. In Luke chapter 4: 16-21 Jesus applies yet another prophecy of Isaiah to himself. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

The text declares that when Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

And when Jesus had finished reading, he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

5. There are many, many more texts of Isaiah that are incorporated into the matrix of our New Testament. There is one other text that I absolutely must mention. I refer, of course, to Isaiah 53, which is printed in your bulletin.

Though not many Jews considered the text as “messianic,” (Footnote: 3) and most thought it applied to the whole nation of Israel, I am quite sure that this text about “the suffering servant,” informed the thinking of Jesus alongside Daniel 7, which is about “the Son of Man who receives the kingdom from the Ancient of Days.” Jesus blends both together when he says, “The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) Certainly, the early church saw this text as descriptive of what Jesus Christ accomplished in his person and ministry. A primary example is found in Acts 8. There we read about the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch, a minister of the Candace or Queen of Ethiopia.

The text indicates that the Ethiopian was a God fearing Gentile who had gone up to Jerusalem seeking further insight about the God of Israel. Unfortunately, as a eunuch he was barred from “the assembly of Israel,” (Footnote: 4) and he missed the 11:00 o’clock service of the 1st Church of Jerusalem. Yet, God had a plan for this man. Philip the Evangelist was over in Samaria, where he was the primary agent in the spread of the gospel in that place. It was a big job, and he was doing it well. Nevertheless, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza; it is a desert road.” Philip obeyed God went down to the desert road. He saw the Eunuch seated in his chariot, and prompted by the Holy Spirit, Philip ran to him, to join him. As he drew near he heard the man reading from Isaiah the prophet.

“As a sheep led to the slaughter or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. 33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth.”

Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And the Eunuch responded said, “How can I, unless some one guides me?” He wanted to know if the prophet was writing about himself or another, and he invited Philip to join him in his chariot. The text declares that Philip accepted his invitation, and then he opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture—the heart of Isaiah 53, Philip told the Ethiopian Eunuch about the good news of Jesus. The text declares that he professed his faith in Christ, and immediately asked for baptism. Tradition says that this Ethiopian was the first convert from Africa, and carried the gospel back to that continent where he was at the heart of a great evangelistic movement, and ultimately became a Bishop of the church.

This text is particularly dear to Moravians. When Zinzendorf sent out the first missionaries, he told them to look for “Candaced Souls” saying, “I want you to speak to those to whom God has already spoken.”

I think it is interesting that this text is associated with evangelism in our church, because it begins with a text from Isaiah, and Isaiah is the most evangelical and evangelistic prophet of the Hebrew Bible. His prophecies certainly remain foundational to the New Testament experience of Jesus Christ.

Several times over the last year I have immersed myself in a book of the Bible. Last fall it was the Revelation. I read it more than 20 times, learning a little more after each reading. Thus far in July I have read Mark 15 times, and want to read it several times more by the end of the month. In the not too distant future, I hope to submerge myself in Isaiah. I am willing to bet that when I have read it through over and over, I will still regard Isaiah as a work by one (or more) of the real heroes of faith.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D. Min.

Footnotes:

1. Admittedly, Isaiah’s appeal may be that we know him primarily from his prophecy, and have very little real biographical information about him. It may be that he is more flawed than we are aware. Nobody’s perfect, except, of course, the One.

2. Scholars generally divide the book of Isaiah into three sections: 1) Chapters 1 to 39 deal with the time before the Babylonian Exile, 2) Chapters 40-55 deal with the time of the Exile itself, and 3) Chapters 56-66 deal with the time immediately after the exile. For example, one of my absolute favorite texts is found in Isaiah 65. It dates from after the Babylonian captivity of Israel, and it speaks to the future that is coming to the people of Israel. God speaks through his prophet to his people saying:

20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the LORD, and their children with them. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the LORD.”

Scholars are divided about this text. Some say they apply just to the nation of Israel. Some say that they represent an end-times vision for all God’s people. There are a number of paintings that all try to capture the meaning of these words, almost all of them entitled, “The Peaceable Kingdom.”

3. In 1st Corinthians 1:23 St. Paul says that the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews. This was so because the idea of a suffering Messiah was completely foreign to them. They expected a victorious and triumphant Messiah who would lead the nation into a new era of prosperity and influence among the nations.

4. I will bet that the Ethiopian Eunuch loved this text from Isaiah:

Isaiah 56:3 Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” 4 For thus says the LORD: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5 I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off.

Heroes of Faith: King David

Picture “David shows Saul he spared his life” from Dore Bible Illustrations—Used with Permission.

David is one of the most endearing, enraging, magnificent, pathetic and intriguing characters in Hebrew scripture. He is also one of the most interesting men ever to walk the face of the earth. If David were suddenly translated by time machine into our era, and forced to make a new life for himself, he would have a number of really attractive choices.

David could be a musician. According to 1st Samuel 16:23 when an evil spirit from the Lord visited Saul, David played upon his lyre, comforting Saul until the evil spirit departed.

David could become a hymnist, or perhaps a poet. In times past more than half of the 150 Psalms have been attributed to David. Few poets or hymnists have ever equaled the beauty of Psalm 23, the confidence of Psalm 139, or the pathos of Psalms 51, all of which were a part of our responsive reading this morning.

David could become a dancer. David once leaped and danced with joy before the Ark of the Lord with such vigor that his performance has become a permanent part of Israel’s history. According to the text of 2nd Samuel 6 David started out wearing a linen ephod, but he must have had an equipment failure. After his dance, David returned to his house, and his wife, Michal, the daughter of Saul, greeted him with displeasure. She told him that in her eyes the King of Israel had dishonored himself, uncovering himself before the eyes of the young women “as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.” (Footnote 1) I am reminded of a story about a certain cast member in the rock musical “Hair.” After seeing the play his mother said to him, “I knew I would see you in the play, son, I just did not know that I would see so much of you.”

David could become a hunter. In the Golden Age of White Hunters in Africa, fearless hunters faced down charging lions with powerful, double-barreled rifles, shooting slugs weighing a quarter pound or more. By contrast the Masai often hunted lions armed only with a spear. David did even the Masai one better. When he was just a boy, watching over his father’s sheep, he killed lions and bears with a primitive sling, that he twirled around his head before loosing a stone with great velocity and accuracy.

Likewise, David could become a soldier. When he was not yet out of his teens, David refused the loan of Saul’s armor and armed himself with only his sling and five smooth stones he carefully selected from the bed of a stream. He then killed Goliath of Gath, the champion of the Philistines. David did not stop at single combat. He went on to become a great General, so that he quickly eclipsed the record of his predecessor, King Saul. The people said, “Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands.” (1st Samuel 18:7)

There aren’t many monarchs left in our world, but, certainly, David would make some nation a great king. And if David should somehow be translated across the centuries to America either party would be proud to place him at the top of their ticket. The Republicans once boasted that not even Santa Claus could defeat General Dwight D. Eisenhower for the presidency. Eisenhower was the architect of the allied victory in Europe, and the last General to serve the United States as President. Eisenhower was elected twice and served eight years. David ruled over Israel for more than forty years.

Of course, I may be over optimistic about David’s ability to be elected. His family life was the stuff of major scandal. His problem with Michal was perpetual. His children were equally difficult. David’s son, Amnon, raped his half-sister, Tamar, and then despised her for it. The text says that “he hated her with a hatred that was greater than the love he once had for her.” (2nd Samuel 13:15) Another of David’s sons, Absalom, heard of what Amnon had done to his sister, waited two years, and then had Amnon murdered. Absalom cut quite a figure. He had long flowing locks, and was regarded as the most handsome man in the kingdom. He was a popular favorite with the people. Ultimately, he tried to usurp his father David’s throne. Civil war broke out, and it lasted until the death of Absalom. He was killed the battle of Ephraim’s Wood when his long hair got caught in the limbs of a mighty oak. (Footnote 2) “That’s not all, folks”. That is just a sampling of David’s tragedy.

Obviously, there are ways in which David is a poor role model for us, and for our children, and for our children’s children. Yet, in other ways, David is one of the greatest roll models of all time.

1. David could be quite chivalrous, and unlike some of us, he never tried to force the hand of God.

Once when King Saul was pursing David, and intent upon killing him, Saul went into a cave to relieve himself. David and his men were hiding in the back of the cave. David’s men urged David to kill Saul, saying that God had delivered him into David’s hand. David slipped up on Saul in the darkness of a cave, and he cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe, but that was all he did. Despite the urging of his men, and despite that Samuel had anointed David in Saul’s stead, David refused to put out his hand against the Lord and his anointed.

2. David also had a model friendship with Jonathan, the son of Saul.

Perhaps you have heard that, “Marriage is two souls living in one body, whereas friendship is “two bodies sharing a single soul.” The first part of that statement was inspired by Genesis 1, wherein we read, “a man shall leave his mother and his father, and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” The second part of that statement was inspired by 1st Samuel 18:1 wherein we read, “the soul of Jonathan was knitted to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved David as his own soul.” David returned Jonathan’s love and friendship. When Jonathan was finally killed in battle, alongside his father, Saul, David sang a lament:

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
Greatly beloved were you to me;
Your love to me was wonderful,
Passing the love of women.

3. David possessed great faith, and he always had total confidence in God, despite the odds against him.

David was just a boy when he went out to meet Goliath of Gath. The text declares that Goliath stood over nine feet tall, and that his spear was thicker than a weaver’s beam. David faced this formidable foe and said:

You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 1st Samuel 17:45

It has been rightly said that one man, one woman, plus God is a majority in any situation. Few people in the history of our planet illustrate this truth better than David.

4. David was intimately acquainted with the depths of sin, and with the heights of God’s grace.

Perhaps you remember the details of that affair between David and Bathsheba. How David was standing on the roof of his palace when he saw Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop, and he desired her. Acting on his desire, he wooed her, and bedded her. She became pregnant with his child. David feared discovery. He summoned Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, back from the battle under a pretense, and then sent him home so that Uriah might have sex with Bathsheba, and be fooled into thinking that the child she carried was his own. But Uriah slept outside the door of David’s house. He refused even to sleep in the same house with his wife when his men were still at war and in harm’s way. David then acted despicably; he sacrificed one of his best soldiers, sending Uriah to the forefront of the battle, so that he might be killed. It was after the death of Uriah that David took Bathsheba to himself.

Yet this sordid tale was far from over. God sent the prophet Nathan to David to pronouncement judgment on David. Nathan began with a story. He said:

1 There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had very many flocks and herds; 3 but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat (from his plate)(Footnote 3), and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. 4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him. 2nd Samuel 12:1-4

Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan:

5 As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. Bring the man before me and I will kill him. 2nd Samuel 12:5-6

Nathan then said to David, “You are the man!” And it was then that Nathan pronounced God’s sentence upon David. Acting in secret, David had stolen Bathsheba from her husband, Uriah, and destroyed Uriah by the sword of the Amorites. God would spare David’s life, but God would publicly bring calamity after calamity upon him. Ultimately, David suffered the death of three of his children, and the loss of several of his wives. To David’s credit, he immediately confessed his sin to Nathan saying, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to him, “Put away your sin that you may not die.”

Many scholars believe that Psalm 32 reflects this difficult period in David’s life. Therein he writes:

3 When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away
Through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
And I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
And then you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

One of the most hopeful lines in scripture is found in Matthew 1:6 There, in the midst of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, we read that “…David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” No text of scripture is more honest nor more grace filled than that! It is honest about David’s failure. Yet it declares that David’s failure did not prevent him from carring out the tasks God had assigned to him. Thus it was said that David was “a man after God’s won heart.” (Acts 13:22)

5. David was no summer soldier or sunshine believer. When the Dark days came, and there were many, he continued to trust God.

When his son by Bathsheba lay ill, David fasted and lay all night on the ground. He went like that for seven days. Then David learned that the child had died. It was every parent’s worst nightmare. Yet David did not quit. He did not close up shop. He did not throw in the towel. He did not abdicate his throne. He did not abandon faith in God. He arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; and he went into the house of the LORD, and worshiped. Then he went to his own house; and when he asked for food to be set before him, and he ate. When his servants called him out for his radical change in behavior, saying, “When the child lived, you fasted. Now the child is dead, and you eat.” David responded:

“While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ 23 But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” 2nd Samuel 12:22-23

I do not think this little vignette from his life tells the whole story of David’s loss. I am quite sure David grieved the loss of the child for the rest of his life; but he did understand that life has to be lived forward, not backward. David knew that his life would never again be the same, but he had the confidence that it could still be good, and he lived for the good that was left. We must do likewise. No one who lives to old age does so without experiencing great loss. If, after a loss or a disappointment, we try to live in the past, we become no good to anyone, especially ourselves. Consider the case of Lot’s wife. When, at God’s direction, Lot led his family out of Sodom, Lot’s wife looked back to her pleasant life in that place, and she considered her present unhappiness, and she turned into a pillar of salt. Take this literally if you want, but do not miss the lesson it for all of us. Every time we look back, we risk becoming equally lifeless. When we look back we risk isolating ourselves from the people we love and all the good that still remains to us. We live in the present, as we anticipate the future that comes to us from God.

6. Finally, we should note that David was the most famous king of Israel. Because of this Christians have always regarded David as the ancestor and prototype of Jesus Christ. Note this comparison.

In 1st Samuel 16:13 we read that, at God’s direction, the prophet Samuel took a horn of oil, and anointed David King over Israel in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of God came upon him mightily from that day forward. In Mark 1:10-11 we read Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan, and when he came up out of the water he saw the heavens torn open, and the Spirit of God descending upon him like a dove, and he heard the voice of God saying, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

God promised David that he would never lack a son to sit upon the throne of Israel. (2nd Samuel 7:16) That promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus did some very un-messiah like things, like getting himself crucified. The New Testament declares, “He died for our sins.” A sign was placed over his cross that said, “The King of the Jews.” That sign was intended to be ironic; it was anything but. Jesus was crucified, killed and buried, but on the third day God raised him from death, and seated him at his right hand, that he might make his enemies a stool for his feet. Jesus reigns as King forever. He wants to rule over us. It is to our advantage. He can help us overcome our mistakes, and mend us at the broken places, and put us on the path back to God.

Let me leave you with a riddle. Jesus asked the question and did not answer it, so neither shall I. In Mark 12 we read that as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I put your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him Lord; so how is he his son?” If you can answer that, you are well on your way to becoming a Christian theologian. Let me give you a hint: Read John 1. The Christology of Mark is very nearly as high as the Christology of John.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

Footnotes:

1)  2nd Samuel 6:20 And David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!” David rebuked Michal, told her that God had made him king, and that he would make merry before the Lord as he pleased. The Scripture records that, “Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.” 2nd Samuel 6:23

20)  David’s general Joab thrust three “darts” into his heart while he was still alive in the oak. Ten soldiers then surrounded Absalom and killed him.

3)  Literally, “eat of his morsel.”

Moses 1 Audio of the Sermon, 1st Half.

Moses 2Audio of the Sermon, 2nd Half.

I hope you have taken the time to read the short “biography” of Moses that we put into the bulletin.  If so you know that his appeal is two-fold.

On the one hand, Moses is “The Deliverer.” If Marvel Comics does not have “The Deliverer” in their stable of super-heroes they should have. Moses is much more interesting than Spiderman, or any of the Avengers. It was Moses to whom God spoke from the burning bush saying, “I AM WHO I AM.” (Ex. 3:14) It was Moses whom God sent to Israel, saying, “Tell them that I AM sent you.” And it was Moses whom God sent to Pharaoh saying, “Let my people go.” It was Moses who brought down the 10 plagues upon Egypt, and it was Moses who led the children of Israel across the Red Sea, and to the borders of the Promised Land, helping God to destroy the Army of Egypt in the process. (i)

On the other hand, Moses is “The Lawgiver.” It was Moses who gave Israel the Ten Commandments. It was the late Martin Buber who observed that Moses gave Israel just the right number of commandments to be remembered using the ten fingers of our two hands.

Of course, Moses did not stop with the Ten Commandments. The Law of Moses—the Law of God—the Torah, includes c. 613 commandments. They run from the humdrum, to the sublime, to the downright shocking.

The most sublime commandment is found in Leviticus 19:18. There we read, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” When, in Romans 13:9, St. Paul says, “The commandments…are summed up in a single sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” he is quoting Moses.

One of the most shocking commandments is found in Deuteronomy 21:18-21. (ii) There we read that if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey his father, or his mother, even though they chastise him, then they will take him to the elders of the city and say to them, “This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.” And then the men of the city shall stone him to death stones.

Now I doubt that any of you have ever considered bringing a stubborn and rebellious child before the elders to be stoned to death; but it is not impossible. A man who ran for the state legislature in Arkansas in the last election proposed that we ought to enforce this Law, and others like it. He calls himself a Christian. When I read that, I found myself wondering if that man is a Christian or a father. A Christian would know the story of Jesus and the woman taken in Adultery—we will take that up in just a minute. A father would know that children often pass through times of rebellion before becoming the people that parents know they can be. I remember a time when my son was so head strong that we had a hard time living under the same roof. He would say the same. Now, I regard him as one of my best friends, and I confessed to him not long ago that he has become a far better father than I ever have been.

In the 18th century Bishop Spangenberg had good advice for parents of rebellious children. He said the children of Christian parents often enter a time of rebellion. He said that as Christians we have promises for our children, especially those we have presented to God in baptism. He said that in almost every case, they would eventually put aside their rebellion, and return to their roots. As the Proverb 22:6 declares, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old (Maybe not immediately—but when he is “old” or “mature”—WNG) he will not depart from it.”

I am willing to bet the law that permits the stoning of rebellious children took some of you by surprise. I wonder how many of you have read all 613 laws set down by Moses? If we read through the Law of Moses we invariably make two significant observations, and then, having made those observations, we ask two very important questions.

First, we observe that a great many of the 613 commandments still make perfect sense, and we still live by them today.

Most of you are perfectly happy to keep the Ten Commandments, and you are not ashamed to display them in your homes. Using your ten fingers, some of you can name them from memory. Even if you can’t you keep them, for you have a highly developed conscience, and you know them intuitively.

Second, we observe that a great many of the 613 commandments no longer make sense for us, and wittingly or unwittingly we ignore them.

All of us who are here this morning have already violated the Law of Moses in a number of important ways even before entering this sanctuary. I will name three. First, unless you were in church yesterday, you already missed the Sabbath. This is Sunday, the first day of the week, not the last. Second, some of us had sausage or bacon for breakfast, which is in direct violation of the law against eating the flesh of an animal with a cloven hoof. Likewise, the vast majority of us are wearing a blended fabric, and that, too, is in direct violation of the law. In James 2:10 we read, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” Yet few of you are troubled by what you ate for breakfast or by what you are wearing, or by any of the other laws of Moses that you break on a regular basis. The very fact of our personal indifference gives rise to two questions.

First, we might well ask, “Why did God lay so many burdensome commandments and ordinances on the Jews?”

What did it matter if the people of Israel ate pork, or wore blended fabrics, or violated any one of the hundreds of little details in the Law? I think it mattered for two reasons.

On the one hand, it mattered because God chose the Jews to be his people in the world. They were to bare witness to him, and the odder they were in the eyes of the rest of the world, the more dramatic their witness. That is still true today. Not long ago my son met with a team of Orthodox Jews from a business in New York to discuss a design project that the firm he works for was doing for them. He said they were dressed in black, and wore skullcaps, or kippahs, and their sideburns dangled in tight coils well below their chins. He said, “Dad, I was tempted to laugh, then it occurred to me that these people take their faith very seriously. They are a powerful witness to God.”

On the other hand, it mattered because it was the odd and distinctive appearance and behavior of the Jews dictated by the Law of Moses that enabled the Jews to survive as a people for more than 2,000 years even though, for much of that time, they did not have a land to call their own. They had a constitution without a country, but it was enough. Jews were often regarded as the dregs of society. Many countries forced them out of their homes, stole their wealth, and asked them to leave. Other countries herded them into ghettoes and prison camps. The inquisition killed thousands of them. Hitler killed more than six million of them. Yet, because of the Law of Moses, and because God still has a plan for them—-and both Testaments testify to this, the Jews have survived.  (iii)

Of course, a second question arises. That question is, “Are we still bound by the Law of Moses?”

We are and we aren’t. We are certainly ruled by the Ten Commandments, and by the Moral Laws. Though it has not always universally recognized, God always intended that the moral law be universal. We neglect it to our own peril. It is not so much that we break the moral law of God as we break ourselves upon the moral law of God. We are bound by the moral law, however, we are no longer bound by what the New Testament calls “the law of commandments and ordinances.” The law of commandments and ordinances was specific to the Jews. It was the Law of commandments and ordinances that made the Jews a people apart, and made them distinctive, and helped to cement their sense of identity. In Ephesians 2 the apostle says that the time for that kind of distinction has come to an end. He writes that the Jew was one man, and the Gentile was another man, but that Christ “…has abolished in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances that he might create one new man in the place of the two, making peace and reconciling us both to God on the cross.” (iv) Today, our relationship with God is not marked by our obedience to the details of the Jewish Law, but by our relationship with Christ.

Christians have freedom under the Law that the Ancient Jews did not, and the primary example of our freedom is found in Jesus himself. Some people are amazed how much freedom Jesus exercised with regard to the Law. Let me give you a few examples:

First, Jesus saw through the law to the Spirit and reason behind the law.

Let me illustrate with a story from Mark 2:23-38. One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields with his disciples. And the disciples began to pluck heads of grain, and, given the context, to eat them. And the Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are your disciples doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And Jesus said to them:

“Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him. He entered the temple…. and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”

And Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; so the Son of man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

Jesus was referring to the 4th commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy.” He said that man was not made to keep the 4th commandment, but the 4th commandment was made to keep man. That is true of all the commandments. God gave the Law through Moses to protect human beings from our selves and from one another. This truth gives rise to one of the best definitions of sin I have ever heard:

“Sin is anything that we do, or fail to do, by which
we hurt ourselves or another.”

Second, Jesus set some laws completely aside.

Take the laws of clean and unclean foods. In Mark 7:14-23 (v) we read how Jesus called the people to him and told them that it was not what goes into a man that defiles him, for what he puts into his mouth enters not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on. He said that it is what comes out of a man that defiles him, for it is the from the heart (vi) that evil thoughts arise, including fornication, theft, murder, adultery, slander, pride, and foolishness. It is these things that defile a man. The text declares, “Thus (Jesus) declared all foods clean.” If you have barbecue for lunch, or if you go down to the beach this summer, and order Fried Shrimp, or eat a Po’ Boy Sandwich made with fried oysters, and lettuce, and tomatoes, on a hamburger bun slathered with Duke’s Mayo—I am hungry, you can thank Jesus for that freedom.

Jesus also refused to carry out one of the Laws of Moses that required a person to be stoned to death. In John chapter 8, some people brought to him a woman taken in adultery, and said to him, “Moses said that we are to stone such as her. What do you say?” And Jesus set the commandment of Moses aside when he said:

Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a
stone at her. John 8:7

Her accusers melted away. Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Does no one accuse you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” He said, “Neither do I accuse you, go and sin no more.”

Jesus did not reject the moral law. He left judgment in the hands of God, but in point of fact Jesus often raised the law to a higher power. In Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that, in the eyes of God, lust is the same thing as adultery. He says that we are to love our enemies, not hate them as some concluded from the Law and made a tradition. He says that Moses was absolutely wrong in his casual approach to divorce. Most Scholars agree that St. Matthew presents Jesus as a new Lawgiver, one who is far superior to Moses. Moses received the Law on a mountain. Jesus taught the Law on a Mountain. Likewise, on the Mount of Transfiguration, when the disciples of Jesus suggest building three booths, one for Jesus, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah, the voice of God declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” (Matthew 17:1-8)

Third, Jesus changed other laws laid down by Moses by the very fact of his life, death, and resurrection.

Take for instance the laws of sacrifice. Moses made provision for many different types of offerings, chief of which was the sin offering, by which the priest made atonement for the sins of the people. Without the system of sacrifice laid down by Moses, we could scarcely understand the sacrifice of Jesus. Yet we are no longer bound by the system. The author of Hebrews (vii) writes that every priest stands daily at his serving, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. He continues:

“But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God…for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified (i.e. “set apart by him”).”

Does the fact that Jesus changed so much of the Law mean that our faith is somehow radically different from the faith of the ancient Jews? Yes, No and Yes.

Yes, we are different for we are not bound by the laws of commandments in ordinances that Christ abolished by his body on the cross: We wear blended fabric; we eat pork.

No, for in some ways, especially touching morality, we are very much the same.

Moses bore a faithful witness to God in his time, and the Jews have never been without witness. Let me illustrate with a story from the Rabbis. It took place just before the time of Jesus. A non-Jew came before Rabbi Shammai. He said to him:

“I will convert to Judaism on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one leg.”

Shammai did not like the conditions, so he hit him with a rod, and drove him away. The same man came before Rabbi Hillel, and made the same promise and the same appeal. Hillel said to him:

“What you hate, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Law of Moses, and all else is its interpretation. Go and learn.”

In point of fact, Jesus said the same thing, putting a positive spin on it, rather than negative. In Matthew 7:12 we read, “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. “ That is also the Golden Rule that binds God’s people together in all times and in all places, and contrary to popular opinion, it is in the Bible, not once but twice, once in Matthew 7:12 and once in Luke 6:31. No doubt this saying is rooted in Leviticus 19:18, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Finally, yes we are very different in our total approach to the Law.

We do not live by the Law; we live by the Grace of Jesus Christ. In Romans 10:4  St. Paul says that Christ is the “telos” of the Law, meaning its “goal” or its “end.” In Galatians 3:24 St. Paul says that the Law was just a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ that we might be justified through faith (in Him). Finally, to establish it all in context, in John 1:17 we read:

The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came
through Jesus Christ.

Moses was a great man, the greatest man of his generation. He was the Lawgiver, but he was not God’s Messiah. He gave us the Law, but Jesus Christ gave us grace, and truth. If we have broken the law in one point, we are guilty of all. The law has the power to condemn us, but no power to restore us. Jesus has the power to forgive us, and to restore us, and to set us right before God. If we have joined ourselves to him in faith, when the world condemns us, he stands before us and before the world saying, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” And when no one can, Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. “

Finis

Footnotes:

i If Moses had a weakness it was his sense of drama. God told Moses to command the Rock at Meribah to yield water for the people, but Moses struck the rock with his staff, twice, and it yielded water. It was because of this small act of disobedience that God allowed Moses to look into the Promised Land, but not go in. (Numbers 20:7-13)

ii 18   “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Deuteronomy 21:18-21

iii By the way, in his book, “This Is My God,” Herman Wouk says that one of the chief reasons he believes in God is the miracle of Jewish survival. He says that the very existence of the Jews shows the hand of God at work in the world.

iv 14 For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.

v “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him…” “Whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?” (Thus he declared all foods clean). “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. 21 For … out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.”

vi In the Bible the heart is thought to be the center of the mind, emotions, and will.

vii 11   And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews 10:11-14

1

(Genesis 12:1-3; Genesis 22:1-14; Romans 4:17-25)(The image is from the “Dore Bible Illustrations” that are available via Gutenberg Press. It is used legally.)

This morning we continue a series of sermons entitled, “Heroes of Faith.” We leave behind Adam and Eve and the prehistory of the World, and look at the prehistory of Israel. Israel had three great patriarchs, Abraham, and Abraham’s son Isaac, and Abraham’s grandson Jacob. This morning we look at Abraham who started life as Abram, and at Sarah, who started life as Sari.

It was the Apostle Paul who called Abraham, “the father of… all (who have faith).”(Romans 4:16 and Galatians 3:7).

It was a Madame Cornuel who lived in 17th century France that made the often quoted remark, “No man is a hero to his valet.” Not only does a man’s valet know that he gets up in the morning and puts his pants on one leg at a time, like any other man, a man’s valet is witness to a side of his master’s character that the world does not see.

The Scripture is at least as critical of Abraham as any valet would be. The Scripture tells us about Abraham’s good points and bad.

The Book of Genesis tells us that Abraham is rich in cattle, silver, and gold. However Genesis 13 reveals that Abraham is sadly lacking in character. It tells us that Abraham was forced to take his household down into Egypt because there was a famine in Canaan land. Abraham was afraid that his pretty young wife, Sarah, would draw trouble to him, so he cuddled up to her and said, “Honey, you are a real beauty. Would you mind too terribly if I told these folks that you are my sister instead of my wife? It will save my skin!” He did just that. And Pharaoh thought that Sarah was beautiful, and he took Sarah into his household. And if it had not been for the fact that God rained misfortune on Pharaoh because of Sarah, and then revealed to Pharaoh in a dream that Sarah was the cause of it, Sarah may have become “the Queen of the Nile” instead of a biblical heroine. I wonder if Abraham was Sarah’s hero after this episode?

The bible reports several other episodes involving Abraham that a valet would blush to tell.

The story of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac is not one of them. This is a story that even the most faithful servant could not refrain from telling. Yet, it is this episode that may have prevented some of you from thinking of Abraham as a hero of faith. Abraham loved Isaac as the son of his old age; but, at one point, Abraham was ready to drive a dagger into Isaac’s heart, simply because God told him to do it!

Now the first question that people ask when they hear this story about Abraham and Isaac is, “Why in the world would God ask Abraham to do such a thing?”

I have had more than one dedicated, thinking Christian come to me with that very question. On another occasion, I had a woman walk out of church during the reading of the Abraham and Isaac story, never to return again, even though her husband attended faithfully for years afterward. Nevertheless, this first question is easy to answer. The answer is two fold.

On the one hand, God did it to test Abraham’s love for him. God had to know if Abraham were really the man who was worthy to be called “the father of all who believe.” That is in the text. It is hard but true. In Genesis 22:12 God said to Abraham:

“Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

On the other hand, God did it so that God might prove once and for all that God is not a god who requires child sacrifice. Remember, child sacrifice was a common practice in Abraham’s day. All the false gods created by the mind of man demanded it. Only the One True God did not. I am sure that the story of Abraham and Isaac was told over and over again by generations of thankful Jews. And many a Jewish mother remembered it gladly as she clutched her newborn son or daughter to her breast and listened to her husband tell of how some Canaanite neighbor had just sacrificed yet another child to Baal. The true God does not demand child sacrifice; and, thanks to the story of Abraham and Isaac, people of faith have known it beyond a shadow of a doubt. (See Note 1:)

But now the hard question—the second question: “How in the world did Abraham ready himself to do such a thing?”

It is in the answer to that question that we discover the true heroism in the heart of the Abraham.

The answer is a five-letter word: F-A-I-T-H. And it is his F-A-I-T-H that made Abraham the man that he ultimate was. You see, God had promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5). And God had promised Abraham that his descendants would not be named through Eliazer the slave that he had adopted, and they would not be named through Ishmael, the son of his concubine Hagar; but they would come through Isaac the son that his wife Sarah bore to him when he was 100 years old and she was 90 years old. (Genesis 17:19). On the morning that Abraham saddled his ass and assembled his servants and yanked Isaac from between the covers to head for a mountain in the land of Moriah, Isaac had not even started to notice girls. As yet he had no “seed.”

How did Abraham ready himself for such a deed? The Jewish rabbis who commented on this passage suggested two reasons: 1) Some of them said that Abraham was so sure of God and so sure of God’s promise that he believed God could raise Isaac from the dead, if need be, in order to fulfill God’s promise. This is echoed in Hebrews 11:19. (Note 2:) 2) Others, pointed to Abraham’s statement in Genesis 22:8 that God would provide the sacrifice, and said that Abraham was confident along those lines. The point is, Abraham was somehow able to obey God and to leave the results with him.

Abraham, like many of us, had a shaky beginning with God; but no man (with the exception of Jesus) ever had more faith in God than Abraham. That is what makes Abraham a “hero,” and that is why we call him “the father of all who believe.”

Now, how do we respond to this heroism?

In may be that we respond as Soren Kierkegaard did after reading this story. S.K. said:

“Abraham I cannot understand, in a certain sense there is nothing I can learn from him but astonishment.”

That is absolutely true. When you and I hear the story of Abraham and Isaac, we do not even pretend to aspire to a faith just like Abraham’s. Elayne and I just drove 1,600 miles to see our new granddaughter. After seeing her we would have driven 5,600 miles to see her if necessary. Yet the love that we have for her is but a fraction of the love that her parents already have for her. We are absolutely convinced that should God call upon the parents of today for such a cruel test, we would reject God wholesale. That is o.k. You and I are not called upon to be the father or the mother of all who have faith. And we are not called upon to be the one through whom God mediates his message against child sacrifice. We are only called upon to be “children of Abraham,” and follow his lead of faith.

So, do we stop with a relationship, or should we try to emulate Abraham in some way?

There are things in Abraham that we would do well to imitate. I would mention two.

1. We can imitate him in Abraham’s willingness to abandon the security of the familiar for the adventure of the unknown.

In Genesis chapter 12 God called upon Abraham to go from (his) country and (his) kindred and (his) father’s house to a land that he would show him. And God promised Abraham a land, a seed, and a blessing for his obedience. And Abraham went out in obedience to God, not knowing where he was going.

In commenting on the faith of Abraham, Oswald Chambers says, “Being a Christian means a continual going out.” Sometimes we are called to go out physically. We leave our country, our kindred, our father’s house to go to some place where God calls us to go, like a missionary going into a foreign land. Sometimes are called upon to go out spiritually. We are called to go out of familiar and comfortable ideas and creeds and theologies in order to be true to Jesus Christ. As the man said, “It is often easier to be faithful to our convictions and our creed than it is to be faithful to Jesus Christ. “

I know this from personal experience. When I was first went to seminary I used to pray that God would give me the spiritual gift of prophecy. Then I went to my first church and I would gladly have claimed any spiritual gift but prophecy. I came to see that Jesus was right: “No prophet is accepted in his own country.” (Luke 4:24) All the great prophets of the Bible, like Abraham and Moses and Isaiah and John the Baptist and Jesus and Paul, lived during times of great change. God called upon them to lead people into a new spiritual truth, and they paid the price for it. Jesus paid with his life when he came as a suffering Servant, for no good Jew could imagine a Messiah who suffered. And Paul’s biggest battle was over circumcision, whether or not people could become followers of Jesus Christ without first becoming Jews.

When I was in Boston I prayed the prayer for my granddaughter Caroline that I pray for all our children. I prayed that, in every dimension, she might be as beautiful as she was in the mind of God when God first thought of her, and that every good possibility of life might become a reality for her as she follows Jesus Christ. Do we want to be as beautiful as we were in the mind of God when he first thought of us? Do we want to see all of God’s plans for us fulfilled? It will never happen unless we are willing to go out of all that is secure and comfortable to risk the unknown, and so discover the breadth and length and height and depth of the God who reveals himself in Christ.

A.W. Tozer the great Christian Missionary and Alliance preacher once said that, in order to be all that God wants for us to be and to claim all that God has for us, we must place two bundles upon his alter: 1) the bundle of the known—and 2) the bundle of the unknown. In other words, we must be willing to abandon what we think we want to be for what only God knows can be.

This takes courage. The Commanding General of the 2nd Marine Division has a personal launch to be used during an amphibious landing or assault. It is named, “Follow me.” That is what Jesus said to his first disciples, and that is what Jesus says to us: “Follow me.” It often takes more courage for a Christian to follow where God leads than it does for a soldier to follow his general into battle.

Now here is the good news. We don’t have to have all the courage we will need on our journey with God at the beginning of that journey. Abraham did not have it in in the beginning of his journey. He was so fearful he was willing to give his own wife into the hands of another! What we need is enough courage to take the next step. Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac, and God provided a lamb for the sacrifice. If we take the next step, God will provide the thing that will give us the courage for the step after that.

We cannot become a Hero of Faith like Abraham over night, but we can continue Abraham’s journey this very morning. We do that when we say:

“God, here I am, surrounded with the familiar. Nevertheless, I stand prepared to follow you into the unfamiliar, into territory where I have never set foot before. I am stepping, Lord, I am stepping!”

2. Finally, we can imitate Abraham in thinking that God is great enough and powerful enough to keep His promises.

God promised Abraham a child when he was 99. And Abraham became a father at 100. God promised Abraham that his descendants (and Isaac’s )would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Perhaps Abraham believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead, if necessary, to keep that promise. Abraham certainly believed that God would provide him with a sacrifice. You and I must believe something almost as difficult. We must believe that all of human history is still under God’s control, still moving toward the accomplishment of God’s purpose. More than that, we must believe that God will keep God’s promises for us as individuals. We must believe that God is bigger than the loss of someone we love, cancer, heart disease, the war on terror, Aids, pollution, the lost of our livelihood, the changes in society, and unbelief itself. More than that, we must believe that if only we will have faith, God will accomplish God’s purposes for us. We have introduced many detours into the journey that God planned for us, yet we must believe that, if we will allow it, God can overcome those detours and bring us to the place and purpose that God had planned for us all along.

The poet Sidney Lanier once watched as a Marsh Hen built her nest as all Marsh Hens have always built their nests—-on the marsh. It seems a foolish place, but that is where the Marsh Hen thrives and all Marsh Hens that want to thrive must do as all successful Marsh Hens have always done. And then Sidney Lanier thought about building a nest for himself, a nest of faith, and then he wrote a poem about it. One stanza reads:

As the Marsh Hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God;

That’s it! We may doubt the muscle in our faith. That’s o.k. If we trust God enough to make the next step in our journey, we will, like Abraham, “grow strong in faith,” as God supplies the strength we need for the step after that. After all, faith is like a muscle. The more we exercise it, the stronger it gets.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

(Note 1:) There is a parallel situation in the Law of Moses. In Exodus 13:1   The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Consecrate to me all the first-born; whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.” The first-born belongs to God. However, Exodus 34:20 allows for the redemption of the first-born:

Exodus 34:20 The firstling of an ass you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the first-born of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

(Note 2:) Hebrews 11: 19 (Abraham) considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead; hence, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

Let me tell you a story. It is not a funny story, but it is an important one. It might help you to understand why I am so bull headed and independent. When I went to seminary, I did not go to Moravian Theological Seminary, though I would today. I went to Asbury Theological Seminary near Lexington, Kentucky. I went there because I wanted to please my dad. Their hero at Asbury is John Wesley, the founder of Methodism; and Asbury is a Wesleyan-Arminian Seminary. Immediately after I arrived at Asbury, and embraced that ethos, I told my dad about it, thinking it would please him. My dad said to me, “Well, that is all well and good, but I am a Calvinist.” This put me in a difficult position. I wanted to please people. I wanted to please my dad—he was the reason I choose Asbury, and I also wanted to please my teachers and my fellow students at Asbury seminary. I found that I could not do both, as both my father and the teachers and students at Asbury took their theology very seriously.

Then I met Dr. Robert Lyon, a professor of New Testament at Asbury. Though Bob had to whisper it, especially within the confines of the seminary, he asked his students to take a different approach to reading the Bible. He told us not begin with a doctrinal approach. He told us to, “Have a high view of Scripture, trust it, and follow it where it leads.” We all have presuppositions when we approach scripture, and Dr. Lyon talked about them. He told us that people believe in Jesus Christ for the sake of the Bible. This is a scholastic approach. The problem with the scholastic approach is that if we find one error in scripture the whole approach collapses. We spend all our time defending the Bible. He told us that other people believe in the Bible for the sake of Jesus Christ. He said this is a relational approach, and it is the approach he saw in the scripture. People in the New Testament believed in Jesus long before the gospels were written down. Most of us believe in Jesus because of the witness of our parents, or of some friend, and only later do we begin to read Scripture, and work out our doctrine of scripture.

If we simply trust the scripture and follow it where it leads, we discover some marvelous things. Take for instance, the Six Days of Creation that we read about in the first creation story of Genesis. When I went to seminary, my grandmother told me that if I gave up the idea that God created the world in six literal days, logically, I had to give up all of Scripture. I could not trust it. I still hear fundamentalist preachers say this all the time. It is simply not true, for if we approach scripture without the presuppositions of a certain theology, that statement conflicts with the facts. Let me demonstrate.

First, consider the word “day.” The Hebrew word day does not always mean a day of 24 hours. It often simply means “a unit of time.” So, too, in 2nd Peter 3:8, we read that with God, a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” The truth is, if we believe that God is the Unmoved Prime Mover behind the Big Bang, then we can say that with God, a day is like more than a billion of our years, and several billion of our years is like, well, a minute, or even a second, in the life of God. As Christians we believe that God is eternal. God lives in eternity where time is meaningless. The Bible teaches that time is a part of creation—the sun and moon are created for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years.” (Genesis 1:14) According to the Genesis story, time, like everything else, was created for the sake of humankind. God understood that we human beings would need a sense of progress.

Now consider a few details of the creation story itself. When we read the first story of creation, in Genesis 1:1-2:4, we see that on the first day, God separated the light from the darkness, and morning and evening were the first day. Now this is interesting because the sun and moon—by which we get our light, were not created until day four. Now, if we trust the scripture, and take it seriously, we who live in the 21st century know immediately that the story in Genesis is not meant to be a scientific account of creation. If it were science, there would be a sun and moon before there was light on the earth. So where does that leave us. Some will think, “Oh, if this creation story is not science, it must be poetry. It is a beautiful, poetic account of creation.” That, I think, is an equally big mistake. The text of the first story of creation is more than poetry. It is theology, which is the study of God, and, I believe the queen of the sciences. We know it is theology because it names God 35 times in 34 verses. Now if this creation story is theology, what does it tell us about the sun and the moon? It tells us first and foremost that they are a part of the creation. This was explosive news for some of the first people who heard these stories told or read. Remember, the ancient peoples that surrounded Israel, whether the Egyptians or the Canaanites, worshiped the sun and the moon as gods. Yet, this story said to them, “The sun and moon are not gods. They are certainly important. One rules the day, and the other the night. but the sun and moon, like everything else, is just part of God’s creation.”

The primary emphasis of the first creation story of Genesis is to insist that God is the creator of all things, and that mankind is the apex of God’s creation. In the first creation story God made “adam” with a little “a,” meaning, “mankind” in God’s own image. The text declares, “in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.” Last week we saw that whatever else this means, it must mean that God gave human beings a measure of the Divine freedom. The animals are ruled by their instincts. We are not. We can go north in the winter. We can choose between right and wrong. God even gave us the freedom to disobey God.

The second story of creation is not just about the creation, it is about things as they are. (See Note: Theodicy) It is not science, and it is not poetry, it is theology. It attempts to explain why the world is like it is, and it roots those things in the attitudes and actions of three important players.

First there is Adam, meaning the man, the first man. Then there is the man’s helper made for him by God. Adam said, “I will call her woman, for she was taken out of man.” Many women do not like this story for in this story women are made subject to men. This story did not create that situation. It is just the way that it was. Men were stronger than women. A woman needed a man’s protection. It was a man’s world, and it would be for thousands of years to come. In the New Testament Jesus lifted the station of women, but that did not last. By the time 1st Timothy was written we read: (See Note on 1st Timothy)

12 I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Churches, who do not let women teach, or serve of church boards, take this text and other like it at face value. Moravians have women pastors, and teachers, and bishops, and elders, because we set these texts over against Galatians 3:27-28 and find them wanting. There we read:

27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

According to the story, Adam was the first to be created, but in my mind it was the woman who took leadership in this first family. Eve was a smart cookie. Eve was wise enough to let her husband think he was in charge, and Eve was smart enough and sexy enough to get her husband to do what ever she wanted him to do.

Eve was smarter than Adam, and more ambitious, too,  but Eve was not as smart as she thought she was, for the serpent, who is the third major character in this story, deceived her.

The serpent deceived Eve with a lie. The serpent convinced Eve that God did not have our best interest at heart. First, the serpent misdirected her. He asked, “Did God tell you not to eat of any of the trees in the Garden?” Eve answered:

“We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Then the Serpent told an out and out lie, the first recorded in Scripture. He said, “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Eve saw that the tree is a delight to the eyes, and good for food, and desired to make one wise, so she ate, and she gave some of the fruit to her husband and he ate.

And the world changed. Suddenly the first pair knew that they no longer lived in a perfect world of carefree freedom. To this point they had been naked and not ashamed. That is no longer true. Their eyes have suddenly been opened, and for the first time they see their nakedness. In response to this change, they fashioned clothes for themselves from leaves, and they hid themselves from God, in the garden.

We cannot hide from God. God knows when we rise up and when we lie down. He discerns our thoughts from afar. (Psalm 139) We cannot hide, and neither, according to the second story of creation, could Adam and Eve. The first pair was transparent before God. God made a visit to them, and God said to Adam, “Who told you that you are naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Like men everywhere—remember, this story is about things as they are, the man tried to pass the buck. He said, “The woman whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12) (See Note: The Woman Also Passes the Buck)

And you know the rest of the story. You know that God pronounced a judgment on the man and on the woman and on the serpent. These judgments handed down by God do not give us any new information about how things are for us, but they offer an explanation, albeit not a final explanation, of “why” things are the way that they are. Consider the punishments:

The man is punished through work. God cursed the ground and tells the man that he will eat his bread in the sweat of his brow. I do not regard my work as a punishment. I am among the fortunate few whose work and vocation go hand in hand. I am one of those whom Thomas Carlyle had in mind when he said, “Blessed is he who has found his work, let him ask no other blessedness.” But the truth is that for the vast majority of humankind, work is a terrible drudgery. If you don’t believe this, you have never pulled tobacco, dug ditches for Shutt Hartman Construction Company, or worked a double shift in a cotton mill.

The woman is punished through child bearing. A man may work hard, but no labor of man is harder than a woman’s labor. The author of 1st Timothy says that a woman is redeemed through bearing children, if she will continue in faith, love, and holiness, with modesty. When we talk about the sexual revolution brought about by birth control, we highlight the negative consequences, sexual promiscuity and the spread of sexual transmitted diseases. We forget that birth control has been God’s gift for many married women, because thanks to birth control they are no longer forced to bear child after child, simply to satisfy their husband’s sexual appetites. There is a new option. This is a recent development in our world that still benefits just a tiny minority of women. In this regard, I think the Pope should get on with the game!

The serpent is punished by having to crawl in the dust all his days, and God puts enmity between humankind and serpent kind. I know all about this enmity. I know snakes have an important role to play in our world, but as a rule I hate snakes, and I am reasonably sure that snakes feel pretty much the same about me. I once stepped down off a log onto the back of a Timber Rattler that was as big around as my arm. They say white men can’t jump, don’t you believe  them. And don’t believe that snakes are slow, either. By the time I came down, he was in the next county. Of course, the serpent of Genesis stands for more than serpent kind. If you take this talking serpent too literally, you miss the point altogether. The author Revelation identifies “the ancient Serpent” as the devil and Satan. (Revelation 20:12) Likewise, Jesus identifies the snake with the devil. In John 8:44 he calls the devil, “a liar and the father of lies.” It is a clear reference to the snake. It does this story a disservice to take it too literally. We know that Satan is much more than a talking snake that is still forced to crawl on his belly all the days of his life. In 1st Peter 5:8 we read that Satan goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Scarier still, in 2nd Corinthians 11:14, St. Paul says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. That means that the very thing that promises good to us, frequently delivers evil.

Finally, I would mention that the man and the woman are expelled from the garden, and forbidden to re-enter. God put an angel with a flaming sword at the gate of the garden, paradise, to keep out the man, and the woman, and all their children after them, including you and me.

The Bible never uses the word “fall.” Nevertheless, theologians of every stripe and persuasion, Wesleyan and Calvinist, liberal and conservative, say that this second story of creation is really the story of humankind’s fall into sin.

Last week we saw that mankind is like the animals, we are finite, creatures of dust. “From the dust we have come, and to the dust we will return.” Yet mankind is also made in the image of God, and like God we posses a measure of freedom and choice. This dual nature means that we live in a halfway house, halfway between the animals and God. We struggle to live in this halfway house. We can’t stand being part finite, and part free. We are constantly trying to breakout. There are two ways out. Sometimes we deny that we were made in the image of God, and we throw ourselves out the door of our animal nature. We give in to sex and lust and the desires of the eye, like Jack Kerouac who’s goal in life was to sleep with 1,000 women. Sometimes we throw ourselves out the door of freedom. We pretend that our freedom is absolute, and greater than it is. A good example of this is Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” He is destitute, and he kills the old pawnbroker for her gold because he regards himself as superior to her—he is a great man who will do charitable things with her money. On a larger scale, this is what Hitler did when he convinced the German people that Aryans were a superior people who deserved to prosper and flourish, and that Jews were an inferior people who deserved to be exterminated. This is what some American militia did in 1792 when they smashed the heads of 96 Christian Delaware Indians at Gnadenhutten like pumpkins, and laughed to see their brains spill out. Some will say, “Some of those Indians fought on the side of the British.” This did not justify the killing of 28 men, 29 women and 39 children.

The fall is certainly a fall down into sin, and sin is more than an action. Sin is a power. Sin lures us. Sin snares us. Sin compels us. That is what St. Paul is getting at in Romans 7:15 when he writes, “I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” It is impossible to overestimate the power of sin. Likewise, it is impossible to overestimate the spread of the infection. The late Herbert Weber, my first Senior Pastor, once told me that the one Christian doctrine that Christians and non-Christians agreed upon was the doctrine of universal sin! “None is righteous, no not one!”

The fall is a terrible thing—but there is some good in the worst of things. On the plus side, according to Eric Fromm, the fall of Genesis is also a fall upward, into self-awareness, reason, and imagination. Before humankind could make progress we had to know that we were naked. Our shame before God and our weakness before the elements, the wind, the rain, the cold, the heat, compelled us to use the minds God gave us to make progress in the world. Necessity is the mother of invention, especially when it is cold outside.

Now let me quit this section with a caution. Some people say that Adam and Eve possessed eternal life until they disobeyed God. The Genesis story itself does not say that. In this story Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they never ate from the Tree of Life. In point of fact God barred Adam and Eve from the garden “lest they eat of the Tree of Life.” Even a very conservative approach to the text, if it is honest, recognizes this. Oswald Chambers, the author of “My Utmost for His Highest,” put this into perspective. He said that Adam and Eve possessed the potential for Eternal Life, for God created them with the potential for holiness without which no one shall see God. “It was their task, “ he wrote “to transform (untested) innocence, into (true, tried and tested) holiness, through a series of moral choices, but they failed.”

Likewise, some people say that we die because of the sin of Adam and Eve. Jesus never mentions this, but in Romans 5 St. Paul assumes it to be at least partially true. Even so, Paul steadfastly refuses to lay all the blame on Adam, the first and archetypical man. He put some of it on each of us and on all of us. In Romans 5:12 Paul says: “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.”

People ask me if I believe in the fall. I not only believe in it, I participated in it. I well remember the day I stole a box of Diamond Brand stick-matches from my grandmother’s kitchen on Cotton Street, and lighted a fire in the back alley of her house. I directly disobeyed my mother, and broke the 4th commandment. It is the first sin I remember, though I am sure that there were others before. It does not matter. I am solid in Adam. I am under the sway of sin and death. If I had been in the garden in place of Adam, I would have done as he did. There is only one who, “…though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being found in human form, became obedient unto death, even death of the cross. “ (Philippians 2) Jesus Christ was the last Adam (1st Corinthians 15), and the only way to escape our solidarity in Adam is to join ourselves to him in faith become solid in Him.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

Note: Theodicy

Theodicy is an attempt to vindicate the goodness of God. Genesis transfers the blame for death and every hurtful thing from God to man. It is an answer, but not the only answer. In my view this answer is not nearly so satisfactory as the idea that in the Cross of Christ, God suffers with his people, and, in the resurrection of Christ, God gives us hope. Brunner has the Genesis story and the Cross in view when he says that the best answser for theodicy is not an intellectual one, but a redemptive one.

Note: The Woman Passes the Buck

The woman also passes the buck. Thus we read, “13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.’”

Note: 1st Timothy

It is my conviction that the pastoral epistles were written by a disciple of Paul incorporating genuine remembrances by Paul, but they are obviously set in a later time frame, when the church had become as much an organization as an organism, having bishops (and elders) and deacons.