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The word is a lamp: addressing two objections to reading the OT
Ps 119:105-112
Fourth in a series on the metaphors for the word: mirror (JB), honey, sword, lamp (JB), rain, seed
St Stephens Belrose
Dec 28, 2014
Words: ????
Introduction
We continue our series on the word of God. We have been looking at the many metaphors used in the scriptures for the word. So far we have considered the word as a mirror, as honey, as a sword. Today we are in the great Ps 119 where the word is described in v 105 as a lamp: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”. Through this series we have been encouraging one another to be more dedicated in our reading and study of the scriptures. I hope you have found that encouragement meaningful and have been making sure you are getting deeper into the word.
Today I want to focus our attention on the OT. And I want to address two difficulties for modern readers of the OT. One is that old chestnut “violence”. And the other is what I am calling “culture shock”.
When it comes to reading the Bible I am pretty sure most of us find the NT easier than the OT. In the NT we have the familiar story of Jesus as told in the gospels and of the early Church in the book of Acts. And then the various letters address many topics. Some are hard to understand but on most pages we will find something that we can connect to and find meaningful. Revelation is a bit scary for many of us. But it is full of colour and movement even if it is alarming at times.
But for many of us the OT is more difficult going. Yes we have the Psalms which have a universal appeal. And we have the scattered narratives which are familiar to us from Sunday School and from popular culture: creation, Noah and his ark, Joseph and his many-coloured coat, the parting of the Red Sea, Moses receiving the law, Daniel and his friends in Babylon. We could list another dozen stories which we find familiar and reasonably comfortable. But for many of us the rest of the OT is completely foreign. And not just foreign. At times what we read in the OT is completely alienating. This is what I am calling “culture shock”.
For example we are reading our way through the OT. We have made in through the 50 chapters of Genesis and the 40 chapters of Exodus. So far we are following the story reasonably well. And now we launch into Leviticus. Leviticus begins with instructions about burnt offerings. First how to sacrifice a young bull: how to kill it and drain its blood; how to cut it up and how to burn it. Then the same with sheep or goats.And then with a bird. That’s Leviticus 1. Suddenly we feel ourselves to be in foreign territory. And when we read three times in the chapter that these burnt offerings created an “aroma pleasing to the Lord” (Lev 1:9,13,17) we are caught between our own distaste for what we are reading and God’s evident pleasure in it. There are cultural practices and values here which seem utterly strange to us. As visitors to the world of the OT we experience “culture shock”.
Or perhaps we never made it even to the end of Exodus. Perhaps we got stuck at the point where God sends the plagues on Egypt to persuade Pharoah to release the Israelites. Or after the Exodus how Moses and Miriam led Israel in the great victory song of Ex 15: “The LORD is a warrior… Pharoah’s chariots and his army he has thrown into the sea” (Ex 15:4). Perhaps this description of God as a warrior-god is enough to make us stop reading the OT. This of course is the problem of violence: another objection some modern readers have to the OT.
And yet the OT is a “lamp to our feet and a light to our path”. We need to see what the OT has to show us. We need to know the God of the OT. So how are we supposed to think about these twin issues of culture shock and violence? That’s my subject for this morning.
Let’s start with
- Violence
ExplanationThe key to understanding the violence of the OT is to understand the big story that the Bible is telling.
The story starts of course with the creation of the world in Gen 1-11. There we see the way God makes the entire universe including human beings who alone aremade in his image. And how he places human beings in the world to rule over it. That is to reflect his character in the world and to represent his wise rule over all he created.
We see there also that God’s good creation has a dark side. A serpent lurks in the garden and lures the first couple to rebel against God’s good rule and to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All the sad and bad things we know in our world flow out of that act of sinful rebellion: loneliness and separation; frustration and death; hatred and violence; empire and arrogance. But in the midst of that downward moral spiral God promises that he will send a human being who will crush the head of the serpent even though he himself will be bitten as he does so. God will not abandon the creation he has made. He will send someone who will get to the heart of the problem and deal with it. And that includes the problem of violence.
But how will he do it?
When we turn the page from Gen 11 to Gen 12 we turn from problem to solution; from question to answer. From Gen 12 onwards we read the story of what God did to solve the problem described in Gen 1-11.
And what did God do? He chose a man: Abraham. He committed himself to Abraham in the form of three promises. God promised that he would give Abraham many descendants so that his family would become a great nation. He promised a land that this nation would occupy. And he promised that through this nation he would bless all the people of the world (Gen 12:1-3; 15:1-21).
Over the following centuries Abraham’s descendants did indeed become a great nation and they did indeed occupy the promised land. And their prophets declared again and again that from amongst them there will come a king, an anointed one, a Messiah who will both suffer and rescue not only Israel but the people of the world and the whole of creation.
And then when the time was right a descendant not only of Abraham but also of David began to teach and preach about the coming Kingdom of God and the start of a new era in human history. His name was Jesus from Nazereth. He preached and practiced non-violence. He drew down on his own head all that a sinful world could do to a person: the betrayal of family, the treachery of friends, the rejection of his people,the violence of an empire. He drew onto himself all the violent, sinful, rebellion of the world. All this as he died upon a Roman cross. And on the third day he rose from the dead, vindicated and victorious, and by that act sin was condemned and Jesus was declared to be the Son of God, the true image-bearer, the complete human being. Here then is the one who crushes the head of the serpent even as he himself suffers the deadly bite to his heel. And so God rescues the human race and the whole of creation from the power of sin and the evil one.
IllustrationRule 1 at J F Buckley Painting Contractors is: don’t make things worse! I know rule 1 should be something more inspiring like Rise up and paint! But “Don’t make things worse” is a way of saying “Do no harm” which of course is a principle in the Hippocratic Oath!
Don’t make things worse is behind our motto: We are here to solve problems and not to create problems! Now I know that sounds really facile. But it is surprising how often it helps to ask “Am I solving a problem? Or am I creating a problem?”
But the moment when rule 1 is really helpful is in a crisis. When you spill 4 litres of paint on someone’s carpet; that is the moment to remember Rule 1. The temptation is to rush in and do something sudden and heroic. For example you might think the solution is to grab the pot of paint you spilled and rush out of the house throwing it into the garden. But I think you can see how that would really make things worse. Now we have to clean up the original spill. And the pool of paint wherever you threw it. And of course the line of paint which now runs through the house from your dripping pot. Not to mention the footprints you walked through the house after you stood in the paint.
Instead what you have to do is bring a clean drop sheet to the site of the spill and lay it down close to but not on the spilled paint. Then you bring a large, clean container and a fresh brush. Then you get down on your knees and using the brush start steadily lifting the spilled paint and wiping it into the new container. Then once the bulk of the paint is removed you begin to deal with the stain all the while making sure you don’t spread it out and make a bad situation worse.
Why am I telling you all this? Because Rule 1 illustrates a kind of principle of the universe: you can’t solve a problem without getting close to it; without getting down on your knees and putting your hands in it. If you want to fix something you have to get involved in it.
ApplicationThat’s what we see in the great story of the Bible. In Gen 1-11 we see a great cosmic paint spill! God makes a wonderful world. But then something goes catastrophically wrong. What will God do to set things right? He chooses a man and a people and sets them on a historical course which will at just the right time produce a savior who will save the world. All this right inside the story of the world.
But to choose a real human being who becomes a real nation; and then to set them on a course which requires that they occupy a real piece of land when of course other people live there and will want to live there; to do things this way has to mean that there will be violence. And there is violence as the story proceeds.
As it happens Israel was less violent than many of its neighbours. Israel remembered its forebears not as warriors but as shepherds. For centuries Israel resisted the temptation to have a standing army. Her military conquests were modest even at the best. Much of her later military activity was defensive. The prophets often criticized her kings for depending too much on their own military ability or on that of allied nations.
But for all that Israel’s God-given vocation demanded that she be a real people in a real world. And that meant at times violence was necessary.
Now I have a suspicion that when we object to the violence in the OT we are not saying what we really think or feel. To be consistent the person who refuses to read the OT because of its violence should also refuse to watch TV or go to the movies. I think we could admire such a person.
No I think what is really happening when we object to the violence in the OT is that we are objecting to the way God has set about solving the problem of the world. We think that God should have thought up a different way to save us. More sanitized.G-rated.Distant. He should have just waved a wand. Or used a magic-spell of some kind. He should have stood at a distance and kind of hosed the world down. Some kind of one-size-fits-all solution.
But that is not how the God of the Bible did things. He did it the way the Bible describes it. And as far as Jesus was concerned this was the way he had to do it. That’s why we see Jesus many times in the gospels telling his disciples that this was how it had to be.
So friends we must resist this objection to the OT. If we feel it ourselves we need to correct our own thinking. Not that we must think positively about violence. Not at all. Violence is always wrong. War is always wrong. Violence is always a sign of human sinfulness. And what God did about this and all sin was to enter into the real world in which real people are killed by real bullets and on real crosses. He entered it and he overcame it.
In fact I think we should go onto the front foot here. Our God is committed to this real world and fully aware of the reality of human wickedness. The Bible tells the story of a real God engaged with a real project of saving real people from the real sins they commit. The Bible is real. And realistic.
The violence of the OT should disturb us. But so should all violence. That God has taken action in history to save the world from its own violence is profoundly comforting. The Bible tells that story and we should celebrate it.
- Culture shock
ExplanationA second problem modern readers have when reading the OT is culture shock. Culture shock is what you feel when you are deeply immersed in a culture which is very foreign to you. And sometimes the Bible can feel like that. Leviticus 1 feels like that. And so do many other chapters especially of Leviticus.
Leviticus 1 introduces us to the laws about sacrifices: what kind of sacrifices should be made and when and how. These overlap with instructions about the building of the tabernacle and later the Temple. And also with instructions about the priesthood. In this way the worship of God and maintaining fellowship with God are placed at the centre of Israel’s life.
There are all kinds of laws as well about purity. These instructions draw Israel’s attention to everyday life and guide them in the way to remain pure and how to deal with impurity. Then there are instructions about what kind of foods to eat and to refrain from eating; and what foods can be cooked together. There are laws relating to the Sabbath and the annual calendar.
I could go on. But just this limited list makes it clear that through the pages of the OT we get a glimpse of a very distinct and rich ancient culture.
IllustrationWe lived for several years in St Ives. St Ives has a very large Jewish community. I found it very moving to see this community continue the long struggle of Jews the world over and down through 40 centuries of history to retain their distinctive identity. You would see small groups walking to the synagogue on Saturdays, heads covered, in a sober mood. On the night before, on Friday night you could sense a rising tension in the supermarket as Jewish families stocked up their kitchens to last until Sunday anxious to be home before sunset. And then on Sundays much more relaxed family groups moving about the suburb. It was moving too to drive past the high fences of Masada College and see the armed guards in their bullet proof vests at the front gate.
Here we are at the farthest end of the world and 40 centuries on from Abraham and 20 centuries since Israel had a temple in Jerusalem. And still in the next suburb are descendants of Abraham working hard to retain their distinctive cultural identity.
ApplicationAnd that gives us a clue to the reason the OT gives so much space to questions of cultural identity; and why it drives home the imperative to remain distinct from the other nations. If Israel was to play the role God intended for her she had to survive.
And survive she did for 20 centuries until the birth of Jesus. In spite of the opposition of her neighbours; in spite of poor and patchy leadership; in spite of the encroaching ambitions of 6 successive empires (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome); in spite of the loss of the 10 northern tribes; in spite of famine and exile; Israel survived until the birth of Jesus of Nazereth. The long genealogy of Matt 1, the account of 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus, is an account of survival.
She survived because God was faithful to her and preserved her even when she was reduced to a stump. And one way he did that was to call her to remember her cultural distinctives. To be different.
Parts of the OT feel very foreign. And they are supposed to. They were supposed to draw a line between Israel and people like us. And so when we feel that sense of alienation it should inspire in us a sense of wonder that God should choose such a strange and extraordinary people for such a strange and extraordinary mission. And it should I think inspire a sense of compassion and gratitude for the dark destiny of God’s chosen people.
Of all the people of the world God chose Israel. He privileged them with his presence and his purpose for the world. That’s why Paul says of them “…theirs is the sonship…the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship…the promises…and the patriarchs…” (Rom 9:4-5). But theirs also was the burden of taking upon themselves the sins of the world in the person of Jesus. They had to discover that the law which promised life could not deliver life but instead increased the guilt of sin. They had to experience over and over again the depths of human sin and the consequences of sin in their own history. They had to live in that fraught space between promise and fulfillment. They had to provide the place, the person in whom all the sin of the world was heaped up and done away with. This was the agonizing destiny of Israel.