Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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Believing Prayer

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The prophet Isaiah is receiving visions from God that open to him the long corridor of future time.

The message is mixed.

The first 39 chapters of the book contain a lot of really bad news. The current bogeyman on the world stage, Assyria, is going to be replaced by another equally bad one, Babylon. And Babylon is going to be the hammer that brings judgment to Judah for its persistence in the very sins that have already brought God’s judgment on Israel through Assyria—

  • idolatry
  • mindless ritualism in worship
  • social injustice

And there’s no doubt that this judgment will come.

But starting with chapter 40, the tone and message change dramatically. Words of comfort. Promises of restoration and blessing. A Messiah. A Servant of Yahweh.

Near the end of the book there’s a passage that seems to get odder the longer you think about it.

1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet,
Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
And her salvation like a torch that is burning.
2 The nations will see your righteousness,
And all kings your glory;
And you will be called by a new name
Which the mouth of the Lord will designate.
3 You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of your God (Is 62.1-3).

There’s the promise of blessing, which will surely come to undeserving Jerusalem. But the part that really catches my eye is the first verse. This blessing, this restoration is so critically important to God that he will not stop talking about it. He will not rest until he brings it to pass.

That sets us up for an even more remarkable statement a bit farther down the passage:

6 On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;
All day and all night they will never keep silent.
You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves;
7 And give Him no rest until He establishes
And makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

God orders his people to hold him to his promise—to badger him, to nag him, to hector him—to “give him no rest” until the promise is fulfilled. And the exclamation point on all this is that he himself has appointed those “watchmen” with the specific task of hectoring him.

God’s really, really serious about keeping his promises.

You’re probably thinking about the implications of this principle for our prayer life, and you’re right to do so; Jesus himself endorses that application.

In Luke 18 Jesus tells a parable about an unjust judge who doesn’t care about the people or the cases they bring before him. But there’s this woman who just won’t quit bothering him about her case. Eventually he rules justly, not because he cares for justice, but because he’s sick and tired of the woman’s hectoring. As he puts it, “by continually coming she will wear me out” (Lk 18.5)—literally, “give me a black eye.” No mas, he says.

Unfortunately, some Christians have assumed from this parable that God is like the unjust judge—that he needs to be convinced to help us, that we have to beat him down and wear him out to extract his begrudging grace. But as my colleague Layton Talbert has wisely and reverently noted, this kind of thinking misses the whole point of the passage.

Jesus is not saying that the Father is like the unjust judge; to the contrary, his point is that the Father is not like the judge. This is an a fortiori argument, one from the weaker to the stronger: if even an unjust judge will do the right thing when asked—enough, and with enough force—how much more will your heavenly Father do the right thing when we ask him? If a judge will do this for someone he doesn’t even know or care about, how much more will our Father, who cares for us as his own children, do for us when we ask? (Lk 18.6-7).

God is the kind of person who listens to his children and responds to them generously. He even appoints people to nag him until he keeps his promises (Is 62.6-7), even though he’s completely focused on their good and doesn’t need to be reminded (Is 62.1).

Go ahead and ask.

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On Reading Jonah, Part 4

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Last time we began our consideration of whether the Jonah story is fiction or non-fiction. We noted that the inspiration of Scripture doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that it’s fiction. And then we concluded, tentatively, that the evidence we’ve considered so far leans us toward non-fiction, but we have yet to consider a category of evidence that the story might be historical fiction, a fictional story made up about an actual historical character.

How do we know that historical fiction is, after, all, fiction?

Two possible ways: because the author tells us he’s fictionalized it, or because it contains things that we know didn’t happen.

The author of the book of Jonah gives us no hint that he’s fictionalizing.

Critics, then, note the unbelievable things in the story—as I listed them last time—as evidence that it’s fictionalized.

There’s no reliable record of anyone ever being swallowed by a whale, let alone surviving. (That James Bartley story is pretty suspect.)

How about the repentance of Nineveh? Well, in fact, that’s not much of a stretch. The passage doesn’t say that they became monotheistic, only that they were afraid of a foreigner’s tribal god and tried to appease him. That sort of thing happened all the time in the ancient world, where syncretistic religion was common. Douglas Stuart notes, “From Assyrian omen texts, we know of four circumstances that could move a people, and its king, to fasting and mourning: invasion by an enemy; a total solar eclipse; famine and a major outbreak of disease; and a major flood. We know that enemy nations, such as Urartu, had beaten the Assyrians in a number of military encounters in the time of Ashurdan III and that a major earthquake occurred in the reign of one of the kings with the name Ashurdan—but not for certain Ashurdan III. Moreover, on June 15, 763 bc in the tenth year of Ashurdan III, there was a total solar eclipse over Assyria” (New Bible Commentary on Jonah).

And what about the plant? Some plants do grow rapidly—we Southerners know all about kudzu—and in a very hot, dry wind (Jon 4.8), shriveling could happen in a hurry. Not outside the realm of possibility, but not common either.

But experienced Christians know what’s going on under the surface here.

The real issue isn’t the fish or the plant or the worm or the wind.

The real issue is that some people just reject the supernatural out of hand. Ax heads don’t float. You can’t feed 5000 people with 5 buns and 2 small fish. And people don’t rise from the dead.

And, in their mind, that’s that.

So Jonah never happened.

Well, I’ll grant you that I’ve never seen a miracle and that I’m pretty suspicious when other people claim that they have. It’s safe to say that they’re exceedingly rare.

In fact, even in biblical times, and even if you take the miracle claims at face value, they’re still pretty rare. With just 2 or 3 exceptions, all the recorded biblical miracles occurred in just 3 relatively brief periods of time:

  • The active careers of Moses and Joshua (80
    years)
  • The active careers of Elijah and Elisha (80
    years)
  • The earthly lifetime of Jesus and for a few
    years following (maybe 60 years)

That’s maybe 200 or 250 years out of 6000 years of earth’s history—assuming you’re a young-earth creationist, and a fan of Ussher’s dating at that. Right at 4.2% of history at the most, and if you hold to billions of years (I don’t), that 4.2% shrinks to practically zero.

But how “scientific” is it to say that they don’t happen at all? How “scientific” is a universal negative? How often have universal negatives been debunked?

I long ago decided that rationalism simply didn’t have a strong enough record to merit my faith. I see strong evidence that the Bible is not of ordinary human origin, and I’ve seen it vindicated any number of times, and so I freely confess that I’m inclined to believe it. So the events in Jonah aren’t an obstacle to me.

I think it happened.

Note: For a clear and concise discussion of the alleged fictional nature of Jonah, see Billy K. Smith and Frank S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, New American Commentary Series (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995), pp. 209-19, “Genre and Purpose.”

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On Reading Jonah, Part 3

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The question that’s been asked about Jonah more than any other is a simple and straightforward one—

Did any of this ever happen, or not?

Is it fiction, or is it non-fiction?

Critics point out all kinds of allegedly laughable events in the story—

  • A man survived inside a fish for 72 hours (Jon
    1.17).
  • The entire city of Nineveh, under the urging of
    its king, repented of their notorious and culturally ingrained cruelty and
    worshipped the true God of Israel (Jon 3.5-9).
  • A plant grew large and shriveled up on 2
    consecutive days (Jon 4.6-8).

What nonsense, they say.

Well.

Let’s back waaaaay up and consider the question as carefully as we can in a blog post or two.

For starters, we should consider whether or not the question is important. Does it matter whether the story ever actually happened?

We know that the Bible contains fiction, from a fable recounted by an Israelite king (2K 14.9) to a story about a prodigal son told by Jesus himself (Lk 15.11-32). Supporters of historicity note that Jesus referred to the “fish story” (Mt 12.39-41), but we also know that literary allusion is a perfectly legitimate rhetorical device—so in theory Jesus could refer to the story of Jonah as a metaphor for his own death and resurrection without necessarily viewing it as a historical event. But I note that Jesus spoke of the men of Nineveh, who repented, condemning Jesus’ hearers because they (the men of Nineveh) had repented at the preaching of Jonah (Mt 12.41)—and that really wouldn’t make any sense if the Jonah event wasn’t actually historical.

We also know that there’s a genre we call “historical fiction,” in which stories are made up about real historical characters (e.g. Barabbas or Daniel) that are fictionalized. So the fact that Jonah is described elsewhere in the Bible as a historical figure (2K 14.25) doesn’t render it impossible in theory that the book of Jonah is a fictionalized account. As I’ve noted in my thoughts on the story of Job, sometimes you can’t answer this kind of question with absolute confidence.

But.

Having said that, I note that Jonah is independently verified in the biblical text as a historical character, and Jesus does use his experience with the fish as a figure of his own death and resurrection, and (for what it’s worth) the rabbinical traditions never seem to have entertained the idea that the story was fiction, so barring substantive evidence that it’s fiction, we ought to assume that it really happened.

What kind of evidence would that be? I think there are two kinds that we could consider.

The first is evidence that it conforms to some common fictional genre that was used at the time it might have been written—sometime between, say, around 789 BC, when Jereboam II began to reign (2K 14.25), and around 200 BC, when we know the book of Jonah was in the Septuagint. (That’s being very generous.)

Critics have suggested that it might be an allegory—but this document doesn’t seem to have the characteristics of an allegory. Whom do the various characters represent? Where are the multiple levels of meaning? Where is the object personification?

Another possibility is that it’s fable. But again, it doesn’t read like fable. For starters, it’s too long and complex. And the whale doesn’t talk, nor does the gourd or the worm.

Well, then, maybe it’s a parable. The moral lesson is there, all right. But it’s still too complicated, and the levels of meaning don’t seem to be there.

You know what it sounds like? It sounds like a narrative about an actual historical character. Our inclination to this point is to consider it non-fiction.

But I noted above that there are two kinds of evidence that a historical narrative is fictionalized. We need to consider the other type. We’ll get into that next time.

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On Reading Jonah, Part 2

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Part 1

Last time we looked at the recurring theme of “greatness” in this brief biblical book. This time I’d like to notice a couple more literary features. 

Have you noticed the parallel structure? 

  • In chapter 1, unbelieving Gentiles (the sailors), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and throwing Jonah into the sea, with prayers that God would accept the obedience they offer. 
  • In chapter 2, Jonah prays to God, praising him for his deliverance. 
  • In chapter 3, unbelieving Gentiles (the Ninevites), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and repenting of their sin, with hope that God would accept the obedience they offer. 
  • In chapter 4, Jonah prays to God, raging at him for his deliverance. 

Two episodes, in exact parallel. 

And here’s the odd thing—while the unbelieving Gentiles are moving in the right direction, the allegedly believing prophet is moving in the opposite direction—against what he already clearly knows. 

In chapter 1, Jonah seeks to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1.3, 10) despite the fact that he knows that the Lord “made the sea and the dry land” (Jon 1.9), and despite the fact that he knows God can and will send a great storm in response to his disobedience. 

In chapter 4, Jonah knows that the Lord’s nature is to show mercy to those who repent (Jon 4.2), yet he hardens his heart against the Lord’s will. 

The irony is strong in this one. 

Something else to notice—in the previous post I referred to Jonah as “the character for whom the book is named.” That may have struck you as awkward. Why not call him “the hero,” or “the main character,” or, to use the more academic term, “the protagonist”? 

Simple. Because he is none of those things. He not the main character; as I noted last time, he’s a foil. There I said that he’s a foil for the other prophets; in many ways the book of Jonah is a study in contrasts with all the other prophetic writings. But here I’ll note that within the book itself, he’s a foil as well—a foil for the true main character. 

And who is that? 

It’s not the fish. 

And, perhaps contrary to our expectations, it’s not the king of Nineveh, as positive a character as he is. (And if you know anything about the Assyrians, you’re as surprised as I am that I just called an Assyrian king a “positive character.”) 

Who’s the main character? Who’s the protagonist? 

It’s God. 

He the one doing all the things— 

  • Calling the prophet and specifying his message 
  • Sending a great storm—and calming it when the sailors obey the words of the prophet 
  • Appointing a great fish—and graciously delivering the disobedient prophet, through regurgitation, when he prays 
  • Responding with grace to the repentance of a deeply evil people by reversing his earlier pronouncement of judgment—even taking pity on the Assyrian cattle (Jon 4.11). 

The book itself doesn’t note this, but we know from later history that this repentance was short-lived. It wasn’t long before the Assyrians were at it again, perpetrating cruelty and violence all across the region, crushing any who opposed them, extorting the wealth of their neighbors, being in general just the big bully of the known world. 

And a bit more than a century later, God sent another prophet—Nahum—with a similar message of doom for Nineveh, and this threat would certainly be carried out; by the end of the century—605 BC, to be precise—near a town called Carchemish on what is now the Turkish-Syrian border, the Babylonian armies crushed the Assyrians, who in their desperation had even sought help from the Egyptians. And just like that, Assyria was history. 

As I say, God knew all that, from the beginning of time. 

But when Nineveh repented, ever so briefly and ever so imperfectly, God forgave them. And spared them. 

That’s the kind of person he is. 

You know, you are of much more worth than an Assyrian cow. Even though you can’t repent worth a nickel, God will forgive you, too. 

That’s the kind of person he is. 

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On Reading Jonah, Part 1

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Every so often I’ve been posting my thoughts on reading various biblical books. There’s no formal plan; I just comment when I have something to say about a particular document. Along the way I’ve posted on Leviticus, Numbers, and Job—sometimes taking just one post, sometimes two. In this post and the next one, I’d like to notice some things about Jonah. (I note that so far these have all been Old Testament books. There’s no particular reason for that.)

Everybody knows the story of Jonah and the whale; we all learned about it in Sunday school. A lot of people note that the Bible doesn’t actually call it a whale—it calls it a “great fish” (“huge fish” NIV), and as we all know, whales aren’t fish.

Well, wait a minute. Of course it’s true that whales bear live young and breathe through a blowhole, while fish have scales (um, not instead of live young, but you know what I mean) and use gills to extract oxygen dissolved in water. Fair enough.

But the zoological taxonomic system, including its definitions of words like fish, was developed long after the Bible was written. (And accusing the Bible of “scientific error” for this is to apply an ex post facto law, which is specifically forbidden in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 3. So there.)

The Old Testament cultures called marine creatures “fish,” just as they called flying creatures “birds,” even if a specific flying creature (e.g. the bat [Lev 11.19]) was later to be classified with mammals, for very mammalian reasons.

So maybe it was a whale. Or maybe it was a really big fish of some kind—maybe even a special fish created just for the occasion. The point is that it was there at that moment, and that God had directed it to be. A “great fish.”

Speaking of which, have you ever noticed how often the word great is used in this short book?

  • Jonah is sent to “Nineveh, that great city” (Jon 1.2; 3.2, 3; 4.11).
  • God sends “a great wind” (Jon 1.4) and “a great storm” (Jon 1.4, 12) before he sends “a great fish” (Jon 1.17).
  • The sailors “feared greatly” (Jon 1.10, 16).
  • The people of Nineveh repented, “from the greatest to the least” (Jon 3.5), and the repentance proclamation was issued “by the king and his great ones” (Jon 3.7).
  • When they repented, Jonah was “greatly displeased” (Jon 4.1)—but when the Lord sent a plant to bring him shade, he was “greatly happy” (Jon 4.6).

This is a book of extremes. God does extreme things to see that his will is accomplished, and the characters respond extremely to what they see going on around them. God’s actions greatly humble a great city and its great people.

But the character for whom the book is named is the most extreme of all—oddly extreme. He goes to great lengths to disobey the great One whose message he is appointed to deliver. He delivers it with no compassion for his hearers—compassion that is clearly the motive of the One who sent him (Jon 4.11). Jonah’s actions and reactions are extreme, like those of the other characters, but they are ironically extreme—the opposite of what we expect.

Other prophets take on difficult assignments and deliver their messages in the spirit in which God sent them—and often no one listens to them (Isa 6.8-13; Jer 13.10-11; Ezk 2.3-7). Jonah delivers the message only when he is forced to—and the people repent en masse. And then, to our astonishment, Jonah is angry at their repentance, revealing himself to be an unreconstructed bigot.

Jonah is a foil for all the rest of the prophetic writings. He is the unprophet.

Have you ever heard it said that God can’t use a dirty vessel? Oh, yes he can. And with such a small and weak messenger, he can bring a great city, filled with great men, to great repentance, and he can show them great mercy.

He’s that great.

Part 2

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On Fear

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It’s October 31—the day my Presbyterian friends call Reformation Day, but pretty much everybody else calls Halloween. Some
Christians think it’s OK to celebrate Halloween, and others don’t. I’m not going to enter that discussion in this post, but I do want to use the occasion to do a little biblical investigation.

In our culture Halloween is typically associated with fear—haunted houses, goblins, and so on. I suppose an outside observer would find it odd that we humans like to be scared, as long as we know it’s safe—and for some, even because we know it’s not safe.

More seriously, I see a lot of fear in the world around me, fear that seems to come from every direction. In politics, fear of the other guy winning. In health, fear of this or that environmental concern. In parenting, fear of this or that factor hurting my child. Any number of my newsfeed friends comment on a post with a single word: “Scary!”

I’d like to lay out a theology of fear from a single biblical book.

Deuteronomy is at the heart of Scripture. It’s the climax of the Constitution that God himself drew up for his chosen nation. Scholars have noticed that it’s in a specific legal form common in its day, called a “suzerainty covenant.” It establishes a relationship between an emperor and his people, laying out the terms of the relationship—and this covenant is unusually gracious to the conquered people. It puts the lie to the nonsense about the “angry God of the Old Testament.”

And it talks a lot about fear. This very common Hebrew word appears 39 times in 32 chapters in the book—31 times as a verb, 6 times as an adjective, and twice as a noun. And its usage pattern is very interesting.

Did you know that the book says both that we should fear, and that we shouldn’t?

The difference is in the objects.

Here’s what God’s people shouldn’t fear—

  • The
    wilderness (Dt 1.19; 8.15)
  • The
    Canaanites, with whom they’re about to do battle (Dt 1.21, 29; 3.22; 7.18; 20.1,
    3; 31.6), specifically
    • The
      king of Bashan (Dt 3.2)
    • Occupying
      the land (Dt 31.8)

So there’s no need for us to be afraid of our circumstances, or the people who stand in opposition to us.

Hmm. That’s pretty much everything that we fear, isn’t it?

Don’t be afraid.

Not about politics, not about health, not about the environment, not about people.

Let me anticipate an objection. I’m not suggesting that these things aren’t significant, or that they aren’t important. A nation’s political leadership can make life miserable (Pr 28.15), and disease is so devastating that Jesus was moved to heal it (Mk 1.41), and God has given us responsibility to care for creation (Gn 1.28), and sin causes unimaginable grief to God himself.

But we shouldn’t be afraid. We have a heavenly Father, and he is working his plan, and he cares for us (Lk 12.22-32).

God even told his people that the very people they were afraid of were going to be afraid of them (Dt 2.4, 25; 11.25; 28.10). How about that.

But perhaps surprisingly, we’re not supposed to be fearless.

Here’s what God’s people should fear—

  • God

There’s only one entry on that list. But Deuteronomy emphasizes this fact far more than the fact that we shouldn’t fear anything else. It gives us lots of information about fearing God—

How should we fear him?

  • All our days (Dt 4.10; 6.2; 14.23)
  • Intergenerationally (Dt 4.10; 6.2; 31.13)
  • By
    • keeping his commandments (Dt 5.5, 29; 6.2, 24;
      8.6; 10.12; 13.4, 11; 17.13, 19; 19.20; 21.21; 28.58; 31.12)
    • worshipping him (Dt 6.13)
    • swearing by his name (Dt 6.13; 10.20)
    • loving him (Dt 10.12)
    • serving him (Dt 10.12, 20; 13.4)
    • clinging to him (Dt 10.20; 13.4)

Why should we fear him?

  • Because he is “fearsome” (Dt 7.21; 10.17) and
    does “awesome” things (Dt 10.21; 28.58)
  • Because it results in
    • Things being well with us (Dt 5.29; 6.24)
    • Prolonged days (Dt 6.2, 24)

My natural tendency is to get all this just exactly backwards. I fear temporary and empty stuff, and I find my heart lacking in fear toward the only one who matters.

But here’s the thing.

Fearing God isn’t like fearing everything else. It’s liberating; it’s beneficial; it’s joyous. It’s what we were designed to do.

It fits.

Oh that they had such a heart as this always,
to fear me and to keep all my commandments,
that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! (Dt 5.29)

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The Really Important Bible Story that Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 5

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

December 18, 520 BC, has been a pretty good day so far; Haggai’s third sermon has given us a lot to chew on.

But he’s not done yet.

Later the same day, Haggai delivers his fourth and final sermon, and it goes far beyond any of the others.

This sermon is different from the others; for starters, it’s delivered not to the crowd of onlookers or the workers themselves, but to just one man—the governor, Zerubbabel (Hag 2.21).

And it’s brief and to the point.

And cryptic.

Haggai talks about the shaking that’s coming (Hag 2.21b-22). He’s mentioned that before, in his second sermon (Hag 2.6-7). And in that day, he says to Zerubbabel, I’m going to make you a signet ring!

And that’s it. End of sermon, end of book.

What on earth does that mean?

Zerubbabel would know very well what it means. I’ve mentioned that he’s the grandson of the last Davidic king. This statement is about his grandfather.

His grandfather went by several names. Jehoiachin. Jeconiah. Or just Coniah.

And in his reign of just three months (2K 24.8), he was an evil, evil king. So evil, in fact, that God had placed a special curse on him through Jeremiah: he would be cut off, the royal signet ring pulled off of God’s finger and cast aside (Jer 22.24-27). And worse, none of his descendants would ever sit on the throne of David (Jer 22.30).

How about that. God just cursed the Messianic line. To all appearances, his promise to David (2Sam 7.4-17) was over. No eternal Messianic king after all.

The end of hope.

And now, to Zerubbabel, two generations later, he speaks again of the signet ring. What does it mean? Will Zerubbabel become king again?

Not until the shaking (Hag 2.21-23). When would that be?

Well, Zerubbabel never becomes king, so not in his lifetime. And not for the next 400 years, through all of Zerubbabel’s royal descendants (Mt 1.12-16). And along about 5 BC, the royal heir—cursed—is a carpenter in Nazareth.*

He will never be king. Nor will any biological son.

I think he knew that. The very existence of the genealogy in Matthew 1 testifies to the fact that the Jews kept track of such things.

And now he learns that his fiancée—a woman whose character he had never questioned—is with child, and he knows he’s not the father.

Anguished, he ponders his next step. In the dark of night, a heavenly messenger appears to him. The situation is not what you think, he says. Marry the woman. Adopt the baby.

Joseph’s reputation will be ruined if he does what the messenger says. It will cost him everything.

But he does it anyway. Does he know? Does he realize that this is God’s remarkable way of keeping an apparently broken promise? Or does he just figure that you ought to do what a heavenly messenger says?

He adopts the baby.

And in that instant, it all comes together. The adopted child becomes the legal heir to all the promises of God to David. He becomes the eternal king, the child born to bear all government on his shoulders. Yet he is not heir to the curse on Coniah. He can reign.

How much do we owe to this Joseph, the man who sacrificed everything to follow God’s hard command and then disappeared entirely from history? What if he had said, “No, let the next generation do it!”?

There can be no next generation. Daniel predicted the death of Messiah around AD 30 (Dan 9.24-26). This is the time. If Joseph doesn’t do it, the promises are all broken, and it all falls apart.

Back to Haggai’s day. Does Zerubbabel understand any of this? Can he make sense of the prophecy of the signet ring?

We’re not told. Maybe Haggai explained it to him. Maybe he never knew. Maybe he thought, “And this is the thanks I get?!”

But the theme of the sermon is clear to us. God keeps his promises.

He has made plenty more. And he keeps them all.

Walk in the light of that trust.

* What follows assumes that Matthew’s genealogy is the royal line of David culminating in Joseph, while Luke’s genealogy is a non-royal Davidic line culminating in Mary. No space to defend that view here, but it’s common and justified at length in standard reference works and commentaries.

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The Really Important Bible Story that Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 4

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So far we’ve seen Judah return from Babylonian Captivity and re-establish themselves in the land. We’ve seen them respond, 16 years later, to Haggai’s urging that they rebuild the Temple. We’ve seen God encourage them that his blessing would be on this Temple, in a special way.

And so the work continues.

But now there’s a new problem.

Routine sets in. The workers go to work every day at the Temple site, and they begin to lose appreciation for the special character of the work they’re doing. And not in the way you’d expect—they don’t say, “Ho-hum, let’s get this job done and move on to the next one.” No, the distortion in their thinking is much more pernicious than that. While continuing their appreciation for the significance of the work itself, they twist its purpose. They begin to make it about themselves rather than the God of heaven.

“I’m working on the Temple!” they think. “I’m a cut above!”

And if “I’m special!” then I suppose I have certain privileges, don’t I? If God appreciates my work for him, then I probably don’t have to care all that much about the details of my own thinking and my own living. That’s for the little people. I’m special. My work makes me so.

On December 18, three months into construction, Haggai trudges up to the Temple site once again.

“I have a question for you,” he says. “It’s about the Law. Call the experts; I want to get their opinion” (Hag 2.11).

If someone is carrying some sacrificial meat, he says, and he rubs up against something, does the holy meat make the other thing holy (Hag 2.12a)? In other words, does holiness rub off?

No, the priests—the experts—say (Hag 2.12b). Holiness doesn’t rub off.

OK, next question.

If someone has touched a dead body, he’s unclean, right (Lev 22.4)? Now, if this unclean person touches something else, does he make the other thing unclean (Hag 2.13a)? Does corruption rub off?

Yes, they say (Hag 2.13b). Corruption pollutes.

So holiness doesn’t rub off, but unholiness does?

Right.

You already knew that, didn’t you? When you wash your hands, rubbing them on a dirty surface doesn’t make the surface clean; it makes your hands dirty again. My pastor from years ago* once said, “When you put on white gloves and play in the mud, you don’t made the mud glovey; you make the gloves muddy.”

These men thought that working on the Temple construction was making them clean. On the contrary, when they showed up every day, they were dragging their corrupt hearts onto the site and defiling it by their very presence (Hag 2.14).

They were undoing with their hearts what they were doing with their hands.

And as a result, God’s judgment on their land continued despite their (merely) external obedience (Hag 2.15-18).

But if they would trust and obey, if they would believe his word, despite the desolation all around them, the blessing would come (Hag 2.19).

So what’s the theme of Haggai’s third sermon? Love first, then obedience.

And so it is with us. We think that our association with other believers, with churches, with institutions, our work for God, enables us to cut corners in our love for him.

But it doesn’t.

God doesn’t want your stuff. He doesn’t even want your frenetic activity—he really doesn’t need your help to advance his kingdom—so much as he wants your heart. Mary knew that, and Martha, I suspect, eventually learned it (Lk 10.38-42).

So stop a minute, rethink, reorient.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Put the important stuff first.

And then, sure, get back to work. With a reoriented heart, the work takes on a whole new perspective.

* That was Chuck Swindoll, Waltham (MA) Evangelical Free Church, 1966-67.

Part 5

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The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 3

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It’s October of 520 BC, and the returned exiles from Babylon have begun construction on the new (Second) Temple under the leadership of their governor, Zerubbabel, in response to the urging of the prophet Haggai. But just a month into the effort, discouragement has set in.

It appears that there are some older folks watching as the young bucks do the heavy lifting. They’re old enough to remember the First Temple, Solomon’s Temple, now gone for 66 years. Let me tell you, that was quite a piece of work, they say. The gold. The silver. The ivory. And those two columns on the front porch. Six feet in diameter. Three stories tall. Bronze four inches thick around a hollow core. Now that was a temple. This one? Not so much. Ah, well. I guess you can do only so much with rubble.

On the 17th of October, Haggai returns to the deflated construction workers with another message from God. He confronts the problem directly.

The old men are right—as far as they go, he says. This one isn’t going to have all the gold and silver and ivory of Solomon’s Temple (Hag 2.3). But this time is different. This one isn’t going to be about gold and silver. Gold and silver are trivial; if you need gold and silver to make this Temple great, I can get you all the gold and silver you need. I put the ore in the hills, and I know exactly where it all is. I can get it for you if I want to (Hag 2.8).

But this time I’m doing something much, much bigger than mere shiny things. This Temple is going to be different.

The day is coming, he says, when I’m going to turn the whole world upside down (Hag 2.6-7). I’m going to do something unprecedented, unimaginable. And when I do, the eyes of the entire world are going to be focused on this Temple, the one you’re building—and it will shine with a glory that gold and silver could never approach (Hag 2.7).

You see, what the construction workers couldn’t possibly know is that in a little more than half a millennium, a little baby boy would be brought into this Temple to be dedicated to the Lord, and a prophet named Simeon would be among the first to know that this was a baby like no other (Lk 2.25-35). And a dozen years later, the same boy would sit in this Temple and confound the rabbis there with the wisdom of his questions (Lk 2.41-50). And as a man he would stride into this Temple—“My Father’s house!”—and drive out those who had filled the courtyard with abusive money-making schemes, robbing God’s people in the very place God had designed to be their sanctuary (Jn 2.13-17). Twice! (Lk 19.45-46). And there he would teach (Jn 10.22-38).

And one day—one dark Friday afternoon—as the priests were going about their normal duties in the Holy Place in this very Temple*, with a horrifying crack, the veil of this Temple would be torn in two, from the top to the bottom, without hands, leaving the way open into the very presence of God for everyone.

Gold and silver? Trivial stuff.

This is about eternal things, life-changing things, world-shaking things.

So keep working, the Lord says. Your work matters, even if it doesn’t look like it to the folks looking on. This is really, really big.

What’s the theme of this second sermon?

It’s God who makes the work great.

Any work done for him, in obedience to his commands, is infinitely great, because the one for whom it’s done is infinitely great.

Labor on, my friend.

* Of course I’m aware that by Jesus’ time Herod the Great had massively renovated the Temple, with the effect that it was significantly greater and more impressive than was the one Zerubbabel’s workers constructed. But Haggai doesn’t make that distinction, and neither will I. The building they were beginning work on would eventuate in world-shaking developments.

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The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 2

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Part 1

In my last post I introduced the story of Haggai, one of two prophets who preached to the Jews who had returned from captivity in Babylon. As I noted there, they had rebuilt the altar and reinstituted animal sacrifice, so as to address their most pressing need, a right relationship with God. And they began to rebuild the Temple until local opposition stopped them.

It’s now 16 years later, and the Temple remains in ruins, with a functioning altar standing amidst the rubble. On August 29, 520 BC, the word of Yahweh comes to Haggai. The Lord directs the message to Zerubbabel, the governor, and to Joshua, the high priest. (Obviously, this is not the Joshua we know best; he’s been dead for nearly a thousand years.)

Haggai begins by telling the hearers to “Consider your ways” (Hag 1.5)—in other words, to rethink what they’re doing. Something is wrong with their priorities.

What could that be? Well, they’re living in nicely decorated houses—well beyond what’s functionally necessary—and the Lord’s house still lies in ruins (Hag 1.4, 9b).

And for at least the most recent of these past 16 years, God has been nudging them toward dependence. He has withheld the rain that would provide bountiful crops (Hag 1.10)—something the Lord had promised them if they would but serve him (Dt 7.12-13). Every sector of the economy has been affected—the grain, the grape, the olive, and all the other agricultural products; and the suppression of this key element of the economy has exerted downward pressure on even the wages for labor (Hag 1.11).

And the judgment has not been limited to decreased income. Cash outflow has been increased at the same time:

You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes (Hag 1.6).

Does that sound at all familiar? Have you ever seen the bills increasing just at the times that you need to cut expenses to match your income? Frustrating, isn’t it?

Now, I’m not saying that when that happens to you, God is judging you, and you need to go out and build a temple—or even put more money in the offering plate. God has many reasons other than judgment to take us through deep waters and fiery trials, and in fact Christ has endured all of the judgment that God has ever had for us.

But at least this common experience helps us understand a little bit of what Judah was going through.

And what does the Lord prescribe as the solution to the problem?

Get some wood. Build the house. Glorify God (Hag 1.8).

I don’t think the solution to divine displeasure is to work harder; the Scripture pictures God as a God of grace, of love, of care. And that is the key to what he’s asking for here.

The problem is not their failure to build the Temple; that’s the symptom. The problem is that they don’t care about their God as much as they care about themselves. And so God tells them, yes, to get wood and build the house—and most important, in that to glorify him, to make him look big, to demonstrate by their actions that they hold him close and hold him reverently, that they value him above all else.

Like every good sermon, this one has a theme, a key takeaway idea. How would you state it?

I’d put it pretty simply: God comes first.

We put him first. In everything—in our thoughts, in our plans, in our labors, and especially in our affections—because if he is first there, he will be first everywhere else.

The account tells us that Zerubbabel, and Joshua, and all the people responded to Haggai’s words as they should have. With the promise of the Lord’s presence and empowerment (Hag 1.13), they get wood, and they begin to build the house. Construction begins just 23 days later (Hag 1.15).

This is a great first step. But as we’ll see, setting off down the path of obedience does not mean that the path will be straight, or level, or free of danger. In less than a month, God’s people will need another sermon.

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