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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Why Creation Matters, Part 5: Deliverance 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: From the Beginning | Part 3: The Flood | Part 4: The Sabbath  

Having surveyed the first section of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Torah, or Law—the 5 books of Moses—we turn now to the second, the Prophets. This section is normally divided into the Former Prophets, what we Protestants call the books of History, and the Latter Prophets, what we call the Major and Minor Prophets. There’s a lot of creation material in the Latter Prophets, but I’m going to touch on just one passage in the Former. 

During the reign of Hezekiah, Assyria invades, conquers, and takes into exile the northern kingdom of Israel, where Hoshea is king (2K 18.9-12). Ten years later, as one would expect of an invading king who has faced resistance from both these kingdoms, the new Assyrian king, Sennacherib, turns his attention to the southern kingdom of Judah. He begins by merely demanding tribute in the form of silver and gold. Hezekiah strips the precious metals from Solomon’s Temple and turns them over (2K 18.13-16). 

Sennacherib, however, is not yet done. Perhaps noting Hezekiah’s initial cooperation, the Assyrian sends emissaries, backed up by a large army, to mock Hezekiah and to threaten to destroy Jerusalem (2K 18.17-37). He calls for the city’s complete surrender, if necessary against the wishes of their king. 

This is no mean threat. In these days Assyria is the Big Kid on the Block, the conquering army that can operate at will across the Near East. Sennacherib’s emissaries have made threats, and they can keep every one of them.  

But things are different in the South. Whereas Hoshea, the northern king, had been evil, Hezekiah is godly; and placing the Creator of heaven and earth on the scales tips them infinitely toward Hezekiah. 

The godly king humbles himself as he seeks God’s presence in the (much reduced) Temple. He sends messengers to the leading prophet at the time, Isaiah, and requests his prayer for the nation (2K 19.1-4). Isaiah responds, apparently quickly, that God will deliver his people from even this essentially omnipotent king; he will need to return to his land, where God will judge him with death (2K 19.5-7). 

The prophecy eventuates. On his way out of Judah, Sennacherib assures Hezekiah of his eventual return and the defeat of Judah (2K 19.8-13). His ground? That the gods of the surrounding nations have not been able to deliver their people. 

Ah. Logical flaw, comparing the gods of the nations to Judah’s God. Hezekiah takes Sennacherib’s written diatribe before the Lord in the Temple and tells him: 

“O Lord, the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. 16 Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. 17 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands 18 and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. 19 Now, O Lord our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Lord, are God” (2K 19.15-19). 

Powerful words. The gods of the nations do not deliver, because they cannot; they are not gods, or even persons, or even sentient beings at all. They are wood and stone, themselves the creations of men’s imaginations and craftsmanship. 

But Judah’s God, this God, is the Creator of Heaven and Earth. He made all things from nothing, with spoken words. Any God who can do this can do anything else, if he wants to. And if his prophet has assured Hezekiah that Judah will be delivered, then it will most surely be delivered. 

And it is, spectacularly. The angel of this God massacres the Assyrian army as they sleep in their tents (2K 19.35), and upon returning home, Sennacherib is murdered, ironically enough, as he is worshiping his own (false) god. 

This Creator God can do anything. He certainly can deliver his people from finite enemies. 

Now, the God who created and made covenant with Hezekiah is also the one who created and has made covenant with his people today. We are safe in his care. 

Creation matters. 

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Why Creation Matters, Part 4: The Sabbath

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: From the Beginning | Part 3: The Flood  

Moses gives us one more application of Creation that I’d like to note. One of the Ten Commandments, the fourth, makes a direct reference to the creation as a basis for application to how we live. I note that two of the commandments—the second and the fourth—receive considerably more column inches than the others. (Not that any of the ten are “less” important than the others, of course.) The second, which forbids graven images, protects the holiness of God; since God is unlike any of his creatures, to make an image of him is to represent him as less than he actually is. 

Does the fourth commandment do something similar? God says that his people are to honor the Sabbath—because he did. Interestingly, there is a second recounting of the Ten Commandments over in Exodus 31, where God says something that ought to get our attention. He says there that by resting on the seventh day, God “was refreshed” (Ex 31.17). 

Now, God doesn’t get tired; he’s omnipotent. And creating the universe, even in just six days, was not at all taxing for him. But when he finished his astonishing work, since he had created time as well as space, he took some of that time to sit back and enjoy—take pleasure in—what he had created. We know, because he created sunsets, that he enjoys the beauty of sunsets; we know, because he created flowers, that he enjoys the beauty of flowers. 

One of God’s attributes is aestheticism. 

And because we are in his image, we should take the time to sit back and enjoy a job well done. 

Aaaahhhh. 

Is there more to it than that? 

I note that in Israel, violating the Sabbath was a capital offense (Ex 31.14). Does God kill people for being insufficiently aesthetic? 

I suppose, given enough time and thought, I could try to make a case for that, but I don’t think it’s necessary; these passages add further depth to the significance of the Sabbath. 

God calls this practice “a Sabbath of rest” (Ex 31.15). We’ve noted that he was not tired at the end of the Creation week, so the seventh day did not serve as recuperative for him. But he knows that we, his people, whom he loves, do get tired, and as he provides all our other needs, he provides our need for proper rest and recovery from exertion. He goes further than that; he commands it. We must rest, as a sign of our relationship with our Creator God. 

Work/life balance. It’s a thing. 

We think we show our love for God by doing all the things. Well, if we love him, we do obey him. But we don’t show love for him by abusing ourselves in his service; we plan regular times of refreshment, of enjoying his presence and the beauty of where he has placed us in his created world. 

Which brings us back to aesthetics, doesn’t it? 

Some years ago I was blessed to visit in the home of a Messianic Jewish family in Arad, Israel, on a Friday evening. We gathered around the table for supper, joined hands, and sang their traditional song: 

Shabbat shalom! 
Shabbat shalom! 
Shabbat shalom, shalom! 
Shabbat shalom! 

We smiled, and we circled the table, and I experienced newly the joy of entering into God’s Sabbath rest, receiving it as a precious gift, and delighting in it for itself alone. 

How much we 9-to-5 commuters abandon, and unnecessarily. 

I don’t have room here for a thorough discussion of Sabbath theology; there’s a lot more to it, and there are whole books on the topic, from both sabbatarian and non-sabbatarian perspectives, and in each of these directly opposing views there are strengths and motivations to appreciate. Suffice it to say that it is a deeply important concept—and the reason it is important is that it is rooted in the doctrine of Creation. 

If we have no Creator, we have no provider; we have no meaningful beneficence; and we have no assurance that there is one who loves us perfectly, knowledgeably, and wisely for time and for eternity. 

Rest. 

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Why Creation Matters, Part 3: The Flood 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: From the Beginning  

As Moses continues his narrative of beginnings, he comes quickly to an account of the Flood, God’s global judgment on human sin. Perhaps you’ve never noticed how thoroughly the flood account is imbued with Creation language. 

The account begins with the observation that “man began to multiply on the face of the earth” (Gen 6.1)—which is a direct response to God’s command to multiply in Genesis 1.28. A few verses later (Gen 6.6), Moses states that God “repented” that he had made man on the earth. Thus Moses introduces the Flood as, in effect, God’s reversal of the Creation event: his Uncreation, if you will. 

And so begins the account. God describes all the life he created in Genesis 1, using the same language: “man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air” (Gen 6.7)—“all flesh, wherein is the breath of life” (Gen 6.17). God orders Noah to preserve two of each of these life forms (Gen 6.20), specifying “male and female” (Gen 6.19). 

As he continues his instructions, he specifies not just two, but fourteen–seven pairs–of the clean animals, again including both male and female (Gen 7.2), and specifying both beasts and fowl (Gen 7.2-3). 

Sidebar: Some question why God specified 7 pairs of each clean beast—and some are completely unaware that this specification was even made. Why this command? Well, for starters, we’re told that upon exiting the ark, Noah made a large sacrifice (Gen 8.20), and after going to all that trouble to preserve breeding pairs, you don’t want to kill them. I also note that that dove eventually didn’t return to the ark (Gen 8.12).  Further, I speculate that Noah and his family might have eaten some meat on the ark, and further, they may have wanted some breeding insurance for clean animals as the repopulation proceeded. 

Back to our account. 

As Noah and his family enter the ark, the Creation language is repeated (Gen 7.8-9). And then they wait for seven days until the rain starts (Gen 7.10). Is this intentionally matching the Creation week? Maybe. 

Summarizing the entry into the ark, Moses recalls the Creation language of “after its / their kind” (Gen 7.14), “the breath of life” (Gen 7.15), and “male and female” (Gen 7.16). As the water rises and the death begins, Moses repeats the language: “of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man” (Gen 7.21, 23). He speaks further of “the face of the earth” (Gen 1.29) as the now-emptied home of animal life (Gen 7.23). 

As the rain continues, “the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth” (Gen 7.18). This too recalls Creation language; in the beginning the Spirit was on the face of the waters (Gen 1.2), and on the 2nd day God separated the land from the water. This gracious provision for life in the Creation week is now reversed; the means for life among land animals is removed, and all flesh “in whom is the breath of life” dies (Gen 7.22). 

After the ark lands on dry ground, Noah waits for seven days (there’s that period again) to send out a dove (Gen 8.10), and another seven days (Gen 8.12) to sent it out (successfully) again. Is this an intentional doubling of the Creation week to imply the completeness of God’s restoration of his good Creation? I’m just suggesting this; we don’t have any way of being certain of the significance. 

So on “the first day of the first month the waters were dried up from off the earth” (Gen 8.13)—for the second time (Gen 1.9-10). And into this new world “every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” emerge to “be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth”  (Gen 8.17-18). 

And the account closes by recounting God’s words: “seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Gen 8.22). 

Creation order is restored. 

So we find that Creation and the Flood are intimately linked in the plan of God. In response to man’s sin, God undoes his miraculous creation—miraculously—and then returns it to its original state, despite the presence of sin. He shows his mercy more spectacularly than he did by creating humans to begin with. And he can do this, obviously, because he was capable of creating the cosmos in the first place. 

Creation is the basis for mercy. It matters. 

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Why Creation Matters, Part 2: From the Beginning

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Part 1: Introduction 

Moses himself, the author of the creation account, begins to interpret and apply it almost immediately. He finds his opportunity in two specific events: the initiation of the godly line, and the Great Flood. 

After the account of the Fall (Gen 3) and the birth of Cain and Abel and Cain’s murder of Abel (Gen 4), Moses begins to trace the line of “the seed of the woman” (Gen 3.15). That line is clearly not through Abel, since he is dead and without any named offspring, and it’s clearly not Cain, the murderer and outcast (Gen 4.12), as his offspring Lamech demonstrates (Gen 4.23-24). So Eve has a third son, Seth (Gen 4.25), whose name means “to appoint,” implying  that he is either “the seed of the woman” or the seed’s progenitor; indeed, shortly later “men began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 4.26). 

Moses chooses to begin chapter 5 by announcing a formal genealogy: “This is the book of the generations of Adam” (Gen 5.1). But at the beginning he chooses to spend some column inches on the birth of Seth, more than is usual in a genealogy. He begins by referring back to his creation account—specifically the key fact that Adam and Eve were created “in the likeness of God” (Gen 5.1). Borrowing almost precisely from his earlier language, he emphasizes that both Adam and Eve, both of whom are essential in producing the godly line, are created directly by God and are in his image (Gen 5.2). He even says that God “called their name Adam” (Gen 5.2), which sounds odd to us until we realize that the name “Adam” simply means “person” or “human” (e.g. Gen 2.5). 

Now Moses applies that language to the birth of Seth: 

And Adam … begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth (Gen 5.3). 

Likeness. And image. Just as God, so to speak, created “after his kind” (Gen 1.11), so Adam and Eve did as well. And this language is more specific than “after his kind”; it’s a mirror image in certain ways. 

What’s the significance of this? It tells us that the image of God is not a “one-shot deal” effective for just a single generation or birth. It continues; Adam passes that image and likeness on to his offspring, who pass it on to theirs. We’re all, all of us, in that image and likeness. 

We find evidences of that in later Scripture. The New Testament repeatedly describes man, or all mankind, as in the image and/or likeness of God (1Co 11.7; 15.49). It describes Christ as particularly in that image (2Co 3.18; 4.4; Co 1.15; He 1.3), and believers, who are “in Christ” (2Co 5.17), as further conformed to that image (Ro 8.29; 1Co 15.49; 2Co 3.18; Co 3.10). 

I find it interesting that in the first reference to “image” in the New Testament, Jesus implies something further about its significance. In Matthew 22.20 and its Synoptic parallels (Mk 12.16; Lk 20.24), Jesus points out that since a coin bears the image of Caesar, it must belong to Caesar, and should be paid as a tax. What he does not say, but clearly has in mind, is that whatever bears the image of God—mankind—must then belong to God, and not to the state. We are his by right of creation, and he has marked us with his image—a brand, if you will—as visible evidence of that. 

The first significance of creation, then—established from the very beginning—is that God is our Owner and Lord, whether we acknowledge that or not. I suspect that a significant motive in the invention of other creation stories is the desire to circumvent, even to suppress (Ro 1.18), that fundamental fact.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Light on the Horizon 

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First, a personal note. Today is the 44th anniversary of our first date. Happy anniversary, Babe. 

Now, the post. 

I have a clear memory of an event from when I was just 3 or 4 years old. 

My father and I were going someplace in the car—I believe that would have been the yellow 1954 Nash Rambler. I was standing up on the floor behind the front seat. (We weren’t much on child restraint—or anybody restraint—in those days.) It was nighttime, and I got interested in the oncoming headlights. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but every so often another pair would appear on the horizon. I got to saying, “Here come annuddah one” when that happened. 

Dad joined in the game, responding with, “That’s all, Dan, no more.” Of course, that just increased my excitement when the next one appeared. Before long I was jumping up and down and screaming, “HERE COME ANNUDDAH ONE!!!” and laughing hysterically. Dad was laughing enthusiastically too. 

I didn’t really understand his joy until I became a Dad myself. 

And nearly 70 years later, I remember hanging onto the back of the front seat, and seeing the oncoming headlights, and jumping up and down, and screaming, and hearing my Dad laugh with unmitigated enjoyment. 

Dad remembered it too, until the day he died after six years of dementia. We often spoke of it. 

Another thought, seemingly unrelated. Bear with me. 

My wife and I like to go to Hilton Head Island once a year, sometimes more. I like the fact that now that I’m retired, we can go during the school year, the “off season,” and get lower rates. 

When we’re there, one of my favorite activities is to get up an hour or so before sunrise and walk east on the beach for a couple of miles, timing it so I arrive at a certain favorite spot just as the sun peeks the top of his shiny bald head up over the horizon. Typically the beach is empty when I start the walk, but by sunrise there are a dozen or so people at the spot, some doing yoga poses as they face the sun, others reading their Bibles, others just walking around picking up shells. 

World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle once wrote, “Dawn is the most perfect part of the day—if you’ve got the nerve to get up and see it” (“Roving Reporter,” The Pittsburgh Press, 7/7/43). 

Some people worship the sun; maybe some of the people out on the beach with me fall into that category. But whatever the specifics, we all seem to have this visceral response to the sunrise. It seems meaningful to us, in some way. 

Long, long ago the Creator of heaven and earth made a promise. After a global flood of judgment, he said that no such flood would happen again. And then he said, 

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease (Ge 8.22). 

Every morning, he said, the sun will rise. 

I think that our attraction to sunrise is based in the fact that we, in the image of God, rejoice that he keeps his promises—that he is faithful. Even those who don’t know him respond to that image at the very core of their being. 

We were at Hilton Head again this past week. And do you know what I thought each morning as I saw the southeastern sky slowly lighten, and the color display adorn the horizon? 

“HERE COME ANUDDAH ONE!” 

I didn’t jump up and down and shout and laugh hysterically, because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my time at Hilton Head in a padded room. 

But the joy was just as intense—even more so, because this light on the horizon is infinitely more meaningful than those oncoming headlights all those decades ago. 

And you know what? That sunrise is always there. It’s not transitory. It’s a permanent halo around the earth, which is rotating underneath it at a thousand miles an hour (at the equator). And thus we see it every morning, and again from the other side every evening. 

Before they died, my wife’s parents had a small plaque hanging in their hall bathroom. It featured a nature scene and the words “Ever watchful / ever faithful / everlasting is the Lord.” 

Indeed. 

Photo by Jason Pischke on Unsplash

On Labor Day

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Today is Labor Day. These days it’s pretty much lost its original meaning and serves for our culture as just a day off that signals the end of summer. And so we have the irony of calling a day off “Labor Day.” 

The kids must wonder about that. 

Originally, of course, it was a fruit of the labor-union movement in the United States, a celebration of and a recognition of the importance of the work done by “laborers,” or what we’ve come today to call “blue-collar workers.”  

Much has been written from a Christian perspective on the importance of work, and particularly of all work; work is a sacred calling, a “vocation,” directed by a wise and loving God. Any obedience to that God has value and meaning. Some people are paid more than others for their work, and some kinds of work are seen as more “respectable,” but theologically speaking, all honest work is a virtue and contributes to the overall good of society and the furtherance of God’s plan. 

I’d like to meditate on the topic from another angle, one of my favorite theological concepts. 

As I think back over my working life, I realize that is filled with good things, great blessings—but things that I didn’t recognize as good at the time. 

At first I wanted to be a pilot. But that costs money, so I thought I’d let the government pay for it. Set out for an Air Force ROTC scholarship; I thought I’d get it, because I had good SAT scores. But I flunked the flight physical—bad hearing from a childhood ear injury—and that was the end of that. I remember riding the Greyhound bus home from Otis Air Force Base, wondering at the age of 16 what on earth I was going to do with my life. (I still get wistful in airports.) 

Well, maybe I can be an aerospace engineer. Applied to UMass Boston and was rejected. Good grades, in-state resident, financial need. No dice. Why? 

Hmmm. Must have applied too late. Reapplied immediately for the next year and worked in a sandwich shop. 

Rejected again. UMass just plain didn’t want me. 

I had applied to BJU to get my Dad off my back, and wouldn’t you know it, they accepted me. Drat. 

Off to college, where within hours I was confronted by my spiritual need and challenged to get serious about life. Everything changed. 

Maybe I should be a pastor. Nope. It became clear that I was not gifted or inclined to what that work entailed. 

OK, maybe I should be a Bible teacher. My senior year I applied to be a Greek GA—had a Greek minor and high grades. Nope. 

After graduation I returned home to Boston and got a job to save for grad school. Midsummer BJU offered me a GA in English. I took it. 

So they paid for the terminal degree—that was handy—and I learned a lot about English grammar and writing style. 

Any chance I could join the Bible faculty? Nope. Those guys are as stable as they come, and since they don’t smoke or drink or drive over the speed limit, they tend to live a long time. 

But with the English skills, I could get a job as an editor at the Press. Maybe I can work there until a spot opens on the faculty. 

A decade later I realized that if no such spot ever opened, I’d be content to work there for the rest of my life. I liked my bosses, my coworkers, the customers, the creativity, the business of navigating the industry’s change from analog to digital. 

A decade after that, I got restless. I could be doing more with the PhD. Maybe I should get a teaching position somewhere else. 

And then one of my Seminary profs stopped me in the Dining Common and asked if I’d like to teach. 

That was 25 years ago, and I’ve been deliriously happy ever since. 

What about that boyhood dream of flying? 

I realized later that, first, I don’t have the kind of personality that keeps pilots alive for any appreciable length of time, and second, I’d have been entering the job market just as all those high-time pilots were coming back from Viet Nam. 

God led differently. 

And, to no surprise, his leading has been good, and fulfilling, and perfect for how he designed me. 

Just saw a headline in the Wall Street Journal: “America’s Teachers Are Burned Out.” 

Not this one. 

Happy Labor Day. 

Photo by Scott Blake on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

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Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How? | Part 3: Joseph, For Example  | Part 4: And Naomi | Part 5: And Esther

I’d like to present one more example of providence, one I think is the crowning example.

God raises up kings and sets them down again. One of those kings, Nebuchadnezzar, comes to recognize that fact when God turns him into the crazy uncle down the street, eating grass in front of the county courthouse, and then restores him again to his throne—and nobody objects (Da 4.28-37).

Just before this episode, God has revealed his plan to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream (Da 2.26-45). The prophet Daniel interprets the dream to predict that after Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Empire will come the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, and then Greece, and then Rome.

And it all happens, just as God predicted.

Six centuries later Persia and Greece have come and gone, and Rome has conquered the Mediterranean Basin, including the little province of Judaea, the southern tip of the old land of Canaan, waaaay down at the end of the Sea.

It’s on the list of provinces, and it has a governor appointed by Rome, but it is of little if any concern back in the capital.

What is of concern, though, is the stupendous amount of money needed to run an empire, particularly one with an army large enough to keep the conquered peoples in check. Along about 750 AU (on the Roman calendar), the emperor, Caesar Augustus, decides he needs more money. He orders a census to organize the tax rolls. The order means that all the inhabitants of Roman provinces need to report to their family’s town of origin and sign up.

In the backwater village of Nazareth, in what used to be the tribal allotment of Zebulun back in the Israelite days, lives a construction worker named Joseph. We don’t know his age at this time, but we do know that he’s engaged to be married to a young woman—perhaps a teen—named Miriam. He has a lot on his mind; he’s learned that his fiancée is pregnant–without his help–and soon after, he’s learned that the child is the supernaturally conceived, promised Messiah of Israel. Miriam is now approaching full term.

Both he and Miriam are descendants of David, the great king of Israel from a millennium earlier. Everyone in Israel knows that David was from Bethlehem, in the territory of Judah. So Joseph and Miriam now have to travel overland to Judea to register for the census.

I’m sure Joseph thinks, “Look, I really don’t need this right now.” A full-term pregnant woman has no business traveling close to a hundred miles by any conveyance, let alone donkey.

But Rome.

So they go, at great inconvenience and almost certainly against their will.

When they arrive in Bethlehem, she goes into labor.

And she has a Son.

As expected.

Now, we already know that this is no ordinary son. An angelic messenger has told Joseph, “He shall save his people from their sins” (Mt 1.21). He is the promised Messiah.

Promised, indeed. There has been a flotilla of promises made over the centuries about this child, beginning in the Garden of Eden (Ge 3.15).

And one of those promises (Mic 5.2) is that he would be born in Bethlehem.

Not just any Bethlehem, either. There’s a village named Bethlehem just 6 miles northwest of Nazareth (Jos 19.15). Joseph might well have taken care of the census business there with a day trip. But the prophecy says “Bethlehem Ephrata,” which is the one down in Judah, where David was from.

So in far-off Rome, the most powerful man in the world, who doesn’t care about Judea or Jews or Messiahs or construction workers or prophecies, operating from the least religious motive imaginable, decides that the Empire will be upended and millions of people inconvenienced for his own convenience, and thus forces a full-term pregnant woman to travel a hundred miles on the back of a donkey.

And the rest is History.

God rules.

He does.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 4: And Naomi

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Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How? | Part 3: Joseph, For Example

How about another example?

Another famine. Another family that leaves Canaan (now Israel) to seek sustenance elsewhere.

This time the head of the family is Elimelech. He takes his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, and they cross the Jordan into Moab (Ru 1.1-2).

And then he dies (Ru 1.3).

The boys marry Moabite wives, named Orpah and Ruth (Ru 1.4). And then they die (Ru 1.5).

This is a disaster. A woman with no living sons is effectively unsupported. Such women often end up as beggars or prostitutes. The situation is worse for Naomi than for Orpah and Ruth, for two reasons. First, she’s an expat, a foreigner, a “stranger,” “not from around here.” And second, she’s not young enough to attract another husband. She’s bereft, horizonless, hopeless.

One of those problems she can fix. She can go home again. Which she decides to do (Ru 1.6).

Orpah opts to stay with her people (Ru 1.14). That’s clearly the wise choice. Young enough to have children, she can find a nice Moabite man and marry again.

But Ruth shocks us. She opts to go with Naomi, thereby leaving her people and all the life she has ever known (Ru 1.16-17).

There’s no rational explanation for this. She has seen no reason to follow Israel’s God, and as we shall see, Naomi doesn’t seem to either.

And so they arrive in Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem. Naomi is clearly not pleased with God. She accuses God of emptying her of all that she had (Ru 1.19-21).

And, frankly, she’s right.

Well, these unsupported women have to eat.

Israel’s law says that they can glean grain from the corners of any fields; in fact, farmers are under legal obligation not to harvest the corners (Le 19.9).

So Ruth, the young strong one, goes out looking for a field (Ru 2.2). She goes to the community field in the little town, and she starts gleaning the corners of one section of it. She doesn’t know who it belongs to, and she doesn’t care; it’s all grain to her.

A few hours later the owner shows up (Ru 2.4). He notices the foreigner and inquires of his foreman (Ru 2.5), who says she’s been working hard (Ru 2.6-7). He speaks with her and encourages her to keep gleaning in his section of the field (Ru 2.8-13) and even to eat with his workers (Ru 2.14). He tells his workers to drop grain on purpose for her to pick up (Ru 2.15-16).

Two good people.

By the end of the day she has plenty of grain (Ru 2.17).

Naomi, the empty one, is delighted by what Ruth has gathered (Ru 2.18). And she is astonished when she finds out who the man is. Of all the men in the village, he is the second closest relative, next in line under a legal obligation to restore Elimelech’s property to Naomi (Ru 2.20). She also reads the tea leaves, so to speak: sounds like the man has his eye on the young woman.

So she hatches a plot (Ru 3.1-5), and it works just as she had hoped. Ruth tells the man (whose name, by the way, is Boaz) that he has a legal obligation (Ru 3.6-9), and he demonstrates immediately that he’s willing to do it (Ru 3.10-13); he even fills her apron with seed as a sign of good faith (Ru 3.15). He lays a legal claim to redeem Naomi (Ru 4.1-4) and clears the way to marry Ruth (Ru 4.5-12).

And then, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, he fills her apron with seed a second time, and she has a son (Ru 4.13). Now there is a future for these formerly bereft women.

And what a future it is! Ruth’s son is the grandfather of a boy named David (Ru 4.21-22), Israel’s greatest king and recipient of God’s Messianic covenant (2S 7.8-16). David’s greater Son will redeem Naomi and Ruth and Boaz and you and me and anyone who believes (Ga 4.5; Ti 2.14).

And by the end of the story the baby is not in Ruth’s arms; he’s in Naomi’s (Ru 4.16). God has not emptied her after all; her temporary emptying was simply a step toward a fulfillment far beyond what she could ever have imagined. She becomes a significant part of God’s promise to crush the serpent’s head through the seed of the woman (Ge 3.15)—and an illustration of the process of redemption by which the Seed would accomplish that.

In our pain, let us not dream small dreams. Let us anticipate the kind of good that only God can do.

Part 5: And Esther | Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 3: Joseph, for Example

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Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How?

So far we’ve been considering God’s providential workings more or less in the abstract. I find that it helps me to look at specific, concrete examples of his working to get a better feel for their characteristics; that way I’m more likely to be able to think broadly, positively, and optimistically about what God might be doing in my life, particularly in those times when I’m tempted to think that he’s not paying attention to how hard it is.

I’d like to start with Joseph.

Joseph’s life starts out pretty well. He is the first son of Rachel (Ge 30.22-24), the patriarch Jacob’s great love, the woman for whom he worked seven years (Ge 29.15-18). (Yes, it was actually more complicated than that, but those were the terms he agreed to.) No doubt because of the identity of his mother, Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son (Ge 37.3)—and at the time he had 11 of them. Jacob makes this favoritism obvious in ways that Joseph would have noticed; his brothers certainly did (Ge 37.4).

Joseph has interesting dreams (Ge 37.5, 9). He may not have known that they were divine revelations and thus prophetic, but they certainly showed him in a favorable light. And the fact that he told them to his family (Ge 37.6-11) indicates to me that he was confident around them, perhaps naively so, not suspecting trouble.

In Joseph’s experience, life is very, very good.

And then.

As the Brits would say, it all goes in the loo.

His brothers, unsurprisingly jealous, turn on him, initially planning to kill him (Ge 37.20), then to leave him to die in a pit (probably a cistern) (Ge 37.22-24), but then “improving” the outcome by selling him to slave traders (Ge 37.25-28). He likely walks, hands tied, all the way through the Negeb and the Sinai to Egypt, where he is sold to a government official named Potiphar (Ge 37.36).

We don’t know anything about the early days of his slavery, but it appears that he works hard and well and distinguished himself from day one, to the point where he becomes Potiphar’s house steward (Ge 39.1-4)—better living conditions than a menial slave, certainly, but still slavery. (I once spent an evening in jail. The conditions were reasonably comfortable, but when you’re not free, you’re definitely not having a good time.)

And then.

Potiphar’s wife takes a shine to the young man, and he refuses her advances (Ge 39.7-12). She accuses him of sexual assault (Ge 39.13-18), and Joseph goes to prison (Ge 39.19-20).

I’m told ancient prisons were even unpleasanter than house slavery. (See under “solecism.”)

He has a couple of cellmates who are former slaves from Pharaoh’s court (Ge 40.1-4), and they have dreams (Ge 40.5). Joseph now knows that these dreams are prophetic revelations—maybe he did when he was a kid, but it doesn’t say—and he informs one of the men that he’s going to be released and returned to Pharaoh’s court (Ge 40.9-13).

Which he is. Joseph asks him to put in a good word for him (Ge 40.14-15). He doesn’t (Ge 40.23).

Two years later Pharaoh has a dream himself (Ge 41.1). His slave—finally—remembers the dream interpreter he met in prison (Ge 41.9-13). Pharaoh sends for Joseph (Ge 41.14).

Joseph interprets his dream (Ge 41.15-36), and—here it gets interesting—Pharaoh believes him (Ge 41.37). (Must have been the shave and change of clothes.) Even without any confirmation—there’s no time for that—Pharaoh appoints Joseph to oversee preparation for the famine that his dream predicted (Ge 41.39-45).

And just like that, Joseph is vice-Pharaoh in the most powerful empire of his day—which is worth a lot more than a bucket of warm spit.

Now, here’s what I haven’t mentioned. Four times during this account, the Bible says simply, “Yahweh was with Joseph” (Ge 39.2, 3, 21, 23). The man might well have been tempted to say, “Where is God in my life? Doesn’t he see? Doesn’t he care?”

God was with him. And even though God loved him, and cared about him, Joseph experienced these brutally hard things.

I said, “Even though,” but there’s no contradiction between God’s love for Joseph and the things he endured.

If his brothers hadn’t sold him into slavery, they all would have died in the famine.

If Potiphar hadn’t believed his wife’s lie, Joseph would have lived out his years as a house slave, and his family back in Canaan would still have died in the famine.

If he hadn’t gone to prison, he never would have interacted with a member of Pharaoh’s court.

Could God have accomplished the deliverance of Jacob’s family some other way? Of course he could have. He could have made their jars of oil not run out (1K 17.8-16), or done a thousand other things.

But he didn’t.

His ways are best, even when they’re hard.

Part 4: And Naomi | Part 5: And Esther | Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 2: How?

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Part 1: Where?

The Scripture describes God as working providentially in specific ways. These ways seem to reflect his orderliness, in contrast to the mythological gods, who generally act impulsively, selfishly, and even without regard to the consequences of their actions.

Preserving Creation

God is committed to maintaining what he has created, in an orderly state, even in its brokenness. When we create systems, we aim for simplicity; the more complicated something is, the more critical points of failure there are, and the more likely they are to grind to a halt. God has created the most complex physical thing imaginable—the universe—and even though we have broken it, it continues to run with remarkable smoothness.

After the most violent upheaval in history—the Flood—God says to Noah,

While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day  and night Shall not cease (Ge 8.22).

For all its brokenness, it runs like a clock, and the sun will indeed come up tomorrow. He has kept that promise.

Providing for Creation

The Psalmist describes the sea’s creatures as waiting on the Lord for their food:

25 There is the sea, great and broad, In which are swarms without number, Animals both small and great. 26 There the ships move along, And Leviathan, which You have formed to sport in it. 27 They all wait for You To give them their food in due season. 28 You give to them, they gather it up; You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good (Ps 104.25-28).

Now, we know that animals think constantly about what they’re going to eat next. I suspect that the Psalmist is describing not so much the psychological processes of fish as the simple fact that God provides what they will eat. All earth’s creatures, in all its varied biomes, are provided for, often in remarkable ways. (Check out the anglerfish sometime.) And again, this despite that fact that we have broken what he has created.

Directing Natural Events

God most famously sent a three-year drought at the request of the prophet Elijah (1K 17.1-2; Jam 5.17-18), and there are references to other actions as well (2K 8.1; Is 50.2-3). One prophet describes God as having his “way in the whirlwind and in the storm” (Na 1.3), and Jesus demonstrates that fact for his disciples directly (Mk 4.35-41).

Directing Historical Events

Paul tells the Athenians that God has determined where peoples shall live as well as when they shall come into existence and when they shall disappear (Ac 17.26-27). I grew up in Washington State, where the state’s political and social culture is directed by its topography: the Cascade Mountains cause lots of rainfall in the west, and the resulting rainshadow makes the east a desert. Today western Washington is reliably liberal Democrat, and the irrigating dirt farmers in the east are reliably conservative Republican. And never the twain shall meet. :-)

Of course, God also directs in more, um, direct ways. He sets up kings and takes them down again (Da 2.21), and he works in innumerable other ways to direct the outcomes of history.

Directing Personal Events

David tells us that “the steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” (Ps 37.23), and his wiser son notes that “a man’s heart devises his way, but the LORD directs his steps” (Pr 16.9). We see God’s providential direction of human choices and outcomes throughout the Scripture, and we see it in our own lives as well. I’ve recounted one personal example here.

There’s much to learn from all this. We learn that God is involved; in theological terms, he’s immanent as well as transcendent. And that means that he cares—something that opens up the possibility of personal relationship, and a positive one at that. It also begets confidence that God will direct our own lives in love and grace, and also in power—his will in fact will be done in us. That’s a liberating thought.

I think we’d benefit from some specific examples of God’s providential working. The next few posts will dip into that.

Part 3: Joseph, For Example  | Part 4: And Naomi | Part 5: And Esther | Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash