More Going on than Meets the Eye (Psalm 82)

Sunday, August 18, 2019

          “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” (82:1).  What about this verse catches your attention?  Discussing it this week with a Christian I trust, one potential issue became apparent to me.  How much do we really know about the unseen, the spiritual realm that exists all around us but outside our three dimensional universe and outside our powers of observation and measurement? 

          “In the midst of the gods [lower case ‘g’], God [capital ‘G’] holds judgment.”  The Christian with whom I spoke, someone I trust, said, “Whatever that verse means, it cannot mean there are other gods.  There is only one God.”  His worldview demands a fierce commitment to monotheism.  There is only one God.  I agree.

          So what do we do with Psalm 82:1 and other passages that indicate an entire governing system of supernatural beings that exist outside our ability to see?  One scholar I read writes that the Psalmist in Psalm 82 “conjures a mythic heavenly court.”[i]  Calling this writing mythology, the scholar indicates it is poetic way of discussing the problem of evil.  How can evil exist when God is all powerful and all good?  Psalm 82 doesn’t refer to a literal heavenly council because, as my Christian friend said, there’s no such thing.  But is my friend and is this scholar correct?  The book of Job, chapter 1 & 2, refer to a divine council.  So does 1 Kings 22.  Furthermore, Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 23, and Daniel chapters 7-12 are just a few of the numerous Old Testament passages that indicate an entire unseen world of activity.  Creatures whether we call them angels, demons, gods with a lower ‘g’, or by some other title interact with God and each other.  What happens in that realm directly affects us. 

          Such a statement runs against the grain of our conventional thinking at three levels.  First, in our world of airplanes, space travel, and the internet, we have trouble taking seriously talk of an unseen spiritual realm.  But, the very Bible we claim is an ultimate authority for truth, ethics, and morality in our lives was written in a time that knew nothing of the World Wide Web or telescopes or rocket ships.  So there’s the distance of history; thousands of years of history. 

          The second tension is one of worldview.  The ancients had no trouble talking about demons and gods and spiritual beings.  It wasn’t belief.  That supernatural world was assumed by all ancient peoples.  With each scientific discovery over the past two millennia, belief in the spiritual is pushed further and further into the realm of superstition.  How do we, with a scientific worldview, take seriously scriptures written by people with a pre-modern worldview?

          Assuming by faith we resolve the first two tensions, the third one rears its head.  The writers of Psalm 82 and the entire Old Testament and the entire New Testament were ancient Jews.  They held ancient assumptions.  Even when they held tightly to theiir monotheistic faith – belief in 1 God – they existed in a world that assumed multiple gods and they were a product of that world.  We are Christians in the 21^st century.  We are products of our world.  Like my friend, we are tempted to say, ‘no, there’s no divine council; just one God.’  We might not know why this is so important to believe, but we know it is, so we are committed to this position.

          How do we resolve the tensions of history, of worldview, and of our own religious assumptions?  How do we get past the tension so we can do a deep dive into the Bible passage?  How do we get to the point that we can, as followers of Jesus, open Psalm 82 and hear God speak into our lives as we read it?

          We need to name the tension and understand it.  The ancient writers have different assumptions than we modern readers.  There’s no reason to shy away from this tension.  Identify it and accept.

Then, we find handholds.  What are the core issues that ancient writers and modern readers can both relate to?  In the case of Psalm 82, the handhold is in verse 2-4.  This is the common ground. 

In these verses, God is angry with the gods for failing to give justice to the weak and the orphaned.  Whether the term “gods” actually refers to earthly princes, kings, and rulers, or to demonic spirits that malevolently influence earthly tyrants, the result is the same.  God is furious when people who have power in society do nothing to help people who are powerless.  Remember, middle class Americans are rich compared with 90% of the people around the world.  When the rich exploit the poor in order to hoard privilege, God judges the rich.

So the connection point with the Psalm in our day and time is the way we who have privilege either walk alongside the poor, the refugee, the minority, and help them; or, we use our power and privilege to keep ourselves well-fed and to keep the poor down.  As Jesus shows in Matthew 25, how we relate to the most vulnerable people in society is tied to how God relates to us. 

In Psalm 82, the narrator is the speaker in verse 1, announcing God as God holds court in the heavenly council.  In verses 2-4, God speaks to those He has entrusted to inforce justice, but who have failed to do so.  In verse 5, the narrator speaks of the ignorance of those God has judged.  Verses 6-7 give us God’s verdict.  “You shall die.”  Whatever is meant by calling these at the council ‘gods,’ they are completely subservient to the God of Abraham, the God we see in the New Testament.  That God, the only one truly called Almighty, has the power to obliterate these other beings. 

Psalm 82:8, the final verse, changes perspective.  In this verse the narrator again speaks, this time in prayer to God.  “Rise up, O God.  Judge the earth.”  Thus we see the tension resolved as we connect to God where God has expressed the highest value: justice for the poor and for the disadvantaged.  God expected his divine council to administer justice.  God expects us to work for justice and advocate for the poor.

Knowing that, we can read Psalm 82 as a word from God for us and we can live a word-informed faith.  We do this as Christians.  Even though the Psalms come from the people of Israel, the promises to Israel are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  So our starting point is to give our lives to Jesus.

On this point, know what is being said and what is not being said.  This is not a call to church membership.  Of course we want people to join the church.  But being aware of the unseen spiritual world and navigating that reality as God-worshippers is not dependent upon church membership. 

Neither is it a matter of becoming a Christian.  Yes, we must confess our sins and receive forgiveness and receive Jesus as our Savior.  That is necessary and everyone who does not turn to Christ is cut off from God in sin.  But becoming a Christian is just a partial step. 

We go all the way into the word-informed faith when we give our lives completely to Jesus.  He is master of our lives, every relationship we are in, every bit of our time, and everywhere we go.  We fully surrender our wills to his.

Once we have given our lives to Jesus, we then align ourselves with God.  We value what God values.  In the case of Psalm 82 that would be justice for the poor.  If we were reading 1 Corinthians 13, we’d commit to self-giving love.  If we were in the Sermon on the Mount, we’d explore what it means to turn the other cheek, love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us.  We scour the scriptures to see how God administers the world and to see God’s desire for how human life is to be lived.  And then, that’s how we live.

Having given our lives to Jesus and having aligned our lives with God’s values, in order to live a word-informed faith, we then commit to two spiritual disciplines.  We commit to prayer without ceasing.  In all the places of our lives, we pray.  Of course, this doesn’t mean stopping the company board meeting to hold a prayer service.  That would get your fired.  However, it does mean as you go through that board meeting, in your mind, you’re reaching to God.  Ask God to help you do your work with excellence.  Ask God to help you show His love to your coworkers.  Ask God to help you maintain your integrity as you work.  This spirit of prayer is constant and it colors who we are in all the places of life.

The other spiritual discipline is worship.  Be committed to weekly worship with the church, either here or in another church. We sing, we pray, we turn our eyes toward heaven, and our hearts toward God.  We believe the Holy Spirit is here helping us worship and receiving the worship we offer.  This belief is the start of our acknowledgement that God is beyond our understanding.  But God is also present, loving us and acting for our good. 

We know there is more here than meets the eye, and because we are children of God in Christ, that is a good thing. 

If you have never given your life to Christ, you can.  Today, turn to Him for new life.  If you are terrified by the thought of demons or evil spirits, you can receive assurance from God right now.  And if you long to see the poor lifted up, be encouraged.  What matters to you matters to God.

AMEN

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[i] Adam Hearlson, textweek.com - http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2939

The Religion God Desires

I have heard it said, over and over by people who don’t attend church, “I am spiritual but not religious.”  In certain Christian circles, especially some evangelical expressions of the Christian faith, the mantra goes something like this.  “Christianity is about faith in Christ, not religion.”  And, a lot of famous people spout sanctimoniously this idea: “I don’t believe in organized religion.”

            Is religion a bad thing?  When you hear the word, ‘religion,’ what thoughts immediately come to mind?  Are those thoughts positive and uplifting and hopeful, or is religion something not to be trusted, something that’s dark or manipulative? 

            Here’s the Merriam-Webster online definition of ‘religion’, entry #2: “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.” I’m happy for each of us to have our response to the word ‘religion,’ but keep this in mind.  In reading the Old Testament, religion is at the center of the story.  Any time we read the word ‘sacrifice’ or ‘temple’ or ‘priest,’ we’re dealing with the very center of Israelite life.

            The Gospel of Jesus Christ stands on the life that is established in the Old Testament.  Our identity is grounded in who we are in Christ.  So, religion – Biblical religion – is at the very core of who we are if we want to be God-worshipers and Jesus-followers.  And, when the Bible talks about religion, it means religious practice.  Who we are is seen in what we do. 

            I am going to paraphrase the thoughts of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann as he demonstrates how the words of the prophets tie together justice and religion.[i] This connection is one of the primary ways our Sunday morning church practice connects directly with our Monday-Saturday lives.  We think of church giving us a foundation for morals, but the Bible consistently shows greater concern for justice in society than an individual’s morality.  If we intend to live out a Biblical Christianity, we will be driven by a hunger for a right relationship with God and for justice for all people. 

            Referring to the prophet Jeremiah, 22:15-16, Brueggemann writes that caring for the poor is the same as knowing God.  “He judged the cause of the needy … is this not to know me?” Jeremiah asks.[ii]  Later Brueggemann writes, religion was supposed to be the way people entered into relationship with God.  That’s what religion was supposed to be.  However, by the time Hosea came along, religion had become the place where God was disregarded.

            That’s the situation at the beginning of Hosea chapter 6.  The nation and the temple and the religion centers in the north had all turned away from God.  The poor were exploited.  Sexual sin ran rampant.  Hypocrisy was at its worst.  Priests and rich and powerful people would come to worship on the Sabbath and then live with no reverence for God or love for people the rest of the week.

            What kind of faith do we have if we are in church once a week but then the realities of God have no voice in our lives the rest of the time?  This is a fundamental question. 

            At the beginning of Hosea 6, the people are in a desperate state.  Because the people turned away from God and did not trust in God, God allowed invading armies to threaten and ultimately overrun the nation.  Hosea’s prophecy comes shortly before this catastrophe, but the storm clouds loom.  And so, in desperation, the people say, “Come, let us return to the Lord.”

            Go through those opening verse, Hosea 6:1-3.  The people are sorry for their sins, kind of.  They’re more fearful of the consequences of God’s anger than they are remorseful for how they have hurt God and exploited the neediest people in society.  We ended last week with the close of chapter 5 where God said he would rot them as maggots and rip them apart as lions.  Shuddering, they respond with this overture of sorrowful repentance.

            Their words state great faith in what God will do. 

            “Come, let us return to the Lord.  … He will heal us.  He will revive us; on the third day, he will raise us up, that we may live before him.  … His appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth” (6:1-3). 

            It’s all true.  God does receive us when we turn from evil.  God does desire a deep and lasting relationship of love with us.  The opening of Hosea 6 is absolutely right, except it is premature.  God knows the heart, and what He sees in this repentance, is words, not changed hearts.

            Be careful about what you wish for; you might get it.  If today we want the salvation God has to offer, we have to be willing to turn to Him completely.  Chapter 7 expands on how much God can see the rebellion that continues to lurk in the hearts of his people even after these earnest words of repentance. 

He addresses Ephraim in chapter 7, verse 8.  Ephraim was one of the sons of Joseph.  One of the ways of referring to Israel was by referring to specific tribes among the twelve tribes, and Joseph’s tribes were divided into half-tribes named for his sons Manasseh and Ephraim.  We you read references to Ephraim in the prophets, think of the most favored among God’s people.

In Hosea 7:8, describing Ephraim’s weak faith and wavering commitment even as Ephraim repents of rebellion against God, God says, “Ephraim is a cake not turned.”  In other words, Ephraim is half-baked.  Any time the community of faith tries to represent God without working for justice, we demonstrated a half-baked faith.  God has no place for it.  In the opening of Hosea 6, the people beg to be reconciled to God, and it will come, but it won’t be easy.

God responds “What shall I do with you Ephraim?”  What shall I do with you Judah?  Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early” (6:4).  God receives our confessions.  Lord, I am sorry for all the nasty words I said, the bad choices I’ve made, mean things I’ve done, and the hateful thought I have in my head.  I am really sorry Lord.  We say that and God hears and loves us, but God can see us too.  God sees us going right back to all of our sins the minute we finish confessing.  The Lord of the Universe, the creator of all that exists, throws His divine hands up in utter exasperation!  “What am I going to do with you,” God ask furiously. 

In the Bible God displays a full range of emotions.  The middle chapters of Hosea are not the most comfortable place in the Bible to sit.  However, we need to see God here so we know how much our actions, our sins, affect the God who loves and saves us.  We need to know the depths God goes to forgive us and make us new.  And, as we will see, there is a word of life-changing hope right in the middle of God’s angry outburst.

But, first the outburst.  Hosea 7:12-13: “As they go, I will cast my net over them; I will bring them down like birds of the air; I will discipline them.  … Woe to them for they have strayed from me!  Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!  I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me.”

Hosea doesn’t end with God’s anger.  God will forgive his people for their sins.  His love never fails.  God will make a new day.  Ultimately, God restores all of creation in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  But there is some hurt along the way.

Anyone who has gone through addiction recovery knows this.  It’s hard to be free from an addiction.  Help is needed.  Often, there are relapses, where the cravings seem more powerful than the love of God, and the addict falls back into deadly patterns.  It takes years, painful years, to break free.  The same can be said when sin comes in relationships.  One person hurts another and trust is broken.  Then comes confession, heartbreaking, genuine tears, and forgiveness.  But even after forgiveness, trust is hard to re-establish.  It’s worth going through the pain because the alternative is to stay in the sin or remain in the addiction.  But, the Bible doesn’t sugarcoat anything.  Reconciliation with God and with people is difficult, lifelong work. 

            How do we as a church exist as a religion in the best sense of the word?  Using Brueggemann’s description of Old Testament religion, how do become the vehicle that carries people into a right relationship with God, a relationship of love, grace, and trust?  Remember, he quoted Jeremiah 22: when we care for the needy, we know God.  In the New Testament, we read that Jesus says that when we feed the hungry and house the homeless, we are doing it for him (Matthew 25).  And in the book of James, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.  Care for orphans and widows is work we do all week long, throughout our lives.

            The justice words that call God’s church to dedicate itself to helping people are the essence of Hosea 6:6.  God says, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”  Sacrifice, burnt offering; this is the procedure of religion and it’s important.  In our context, it would be like the offering, the hymns, the communion; all the things we do in our worship service.  Steadfast love is who we are – agents of God’s compassion.  Knowledge of God?  Brueggemann has already pointed out from his lifelong study of the Old Testament prophets that knowledge of God comes as we work for justice and help the poor, and Jeremiah and Jesus and James and 1000 Bible passages underscore this truth.  

            When we sponsor a child or volunteer with the dental bus or volunteer our time to tutor students or give sacrificially in order to supports missions or advocate for racial justice, we live out the religion God desires.  And we hold the key to our own well-being.  Our happiness comes when our relationship with God is right.  Our relationship with God is right when our religion is true.  Our religion is true when we work for justice. 

            We need not recoil at the idea of religion.  We simply need to live our faith, our religion, all the time, not just on Sundays.  And when we repent of sin, we go into it knowing sin is painful and God is angry.  Repentance is hard work and only takes hold when we have a change of heart.  But God’s love is deeper than his anger.  We’ll see that in future weeks as we continue through Hosea. 

For now, as we come into our time of prayer, fix your gaze on the cross of Christ.  If for you, today is a day of repentance and confession, come to Him.  He will receive you in love.

If for you, this is a time to recommit yourself to serving the poor and working for justice in the name of Jesus as an expression of his Gospel, make the commitment to do that.  And ask the Lord to show you what that will look like in your life.

AMEN

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[i] W. Brueggemann (1997), Theology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p. 613, 644, 677-678.  Brueggemann frequently refers to Israel religion as the ‘cult.’  This is a loaded word as people in our church have come out of oppressive, manipulative cults.  So in place ‘cult,’ I will refer to Israelite religion.

[ii] Brueggemann, 613.

Merciful Rain

In 2008, I preached this sermon from Hosea 6.  Now 10 years later, we are once again looking at the prophet Hosea.  I thought I'd re-post this because I think it is an effective presentation of how the 21st church can live the truth in the words of this prophet from the 8th century BC.

The next post will always be a message from Hosea.  It's one I wrote this week, but have decided not to preach this Sunday.  It's not bad, but I don't think it is the right message for our church this week.  Still, it might bless someone, so I'm posting the text.

Merciful Rain (Hosea 6:1-6; Matthew 9:12; 12:7)

Sunday, July 20, 2008

            Here’s what happened: Matthew was at work as a tax collector.  He probably did what every tax collector did.  He’d take a little more than required and pocket the difference.  His work was not popular, but it was profitable.  He was hated for taking from his own people, the Jews. 

            So, one day, he was at work at his dishonest lucrative job.  That’s when Jesus came.  Everyone had heard about Jesus.  Demons melted in fear before him.  Diseased people came to him and were healed.  Teachers of the law were confounded by his wisdom and confronted by the fire of truth within Him that revealed their own hypocrisy.  His genius seemed beyond the scholars, yet he taught in word pictures that everyday men could relate to.  His stories were about fishing and farming. 

            Now, here He was, standing at Matthew’s table.  “Follow me.”  Two simple words said so much.  Two words; Matthew’s who world blew up!  “Follow me.”  Matthew stood, left the table and the piles of money, and followed.  His heart must have beaten a mile a minute.  It wanted to explode out of his chest.  “Follow me.”  Matthew knew everything was changed, and life would never again be the same. 

            Somewhere in that first walk at Jesus’ side, Matthew worked up the courage to ask Jesus if they could have a party.  He was new to the whole disciple thing.  He’d just been cheating peasants out of their last pennies a few moments ago.  He didn’t know if disciples were allowed to party.  He didn’t know the master loves parties.  I wonder if he was surprised when Jesus said, “Heck yeah!  I’m up for a party.”

            Matthew invited everybody he knew which turned out to be a problem.  The people he knew were other dishonest tax collectors, and a few women who had been rejected by their husbands and rejected by their families and rejected by the synagogue.  In fact, the only people who spent any time with these women were the men who paid to sleep with them.  The women did this work so they would have money for food and shelter.  It’s the only work they could get.  Do you see the problem with the tax collectors and prostitutes at Matthew’s party?  If you do, you’re like the Pharisees.  Jesus had no problem laughing and fellowshipping with these people.  He loved them.  The Pharisees were disgusted by them and they told Jesus as much.

            That’s when he said it.  Jesus looked at the Pharisees and said, “Go and learn what this means.  ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”  Then Jesus said, “I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners.”[i]  Jesus said it, and Matthew, who had been a disciple for all of an afternoon, remembered. 

            Later on, Jesus got the Pharisees bent out of shape again.  This time, his disciples were harvesting grain on the Sabbath.  Sabbath is extremely important, but, the Pharisees didn’t understand that the Sabbath was a gift God gave us, not a restriction He imposed on us.  It is a command to keep the Sabbath holy, but it is for man’s good.  Hungry men need to eat, even on the Sabbath. 

            So, the disciples picked grain and the Pharisees fell apart and made accusations.  Jesus looked at them and said, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”[ii]  Matthew remembered.  He remembered the first time when Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means.”  He remembered the second time, “If you had known what this means.”  Years later, after the resurrection, after years of service, as an old man, when he sat to write the gospel, Matthew remembered.  Jesus desires mercy, not sacrifice. 

            There’s more to this story than meets the eye.  In saying, ‘[God] desires mercy, not sacrifice,’ Jesus places the prophets in the center of his theology of torah.  Jesus locates his understanding of how the law of God is to be lived out in the words of Israel’s prophets, specifically Hosea.  This phrase that exposed the coldness and restrictiveness of the Pharisees’ hearts and burrowed into Matthew’s soul is a quote.  Jesus spoke Hosea’s words.

            Imagine a church in a small town led by a pastor and few elders who had big dreams.  The church was 75 years old.  The original members knew beyond a doubt that God had led them to plant this church in this remote area.  The surrounding counties grew, but it would always be a rural place.  The people were ok with that because ‘small’ and ‘big’ were inconsequential words to them.  Their identity was in the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.  Their mission was to share His gospel with the people in their community whether the number was in the 100’s or the 100’s of thousands. 

Early on, it was a church that prayed for people who were in the hospital.  They prayed for people when a tornado destroyed the barn or a fire left them homeless.  The prayers were accompanied by action – baking, taking people in, visiting, helping people find new jobs, rebuilding what had been lost.  The church never became very big doing that work, but the whole county knew that the Spirit of Jesus breathed in these humble people.  

Years went by, and the pastor retired.  More years passed and another pastor came and another.  Those original members aged, and died.  Some of their children moved away.  The founding vision, evangelical and zealous, was still written on plaques on the church walls, but the church lost steam and declined.  Now though, there was a new pastor and new elders and big dreams. 

There was also a new factory in town – a big one.  The owner was a multimillionaire.  His business practices were similar to those of the tax collectors in Jesus’ day.  He used people, cheated when he knew he could, and made money hand over fist.

  The town was small enough that the ambitious pastor and the unscrupulous factory owner crossed paths.  Of course the pastor invited the man to church.  The pastor had big plans for the church to become a big deal.  He felt he needed this heavy-hitter along with the other important people in town in his church.  They struck up a friendship and in time the rich man began attending services – sporadically.  He had no conviction of the heart.  Nothing in his personal or professional life changed.  But before long, he was chair of elders at the church.

The church got bigger.  More people came because they were excited to see the new building the rich man had donated.  It included a gym and a weight room.  The pastor was proud of all that was happening.  He swelled and his chest puffed as he looked in the mirror.  Almost half the people in the town came to his church.  He was careful to never cross his benefactor.  If there ever came up in meetings conflict, he always looked to the factory owner before he did anything else.  He never took a stance in opposition to the factory owner’s point of view.  The relationship was symbiotic and both men benefited. 

Wouldn’t that fiery prophet from the Old Testament, Hosea, have something to say were he to venture to this town and see this church?  Hosea was the prophet God told to marry a prostitute.  He was commanded by God to enter into a relationship with a woman knowing from the start she would cheat on him.  And of course it happened.  But, we miss the point of Hosea’s words if we get bogged down in the absurdity of marrying a whore.  Sometimes Bible readers open to Hosea 1, and read verse 2 “Go take for yourself a wife of whoredom,” and they think, ‘wow!  It says whoredom in the Bible.  This must be interesting.’

It’s fine that it’s interesting.  More importantly, Hosea wrote in a groundbreaking way, being the first to associate Israel’s worship of Assyrian fertility gods with the sin of adultery.[iii]  Hosea, much more than the prophets before him, used marriage as a metaphor when he spoke of the relationship God had with Israel.  God was the proper husband and would provide for all of Israel’s needs.  Israel, for her part, was to accept the standards of behavior laid upon [her] in the covenant relationship.[iv]  She was to live according to the ethics and righteousness taught by Moses, and she was to depend on God for all things and worship Him only.  She did not need to cozy up to the Assyrians. 

The pastor did not need to kowtow to the big businessman.  Sure, it provided a fancy new worship center.  But what else?  Compromised preaching?  A chairman of elders who blatantly disregarded God’s call for ethics and God’s concern for the poor and God’s condemnation of greed?  A pastor who forfeited his authority so that he’d have a good reputation and a nice salary?  The first sin Hosea condemned in Israel was spiritual unfaithfulness. 

The second was pride.  How often does pride creep into what we are doing even though it is universally condemned throughout the Bible?  Don’t we have a fine facility?  Haven’t we done so much to help people who need it? 

Think of the pastor in the fictitious church preaching to 1000 people every week.  Think of him beaming as the masses hang on his every word.  Hosea says in chapter 5, “Israel’s pride testifies against him.  They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord.  Now the new moon will devour them along with their fields.” [v]

The third sin was a fruitless alliance.  Israel thought salvation could be found in joining forces with Assyria.  When that fell through and appeasing the Assyrians led to being dominated by the Assyrians, the Israelites thought they could find salvation in an alliance with their old enemies – the Egyptians.  That failed to stop the oncoming train, and the leaders of Israel – supposedly the men who would represent God in the world – ended up in exile.  The Assyrian exile was brief.  The Babylonian exile lasted 50 years.  The Pharisees in Jesus’ day sought alliance with a corrupted king – Herod.  He was a co-conspirator in framing Jesus and getting Jesus executed.  Forty years later, it was for naught.  The security the Pharisees sought in ousting Jesus went up in smoke as the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and leveled the temple, razing it to the ground.  The pastor of the imagined church in our story formed an alliance with a crook.  He got a big building, a big check, but he was an impotent leader, and his soul rotted to the core. 

Spiritual Adultery – Pride – Fruitless dependence on people instead of God; these are the things Hosea colorfully condemned in his forceful prophecy.  We are not Israelites in the 8^th century BC.  We do not live in Jesus’ day.  We are a real church, not a made up one.  We though are tempted to worship people, things, and institutions other than Jesus.  We might not think we do that, but sometimes we give the loyalty that belongs to him to other things.  We are tempted to pride.  Sometimes we burst with it and there’s no room for gracious humility before God.  Sometimes we put trust in banks, loans, wealthy donors, property, and other things.  None can deliver as God can.  Jesus believed that the words Hosea spoke 750 years before he was born were still speaking when he lived.  Those words still speak today.  Is there an answer?  Is there a way out when we fall into the sins of spiritual adultery, pride, and putting our trust in men and things instead of God?

 

“Come; let us return to the Lord.”  If you’re ever in search of a simple example of repentance, read Hosea 6:1a.  “Come; let us return to the Lord.”  Hosea spoke with force against the problems that spiritually undermined God’s people – Israel in 750BC and us today: worshipping other gods/spiritual adultery; pride; fruitless dependence on people instead of God.  These patterns of sin lead to destruction, but there’s a solution.  Repentance; come; let us return to the Lord.  Some in Israel heard Hosea’s prophecy, felt the pull of God’s Spirit in their hearts, and uttered these words.  They were convicted.  If we listen to a prophet in the right way, with humble hearts and open ears, we too will fall under conviction.  It’s like the hand of God grabs hold of out hearts and holds them tightly because He loves and doesn’t want to give us up to our sins. 

Make no mistake, God was angry.  When the people sing their song of repentance, they compare the Lord to rain.  “He will come to us like showers, like spring rains that water the earth.”[vi]  Any seeker who has been starved for love, for purpose, and for meaning in life knows the refreshment in finding Jesus and finding wholeness in Him.  He said in the Gospel of John that he gives living water and when we drink of his spirit, living water pours forth from us[vii] to refresh those around us with peace, compassion, joy, and generosity.  The Lord is unquestionably a rain that cleans us and makes us new.  He does this when we turn to him.

Hosea records the people responding in repentance and calling out to God, a spring rain shower.  God uses other images to describe himself and his anger toward them in the previous chapter.  “Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim, and like rottenness to the house of Judah.”  “I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah.  I, myself will tear and go away; I shall carry off and no one shall rescue.”  I am pretty sure if I made a multiple choice test of Biblical metaphors used to describe God and passed it out to everyone here, and the choices were ‘God is like an eagle, or a dove, or a lion, or a bunch of maggots, no one here would check off maggots.  God was mad. 

If we want to turn away from him and worship the dollar or in pride worship ourselves or put our trust in our government for safety and purpose instead of trusting Him, He’s rottenness to us.  He’s an angry lion that mauls and devours us. 

Still, the people who repented were right.  God gets angry, but God is a spring rain.  In spite of us and in spite of himself, he continually loves his people.  “What shall I do with you Ephraim?  What shall I do with you O Judah?”  Hosea records God’s anger, the people’s repentance, and God’s agony.  Justice says destroy, but God’s heart of love is bigger than his anger.  When the people repent, he may let them hurt, but God will not give them up.  When we sin, we do suffer pain as a result.  But, God does not give us up.  The dramatic twists and turns of the relationship of God and His people take us to the high point of Hosea’s prophecy in chapter 6.  This is the verse that inspired Jesus in his dealings with legalistic Pharisees.  This is the verse that reminds us that our Sunday worship becomes significant in our Monday – Friday conduct.

“I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice; the knowledge of God and not burnt offerings.”  The sacrifices and burnt offerings were the central part of worship services in Israel, but God did not want it if the people giving it turned around and did evil to each other the rest of the week.  God did not want elaborate worship rituals from a people that mistreated the poor, disregarded God’s ways, and chased after false gods. 

When we understand that, and our worship is full of mercy that speaks through our daily lives, our big dreams are not for large building and massive crowds. Our big dreams are for the people the church will help.  Our big dreams are about worshipping God with genuine hearts whether it is with a professional worship band or old hymnals and an out of tune piano.  Our big dreams are for transformed lives whether 5 people or 1000. Our big dreams would lead us to call the factory owner to repentance, not make him an elder just for the sake of so we can get his tithe. 

“I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice.”  God wants our worship songs and our Sunday morning offering of music, word, money, and prayer to lead us to become a community of love in action; to be known for the way we show what God is all about as we take care of hurting people.  Commitment to social justice and abounding compassion become what matters to us. 

Jesus exercised interpretation as he often did in quoting Hosea.  When Pharisees wanted to condemn sinners, forgetting of course that we are all sinners, Jesus responded to them saying “Go and learn what this means.  ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  When Pharisees tried to intimidate Jesus’ disciples by using the law as a blunt object to bludgeon them, Jesus responded, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”  Hosea’s words understood and expressed by Jesus, bring us to a moment of truth. Disciples hear Jesus and they are convicted to love and give mercy to people.  Pharisees hear Jesus and are proud that they know Him and they look down on those who are lost.  Are we Disciples or Pharisees?  Do we show mercy or are we indifferent toward God and condemning toward one another?

[invite worship team up]

I don’t know what’s in your heart in this moment.  I know that there have been times this year, when I have had to repent, because I wasn’t looking to God.  I had my back to Him and I was wrapped up in my own pride.  I had to say, in my heart, “Come; return to the Lord.”  I had to pray for God’s merciful rain to fall on me.  And it did.  God didn’t say to me, Rob, you’re a preacher.  You know better!  No, God said to me, Welcome home my blessed, beloved one.   And I fell into His arms. 

I don’t know if you are in that place.  But if you are, come this morning to the arms of God.  It could be you’ve wandered.  You’ve been hostile.  You just ignored God.  If could be, you’ve avoided.  You know God is calling and you’re running the other way as fast as possible.  It could be you’ve given in to temptation.  We are a transforming church when our members are willing to let down all facades and come to God in confession and repentance.  When we do that, people stream to us because they know they’ll be washed in God’s raining mercy.  So, if you need to, don’t wait.  Come today

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[i] Matthew 9:12

[ii] Matthew 12:7

[iii] Gowan, Donald (1998), Theology of the Prophetic Books: The Death & Resurrection of Israel, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville), p.44.

[iv] Gowan, p.45.

[v] Hosea 5:5a, 7a, 7c.

[vi] Hosea 6:3

[vii] John 4:10, 13-14

God's Servant in the 21st Century

            Think of the most important news stories in the world right now.  I don’t mean your favorite stories although the most important could be a good, positive story.  What I am getting is the stories that are significant for humanity.  What issues or stories are the big ones?  Concentrate on the one or two that come to mind.   Think on the first one or two stories that came to mind.

            Now, raise your hand if the story you thought of is negative.  If it would be “bad news,” just raise your hand.

            Some that came to my mind as example of the most significant current events include the following:

-         Race relations in the United States.

-         The ongoing war with Isis in Iraq and Syria.

-         The terrorist murders in France.

-         Climate change.

-         The Republican-controlled congress.

-         Immigration in the United States

-         Same-sex marriage becoming a norm in American culture.

I wonder if anything that came to my mind would be on your list.  It’s too simple to count every story as “bad”.  Some certainly are.  Others are rife with tension because there is the negative element, but also the potential for hope.  These stories and many you have thought of and stories that we can’t see coming that will dominate headlines tomorrow collectively make up the narrative of our time.  This is our day.  When seen collectively, the signs of sin wreaking havoc and destroying human life are all too obvious. 

What word does a follower of Jesus Christ speak into this bad news?  To what action is the body of Christ, His church, called in our day?

We want to live out our faith publically.  We want to live as Jesus’ disciples not only as we carry out our individual lives and our church life, but also as we give a witness to the goodness of God and claim that God’s goodness, seen in Jesus, it a truer story than the bad news we hear.  We want to counter the anxiety, hatred, death, and destruction we see in these stories with a story of the good news of life in Christ.  All people are invited to Him and He seeks the lost and in different ways most of us have times of being lost.

Isaiah, living in Babylon with the Jews who were there as exiles, spoke the good news of God into a situation in which God’s people felt defeated an abandoned.  They thought themselves dead and the promises dating to Moses gone, but Isaiah came along to say God is still all powerful, God is with us, and God will save us. 

Isaiah’s words to the exiles are found in Isaiah 40-55.  Within that block, there are four passages called the servant songs.  Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and then the most well-known 52-53 are passages in which the prophet speaks of a special servant of the Lord, or the prophecy is from the perspective of the Lord’s servant. 

Bible scholars have widely debated who specifically was being discussed in these “servant songs.”  Who is the servant?  There have been many suggestions.  The servant is the prophet himself – Isaiah.  The servant is the nation of Israel, commissioned by God to be a light that shines and allows the world to see God (Is. 49:6).  The the emperor of Persia when Persia overthrew Babylon and allowed many Jews to return to Israel, Cyrus, is specifically named in Isaiah.  Thus, many think he is the servant.  New Testament writers took the prophecies to be signposts pointing to Jesus. 

Isaiah certainly did not know Jesus was coming.  He knew God was doing a new thing, but he expected to see God work in his lifetime and he did.  God has always been a God who saves.  I don’t think Christians are wrong to read the “servant songs” and immediately think of Jesus.  However, I think there other ways of identifying the servant are equally appropriate. 

Donald Gowan of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary writes, “The identity of the servant is not the key issue.  … What God accomplishes through the servant is what is important.”[i]  Another expert, Norman Gottwald, of New York Theological Seminary says, “The most promising question is not who is the servant but what does the servant do?”[ii]  When I was in seminary, we would get caught up in discussions over issues like this, and I have found it extremely encouraging to read these scholars and hear them express more concern about the servant’s action and what it says about God.  Most helpful is the perspective of Paul Hanson of Harvard Divinity School.  He says, “The servant is the description of the human being whom all who love God are challenged to become.”[iii]

Isaiah?  Israel?  Cyrus?  Maybe the servant image pointed to these, but when we consider the world around us, and the problems, and when we realize we are called as Christ-followers to announce the Gospel and the hope it brings to a lost, hurting, dying world, then the servant is a depiction of who we are called to be as God’s witnesses.  And in Jesus, we have a perfect example.

Look at Isaiah 42.  God delights in the servant.  After Jesus was baptized a voice from Heaven said, “You are my Son, the Beloved.  With you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).  In Isaiah 42 God says, “I will put my spirit upon him.”  Luke 4:1 says Jesus was full of the Spirit and led by the Spirit.  Isaiah 42 repeatedly shows the servant to be an agent of God’s justice (v. 2, 3, 4).  In his first public sermon Jesus declared that the Spirit of the Lord anointed him to bring “good news to the poor, … release to the captives, … recovery of sight to the blind, and … [freedom] to the oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

In Isaiah 49, the servant is the speaker.  “While I was in my mother’s womb, he named me” he says (49:1).  The Angel Gabriel told Mary, “You will bear a son and name him Jesus” (Luke 1:31).   The servant says God made his mouth like a sharp sword.  “He made me a polished arrow” (49:2).  In Revelation, the resurrected Christ is described as having a two-edged sword coming from his mouth (1:16).  In Isaiah, the servant says God is glorified in Him.  In the Gospels, God is glorified in Jesus during the transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36).  Also in John 12, shortly before he is arrested, Jesus declares that his action of sacrificing his own life brings glory to God.  Immediately, a voice from Heaven confirms what Jesus just said.  God is glorified in Jesus and in what Jesus’ act of dying on the cross (John 12:27-28).

If the various Bible scholars are correct and the most important thing to see in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 52-53 is what the servant does, then we can see that Jesus does it better than anyone.  He perfectly filled the role of the servant described by Isaiah, and the servant is the key figure in God’s salvation of Israel and in turn the world.

Now recall again the problems we face – racism in our country; war in Syria; terrorism on a global scale; an immigration system that is completely broken and affects millions of people in our country; pollution which leads to climate change.  As Jesus’ disciples, we are called to respond to the bad news of terror, war, and death by sharing the good news of life in Christ.

How do Isaiah’s prophecies and Jesus’ ideal modeling of those visions help us?  Consider what we are.  Paul writes in 1^st Corinthians 12, “You are the body of Christ” (v. 27).  He also says, “In the one spirit we were all baptized … and we were all made to drink of the one Spirit” (v.13).  After Jesus rose from death, he breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples (John 20) and after his ascended, the Holy Spirit filled hundreds of Christ-followers at Pentecost.  Jesus is as present and as active as when he walked the earth but not bodily.  He is present in spirit and in the church, us.  We act as the body of Christ.

What did Professor Hanson say about the “servant songs?”  If we are people who love God, then we strive to live into the role of God’s servant.  Thus we look at the same verses from Isaiah Jesus fulfilled and see if those depictions can continue to be descriptive of the church in the world today.

In Isaiah 42 it says God delights in the servant and in Luke 3, at his baptism, God calls Jesus his beloved.  Isaiah tells us that God puts his spirit upon the servant, and Luke 4:1 says Jesus was full of the Spirit and led by the Spirit.  What about today?  Paul writes in Romans 5, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (5:5).  As the servant is beloved of God and endowed with God’s spirit, so too are when we receive forgiveness and give our lives to Christ. 

Last week we talked about seeing God above the problems of the world, as over everything.  We see God for God is.  This morning, we add to that, our perception of ourselves.  In Christ, we are sons and daughters of God.  When we find ourselves tempted to dwell on problems, our own personal struggles or the evils that threaten people around the globe, a helpful spiritual discipline is to remember that in Christ we are sons and daughters of God.

Isaiah 42 shows that God’s servant works for justice (v. 2, 3, 4), and Luke 4 among many other Gospel passages shows Jesus’ concern for people who suffered injustice.  We are living into the life of God’s servants when we identify the most vulnerable people in society and we work to help them.  Most often, these are those who are victims of injustice.  We see it, name it, and work to counteract injustice.  This will be our theme next week, but here we’ll simply say that the Lord’s servant speaks and works for the justice the Lord demands.  When we act out of compassion to help those in need, we are living into the role of God’s servant. 

Isaiah 49 also showed us some things about the servant including that God knew him before his birth.  And the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would have a son and would call him Jesus.  Does the Lord pay such careful attention to us even before we are born?  Luke 12 and Matthew 6 are both places where Jesus talks about the intimate, detailed care God has for us.  Like the servant, we too are loved. 

Isaiah 49 also tells us that the servant speaks the piercing truth so that his words are like a sword, and we see the same of Jesus throughout the gospels and the sword metaphor used in Revelation 1.  The servant says God made his mouth like a sharp sword.  If we as individual disciples and collectively as the body of Christ want to answer God’s call and live as God’s servant, we have to speak the truth of the word of God.  We don’t need to go out of our way to try to step on the toes of people in our lives.  We don’t need to quote scripture all the time.  But our words must laced with, colored by, and washed in the truths of the Bible.  When they are we end up pointing people to God. 

That’s not always comfortable or easy.  It doesn’t always feel good.  But, speaking truth in all occasion with love and compassion and tact indicates that we are living on God’s terms for God’s purpose.  We have given up our lives to Him that he would use us as His instruments of healing in the world. 

Finally, in Isaiah, the servant says God is glorified in Him.  In the Gospels, God is glorified in Jesus.  When we love, when we show compassion and work for peace and justice, when we welcome all people, and when we realize that because of Christ we are God’s offspring as well as his creation and all this determines how we speak and how we live, then God is glorified in our lives. 

The servant songs become a 21^st century word that speaks to the world around us as we see ourselves for who we are in Christ and set our lives so that all that we say, think, and do reveals our complete God-orientation and Holy Spirit dependence.  Now, again, recall the opening question.  What are the stories of today, the big issues?  Which one troubles you most?  It could be a national current like terrorism.  It could be something local.  Maybe what troubles you most is something in your own neighborhood or your own family. 

We are God’s servants – loved, Spirit-equipped, armed with the truth we have in the word, and commission to work for justice, show compassion, and point people to Jesus.  We are going to take a few moments now for silent reflection.  Consider what you find most troubling in the world today.  Ask God how you, as His servant, and how we, His church, are to speak and give his hope and peace and love to the people suffering from that trouble God has put on your heart.  Take a few moments to think and pray about it silence, the problem, and the word of God we, His servants, are to bring to the people who suffer.

After we have this reflection time, we will sing, you will be invited to come for prayer if you would like to come. 

AMEN

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[i] Gowan (1998), Theology of the Prophetic Books: The Death & Resurrection of Israel, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville), p.159.

[ii] Gottwald (1985), The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction,Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.497.

[iii] Hanson (1989), Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preachign: Isaiah 40-66, John Knox Press (Louisville), p.44.