Lessons to a Stubborn and Rebellious People in a Weary Land - Research Paper Example

here 15 August Lessons to a Stubborn and Rebellious People in a Weary Land The moral depravity of this day and age is nothing new. Since Adam and Eve inhabited the Garden of Eden, man has had a fatal flaw – something that has kept him from experiencing full fellowship with God and the joy He intended us to have. Blame it on our ancient common ancestors, Adam and Eve, if you like; we all have a sin problem. We all miss the mark of God’s perfection each and every day, and this was no different for the people of the Old Testament. But despite man’s common fallen nature, God has repeatedly reached down to him and accomplished great things. Throughout the Old Testament of the Bible, God has used man and his imperfections to teach mankind many lessons, oftentimes using nations and lands outside of Israel to fulfill His divine purpose. Whether it is the Egyptians in the time of Moses, the Philistines in the time of David, the Babylonians in the time of Daniel, or the Persians in the time of Esther, God used His people – the Jews – to achieve mighty works that would serve as examples of faith to future Hebrew generations and as warnings to outside nations that worshiped false gods and opposed His people. But this is not the full picture. God often worked within His own camp – the people of Israel – to expose their corrupt nature, punish them, purge them of their sins, and bring them back into His mercy and blessings. With Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Job, Noah, and others figures in the Old Testament, God used traumatic or catastrophic events in order to steer man back on the right path of godliness and submission to Him. The best place to start when examining how God used the people and places of the Bible is the book of Genesis, which means “origins” in Greek and “in the beginning” in Hebrew, (Hamilton 1). And the genesis of mankind, of course, dates back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a perfect paradise on earth devoid of any of the toils or strife that we experience every day on earth. But when God put Adam and Eve in the midst of this unblemished land, corruption was speedily on its way. Soon after God created Adam from the dust, He chose to create Eve out of his rib because He said “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him,” (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 2.18). But not long after God had given the warning not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Satan – through the guise of a serpent – persuaded Eve that God did not want her and Adam to eat the tree’s fruit because He was afraid they would become like Him. In essence, Satan called God a liar, telling Eve that if she ate the fruit, she would not die, going against what God had said. Eve took the bait, and the horrific legacy of sin has permeated every facet of man’s life ever since. Once Eve and Adam had partaken of that cataclysmic snack, Satan’s wrath of sin, misery, and treachery was ushered into the world. Adam and Eve soon discovered shame, guilt, fear, and all the other trappings that come with sin and disobedience. God quickly banished the first couple from the garden – which was located in the area of modern-day Iraq – and the two experienced grief, pain, and suffering for the first time. Reaping the consequences for this initial disobedience was a tough lesson to learn, and even though the inheritance of this sinful nature has perpetuated for 7,000 years ? from early Old Testament times up through today – God has shown man in many miraculous ways that He has the victory over Satan and sin. Cain and Abel were the first offspring to inherit their parents’ sinful nature, yet where there is sin, there is grace. Through these two brothers, we also witness the world’s first sibling rivalry. Whereas the firstborn – Cain – worked the soil and harvested crops, his younger brother Abel tended the flocks as a shepherd. When they went before God to offer a portion of their livelihoods, Cain brought some of his fruits, while Abel brought the fat portions from the firstborn of his flock. God favorably received Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s, causing the older brother to burn with rage, disappointment, and jealousy toward his younger sibling. Consumed by his jealousy for God’s favor, Cain murdered his brother, and God banished Cain out of his presence to the land of Nod, east of Eden, telling him, “When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth,” (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 4.10-11). Just as his parents before him, Cain’s rebellion brought on a legacy of curses for mankind, yet God’s mercy in sparing their lives despite their sin – “For the wages of sin are death,” (NIV Study Bible, Rom. 6.23) – was shown all the more. After dealing with many generations of sinful and rebellious man descending from the world’s first murderer, God decided that He had had enough and resolved to wipe man off the face of the planet, with exception to Noah – who walked with God and was blameless among the people ? and his wife, along with their three sons and their wives. Noah lived in the land of the wicked and evil Cainites at a pre-Flood time when rain had not yet fallen from the skies (Brown 40-41), so when he started to build a 510-foot Ark at God’s command ? far from any body of water ? he was mocked by men who scoffed at his message of impending doom brought upon by their wickedness. For 120 years, Noah constructed the Ark with 2 million feet of cargo room, according to God’s specifications, and when he finished at the age of 600, God ushered in two of every kind of animal on earth. Once God has shut Noah, his family, and all the animals inside the Ark some 5,000 years ago, “all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened… forty days and forty nights,” (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 7.11-12). Within that time, the rest of the human race was wiped off the face of the earth in the deluge. After about one year, when the waters had safely receded from higher ground, God told Noah to come out with his family and the animals and re-populate the earth, giving him the merciful promise seen in the rainbow that He would not destroy all life on earth with a flood again (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 9.13-16). Yet man still did not learn his lesson from this consequence of sin, and he has continued to experience God’s wrath (and grace) in different forms throughout the ages as a result of his wickedness and rebellion. Job, of the land of Uz, is a peculiar character of the Old Testament, as he incurred God’s wrath through Satan not as a result of his wickedness, but because of his righteousness – which God faithfully blessed after his tribulations. When Satan returned from successfully terrorizing people on earth by drawing them into sin, God – having confidence in Job’s uprightness ? challenged Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil,” (NIV Study Bible, Job 1.8). Satan proceeded to murder Job’s sons and daughter, destroy his possessions, and inflict painful sores on his body. His suffering was so severe that his wife told him, “Curse God and die!” to which he responded, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? (NIV Study Bible, Job 2.9). Job’s friends later came to comfort him, but instead, they exacerbated his suffering by telling him that his afflictions were a result of his sin. As if being put on trial, Job responds that he yearned to find God and plead his case before Him, “I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would find out what he would answer me, and consider what he would say,” (NIV Study Bible, Job 23:4-5). Here, Job desires an arbiter or a go-between to intercede on his behalf, wanting to be reconciled to God and anticipating the need for an incarnate Messiah (Kaiser 62). God uses this trial of Job’s to incite people to praise God in the midst of curses – which will turn into blessings ? and as a lesson to not judge others because of their afflictions. God also uses Abram – later named Abraham (meaning father of many) once He blessed him with offspring – to teach His people to trust in His promises and remain faithful in the face of doubt. Even though Abram was well established in Ur of the Chaldeans, he believed in God’s promise and set out for the unfamiliar and dangerous land of Canaan with his wife and caravan of possessions. He had faith that God would come through for him and make him a great nation, bless him, make his name great, and give his offspring land to possess (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 12.2,7). So, at 75 years of age, Abram set out on an uncertain journey with nothing but God’s promises of offspring, blessings, and land (McKeown 4). His nephew, Lot, parted ways with Abram and got the seemingly better land of the plain of the Jordan, while Abram settled in the land of Canaan, but Lot’s territory, including the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, ended up being destroyed by God’s wrath. It was not until Abraham was 100 years old that his once barren 90-year-old wife, Sarah, bore him the child, Isaac, by whom future nations would come. And when God told Abraham to take the life of his son, Isaac, the patriarch obeyed, knowing God would provide the sacrifice. He had passed God’s test, and God spared the boy’s life. Abraham’s faith never faltered ? even though he came into contact with wicked, faithless people on every side ? and God delivered on all of His promises to Abraham in His own timing. Joseph ? the son of Jacob, whose father was Isaac ? also lived in Canaan and had to deal with his own family’s wickedness, which eventually brought about a blessing. God spoke to Joseph through dreams, and when he shared one of these dreams with his 11 older brothers, they became extremely angry with him and jealous, as the dream revealed that Joseph would reign over his brothers and parents (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 37.5-8). Faking his death, the brothers sold Joseph into slavery to Egypt, a land that worshipped false gods. Once in Egypt, God raised Joseph to power three times – in Potiphar’s house, in prison, and in Pharaoh’s leadership over Egypt, where he became second in power in all the land. Because God gave Joseph the ability to interpret Pharaoh’s dream and was given the divine wisdom to see Egypt through the upcoming famine, he was appointed in charge of all of Egypt (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 41.41). As the famine spread well beyond Egypt’s borders, Joseph’s brothers came to purchase food. When Joseph finally revealed himself to them, they bowed down to him as they did in Joseph’s childhood dream ? out of fear, guilt, and reverence. Joseph had saved the world from famine, (Wenham 34), as he tells his brothers, “But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance,” (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 45.7). Once again, God worked powerfully through an ordinary man and wicked deed of His people to eventually turn the apparent curse into a blessing. Several hundred years later, God would bring about another Hebrew deliverer from the idol-worshipping land of Egypt, but this leader would draw them out instead of usher them in. In order to save Moses when he was an infant, his Jewish mother devised a plan so that he would be spared Pharaoh’s wrath and be raised as a youth in the home of the Egyptian ruler (NIV Study Bible, Exo. 2.1-10). After coming of age, Moses started to realize the oppression of his people in Egypt, who were reduced to slave labor. Moses’ eventual rise to power as the champion of the Jews in the book of Exodus is typical of antiquarian historical accounts, recounting the early oppression of the Jews in their integral role within the ancient Egyptian culture (Seters 113-14). When God has Moses return to Egypt to deliver His people, he is met with much resistance from Pharaoh, who becomes responsible for bringing about the divinely inflicted plagues upon his fellow Egyptians out of his own stubbornness – not heeding Moses’ plea to let his people go, or suffer God’s wrath, (NIV Study Bible, Gen. 10.25-29). Through God’s miracles, Moses ended up delivering millions of Pharaoh’s Jewish slaves out of Egypt, across the parted Red Sea, and into the desert region just shy of the Promised Land – the fertile land of giants, milk, and honey ? which was on the other side of the Jordan River. Because of the rebelliousness of the delivered Jews, Moses, and virtually all of the exodus camp, never made it to the Promised Land, yet the prophet goes down in history as having the closest communication with God than any other man (excluding Jesus). God uses the wickedness and idolatry of the Egyptians and the rebelliousness of the Jews in the desert to showcase His miraculous works through Moses, which were used to display the power, wrath, and mercy of God as a lesson to posterity. Generations after God had ordered Joshua and Caleb to lead the Israelites across the Jordan into the Promised Land – following the death of Moses – Israel rebelliously demanded a king to resemble heathen nations, but God turned what should have been a curse into a blessing when he eventually made David king to replace Saul. This demand for a human king disturbed the prophet Samuel greatly, who received this reply from God: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king,” (NIV Study Bible, 1 Sam. 8.7). As a result, Saul became the first human king of Israel, but as his heart turned from God, another man – a man after God’s own heart – began to be raised up. God started working through David when he was a young shepherd boy, giving him the divine strength and courage to overcome Goliath ? the nine-foot-tall Philistine from Gath, a land that did not follow the God of the Jews. This put David in Saul’s good graces, but the king quickly grew jealous of David’s popularity with man and favor with God. The humility of David is noted in Psalm 18, where he gives the victory to God for delivering him in times of trouble, (McCarter 452), “He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me,” (NIV Study Bible, Ps. 18.17). From David’s childhood through his kingship, God used the wickedness from both inside the Israeli camp with King Saul, and outside, with the Philistines, Moabites, Arameans, etc. The evil spirit working on Saul and the surrounding nations that worshiped false gods were all used as opposition against David to ultimately bring God the glory when he brought the former shepherd boy victory. David’s son, the wisest man who ever lived, also received countless blessings from God, but Solomon’s father’s sin of adultery ended up causing a struggle with sin in his own life, as well. Like David, Solomon was highly favored by God, who was pleased with the new king’s request of Him, “So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?” (NIV Study Bible, Kings 3.9). Soon thereafter, God made Solomon the wisest and richest man this world has ever known. He authored – with divine inspiration – the books of Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, (Coogan 345), and rulers from far regions came to witness his glory. Yet, with all his wisdom, Solomon succumbed to a sin similar to his father’s: “He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray,” (NIV Study Bible, 1 Kings 11.3). This disobedience caused him to follow other gods and anger the one true God, who punished him through taking his kingdom out of his descendants’ hands after he died. God uses Solomon’s example to show that disobedience in one area of one’s life will quickly spread to another, yet, even though Solomon’s offspring suffered for his sin, God’s grace and abundance still shined down on the powerful king until the day he died. After Solomon’s reign, as God had promised, other kings began to rule over the Jews from other lands, and Esther became one of the Jewish exiles through whom God worked in the land of Persia, whose king had conquered Israel and worshiped false gods. When King Xerxes became displeased with Queen Vashti, he sought another to take her place. Shortly after he had chosen Ester, Xerxes’s highest official, Haman, deceitfully had the king sign a decree to kill all the Jews within the kingdom’s provinces because he detested Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, who would not kneel down to honor him, (NIV Study Bible, Esth. 3.8-9). When Mordecai discovered the plot, he urged Esther to risk her life by pleading with the king to stop the massacre. After expressing some anxiety about going before the king, Esther asked the king to oppose Haman’s plot. Xerxes then did all he could to foil the slaughter… before honoring Esther’s new plea to end Haman’s life. Despite the powerful way in which God worked to save His people through Ester, one critique of the queen contends that she should have refused to take Vashti’s place, that she would not try to save her people until she learned that her life was also in danger, and that she vengefully desired Haman’s death, (Kuyper 175-76). Even though there could be some validity to these arguments, when taken at a biblical perspective, it becomes quite evident that God had directed Esther’s very moves to work out the deliverance of His people, as “A man’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?” (NIV Study Bible, Prov. 20.24). Regardless of what her flaws may have been, God powerfully worked through Queen Esther, just as He worked through countless other sinful Jews throughout the Old Testament to bless His nation and glorify Himself. Daniel was another Jew who was exiled as a result of Solomon’s disobedience, and like Queen Esther, God used Daniel to expose the wickedness within a foreign land – this time, Babylon – so that His name might be glorified. Despite living in an idol-worshiping foreign land, Daniel fully followed the precepts of Scripture. This kind of faith in the Old Testament has been posited to denote an agreement to a promissory relationship, as opposed to a body of belief, (Brueggemann 78). Because God had blessed Daniel’s obedience with godly wisdom and favor from King Darius, the king’s officials grew jealous and devised a plan to have Daniel killed. They deceitfully had Darius sign a decree to throw into the lion’s den anyone praying to any god or man (besides the king) for the next 30 days. And soon, they caught Daniel praying to the God of Israel and demanded that the king abide by his decree, to the king’s dismay. This did not faze Daniel, however, whose unswerving faith in God drew him to believe that God would protect him in the lion’s den. When he emerged unscathed, the king had the conspirators and their families thrown into the den, where they were quickly devoured. Ecstatic, Darius declared, “I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel,” (NIV Study Bible, Dan. 6.26). Once again, God blesses His people and is glorified though His faithful servant by exposing the wickedness of pagans in and idol-worshiping land. The book of Jonah represents one more Israelite who God uses to deliver people, despite the prophet’s rebelliousness. In fact, Jonah’s disobedience and disciplinary punishment by God is such a candid representation of man’s resistance to his Creator that the account has generated the long-established expression, “a Jonah” – a term used among sailors across the world to label a person who brings bad luck or endangers a ship, (Afflicted with a Jonah). When God told Jonah, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me,” (NIV Study Bible, Jon. 1.2), the prophet ran from God and boarded a ship headed from Joppa in Israel to the furthest destination he could find ? Tarshish, a heathen land in modern-day Spain. When God sent a tempest to stop Jonah’s escape from His will, the shipmates discovered that he was the reason for their peril and threw Jonah overboard (at his request) to quell the storm. As soon as he hit the water, the storm quieted and he was swallowed by a great fish, and was trapped inside for three days and three nights, (NIV Study Bible, Jon. 1.17). After Jonah humbled himself and prayed, God had the fish vomit the wayward prophet onto dry land, where God ordered him, once again, to preach His message to heathens in the city of Nineveh in modern-day Iraq. The reluctant prophet did as he was told, but still harbored resentment in his heart because God had extended his grace to such a vile people. Continuing a common theme of the Old Testament, God chose to work through a flawed and rebellious man to bring blessings and deliverance to an undeserving people in a heathen land. Throughout the lands of the Old Testament, God is seen doing miraculous works through ordinary, sinful man. God is just to punish, but also gracious to forgive and bless. He has it covered, from the Garden of Eden, to the land of Uz, to Egypt, to Canaan, to Nineveh, to the land of the Philistines, and even to the faraway land of Tarshish. Regardless of the stubbornness of His people or the hardness of the hearts of heathens in distant lands, God’s plans to bring about his judgment and mercy ? through signs and wonders orchestrated through His chosen vessels ? are never thwarted. Whether God uses His people of the Old Testament as examples for future generations not to follow, as great recipients of grace, as instruments of great works to deliver people from disaster, or as role models of faith, His will is always done to bring about His unfathomable justice and grace. Works Cited “Afflicted with a Jonah: The Seacaptain’s Fear of Parsons Sons,” New York Times, 6 Mar. 1885. Web. 6 Aug. 2011. Brown, Walt. In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, 7th Edition. Phoenix: Center for Scientific Creation, 2001. Print. Brueggemann, Walter. Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. Print. Coogan, Michael D. A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1990. Print. Kaiser, Walter. The Messiah in the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995. Print. Kuyper, Abraham. Women of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1941. Print. McCarter, Kyle P., Jr. The Anchor Bible, Volume 9: II Samuel. New York: Double Day, 1984. Print. McKeown, James. Genesis (Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2008. Print. Seters, John. The Pentateuch: A Social-Science Commentary. New York: T&T Clark International, 2004. Print. The NIV Study Bible. Ed. Kenneth Barker. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995. Print. Wenham, Gordon. Exploring the Old Testament, Volume 1: The Pentateuch. London: SPCK, 2003. Print. Read More