Digging Deeper

Just about everybody who is familiar with the Bible knows about the story of Sodom and Gommorah in Genesis 18. I find it to be a very rich story, and every time I read it, I get something new out of it. I just recently read it, I noticed verse 19 for the first time. Verse 19 is part of a three verse passage where God talks about his decision to discuss with Abraham the situation concerning Sodom and Gommorah:

17 The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, 18 seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19 For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”

A part of the reason that God decided to talk to Abraham about what He was thinking and planning concerning Sodom and Gomorrah was so that Abraham could “command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice.” So, I interpret this as God is giving Abraham an experience that he could use to teach his children (and his descendants in general) and his household (those under his authority) about “doing righteousness and justice”. And those of us who claim a share in Abraham’s spiritual heritage can also learn from this experience.

Before we continue, there are a couple of key words in this verse that we need to define—righteousness and justice. Righteousness means basically treating other people right or fairly. Justice means putting things right. When people come to a person in authority—like a king or a judge--with a complaint about someone not treating them right, they want the person in authority to perform justice, or in other words, to put things right, whatever that entails.

So, what is being taught in this story about “doing righteousness and justice”? In this story God, who is the person in authority, reveals that, “the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great.” (vs. 20) In other words, God has heard a ton of complaints about Sodom and Gomorrah not treating people right. So, God decides he needs to get involved. There are two notable things that God does before he makes a judgment. First, he talks over the case with a fair and honest third party—Abraham—to get another perspective, and secondly he goes and visits Sodom.

Abraham is quite familiar with Sodom and Gomorrah, since he lives not too far away and his nephew Lot lives in Sodom. He has heard about how they treat people, but he has also shown compassion towards them. When the kings of the north raided Sodom and carried off all of its people, Abraham went and rescued the captives. (Gen 14:8-24) So Abraham is a good third party not only to discuss the case with, but also someone who can advocate on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abraham does not dispute the charges against Sodom and Gomorrah, but shows great concern for the good people living among the wicked, and asks God, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” (vs. 23) After asking that question, he and God negotiate and agree that God would not destroy a city even if there were only ten righteous men in it.

After this discussion, two angels representing God enter Sodom to see if there is a basis for the complaints God has heard, and also to identify ten or more righteous men. To find out these things, the angels simply walk into the city, and see how people treat them. In this investigation, God is not looking to see if the people obey His laws, but to see if they live up to their own standards. In this part of the world hospitality is one of the highest values, if not the highest value. It was so in Abraham’s time and continues to be in the rural areas of the Mideast today. A righteous man takes excellent care of visitors, even total strangers. In Gen. 18.1-8, Abraham demonstrated this important custom of hospitality by taking care of that three strangers who arrived. To make it easy for the people of Sodom, the angels were not dressed as tramps or refugees, but dressed well enough that Lot assumed they were VIPs and called them “Lords”.

The angels walk into town, and in a few short hours all the men of Sodom clearly demonstrate their nature. Lot immediately invites these strangers to stay at his house and feeds them. All the other men want to gang rape the strangers. There is only one righteous man, so the angels get ready to execute God’s judgment by destroying the town. But heeding Abraham’s concern about not sweeping away the righteous along with the wicked, the angels first lead Lot and his family out of town to a safe place.

In summary, God invites Abraham to participate with Him in administering justice, so that Abraham can teach his children, grandchildren, and others under his authority about “doing righteousness” (treating people right), and “doing justice” (putting things right). While doing justice, God wants to treat people fairly. He gets input from a third party who both knows the defendants and is ready to be an advocate for them. He also checks out the situation Himself, and does not rely just on the words of those demanding justice. In this case, putting things right involves not only punishing the wicked, but also protecting the innocent.

Send Us a Man

After the Israelites had finished their forty years of wandering in the desert, Moses said to them,

¹⁵ “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— ¹⁶ just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. [Deut. 18.15-18, ESV]

 Moses was reminding them of the time forty years previously, when they arrived at the base of Mount Horeb/Sinai and God appeared on the top of the mountain as fire, smoke, and lightning, and spoke through thunder, and the Israelites were afraid. [Exod 19.16-20] Essentially what the Israelites were saying was that God was frightening, and would he please send them a man who was not frightening. So, God agreed and promised to send a man, and God would put his words in this prophet's mouth.

Fast forward some centuries to the end of the period of the judges, during the time of Samuel the prophet:

⁴ Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah ⁵ and said to him, “ ... Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. ... ²⁰ that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”  [1 Sam 8.4-5, 20, ESV]

And Samuel prayed to the Lord. ⁷ And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. [1 Sam 8.6-7, ESV]

 Effectively what the elders were saying was that God was too remote, so they wanted a man sent to them, whom they could see and hear. So, Samuel first anointed Saul to be their king, and later he anointed David to be king. During David's reign, God said to David:

¹² When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹³ He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ¹⁴ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. [2 Sam. 7.12-14]

 God promised to send a man, who would be his own son to reign forever on David's throne.

Twice God the Israelites spurned God's presence among them and his direct leadership, and twice God agreed to meet their expressed desires for a man instead. The Israelites did not know it, but God had already formulated a secret plan before the beginning of time to meet their expressed desires while meeting his own great desire to live among his people, and lead them directly. So a few hundred years later, God started sharing his secret plan with Isaiah:

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. [Isaiah 7.14, ESV]

Immanuel means "God with us". In that infant son, God would be present among his people. A few chapters later in the book of Isaiah, more information is given about this infant:

⁶ For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ Of the increase of his government and of peace
    there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
    to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. [Isaiah 9.6-7, ESV]

The baby boy would be Mighty God himself, and the everlasting king of Israel. So in the fullness of time, the promised man--king and prophet--arrived, robed in swaddling clothes and enthroned in a manger. He arrived with an army of singing angels and was watched over by the shepherds of the Passover lambs.

Jigsaw Puzzle of Life

As we go through life, we all collect bits of information about various things. Some bits come from our own experiences, while others come from stories we have heard or read. These bits of information are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and each of us has the challenge of trying to assemble our own puzzle of life. How we assemble our individual puzzles helps each of us understand where we came from, what our purpose is, what visible and invisible forces affect us, and what our connection is to the people and things and forces around us. Based on our understanding, our world view, we try to live the good life, maximizing our happy experiences and minimizing our unhappy ones. Everybody does this, from penthouse dwellers in New York City to jungle dwellers in Papua New Guinea.

If I go to the store and buy a jigsaw puzzle, there are some things I can be sure about. First of all, the finished puzzle will have a well-defined border and all the pieces in the box will fit inside that border. Secondly, the label on the box will me how many pieces are in the puzzle, whether it be 100, or 250, or 1000. Thirdly, I can be very confident that all the pieces in the box are genuine, quality pieces and all will connect nicely to the other pieces, forming a complete, tidy puzzle. In the store-bought puzzle box, there won't be any pieces that don't belong to the puzzle. The puzzle of life is different. First of all there is no box. The puzzle doesn't appear to have a well-defined border, so I don't know how big or what shape it is supposed to be. I don't know how many pieces it is supposed to have, so I don't know when I will be finished putting it together. Throughout my life, I have accumulated thousands of bits of information, or puzzle pieces, but I don't whether I have enough pieces to complete my puzzle, or whether I have too many. I don't even know if all the pieces I have are of good quality and genuine, or whether some of them are phony, representing false or imprecise information. Some quality pieces that I collected may have gotten faded or deformed by going through the laundry of my brain, and so no longer fit well.

When I assemble a store-bought puzzle, I usually start by sorting the pieces into little piles of  pieces that seem to go together. I assemble each pile winding up with a bunch of  disconnected "islands" like a house, a mountain, a cloud, a tree, a face, or a fish. After arranging the islands how I think they ought to be arranged, I use the remaining pieces to connect the islands, until there are no more gaps. Likewise with my puzzle of life, I have assembled a hundreds of islands of understanding--American history, how to use a credit card, the Kingdom of God, what food is good for me, God's love for me, astronomy, Sudoku, my wife, and so on. Some islands have been connected to other islands, but some are still not connected to anything. Many of my islands have a lot of holes in them, because I haven't found the pieces that fit into the holes. And I have a lot of loose pieces left over that don't seem to fit anywhere yet. On top of all that, I am not 100% sure that I have correctly assembled the islands that I have.

But I am not alone in my struggle. The apostle Peter told about the Old Testament prophets, who  "searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing." Even though God gave them some very special pieces to their puzzle of life, he did not give them all the pieces, so they ended their lives with unconnected pieces.

There is a special Greek word mysterion that occurs a few times in the New Testament that is usually translated "mystery." In the ancient Greek world, it was sometimes used in a military sense to describe a general's complex battle plan. The general would share parts of the plan with each of his officers, so each officer would know enough to do his own part, but not enough to understand the whole plan. Each officer would then implement his part in faith, trusting that the general had a winning plan. It was not until the battle was won that the entirety of the secret plan was revealed to all the officers.

Paul uses this term in Ephesians 3:

the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. 6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. [Eph 3.4b-6, NIV]

God formed a secret plan at the beginning of time, and has been working on it ever since. In each age, as his plan is implemented, he shares additional pieces of the puzzle with key people, but he has yet to share all the pieces. That won't come until the end. Until then, I have to be content with the fact that I will never have all the puzzle pieces in this lifetime. But the Lord will make sure I have the pieces that I need to implement my part in his plan. So, even though I will never finish, I have the joy and challenge of working with the pieces I have.

There is one very key puzzle piece, a part of the mystery of God's will which Paul shares in his letter to the Ephesians which is "to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment–to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ." [Eph 1.10, NIV] In my puzzle metaphor, that means that Jesus Christ needs to be in the center of my puzzle, and I need to eventually connect all of my disconnected islands directly to Jesus. If I am committed to this, then my life puzzle will come together a lot easier.

Panting for Living Water

There is a song by Martin J. Nystrom that is special to me because my last name is Herchenroeder. It starts like this:

As the deer panteth for the water
So my soul longeth after Thee
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship Thee

This song is special because the first three syllables of my last name means "deer in a glade". A glade is a clearing in a forest, so I have this picture in my mind of a deer in a glade or clearing between the forest and a stream of water, and the deer longs for the water--he is thirsty. A glade is not the normal habitat for a deer; it prefers the thickets of the dark forest, where it can easily hide from predators. In my picture the deer is standing in the clearing at the edge of a forest, eyeing the stream and debating whether to risk being vulnerable and go down to the stream to satisfy its thirst, or return to the security of the dark forest.

My mind tends to wander, so this mind picture of the deer frequently blends with a memory of a scene from the story of The Silver Chair, by C. S. Lewis. In this scene, a girl named Jill Pole is standing near a stream, and she is very thirsty, but there is a lion next to the stream, so she tries to figure out how she can get a drink without risking a close encounter with the lion. [If you are interested, this story of Jill and the stream can be found here.] In my blended picture, the deer is debating whether to go down to the stream risking an encounter with the lion, or to return to the forest. The stream with the living water and the lion are connected, the deer can't drink the living water without trusting and facing the lion, who, by the way, is not tame, but he is very good.

The deer is me. I am spiritually thirsty. I long for intimacy with God, but too often I run from the lion into the dark forest, where there is a false sense of security. However, true security and quenching of my thirst only comes from being close to the Lion. So I sing to him, "You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship thee..."

View from My Ceramic Throne

Daily I sit on my ceramic throne. From this lofty perch I gaze over the bathroom floor of our rented home. The floor is covered by laminate with an imitation wood finish. (For those who are not familiar with it, laminate comes in 6" x 36" planks with adhesive tabs for easy installation.) When I look at the flooring, I see the flaws. There are a couple of places where there are significant gaps between the planks. In other places, there are no significant gaps, but the seams are quite noticeable. As I look with a scornful attitude, the Lord reminds me of a particular tile on another bathroom floor that I laid with great pride few years ago. In the months that followed, due to environmental factors, "significant gaps" appeared on all four sides of that tile. Everybody sees those gaps when they walk into that bathroom.  Jesus said, "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged." [Mat 7.1-2]

I am temporarily humbled, but my haughty spirit did not give up. I think, "the laminate is just cheap plastic, and wood finish is fake." As I gaze, I start thinking that this laminate looks awfully familiar, and then I remember, it is very similar to the laminate that my wife and I laid on our dining room floor in our house on Merribrook Trail. We chose it because it was durable, water resistant, easy to clean, easy to install, and quite affordable. And it looked nice too. My attitude was very different when it was my floor material. Humbled again. I now remember the challenges of laying that laminate, and many of the seams did not turn out as well as I would have liked. The honest truth is that I didn't do any better with my dining room floor than those who installed the laminate at my feet. "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged."

I now look away from the seams and turn my attention to the actual wood grain pattern which covers 99.9% of the floor. It looks very realistic, complete with knots and shifting colored contours. Each plank looks like an accurate photograph of a real plank, cut from a real pine tree, growing in a real forest. Dendrologists tell us that the knots and contours in the wood give us a history of the tree. So, here at my feet are faithful representations of complex stories from the past lives of real pine trees. Wow.

Praise God for the complex trees he has created. Thank God for the durable, water resistant, easy to clean, and nice looking floor at my feet, by which I benefit through no effort of my own.

New Name, Same Disease

I have a disease. It was first diagnosed in 1986 as Glandular Fever. In 1988 it was diagnosed as Epstein Barr Virus Syndrome. Then in 1995 I was told I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I just learned that my disease has a new name, Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease. It is a new name, but I still have the same disease I got in 1986. The symptoms vary a little, but it is still the same disease.

The intensity of the disease has varied over the decades. When the intensity is high--like now--I spend a lot of time lying on my back doing nothing, or at least trying to do nothing. During this time, I am never really alone. There is someone else who is known by many names--the great dragon, the ancient serpent, the devil, Satan, and the deceiver of the whole world [Rev 12.9]--who is constantly prowling around like a roaring lion, trying to devour my soul. He sows into my mind seeds of guilt, bitterness, lust, pride, despair, fantasies, or whatever fancies him at the moment.

Why does the dragon bother with someone so insignificant as me? Because of the other person who is always with me whom the dragon hates. This person has more names that anybody--King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Son of Man, Son of David, Son of God, Lamb of God, Word of God, Redeemer, Savior, Healer, Judge, Rabbi, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with Us. He is with me. [Rev 17.14; Isa 9.6; etc.]

There is a battle over my soul. The dragon seeks to destroy, while Emmanuel seeks to redeem. Emmanuel uses different weapons than the dragon. Recently he has been using phrases of hymns or worship songs that I am familiar with: "Majesty, worship his majesty," ... "who would have thought that a lamb could rescue the souls of men," ... "singing until the evening comes." ... Sometimes just a fragment of a tune and one or two words play over and over in my head, and I wrack my brain trying to  remember what song the fragment is from, so I can sing more of it. (Sometimes I have to resort to the internet.) All these songs are rooted is scripture, the Word of God. As long as I receive these musical fragments graciously and meditate on them, the dragon is kept at bay.

The battle has many names and takes many forms throughout history from Gen 3 to Rev 20, but it is the same battle through the ages. Remember, keep on singing until the evening comes.

The New Covenant as Relationship

God has offered us a covenant, which is summarized in Heb 8.10-12:

¹⁰ This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
¹¹ And they shall not teach every one his fellow or every one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
¹² For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

When I compare this New Covenant with the Old Covenant, which is written in the Torah [Gen-Deut], one of the things I notice is that the difference in focus. The Old Covenant focused a lot on specific activities that God would do and what Israel would do, while the New Covenant has a greater focus on the relationship between God and his disciples. In fact the phrase in verse 11, “all shall know me,” could easily have been translated “all shall have a relationship with me.” Verse 11 also says, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” This is also about relationship. This  one sentence is very brief has often left me wondering what it means, and how is it to be lived out--being God's people. I have found Jesus' discourse in John 13.31–17.26 to be very helpful in understanding this verse. In this discourse, which is located in John's gospel between the Last Supper and Jesus' arrest, Jesus talks to his disciples about the relationship that he wants to have with them after he leaves.

Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” At first glance it might appear that the focus here on loving each other is a focus on activity, but it is really about relationship with Jesus. Our loving others is an outworking of our relationship with Jesus, and evidence that we are his disciples. How he loves me is how he wants me to love others. I am to love others as his representative.

Jesus also said,

I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may be with you forever,— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth, ...[John 14.16-17] ²⁶ the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I said to you. [John 14.26] he will guide you into all truth, [John 16.13]

This is all about relationship. Jesus prays, the Father gives, the Spirit teaches and guides, and the disciple receives. God's relationship with me is an extension of the preexisting relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In John 15, Jesus talks a lot about the relationship he wants with his disciples, and uses the metaphor of a vine. He said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” [John 15.5]. Abide is an interesting word. It is what you do in an abode or house--you live there. You do your daily activities like cooking, eating and sleeping there. That is what Jesus wants, he wants you and me to live in his presence. He wants to be part of our daily lives. And if we do that, we will bear fruit. The question is, “What fruit?” That's up to Jesus. If we abide in Jesus and his word, and follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will bear the fruit that Jesus wants. I have always wondered, who is actually producing the fruit? Me or Jesus? I think it is a joint effort between Jesus and me, the vine and the branches. It is a relationship.

There is a statement that Jesus says over and over in this discourse, and that is “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.” He says this in various different ways 6 times over three chapters. [John 14.13,14; 15.16; 16.23,24,26] Jesus wants us to do what he does. He asked the Father to do something audacious, like sending the Holy Spirit to us, and he wants us act in a similar fashion. Jesus wants me, as his representative, to ask the Father to do audacious things that are relevant to what Jesus is doing.

In John 15.16, Jesus says, “You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” Bearing fruit that lasts and praying in Jesus' name are tied together. Since Jesus appointed us to bear fruit, he expects us to boldly go to the father under his authority to ask for things pertaining to fruit bearing. If I don't pray like that, I might not bear much fruit.

I have barely scratched the surface of this discourse in John's gospel, but just from the little that we have looked at so far, the New Covenant is an invitation to join Jesus in his relationship with His Father and the Holy Spirit to do what Jesus is doing.