From Oswald Chambers :
We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises. When we become simply a promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies. That is not believing God — it is only believing our belief about Him.
There’s more to the devotional. I recommend the whole thing. But I thought this part was particularly good.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m currently going through the “The Bible in 90 Days” podcasts on my daily commute (which will work out to more than 90 Calendar days, but probably less than 90 commuting days). Last week, I got to hear one of my favorite stories from I Kings and its parallel in II Chronicles (one that always makes me laugh out loud), though I had completely forgotten one aspect from the story.
The story (from the I Kings retelling):
For three years there was no war between Aram and Israel. But in the third year Jehoshaphat king of Judah went down to see the king of Israel. The king of Israel had said to his officials, “Don’t you know that Ramoth Gilead belongs to us and yet we are doing nothing to retake it from the king of Aram?”
So he asked Jehoshaphat, “Will you go with me to fight against Ramoth Gilead?” Jehoshaphat replied to the king of Israel, “I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.” But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, “First seek the counsel of the LORD.” So the king of Israel brought together the prophets—about four hundred men—and asked them, “Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?”
“Go,” they answered, “for the Lord will give it into the king’s hand.”
But Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there not a prophet of the LORD here whom we can inquire of?”
The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, “There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the LORD, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah.” [THIS is even funnier listening to the story than when reading it!] “The king should not say that,” Jehoshaphat replied.
So the king of Israel called one of his officials and said, “Bring Micaiah son of Imlah at once.”
Dressed in their royal robes, the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were sitting on their thrones at the threshing floor by the entrance of the gate of Samaria, with all the prophets prophesying before them. Now Zedekiah son of Kenaanah had made iron horns and he declared, “This is what the LORD says: ‘With these you will gore the Arameans until they are destroyed.’ ” All the other prophets were prophesying the same thing. “Attack Ramoth Gilead and be victorious,” they said, “for the LORD will give it into the king’s hand.”
The messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him, “Look, as one man the other prophets are predicting success for the king. Let your word agree with theirs, and speak favorably.” But Micaiah said, “As surely as the LORD lives, I can tell him only what the LORD tells me.”
When he arrived, the king asked him, “Micaiah, shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?”
“Attack and be victorious,” he answered, “for the LORD will give it into the king’s hand.” [Note the sarcasm that had to be present here!] The king said to him, “How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the LORD ?”
Then Micaiah answered, “I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the LORD said, ‘These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.’ ”
The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Didn’t I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?”
Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD : I saw the LORD sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. And the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’
“One suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’
“By what means?’ the LORD asked.
“I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.
“You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the LORD. ‘Go and do it.’“So now the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you.”
Then Zedekiah son of Kenaanah went up and slapped Micaiah in the face. “Which way did the spirit from the LORD go when he went from me to speak to you?” he asked. Micaiah replied, “You will find out on the day you go to hide in an inner room.”
The king of Israel then ordered, “Take Micaiah and send him back to Amon the ruler of the city and to Joash the king’s son and say, ‘This is what the king says: Put this fellow in prison and give him nothing but bread and water until I return safely.’ ”
Micaiah declared, “If you ever return safely, the LORD has not spoken through me.” Then he added, “Mark my words, all you people!”
Now, as I was driving, I found I had a number of things to unpack from this (not all of which I’ll share), including (in order of increasing importance).
Q1: Who names their kid Jehoshaphat? Seriously. You’re just asking you kid to get beat up on the playground, so he’s either gonna be really tough or really scared of his own shadow. Or he and his best buddy, Gesundheit, are going to form an exclusive club of two.
Q2: Why does the Bible always describe folks from Jerusalem going down to see folks in Israel (which is north of Judah)? OK, so I know this one – Jerusalem is at a higher elevation, and maps were not yet printed with North at the top of the map. But still…
Q3: If you can imagine this scene playing out on the silver screen with Sean Connery as Jehoshaphat (gesundheit), Alan Rickman as Ahab, and John Cleese as Micaiah, you should be able to see why I find this scene so funny. (You might also understand why my wife sometimes numbers me among her children).
Q4: I’ve gotten into a good number of discussions over the past decade or so about systematic theology and how it is simply man’s invention to explain God, and how it quite often serves to place God into a box of our own making, rather than simply seeing him in light of the same being who spoke to Job, to Moses and to Jesus. Systematic Theology is our way of making God “safe”, but to borrow from C.S. Lewis, God is not safe, but He is good.
One area where I find the most amusement in the discussions about systematic theology is the concept of God’s sovereignty – and how sometimes the folks who pay it the most lip service (as the hinging proof of their theological system) are the same ones who, in practice, seem to want to prove that they don’t really believe it.
For example, when discussing free will, they want to die on a hill they’ve created in that “God cannot be sovereign if He allows man to have a choice in whether or not to follow Him”. The thing is this: If God is sovereign, He has the power to do pretty much whatever He wants to do, including the rather mundane task of delegating some decisions. [The process of delegation is, by definition, worked by one individual with authority to someone else without it. In the process, though, the one in authority does not lose his authority in allowing the lesser party to execute the task/decision.]
The typical answer I’ve gotten to this observation is that there are, indeed, some things that God cannot do – with the first example always seeming to be that God cannot lie. [As if this isn't an argument of apples-to-oranges, since lying is a sin for man to commit, but delegation is not, though I digress.]
This story in Kings & Chronicles, though, actually throws a bit of a wrench into that works as well, since we’ve got a prophet of God, Micaiah, who is shown a vision by God, in which God, at the very least, condones a spirit going out to lie to Ahab, in order to entice him to his death.
So God let me laugh twice that day – once at the story, and again at the part of it I forgot.
Good times.
Happy Resurrection Day!
This is the final post in the current series of articles on Holy Week:
Part I: Lamb Selection Day
Part II: Passover Preparation
Part III: Passover Banquet
Part IV: Passover Sacrifice (also inserting Jesus’ use of remez while on the cross)
Part V: The Feast of Unleavened Bread
Today, in Part VI, we will briefly discuss the Feast of Firstfruits.
As was mentioned in yesterday’s article, the feast of Firstfruits is the third celebration during Passover week, and it is celebrated the day after the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
The Meaning of Firstfruits
Many Christians do not realize that the Jewish calendar, as established by God, is set up around the agricultural calendar of Israel. There have been number of discoveries of ancient agricultural calendars from Israel, which link the religious and agricultural calendars together. One of the most prominent was the discovery of the “Gezer Calendar Stone” (right), which is housed in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum in Turkey.
When you have entered the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the firstfruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the LORD your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name and say to the priest in office at the time, “I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come to the land the LORD swore to our forefathers to give us.” The priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the LORD your God. Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me.” Place the basket before the LORD your God and bow down before him. And you and the Levites and the aliens among you shall rejoice in all the good things the LORD your God has given to you and your household.(Deuteronomy 26:1-11)
So, the same way that we are to give to God the first part of our money, resources, time and everything else, these people brought the first part of their crop to God.
Just as a refresher, here is where we have been thus far in this series:
Part I: Lamb Selection Day
Part II: Passover Preparation
Part III: Passover Banquet
Part IV: Passover Sacrifice
In the past, we’ve also examined Jesus’ use of remez while on the cross
Tonight, in Part V, we will be examining the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Timing
“Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. (Exodus 12:17-18)
“These are the LORD’s appointed feasts, the sacred assemblies you are to proclaim at their appointed times: The LORD’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. On the fifteenth day of that month the LORD’s Feast of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. On the first day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. For seven days present an offering made to the LORD by fire. And on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.’ “(Leviticus 23:4-8)
On the Jewish Calendar, the Passover Festival is often a combination of 3 Festival celebrations, spread over a 7-9 day period (depending on which day Passover falls). These three festivals are: Passover, Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits. The Feast of Unleavened Bread, while it lasted a week in total, was celebrated in sacred assembly on the first Sabbath after Passover – whether it was the day after or seven days after Passover. Firstfruits was then celebrated, per Leviticus 23:15, the day after the Feast of Unleavened bread (and then the Feast of Weeks – Shavuot or Pentecost – seven weeks later).
In Part I of this series, we examined Lamb Selection Day, and in Part II, we examined the preparations for Passover. In Part III, we delved into the Passover Banquet, now called the Seder. Tonight, in Part IV, we will examine the passover sacrifice.
Origins
The origins of sacrifice in Hebraic tradition, and so, too, for us, goes back hundreds of years before Moses and the Exodus to the time of Abram. In Genesis 15, we read:
After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars – if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6)
In this passage, God has promised to protect Abram and to reward him. In Abram’s culture, the two most important things one could have were children and land – because these were the only things that could carry on as a legacy to future generations. Nothing else could truly serve as a reminder to future generations of people the worth of a person and his or her life.
In Part I of this series, we examined Lamb Selection Day, and in Part II, we examined the preparations for Passover.
In Part III, we will examine the banquet traditions of Passover as practiced in the first century – in very similar manner as is done today – with the intention of examining some significant details relevant to Christianity. It is not my intention to give an all-encompassing look into what is now referred to by faithful Jews as the Seder (which is most likely not the name used for this meal in the first century). If you want to see all of the parts of the service, there are a number of Christian and Jewish websites which document this.
The Banquet
Unlike the traditional Christian “Lord’s Supper”, this meal was a four-course banquet, each with a specific cup of wine to symbolize it, which might take five or six hours, total, from beginning to end. While we are certain that this was practiced in the First Century, we do not know whether Jesus and his disciples each had four cups or if only Jesus had the four cups (there is evidence of both, though the synoptic accounts seems to indicate that Jesus shared from one cup for at least the third cup), which also signified where they were in the meal. We do know, though, that the tradition of the cups of wine began some 200 years before Jesus and his disciples met in the Upper Room.
These four cups, according to Jewish tradition, are given their meaning from Exodus 6:6-7
“Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will deliver you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
The four cups are (sometimes the English translations for the names differ, but the meaning is consistent):
Each of these four cups symbolized one of God’s promises, and it is believed, from numerous early Jewish sources, that wine was representative of life/blood, and that God was promising on His own life that He will keep His promises (more on this in the next installment, if it seems a little “odd” to you).
Over the past 20-odd years, I’ve had a number of opportunities to teach and/or counsel high school youth groups, along with some additional experience w/ folks struggling with addiction recovery (groups that have more in common that you might think). One of the common topics that I’ve found that these people have struggled with is the concept of decoupling forgiveness from the consequences of sin.
“If you have forgiven me, then things must go back to the way things used to be…”, so the argument goes. “If you are still going to treat me different/punish me, then you really haven’t forgiven me,” is cry of the addict, and it is the siren call of the addicts’ enablers in allowing the abuse to continue. In addictive/abusive relationships, it is quite common for the abusers to manipulate those around them by taking a key component of Jesus’ teaching about living in the Kingdom – the concept of forgiveness – and twisting into something antithetical to its purpose. As the saying goes “the best lies are the ones that contain the most truth”..
And without a good grounding in the Word, it is easy to fall for this lie, which is why so many do. And, as so many of the key threads of Jesus’ teaching do, the decoupling of forgiveness and consequences begins in the Garden of Eden.
In Part I of this series, we examined Lamb Selection Day, which we Christians celebrate as Palm Sunday (though technically, since the selection happens on Sunday evening, it is actually on Monday in the Jewish calendar).
In this, Part II, we will examine some more of the traditions of Passover as practiced in the first century – in very similar manner as is done today – with the intention of examining some significant details relevant to Christianity.
Removing the Leaven
For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread (Exodus 12:19-20)
In Hebrew practice and tradition, on the seventh day before Passover, all families would search their houses for yeast (in some Jewish families, a paternal figure would hide bits of bread for the children to search out and find – which may have been borrowed later by Christians in ‘Easter Egg Hunts’. We do not have evidence, though, that this particular tradition was practiced in the first century). All yeast found in the houses would be brought to a central place and burned.
Yeast is used throughout the scriptures – both the Old and New Testaments – as a symbol for sin. While the elimination of yeast was a remembrance of the Children of Israel leaving Egypt so quickly that there was not time to make bread with yeast, this elimination is also symbolic of systematic removal of all traces of sin in one’s life. Keeping in mind that it is always important to keep sin out of our lives, it is this purposeful searching that it done at Passover that seeks ALL the sources by which it may have crept into our lives.
[A few years back, I did a series of articles on Holy Week on my personal blog. I'm making a few updates and reposting them during this year's Holy Week.]
There are a number of interesting events and “coincidences” that can be examined in the Jewish Traditions of the Second Temple period which hold significant parallels with Christian understanding of the last week of Jesus’ life, leading up to his resurrection.
This is Part I in the series (Palm Sunday), with further parts planned for later this week, to correspond with the days being celebrated.
Lamb Selection Day
On the tenth day of the first month of the year (five days before passover), every family was required to choose a lamb for passover, per the instructions given by God to Moses:
Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. (Exodus 12:3-6)
In order that the families could comply with the instructions from Exodus 12, the lambs were chosen the afternoon of the 9th day of the first month, so that they would be with the family from the 10th (which began at sundown) through the 14th. One reason for this, according to some Jewish sources, was so that the lamb would spend time with the family, becoming a part of it, so that when it fulfilled its purpose, it would take the sins of the family with it.
Jewish historians record that the lambs were brought from the fields of Bethlehem to the south up to Jerusalem and through the Northeast gate of the city by the pool of Bethesda, called the “Sheep’s Gate” (see above). (As we discussed during the the Desanitizing Christmas series a couple of years ago, the sheep of Bethlehem were owned by the Sadducees, and only these sheep were allowed to be sacrificed on Passover – for the purpose of filling their corrupt coffers.)
The year of Jesus’ death, He and his disciples began the trip into Jerusalem on a donkey at Bethphage (which is exactly one Sabbath day’s walk from the city walls). Bethphage is to the east of Jerusalem, and the road travels over the Mount of Olives down to the Sheep’s Gate. There they were met by a crowd of people waving palm branches.
The palm branch was a symbol which some scholars believe was not allowed within the city of Jerusalem, because it was associated with the zealots who wanted to overthrow Rome. The war cry of the zealots was “(God) Save Us!” chanted over and over again. In Hebrew, this would be pronounced “Ho-sha-NAH”, which we pronounce today Hosanna. This comes from Psalm 118:25-26, which is at the end of the Psalsms of Jewish blessings (Ps 113-118) called the hallel, sung during Jewish holidays.
O LORD, save us;
O LORD, grant us success.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD.
From the house of the LORD we bless you. (Psalm 118:25-26)
And so, the cry of “Hosanna!” was not one simply of recognizing Jesus as a king – but one of a liberator. It was a cry for revolutionary overthrow of the oppressive Roman government. As an opening to the Passover week, it was a harbinger of civil unrest and violence that put the authorities of the city on edge.
Palm Sunday
This is the setting for Lamb Selection Day – which we Christians call “Palm Sunday”. And it is on this day that the Lamb of God, born in the flocks of Bethlehem, who was sacrificed for all of our sins, entered the city of Jerusalem. This was done at the end of the day (Mark 11:11) which would have been the same time at which the Passover lambs were being selected for each family group (and it is also the time that the disciples would have chosen the lamb for their own Passover Meal, which occured on the evening of the 14th day).
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
“Say to the Daughter of Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosannain the highest!”When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”
The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” (Matthew 21:1-11)
As Westerners, we may miss this, but to Hebraic audiences, the picture is a stark one being painted here: Jesus is proclaimed a messiah by the people, but in doing so, they were selecting him as the Passover lamb to cover all the sins of the people for all time. He was from the flocks of Bethlehem, as all lambs were required to be in that time. The people waved the Palm branches, declaring Yeshua the Messiah. And so it is that the early Christians understood this day (which we celebrate as Palm Sunday) as the day in which Jesus was selected to be our sacrifice.
And so it is that this perfect lamb would have additional significance 5 days later, on the day of Passover…
(to be continued in Part II: Passover)
Two young children are sitting in the back of the car shoving, whining, and complaining about each other.
“What’s going on back there?” demands the mother.
“She keeps pushing me!” the younger whines.
The mother asks the older sibling if this is true.
“Yes, but that’s because she keeps putting her arm in front of my face,” explains the elder.
The mother replies to the younger, “If you want to stick your arm up in the air, fine, just don’t stick it in your sister’s face.”
When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable,
But he who restrains his lips is wise. – Proverbs 10:19 NASB
![Image of The Prodigal God (An Unabridged Production)[2-CD Set]; Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31Jl6fhDLxL._SL75_.jpg "The Prodigal God (An Unabridged Production)[2-CD Set]; Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith")
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