God's Standards

It's hard to understand what is happening in the Old Testament when God starts to favor Israel and cast out the other nations before them. For the longest time, one of the complaints has been that God seems to like one peoples more than another, so He moves heaven and earth for them. And if that's the case, then is it true that you can be a good person and still experience the curse simply because God loves someone else more than He loves you? 

It's scary to think about. It's not the kind of God we would want to worship. How could we ever know where we really stand? How could we know whether we are loved or really loved? Whether we are one of the peoples He would move heaven and earth for...or one of the peoples He would just...move? 

Thankfully, God leaves no doubt about why He's casting out the peoples He's casting out: they're sinners. 

They are a people who live contrary to the way that God desires for humans to live. They are a people who worship in perverse and profane ways, who worship gods other than Him, who do despicable things - the very kinds of things God tells His people not to do. And when He tells His people not to do them? He says plainly that these are the very same things He's casting these other peoples out of the Promised Land for. 

Even when God casts His own people out of His own community, He's clear about why. He says plainly what it is that makes them unclean and why being unclean isn't compatible with being in His community. 

Never is it because He "loves this person more." Never is it because "so-and-so is just a better human being." No, it always goes back to God's standard for living and the ways that persons are not holding their end of that covenant. 

So we don't have to worry about whether we're loved or really loved: we are truly loved, and God is - and always has been - very clear about His love for His people and His standard for the way we ought to live. 

God of the Poor

Do you ever feel like you don't have anything to offer God? Like there's nothing valuable enough in your life to bring to give Him? 

There is a sad truth in many of our churches where persons believe that the church is for the "haves," but not for the "have nots." Where persons believe that what they have to offer is less-than, is small, is too little to be meaningful. Sadly, we have too often fed into this by making the poor among us our projects, reinforcing the belief that you are not a member of this church; you are an outreach of this church. 

But God isn't like that. Never has been, never will be. 

From the very beginning, God made certain that there was something for everyone to bring to His presence, whether they were wealthy landowners or indentured servants or homeless persons living on the streets. 

When God gives His commands for what kind of offerings His people are supposed to bring, look at the way that He structures it. He says, "This is the offering that you are supposed to bring. If you can't afford this offering, then bring this one instead, and it will be received just the same. If you can't afford that offering, then bring this one instead, and it, too, will be received just the same." 

In my last reading, I counted in some places three economic levels of offering that were all equally acceptable to God for fulfilling the requirement of the sacrifice, depending upon what your station in life was. Now, remember, all of these persons were entering the same Promised Land. All of them were traveling toward the same Canaan. Even so, God is still mindful of the fact that living in the same land doesn't mean everyone will have the same resources or the same successes or the same provisions. The nature of human society is simply that they won't. 

So God makes a way for everyone to, at the very least, have the same standing before Him. 

Do you ever feel like you don't have anything to offer God? Well, my friend, that's just not true. Whether you have very much or have very little, God has already made it clear that what you have to bring is just as lovely, just as pleasing, just as perfect as what anyone else has. 

So...come.  

God of the Evening

And there was evening...and there was morning. Today. 

There were a lot of ways to become unclean in the Old Testament, including many things that are impossible to avoid as a human being. And it was not just humans who became unclean - everyday things could also become unclean, just by touching the wrong things or being touched by the wrong persons. Israel spent a lot of their time trying to become clean again. 

And how exactly did that happen? 

It happened when they did exactly what God told them to do - go and wash, perform this ritual, sprinkle this blood, etc. But it didn't happen exactly then. See, you had to wash, or wash the item, or perform the ritual or whatever, but you would only be made clean again at evening, when God made you clean again. 

Evening was the time that everything in Israelite society was reset. It was the beginning of the day, not the end of it like we know it to be. It was the time when all things were restored, right at the moment when it looked like everything was shutting down.

But that's precisely the point - at the time when everyone and everything was returning to the home for the night, God would cleanse His people and send them home. It's the same idea as not keeping your neighbor's coat overnight; he might need it. God did everything He could to make His people clean by evening, so long as they followed His commands, so that they could be inside, warm, and with loved ones when darkness fell. 

Oh, how this wraps around my heart. Oh, how it gets me. Because I know the darkness, and I know the shame, and I know what it feels like to feel unclean and to desperately long for nothing more than to just. go. home. And by God's great mercy, we can. 

They say His mercies are new every morning, and that's great. And in our world, it seems true. But the Old Testament reminds us that His mercies are actually new every evening, before the darkness falls. 

God of the Unclean

One of the most common misconceptions about God is that He only wants us when we're clean. He only wants us when we're pure. He only wants us when we're praying three times a day, reading our Bible, going to church. Too many have said that they can't possibly come to God because they aren't "good enough" to do it yet. 

Too many spend their entire life on the sidelines, thinking they are just a couple of good decisions - a couple of hard-fought victories - away from "deserving" God. 

Which is why the ceremonial anointing of the priests, all the way back to Aaron himself, is such an encouragement. 

God gives us this elaborate ritual that is meant to anoint the priests into His service. It starts by putting the holy clothes on them and bringing them into a holy place. Then, they are to offer sacrifices for their sins and purify themselves before Him so that they can be inducted into His service. 

Read that again - it starts with coming into His holy place and then purifying themselves. 

That means that at the moment that these men stand before God to offer themselves into His service, at the moment that they come into the holy place, at the moment that they put on the holy clothes...they are not clean. 

They are not atoned for. They are not forgiven. The errors of their ways have not been sacrificed for. They have not been washed clean. At the moment that the priests come before God to be anointed, there is nothing holy about them except for the place in which they are standing. (Well, yes, and the inherent dignity that comes with being a being created in the image of God, of course.) 

Nowhere in the Bible does God ever say, "Go out into the people and find me the best, most righteous, most prepared individual that you can. Find Me someone who doesn't need My forgiveness so that I may have someone to work with." That's not how God works. 

He works with the unclean, then cleans them up. He works with the called, then anoints them. He works with the unrighteous and turns their hearts. 

If you think you're not "good enough" to come to God, remember: Aaron (yes, that Aaron - after the show in Egypt, after the blossoming staff, after the golden calf, after all of it) came to God dirty and stood in the holy place and became the first in a long line of priests. 

And that's exactly the kind of thing God is still doing. 

So just come. 

God of Accidents

God is more gracious with us than we are with ourselves. Or with each other.

One of the things that I love about God's law is how it makes space for the humanity in all of us. It does what we often can't (or won't) do in that it makes provision for the times when we're going to mess up without meaning to. God knows there is such a thing as an accident. 

Throughout His law, He keeps reminding us of this. There are offerings you bring when you've done something wrong, then there are offerings you bring when you have done something you didn't even mean to do that is wrong. There are offerings you bring because you know you've made a mistake somewhere, even if you haven't identified it yet, and there are offerings you bring when you become aware of the sin you've committed without even knowing it. There are cities that you can run to if an accident results in someone's death, so that you cannot be killed in revenge for something that you didn't intend to happen - the Scriptures say, for example, if you're chopping wood and the ax head flies off the handle and kills your friend. That's an accident, and God has made provision for that. 

It's not something we're very familiar with any more in our world: accidents. We believe that everyone is in control of their actions at every point in time, and any time anything at all happens, we immediately start looking for someone to blame. We look for someone to hold accountable. The ax head flies off its handle and kills your friend? It might not be your fault, but many in our world would be quick to say it's time to sue the ax manufacturer. Their product was clearly defective, and if they'd just done their job better, this wouldn't have happened. 

On one hand, maybe that's true. Maybe the ax was poorly made. In a disposable world that doesn't seem to take as much pride in the quality of its products, and with a workforce who has dubbed phrases like "quiet quitting" and "bare minimum Monday," it's easy to think that someone, somewhere, was negligent, and this is their fault. 

On the other hand, accidents do happen. Just by nature of our being human. We know this because we cause accidents in our own lives all the time. And sure, sometimes, we beat ourselves up over them. We think about the tiniest little things that we could have or should have done better, what we should have been paying more attention to, that might have prevented it, but deep down in our core, we know that we can't stop everything from happening. Sometimes, things. just. happen. Even with the utmost of diligence over our own lives, things still just happen. Accidents are real. 

God's Word reminds us of this. And not only that, but it reminds us of grace. God already knows that accidents happen, and He's already made a way for us through them. 

And if God has done this for us, don't you think it's time we do it for ourselves? And for others?