Mining the Minors: Hosea (28)

We see repeatedly in scripture that God does not over-value our personal histories of religious service the way we may. Believers must fight the natural tendency to “take our foot off the gas pedal” as we age, relying on the spiritual successes of the past to stand as an adequate representation of what God has done in our lives rather than pressing on to finish the course with distinction.

Need I point out that the apostle Paul did not do that, nor did any of those who are commended by God? There are plenty of Old Testament cautionary tales to remind us that how we finish is what matters, not how impressively we start or the promise we may show.

Mercy or Sacrifice?

“I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

On at least two occasions the Lord applied these words first spoken by Hosea in 6:6. Both speakers expressed what was appropriate to circumstances that prevailed in their time.

Hosea was responding to his nation’s blindness regarding the Lord’s overriding purpose in delivering Israel from slavery, giving them the law through Moses along with instructions to guide them in offering sacrifices. They were to be a completely different people, their manner of life superior to what was going on in various nations around them. Those nations had their sacrifices and offered them to ward off punishment from the god or gods they offended.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (24)

The apostle Paul taught the Corinthian Christians to examine themselves before eating and drinking in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. Repentance and confession would naturally follow; after all, self-examination that doesn’t result in a change of heart and conduct is a worthless exercise.

Short version: sin must be dealt with before worship or fellowship can truly take place.

Burning Sons

God commanded Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering on a mountain in Moriah. Most of us know the story very well.

And yet over the generations since the account was written down, readers continue to express outrage and doubt, both about the character of a God who would make such a demand, and especially about the character of any man who would comply with it. Even Søren Kierkegaard had great difficulty with the passage, referring to the act as an “ethical rupture”. More recently, James Goodman writes, “Could there be better evidence that God is a tyrant, Abraham a sycophant and Isaac an utterly abused child?”

Metaphorical Mites

You remember the widow, right?

I know, I know, there are more than a few widows in the Bible. I mean the one at the temple in Jerusalem in the gospels. The Lord remarked on the gift she deposited in the temple treasury. He specifically drew the attention of his disciples to it when he said that she put in “more than all those who are contributing.”

If you only read Luke you might be forgiven for thinking this incident occurred at random, but Mark makes it clear that the Lord “sat down … and watched the people putting money into the offering box.” That may seem an odd way to occupy your time, but I think he was waiting for a certain poor widow to come along.

So her two mites matter, and maybe not only for the reasons you might think.

That Wacky Old Testament (12)

“Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck.”

Well, that seems a little brutal, doesn’t it? “Hello, baby donkey. Nice to see you in the world. SNAP!”

What on earth is THAT all about?

Good question. Glad you asked.

Anonymous Asks (8)

“If God doesn’t like suicide, isn’t what Jesus did kind of like that? Did God send His Son to be murdered?”

Hmm. Maybe I’ll go with the second question first.

Peter’s message to the Jews at Pentecost was: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” That puts the responsibility for Christ’s death squarely where it belongs, I think: God certainly delivered him up, but it was lawless men that crucified and killed him. We can argue that God knew in advance that his Son would be rejected and murdered, and this is certainly true, but everyone involved in putting the Lord Jesus to death made a personal choice, from Pilate to Herod to the soldiers who crucified him, most especially the Jews who cried out repeatedly for his death.

As for suicide, well, that’s another story …

A Better Word

“Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?”

Washed in the blood. I’ll be frank: that’s kind of a grisly image, though a very popular one in late 19th and 20th century hymnology. If some of our modern churchgoers cringe at the mental picture it conjures, we can hardly blame them.

Elisha Hoffman’s lyric presumably riffs on Revelation 7, where John sees an innumerable multitude of worshipers in front of the throne of God and is told, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

In Revelation it is the robes that are washed in the blood, not the worshipers themselves. Hoffman probably understood this, though his title is a bit too ambiguous for me.

What we do find much more often in scripture is sprinkled blood.

The Needs of the Many

I suppose my subject may require at least a rough definition, but sometimes there’s only one word for a particular job. So the word of the day is solipsism.

The solipsist is not a narcissist; that’s a pathology. The solipsist is not merely selfish; that’s childish and natural in a fallen world, and even unbelievers may learn unselfishness as they age and experience life. Solipsism is actually a philosophical theory that the self is all that may be known to exist, but I’m not here talking about mere philosophies or theories. Practical solipsism is a phenomenon in which adults — particularly Western adults, I think — automatically and reflexively view every issue before them first and foremost from the angle of how it affects them.

It’s kinda like empathy ... except it isn’t. Empathy feels your pain. Solipsism feels its own imaginary pain that has been triggered by yours.

And solipsism is absolutely epidemic in our culture.

Metaphorical Mites

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