Family gods (Joshua 24:14)

 “Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.”   

The implications of this verse are chilling.  Joshua is giving his farewell to the nation of Israel.  They have entered into the Promised Land, conquered its armies, and occupied its cities.  The future looks bright for Israel—she finally has her own land, her own place to grow as a nation, and to live out her very unique faith before the eyes of the surrounding pagan, lost world.  But it seems that she has carried with her a dark habit from her distant past—idolatry.  The gods that their forefathers served beyond the River were those of the Mesopotamians, from whom the father of Judaism, Abraham, came.  The gods that their fathers served in Egypt were the idols of the nation that they had been enslaved to for over 400 years, and had been miraculously delivered from just 40 years earlier.  The reason the verse is chilling is because this people, God’s redeemed, covenant people, still had such idols with them as they entered the land of Promise!  The Hebrews had secretly clung to the worship of idols from Mesopotamia for as much as 600 years, and the worship of Egyptian idols for over 400 years.  An idol is something—anything—that people turn to in obedience and deference with the expectation of having their most cherished hopes and needs met.  It seems that the Lord was not fully trusted by the nation, throughout its entire history, and so other gods (little “g” gods) were packed along the cultural suitcases on the trip to and from Egypt.   

What is particularly alarming about such idolatry in God’s chosen people is that the way it must have been, had to have been, practiced and preserved was through the intimate lines of family connections and marriage, through your fathers, Joshua said.  This is the reason for the Bible’s pervasive concern that children be raised in households of genuine faith, and marriages be entered into only by those of the same faith.  It wasn’t the mixing of diverse bloodlines that concerned the Lord, as in cross-racial marriages—it was the ultimate degradation of the one true religion with the idolatry of another.  And so, the problem that Joshua put his finger on was that while God had miraculously delivered the nation from their Egyptian slave masters, many in the nation had chosen to remain enslaved to Egyptian idols—and they secretly practiced their enslavement through the countless family decisions and values that were made and communicated to their children down through the generations. 

Today, such little-g idolatry may exist even in Christian families where the decisions of life (schooling, finances, marriage, time-management, housing, etc.) are made according to the standards and beliefs of our surrounding culture, without consideration and obedience to the Word of God concerning such matters.  For idols aren’t funny looking statues that sit on our mantles, and they aren’t cars, houses, boats, and vacations—they are the ideas and demands that we create and serve  in order to gain the things we want in life, particularly the things that we are unwilling to trust the Lord to provide.  And while such idols do often seem to provide such perishable items and soon-to-be-forgotten experiences, no idol provides what you and your children desperately need—forgiveness for your sins and reconciliation with God.

Gagging the Faith (Joshua 1:8)

 ”This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.”

Moses’ instruction to Joshua concerning his relationship to the Word of God is instructive for Christians today who seek to live faithful, obedient lives. Joshua was to maintain an equal, three-pronged commitment to the Word.

First, his speech not simply to be Bible-based, but Bible itself. I don’t think this means that Moses felt Joshua should spend his life simply quoting Scripture at every turn, but that he was to be a man whose speech continuously reflected the specific message of God’s Word, verbally proclaimed as the truth-source of every significant consideration in life.

Second, Joshua was to meditate on the Word of God—he was to make a habitual, personal discipline of mentally “chewing” on the Word, considering its application, meaning, and significance. He was to purposefully saturate his mind with the Word of God–a constant consideration and repetition of it that would naturally lead to memorization, I imagine.

 Finally, the purpose behind Bible rooted speech and thought was so that Joshua would live a life that corresponded with the teachings of the Bible. These aspects of his relationship with God’s Word were like the legs of a three-legged stool—take away one of them and he would find failure, instead of a life that was prosperous, and marked by success.

Today, believers are constantly challenged to live their lives with one or more of the stool’s legs taken out from under them. We are tempted to think a lot of the Word, but not diligently obey it. We are applauded by our surrounding culture when we obey the Word—especially when our obedience directly benefits the culture through our services—but carefully scrutinized to insure that we are not guilty of speaking the Word, particularly in a way that confronts the culture with its desperate need for forgiveness and restoration to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. Christianity, a faith that prays for and promotes the proselytization of every human being on the earth to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, becomes unrecognizable as itself when it no longer actively seeks to proselytize. Our spiritual forefathers did not suffer for doing good deeds for the communities they lived in—they suffered for refusing to cease preaching that Name without which no one could hope to be saved (Acts 4:12). But today, it seems we are often tempted to volunteer to gag ourselves, so desperate are we to be thought of as reasonable, friendly, even “cool” Christians.

Should anyone reward or commend your “faith-based” actions, for the good of your community, while at the same time requesting or even requiring that you in any way curtail or postpone the clear, verbal, sharing of the message of the gospel, politely excuse yourself from the “conversation” because it’s not a conversation, really.   The gagging of your faith is too high a price to pay for the momentary applause of the surrounding culture.

Your Hungry Brother (Deuteronomy 15:7-8)

 ”If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother; 8 but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

A loophole is a condition or application of a law that allows for a person to subtly circumvent the law itself—all without formally breaking that law.  We’re pretty good at finding loopholes in our tax laws here in America, come April 15^th!  But let’s put ourselves in the sandals of those to whom this text was originally written—the Jewish people of Israel, approximately 1400 BC.  Let’s pretend that we’re just finishing breakfast, and are preparing to head to our field to put in a long day’s work.  We look out the door of our small, stone house and see a poorly dressed man, standing.  He’s obviously waiting for us to come outside.

I say, “Oh, great.  There’s another one of them today.  What are we going to do?  We can’t become village lunch ticket!”

You say, “He’s poor, we’ve got to help him. ““If there is a poor man with you…””

“How do you know he’s poor,” I say.  “He’s got shoes on his feet, clothes on his back.  He walked here; he could just as easily have walked down the road to the next farm.”

You say, “But he’s a brother, like it says, “one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the LORD your God is giving you…”

“Let’s not get literalistic or fundamenalistic here!” I say.  “How do you know he’s a Jewish brother, or from this town?  And sure, God may have giving the nation this land…but we’ve worked it ourselves, and own it, and need to be good stewards of it, not giving its produce away to every guy that comes along looking for a handout.  I don’t think the Bible wants us to just throw common sense out the window, do you?”

You say, “It’s commanded, “you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother.”

“Well,” I say, relieved and a bit offended, “you certainly don’t know my heart, do you?  This is an issue between me and God.  Remember, “Judge not!”

“Right,” you say, “…but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

“Yes!  I’m glad you quoted that verse,” I say.  Lend!  Lend!  We’re supposed to lend him what he needs—NOT give, but lend!

“Yes, but—“

“But how can you lend something to someone who doesn’t have any way to repay it?  And how can you even know that he’ll be around to repay it,” I say.

“But you just said that you don’t know that he’s really poor.  You said, “He’s got shoes on his feet, clothes on his ba—“ 

“Right!” I say.  We can’t know, so how can we really apply this literally, without some sort of verifica—“

Suddenly, I don’t have your attention anymore.  You’re looking out the doorway.

“He’s gone now,” you say.

“Just as well,” I say.  But I mean, “Mission accomplished.” 

And I say, as if changing the subject, “Tomorrow, let’s eat breakfast on the back porch.  It’s pretty there in the mornings.”

 

Checking in…

Sharon and I are in SF this weekend, after a week in Reno at the National Foster Parents Conference.  It was a great conference, and I was further strengthened my convictions that one of the most powerful ministries that we, as Christians, can do is to take a part in caring for the many children in our country who are removed from their birth families, and need a safe, loving home to live in.  We’ve made a lot of noise about abortion, stem-cell research, abstinence training, etc.  Actually caring for these hurting children is a practical way of putting some action with our words.