Bible in a Year – Day 28: What’s a Life Worth?
Jan 28th
Today’s Reading: Exodus 30, 31 & 32
As with just about every day, there’s a lot packed into today’s reading. However, there were two parts that really jumped out to me and they both follow a similar theme. First, there is the “atonement money” that God requires every person to pay. Second, there is this conversation between Moses and the Lord where Moses asks God to forgive the Israelites for worshiping the golden calf. Both, I think, demonstrate a fundamental truth about the value of each individual – a truth that God first taught Noah and then, Noah articulated back to God.
Let’s take a look at the atonement money. The purpose of this money was to offer a “ransom” for the life of each individual. Clearly, this has some prophetic undertones as Jesus would pay the ultimate ransom for us and would be the ultimate atonement. However, I think there’s something interesting about this passage. God requires that everyone is to give one half shekel. And he specifically says that the rich are to give no more than a half shekel and the poor are to give no less.
Now, whenever God and money are combined in the Bible, most people immediately believe that the passage must be a commentary on church giving, tithing, etc. In this case, though, I don’t think that’s the point at all. In fact, when you read through the rest of scripture, you see that God typically does require more from those who have more and often lessens the giving requirements for those who are poor. So what’s going on here?
Well, remember that we’re talking about a ransom or atonement. That is, a sum of money paid in exchange for someone’s life. What’s a life worth? Whatever the person who saves your life says it’s worth. In this case, God tells the people that they are to pay one half shekel as a ransom for each life. But what is God going to do with a half shekel? He doesn’t need the money! What he does need is that for the people to understand that their lives have value and that no one person’s life is more valuable than another. The lives of the rich aren’t worth more than the lives of the poor or vice versa. This is a lesson in the value of a life, not a story about tithing or church giving.
This same lesson, then, is obviously learned and articulated by Moses when he says to God in chapter 32, verses 31 & 32:
“Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”
Moses here is essentially telling God that his life (or more accurately, his soul or his existence) is not any more valuable than anyone else’s. If they aren’t going to be forgiven – if they’re going to be rejected by God – then Moses doesn’t want to be accepted by him either. It’s a reminder that we’re all in this boat together – that God interacts with humanity as a whole as well as individuals. And it’s a reminder that you are worth the same as me and the same as the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. And, ultimately, Jesus would pay the same price for all of us.
Bible in a Year – Day 27: You’re It…Like It Or Not
Jan 27th
Today’s Reading: Exodus 28 & 29
Sometimes it’s great to be chosen. Chosen first for the kickball team in elementary school? Awesome! Chosen as a finalist in the Miss Coburn County pageant? Swell! Chosen to work in a newly formed house of worship which requires you to slaughter and burn animals, not to mention splashing and getting splashed with lots of blood? Um…not so much.
In today’s reading, God’s instructions are for Aaron and his descendents to become the priests of the new tabernacle. And while this role has a few perks, it doesn’t really seem like the most fun job in the world. There’s a lot of blood involved and, in all likelihood, a lot of stress about making sure to follow the rules. Maybe that’s why God had to appoint some people to the position of priest – no one would willingly apply for the job!
Whatever the reason, God chose Aaron and his family to be the first priests of Israel’s new place of worship. Now, Aaron may have seen this coming. After all, he had been in a position of leadership among the people of Israel since before they left Egypt. Because of that, it makes sense that God would entrust Aaron with this most important of tasks. What I find interesting, however, is that it wasn’t only Aaron who was chosen. It was Aaron’s family! I can imagine a teenage boy being told by his father, “No hanging out on the beach for you this summer. You’re going to be a priest!”
What? This was not the life that these young men chose. Rather, it was a life chosen for them. They had no say in the matter whatsoever. What’s more, they were chosen to be priests not because of some standard of purity or ethics to which they adhered. No, they were chosen based solely on lineage. Who was their father? OK, then they will be priests.
Can you imagine if God worked that way today? Rather than choosing to go into the ministry, you might just be dragged, kicking and screaming – into the church to work for God! Well, the truth is that God does still work that way. Take it from one who has been dragged back to the church kicking and screaming. I tried on multiple occasions to walk away from the task that God has given me as a full-time pastor and, every time, it has not gone well for me.
The fact is, my only choice in the matter is whether or not I’m obedient to the will of God – a choice that Aaron and his sons also had. Just like us, they could have poo-pooed the idea that they were supposed to be priests and simply carried on with their lives. Although, I’m guessing it wouldn’t have turned out well for them.
But let’s face it, it won’t turn out well for us either! If God is calling you, choosing you and asking you to do something, he’s not going to let you rest until you do it. Sure, he gives you a choice. But he’s not going to stop asking. He’s not going to stop urging. He’s not going to stop whispering in your ear. God, as it turns out, has a plan. It’s a grand plan with lots of details and millions of people who have to work together to execute this plant.
And God knows better than you or I what kind of person he needs in each role that he has created in order to fulfill his plan. And so, here we are – called by God – and we have a choice: Do we answer God’s call and step into the role he has assigned us or do we ignore his call and go our own way. It was a decision that Aaron’s family had to make and a decision that all of us still face today.
Bible in a Year – Day 26: Is God OCD?
Jan 26th
Today’s Reading: Exodus 25, 26 & 27
Well, the good news is that if you ever wanted to build a tabernacle, you now have very detailed instructions! As you read through these chapters, if you’re like me, you said, “OK, OK, I get it. Enough with the details.” Alright, maybe that’s just me. I don’t love details in the first place and I really don’t like to read about them. But there were a couple of things that I realized as I began to ask God to reveal something about himself through these passages of scripture.
First, God cares about the details…and he’s thought them all through. Imagine if God had just told Moses to build a tabernacle and had given him no instruction on how it was to be constructed. I would think that Moses would have probably done a pretty decent job of hiring the right people and seeking wise counsel, etc. But it would have been a nerve-racking job. I can see Moses staying up late at night fretting over every single detail, just hoping that the decision he made about what material to use on the leaf of the lampstand was up to God’s standard. I can see the elders of the tribe arguing over whether to use blue or purple cloth for the curtain. The fact of the matter is that through these tedious details recorded in Exodus, God made Moses’ life, and the life of those charged with building the tabernacle, a whole lot easier. They had, essentially, a blueprint from the master architect and instructions from the master carpenter. All they had to do was follow the instructions.
The second realization that I had while reading this text is that, once again, God is helping the people of Israel start from scratch. Now, we know that they made bricks in Egypt and may have learned some of the famed carpentry skills of their captors, but God was calling these people to build a nation. They would need to learn everything that anyone needs to build a nation. And so, God begins to teach them about the proper way to build this building – a temporary structure that would need to be easily dismantled, but strong enough to weather the harsh, dry, windy climate of the desert.
It occurs to me that someone out there reading this post might feel like God has called them to start from scratch. Like the Israelites coming out of Egypt and like their father Abraham before them, you might be asked to head of off to a strange land and leave everything you know behind. That’s a scary proposition, but here’s the good news: If God has called you to start from scratch, he is going to give you the plans that you need to do his work. Oh, and he definitely cares enough to give you the details!
Bible in a Year – Day 25: Rulez!
Jan 25th
Today’s Reading: Exodus 22, 23 & 24
Rules, rules and more rules! There are rules about cows, oxen and sheep, rules about wives, rules about money, rules about thieves and about a hundred other rules contained in just a couple of chapters. (Fear not, there are many more rules to come!) So what’s with all these rules? Was God just trying to make life as complex as possible for his “chosen people?”
Well, we have to remember that for these people, everything was being started from scratch. In fact, they didn’t even have a place to call home. They were just traveling through the desert, surviving on very little food and wondering why in the world they had left their former life in Egypt. And, just like every society that has ever started from scratch, the Israelites needed a framework for their civilization.
Think of it this way: Imagine the early days of the United States of America. There were groups of people who had come here from all over Europe, all with different ideas of exactly what this new world and new life would mean for them. Now, imagine if in those early days, just as the nation was being birthed, no one had thought of drafting a constitution. Imagine that some free-spirited leaders decided that every person would just do what they thought was right, rather than having a bunch of rules written down. What kind of chaos would have ensued?
Not only would the people have had no way of knowing what was or wasn’t acceptable, but there would be no way to have a court system that worked – no way to have any consistency or fairness in judgement. In short, a nation without a constitution is a nation without governing power and, in essence, is no nation at all.
And so it was with ancient Israel. This was, after all, not even a nation yet. They were really just a gigantic family – the family of Israel. They were just beginning to be birthed into a nation and the formation of a type of constitution or series of laws was necessary for them to continue to function properly. And so, much like our constitution, the people of Israel were given a series of laws and, in some cases, the punishment that was to be exacted upon someone who broke one of those laws.
Now, there are some sticking points in these laws for us modern readers. Some of the instructions about wives and slaves seem archaic to us. And, in fact, they are. Some have questioned how God could condone slavery or the seeming use and abuse of women. The truth is, we simply don’t have all of the story here. Depending on which biblical scholars you choose to listen to, there are a few possible explanations for the inclusion of these types of laws.
First, it could have been that God simply desired for humanity to function differently back then. He certainly had that right, since he created us. For those who ascribe to the idea that the Bible is the inerrant (or, without error) word of God, this is really the only option available in regards to your thinking about why God included these laws. The Bible tells us that God doesn’t change. However, it is possible that the way that he related to people and the way he wanted us to relate to each other has changed over the centuries to better suit his plans.
A second option – one available only to those who don’t believe that the Bible is inerrant – is that these were not laws spoken from God, but were, rather, laws created by Moses and perhaps some of his close advisers. The thinking goes that since God gave Moses the Ten Commandments – the basic tenants upon which laws should be built – that God also gave him the authority to establish the details of how those laws were constructed and implemented. Moses, then, in order to have some level of consistency among his newly-appointed judges, would have needed to think through specific scenarios and had specific responses available to all who were judging cases. And so, Moses, armed with the Ten Commandments from God, would have set out to create laws that related to the specific situations he saw around him – situations that took into account the cultural norms of the day and which, from Moses’ perspective, were perfectly normal and didn’t call for any major changes. Slavery had become a cultural norm in those days and Moses would have had no reason to assume that people would no longer own slaves.
A third option, of course, is that God did, indeed speak all of these rules into existence, but that somewhere along the way, some things got added in, mistranslated or otherwise misunderstood. The Bible was, after all, oral tradition before it was ever written down. Again, this option is only available to you if you don’t believe that the Bible is inerrant.
There are probably countless other theories regarding why God seems to take a nonchalant attitude toward slaves and women here and elsewhere in scripture, but I think the primary thing to note is that when these passages are read in the historical context in which they were written, the issues of slavery or the treatment of women would not have raised any red flags among the people.
And perhaps that’s the point. You can only change so many things at once, after all. Maybe God decided to get people moving a few steps in the right direction and trusting him before he began completely turning their cultural paradigm upside down.
Bible in a Year – Day 24: The Ten
Jan 24th
Today’s Reading: Exodus 19, 20 & 21
Here it is…the beginning of “The Law” that the people of Israel would follow from the days of Moses until the end of the world. Even people who are completely unfamiliar with church or the Bible know about the Ten Commandments. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know what the commandments are – only that they exist and maybe a vague idea of what a few of them say. It’s probably a good idea then to take a glance at what in the world these commandments are about.
A not-so-quick synopsis of the commandments goes like this:
No other Gods – In a culture that was traditionally polytheistic, or at least open to the idea that there could be many gods, this was an important statement. For those of us today who live in a traditionally monotheistic culture, we tend to interpret our “gods” as anything that we make equal to or more important than God in our lives.
No idols – Again, this is a commandment that spoke directly to the common practices of the day, where people, having chosen their god or gods, would cast some kind of image out of gold or another material as not only a representation or symbol of their god, but as a god. My friend Vijay, who grew up in a culture where these kinds of statues are still commonly used, relates how, even after he became a follower of Jesus, it was difficult for him to remember that those statues weren’t god (or God) and weren’t in any way sacred. And so, it was important for God to literally write in stone that the people of Israel should not craft these kinds of idols (to him or any other god).
Do not misuse God’s name – this is a situation where the NIV (New International Version) translation of the Bible is very useful. Many of us have heard the commandment translated “Do not take God’s name in vain,” which is actually a somewhat paraphrased version of the old King James translation. The problem is that it doesn’t make much sense to us. Here, the NIV allows us to understand that we’re talking about misuse of God’s name – misappropriation, if you will. With that interpretation, I think it could be argued that there are plenty of us, myself included, that sometimes misuse the name of God (or, in our post-Christ era, misuse the name of Jesus). History is littered with victims of those who committed despicable acts in the name of God. God recognized the power and authority in his name and warned his people against the abuse of that power and authority.
Remember the Sabbath – The Sabbath day was and still is one of the most misunderstood of God’s commands to the people of Israel. This was God’s version of the classic parental exhortation that “I’m doing this for your own good.” If we take a couple of steps back and gain a new perspective, we’ll see that God institution of required rest among his people was simply a matter of appropriate management of people resources. If you don’t rest, you’ll get tired. If you get tired, you’ll lag behind, won’t be fit for battle and you’ll bring others down. Now, God was pretty harsh about what would happen to those who broke the Sabbath, but the principle spoken of here still exists today as we busy ourselves to the point of exhaustion and burnout rather than heeding God’s words to take some time to rest.
Honor your father and mother, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie – These are all fairly self-explanatory and all point back to the same idea: don’t think so highly of yourself that you disrespect or harm someone else. These are the “love your neighbor as yourself” portions of the law
Don’t covet – The final commandment also falls under the “love your neighbor” heading, but I want to separate it out here for this reason: Because covetousness speaks to an inward condition of the heart, rather than a visible action. You see, dishonoring your parents, killing someone, having an affair, stealing or lying – they are all outward expressions. They are actions. Covetousness, however, is something that lives inside of a person and festers. This one word, “covet,” contains within it ideas like jealousy, selfishness, greed and envy – the kind of conditions that will eat away at a person’s soul and that could ultimately drive them to one of the horrendous acts mentioned above. This final commandment is perhaps more important than many of those preceding it, but most people don’t give it much thought.
In short, the Ten Commandments were a quick version of God’s rules to live by. The longer version would be played out in the coming chapters of Exodus, as well as in other parts of scripture. At the end of today’s reading, we begin to catch a glimpse of the “longform” rulebook that the people of Israel would use as part of their religious and legal system. We will explore that a little further tomorrow.
