That Hurt: God's People
April 21, 2024Pastor Patrick presented today's message, "That Hurt: God's People." A video of the message is here.
I think a fair summary of today's message is that people are flawed, and in their flawdom, they can give a bad name to whatever groups they are a part of, including the Church. You can be hurt in the Church by people. Not by God, but by people misbehaving in one way or another.
The fact that we are flawed (all humans) is made quite clear in the Torah. Right at the beginning there's our "Fall" at Creation. I think it was more of a choice than a "Fall" but whatever. Not much later in Genesis after the Flood (and you remember why that happened, right) there's Genesis 8:21 which includes: "the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth." Note it doesn't say childhood. But from our youth on, our natural tendencies are not particularly good. We tend to care mostly about ourselves, and that rarely leads to good behavior.
Behaving in a way that puts God in a bad light is actually outlawed in the Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:7, "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." The verb "take" (nasah, נָש) carries with it the meaning of carry or lift. This commandment is not about using the occasional OMG. It's about carrying a banner around with GOD written on it in 2-foot letters while doing something bad. It's about misrepresenting God. It's about doing bad things in God's name. It's about giving God a bad reputation through your behavior. The typical example given of this is terrorists yelling "God is Great" while slaughtering innocent people. But it doesn't have to be that extreme. As Patrick described this morning, doing something bad, or hurtful, at church, for instance, to others in the church, put's God in a bad light. That violates this Commandment. And guess what, it's the only Commandment the breaking of which God will not forgive. It says that right there in the verse!
Looking at this from the positive side... The best advertisement for God is God's People doing good things.
Interestingly, Moses used a similar argument with God when God was about to destroy the Israelites (they just didn't know when to quite complaining). Moses' argument is in Deuteronomy 9:26, 28, "I prayed to the LORD and said, 'Sovereign LORD, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance that you redeemed by your great power and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand... Otherwise, the country from which you brought us will say, 'Because the LORD was not able to take them into the land he had promised them, and because he hated them, he brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness.'" Get it? Moses is arguing that God's own behavior (potentially killing all the Israelites) could put Him in a bad light with the Egyptians!
One commentary reference I found to "shaking the dust off" from the Old Testament is actually a quote from Matthew 10:14-15, "Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. It will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." Wow. I trust you remember what Sodom and Gomorrah were like. The Sodom story is in Genesis 18:16 through Genesis 19:29.
Some suggest that dust is a reference to being dirty. But this strikes me as a little mundane. What if this "uncleanliness" was related to the clean/unclean and pure/impure states of the Old Testament? I've written here a number of times about the understanding that Torah references to clean/unclean and pure/impure are really references to "life focused" or "death focused." Even the kosher laws make more sense in this regard. So maybe the meaning of "shake the dust off" is about getting rid of death-related things, like not be in a right relationship with God.
I've also seen it suggested that what folks are being told to shake off are "pagan ways." Fighting pagan ways is a very clear theme of the Torah.
It's hard to think of dust in the Torah and not be reminded of Adam's creation from dust. Adam is even named in a way reminiscent of "ground" or "land" (adamah, אֲדָמָה). To be clear, the "dust" man is made of in Genesis 2:7 is a different word, aphar (עָפָר) which can also mean "dry earth." Stretching this to its limit, we could say that shaking off the dust is to minimize the nature part of man and maximize the "in God's image" part of man.
One article I found (here) suggested these situations are when it's time to back off and shake off the dust:
- When They Refuse to Listen
- When They Ignore What They Have Heard
- When Discussions Turn to Quarrels
- When They Speak Evil
- When They Stir Up Persecution (as in today's Antioch story)
Bonus
October 7: In Their Own Words
Until a few days ago I had never heard of the Unreported Story Society. Neither had I heard of a new play called "October 7: In Their Own Words."
Here's the description of the play from its website: "A Verbatim Play consisting entirely of eyewitness accounts of the October 7 [2023] massacres in Israel. The play is 100% verbatim. Every word on the stage is taken from the actual accounts of survivors and families of victims. There is no drama added and no editorializing. OCTOBER 7 is the voices of those who lived through that day. The stories are tragic, they are moving, and they are heroic. They are also unforgettable. Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney traveled to Israel after October 7 and interviewed those who lived through that day. Young and old, secular and religious, Israelis from all across the country tell us about how that day changed their lives and their country."
The play will run May 2 through June 16, 2024, at the Actors Temple Theatre, 339 W. 47th St, NY, NY 10036.
I suspect it will be hard to get through.
Seeing as we're not going to get to New York in that time frame, I hope it's made available in more accessible ways...
Here's another "verbatim" approach: "Israel in a Time of Terror." It's a video of interviews done by Dennis Prager in Israel in 2002 (I think that's when it was filmed). You can watch it here on YouTube.
Bonus2
Luck/Chance/Fate
Is there an element of luck, chance, or fate in our lives? Are there things that just happen? Or is God in control of everything, as if He were pulling all the ropes and twisting all the dials all the time?
One thing that's quite clear is that the "Big Miracles" (e.g. floods, parting seas, manna, etc.) seem to have slowed way down or even stopped. A miracle is defined as any time God interferes with nature (physics, biology, chemistry, etc.) in order that something happens that would/could not otherwise happen. The Bible is full of miracles all the way through it. Not so much any more. We seemed to have fallen into an era of "don't expect the big saves."
Here's how I look at it. God created the system, the whole system, from the very biggest to the very smallest moving part and how they interact. Knowing this, it's quite legitimate to credit God with that beautiful sunset. He created the system that made that happen. It's correct to credit God with the birth of a child; He created the system that made that possible. When it comes to the successes and failures of our own lives, its ups and downs, can we give God credit? Blame God? Well, yes and no.
Things like our innate abilities and work ethic can be credited to God's system. But, there is also a built-in, systemic if you will, "luck" factor as well. You get some credit for using the gifts God gave you, but also, you can't blame God for everything that goes wrong. There is that pesky luck factor. Just dumb (natural) luck.
And nature is dumb, by the way. It has no wisdom, no moral code to apply. Nature simply moves from sub-atomic particle interaction to sub-atomic particle interaction in a survival of the fittest kind of way, all the way up the levels of nature. Only Man, made in God's image, has the ability to be moral about what happens. Whether each individual uses that ability properly is the big question. God's question.