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Week 17 II Kings

Whoever wrote Kings can tell a good story. But I’m surprised by the one in chapter one. A captain and fifty soldiers are destroyed by an act of God.
I figure I’m a pretty normal reader and my instinctive reaction is that 51 innocent guys were incinerated by a god who is harsh, unfair, ruthless and brutal. A terrible guy.
So I think a bit while my instinctive reaction settles…
There’s something I’m pretty sure about.
And there’s something I’m not so sure about, but think could be true.
I’m pretty sure the writer’s aim was not to say that 51 pristine guys were eliminated by a horror-show god. I’m pretty sure that when I’m reading the story and drawing my conclusion that god-is-the-worst then I’m getting something out that the writer didn’t put in.
The thing I’m not so sure about – but think might be true – is that the writer decided to take a bigger story and boil it down so completely that almost nothing was left. Just a crust of distillate. Condensed so totally that I’m jammed into a corner. Like the writer is saying: okay, now you figure this one out.
It seems like a kind of test-story to me.
I know this writer can tell an inspiring and understandable story.
But here it’s like he wants to know how I’ll manage something that’s uninspiring and hard to understand.

Note: the story is in II Kings 1:9-15

Week 16 Psalm 48

I stopped right away: great is the Lord.
The Lord is great. I figure that if the Lord is great then what he’s like, what he says and does all squeeze in under the big umbrella of God being great. All of it. 
What that means is that when I read something about God and it doesn’t sound too great then I can either decide that what I’m thinking about God being not-so-great is correct, and that in fact God isn’t great. Or I can decide that what I thought about God being not-so-great was a gaff.
I think my basic question is: does everything fit under the big umbrella or are some things left out in the rain?
If I got to decide personally and independently what’s going to stay dry and what gets wet then a big problem is solved because I could manipulate quirky or inexplicable God-doesn’t-look-so-great things in a satisfactory way.
On the other hand if I’m basically stuck with what the bible says and I don’t get to decide what things about God are great or not-so-great then it’s more of an uphill climb. If God is great but from my perspective it looks like the greatness is not-so-greatness then that’s a predicament.
I’ve got to admit it would be easier if I got to decide for myself.
It would be way easier.

Note: Psalm 48:1 great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised (NASB version)

Week 16 I Kings

In I Kings chapter eleven a pretty interesting thing is happening.
For starters, Solomon has turned renegade on the Lord, and because of that the Lord is going to take action, is going to take away the kingdom.
The rest of the chapter explains how the Lord will get that done.
First: the Lord raised up an adversary to Solomon, Hadad the Edomite.
Then: God also raised up another adversary to (Solomon), Rezon the son of Eliada.
And finally Jeroboam was told by the Lord: I will take you…and you shall reign over Israel.
So the Lord took indirect action by prompting three of Solomon’s enemies.
What’s pretty interesting here is that Hadad, Rezon, and Jeroboam were already natural adversaries of Solomon, with long preexisting hatreds against the king.
So on the one hand there is the Lord operating in the affairs of Israel by stimulating and animating three angry men.
And at the same time Hadad and Rezon and Jeroboam are operating too, already personally stimulated and animated, making personal decisions and choices, taking action, doing what they want because of who they are and what has happened in their pasts, scores to settle, personally driven by their own personal drivers in a way that looks pretty exclusive. People, not coded automates.
In the end the Chief Operator has the final say. And in their own way the sub-operators have a say, too.

Note: quotes from I Kings 11:14, 23, 37 (NASB version)

Week 16 I Kings

First Kings chapter eleven describes Solomon’s crash. It comes abruptly, like a sudden darkening in a high blue Alberta sky.
In chapter after chapter Solomon’s incandescent career has been described. An astute ruler, a master-planner, a state organizer-manager-builder, he’s famous for his prodigious wisdom, staggering wealth and religious faith. For ten chapters his reputation builds as one of the great guys in the bible.
Then chapter eleven verse one begins with the words: now King Solomon loved many foreign women. It’s an innocent-enough sounding verse, an understandable verse. But as of that verse Solomon stops being one of the luminous guys.
The writer makes a very clear point that Solomon had romantic attachments to many, many foreign wives and lovers. The point is so clear that there’s a bit of a temptation to blame the women for his disintegration. But whatever part they were in the mix, Solomon was his own man…
Solomon: turned his heart away after other gods.
Solomon’s: heart was not complete with devotion to the Lord his God.
Solomon: worshiped Ashtoreth and Milcom.
Solomon built temples to other gods. 
Solomon: did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.
Solomon: refused to follow the Lord fully.
Solomon: did not listen to the Lord’s command.
So a long, long international procession of gorgeous and sensuous and alluring middle-eastern women turned Solomon’s head.
But when-push-came-to-shove Solomon turned his own heart.

Note: quotes from I Kings 11:1, 4-7, 10 (NASB & NLT versions)

Week 16 I Kings

Solomon’s great temple took seven years to build.
It was meant to be the geographical place of the Lord’s residence, the earthly address where people would come to worship God. And it was as lavish and beautiful a piece of architecture as Solomon could build.
But on the big day when it came time for the public dedication Solomon realized that his temple wasn’t really as phenomenal as he thought. It’s more like it was laughably inadequate.
You can see that when Solomon asks: but will God really live on earth? Why, even the highest heavens cannot contain you. How much less this Temple I have built?
Will God really live on earth? It’s a good and legitimate and sensible and logical question, and pretty clearly the answer is no. God doesn’t live on the earth. He doesn’t live in the sky. He’s not geographically constrained. He has no spatial limitations.
I get the feeling that Solomon is weighted down thinking about the dimensions of a Big God, an authentically titanic God. And it’s not only his size, it’s his unqualified difference. God is different, alien and antithetic.
Fortunately Solomon doesn’t travel very far along the God-and-I-are-so-mismatched-that-I’m-basically-a-meaningless-zero tangent. Instead he admits that we’re impossibly qualitatively different but in spite of that incompatibility please, please, please watch over this temple and the people who come here to prayer and please: hear us from heaven…and when you hear, forgive.

Note: quotes from I Kings 8:27 & 30 (NLT version)

Week 16 I Kings

Solomon weathers a leadership crisis and becomes king.
Then in chapter four I see a bunch of names.
I scan down the list. Okay – new government, new officials.
Solomon appoints twelve deputies to his taxation districts. Twelve districts is no surprise – back in Joshua the land was divided among the twelve family units.
I look at the first name on the list: Ben-hur. Ben-hur leads Ephraim. Right away I figure I know how the pattern will play out – the name of some guy I don’t know will be connected with the name of a known guy/territory: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, etc.
My great idea breaks down with name #2. Ben-deker is deputy in Makaz.
I check the list for Jacob’s son’s names. I see Ephraim, Naphtali, Asher, Issachar, Benjamin, Judah. But that’s it.
Where are the rest? I need an accurate map of cities and tribal boundaries during Solomon’s reign. And I need time to match the cities to the traditional territories. For example, in my back-of-the-bible map the town of Bethshemesh looks like it could be in Judah.
But I don’t have a good atlas and I’m out of time. Maybe the cities line up with the original territories or maybe they don’t.
I guess it doesn’t make too much difference.
I need to keep in mind that things are changing all the time. And I need to keep in mind that the bible tells me things worth knowing but doesn’t tell me everything.

Week 16 Psalm 42

Easter Sunday morning and I landed on Psalm 42. It’s a things-are-really-not-going-very-well-for-me psalm, and the despondent writer is asking himself why-am-I-in-despair?
Even though he asked the question, it looks like he actually does know why he’s down. First there’s a bunch of negative things happening, and secondly the Lord isn’t offering him any back-up.
So his real question is more like ‘how-can-I-stop-feeling-this-bad?
Eventually Despondent Writer’s question leads to an answer: hope in God.
When you think about it this isn’t a bad answer. A bad answer would be something like: well-let’s-just-hope-for-the-best. Hoping for the best, apart from sounding pretty nice and pretty caring (which is its real strength) doesn’t have much living-my-life heft. It’s a disengaged virtue-word. Despondent Writer’s antidote isn’t: Just Hope. It’s: Hope in Something. Hope connected to something is better than hope disconnected from anything.
The God Despondency Writer has in mind is the God that the OT is portraying as being decisive, involved, insistent, engaged, a God who has definite opinions and values and preferences and standards.
Despondent Writer is saying that the answer to despair is to hope in the concrete God who’s described in scripture.

Note: quote is from Psalm 42:5 & 11 (NASB version). Pastor Steve talked about hope in his Resurrection Sunday sermon (from I Peter 1:3-5 (I won’t get there until December)). So it was a nice coincidence.

Week 15 II Samuel 

When Nathan the prophet exposed David’s crimes of adultery and murder he also forecast two pretty heavy outcomes. First: the sword shall never depart from your house. Secondly: I (the Lord) will raise up evil against you from your own household.
The last twelve chapters of II Samuel map out how that forecast developed.
David’s son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar. In retaliation Tamar’s brother Absalom had Amnon murdered. Eventually Absalom mounted an armed revolt against his father. The rebellion turned into civil war. David escaped, regrouped, and eventually defeated his son. The war was won but the nation was divided between the factions of Israel and Judah. There were post-war reparations to figure out. Disloyalties to be punished. Internationally, the wars with the Philistines kept right on going.
Not much light shines through the grisly treachery of the second half of the book.
David started out so well – so much drama and heroism and bravery and faith and romance and suspense. What a great, talented, story-book guy.
But in the second-half, not so much.
There doesn’t seem to be any question that within himself – in his inner life – David matured and grew during those last years of his life. His faith and his connection with the Lord were restored and vitalized. But despite that, the last years of his living-in-the-natural-world life were turbulent, conflicted, topsy turvy, error-prone, tragic.

Note: quotes from II Samuel 12:10-11 (NASB version)

Week 15 II Samuel

Chapter eleven. Sundown in Jerusalem, gloaming, only a little light left in the sky. But enough that from his pavilion David can see a woman. She’s on her roof, having as private a wash as she can. He stands watching until the day is full-dark and the woman goes inside. Her image stays in David’s head, and a plan starts uncoiling.
[It’s easy to understand what’s happening in David’s head. How short a step it is from seeing a desirable woman to playing out a sexual fantasy. Image, desire, imagination, body chemicals, dizzily stirring up an intense concoction.] 
David stands in the dark with a witches’ brew filling up inside him, and then spilling over into the concrete world of action. David gets the woman, gets his sexual intercourse, conspires to have the woman’s husband killed, and closes the circle by marrying the desirable Bathsheba. On the surface things worked out.
Except there’s a grey stratus smudge on David’s inner horizon: the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Nathan confronts David.
He tells him that before the adultery, before the murder, back on the dark roof: you despised the word of the Lord. The prophet then adds, quoting the Lord: you despised Me.
David is abjectly, penitently sorry. But the evil outcomes are already working their way out into David’s world.

Note: quotes from II Samuel 11:27 and 12:9-10 (NASB version).

Week 15 II Samuel

Exercise:
Let’s say I have an inverted-V.
And I have the book of II Samuel.
Let’s say I have to fit the inverted-V over the story of David so the point of the V sits at the high point in his story. Question: where will it land?
Answer: chapter seven. Hands down. Where the Lord gives David a Big (twelve-verses long) Promise. It ends by saying: your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.
This long promise divides into several smaller promises.
The beginning promises are for David – success, victory, peace, rest, fame. Right-Now promises.
Then there’s a promise that one of David’s descendants will build the temple. That’s a Near-Future promise.
And then there’s the final promise: your throne shall be established forever. A permanent dynasty. Which is a Distant-Future promise.
Prophecies that are true have to come true. So I’ll tuck these last two away for future reference.

Note: quote is from II Samuel 7:16 (NASB version).
Side-note: The descendant’s promise (verse 12-14) is complicated by having an if-then attached to it. This muddies things because at first the promise sounds like it’s totally without any conditions. But it  turns out that the way the descendant lives his life will have a huge impact on the way the promise develops. The kingdom will succeed, guaranteed. Will the descendant succeed? Maybe.