SUNDAY REFLECTION for OPEN PRAIRIE UCC – FEBRUARY 5, 2017 

What Was Yahweh’s Plan?

I’m going to back to the Old Testament today. I was never really interested in it before, but I just started reading it for the first time last year. So if you don’t know, the Old Testament is the collection of Jewish writings (we should be calling it “Hebrew scripture” now, but I’m so used to saying “Old” and “New”), and the New Testament is a collection of Christian writings.
Well I’m not Jewish, by blood or culture, and I’m not really interested in history, and some of the ways people have USED the Old Testament in the past aren’t healthy in my opinion, so why should I need it?

I’ve never read it.

So I have to confess; Many times I’ve stood at the podium as the Liturgist to read Old Testament passages, and sometimes I don’t even understand what I’m reading!

I don’t have any context for it.

I should also say that even parts of the New Testament seem very strange to me.
One example is a verse in a letter that Peter wrote. It says that after Jesus was crucified He went to visit disobedient spirits. It says,

1Peter 3:18-20 …He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.

Well, Peter was one of Jesus’ closest disciples – from the very beginning to the very end – but he didn’t write very much. Why would he want us to know about disobedience in the days of Noah?

I just skip right over stuff like that – I don’t know what it means….
(and that’s NEW Testament)

But before I start talking about the Old Testament, I want to set a little framework for thinking about it first. I believe that I am more than just a physical body that just happened to get enough brain power to start thinking about itself. I truly believe that I also contain a spiritual component. I believe that my physical body is a temporary container for my spirit. You might have heard of a music group called “Jars of Clay”, that’s what they’re talking about. This body is a Jar of Clay. We are earthen vessels. And, of course, my hope is that my spiritual component can live on without my body, in some kind of afterlife.

But the bible teaches that there are spiritual beings that DON’T have physical bodies, living in parallel with us right NOW. One of those beings is said to be the Most High God, Yahweh. The word Yahweh is always used to mean the Most High God. So Yahweh is a spiritual being without a body. And the bible also talks about a lot of OTHER spiritual beings. One phrase you might have heard is “the host of heaven”.  The way the bible refers to the host of heaven makes them definitely not human. The bible mentions a “divine council”, definitely plural. not human. The book of Daniel refers to foreign nations being ruled by “divine princes”. There are angels appearing all over the place (Gabriel and Michael), there’s a serpent or a “deceiver” in the Garden of Eden, there are demons (even in the New Testament), and there are lots of references to “other gods”.

Even one of the Ten Commandments is about other gods.

Now, don’t get me wrong…
I’m not suggesting that we have to believe in polytheism today (which is a belief in multiple gods). But THEY DID! We like to say we’re monotheistic, but if we take the time to learn the framework of THEIR beliefs, it helps us to understand the meaning of some of the things they write about. So the bible is concerned with three major types of beings; God, a lot of other spiritual beings, and US.

So, with that in our minds, let me ask the question,
“What did Yahweh really want?”
When I began reading the book of Genesis, I really started to think about this; If there really is a God, and He really did kick-start this whole thing we call “life”, did He have a mental picture of what it would be like? What did Yahweh want, from the very beginning? If he’s the highest authority over all other spiritual beings, what was HIS PLAN? Well, from what we read in the text it seems pretty simple. But before he told us what it was, He planted a garden.

The Garden of Eden. In my mind, we find ourselves in a world that provides us with everything we need to sustain us. But nature itself is chaotic, it’s a “dog eat dog” world. So the image of the garden, to me, is that God brought ORDER to nature. When we tend our gardens, we are imposing an orderly arrangement to natural processes; to get what we want.

God’s command to US was  – – – Do you know what He asked us to do?
It is this:

To be fruitful and multiply,
to fill the earth and subdue it.

In other words, He wanted us to have babies, and plant our own gardens, extending the pattern of the garden in Eden out, as more and more people come into the picture. Bringing order to the world.
It also seems like He wanted to live WITH us, and His original intention was that we could do this without ever knowing the difference between good and evil.  In addition to His instruction to have babies and make gardens, He doesn’t want us to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
By the way, I’ve heard people refer to it as the Tree of Knowledge, but that’s not correct. It’s NOT the Tree of Knowledge, It’s the KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. Which meant that evil was already available to be known about, and of course we (and our “Free Will”) couldn’t resist the temptation to learn about evil, and we know where that has led. Even the very first family had a brother killing a brother. That’s the story of Cain and Abel. You can’t get much worse than that.

Well, maybe you CAN get worse than that…

Because before long, things had gotten SO BAD that God was ready to start completely OVER again. That’s the story of The Flood. The verses right before the story of Noah’s Ark tell us about sons of God taking daughters of men and having half-breed children. That’s like the Hercules story, half man, half god. It says that their offspring were “the heroes of old, men of renown”. Giants in the land. Some people even think that Goliath (from the story of David and Goliath) was one of them. Well, here it is exactly:

Gen 6:4  The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.  The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

Anyway, the plan was going WAY off course, and that’s when He decided to start over. Well, NOW – the New Testament verse that I read from Peter earlier starts to make more sense.
But instead of reading that verse again, I’ll read another one that’s similar.
This one is also from the New Testament. This is from the book of Jude. In verse 6 he says:

Jude 1:6 angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgement day.

So, they believed that some kind of REBELLION happened and the Most High God is still trying to deal with it.

Those New Testament verses are still very strange to me, but reading the story in the Old Testament has illuminated the history behind them a little bit.

Ok, after the big do-over, do you know what God’s NEW plan was? Everyone has been wiped out except for Noah and his family. And Yahweh gave them a NEW command. Do you know what He asked us to do? Here it is:

be fruitful and multiply,
fill the earth and subdue it.

Same plan!

He’s sticking with his original vision; babies and gardens.
He also promised to never try to exterminate us like that again.
In the bible, that kind of promise is called a “covenant”.
So that’s the covenant of Noah.

But almost immediately, things start to go haywire again. Noah plants a vineyard and gets drunk, something bad happens that’s described only vaguely, things go from bad to worse, and before long we find ourselves at the Tower of Babel, where not only are they trying to make cities (which is the opposite of spreading out to fill the earth, if you think about it) but they are now trying to reach the power of God (by building a tower) to make a name for themselves.

Not to glorify god, but to USE god for their own purposes.

So God is disappointed again, but since he promised not to exterminate us, he goes in a different direction. He confuses them with different languages and they all start dispersing into their own “nations”.
Looking back on this scene, the book of Deuteronomy (32:8) says

“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the sons of God.

(Now, a kind of a technical point here about bible translation. some translations say He divided the nations according to the “sons of god”, other translations say divided according to the “sons of Israel” but the sons of Israel is considered by many scholars to be a bad translation now. God never divided up the Jews, and the only time He divided mankind up, Israel didn’t even exist yet).
So the people were divided by language and boundaries according to the number of the sons of God, or the assembly of God, and then verse 9 says,

“For the Lord’s allotment is his people, Jacob is his special possession.”

Now let’s stop and think for a moment…
Immediately after the Tower of Babel, what does Yahweh have?

Nothing!

He has pretty much disinherited us,
and everyone is going off to their own nations.
And whether you believe that they were under the authority of other gods at that point or not, it seems pretty clear to me, that NO ONE was placing THEMSELVES under Yahweh’s authority during that time.

If you ask most Christians why the world is the way it is today, they would probably point to the Garden of Eden.

If you asked many Jewish people why the world is the way it is, they would point to ALL THREE of those events;
the Fall,
the Flood
and the Tower.

So at this point in the story, God has nothing.
He has disinherited us.
Does that mean that He’s done with us?

Not really…

He already promised not to exterminate us again, so he decides to start over in a DIFFERENT way. He chose a man named Abram, who he renamed to Abraham, and declared that through him he would create HIS OWN people, and that’s where the seed of the Jewish culture started.
Back then a God had to have Holy Ground, so he said wherever Abraham walked and whatever he saw would become “Yahweh ground”. That’s a covenant he made with Abraham. And he promised that THROUGH Abrahams’ descendant’s, the Jewish people, would come a blessing to ALL families.

One of Abraham’s descendants would bring about the solution to the problem of evil in the world. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham, and I’m skipping a lot, but Yahweh gave Jacob a new name, too. He named him Israel. That’s where the twelve tribes of Israel came from, the twelve sons of Jacob. That’s why that verse before said, “the Lord’s allotment is his people, Jacob is his special possession”. That’s Israel.

Now I’m skipping a lot more…  Moses brought a formal version of the law into the culture, and at the same time his followers were still making idols to other gods!

There continued to be a lot of both good and bad living together, and I’m skipping all that to say that by the time Jesus came, it seemed like everyone had forgotten that the grand plan was to restore the earth and bring peace to everyone. When Jesus announced that the Kingdom of God was happening, starting with the Jews, but open to EVERYONE, they just couldn’t accept it. They were expecting a personal Messiah in fulfillment of their covenants and prophecies, and they just couldn’t believe that the door would be opened to us,

The Gentiles.

But the New Testament describes in the book of Acts how the Spirit came to live among us, starting with the disciples, and then to a lot of other Jewish people at Pentecost, and it carefully mentions that Jews from all areas were reached; Asia, Rome, Egypt, Libya, the Samaritans, even an Ethiopian eunuch.

Jewish people were visiting Jerusalem for Passover, and the Holy Spirit came down into them on a day that we call Pentecost, and then those people took the Spirit back to their own communities.

And once all of the Jewish communities had received the Spirit, we learn about Paul on his way to Damascus. Damascus was Gentile territory, but Abraham had gone there to rescue Lot, so Damascus was kind of a symbolic border between Yahweh-land and the rest of the world.
Anyway, Jesus appeared to Paul on his way to Damascus, and commanded him to take the message to the Gentiles, too.

In Acts chapter 9 verse 15:  The Lord said,
“this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name to gentiles and kings…”

Then the book of Acts very carefully lays out how Paul took the message, the gospel,
the “Good News”,
and shared it with all of the other nations.

And that’s where WE come in.
Yahweh has opened the door to US.

We aren’t born under the authority of Yahweh,
but we can freely choose to become adopted members of his family.
He says once we are in HIS hands, NO ONE has the power to snatch us away.
He is the Most High ruler,
with authority that he has freely extended to Jesus.

The other reason I wanted to share the story is that I don’t think He expects as much out of us as some people try to make us believe.

There’s nothing wrong with just having babies,
tending our gardens,
and taking care of each other in peace and love.

But it seems to me, that for some reason,
we just can’t be content with a simple life.

…and that’s when we start getting into trouble.

I’m just going to read two more verses and then we’re done.
This is from the book of Acts 17:27-28

…that they should seek God,
and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.
Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 
for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ 

Thank you.

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HEBREW SCRIPTURE READING  FEBRUARY 5, 2017 – OPEN PRAIRIE UCC

PSALM 82
God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah. Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you;  nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.” Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!

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NEW TESTAMENT READING FEBRUARY 5, 2017 – OPEN PRAIRIE UCC

GALATIANS 3:23-29
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.  So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.  But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

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