This or That?

One of the things that Jesus' critics did during the time that He walked the earth was to try to ask questions that had two possible answers, but both answers could be used as grounds for an accusation. One of their favorite scenarios stems from the fact that Israel was under Roman rule at the time. Roman law didn't necessarily match up with the Law of Moses, so by asking him about a situation where the two sets of laws contradicted each other, they hoped to draw Jesus into making a statement that would either qualify as heresy, because it went against the Law of Moses, or insurrection, because it went against the law of the Roman Empire.
For example, they brought to Him a woman taken "in the very act" of adultery. I have mentioned this before, but, I still don't understand how you catch one person committing adultery. The point was, though, that under Moses' Law, she should be taken outside the city and stoned to death. That must be a terrible way to die. Under Roman law, though, her punishment would be, well, nothing, (unless she were a married woman and then her husband had the right to exact vengeance, but I don't think that was the situation here). In any case, death by stoning was not an option under Roman law, and one would have to go through the Roman Courts in order to get her sentenced at all. If they just took her out and stoned her, the Romans would consider that murder. So they asked Jesus what they should do. Not that they cared what was actually the right thing to do, they just wanted to either hear Him tell them to obey the Law of Moses (which would be insurrection against the Romans), or to obey the Roman law (which would be heresy against Mosaic Law). Personally, I can't help but wonder how these righteous men, leaders of the temple, pillars of the community, once they got it into their heads that this was a good way to trap Jesus, how did they know where to find a woman sleeping with another woman's husband? In any case, what Jesus so famously said was, "Let the one among you who is without sin, cast the first stone." He wrote something on the ground; we are not told what it was, but it seems to me that He must have written something to indicate that He knew exactly what sins each of those men were guilty of. A little reminder, in case any of them wanted to try to pretend that they were sinless. Something to put them on notice that He knew (of course, that would indicate that these men were so callous that even when they found out that Jesus knew every thing they’d ever done, they still refused to accept the idea that He was God manifest in the flesh). I don't know that for sure, it's supposition, but I think it must have been something like that.
They tried to get Him with tribute money, too. Should we pay taxes to Caesar, or no? Well, aren’t you using Roman money? Aren’t you already legitimizing the Roman government in so doing? “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Or, obey the laws of the government over you, but don’t forget to obey God’s law, too.
Sometimes we find ourselves facing a decision. Do I do this, or do I do that? Sometimes the right answer isn't either one of the two obvious choices; but it takes a lot of prayer to find God's will for our lives. Don't get trapped with the wrong choice because it seems like the lesser of two evils (well, except maybe in the voting booth, because God uses imperfect politicians, too).

Zipporah

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been left stranded on the island of misfit toys. Whenever I feel that way, I pray about it, and God reminds me of some of the reasons why I belong on the island of misfit toys. Nobody’s perfect, especially not me. Some of the people in the Bible seem like they shouldn’t have been there at all, and yet, God knew the hearts of these people, and He knew where they belonged.
Zipporah is one of those people. For those of you who don’t know, Zipporah was Moses’ wife. When Moses was forty years old, he came to the realization that he was where he was to deliver the Children of Israel. I’m not sure that he really wanted to, but he knew that was why God put him where he was. To make a long story short, Moses ran away. He went and joined himself to a group of Midianites living in or near Ethiopia. One of these was a wise old man named Jethro who had a daughter named Zipporah. Moses lived with the Midianites for forty years. God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, and sent Moses back to Egypt, and Moses went, taking his wife and children with him. If Moses was reluctant, Zipporah was even more so. These were her people only by marriage; I don’t think she had ever been to Egypt before, and she certainly wasn’t familiar with Hebrews (other than Moses). Somewhere in between Midian and Egypt, God reminded Moses that He had commanded circumcision for all Israeli males, back during Abraham’s time. Moses, living “among the heathen” as it were, had never circumcised his own son. Zipporah really didn’t know anything about this; it was not the custom of her people, and as far as she was concerned, it was just mutilating a baby. And Gershom wasn’t a baby any more. God threatened to kill Moses, and Zipporah performed the circumcision herself. I think it’s safe to say that her religious conversion was complete at this point. She became very angry with Moses at this point, but she stayed with him, and I don’t believe there’s any record of another disagreement between the two of them after that (I’m sure there were some, just not major enough to write down). Later on, Moses’ sister Miriam criticized Moses for marrying Zipporah on the grounds that she was not an Israeli. God struck Miriam with leprosy, but then healed her at Moses’ request.
Of course, the mere fact that God sided with Zipporah against the prophetess Miriam is a good indication of where Zipporah’s heart was. I think it’s also important to look back over her life and see what she had to go through to get to that point. If God had demanded circumcision for Moses’ sons while they were still in Midian, she probably would’ve had a much harder time accepting it. As it was, it seemed that God had to go against Moses to get her to follow the commandments that God had given the Israelites. Could God have used Moses to deliver Israel while Moses had an unbelieving wife? God is God, He can do anything, but Moses was skittish enough about what he had to do with his wife’s support; imagine what it would have been like for Moses if he spent his days arguing with Pharaoh and his nights arguing with Zipporah. Really, God did Moses a favor by almost killing him.
The most important thing that we have to look at in Zipporah’s life is that she started out living one kind of life, and ended up living a completely different lifestyle. There’s no real indication that she even realized that the way she was living wasn’t going to cut it. God had to deal with her pretty strongly to get her attention. She was not as flexible as she really should have been, but it ended up being okay. We need to be flexible, ready to do what God would have us to do, able to change as the need arises. There’s a song that they play on the radio, one of the lyrics is, “The way it always was, is no longer good enough.” It’s important to understand that, you may have been comfortable with your lifestyle for years, but then God has something else in mind for you. But I don’t want to change. Miriam didn’t want to leave Midian; Moses didn’t want to leave Pharaoh’s palace, Lot’s wife didn’t want to leave Sodom (how could you not want to leave Sodom? She had grown comfortable there), but it’s not about being comfortable.

Are You Taking That Literally?

I have heard some people say that the Bible is the literal Word of God, and I agree with that, but then I have also heard people say that they take the Word of God literally. That's not the same thing, although it sounds very similar. The thing to remember is that, even though the Bible is the literal Word of God, that doesn't mean that there are not figures of speech in it.

Do you think that when Jesus said, "Ye are the salt of the earth," that we were immediately transubstantiated into salt? (wasn't that the punishment for Lot's wife?) Or was He merely stating that, just as salt can be used as a preservative to keep certain foods from going bad, that it is only because there are some people left on earth that God thinks are worth saving, that He hasn't gone ahead and destroyed the whole planet (in other words, we are the preservative for the earth). Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a lot of prayer to understand exactly what is meant by some of the passages in the Bible. Fortunately, God wants us to understand, so He will give us understanding, if we ask for it.

One of the most amusing arguments that I have heard, as far as not believing the Bible, is, "Do you have a paddle strapped to your weapon?" This is not so much a figure of speech as just an anachronism. God was trying to teach Israel a little something about sanitary hygiene, without getting into the explanation of why it's a bad idea to just provide a place for flies to gather and spread germs. I think most of us know, these days, that if you aren't where you can flush it, you should bury it. Besides, that is Old Testament law, and we are not under the law, but under grace.

By the way, while I am on the subject, I have heard a lot of people (many of whom should have known better) say the 'The Law' is the Old Testament. The Jews divide up what we call the Old Testament (what they call the Tanakh) into three parts: The Torah, the Neviim, and the Ketuvim. By the way, they don't arrange the books in quite the same order that we do, either. It starts out the same: The Torah contains Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (although those books are called Bereshit, Shemot, VaYikra, BaMidar, and Devarim, respectively). The Neviim contains Joshua, Judges, First Samuel, Second Samuel, First Kings, Second Kings, but then goes to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Minor Prophets (Yehoshua, Shoftim, Shmuel A, Shmuel B, Melachim A, Melachim B, Yisheyah, Yermiyah, Yechezchial, and Treisar). Ketuvim contains everything else. My point is this: Ketuvim is the Hebrew word for writings, basically, this is the poetry of the Tanakh; Neviim is the Hebrew word for Prophets, so all the books written by prophets are included in the Neviim; Torah is the Hebrew word for law, so all the books of the law are in the Torah, or the books of Moses--also known as the Pentateuch (although Pentateuch comes from the Greek, so I guess it would be improper to refer to those books as the Pentateuch unless you were also using the Greek names Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Did you catch what 'The Law' actually is? The five books of Moses--which would explain why the Law is sometimes referred to as the Law of Moses.

In summary, the Bible should be taken to be the literal Word of God, but not everything in it should be taken literally, and 'The Law' refers to the five books of Moses.

The Answer Is in Your Hands

There is an old legend about a wise old man who lived in a village, and a young man in the same village that decided to best the old man. "I'll show people that he's not so smart." So he took a bird, and he held the bird behind his back, with the bird's body in one hand, and it's head in the other. He then challenged the old man to tell him whether the bird was alive or dead; thinking that, if the old man answered that the bird was dead, he could produce the living bird, but if the old man answered 'alive,' then he could wring the bird's neck and produce the dead bird. The old man simply replied, "The answer is in your hands."

In John 8, the scribes and the pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who had been taken 'in the very act' of adultery, and asked him whether they should stone her. He stooped down and started writing on the ground, as if he didn't hear them. Eventually He made the now-famous statement, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

There are all kinds of subtleties to this situation: First of all, if she was taken in the very act, shouldn't there have been another participant? It's doggone difficult to commit adultery alone. Secondly, what was it He was writing in the dirt? Third, if they really wanted to see justice done, why were they coming to Him, and not to the established legal system? (of course, the passage answers that question: they came to Him specifically so that they could make an accusation against Him) What accusation were they trying to concoct? Wouldn't they have expected Jesus to commend the law of Moses?

All right, let's take this one step at a time: First, where was the man? I can only speculate; the Bible doesn't say. Let me suggest that it isn't really important, the point of the story is to teach us forgiveness. As far as my personal opinion, I suspect that he was standing right there with a stone in his hand. Consider for a moment, that the whole idea here was to find some excuse to accuse Jesus of something. That means that these religious people went looking for an adulteress, and were fortunate enough to catch one red-handed. How did they know where to look for one? I suspect that they had a pretty good idea where to find one, because they had each sought out such a woman in the past. When they found her, she was with one of their own--but that didn't matter, because the object of the exercise was to get Jesus (it's been said that Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, Protestants don't recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian church, and Southern Baptists don't recognize each other at Hooters; not to suggest that Southern Baptists are really any different than the rest of us--but I think that the Pharisees must have had that mindset as well--it's human nature to overlook the faults of one's friends).

Second, what did He write? Again, pure speculation, the Bible doesn't say. It was probably something very personal to the men standing in judgment. One thing that has been suggested: It was a list of the names of the woman's accusers, with recently committed sins (possibly even dates and times that they had been with her). After all, He was God manifest in the flesh, He would have known these things, but, it might have been a greater show of power than He was willing to give them. Someday, I'll get a chance to ask Him, in person (and He may just tell me that I don't need to know).

Third, the accusation. This is the part that most people don't get. Under the law of Moses, she should have been stoned. However, Israel was under Roman occupation. Adultery was not a capital crime under Roman law. As a matter of fact, stoning was not allowed under Roman rule (why do you think that the Pharisees didn't just take Jesus out and stone Him?); that would have been considered murder. If Jesus had said, "Stone her," then they could have accused Him to the Romans of not obeying Roman law. If He had simply said, "Let her go," then they could have accused Him to the people of Israel as not respecting the law of Moses. They figured that, either way He answered, they could get Him in trouble with somebody. They didn't really care who.

Again, this isn't really important. The important thing was that it was a lesson in forgiveness. None of us are perfect, each of us will need forgiveness at various times along our journey. We have to be willing to forgive others. That's not always easy, but if we understand that even those people that we have the hardest time getting along with are not that mush different from ourselves, and that, in some ways, forgiving others is forgiving one's self. Can you forgive others? The answer is in your hands.