Kingship, Israel, Cause & Effect

 

Blessed Sunday, Blessed week to you all! We continue our journey through who and what Israel is as we look at salvation working itself out through the things that happened….

(as I have said, the blog address is dreliatjacobsladder.blogspot.com, and this is just a sharing as I walk my journey; no church, no mission, no donations, no political agenda.)

How Kingship Changed Israel and shifted Gods will……

God had accepted Israel’s desire to have a king, just as the nations had kings. Amazing. And God warned of the consequences. Was anyone listening? Even more, who would claim to speak for God? Saul is anointed king. After David’s victory over Goliath, Saul began to see David as a threat to his position and sought David’s death. David had become a popular hero. (see 1 Sam 29:5ff) Once again, in human relationships, holders of power fear displacement. Why? Ultimately, a battle ensues between their forces and Saul is defeated. (Read 1 Sam 28 about Saul and his visit to the medium of Endor to get a sense of how lost Saul had become). Hardly an impressive beginning.

David is anointed King. His greatness and his potential are reflected both in the 8th and the 23rd Psalms, and in others like Ps 103. The decisions David makes and the actions he takes  result from his personal experience of God. God is working with him and he is aware of this, and so he is able to think differently and act differently. Human potential in Psalm 8 is the precursor of the prototokos  - the prototype in the New Testament that is new creation in Jesus. This is what we are building up to because it is of life changing significance. David’s self-discovery of himself ie his newly discovered potential in relation to God makes him a unique example for us - something we will see as we move from the Old Testament and its form of deliverance-salvation to Jesus and the full significance and promise of new creation’s deliverance-salvation in the New Testament. Here, the peace (shalom, wholeness) of God which is present in David’s life carries the promise of provision and protection. It is always there. And there is an even greater promise – to live in the house - the place, the plane, the dimension, the presence - of the Lord….. forever. That means that you learn that your soul is not limited by your body and to your body! It can grow in and of itself! But David only gets so far and no further in this life. We have to wait for that possibility to reach its completion in Jesus. And then pick up from there!

David struggles as he is caught between his zeal for God, his human weaknesses, and Satan’s temptations.  David loves God, but his love for God is not sufficient to fully detach himself from Satan’s insidiously tempting desire for possession and material gain. David is still a work in progress.

Our detachment from material gain and possession is critical for true spiritual growth on this earth. 

We don’t have to shun material possessions – they are essential and useful to this life! We can’t live on fresh air, sunshine and God’s energy just yet! Or rather, to live on divine energy that can sustain us, as Jesus made reference to when he said to the disciples that my food is to do the will of Him who sent me. A strange saying of great depth!

It is why we are placed here, and why Jesus taught the parable of the rich young man. We could make this world so different if we had eyes to see and hearts full of Godly love. Equity would come naturally. Not greed. We could learn the reality of God given power, which will evade us as long as we think of material possession and power! Some have managed this, but they cannot intervene in the lives of others because true growth must happen in and of our own volition for each one of us.

David’s weaknesses lead him into error, again and again; and we begin to see a pattern of cause and effect replace the initial deliverance-salvation pattern, where God always answers cries for help. Now it becomes the reality of cause and effect that must be dealt with, as with an action that creates a cause, and the reaction that is its effect. And we are held accountable. God is always teaching us.  We are to be masters of our own fate, creators of our own consequences. And if you hear someone say accept Jesus and the illness will go away you should know what game is being played. Jesus does not play games with verbal acceptance, public or private.

This is the first major paradigm shift in deliverance-salvation, and it happens in the time of King David. Has ecclesiology ignored this cause-effect-accountability shift?

Well, it is not exactly good for the enterprise of the church which has traditionally emphasized faith and belief as all that is needed. But God requires accountability. We must answer for our actions. We cannot hide behind the notion of a free grace that covers our wrongdoings. We can’t just be ‘forgiven’ and then leave it that at. Our actions have consequences. We have to make things right. We cannot say “I’m sorry” and then walk away.

This is perhaps best seen in the incident of David coveting and taking Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. We will deal with this in depth in the Chapter on David. But in brief, See 2^nd Sam Ch 11. Bathsheba gets pregnant. David’s first strategy is to bring Uriah home for a break, where a pregnancy would be attributed to Uriah. But that does not work. Faithful Uriah would not leave the king’s side, having been ordered home from the field.  So David orders that Uriah be left unsupported at a critical point of the battle (see 2 Sam 11:15) and Uriah is quickly killed off.  David then brings Bathsheba into the palace, but the child that is born falls ill, and despite David’s prayer and fasting, the child dies.

Deliverance from corporate sin is no longer part of deliverance-salvation. Having been consistently ignored by Israel’s leaders and its people, God’s has responded.

The duty that God requires of each one of us is not a duty to church or faith, but one that we demonstrate towards each other. The proclamation that in accepting Jesus our sins are forgiven and we are set free from sin is easily an ecclesiological and limiting interpretation of the Bible.⁷ That statement means a lot more and has huge depth. Unrecognized for what it really is, the true nature of sin just ends up being an ongoing emotional experience quickly and easily dealt with by ritual and sacrament repeatedly. Is this sin insurance! The ongoing reality of being caught in the sin-forgiveness cycle will follow us , despite what we have confessed and/or proclaimed, until we have learned how to break free of it.  And the way to do this is not rule based but relationship based! Then the center will hold, and integrity becomes inherent, clear and a natural consequence.  But talk is convenient and often precludes demonstration.

 The freedom Jesus teaches is way beyond traditional practice and demonstrated ability. It involves accepting the consequences of our actions and living with and going beyond them. God does not reject anyone, nor does God excuse anyone per the claim of ‘I have forgiveness in Jesus’. Yes, we are forgiven. But who told us that forgiveness excuses accountability and responsibility?  The Bible does not say that. It has just been interpreted to appear so. But we can learn from the Holy Spirit.

The church’s proclamation is that because Jesus has died for us we do not need to do anything to be saved except …….accept Jesus. Great. But - this is only the beginning. Just our claim of ‘being saved’ is not going to persuade God to make us channels of spiritual power. There is a wait and see spiritual principle at work here. This is why scripture talks about working out your salvation in fear and trembling. (see Phil 2:12…) The true claim to being saved results in linear growth into a new creation that is evidenced by behavior and ability. And this ability is a lot more than just not ‘sinning’ according to the definitions of sin that we live with.  They are instead the true gifts of the Spirit that we grow into in discipleship. Not eating and socializing and speaking in tongues, or God forbid, false prophesy.

The early church may have decided that ‘the Gospel of Jesus Christ ’ was the most palatable way of getting the message of the Kingdom of God across. But it ended up preaching a somewhat different Gospel from the one Jesus preached. Following that tendency, the church decided what would constitute the Canon – selecting what writings went into what became known as the Bible, and what writings would not. And then the tradition came along and declared all of it as the infallible word of God. Ultimately, The Oxford Annotated Bible editing team placed the Apocrypha of the inter-testament period (writings between the Old and the New Covenant) in their edition. But of course, we are already into carrying the Word of God around, holding it up, and then ‘proclaiming’ it to (or at?) others… a subtle form of supremacy/one-upmanship/hegemony/call it what you will.

Has church tradition presented salvation as a quick and easy comfort fix? Take Jesus as your Savior, and we can all get into God’s nice comfortable safe heaven.  All you gotta do is attend church and give $? Not very hard, is it? But God Almighty is God Almighty. Our accountability remains. Only when we strive to make good for the mistakes we make in this life and grow beyond making them, will we begin to realize the true spiritual experience of deliverance-salvation and new creation for us now, and the power that it brings to us. Being sorry requires concrete follow-up action. And we must know the difference when social reform presents itself as spiritual experience. It must be based on social holiness to be long term effective. If hearts are not changed, events will cycle through and present themselves in different form in another generation. This has always been so. There must be a deeper, stronger basic reset that can be long term effective. This is the way Jesus leads.

We may not take it seriously, but physical death will bring us to the seat of spiritual Judgment. This is where interpretation has been willful and ecclesiology has been vague. I am always mindful of the incident in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Chapter 11, about The Grand Inquisitor, and the depiction of Jesus portrayed therein.⁹²

As Israelite history rolls on, much wisdom is given to Solomon, because he asked for nothing else.   Unfortunately, even though Solomon appears to benefit initially, he gradually entangles himself with other ‘gods’, and in the end, the material greatness of the Israel of Solomon’s time does not evidence spiritual greatness. Solomon may have built a marvelous temple, but God resides in the temple of the human Spirit and not in a building.  The opportunity of being blessed to be a blessing appears to have failed. The Kingdom disintegrates after Solomon, and cause and effect prevail in human relationships. The people are divided, with Israel in the North, and Judah in the South. The Tribal Confederacy of the 12 tribes of Israel led into an earthly Kingdom. That Kingdom desired to be like the Kingdoms of this earth. Now, in consequence, it stands divided.

To learn from God, we have to want to grow beyond ourselves, for God has new things to teach us. Jesus walks in that kind of direction. New direction, new ability. Hence the importance of doing what we are doing, seeing how Israel failed and how Jesus pointed new direction and was rejected by Israel for it! Stay well! Every blessing in Jesus, G.