Am I my brothers keeper?

So often in our culture we are told the greatest sin is to offend someone else. The greatest goal is to acquire the most "friends". Unfortunately this can be seen all too clearly in the church.

How many times do we see a destructive pattern in a friend and say nothing? How often do our friends give us a clue into some trouble in their lives and we play stupid and avoid digging into it? If we're honest most of the time we don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to take on the responsibility or be too honest and risk losing a friendship. We don't want to have to come alongside these people because there's a good chance our good life will be rocked. Or we tell ourselves we have enough of our own problems, so we become isolationists. When we boil it down we don't want to look beyond ourselves.

Take a look at this example of someone following this motto in Genesis 4:9. Then read through Ezekiel 33 and Acts 20:25-26 to see God's perspective/expectation.You should see that we are our brothers keeper and judgement isn't our purview. A wicked man can become a righteous man and a righteous man can become wicked. It's simply our role to point out the wickedness, to try to turn a sinner from their ways James 5:20. This isn't necessarily a salvation question for the one in error or the one we sees, but it is an obedience, trust and love issue. Of course we can easily pervert this mandate with self righteousness and become wicked like Job's friends when they were more concerned with protecting their own theology than with comforting Job. It's easier to discipline someone out of anger or avoid the issue altogether than to confront in a loving manner. When we confront it's not to chastise or for selfish reasons, but ultimately for the glory of Jesus and the benefit of the hearer. So obviously it's important to have our priorities right, be in prayer and approach people in humility, realizing we are all broken and fallen and probably a lot closer to making a similar decision than we care to know. It's wicked and sinful to confront from any other perspective, but yet we can't shy away from it lest we have blood on our hands.

Yes it will likely take time and effort to prepare to confront. No it won't be as easy as an angry knee jerk reaction or a lie or avoidance. None of these perspectives really require time or effort and all are completely selfish, even if we tell ourselves it's for the other person's good. Who benefits from an angry harsh response? You. You get the opportunity to tell someone off and get something off your back. Yes the other person may benefit from what you tell them, but this will be despite you. Who benefits from a lie? No one. Yes you seem to benefit and you can lie to yourself too and believe that you'd just hurt the other person, but in reality no one benefits from this not even you. The same is true of avoidance, which is willingly living in deception.

I can promise you, though, that the more you loving confront and receive a loving rebuke, the easy it will become, the quicker you'll see the need and the more patient, loving and bold you'll be with people. We don't often associate boldness and risk with love, but often times they do all go together.

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Ezekiel 21

Read Ezekiel 21 today. Honestly I found myself feeling really sick and tired of all these repetitive prophesies of eminent doom and destruction, especially when I feel completely surrounded by pain, lack of fulfillment, rejection and failure. In my mind I said “God, come on!! Enough with the doom and gloom here! Give me more intellectual stimulation and challenges, more hope for the future, something I can walk away with that will help me feel better about or escape my life”. That's why I love to read the stories of King Josiah and that's why so many pastors like to preach on such stories, the rare times they actually teach on the OT (that’s a rabbit trail for another article). And why shouldn’t they teach on such stories? I mean what a great story and ending! It fits the American worldview, way of thinking and theology: do good works, seek out God, pray, attend church and read the bible and you live happily ever after! That's why OT stories like King Josiah, Ruth, Esther and Joseph are taught in Sunday schools and easy for pastors to teach to adults. These stories are palatable to the ears and less likely to offend anyone (the biggest sin in America right now). These are the stories I want to read and hear more about, as most of us do. However, it's too easy to blow off the prophets in an effort to protect the American illusion.

Who is this God I say I follow? Am I trying to fit into His story or am I trying to get Him to fit into mine?

Are all of God’s prophesies eminent and unchanging? Why do you think all these doom and gloom prophesies are in the bible, in light of His character? Do you truly believe God loves and desires that none should perish, but have life? Are you looking for your personal Jesus, trying to put God in a box or are you truly in relationship with Him? Are you taking the time to actually get to know Him or do you simply sweep what you see as the embarrassing truths of God under the carpet? “If God’s love then how could he allow that to happen?”

Hezekiah: The American perspective

If you take a moment to read 2 Kings 18-20 you can read the story of Hezekiah. You’ll see in verse 18:5 that he was a godly king. You can also read in 19:6-7 that God prophesied in favor of Hezekiah and he trusted God’s words over the enemy’s, even though the enemy was extremely cruel and his words were intensely frightening to him (waiting on the Lord, also for another time).

Are all of God’s prophesies eminent and unchanging? Read chp 20. It was prophesied that Hezekiah would die from his illness. However, because of God’s character and love He changed this prophesy when Hezekiah asked. So yes God’s mind can be changed. Unfortunately it seems it would’ve been better if Hezekiah had heeded the prophesy. In his pride he showed off his riches to a foreign nation. In his selfishness he was glad at hearing the prophesy of destruction shared with him as a result of his pride because it didn’t affect him, but only future generations. However, it is this last sin I want to focus in on. This is a very prevalent perspective in America. Live for today and to hell with tomorrow. Not only do most of us not care about future generations, most of us don’t even seem to care what happen in the future of our own lives. Hezekiah’s last recorded thoughts were unfortunately shared by the Israelites prophesied against by Ezekiel and I’m afraid they are ours here in America as well.

Jonah: God’s perspective

I’d strongly encourage you to read through the book of Jonah. It’s a very short, but rich read. It’s my favorite book in the bible and in my opinion is chock full of deep truths about life, walking with God and His character. This is a great book to read if you really want to learn more about who God really is.

Anyway, upon reading this story you’ll see that Jonah initially runs from God and for good reason, at least in his way of thinking. The Assyrians were a very bad and cruel people. They did all sorts of evil and cruel things to their enemies and had been treating Jonah’s people this way. Jonah was surrounded by pain, suffering and hopelessness, or at least this was likely his perspective. So he ran from God. Why? Interestingly enough, because he knew God and His character and didn’t want this God at this time. Jonah knew one of the major functions of prophesy, to avert the sinners path, with the hope of renewed obedience and repentance. Jonah didn’t want any of this for the Assyrians. He wanted their destruction. As we all know Jonah came around, fulfilled God’s command to him, preached the destruction of Nineveh, they repented and so God relented, even though Jonah never mentioned an alternative to destruction. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” That’s all he said for 3 days and yet Judah had many prophets tell them much the same thing over a very long period of time, including God’s initial warnings against disobedience, which he gave to Moses.

I think it’s interesting to note that Jonah started off very American (escaping reality and trying to put God in a box), but ended up being obedient and hopefully learning an important lesson. In contrast Hezekiah started off with a godly perspective, but ended up with a very American one (It’s not my problem).

Now I’m not saying stories like Josiah or Ruth shouldn’t be shared or that only doom and gloom should be taught. Not at all! However, it isn’t our place to ignore certain seemingly confusing aspects of God or try to fit God into our own box (something very prevalent in present day America). We need to look at everything in the Bible! It’s all relevant! We need to bring our questions to Him instead of simply writing them or Him off. In seeking to understand these seemingly difficult truths of God we can actually learn more about who He really is and who we are following. We should all strive to have the type of friendship with God Moses had or know God’s character as well as Jonah did! Well we can only have this if we seek Him out with our whole heart and take into account all which is written about Him in scripture.