Fear

The helping God and one common memorial

eejoseph, ,

The Battle of Mizpah is immortalized more in a lovely song than in the stone Samuel erected to commemorate the Lord’s answer to the people for deliverance from the Philistines. The prophet was not engaged in mere iconography: he wanted to declare something of the undercurrent. By erecting a stone and naming it he might have simply instituted a memory. Instead he clearly wanted to proclaim something profounder. When Samuel drew out the meaning of Ebenezer (Help-Stone) he referenced the Lord’s help up to then. ad-hennah, the Lord has been helping us, with the perfect tense of help (azar) pointing to the way things were, as contrasted with a help event.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing thy praise…

Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’ve come

The Ebenezer of verse 12 in this 7th chapter of Samuel’s second book is the capstone rising from the fear the Hebrew people experienced in the 7th verse. Often it takes discomfort or concern to bring us to seek God’s help. The Christian understanding of help brings us to a more circumscribed help experience. Help is resident and needs no intermediary. The Holy Spirit is in us to help us assimilate the totality of divine reliability – guide us into all truth.

Help-Stone
Ebenezer, (Hebrew eben – ezer)

The Ebenezer experience is triggered by the sons of Israel became afraid of the Philistines.

יִּשְׁמְעוּ֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וַיִּֽרְא֖וּ מִפְּנֵ֥י פְלִשְׁתִּֽים׃

In their changing conditions, facing the Philistines, the Israelites deemed themselves in need of prayer. “Do not cease to cry (za`aq, זעק) for us” they implored Samuel, “we need Yahweh to save us from the Philistines’ hand” (vs. 8). Samuel’s response is to combine a young lamb as a whole burnt offering with his cry to God. We do not know what he said, but the book records that the Lord answered the cry.

Dire straits

As long as we do not think we can create or depend on parallels of an Ebenezer experience, when we have not really reached a place of dire proportions. The sons of Israel were without the ark of the covenant for seven months, and it was not returned from Philistine hands as a result of an Israelite offensive. The Philistines were massing for an attack on the Israelites. A more dire and fatal condition could not be imagined for the Hebrew people than to have the visible symbol of divine presence in the hands of their enemies. Even in circumstances like these God is responsive.  He answered with thunder as the Philistines advance to attack.

My Help-stone

A help-stone, if we want to find a parallel in our lives to the Mizpah-Ebenezer episode, it would be great if we could first  acknowledge where we are.  Then, in raising up a memorial, acknowledge God’s role in being our present help, that is, present and helping long before any crisis.

Triumphalism and the abuse of faith

eejoseph, ,

Putting the endless cycle of human life alongside faith and the invitation to ask God what(ever) we wish can lead to some debilitating outcomes.  It can  be demonstrated that God’s will includes human health and improvements to living standards but how does anyone explain the ravages of sickness and moral decay and the illusion of building victorious lives in temporal matters

Linking the certification of salvation with the certainty of rescue and relief is unproductive

  • Why is any Christian sick?  They’re human.  People are not sick because they’ve sinned.
  • How many sins constitute moral decay.  It seems that only some believers can keep sinning all their lives because “no one is perfect”.
  • Since it only takes the prayer of one righteous person to drastically change life conditions it would seem that God is not listening to the millions.

Certain abolition of the sacred

Light was not abolished when the sun set last evening.  Wickedness is not bliss because so many public figures embrace few virtues. Love was not extinguished when Christ’s beloved people crucified him.  The law was terminated when its mediator destroyed the sacred tablets and had to make the replacements.  Faith in God means saying “Amen” to what is on our plate until fear and dissatisfaction rises in our hearts.  If you have thought that getting answers to prayers that ask God to change our situation in life then perhaps eternal life is not dominant.  Perhaps there is no joy in the morning after.

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. (Romans 8:37, NASB)

We are conquerors⁷ or “conquerors to the nth degree” is not the same as “we conquer”.  You can be a writer but you are not always writing.  You can be a teacher who sometimes learns.  You can be a conqueror who does many other things.

The sentence in Greek is not a copula (an expression linked by the verbs BE or BECOME) as Psalm 82:6 is in Hebrew, where the people are God’s.  People=gods.  The next verse (7) tells us what they do.  There is actually no verb TO BE in the verse.  The Hebrew text simply puts GODS and YOU side by side; “gods you”, elohim attem.


6) I said, “You are gods, And all of you are sons of the Most High. 7) “Nevertheless you will die like men and fall like….

It is quite certain that we do not know the difference between a thing and an activity, the difference between being a conqueror and conquering.  But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. (Romans 8:37, NASB).  What if our true victory in everything happening to us? It is obvious that fear, not love and faith motivates people who are eager to wear the badge of triumph over life’s essentials.

Hero is a scaredy cat

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I propose that those groups and individuals who are prominent in announcing how the final global crisis will develop towards the destruction of the forces of evil. Typically in Christian circles, the final events include a  war that is popularized as Armageddon, but there is also a severe personal conflict between allegiance to God and allegiance to the Beast – that  secular power that dominates the kingdoms of the world and demands worship. So let’s say that those people who can identify the Beast and its mechanisms for enforcing it sovereignty will be the people who most quickly turn to accept what the Beast says, because, for one, it is reasonable and right to submit to authority.  The confidence with which people identify the weeds for uprooting from the Lord’s garden leaves much to be desired.  If we are prepared to ignore what the Church’s Lord says about the similarity between weeds and grain it is certain that we are at risk of misidentifying the beast’s false God.  It is a cowardly mindset that presents love as impatience.

Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’  And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them’. (Matthew 13:24-29, NASB)

I wonder what rubric encourages people in the modern era to believe that they can identify false grain and root them out.  Maybe it is a massacre strategy based on Ezekiel 9.   Maybe it is a xenophobic mindset that has no time or compassion for the people who are clearly the targets of God’s love. Most likely the eagerness to create a garden (or church) in our own image is more impressive than the secret of the moment when divine forbearance ends.  They’d rather kill than die for the lost.  But we knew that: love for God is a perfect dud when love for humanity is a secondary option.  Our heroes cannot be people who have no testimony of assurance, only incidental hope, nor can our heroes be cats living in fear of a roaring lion, not when we belong to the pride of the Victorious Judean Lion.

Worry’s wear and tear

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Alive or dead, believers are assured God’s presence. Members of the divine royal family expect to have the common experiences of the monarch. Follow me means exactly what it sounds like: get in line behind me. There are a lot of people who are bent on dodging the turns, climbs, pauses, and adversities appointed by God for our good. Worry (or concern!) about life’s situations is what moves people, but that it kills relationships, hope and people is clear from Yeshua’s admonition “Do not even start with worrying about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34)

Politics and religion are incapable of creating the world most people want. The world we inherited is a tool of uncaring and greedy people. We see them scrambling for the success of their family and their tribe. They do whatever it takes to create the appearance of their dominance.

Worry displeases God and ruins faith

That worry is simple and deadly is clear from Yeshua’s stop sign about food and drink and clothing (Matthew 6:25) and his prohibitions in verses 31 and 34. What we fear most also is entirely, like growing a centimetre, out of our control. We become fools by building ever larger warehouses while neglecting the necessary pathmaking.

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15. and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

Hebrews 2:14-15

If you thought that you could plot a worry-free path to tomorrow for yourself or children you have still the worry about today’s food, drink and clothing. It is not only the risk of hunger, thirst, and nakedness that concerns us, but the evaluation of our food, drink, and clothing by our neighbours. One “boo” from a believer and death’s terrors flees back into the shadows.