Lately, we’ve been revisiting the Old Testament in our Bible classes, and we understand that, while we are no longer bound to that law, studying the triumphs and failings of God’s people can benefit our own spiritual growth. As Paul writes in Romans 15:4:
For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
I want to take some time in this lesson to look at a few individuals from the Old and New Testaments. What will we see in them? Will we see characters to judge and condemn, or will we see reflections of ourselves – the same faults, the same misplaced priorities, the same desires, the same misdirection, and the same stumbles we all share? If we can see ourselves in them, then we will be able to see our reflections in one another and handle the sins in our lives and others all the better.
Seeing Ourselves in Them
We know the figures of King Saul, King David, and the Apostle Peter pretty well. We’ve studied their lives time and again, and I don’t think this lesson is going to shed any new light on these individuals. I want us, however, to be self-reflective as we take a look at specific events from each of these lives.
- King Saul (I Samuel 13:5-12). Scared of the impending doom he perceives and anxiously impatient for Samuel’s arrival, Saul takes it upon himself to make an offering to the Lord. The problem is that it is not his place to do so, and he acts outside the authority of God’s word.
- King David (II Samuel 11:3-5). David sees a woman bathing and desires her. He goes to great lengths to have her and to greater lengths to cover his sin, resorting to lies and murder to prevent the knowledge of his indiscretion from spreading.
- Peter the Apostle (Matthew 14:22-33). Peter walks on water to reach Jesus, but his faith falters. He begins to sink, and Jesus must pull him up, chastising him for a lack of faith.
What do we see with these individuals? Do we only see the rebukes and the consequences their actions inspire? Do we only focus on their failings? Do we sit back and judge, patting ourselves on our back that we are not as bad as them? Do we just see Saul as an impatient egomaniac; David as a womanizer; Bathsheba as immodest; Peter as faithless? It’s very easy to look at these people as mere character whom we can academically dissect and discuss while failing to see our own reflection in them. Can we not see that you and I are no different today? Should we not be learning about ourselves as we are learning about them?
When we examine Saul’s action in I Samuel 13, we can see our own fears and insecurities in him. How often do we want God to work on our own timeline? How often do we feel when need to do His work for Him? After all, Christians are fond of quoting Benjamin Franklin: “God helps those who help themselves.” With David, it’s easy to throw blame all over the place in those events, but do we not see our own struggles with lust and desire in him? Are we not as guilty of increasing our own sins to cover our own faults? Finally, in the case Peter, we all have our moments when our faith meets its limits and falters. At least in Peter’s case, he turns to the right source for salvation. At times, I am Saul. I am David. I am Peter, and so are we all.
Forgiving Others
If we can empathize with these distant historical figures, it should be all the easier to be compassionate and forgiving toward our fellow man. Jesus’ ministry is filled with moments of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness – especially toward individuals with whom we might have a hard time relating – activists, tax collectors, prostitutes. The Hebrew writer gives us some insight into this empathy in Hebrews 4:15-16:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Jesus can empathize with our struggles and shortcomings, and we should be able to do the same with our fellow man. Just like we often say we should be quick to hear and slow to speak, we should be quick to care and slow to judge others’ sin. After all, if we look closely enough at their problems, we might just see a reflection of our own.
Forgiving Ourselves
If we can forgive David, Peter, and Saul their failings, we should be able to more easily forgive our own. If we are quick to criticize and condemn those we see in the Bible, what will we do when we see our own reflection in them? If we are too harsh on them, will we be too harsh on ourselves? II Corinthians 7:10 warns of falling too deeply into regret over our sins.
If we want to beat down individuals like David, Peter, and Saul for their faults; if we want to beat down others around us for their faults, how will we handle it when we fall into the same traps? Will we be like David and try to conceal our sins, regardless of the cost? Will we beat ourselves down for these failings? Instead, we should be helping each other up, turning to each other for that help, and ultimately allowing our Lord to lift us up when we begin to sink into the despair of sin.
Conclusion
The Bible story is one of redemption and reconciliation, and time and again we see that anyone, regardless of their pasts and their faults, can take advantage of God’s grace. Saul could have turned back to the Lord instead of sinking deeper and deeper into bitterness. David and Peter do ultimately grow. My mind keeps coming back to the imagery of Peter sinking beneath the waves; he knows who to appeal for salvation. There are many lost and wandering in the world, sinking in sin, and we can be that rescuing hand if we can look upon them with the love and compassion demonstrated in our Lord. Conversely, we will need that mercy at times. We will need a brother or sister pull us up, and we have to be able to forgive ourselves when that happens.
It all starts with what we see when we look into God’s word. If we can see ourselves reflected in the people within, with all their faith and all their faults, then we can better forgive others and ourselves for their faults. We all have David moments. We all have Saul moments. We all have Peter moments. The measure of our spirituality comes when see those moments in ourselves and others. We can look into that flawed reflection and see a soul that Christ loves and for which He was willing to sacrifice Himself. We can see the value of our own souls and those of others, and, in so doing, we can see the need for our Savior in our own lives and theirs. What will you do with others when you see them sinking in sin? What will you do when you need rescuing? It depends on what you see when you look into the mirrors in God’s word and those all around us.
And when [Jesus] drew nigh, he saw [Jerusalem] and wept over it, saying, “If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:41-44).
This was absolutely not the expected narrative.
There had been rumblings regarding Jesus of Nazareth ever since He was born. Angels had declared that He would be the Son of David. He would redeem Israel. His life seemed to testify to this charge – He healed the sick, raised the dead, and powerfully refuted His opponents. After all of His work in Galilee, Decapolis, and the surrounding regions, He had come to Jerusalem. As He entered town on a colt, fulfilling all that had been spoken, expectations were at a fever pitch. The showdown with the authorities had to be coming. The vindication of Israel was surely around the corner. Pilate and the Romans would not know what hit them!
But while all the Jews fervently desire – and expect – the downfall of the Roman power and the exaltation of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple of God, the Messiah Himself weeps and mourns the upcoming devastation of Israel, sack of Jerusalem, and victory of the Romans.
This was not the first time such things had taken place. And the reactions were about the same.
God raised up Jeremiah as a prophet to Judah at the end of the seventh century BCE. Everything seemed great for Judah. God had delivered Jerusalem from the hand of the Assyrians, and as Assyria was declining in power, Judah was re-establishing itself over the lost lands of Israel. Most of the Jews saw a rosy picture ahead of great prosperity and a powerful king in Jerusalem, all thanks to the One True God, the God of Israel.
Yet Jeremiah predicted destruction by the hands of Babylon because of the sin of the people unless they repented (cf. Jeremiah 7). Jeremiah prophesied the unimaginable: YHWH allowing His enemies to triumph over His people and desecrate His Temple. Jeremiah was reviled, and gained no love from his fellow Jews when his message ultimately proved true. The crisis of belief after the destruction of the first Temple was sufficient for the Jews of the day!
Six hundred years later the situation was little different. How could Jesus of Nazareth, claimed to be God’s Messiah and the Redeemer of Israel, predict that the holy city would be destroyed? How could YHWH allow these uncircumcised brutish Romans to triumph over His people and desecrate His Temple?
And yet Jesus proves to be correct. He was not the Messiah the Jews were expecting or, quite frankly, even wanted. He did not come to deliver them from the Romans – He in fact predicts that because of their rejection of Him the Romans will destroy them. He came to deliver them from their sins so that they could overcome in the spiritual battle – the one of much greater importance than the one they wanted to fight (cf. Ephesians 6:10-18).
The Jews were so fervently desiring the end of Roman oppression that they did not perceive the oppression of the Evil One. The Jews were so focused on their hope for a champion that they missed their Messiah. They paid a heavy price when God declared with power the end of the covenant between Him and Israel and the consequences of killing the Son when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and slaughtered the Jews, just as Jesus foretold (cf. Luke 20:9-18). While Jesus was more than a prophet, He still was a prophet, and the only One to speak of the destruction of Jerusalem for a second time in advance. Such is a powerful testimony to who He really was!
It is easy for us today also to focus on our own battles and the world around us and forget about the spiritual battle of great importance. We would like to imagine that God’s Messiah would be the champion of our causes. For too many, Jesus is not the Messiah that they would expect or even want. But that is not for us to decide. God set forth plainly in the Law, Psalms, and Prophets exactly who Jesus would be and what He would accomplish, and He fulfilled them all (cf. Luke 24:44-47). He came to show us how to live, manifesting the true image of God and died so that we could die to sin and live to righteousness, and was raised in power on the third day, and now reigns as Lord (cf. 1 Peter 2:20-25, 1 John 2:1-6). Let us not make the same mistake as those who have gone on before us and seek a Messiah of our own desire. Let us accept Jesus as the Messiah, and do His will, lest He weep and mourn over us also!
lesson by Ethan R. Longhenry
Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all (Colossians 3:11).
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” This is the one of the ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, but the idea did not originate there. The idea that all men (and women) stand as equals before their Creator comes from Paul and the New Testament.
Paul emphasizes to the Colossians (and to the Galatians in Galatians 3:28) all divisions that keep people apart in the world have no place in the Kingdom of Christ. Rich or poor, slave or free, Greek, Jew, or barbarian, man or woman – all can be in Jesus Christ, and all are one in Christ.
This message was radical in the first century and it remains radical in the twenty-first. Even though it has been the ideal to believe that all men are created equal, there still remains plenty of prejudice in society. Racial disharmony still exists, even though few speak about it openly and plainly. There remains plenty of judgmentalism against those in different economic classes, regions of the country, cultures, and so on and so forth. We can always find plenty of reasons to consider people of other classes, cultures, races, languages, etc., as inferior or worth less than ourselves.
Yet none of this is true in reality. The truth – uncomfortable for many – is that we are all sinners, we are all guilty, and there is no reason for any of us to feel morally superior or inferior to anyone else (Romans 3:23, Philippians 2:1-4). Believers in Christ should actually be thankful for this– after all, if God were going to be prejudicial, He would have favored Israel according to the flesh, and we who are Gentiles would remain excluded from the covenant and condemned (cf. Ephesians 2:1-18)! Jesus of Nazareth was a first-century Palestinian Jew, not a white Anglo-Saxon American, or African-American, or Hispanic, or anything else. Through His death He reconciled us all to Him so that we would not be hindered by these divisions any longer (cf. Ephesians 2:11-18)!
Let us not imagine that it was “different” or “easier” then than it is now. For generations Jews were raised to feel morally superior to Gentiles (cf. Galatians 2:15); in Christ, they were now one. Greeks were bred to feel superior to all the heathen barbarians and their barbarian tongues (the word “barbarian” comes from the “bar,” “bar” sounds that Greeks heard as the language of foreigners); now, in Christ, they were one with those barbarians. In fact, even the Scythians, who defined barbarianism and were the ultimate in unsophisticated, could be one in Christ with Greeks and Romans and Jews!
The situation was similar for masters and slaves and men and women. After all, according to the society of the day, there was a reason that masters were masters and slaves were slaves. Yet now master and slave were both slaves of Christ (cf. Romans 6:18-23), and were now one in Christ. Ancient societies, in general, believed women to be morally and intellectually inferior to men. Yet, in Christ, both have equal standing. Notice that this equality does not change the fact that men and women and masters and slaves have different roles in which they function, and those roles are maintained (cf. Ephesians 5:23-6:9). Yet they all remain equally valuable before God.
Until the Lord returns, people will continue to use the differences that exist among themselves to judge one another, condemn one another, exclude one another, and to dislike one another. After all, it is more comfortable to believe that one is better because of one’s race, nationality, ethnicity, cultural heritage, class, and the like. Nevertheless, Jesus broke down all such barriers when He suffered and died on the cross. The hostility has been killed. God’s manifold wisdom can now shine forth in the church– the assembly of the saints, Jew and Gentile, white, black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and east or south Asian, rich and poor, male and female, employer and employee. A group of people who believe that whom you serve is far more important than what you look like or who your ancestors are or how much money you have in the bank. A place where different people with different abilities and perspectives come together to make up for the deficiencies of each other to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
That is a beautiful vision, and if we believe in Christ, we must work to put that vision into place. We can only do that by killing our own hostility toward other people through reflecting Christ: self-sacrifice, humility, and love (cf. Romans 8:29, 12:1). The barriers we may be tempted to build up against other people based on race, class, or culture must be torn down if we are going to show the love of Christ to all men and women (cf. 1 John 4:7-21)! Our faith and confidence rests on the fact that God no longer shows partiality (Romans 2:11); if we continue to show partiality and prejudice, how can we live godly lives? Let us put to death any hostility and prejudice that may remain in our hearts toward our fellow man, just as we put the man of sin to death (cf. Romans 6:6, 1 Peter 2:24), and glorify God that we can all be one in Christ!
lesson by Ethan R. Longhenry
We all know the expression, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” It’s not an old expression, dating back to around 1944 when the journal American Speech used the expression, “You can’t judge a book by its binding,” but similar expressions can be found as far back as the first century when Juvenal writes, “Never have faith in the front,” in his Satires. It’s an expression that reminds us not to judge on appearances.
God expresses this idea to Samuel in I Samuel 16:7 when he says:
Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.
We often express this by saying God looks at the inward man rather than the outward, but the message is the same as judging a book by its cover. We cannot truly know the contents of a person based on appearance alone.
Often, we apply this to physical appearances, and rightfully so. A tattoo, body piercings, nontraditional clothing, dyed hair, etc. – these outward appearances are not necessarily indicative of the individual’s heart. I think we do ourselves and God’s word a disservice, however, when we stop there. More than appearances are involved in that “outer man,” or the cover of the proverbial book.
What conclusions do we draw based on cursory facts about an individual? What assumptions do we make when see a single mom or dad; a homeless person or family; an AIDs victim; a supporter of healthcare reform; a war protestor; someone with serious weight issues; a lawyer; a “liberal;” a beggar on the street; an animal-rights advocate; an ACORN worker; someone walking into a Planned Parenthood location? What do we see based on outward appearances? Are our own biases and projected stereotypes so strong and so entrenched that we are unwilling to see the book behind the cover?
Think of Rahab, David, the Philippian jailer, Matthew, Paul, even Jesus – how many of these could be rejected based solely on the appearance of their cover? How many of us would be quick to reject the aid of a prostitute; spurn the teachings of a tax collector; eternally begrudge a former Pharisee his past; ignore the words of a carpenter who doesn’t know his place? Would we view any of these as people worth our time, or would we blind ourselves to them because of the situations and issues surrounding their lives?
Speaking of God’s mind in I Corinthians 2:11, Paul writes:
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
The same is true of our fellow man. We cannot cast blanket judgements on those around us because of the situations or issues that create the cover of their book. We cannot know the inward person until we make the effort to know them, and then, if their inward person is not who they should be, we can be a good influence that helps them change their stories.
Unlike a poorly written book, our life stories are fluid. We aren’t typeset and bound, unchangeable with all of our flaws and errors forever intact. We can change our stories, and we can help others change theirs. Like God instructs Samuel, we should be looking past the physical, so we have a hope of understanding the inner person. As for ourselves, we should be working to demonstrate Christ’s love and mercy in our lives, so we ourselves can avoid similar unfair judgment.
Years ago, I came across an article addressing the successful individual and group projects. The author points out three points of success in any undertaking:
- A knowledge of the situation.
- The proper attitude.
- A willingness to be involved.
As congregations, we may take our building for granted. We may take our brothers and sisters for granted. We may take growth for granted, but we’ve all seen congregations that have dwindled over time until they no longer exist. Taking things for granted never leads to success.
The Challenge of Involvement
In Joshua 24:14, Joshua challenges the people of Israel to choose whom they will serve – whether Jehovah God or those idols they left behind in Egypt or have seen in the other nations. We know the people begin strong, but they begin to take God’s promises for granted. They take their faith for granted. They begin to take their homes for granted. They grow lax, and the spiritual integrity of Israel begins to decay. They fail to retain knowledge, lose their spiritual attitudes, and they cease involving themselves in God’s work. Subsequently, they lose all those things they take for granted.
Involved In God’s Work
A godly congregation is a family, and, as a family, we are diverse; we have different ways to contribute; we have some different opinions; we have different personalities. We can see this family unity in many small ways throughout scripture. Romans 16:1 singles Phoebe out as a helper of many. I Corinthians 16:15-18 acknowledges three individuals helpful to Paul, and Paul specifically points out the dedication demonstrated by Stephanas’ family. In II Timothy 1:16-17, Paul expresses gratitude toward Onesiphorus for his encouragement. Finally, Acts 9:39-40 shows the love people of Joppa had for a woman named Tabitha for her charity and good deeds. These individuals may not be surrounded by great events, but they make a difference in God’s work because of their knowledge of those around them, their attitude, and their willingness to get involved.
These are those we are supposed to be most like. These are the lives we should be emulating. We should make ourselves aware of situations and opportunities around us. We should look on those opportunities with a willing and humble attitude, and we need to be willing to get involved. We should not fall into habits of self-centeredness and selfishness as King Saul does as his reign progresses. Our eyes should be looking outward to the fields around us, seeking those opportunities before us, and demonstrating God’s mercy and love in our involvement. In Luke 15, Jesus asks His listeners who would not take the opportunity to rescue one of their own flock, one of their own possessions. We should be so concerned about those lost in God’s flock.
Conclusion
In Luke 14, Jesus asks a series of rhetorical question to those around Him – questions aimed at making those think about their level of commitment in their self-interests, in the tasks they undertake. He asks them about counting the cost of their commitment, about the effort they are willing to expend, about their willingness to keep pushing forward instead of looking back. We can take those examples of Phoebe, of Stephanas, of Onesiphorus, and of Tabitha and see the ways we can encourage others in Christ. We know the situations and opportunities we face. Our choices comes down to the attitude with which we face these opportunities and our willingness to involve ourselves in God’s work. Instead of looking after our own wants and self-interests, we can prioritize others’ needs and God’s interests, serving as a light in the lives of those around us.
lesson by Tim Smelser
