In Luke 10, Jesus is invited to dine with two sisters: Martha and Mary. In the passage, we see that they have very different responses. One sits with Jesus and hears his teaching. The other busies herself trying to serve Jesus and gets stressed out from the work. Many of us can be guilty of this but it’s the first sister who has focused on the one necessary thing. It’s good to serve and use the gifts that God has given to build up his church, but that is not meant to come at our relationship with Jesus.
Author: the Josh Benner Blog
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Roe overturned
I still remember the moment when my wife got an update on her phone about a leaked Supreme Court document that SCOTUS was going to overturn the historic Roe v Wade decision from 1973.
Before that, I never thought I’d see the day. Today, it became official as the court overturns a constitutional right to abortion.
The aftermath of this decision will lead to intense debate. From the most ardent supporters of abortion, there will be sackcloth and ashes. Over the past several weeks, we’ve heard the various talking points about how necessary abortion is, and about how women will just do them illegally.
Overturning Roe doesn’t make abortion illegal. But it does give states broader authority to limit abortion. Numerous states already had laws to limit abortion already in place in case Roe was overturned.
Sadly, all abortions will not yet be stopped and there is still more work to do. But lives will be saved.
Before Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1973, 30 states had made abortion illegal and it was only allowed under certain circumstances in 16 more. We hear a lot about democracy and “threats to democracy.” Roe was a threat to our humanity. Roe went against the will of the people and in the process, led to horrendous casualties.
We’ve made termination the easy way out over choosing life. We’ve undermined the value of life of those conceived in cases of rape and incest and made them political pawns as if their lives are expendable. We’ve talked about people being raised in less stable families as if they’d be better not being able to live at all. Millions of people who have lived through similarly challenging upbringings would beg to differ.
In the 50 years since Roe, I think of the sixty millions of babies who have been aborted and I don’t understand how all people aren’t heartbroken by that number. Tens of millions of lives have been created and terminated. Tens of millions of lives have been created yet never got to be lived. We’ve devalued life. We’ve taken something precious and made it a problem to be dealt with. We’ve taken something as tragic as abortion and turned it into a big business, both for abortion providers and those who work to lobby on its behalf.
Fifty years of this barbarity. I think of the millions of lives lost but also the kids and grandkids those people would have had. At the end of the movie Schindler’s List, they give Liam Neeson (who plays Oskar Schindler) a ring with an inscription from the Talmud which says “whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”
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Choosing your poison. Israel’s demand for a king. Studying 1 Samuel 8:19-22
The book of Proverbs dedicates a lot of space to talking about the “fool,” the person who lives a life in opposition to the wisdom of God. The chief way a person can be a fool is in a failure to fear the Lord. We do this when we try to take God off of his thrown. Other examples of foolishness.
Proverbs 28:26
Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.
In 1 Samuel 8, the Israelites speak up and say that they want a king to lead them. The problem is that they wanted a human king instead of God as their king.
And in this passage, the Israelites were trusting their own minds. Their own desires and will.And again there are many other examples in the book of Proverbs.
The people are going against the wisdom of God. And the chief way they’re doing this is the failure to fear the Lord and to honor him above all else.
Had they done that, they would have realized that they didn’t need a king. That they had everything they already needed in God.
The best way to know the will of God is to know his word. There are things we can do which are totally contrary to the wisdom of God. For the Israelites, it had been explained to them why a king was not going to be good for them. And they wanted it anyway.
And again, we can do that too. We can have all of the reasons to know that something will not be good for us. But then we do it. The Bible has wisdom in regards to how we manage our households, our finances, our health, our rest, our language. It’s in our best interest to get with the program. To live for God. To follow his wisdom.
Sometimes we even know better and continue to do what we want anyway.
It’s so easy to let the ways of the world influence us more than it is us influencing the ways of the world. We might not be asking for an earthly king, but we so often want another god. We so often look to areas of life that we think will lead to our flourishing.
Because of his goodness, God insisted that the Israelites be warned with what they were doing. He TOLD them it wouldn’t work well. And we receive warnings in God’s word.
The heart of the issue isn’t just about wanting a different king. It was putting something over God. And any time we choose to go against God, to go against his word, we’re putting ourselves on the throne.
Is there’s something you don’t have right now, but where you think “if only I had THIS” everything would be better? Or you’d truly be happy?
Don’t replace the true king. The issue is when we buy into the lies of what objects or relationships can give us and place those on a pedestal above God and the true fulfillment, and purpose, and grace, and the life that comes from him. There is a price to be paid for wanting to change the king.
At the end of the passage, the Israelites make their choice.
Verses 19-20:
19 But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us,20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
In this chapter of the story, it doesn’t tell us too much about the result. But upon continuing to read in the Old Testament, the things that Samuel had warned about did end up befalling the Israelites. With the advent of the monarchy, it did institute high taxes, losses of land, more wars. And the kings weren’t there to fight their battles for them. And those problems would continue to spiral from one generation to the next.
Isn’t that what happens in our lives too? When we decide to go against the wisdom of God? There are consequences for that. They might be external. They might be in our environment. But they’re also always going to be internal.
Our sins, our putting things ahead of God, our living life as though a new king or a new source of purpose is going to fulfill us will chip away at our relationship with God.
God allows us to make bad decisions. It is sometimes through the tough decisions and struggles that we see that there is no other way besides God.
God is the one true king. He is to be the king of your life. It’s not about looking elsewhere when we’re struggling.
In spite of the sin of the people, God was still gracious. Because God is a good God who is faithful to his promises.
The first king of Israel was Saul. But he would be replaced in the following generation by King David. And through David, came a line that would lead to the king of kings, the Lord Jesus. Even though God allowed for their to be a new king, he was always the one who was really in charge. He was always the one who was still sovereignly reigning and ruling in the world. For all eternity past, God had known what the Israelites were going to do and had already known how he was going to work through the sins of his people to bring about his kingdom.
But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s God’s desire for our obedience and to properly worship him as the king. We are to listen to his warnings. It’s his will for us to put him first, to worship him alone, to place our trust in him.
Don’t look to earthly kings when we have a heavenly king. Because unlike earthly kings who sin and fail, who can be in things for their own gain, our heavenly king is perfect, and he is just as he rules and reigns supreme over all creation.
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The Gospel according to Genesis. Studying Genesis 3:7-13
In Genesis 3, we see the fall of humanity into sin. What is also significant about the passage is that we see the initial reaction of Adam and Eve to their sin. They do what humanity has done countless times since that first sin: they try to cover up their own sins.
Man’s attempt to cover sin
In Genesis 1-2, we see the account of God’s good and orderly creation. Everything is great in those first two chapter of the Bible. In chapter 3, we see the fall. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. Sin is introduced into the world.
Lightning doesn’t immediately strike them dead.
The first reaction that we see to sin is not from God but from Adam and Eve.
Genesis 3:7-8 says:
7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Adam and Eve try to hide.
They try to cover up their own sin. But man is unable to do so. We cannot hide from an all knowing God and we cannot cover our sins up.
The God who covers sin
In 2 Samuel 11, King David does something truly terrible. He has an affair with a married woman named Bathsheeba.
2 Samuel 11:2-4:
2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3 And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (underlines added)
It’s similar language to Eve in the garden before the fall.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
-Genesis 3:6
As Eve saw that the tree was good for good and it delighted her eyes, and she took the fruit; David saw Bathsheeba, that she was beautiful, and he took her.
Bathsheeba gets pregnant from this affair. Then David does something else truly terrible. He sends Bathsheeba’s husband to the front lines in battle for the purpose of having him killed.
In Psalm 51, we see David address this sin that he’s committed and he is devastated by what he has done. In my opinion, Psalm 51 is the strongest personal lament of sin found anywhere in the Bible.
But there’s one particular idea that I want to focus on from that Psalm.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit. –
-Psalm 51:8-12
In turning to the Lord, David asks God to hide your face from my sins.
Do you see the difference?
Adam and Eve try to hide themselves from God because of their sin. David asks God to hide his face from David’s sins.
A holy God and human sin
Genesis 3:9-11 says:
9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
John Sailhamer points out that all of God’s responses to Adam and Eve come in the form of questions. The Lord does not respond by reigning down brimstone and fire. God is inviting Adam to confess what he has done.
God isn’t asking questions out of a lack of knowledge. God is all knowing.
It is through God’s questions that Adam convicts himself.
God asks Adam where he is and Adam explains that he was afraid because he was naked and he had hid himself. God asks Adam how he knew he was naked and asks Adam if he has eaten from the tree that God commanded him not to eat of.
This is the real heart of Adam’s shame. It’s not because it’s naked. Adam is ashamed because he has disobeyed God’s direct commandment.
But Adam responds with excuses, as does Eve.
Excuses
Genesis 3:12-13:
12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
The woman whom you gave to be with me.
Adam blames both Eve and God. He blames Eve for giving him the fruit, and he blames God for giving him Eve!
So often, we make excuses for our sins. We blame God, blame others, blame circumstances, blame family. Your sin is your fault and no one else’s. It is important that we recognize that. We commit our own sins. No one else does that. As Adam and Eve were guilty of their sin, we too are guilty of the sins we commit.
I believe that one of the ways we blame God when we sin is that we blame him for decreeing things are unholy that we want to do.
The place for shame
I worry that our society has tried to do away with shame. But sometimes we feel shame because we did something bad or are doing something bad. In that instance, shame can be a good thing because it can point us to another way to live.
Our society preaches an anti-gospel that lifts up the goodness of man, makes excuses, and encourages hedonism. We say that we shouldn’t be ashamed, and yet our society is miserable. Mental illness, anxiety and depression are through the roof. Drug use is through the roof.
We know that we’re messed up and friends and society wanting us to have a sin positivity doesn’t take that shame away.
Not all shame is bad.
Shame should drive us to repentance. It should drive us to the one who does atone for our sins, to the one who does forgive our sins. The Lord Jesus. He was without sin and died so that all who believe in him can have eternal life. Jesus invites us to come to him and to turn from our sin.
Sources used:
Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 193–194.
John H. Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 53–54.
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Which king do you want? Studying 1 Samuel 8:10-18
In 1 Samuel 8, the Israelites approach Samuel and express their desire to have an earthly king. The problem with this is that God was their king and they wanted a human king instead so that they could be like all of the other nations.
God will allow for the Israelites to get the king that they want. But not without warning them first. Samuel is called to tell the Israelites of what the consequences will be. They want a king because they think it’ll be good for the land but it’ll be much worse.
More wars
1 Samuel 8:10-11:
So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots.
There will be things that the people will have to give up. They didn’t have a king and so they weren’t beholden to an earthly leader. And that will change with a king.
There’s irony. They want a king who is a military leader. But part of the cost of that is that their men are going to be drafted into the army and have to fight.
Verse 12:
12 And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.
So vast numbers of men are going to be part of this Israelite military.
Everyone will be subjects of the king
Verses 13-14:
13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.
So with a king, not only will the people be giving of themselves. They will also be sacrificing some of their land.
More taxes
Verses 15-17:
15 He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. 16 He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.
God will take a tenth of their grain. They hadn’t been paying taxes, but now they’re going to start. And as the history of Israel unfolds in the Bible, the tax become crippling on the Israelites.
They think wanting a king will bring security, it won’t. They think it’ll bring prosperity, it’s going to bring them the opposite. Because they’re turning away from the security of the true king.
You can see that it’s getting worse and worse.
Have you ever advised someone and there was just overwhelming reasons not to do something and they did it anyway…and it was a terrible idea?
We’ve all seen that with loved ones. We’ve all probably also been guilty of that at some point. Taking what was wise and sensible and running straight the other direction.
The text says to the people and you shall be his slaves.
The people are selling their collective souls for relief. And they don’t need to! They don’t need to do this. They have God!
And so do we. And yet we so often look to things besides God for our relief, for our joy, for our pleasure and fulfillment.
Don’t look to earthly kings when we have a heavenly king. Verse 18:
18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
That’s not to say that the Lord will stop being the Lord of Israel or that he will stop caring about his people. But the text is warning the people that they will face struggles for choosing this route. They haven’t brought it on themselves yet. Because of his grace, God is giving them a warning. He’s saying the bad things that will happen.
And they don’t listen to that. It says something pretty profound about the sinfulness of our heart. We can be warned and told about how unwise something is and that it will have terrible consequences and still choose it.
And that’s not just to hammer the Israelites. We do things like that all the time. When there’s every reason to believe God or to listen to God, when we know that it’s his wisdom and will for us to do one thing and yet we say “I want my own king.”
Often for us, the king we want is ourselves. We want to be on the throne of our lives. We want to say “My kingdom come, my will be done.”
Don’t look to earthly kings when you have a heavenly king. And don’t look to yourself when we have the true king. So God tells Samuel to give the people what they want. And I think God does that sometimes in our own lives.
Just like how parents can sometimes do that when a child wants to do something unwise. A child not wanting to bring a coat and then being cold. Facing the natural consequences of a decision.
God isn’t haphazard with this. He’s not being caddy with them. He’s giving the people what they want. You want a king, here’s your king. You want to live a life that’s focused on you, you want to focus on what brings you pleasure, you want to just focus on making money, fine. You might even have some success in another area that you follow, at least for a season.
But going against God will never ultimately lead to peace and fruitfulness.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:
God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.”
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