And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Romans 8:28-29
PART 1/3.
there is nothing that god does not do in the loves of those who love him that is not good, in some way, and that is not with the purpose of conforming us to the image of christ. with that said, i cannot believe that my marriage would somehow be an exception. for what is the basis for marriage? in short; the providence and will of god. i disagree with most books written today on marriage because they're all wrong. they all focus on some idea that says the goal of marriage is to walk in some sort of marital bliss, and to achieve martial and sexual nirvana. this idea that the reason for getting married and the purpose of getting married is so we can be happy, and that a spirit of happiness must be present in the marriage in order for the marriage to be sustained and to remain enacted. but that is not what marriage is about. marriage is about conforming you to the image of christ. that's the goal of marriage.
in god's sovereignty he has given me woman that is strong in all the points that she must be strong, so that i am not tempted more than what i can bear. but also in the sovereignty of god he has given me a woman with divinely orchestrated weaknesses. he's given me a woman who has strengths in areas that i do not necessarily benefit from, and who alternately is weak in some places that i would give my right arm for her not to be weak in. and why? because his great purpose in my life is to conform me in the image of jesus christ. the sum of this image of christ is his unconditional love, his mercy and his grace. and this is what i understand; there cannot be unconditional love in a place where someone meets all the conditions. the thing that god wants to create and fashion most in my life is christ-likeness, which most manifests itself in unconditional love. he wants to teach me love, mercy and grace, and that is why in his providence he has given me a wife that is not perfectly compatible, a wife that i must at times bear with, be patient with and struggle with, and vice-versa.
so many men who don't understand the sovereignty of god in marriage will marry a woman and think to themselves how incompatible she is with him, and how different she is from him, and how they have so many troubles in certain areas. and why is this? because the lord wants to make them like jesus. as a man, he wants me to love like christ a woman that does not meet all my conditions. he wants me to show mercy and grace, and not give her what she sometimes deserves, which may be a hard look. and to give her what she never deserves; which is grace upon grace upon grace. and this is what i've come to understand, if not in whole then at least in part; that god wants to make me like his son, and the primary means he does so is through my marriage.
god knows about missina's strengths, and god knows about her weaknesses, and it's those weaknesses in her which are going to conform me to christ more than her strengths. i know men who look at their wives, and the things that are inside of her and the things that are incompatible and that they would like done differently, and they will go to despair. they will be depressed and bothered by these things, but a man who knows the word of god will be able to praise god more for the weaknesses in his wife more than then strengths, because that man knows that those weaknesses have been divinely appointed to do him good. because they will burn down my pride. they will burn down my arrogance and my insufferable, impossible, unregenerate stiff-necked pride. they will eat and away and chip away at my selfishness and at my vanity. at my self-centeredness and my insolence. at my desire to wage war with her over the smallest and pettiest of things. at my ingratitude and my faithlessness and at my unforgiveness. at my short-temper and my ability to cut her down with cruel and thoughtlessly chosen words. may they be burned away like chaff and wrenched from my spirit, given to god and put to rest. may they be, may they be.
I was reading the bible yesterday, as is my custom. I want to read the whole bible through in a month, and so have been reading large portions of scripture for hours at a time. In the last 24 hours I've read through 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles. And I've heard many different sermons and bible study lessons concerning individual kings, whether it be Ahab and his wife, or Uzziah, or Jehu, and I knew for the most part that the kings of Isreal and Judah were bad, and that going from a biblical theocracy to a monarchy did not end up well for them. But when I read everything collectively, as part of a big picture narrative...all these stories and this sordid history....it was very, very hard to handle.
Because what happened in a nutshell, was that the children of Israel wanted a king and told this to their prophet. The prophet took this to God, who became justifiably upset, but told Samuel to give them a king anyway, and to warn them that having a king would mess with their lives and would be disastrous. But the people didn't care, and resisted the admonition. So though Samuel and God were both grieved, they gave them one anyway, who was named Saul. Saul would ultimately crash and burn, then came David, who while he was a man after God's own heart, was a complete failure as a father, and whose own personal sins wrecked havoc on a kingdom and on a nation and on his family. Then came Solomon, who was the wisest and richest man who ever lived, but was turned from God in his old age, despite the fact that god had blessed him beyond compare. After Solomon died, and his son Rohoboam came to power, the nation split apart and what followed was two centuries of idolatry and horror and perversion and bloodshed.
These kings were wicked in the sight of the Lord. They sacrificed and murdered their children, committed patricide, worshiped the baals and asheroth, desecrated the temple, built high places and idols, went to war where MILLIONS men of valor of Israel died in various campaigns, commited fornication, crushed the citizens, and generally made a mess of everything. And I was reading these accounts, for hours upon hours on end, and it broke my heart because Israel only had one king which was mildly good, Jehu, but the rest were evil. As far as Judah, they would have a few kings who were mostly good, but even then they would do wicked things, and fail to do what commanded them. And even more tragic, was that even if they were good, their sons who ruled after were evil, or would do wicked in the sight of the lord and strike down and repeal any good reform that their fathers before them had done. as a brief history and description
KINGS OF ISRAEL
Jeroboam, bad, 930-909 BC Nadab, bad, 909-908 BC Baasha, bad, 908-886 BC Elah, bad, 886-885 BC Zimri, bad, 885 BC Tibni, bad, 885-880 BC Omri (overlap), extra bad, 885-874 BC Ahab, the worst, 874-853 BC Ahaziah, bad, 853-852 BC Joram, bad mostly, 852-841 BC Jehu, not good but better than the rest, 841-814 BC Jehoahaz, bad, 814-798 BC Joash, bad, 798-782 BC Jeroboam II (overlap), bad, 793-753 BC Zechariah, bad, 753 BC Shallum, bad, 752 BC Menahem, bad, 752-742 BC Pekahiah, bad, 742-740 BC Pekah (overlap), bad, 752-732 BC Hoshea, bad, 732-722 BC
KINGS OF JUDAH:
Rehoboam, bad mostly, 933-916 BC Abijah, bad mostly, 915-913 BC Asa, GOOD, 912-872 BC Jehoshaphat, GOOD, 874-850 BC Jehoram, bad, 850-843 BC Ahaziah, bad, 843 BC Athaliah, devilish, 843-837 BC Joash, good mostly, 843-803 BC Amaziah, good mostly, 803-775 BC Uzziah, GOOD mostly, 787-735 BC Jotham, GOOD, 749-734 BC Ahaz, wicked, 741-726 BC Hezekiah, THE BEST, 726-697 BC Manasseh, the worst, 697-642 BC Amon, the worst, 641-640 BC Josiah, THE BEST, 639-608 BC Jehoahaz, bad, 608 BC Jehoiakim, wicked, 608-597 BC Jehoiachin, bad, 597 BC Zedekiah, bad, 597-586 BC
But then sandwiched between some of the worst kings that Judah had ever seen, with having a father and a grandfather who were ungodly blasphemers, murderers and idolatrous terorrizers, was king Josiah. As a summary, he was the last of the righteous kings of Judah,
and Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath. And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left” (2 Kings 22:1-2).
Within the first years of his rule he began to encourage the exclusive worship of the Lord, and he outlawed all other forms of worship. Josiah repressed cultic sodomitic activity and had the foreign cultic objects of baal, and ashterah, and all the hosts of the heavens in Salomon's temple destroyed. The living pagan priests were killed and the bones of priests exhumed from their graves and burned on their altars [which was viewed as an extreme act of desecration against these pagan deities by their adherents]. He also had the high priest Hilkiah take the tax monies that had been collected over the years and use them to repair the neglect and damage the temple had suffered during the reigns of Amon and Manasseh. In the process they found scrolls of the law. Josiah pretty much freaked out when he heard the curses God had pronounced upon His people for abandoning Him. Wanting to know God's will, he had the priests inquire of the Lord. They went to Huldah the prophetess and she prophesied, telling them.
“Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘Tell the man who sent you to Me, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will bring calamity on this place and on its inhabitants—all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read— because they have forsaken Me and burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke Me to anger with all the works of their hands. Therefore My wrath shall be aroused against this place and shall not be quenched.’”’ But as for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD, in this manner you shall speak to him, ‘Thus says the LORD God of Israel: “Concerning the words which you have heard— because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and you tore your clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard you,” says the LORD. “Surely, therefore, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace; and your eyes shall not see all the calamity which I will bring on this place.” So they brought back word to the king. 2 Kings 22:15-20
Because of the king’s righteousness, God determined to delay the punishment, even though he knew that as soon as a wicked king would again take the throne, the people would go right back into idolatry and paganism. Josiah continued his reformation, perhaps with the hope that the there would be national repentance at the grass-roots level, and that God would change His mind.
Now the king sent them to gather all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to him. The king went up to the house o the LORD with all the men of Judah, and with him all the inhabitants of Jerusalem—the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD. Then the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to follow the LORD and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people took a stand for the covenant. 2 kings 23:1-3.
And the king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book. And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the LORD their God. And all his days they departed not from following the LORD, the God of their fathers. 2 Chronicles. 34:31-33
And Josiah goes crazy. He executes hundreds and thousands of pagan priests, removes the altars all across the land, destroys and desecrates all the temples, especially the ones Solomon made for the pagan gods of ashtereh, chemosh and milcon. He cut down all the sacred groves and filled them with the bodies of the men he killed, And he did this all across the land, wherever he went, killing witches and sorcerers, temple prostitutes, and burning any idol or statue he could find. In fact, over 100 years earlier a prophet of God had foretold the desecration of Jeroboam’s altar at Bethel, and his name was given at very time the prophecy was uttered.
And behold, a man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of the LORD, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Then he cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD, and said, “O altar, altar! Thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David; and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men’s bones shall be burned on you.’” 3 And he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign which the LORD has spoken: Surely the altar shall split apart, and the ashes on it shall be poured out.”1 Kings 13:1-2,
Josiah also held a passover, slaughtering thousands of animals in which everyone across the land attended, and we are told it was the greatest passover since the time of Samuel, and that there had been no king like Josiah since.
And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him” 2 Kings 23:25.
Josiah was one of if not the most righteous kings of the Old Testament. After his death, exactly as God had foreseen, the people returned to idolatry. It was only a few short years afterward that the kingdom of Judah, like the kingdom of Israel in the North, went into national captivity and was deported from the land.
And I listened to all this, verse after verse of this man of God doing what was right and enduring until the end, and I wept. At work, heading to my office as I could feel the tears starting to come. I wept, because I have read about so many others who started well, [not nearly as good, but had done some good] and yet who would ultimately turn aside and do evil, or fail to do good, and who would miss the mark in the ways that it counted. I would read about kings who would not do the wicked of their fathers, and I would cheer and get my hopes up, only to see them dashed in the end. But this man. Cut down in the prime of his life [39 years old] in battle; this man who purged an entire nation of every last vestige of sin and evil. The only one of dozens. The bright light in the abyss of the generations. This man was good. And he was steady. And he loved the lord. And I could only imagine what God was thinking and how proud of him He was.
And needless to say, Josiah is my new favorite person in the Bible.
today one of my employees who...is a bit slow and seems to suffer from some retardation, walked up to me, one three separate occasions, out of the blue and for unknown and unspecified reasons, told me the following
1. "i bet you when hannah montana turns 18 she's gonna turn into a big slut." 2. "i want to be the first white person to go to africa and bitch-slap a tiger" 3. "i used to have a bull-mastiff that would attack on command." 4. "when i was 15 i almost pushed my girlfriend off a cliff. she broke my heart, the slut, and she's lucky i didn't do it."
if you guys have any suggestions of how i could possibly respond to those things, especially when he sits there and waits for an answer; [as if i could ever have anything to say to that], then feel free to share them with me.
After Gideon puts down the Midianites and executes those two kings, The men of Israel wish to make him king. But he rejects the invitation given at one of the tribal assemblies to rule and establish a monarchy, because he supported the theocratic kingship of the Lord. He flat out tells him “I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you, but the Lord shall rule over you."
Gideon instead asks for all the golden earrings from their plunder, and his men acquiesce. The weight of this was 1700 shekels of gold [or about 73 lbs]. Then Gideon makes melts down all the gold and makes an ephod out of, which he sets up in his city, Ophrah. It wasn’t worn as a garment as most ephods are, but rather was worshipped as an idol! Gideon, a man divinely appointed to deliver Israel from idolatry and oppression unfortunately became an instrument causing Israel to become an idolatrous nation once again. We are told that “all of Israel played the harlot with it there. [the ephod in ophrah] It became a snare to Gideon and his house]. In any case, because the Midianites were put down, peace reigned for about 40 years.
After Gideon subdued the Midianites, he went back to his own house. We are told that Gideon “had seventy sons who were his own offspring, for he had many wives.” If he had 70 sons, it is probably safe to say that he also had many female children. Probably not 70, but I would imagine at least 30? 20? And assuming that each wife had 10 children [which would be a large number, even by biblical standards,] that would mean he probably had 10 wives, though it would probably be more accurate to peg him at 15 or 20 wives.
On top of that, he had at least one concubine, who bore him a son named Abimelech. And at this point Gideon lives to a good old age, and then dies and is buried in the tombs of his fathers in Ophrah. But we are told that as soon as Gideon dies, Israel returns to playing the harlot with the Baals, and makes Baal-Berith [which means Lord of the Covenant] their god. They forget all about the Lord and the deliverance that he wrought, and neither do they show goodness to the house of Jerubbaal, who was the instrument of their salvation.
Now Abimelech comes on the scene. He goes to Shechem and speaks with his mother's side of the family and tells them it would be better if he reigned over them, rather that the 70 sons of Gideon. [who were not even ruling at this time] He appeals to his kinsmen on his mothers side to speak on his behalf to the men of Shechem, because he did not have any direct right to the throne. [Shechem appears to have been ruled by an assembly which had the authority to designate kings as well as depose them]. Then Abimelech is given 70 shekels of silver from his family members, and with it he hires mercenaries. He takes theses mercenaries with him and go down to Ophrah and slaughters all the sons of Gideon. That’s right, he kills his 70 half-brothers in public execution. Only one son survived, Jothan, the youngest, because he hid himself when this went down. The men of Shechem get together and crown Abimelech king. And when Jotham finds out that all his brothers are dead, he begins to prophecy, and essentially recounts how his father had saved them, but then they killed all his brothers, and that god would punish them. He then flees for his life to a town called Beer, for fear that his half-brother would hunt him down and kill him too.
And what happens to Abimelech? Well, following the crowning of him as king, he rules three years until god sends a spirit of ill-will to divide then men of Shechem and Abimelech. They begin to hate Abimelech, and join forces with Gaal of Eber, who was a Canaanite with many men. Gaal threatens to depose Abimelech, who hears about this and then in turn lies in waits to ambush Gaal and his men, as well as all his kinsmen who were against him. And he does exactly that. He jumps out and Abimelech and his men kill many of them, and chase them all the way back to the city of Shechem, where his family made him king some three years ago. He repays the betrayal harshly, killing all the inhabitants of the city, as well as sowing it with salt [putting a literal and figurative curse of barrenness upon it] . But some inhabitants of the city escape and flee to the tower of Shechem, which was a stronghold for them at the time. Abimelech and his men attack the tower and set it on fire, killing a thousand men and women.
Then Abimelech goes to attack the city of Thebez, which was in the northeast of schecm. Apparently this city had been under his control, but had joined in the revolt against him. The city folk flee to the stronghold tower in the middle of the city. Abimelech comes upon it, with designs to burn it down as well. What follows, and what concludes, is thus
But a certain woman dropped an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull. Then he called quickly to the young man, his armorbearer, and said to him, “Draw your sword and kill me, lest men say of me, ‘A woman killed him.’” So his young man thrust him through, and he died. And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they departed, every man to his place. Thus God repaid the wickedness of Abimelech, which he had done to his father by killing his seventy brothers.And all the evil of the men of Shechem God returned on their own heads, and on them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.
And that’s it. That’s the story of Gideon and his legacy. Up until this point, my knowledge of Gideon was limited to a story about fleeces and people drinking up water and them capturing a city with swords and torches under pots. But to discover that he killed entire cities for not giving him sustenance? That he dragged men over thorns and briers to tear their flesh? that his ephod was worshipped and was the idol Israel played the harlot with? That he had over a dozen wives, at least one concubine, and seventy sons which were all murdered by his other son? Definitely not things which were told to me in Sunday school, or which were in my picture bible when i was a kid
I’ve been reading the bible a lot lately, and one of the rewards of this experience is that I’m learning, or re-learning all sorts of stories in which I had limited/ no knowledge of. A great example can be found in the story of Gideon.
Gideon was a judge who makes his appearance in chapters 6-8 in the Book of Judges. He was the son of Joash, from the clan of Abieezer in the tribe of Manesseh. As is the pattern throughout the book of Judges, the Israelites again turned away from God after forty years of peace brought by Deborah's victory over Canaan and were allowed to be attacked by the neighbouring Midianites.
Now Gideon came from humble beginnings. Though his rise and the deliverance of Israel would be foretold by a nameless prophet, we encounter Gideon threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the raiding Midianites. There is no mention of him being a warrior, or trained in the art of warfare, but rather we he views himself as least in his father house. An angel appears to him and tells him that God is with him, that the angel himself will be with him, and that he is charged with tearing down the altars of Baal that very night. His first task therefore, as God’s appointed deliverer, was to remove the cause of Israel’s idolatry by trashing the altars and removing the wooden image, which would be a cult object representing the Canaanite goddess Asherah. Gideon takes 10 of his servants with him, in the dead of night [because he was too scared of his father’s household and the people of the city to do it during the day], and tears down the altars.
Come morning, the men wake up and find out what happened, and discover that it was Gideon who desecrated these high places. The men come to Joash and tell him to hand over his son, so that they may execute him for doing this to the altars, but Joash tells them
“Would you plead for Baal? Would you save him? Let the one who would plead for him be put to death by morning! If he is a god, let him plead for himself, because his altar has been torn down!”Therefore on that day he called him Jerubbaa, saying“Let Baal plead against him, because he has torn down his altar.”
So he blows the trumpet and the Abiezrites gather behind him, and he sent messengers all throught Manasseh, who also gathered with him, along with men from Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali. Then comes the sign of the fleece. And in this we see that Gideon didn’t request the sign of the fleece to determine god’s will, as has been abusively extrapolated today, but rather to gain deepened assurance. Through divine revelation that he had previously experienced he already knew he was appointed to deliver Israel. Rather though, what he was asking was for the confirmation of the lord’s presence and power to enable him to accomplish the task. Earlier in the chapter we read that the Holy Spirit came upon him [literally, the Holy Spirit clothed himself with Gideon] and we can surmise that this is what he is asking.
So after that, when all the men are gathered to him, we find that Gideon has 32,000 men. But that is too many men, and if they defeated the Midianites God would not get his glory. As it were, after all then men who are scared go home, and all the people who are not alert at the river peel away, he find himself whittled down to about 300 men. That is, seemingly, the perfect number. Gideon and his men attack the Midianites, and God makes it so that the men in the enemies camp turn their swords on each other and kill each other. Gideon and his men relentlessly pursue them and eventually catch up with the camp, killing them all and capturing two princes, Oreb and Zeep, whom they promptly behead and carry their heads back to their leader.
But Gideon has not yet redeemed his people. He keeps on pursuing the Midianites and comes to the city of Succoth. He asks for food for his 300 men but the people of Succoth refused, more than likely because they doubted his ability two defeat the two Midianite kings Zebah and Zalmunna, and feared reprisals by the men of Midian. Gideon threatens them that because they didn’t help him and feed his men, once he was done with the two kings, he would come back and “tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers” [this would literally be intending to draw threshing sledges over them, or drag them over thorns and briers like a threshing sledge over grain]. He also asks similar help to the city of Penuel, who also refuse him in like manner, and who also find themselves on the receiving end of Gideon’s wrath.
But these two kings further retreat to the city of Krakow. There were only 15,000 Midianite men left at this time, as they had already suffered heavy casualties, losing 120,000 soldiers already. Gideon pursue these kings and eventually kill the 15,000 men and capture both kings. [. Keep in mind that Gideon still only has his original 300 men, none of who have seemingly been lost in battle]. On his way home, he find a young man from the city of Succoth, interrogates him, and this prisoner gives up the names of the leaders and elders of that city, 77 in all. Gideon, true to his word, tears their flesh with the thorns and does as he had promised. Penuel was dealt with even more harshly, as Gideon tore down their tower and killed all the men of the city, as retribution for not feeding them and caring for them in their time of need.
Then we find out that these two kings had killed several people in the town of Tabor, namely Gideon’s half-brothers and possibly his full brothers. He confides to these kings that he would had spared their lives if they hadn’t killed his family. But because he had, he charges his eldest son Jether to kill the kings. Jether does not however, as he was too afraid and we are told because he was too young, so Gideon takes it upon himself and executes them both.
