Month: June 2020

The Golden Calf

In Exodus 32 we have the story of the people of Israel making and worshiping a calf made of gold. Several days previously, in Exodus 20, God had spoken to them from Mt. Sinai, giving them the ten “Words”, one of which was, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below…” (20:4)

After that God called Moses, along with Joshua, to come up on the mountain to him. Moses was on the mountain for a week before God summoned him, then for another forty days while God gave him further instructions.

The people didn’t know how long Moses was going to be away, but evidently they expected him back a lot sooner. In chapter 32 “the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain” (32:1). So they came to Aaron and said, “Make us ‘Elohim'” (a word for God, but it can also mean “gods”). So Aaron asks for their gold rings, and fashions them into a calf. Then the people said, “This is Elohim who brought you up out of Egypt.” Then Aaron declared that the next day would be a festival to the LORD. The next day the people offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings and had a celebration.

As you probably know, God and Moses were angry at this and many of the people were killed by the sword and by a plague as a consequence. It was clearly an evil, sinful thing that they did. But the text implies that they thought they were honoring God in so doing. They asked for a representation of the God who brought them out of Egypt, and Aaron called a festival to YHWH. Their sin was in not understanding or taking seriously God’s instruction from the mountain to not make such images.

It seems to me that one of the things this passage teaches is how easy it is for the whole congregation (“church” if you will) to fall into sin and not realize it. Is that what has happened to the church today? It seems to me that there are many parallels between Israel in this passage and Christianity today.

First of all, Israel expected Moses to return sooner, and when he didn’t, they started to lose hope. We who await the promised return of Jesus have been waiting for millenia. The impression was that it would be a lot sooner than this. Moses, like Jesus, expected the people to wait for his return, and remain faithful to God’s instructions for as long as it took.

On the mountain where God told Israel to not make any idols, he also told them to remember the Sabbath day (the seventh day) and keep it holy. The bulk of the Christian church has abandoned that command and established a different day, Sunday, that they honor and think of as the Lord’s day. They also ignore biblical festivals that God established and substitute their own calendar. Just as Israel thought they were worshiping God correctly, but were disregarding his clear commands, so the church today is not worshiping in the way that God commanded.

Israel had the voice of God speak to them from the mountain, and they vowed to obey him, but they either didn’t understand or disregarded his commands. In the same way the church has the scriptures of the Old and New Testament and the clear words of Jesus and others affirming God’s law and its importance in our lives. If we don’t understand it or choose to disregard it, we are as much at fault as the Israelites were in Moses’ day.

When Moses finally returned, he was very angry at the people, and they had to pay dire consequences. When Jesus returns, will he be angry at the way that the church has disregarded God’s commands? I pray that we may repent and return to God’s ways before that day comes.

The Great Commission

Jesus’ last words to his disciples before he ascended are recorded in each of the four gospels and Acts. There are some differences in wording, but the general idea is that he wants them to go throughout the earth and tell people about him. This is known as the Great Commission.

We will look specifically at the Great Commission as recorded in Matthew 28:19-20. In many English translations the primary command given is “Go”. In the original Greek this is not quite the case. The word for “go” is actually a participle, “going”. A literal translation would be something like, “In going, make disciples” or “As you go, make disciples.” The imperative in the verse is to make disciples; the going is assumed.

This making disciples is condensed into two discrete actions, baptizing, and teaching to obey Jesus’ commands. This raises some questions. What are Jesus’ commands? He didn’t typically go around giving commands. We would be hard-pressed to find many commands of Jesus, much less a whole systematized way of living. He did identify a “new” commandment that he was giving, to love one another (John 13:34; 15:12). But this is very similar to what he identified as the second greatest commandment in God’s law, loving your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39 cp. Leviticus 19:18). Jesus is repurposing one of the commandments recorded by Moses in Leviticus for his followers.

This should not be surprising. Jesus emphatically affirmed the law that God gave through Moses on many occasions. One of these is at the beginning of his ministry in Matthew 5. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (5:17-19)

Is it legitimate to think of God’s commands through Moses as the commands of Jesus? Here is another way of thinking about it that might clear up this question. In the beginning of the books of John and Hebrews, Jesus is portrayed as being actively present at creation. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made… He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” (John 1:3, 10) “But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” (Hebrews 1:2)

Given that Jesus is portrayed as participating with God in creation, it shouldn’t be a stretch to consider Jesus as participating with God in the event at Mt. Sinai recorded in Exodus 20, as well as the continuing revelations of his law to Moses throughout the Pentateuch. If we realize that Jesus was acting with God as the lawgiver to Israel, it’s not so hard to understand what Jesus’ commands are, the entire law of God.

The writer of I John defines loving God as obeying his commands. “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” (I John 5:2-3). Earlier in the book he wrote, “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness” (3:4). Still earlier he uses this same language referring to Jesus. “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar and the truth is not in him” (2:2-4).

God’s commands are Jesus’ commands and Jesus’ commands are God’s commands. What Jesus is telling his disciples on the mountain in Galilee is: After initiating new believers by baptism, make them into disciples of mine by teaching them to follow God’s law as I did.

We need to adjust our concept of discipleship by teaching people as Jesus taught, to follow God’s law. Then and only then will we truly be disciples of Jesus.

Jesus Today

When Jesus was on earth in the first century, he criticized the religious leaders of Judaism. When we look closely at the New Testament accounts of this, we can see that his criticism was usually because they put their traditions in place of scripture. An example of this is in Mark 7. The Pharisees were advocating ceremonial washing (7:1-7), which had no place in scripture, but were shirking the commandment to honor their parents by how they were using their money. (7:8-13)

This is not the only passage where Jesus makes this point. In Matthew 23 he commends the Pharisees for tithing their spices according to the law (23:23), but criticizes them for neglecting the more important matters of the law. We often think that Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees was for keeping the law too rigorously. But actually his criticism was for not keeping it enough, and for elevating their traditions above God’s law.

If Jesus were physically present on earth today, I suspect that he would treat Christian leaders in the same way that he treated the Pharisees of old. Everywhere you look, Christianity has practices that are based on traditions rather than on scripture. God was pretty specific as to which day he designated as the Sabbath. But the vast majority of Christians revere Sunday as their holy day, without any hint in the New Testament that they should do so. Rare is the Christian that observes Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles. They do tend to celebrate the festival of Weeks (Pentecost), but only because of events in Acts 2 that happened on that day.

If we truly want to be followers of Jesus in our day, we need to take seriously his teaching of scripture over tradition and his criticism of the religious leaders of his day for this very reason. “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” (I John 2:6) May we be followers who take scripture seriously, and weigh it against all our traditions.

Christianity or Judaism

From my study of the scriptures, especially of the New Testament, I have come to the conclusion that God wants Gentiles who turn to him in our era to embrace four things: the God of Israel, the people of Israel, the faith of Israel, and the Messiah (king) of Israel.

Ruth is an example of this. Although a Moabite, she promised Naomi that “your people will be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). She truly embraced the people of Israel as well as their faith. She also turned out to be an ancestor of David, from whom Jesus the Messiah was to come.

Judaism has done well at preserving the first three items on the list. But, as Paul points out in Romans 11, they have been temproarily blinded regarding the identity of the Messiah. But at some time in the future they will turn to him as a nation (Romans 11:25-26). Then they will have embraced all four.

The followers of Jesus in the first century started out with all four. Paul explained how believers in Jesus became one with the people of Israel. “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called ‘uncircumcised’ by those who call themselves ‘the circumcision’ (that done in the body by the hands of men)– remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:11-13) “This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 3:6) “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.” (Romans 11:17-18)

Jesus and his followers practiced biblical Judaism, keeping the law, worshiping in the temple and synagogue, and keeping the biblical festivals. There was no intention of starting a new religion; Jesus presented himself as the fulfillment of the promises of scripture. When Paul commended Timothy for continuing the faith of his mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5), the timeframe doesn’t allow this faith to be anything but Judaism.

In the early second century Gentile believers in Jesus, realizing that they weren’t Jews, didn’t see any reason to pay the heavy taxes that were being levied on Jews. So they positioned their faith as different from and in contrast to Judaism. They established a different holy day, different festival days, and abandoned the biblical law and festivals, essentially deserting the faith of Israel.

It’s well-known that much of the anti-semitism of history has come from Christians. Many of them didn’t consider the Jews as their brothers and co-religionists but their opponents. As a result, in areas where some form of Christianity became the official religion, Judaism was outlawed and Jews were persecuted and killed.

In more recent times many Christians have turned to look more favorably upon Jews and Israel. That’s a good thing. But most of Christianity continues to reject the faith of Israel, including the law of God.

A faith that reflects the teaching of the New Testament, as I understand it, would be Judaism plus Jesus. Or it could be considered to be a Christianity that embraced Israel and its faith. In either case, I think that scripture indicates that both groups will make progress in this direction as time passes, and be ultimately joined in the last days.