Greg Boyd - Cross Vision

[Music] yesterday junior-class the questions are are so important they're all important they direct your life and so what I'm going to be sharing here this morning is is a it's it addresses that I think what is one of the most important questions in fact the most important question we can ask and that is what is your mental picture of God what's your conception of God how you conceive of God what really happens in your head when you think about God and asking what your theology is but what actually goes on in your head when you think about God or when you pray or worship it it's the most fundamental variable that sets the direction and sets the quality of our life the beauty of your relationship with God will never outrun the beauty of your conception of God and the beauty of your life will never outrun the beauty of your conception of God we always take on the image of the God that we worship so if you have if you have a mediocre picture of God you're going to tend to have a mediocre Kingdom life and probably have a mediocre relationship with God because anyone who saw what you see when you think about God would feel mediocre the question is how beautiful is your conception of God and why not submit to you this morning that if your conception of God doesn't feel too good to be true then you're shooting far too low your conception of God ought to contrast with this mediocre world which conditions us to be mediocre and so it ought to feel too good to be true and if it does feel too good to be true just let that be a reminder to you that you're heading in the right right direction because the truth is that however beautiful you conceive of God is infinitely more beautiful than that so now I feel too good to be true and I'm and and so I'm gonna be dressing our mental conception of God and more specifically addressing a problem that I bet all of us have had with our mental conception of God and that is what do we do with the violent not beautiful conceptions of God that are there in the Old Testament oh I say this also I frequently don't have a clue what's going on that's nothing new and so coming here I somehow got at my head that the plenary session would be first and then the workshop second and so I plan on the foundation for everything on the in the plenary session and then looking at particular text in the workshops but it was reversed and I can't deal with particular passages unless I laid the foundation kind of a paradigm gonna be proposing here so for those of you who are in the workshop but some of this is gonna be overlap all right so just there'll be some new stuff but someone's gonna be overlapped so just be patient but it's the kind of thing that maybe is worth hearing twice effect for somebody's three times because you came to both seminars which I don't understand but so the whole conference is me giving the same speech that's got to be exciting so imagine this I start off across vision and what I'm sharing here it comes out of two books one is the crucifixion of the warrior God they are both published last year and crucifixion of the warrior God is a two-volume work it's 1500 pages it's academic and then the popular version is called cross vision it's about 250 pages I think somewhere around there so I am here going to be giving a 30 minute talk on a 1500 page work fortunately I talk very fast but it's just gonna have to skim the surface alright and and then basically this is one big infomercial for the book right so that's most like you do I'll give you a teaser so I start off a book a cross vision this way I've been married for 39 years and she's a very lucky lady 39 years to to Shelley and Shelley is the this is one of the kindest people you could ever meet compassionate gentle authentic she's just true blue so imagine I'm walking downtown downtown st. Paul or Wichita but let's go st. Paul cuz that's where she lives and I see you're on the other side of the street I'm just down there for some reason or other I see her on the other side of the street and I try to get her attention but let's go with me you know the traffic's too busy and too loud and she doesn't hear me or see me so I just kind of finally watched her on the other side of the street I figure I'll walk with her up until the time where we get a crosswalk and then I can cross over and and get to her so I'm watching her from the other side of the street with loving eyes and I see this is coming up on panhandler looks like a maybe a war veteran or something he's wearing a war veteran cap he's in a wheelchair he's selling you know pencils with flags on the top of it kind of thing we're not selling just asking for donations and so I see Shelley approaching this guy and I'm thinking oh I know Shelley you know she's Jesus has compassion to a fault she'll probably give the guy more money than we can afford to give him but you know that's what I love about her so imagine if I as I'm watching her and she's approaching this man all of a sudden instead of putting money in the jar I'm talking to the guy for a while she takes off his cap slaps him in the face throws it in the air and then then knocks over his pencils and spits on him and then runs know what what should I do with that oh how do I make sense out of this until I can sit down and say honey what was going on until I can do that face-to-face well my choices are this I could on the one hand say gosh 39 years of marriage and you think you know somebody turns out she's got this mean streak in her surpri been seeking out every Friday afternoon to go abuse panhandlers I could think that but to even suspect that feels unfaithful it feels disingenuous if you looks like I'm willing to call into question the Covenant that I have with my wife and the years we've had together I'm going to say that all that was not really authentic because it's a part of you that I didn't know it feels like I'd be betraying her to even entertain the possibility that she actually was acting cruelly towards us panhandler so what my other option would be to say I trust Shelley I trust her character I know her character and therefore something else must be going on here something else is going on and if I knew there's something else it would explain this behavior it would reel that in fact she was not being cruel even though it looked that way so maybe III would entertain scenarios just to kind of alleviate the cognitive dissonance that's in my brain maybe she's part of a social experiments you got recruited and and there's there's there's the spokes that are observing how people respond to someone who was acting this cruel in public maybe was a socialist or maybe it smells reality TV shows where you know cameras are capturing everyone's horrified look on their on their face as my wife actual bizarrely maybe maybe it's a reality TV show and I'm being Punk'd and then we'll all be laughing at it in two weeks when it's on television as they capture my horrified face now those seem implausible but compare it to the idea that my wife could actually be cruel they're very plausible and the plausibility of any scenario is going to be based on what are the alternatives something else must be going on this is I think that Kent situation we find ourselves in when it comes to knowing God through Jesus Christ and in the context of the whole Bible I'm gonna suggest to us that if we trust really trust that Jesus is the full revelation of God then we must suppose that when we find portraits of God in the Old Testament and some would say in the New Testament too but I'm gonna let it lay that aside there's been a number of books written on that that that I don't a cover that ground absolutely the Old Testament here and and if we really trust Jesus we have to assume that there's something else going on when God is depicted as acting in ways that seem very contrary to Jesus the way the New Testament presents it that Jesus reveals this god of outrageous love he says you've heard it said eye for an eye tooth for tooth I like that but I say it's you turn the other cheek I never exist don't resist the evil doer nor does this enforce don't respond in kind rather turn the other cheek go the extra mile and then he says love your enemies pray for those who despitefully use you do good to those who are who oppose you that you may be children of your father in heaven so this is the criteria that Jesus sets for qualifying as a child of God you love like the father loves then Jesus says the fire he causes the Sun to shine on the just and the unjust and the rain to fall on the righteous and the wicked in other words the Father loves indiscriminately the Sun doesn't pick and choose who it's going to get warm and the rain doesn't pick and choose was gonna get wet it just Falls so also God is love he just loves and we reflect the fact that we're his children that were born from him that we've got this imperishable seed in us that we've got his DNA in us we reveal that when we love like that so if you're a follower of Jesus you don't get to not love and believe me sometimes that is really tough I'm gonna season right now other where there's a guy in my life who I have to love I don't get to hate him man I'd be so easy to but yeah you you you love indiscriminately were to be like this because God is like this right John sums up the whole gospel when he says that God is love first John 4:8 and then he says here's how we know what love is which is so good he gives us a definition because always people just fill in the meaning of love whatever they want to fill it in with but the the scripture gives us a very objective clear definition by pointing us to the supreme example of it and and so John says here's how we know what love is first John 3:16 here's how we know what love is Jesus Christ lay down his life for us so also we should lay down our life for one another so God is this cross like love love isn't just a verb that God does and sometimes doesn't do know it's the noun that he is so so God is so sacrificial love cross like love all the way down to the core of his being that's that that's who he is which means that Jesus isn't just one revelation among others this is so important here some people read the Bible like a flat book where everything is equally authoritative and so Jesus and this view would reveal part of what God's like but God also has this mean streak that comes out once in a while or maybe he was just in a real bad mood back then or something but but Jesus just isn't the full revelation of God he's one picture alongside all the other pictures and so people take all the pictures of God in the Bible and and they squish them all too and that's the picture of God and it covered over the whole thing by saying mystery oh it's just a mystery in such a way we don't understand it we got split up with it Oh see but if you read the Bible that way I don't think you're even the Bible biblically there's a--there's between a cook book and a detective novel a cook book it doesn't matter where the recipe is it means the same thing right but in a detective novel where something is it's all important have you ever seen like The Book of Eli or the success have you seen those movies okay so spoiler alert the last minute of both of those shows completely reframes everything it's the kind of thing where you see it at the end and you go what and then you got to watch the whole movie again to see how it makes sense in like the end that's how the Bible is at all is pointing in one direction and when Jesus shows up he gives a radical refrain about everything that that preceding him everything that led up to him it's a complete reframe so he find things like this I have 60 pages on this and crucifix on the warrior God I'm gonna give you 20 seconds worth hebrews 1 says in the past in the past the past I stuttered even when I write I advanced 12 years of speech therapy to get over my stuttering do you think and to learn how to talk too slow [Laughter] the problem I had was that I think in paragraphs and they all try to come up at the same time so for the first up till sixth grade seventh grade a little bit of the eighth grade I would go lit so don't laugh at me when he stuttered in the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he also made the universe and then the son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being well the authors doing he's drawing a contrast here in the past they got revealed himself through prophets it was mediated in various ways at various times the Phillips translation has in the past they had glimpses of the truth but now the revelation of God isn't mediated he sent his own son in the book of Hebrews and there's a sure the entire New Testament to say son of God is not to say not God is to say God in His revelatory mode God as this human being God in other words God has come in person they got glimpses of the truth back then but now we've got the son himself if you're outside and you're getting glimpses of the son s un it's a pretty cloudy day but now the son himself the son itself has come and we see who he really is and so in the past they had an approximation of God's character but now we see the very character of God the Son is the exact likeness his is the radiance of God's glory first he says I think about that term but what's interesting radiance and glory not much what the author is saying is Jesus is the shininess of God's shininess when God displays God's own self it looks like Jesus Christ he's a perfect revelation of God and then he says that he is the the character with the exact likeness of God's very being they got glimpses of God's actions and character in the past but the son reveals God's very it uses this word who post ocess which means essence so the very essence of God is revealed in Jesus Christ he's not one revelation among others there's only one Sun and for the cloudy day you get glimpses of them and there's no clouds you see what the sun's really like and and and so also insofar as anyone got a true revelation of God they were seeing the same thing we see we just see it a lot more clearly the clouds have now disappeared we see who he was really like in fact Jesus says that all scripture points to him it's all about him John 5:39 3:45 he says that says the Pharisees you study the Scriptures diligently and yet you don't come to me to find life but I'm the life of Scripture if you're reading the Bible in any other way other than to find the life that's found in Jesus Christ you're not reading it correctly you can know every verse can can know in its original language have it all down pat but what are you any good unless it's giving you life in life is found in Jesus Christ and then Jesus says if you would have believed in Moses and the prophets you would have believed in me because they wrote about me so it all points to Jesus and more specifically it points to the crucifixion not as when I say the cross don't I don't mean an event separate from the life of Jesus I mean the event that summarizes and weaves together everything Jesus about it's the culminating expression of who Jesus is that's why Jesus said in John 12 that when I am lifted up that's when I'll glorify the father this is the hour in which I glorify the father it was always true that he glorified the father it's always true they revealed the father it was always true that Jesus said if you've seen me you see the father okay that was always true but you see it most clearly on the cross this is the character of God God has crossed like love down to the very core of his being first Corinthians 15 Paul says that Jesus was crucified and and rose from the dead according to Scripture as NT RI points out his new great book called the day of the Revolution began Paul isn't saying that there's like four or five verses that point to this the whole trajectory of Scripture culminates and is fulfilled in the cross summarizing all of Jesus life so everything in the Bible is supposed to point towards Jesus cross standard ministry so if that's the case then the last thing we should ever do is be holding on to pictures of God that are in competition with and maybe even contradictory to what we find about what we learn about God in Jesus Christ rather to just take Jesus's own hermeneutic we should be looking at all of the Old Testament through the lens of the cross because it's all there to point to the cross so every portrait is supposed to point to Jesus crucifixion it can't be in competition with him let alone a contradicting him but here's the problem Jesus himself endorses the Old Testament it permeates everything he's about he uses scripture says and God says interchangeably and if he's Lord than I feel I have no choice but to believe what he believed if he's Lord I can't really correct his theology I don't think you know Jesus said why do you call me Lord and yet don't do the things that I command you to do but he could have also said why do you call me Lord and yet don't believe the things that I believe and so I have to accept all this as divinely inspired I believe in the plenary inspiration of the Bible the whole thing is is divinely inspired and yet there are portraits of God in the Old Testament that seemed to flatly contradict what we learn about God in Jesus Christ probably the most McCobb portrait of God is is found when and in Deuteronomy 7 in other places when he says to Moses he's depicted as saying to Moses go and have the Israelites slaughter destroy utterly destroy the word there's harem everyone say harem then feel good learning Hebrew is just so funny to use that phlegm clearing stuff the shame so and the concept there's ghost slaughter them man men women children babies and even even the animals although in Deuteronomy 22 it specifies don't kill the trees they haven't done anything to deserve that which I think would apply to animals and babies too wouldn't it but there's the question so Jesus tells us to love the little children and and whoever causes a little child to stumble it would be better for a milestone to be wrapped around their neck and he he prays for mercy at his last breath on the cross but here God says show no mercy in fact there's a couple passages that threaten people if they if they're relaxed on swinging the sword if you're not killing sufficiently you could be punished by it by Yahweh and the thing about Karim is that it wasn't just utterly destroyed it wasn't just about utterly destroying a people group but it was about doing it as an act of worship it's to consecrate to God this people group and you got only destroy them so how the question that is is how does a portrait of God like that and there's a lot of them in there there's over a thousand violent depictions of God how does a portrait like that point to the cross the self sacrificial other oriented non violent enemy embracing love of God that's revealed on the cross that's the question it's not about how to how to make God look a little nicer or explained why he had to do that the challenge that we have is to understand how all scripture including these violent portals of God bear witness to - to - to Jesus Christ we've got three options here so far as I can see one you could say well I guess God is kind of like Jesus but he's also gentle seidel and you know it's a mystery but see that I submit to you is not being faithful to Jesus to trust in Jesus is to trust that he's the full complete definitive unsurpassable revelation of God he culminates and supersedes all previous revelations they had shadows we have the reality they had cloudy day we have the son himself or second option as you could just say don't worry about it just me that was a primitive view and and you can just skip over those parts and there's a lot of folks do with that today but I submit to you that that is also unfaithful to Jesus because if he is Lord we have to believe what he believed and he clearly believed the Old Testament was the inspired Word of God the third option is the one I'm recommend for us this morning by the way this is my way of working through an issue it's not doctrine to see this does not represent the views of friends university or the apprentice Institute so feel free to if the shoe fits wear it if you got something better let me know about it because I would like to consider it but so so the third option is this it is to trust Jesus completely and to assume that something else must be going on something else is going on and that's something else I submit you will show us how a portrait of God commanding genocide points to the cross so for me that something else began to get clear about 12 years ago I guess it was when and now you're gonna see my lovely artwork that workshops have already seen it they know that I'm a van Gogh so now it's the rest of you can enjoy this that's cool you have a automatic pen holder there very nice so here's the cross and the I began to understand what that something else was that's going on when I asked this question we learned about the importance of questions yesterday here's a question that I had never heard anyone asked before I'd never asked it before but the moment I asked it I wondered how is it that I've never asked that before it seems like the most obvious question in the world and the question is this how does the cross Jesus hanging on the cross the cross understood of the the through line of Jesus whole ministry how does that reveal God to us how is that the definitive revelation of God to us so if you took like Uncle Joe unbeliever here's Uncle Joe unbeliever okay he's looking at the cross he's not a believer I know he's sad because he doesn't know Jesus so here okay so that's uncle unbeliever we didn't send the cross it's not a definitive revelation he doesn't see God there what he sees is a crucified criminal just one of the many people that were all and put to death no God there so what does what does what does what you recall this person Betty the believer and she's happy because on they all have bodies here okay so there I told you was good would she look how how does the cross become the defendant revelation of God for bidding of the believer well she's seeing the same thing that the unbelievers seeing on one level she's seeing a crucified criminal but she sees something else going on if you're believer you're seeing this you may be I've never thought about it but you're looking through the cross and by faith see this is what the natural eye can see that's why I'm believer a believer sees the same thing it's a natural way of looking at things but you by faith look through the cross and you see that it's God who stepped into this by faith you accept the the message of the gospel that Paulo preaches Way says God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and it's the fact that the Almighty God creator of heaven earth would be willing to stoop this distance and take on this appearance and become our sin and become our curse as Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5:21 in Galatians 3:13 he becomes our curse which means that God went as far as God could possibly go out of love for us God actually experiences his own antithesis they all holy God becoming sin and the perfectly United God experiencing separation from himself that's what the curse is and so in all eternity God couldn't go one centimeter further than God actually went out of love for us and the unsurpassable distance that God crosses to be in relationship with us reveals the unsurpassable perfection of the love that God is actually it's the greatest love story ever told it couldn't be a greater distance cross or a greater love revealed than the love that's revealed on calibrate that's why John says God is love and he defines love by putting us to the cross so you look through the surface the surface of this is ugly hideous because we know that it mirrors are seeing the ugliness of sin and are going to stop the judgments and the consequences of sin the surface is ugly but the believer unlike the belief of the unbeliever the believer looks through the ugly surfaces to behold the beauty of the beautiful God it's it's so this is faith perception and this is natural perception and so the cross is for the believer both revoltingly ugly on the surface but radiantly beautiful unser passively beautiful in its depth it's revolting beauty now if the cross reveals what God is really like it reveals what God's always been like including what God was like when he breathed Scripture and since all Scripture is there for the ultimate purpose of pointing us to and bringing it into relationship with the crucified Christ shouldn't we ask the question where else might we find God revealing himself this way this is who God is he's a God who Stoops to bear the sin of his people and to take on an appearance that reflects the ugliness of that sin where else might God do this if the cross reveals what God is really like it can't be a one-off event this is revealing what God always is like Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever Hebrews 13 so uh I submit to you we're asking the question where else might we find God looking ugly on the surface because he's bearing the sin of his people so where else might we find depictions of God where we have to look through the ugly surface to behold the beautiful God who was willing to stoop this distance to stay in relationship with his people and I submit you that all of the sub christ-like depictions of God in the Bible should be interpreted in this way he's a God who reveals his beauty by taking on the ugliness of human sin and therefore taking on an appearance of the elegance of human sin that the surface doesn't reveal what God is like in and of itself if it did we have to conclude that God is profoundly ugly what reveals God to us is that we by faith look through the cross to see of the triangle by the way is God Trinity I assume you all got that so we should read the Bible knowing if we trust that this is really what God is like how about we read the Bible knowing that sometimes God reveals his beauty by stooping to bear the ugliness of people where else might we need to exercise faith to look through the sir there's something else that is going on in all of these depictions the violent depictions of God the Old Testament I think we're in the situation that I was that I would be if I saw my wife acting bizarrely and cruelly on the other side of the street trusting that God really is loving and beautiful and all that I assume something else must be going on and this that there's something else that's going on in the violent depictions of God in the Bible is exactly the same thing that's going on at the cross when the cross becomes a definitive revelation of God for us he's a god who's always been willing to meet his people where they're at to stoop down to their level to embrace them as they are including their there are their mental conceptions of God and loving them as he is he kama dates that because he's not going to coarsely do a little bottome on people so they think all the right thoughts that's not the kind of power God relies on the cross is the power of God Paul says in first Corinthians 1 and that's a the power of the influential power of love that's that's the kind of power that God exercises so he respects people's personhood he doesn't lobotomize their grain so they think through thoughts which means he has to accept them as they are and accommodate them as they are in order to keep on moving them or in the direction that he would like them to to to go and this is why what you find throughout the Old Testament is this these authors will ascribe violence to God and love depict God in violent terms but if you read their own radiance carefully you'll find out that God isn't the one that actually did the violence there's other humans or other cosmic agents that are involved in this violence the only thing that God does to bring about a judgement is he withdraws he turns people over which is what what the father does on the cross all the violence that happened to Jesus was done by human beings working under the influence of these the kingdom of darkness and and the only thing the father did was turned him over Paul says several times God gave him over because this was part of the Divine Plan God judges by I think God stays in the game to protect us from the negative consequences the destructive consequences of our sin because sin is inherently destructive but if we get to the point where that's just enabling us to sink deeper into our sin God has no choice but to let us go and and let us suffer the consequences of our sin and he does that hoping it will learn the hard way what we didn't learn the merciful way and some of you who have had drug addicted loved ones you know what I'm talking about sometimes you you stay in there as long as you can to protect them there's a time that you have to just kind of let them go it's also why in the the the the biblical authors often apply the same violent verbs to God and to people Jeremiah and Ezekiel especially good this a lot they'll say the big God is saying I've got to smash families together children and and parents alike but then they say the same thing about Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon who invaded Israel and the reason they're doing this the primary reason I mean this is their mental conception of God that's just where they were and so God's has to accommodate that meet him where they're at but it's also the case that in the ancient Near East which is the cultural context of ancient Israel ascribing violence to your God was the highest form of praise all people do this they they know that they are they engage in the violence but they don't take the credit for it they they credit God and and the more McCaw of the violence and the grosser the violence the more you're praising God and so they have it like the contest with these other our God is greater than your God because our God well it'll eat your children alive and spit out their bones and dance with their blood and you find things like that in the Bible and the Psalms about you know how the righteous will dance in the blood of the wicked and things like that so given that Jeremiah and Ezekiel and all the others they'll attribute violence to God and they think they're praising God and doing that even though they know that God didn't actually do any of the violence all the violence that happened to Israel for example came from Nebuchadnezzar in the Babylonians not God God simply turned them over and so let this happen all of God I think ever does is withdraw so let me give you one example of this let's go to the show no mercy because I didn't talk about that in the workshops yet how should we interpret this passage show no mercy slaughter every man woman child baby and even the animals anything that breathes leave nothing alive that breathe how should we interpret it I submit to you that the surface of that text which you can get by strictly exegetical means is profoundly ugly and inconsistent with the revelation of God in Christ the Jesus who told us to love the little children with a little stone come out of me don't cause them to stumble and he prays for our forgiveness I can't imagine Jesus under any circumstances saying hey you guys go out and slaughter that whole people exterminate them as an act of worship to me I can't imagine that and so I will regard the surface doesn't tell me what God's like the surface tells me what the people of God are like at the time they are thinking in terms of just the thing you very much like all other anchor needs and nourishing people in fact when you find beautiful depictions of God in the Old Testament they stand out and contrast with everything everyone else is saying about God but when they depict God as a heavenly warrior those depictions are very much on a par with what everyone else is saying about God in fact sometimes they even take songs that were sung to a pagan god a warrior God lifts the song switch out there got to put in Yahweh so it shows you that they're being cold from the condition so you learn a lot about the sin that God is bearing with his people at this time when you come up on a portrait of a guy like that but if you trust that Jesus really reveals what God's told me like without remainder then you look through that and marvel at the fact that God was willing to stoop this far down to stay in relationship with these people to continue to work and them to move them forward and ultimately to reach the world for those people God was willing to view this so behind their ugly depictions of God like show no mercy slaughter them all we should see the beauty of a God who was wanting to accept the people who thought he was capable of this now going along with that we have to look at a few other considerations on this I think reinforce this we trust that something else is going on behind the general seidel portrait of God and what's going on behind all these portraits is exactly what's going on there's something else that's going on on the cross I god always promised the Israelites if you trust me I'll fight your battles you won't have to fight you won't have to use the sword so the fact that they invaded the king in the land of Canaan using the sword and a ruthless genocide away tells you that they were already outside the will of God they weren't trusting God because otherwise he wouldn't had it had to do it that way if they asked this question they trusted Moses but should we and I mean sound so radical but listen of this Moses is the only one who claims to have gotten this command from God it's Carrie it's it's given or carried out 37 times in the Old Testament it all comes from Moses and Joshua carries it out he says do this on the authority of Moses who heard from Yahweh but should should should that be enough for us yeah Paul said in Galatians 1 that if anyone preaches a gospel other than what we've preached even if it looks like an angel of light lets them be anathema look to me accursed well I submit you that the idea that God would want you to engage in genocide and exterminate entire people groups is about as contrary to the gospel as you could get so I thought I weren't here for saying no that wasn't God Moses that's you that's on you so I submit that that itself is the reason why we shouldn't trust it in in that the final thing and see when you start looking at the Bible through the lens of the cross because they're all supposed to point to that you start to notice things you never noticed before I never noticed it's more maybe you haven't either but there's several places where we find God giving nonviolent plans on how to enter the land of Canaan for example he says in exodus 20:3 i will send my terror in front of you and we'll throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you and I will send the pestilence insects in front of you which shall drive out the Hittites and the Canaanites and the Hittites and the termites and everyone else from you so he's saying I'm gonna make this two pesty for them there they're going to get uncursed Baal and the migrate off the land but he says I will not drive them out from before you in 1 year or the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply against you little by little I'll drive them out from before you until you have increased and and put and can possess the land but that sounds like a little more Jesus way of doing things doesn't it oh yeah just increase the insects they're gonna get don't naturally migrate I'll do it slowly it's gonna be a gradual thing what happened to that plan you're from I'm gonna make it to pep st for him to buggy form also now it's solid all men women children babies and include the animals but spare the trees what happened or here's another one does give one more do not be fell out yourselves in any of these ways for by all of these practices the nation's I'm casting out before you he's gonna cast it out have defiled themselves thus the land became defiled and I punched it for its iniquity and the land vomited out its inhabitants and here the Lord it's a motor speech where you speak about a future thing as though it was already past and so here the plan is I'm gonna the land will vomit them out probably meaning I'll dry it won't be productive you know the one had success in agriculture total naturally migrate off it what happened to that plan I submit to you that I mean maybe God just often had a change of mind and got in a bad mood and it said slaughter them all but I if I trust Jesus I have to submit something else is going on here and I here's one way of thinking about it I think God did tell Moses I'm giving you this land but what Moses here is what any ancient Near some person would here is oh we're supposed to be us a lot of them I cuz that's what I meant to take someone's land in ancient Near East and it's plenty of examples of people believe that God helped them slaughter the inhabitants so they could acquire the land but no one ever dreamed of trusting a God who would give you the land without needing to slaughter anybody so I submit you that God says I give you the land but Moses hears oh but we're supposed to slaughter them and exterminate them and God because God won't lobotomize Moses or Knik you laid his brain cells to believe the true thing that comes a point he'll influence as much as possible but there comes a point where he has to just accept you as you are even though it's going to make him look bad in the narrative of his mission missionary activity which is written by his children but he puts up with this he's a guy who's not above coming down to this level I'll close with this all this is about God accommodating us where we're at loving us as we are in order to keep working with us to become all that he knows we can become and I've looked for analogies of this all over the place and someone sent me this one and it's just beautiful it there's a couple that works in a Christian foster home that takes in only severely abused children and in this home they have a an incarnation of philosophy where they believe that you first have to get on the inside of a child and understand why they're doing a behavior before you try to correct the behavior so they get this little girl I'll name her Suzy she's a ten year old girl and the first thing she stays there when they come in the morning they come in in the morning to check on her her walls were covered with her feces poop and I suppose a lot of people there would go oh it's discussing that's repulsive that's rebellious behavior and would have disciplined her I see these folks they they rightly concluded that if she did this there must be a reason for it we don't know what it is but she must feel the need to do this so they made a deal with her she could smear her poop on this one part of one wall instead of the whole room and they said if you need to do this we don't understand it but but what we love you and we're gonna work with you and so you can have this part of the wall and and so she would do that every night she'd smear poop on that section of the wall and in the morning the workers would come in and with her would clean help clean it up over time she they won the trust of this young lady Suzy and and as soon as he opened up to them as to what was going on turns out she had been sexually abused by her usually drunk father in the middle of the night since the age of four and one time during the sexual abuse she accidentally defecated and her father was revolted disgusted with this and so bolted out of the room and little four-year-old Suzy or six-year-old Suzy I guess when that's happened she gets a clever idea I know how to keep father away from me and so she would smear poop on the walls and to us to smell all that poop would be disgusting but to her that's what security smelled like that's what safety smelled like and she couldn't go to sleep without it hence where she had to smear the poop and when this team learned about this they said to her you're a very very smart young lady and as long as you feel we need to do that we want to affirm that in fact we'll help you do it and so a worker would put on latex gloves and come in there and help her smear the poop on the wall the next morning come and and and clean it up now imagine imagine if you were a social worker and you came to check on the house and you find a worker kneeling next to a girl smearing her poop on the wall you say that's revolting that's disgusting called Child Protective Services this is abusive it looks terribly ugly but if you knew the character of the people who were doing it if you saw what else was going on if you knew the whole story it becomes beautiful it becomes beautiful it's a beautiful story it's revoltingly beautiful revolting on the surface but if you know what else is going on it becomes beautiful folks this is what God does with us on the cross he dives headlong into our poop he becomes it He loves us in the midst of our poop because he wants to eventually grow us out of our poop and and he he says the cross reveals what God's always been like he's always been doing this and so what I see when I find crappy pictures of God in the Bible yeah they're crappy go ahead a name crappy but don't don't stop there look what else is going on and what else is going on is the exact same thing that went on at the cross a God who's willing to stoop to any distance necessary to reveal his beauty to us to work with us to move us to where he wants us to be [Music] you

Channel: Apprentice Institute at Friends University

Views: 2,839

Rating: 4.5999999 out of 5

Keywords: Apprentice, Institute

Id: -HTg3s-WLU0

Length: 43min 35sec (2615 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 04 2019