This is a talk I gave at Jesus Folk this year. It is long and similar to another blog I have posted on here. Also 95% of the ideas in this are from Rob Bell’s book Jesus wants to save Christians: A Manifesto for a Church in Exile.
We’ve been studying the sermon on the mount so far this year, which is the longest sermon Jesus gave his disciples. It can be viewed as a manifesto for how Jesus desires his church to live. A Manifesto for the land of God.
Jesus says in Matthew 5: 17-22 “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. For truly I tell you, 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. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly 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. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
A pharisee was a religious leader of the time of Jesus who focused on strictly adhering to Jewish law. If you thought of anyone whose job it was to practice and teach these laws it would have been a pharisee, but as we see here, Jesus declared that his disciples righteousness must surpass a pharisees in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven.
Throughout the Torah (the Jewish holy book) and the Old testament there are hundred of rules on how to live life. Here is one that seems particularly random, but guarantee the Pharisees upheld it. In the book of Numbers 15 in the bible the Lord says to Moses “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated to your God. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the LORD your God.’”
These are definitely one of those rules that when reading my bible I just sort of glide over and assume there is no current cultural relevance. But at the time many Jews would have worn prayer shawls with tassels with blue thread attached to the corner. In Hebrew Corner Tassels is said Kanaf Tzitzit.
When God gave this commandment to Moses he said by attaching these you will remember to obey all my commandments and will be consecrated to your God. To be consecrated to God is to be devoted, set aside for, made holy for God. I’m suppose to attach Kanaf Tzitzit, attach Corner Tassels to remember to make myself devoted and holy for God.
Then the scripture continues, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God.
But what does Egypt have to do with anything? God was giving these commandments to Moses.
Moses was a man who many would have been viewed in his early life as not particularly holy. Although Hebrew born, he was raised by an Egyptian family. At this time in history the Hebrew people were enslaved by the Egyptians, the pharaoh was using them to construct his great empire. Moses saw the oppression of his people and out of rage murdered an Egyptian slave owner. Like Moses, God saw the people of Israel in slavery and heard there cries. And what did God do? He listened, he responded. He called on Moses to represent him to the pharaoh and demand the Israelis get set free. When the pharaoh didn’t listen, God did miraculous things, including parting the red sea and allowing the Israeli people to walk though it. To escape from slavery, to escape and be set free from Egypt.
These Hebrew people did not have a casual or removed relationship with God. God wasn’t this abstract idea they had heard growing up in Sunday school, but rather this God interacted with them, listened to them, set them free from slavery. They knew this God.
Throughout the bible we hear stories of God responding to the cry of his people. In Genesis, we learn the story of Cain and Abel, when Abel gave an offering to God that he looked on with favor, his brother Cain grew jealous and killed him. God responded, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” When God’s people suffer, God responds.
So now we have these people, they have just escaped Egypt and are wandering around in the wilderness with seemingly no where to go. An important thing to remember about these people is there primary reason for existence up to this point was to do forced labor, slavery. For generations there value had been measured in how effective they were at building the Pharaohs empire. They were like machines. And when people are treated like machines there entire life, and for generations and generations, they forget what it means to be a human.
It says in the bible that God ascended on a mountain and brought lightning and thunder and the people declared they feared God and wanted only Moses to speak with him. So Moses went atop Mount Sinai and talked with God. What God gave him, among other things, is something we are all probably somewhat familiar with: The Ten Commandments. And what do we thing of when we think of these commandments. A list of boring rules that suck all the fun out of our lives and make us feel guilty all the time. We think of laws. In fact in Matthew 5, these are some of the laws that Jesus is insisting he has come to fulfill rather than abolish.
It starts “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, the land of slavery.” It is important we remember our history, as probably most of us have never been to Egypt and definitely not a slave in Egypt, God has still set us free, delivered us from a a different sort of slavery, a slavery that, similarly to the Israeli people hearing this for the first time, has dehumanized us. God doesn’t want these people to forget that he hears the cry of the oppressed and responds.
It continues, “You shall have no other God’s before me.” These people had been living amongst a culture that had many God’s, many things to worship. But probably most significantly, the Pharaoh was viewed as divine. The same Pharaoh who had mistreated them, enslaved them, forced them to bow down to him. Our God is promising something revolutionary to these people. I am the only God, you will not bow down to Pharaoh, you will not be enslaved by this false master, for I am your God. There are many things today that can become a sort of Pharaoh to us, a thing that we end up bowing down to despite desiring something better: depression, pain, self hatred, money, success, drugs, alcohol, stress, the list goes on and on. God is calling us to worship only him, to be freed from these oppressive influences in our lives that desire to enslave us.
The next commandment reads “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” I always thought this was sort of a throw away commandment, “Okay, don’t make a statue of God and bow down to it, got it” But the Egyptian culture had images representing all of their gods. Statues visually displaying who that god was and what it stood for. Very shortly before God delivered these commandments to Moses he told him to communicate to these people that “Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The primary job of a priest is to tell people about what it is they represent. To bring to the people the truths about whatever it was they stood for. God desired a kingdom of priests, a kingdom of people who represented to the world who God was and what he was all about. More importantly than God just not liking statues of Himself, he more strongly desired that these chosen people become the image of God. Instead of someone looking at an idol to see what it was that god was about, These people where called to be the image of God, to be God’s body, clearly articulating through word and deed what it was God is all about. The whole world belongs to God, but we are invited to be priests to the world, showing and telling everyone the good news. And this offer isn’t exclusive to those people waiting at the foot of the mountain. Jesus spoke of this kingdom stretching to the ends of the earth and of us all being God’s body.
The next commandment is “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” Often translated to not using the Lord’s name in vain. When I first starting going to church, I once had a Christian friend rebuke me for saying “oh my god” declaring it was against the ten commandments. And I remember thinking, did people say “Oh my god and god damn-it back then?” As I had recalled that wasn’t common slang at the time. The commandment is “you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.” Misuse in Hebrew translates also to carry. Do not miss carry the name of God. As it has seemed so far, these commandments are building on each other. We are asked to carry God’s name. If we are representing him to the world, being a holy nation of priests, being God’s body, we better be making it clear to people that God is one who hears the cry of the oppressed and responds.
The next commandment is “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Lets think about how incredibly upside down this concept was to these recently freed Hebrew slaves. They worked 7 days week. They worked all day everyday. They were measured by how machine like they could be, by how many bricks they could produce, how much empire they could build. They didn’t rest. Resting wasn’t an option. God doesn’t desire for his people to be machines. He desires for them to rest. He desires them to take one day a week to sit back and remember He created them, He loves them. We are not defined by how much we can get done, but rather are defined by our calling to be a holy nation of priests.
God is giving them an invitation to let go of a life of oppression, a life of slavery, a life that rid them of there humanity and choose something better. These people of God were crying out and he responded.
God commanded we attach Kanaf Tzitzit to our clothes to remember to be consecrated to God, to remember his commandments To remember to be a holy nation of priests representing to the world who God is.
As God was laying down these commandments to Moses he said “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.”
The word for covenant in Hebrew is Beirut, which translates to “To cut a deal.” It was a legalistic term people used when arranging the details of marriage. God identified these arrangements as a marriage. A marriage between the human and divine to show the world who God is, to be God’s body.
Another important thing here is the If, “Now IF you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all Nations you will be my treasured possessions”
God wanted these people to be consecrated, holy and devoted to God. He wanted them to remember their history of slaves that he set free and rose up to be his body, showing his good news to the world.
And what happened to these people? They forgot there story. They were delivered to a land where they were able to prosper. They became a nation for the whole world to see and look upon. And what did the world see. Was it the glory of God? Was it a reflection of a God who heard the cry of the oppressed and responded? Was it of a God that freed people from slavery?
Solomon one of the many kings of Israel throughout history was speculated to be the richest man to ever live. He had tons of authority and power, the kind of influence that could really change the world. But that isn’t what happened. It is in scripture that King Solomon used slave labor to build his temple. These people who were set free from slavery by God where now, ignoring God’s commands, and using slave labor to build God’s temple.
He had forgotten his history. He had forgotten his marriage with God. God desired to free people from slavery. He asked the Israeli nation to be his body, representing to the world who God was, and they took the blessings and forgot there story.
They were not following the commandments, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” They were not attaching Corner Tassels, they were not remembering how God had worked in there lives, how God heard the cry of the oppressed and responded.
The oppressed became the oppressors.
God wanted the Israeli nation to show his glory to the world. We wanted them to respond to the cry of the oppressed and display God’s love on earth so others would see how good He is. When God set these people free and blessed them, they didn’t do this.
As they forgot the history, the story of there people, it indeed was repeated. They become occupied and amidst the suffering of there nation many prophets spoke of a coming Messiah, one who would restore the kingdom. They imagined a great king, greater than Solomon.
Lets fast forward to the time of Jesus. The nation of Israel was now in occupation by the empire of the time, Rome. The stories of God freeing them from Egyptian oppression and the promise of being God’s chosen people still greatly impacted there lives. People had been prophesying of a coming Messiah, a person to come and restore there Kingdom. A king greater than Solomon. The twelve listening to the sermon on the mount believed that Jesus was this messiah, they believed he would rise up and become a great king, blessing the nation of Israel. Now he is sitting on a mount affirming, he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. But Jesus spoke of a greater kingdom, a deeper kingdom, one that stretched to the ends of the earth, a kingdom of servants.
And the crazy thing is it seemed like Jesus broke a lot of the rules. The commandment about acknowledging our own humanity and resting in the presence of our God, had turned into a rule where people where not allowed to do anything on the Sabbath, it was against Jewish law. This included healing.
Jesus went to the synagogue on the sabbath and saw a man with a shriveled hand. He told the man to stand and said to the pharisees “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” They said nothing and Jesus healed the mans hand.
It is pretty extreme to claim by not healing this man’s hand, by passively not addressing his pain, it is doing evil, it is killing. It is the opposite of life. I wonder if maybe it wouldn’t just be death to the man who would not be healed, but also a form of death for those who refused to heal him.
The commandments were given to us as a means of restoring our humanity, not the broken sinful humanity that we have embraced, but the beautiful marriage of the spiritual and physical. When God first created human, he breathed into his lungs and gave him life.
That same life that we are estranged from everyday.
By looking at this covenant with God, these marriage arrangements, we are more fully realizing what it means to live.
When we remember that God hears our cry and responds
When we remember that God has freed us from slavery, from oppression
When we remember that we are not machines, but creations
When we remember that God wants us to be a holy nation of priests representing to the world who God is and what he cares about
When we remember that we are called to worship God only and rest in his presence
When we remember these things, we are living.
In Revelations 2 it says “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”
God deeply desires to write on a white stone a new name for us. A name redeemed and rescued from oppression. The name we were meant to have. He wants us to live as we were created to live.
What is the name God is giving you? How is God calling you to your true identity?
The Lord said to Moses “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated to your God. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the LORD your God.’”
God is giving us these commandments so we can see our place in this Kingdom. God has freed us from Egypt, he has heard our cry, he has seen out eastward movement, away from the Garden, living outside our true identity as his children.
He desires for us to attach Kanaf Tztizit, attach Corner Tassels so we don’t forget our history, so we don’t forget our identity, so we don’t forget who we really are.
We are called for our righteousness to surpass that of the teachers of the law and the pharisees, in that we are called to see these rules, these commandments not as another form of slavery but rather liberation. We are called to remember our God who has freed us from oppression, to not make idols of him, but rather be his body, we are the world’s image of God, we are called to not misuse his name, to miss carry. As we attempt to be God’s body, we better not be giving people the wrong idea of who God is. We are called to Sabbath, to rest, to remember our humanity, to remember our creator.
As we more fully step into our humanity, our truest identities, let us make Kanaf Tzitzit, make corner tassels so we don’t forget, so we remember our story. Lets allow God to rename us, to show us who we were created to be. Lets step away from oppression and slavery, away from death, Lets choose life and turn and thank God!
11 months ago
