- Theology and Identity
- Season 1
- Episode 3
- Airdate: 8 December 2023
- Please note this is a script, and not a transcript. There may be slight differences between this text and the actual broadcast.
- All Bible quotations taken from the English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016)
Links:
_________________________________________________________________
I'm doctor David Clark The title of this podcast is theology and identity, and our aim is to explore the interaction between the way we understand God and the way we understand ourselves. In our first series we are exploring the texts of the Old Testament to see how they reveal the character of YHWH and the identity of his chosen people Israel. We're working our way through the Old Testament utilising the analytical framework of narrative theology. What this means is that we are reading the the Old Testament as a story. We’re looking at how the character of YHWH is developed throughout the text, how the people of Israel struggle to find their identity, and how the relationship between YWHH and his people progresses.
In our first broadcast we looked at the promise that God had given to Abraham. In Genesis chapters 12 and 22 God said to Abraham I will bless you and you will be a blessing. I will make you a great nation and through your seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed. We've noted that this is the central storyline of the entire Old Testament. The driving question the Hebrew Scriptures is: how will God fulfil his promise to Abraham? How will he bless the family of Abraham and how he bring blessing to the nations through them?
One of our first task was to identify the meaning of this blessing? To determine this, we looked at the first 11 chapters of the book of genesis that portray the fall of humanity and give us a first glimpse of the consequences of sin. And what we there saw was that sin results in separation. It separates us from god. It separates us from one another. And it leads to a broken disjointed relationship with the physical creation. So if the consequences of sin is separation the blessing that comes to humanity through the seed of Abraham will be restoration. Restoration in our relationship with God, restoration in our relationships with one another, and a restored relationship with the earth.
This is the promise that God gives, that through the seed of abraham will come restoration to the nations. This is the gift of God to the nations, through the people of Israel.
In our second podcast we asked the question how specifically will this happen? We’ve noted that be before Israel can be a blessing to the nations, they must first receive the blessing from God. They are given the gift of love relationship with YHWH by grace. They then make a covenant with God as a means of abiding this relationship. This covenant consisted of four major pillars: monotheism, election, Torah, and tabernacle. Israel must worship Yahweh and Yahweh alone loving him with all of their heart all of their soul and all of their strength. They must embrace their identity as the chosen people as its chosen nation. Israel, the seed of Abraham is the one and only nation with whom YHWH has made a covenant. And they are the one and only nation through whom blessing will reach the nations. So they must understand that a lot is riding on them. Third they must keep God's commands. 613 laws that show them the way of life. And finally, they must preserve the sanctity of the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is important because this is where sacrifices are made for the atonement of Israel. Even when the people sin and make mistakes through the sacrificial system they have the forgiveness of their sins. These are the four pillars of the covenant.
Faithfulness to the covenant first and foremost is the means by which Israel preserves and maintains their relationship with YHWH. This is how the first part of the Abahamic promise is fulfilled. Israel receives and preserves the blessing of relationship with God.
We also noted in our last podcast that there is a missional element in the promise made to Abraham. Israel will be blessed -and they will be a blessing to the nations. This happens primarily through the example that Israel gives. As the honour the terms of the covenant, they thrive and prosper. As they follow the law they will be happy healthy and prosperous they will live in peace with one another. There will be justice for the poor and care and compassion for all. And all of this prosperity will not go unnoticed. The nations around Israel will see how they love their God and how they love one another and this testimony will draw all nations to Jerusalem. And the nations around Israel will say we want to be like you. Teach us the ways of your God so that we also can worship him. So the vision here is that Israel is an example to the nations. They are a model people. They are a light shining on a hill that draws all of humanity to themselves.
So as the first five books of the Old Testament or the pentateuch comes to an end we as the readers are very hopeful. We believe that Israel has the ability to take possession of the land that God has promised them. And they have the ability to become this model people.
As we then read through the book of Joshua, we feel encouraged. Joshua is a strong leader with a clear vision. In chapter one of the book of Joshua we see the affirming promise that God gave to Moses. In Joshua 1, the Lord speaks to Joshua saying:
Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Mose. . . No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.
Then follows the accounts of the great victories and successes that Israel enjoyed under Joshua’s leadership. Of course some mistakes were made along the way, but for the most part, the 12 tribes got off to a good start in the land that God had promised to them.
As the life of Joshua came to an end the task still had not been completed. Just before he died he gathered the leaders of the 12 tribes together at Shechem and there together they renewed the covenant.
Ch 24
Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
16 Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, 17 for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.
After Joshua died the men of his generation continued to provide strong leadership to the 12 tribes we read in Joshua 24: 31
Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel
But then we come into the book of judges and this is when everything starts to go wrong. The 12 tribes start fighting against one another and they fail to take possession of the land that God had promised to them. But even more tragically, they turned away from worshipping God.
Judges 2
And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. 13 They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.
So we come into what was really the darkest and strangest. In the history of the 12 tribes. Very weird things happened among the people of Israel.
There was a leader named Jeptha, the son of a prostitute who tragically sacrificed his own daughter in order to fulfil a foolish vow that he made to God.
We have the story of Samson who was set apart from his birth to be a deliver for the people of Israel. Samson had incredible strength but he also had an unfortunate tendence to go after prostitutes and women who did not worship the God of Israel.
We have the story of a man named Micah who turned his house into a mini-temple, complete with silver images of YHWH and even a Levite priest.
In chapter 19 we read the story of a levite and his concubine. Traveling through the territory of Benjamin they stop for a night in a place called Gibeah. Staying as a guest in the house of an old man, something very similar to the experience Lot and his family takes place. The house is surrounded by wicked men of the city who demand that the levite be turned over to them so that they may ‘know’ him. In order to appease the mob the levite sends out his concubine. The very disturbing account says that these men abused her all through the evening and the next morning when the levite went out he found her dead on the doorstep. And then he did something very strange. He cut her body into 12 pieces and sent a piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel. It was a grotesque gesture. And it provoked a civil war, where the 11 other tribes went to battle against Benjamin over what had happened in Gibeah.
What we must note in this passage is that these violent men of Gibeah who wanted to rape the Levite and then actually raped and murdered his concubine were not ‘pagans’. They were Israelite, from the tribe of Benjamin. So the author of Judges is painting a very interesting picture here. He’s saying that Israel is becoming like Sodom, the people of Israel are losing their humanity, and if something doesn’t change, the nation will descend into utter chaos.
So looking back over all of these horror stories from the book of Judges, we ask: What was going on with the people of Israel at this time? Leaders sleeping with prostitutes and sacrificing their children. Families casting silver images of YHWH and setting up mini-temples in their homes. Violent mobs raping women and men. Dismembering dead bodies. Civil war?
Israel is hardly acting as the model nation that they were called to be. Is there any hope that the nation can get back on track. It would seem that the answer from the text is yes and no. Every time things would get really bad, they would cry out to God for mercy. He would deliver them, but then of course they would return to their old ways.
So how did YHWH feel about this constant process of going back and forth. Judges 10 offers some amazing insights into the character of Israel’s God.
And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, saying, “We have sinned against you, because we have forsaken our God and have served the Baals.” 11 And the Lord said to the people of Israel, “Did I not save you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites, from the Ammonites and from the Philistines? . . . Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more. 14 Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress.” 15 And the people of Israel said to the Lord, “We have sinned; do to us whatever seems good to you. Only please deliver us this day.” 16 So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord, and he became impatient over the misery of Israel
But then as we read on we see that this supposed re-committing of their lives to the Lord didn’t last.
The question I want to explore is this: what was going on in the heart of the people at this time? God had done so much for them, and yet they found it so difficult to remain faithful. From a theological perspective, what was the problem?
Some theologians, would of course argue that the problem was human depravity. The human heart is so corrupt, the people of Israel didn’t have the ability to remain faithful to the covenant. They didn’t have the ability to worship YWHW alone. They didn’t have the ability to be a model people.
But the problem I have with this particular theological interpretation is that it involves reading the text through a hermeneutical lens that wasn’t developed until much later in history. When we approach the OT as a narrative, we try to enter into the moment. We don’t want to superimpose our modern theological presuppositions. We try to work only within the framework that the text itself has given us up until this point.
In this light - everything we’ve in the texts up until now seems to indicate that YHWH does in fact believe that covenant faithfulness is possible. And his plan for the nations is riding on this. He has given Israel everything they need to succeed, and his sincere hope is that they will succeed. Why would he even bother making a covenant with Israel if he thought they had no ability to keep it? In my view, God made a covenant with Israel because he genuinely believed that they had the ability to be faithful. This doesn’t mean he expected them to be perfect. That’s why he instituted the sacrifices of the Temple. He didn’t expect them to be perfect, but he did call them to be faithful.
So once again, for me the ‘total depravity’ approach doesn’t work here. I think something else is going on. And I think the root issue is a crisis of identity. Let’s focus on a particular character in this book of Judges whose story will help illuminate this point. We turn to figure of Gideon, beginning in Judges 6.
Gideon was a young man during one of those seasons when everything was going wrong for Israel. The text says that because of their unfaithfulness, God gave them over to the hand of the midianites for seven years. The Israelites would plant crops but the midianites would descend from the hills on their camels and they would trample the fields of the Israelites and burn their homes and kill their animals, leaving them with nothing. And so the people of Israel moved into caves and mountain strongholds in order to hide.
The people of Israel cried out to God for mercy, and God chose Gideon as the one who would lead them in defeating their enemies. Now Gideon was perhaps more brave then some of his fellow Israelites. Rather than running off to live in a cave, he stayed in his home and tried to bring in the harvest. The account in Judges 6 says that Gideon was threshing wheat inside of a winepress. Now anyone familiar with ancient farming techniques knows that the way to thresh wheat is to pile it up on a slab located in an open area. As the harvester beats the wheat, he throws it into the air, the wind carries away the chaff. This is called winnowing. And in the end, only the heavier grain remains on the threshing flow. The problem with this technique is that when you thresh in an open area that cloud of chaff and dust can be seen from far away. Had Gideon done this, the midianites would have seen him from afar. And so to hide from the midianites, Gideon is trying to thresh his white inside a winepress. Now I imagine that hidden in an enclosed area there would be no wind to carry off the chaff. So it may very well be that what Gideon was doing was an exercise in futility. But the least that can be said about him where's that at least he tried.
As he was threshing the wheat the text says that a messenger, which is the Hebrew word malach, came and sat under a tree and watched Gideon in this foolish exercise. And then the messenger speaks to him: saying the Lord is with you oh mighty man of valour. Now of course this is a very strange greeting. From the text itself there is no indication that Gideon had ever done anything worthy of note, that he had won any battles or exercise leadership over anyone else. So it seems strange that the messenger of the Lord would call him a mighty man of valour and say that the Lord is with him.
So in response Gideon challenges the messenger. The first point he wishes to contest is that God is with them.
Jud 6:13 Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
So it becomes very clear that Gideon does not believe but God is with him or with his people. But the messenger doesn't give up. And as we read through the narrative we discover that this is no ordinary messenger.
6:14 And the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?
The man speaking to Gideon is Yahweh himself appearing in human form. But Gideon is still not convinced. And he has a very clear explanation as to why he is unable to be a leader for the tribes of Israel.
6:5 And he said to him, “Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”
Manasseh is a small tribe. Perhaps one of the smallest of the 12. And within manasseh Gideons clan is the weakest. And then within gideon's family he is the youngest. And so he is saying I am the smallest of the smallest among the small. In other words I'm a nobody.
But God did not give up. It would seem that God saw something in Gideon that Gideon did not see in himself. Gideon saw himself as a nobody and God saw him as a mighty man of valour. Gideon saw himself as someone who had been abandoned by God, and God saw him as someone who had inner strength, and the ability to lead. God saw gideon’s amazing potential. And his calling for Gideon was not limited by gideons weaknesses and failures. God called Gideon because God saw all that Gideon had the potential to become.
16 And the Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.’
So when Gideon finally did decide to obey, God's vision for Gideon was fulfilled. In his first major battle Gideon confronted the midianites. The text of Chapter 7 says that the midianites and the amalakites and all the people of the east lay along the valley like locusts in abundance and their camels were without number as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance. Gideon faced this multitude with just 300 men, and he defeated them.
As we look at the story of Gideon, I want to know in what ways he might be representative of leadership in Israel at this time? In what ways might the struggles and the doubts of Gideon symbolise the doubts and the struggles of the entire nation?
I believe that through the story of Gideon, the book of judges is pointing us to a bigger problem in Israel. Was it a lack of leadership? The author of Judges reminds the reader numerous times throughout the text that there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. But that seems to be an oversimplification. And we don’t have to read too far ahead in the narrative to discover that even when the people of Israel had a king, it really didn’t make that much of a difference.
What if the real problem is not the lack of a king? What if the real problem is that the people of Israel have lost track of their identity? It seems to me that the people of Israel had lost their understanding of what it meant to be the chosen people of God. They had lost a clear sense of their purpose, and calling. The root cause of their failures was self doubt and insecurity. From their own creation stories, they knew that had been created in God’s image. They knew that they were the seed of Abraham. They knew that God had made a covenant with their fathers in the wilderness. Had they just stood in their identity as a people chosen by God, capable of living in covenant faithfulness, and called to be a model people to the nations, perhaps they would have not have failed so dismally.
And so lets bring these questions that emanate from the OT text in the 21st century. Our question on theology and identity is this: Could it be that God sees something in people that they have never seen in themselves? Could it be that God speaks over the lives of individuals and communities words of hope of affirmation and of great potential? And could it be that the struggle of Gideon and the people of Israel is the same struggle that people of faith face today?
The text challenges us to ask Who are we listening to? Are we listening to the voice of inner doubt and insecurity? Are we listening to the voices of the world that say we're a failure, we're not good enough and our lives will never amount to anything? Or are we listening to the voice of our Creator? The one who made us and loves us, and calls us to something better?
And with that though, we’ll conclude our reflection on the book of judges. In our next podcast we will look at the rise of the monarchy in Israel. God eventually did give the people of Israel a king. But we want to know if this was really the solution did the kings of Israel and Judah lead the people into covenant faithfulness or did these problems of doubt and in security and faithlessness persist? I'm doctor David Clark I hope you will I hope you will join me next time in the podcast theology and identity.