Shownotes
Welcome to Day 2201 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
What Does God Want – God Was Betrayed By His Family – Daily Wisdom
Putnam Church Message – 02/05/2023What Does God Want? - God Was Betrayed By His Family
Last week, we continued our series with the overall theme, which is to answer the question: What does God want? The answer we discovered was that God wants you along with every person who will ever live. In other words, God wanted a human family. God wants co-workers to take care of His creation. God wants you to know/ who you are/ and why your life has value to him. /He loves you /and desires that you also love Him. Last week’s message explored the three rebellions in Genesis 3-11. After those rebellions, God chose to restart his human family with Abraham and Sarah, which resulted in the nation of Israel, God’s portion or, as we refer to Israel, as chosen God’s people. Deut 32:9: “For the people of Israel belong to the Lord; Jacob is his special possession. The history of biblical Israel was a long, meandering affair filled with triumph and tragedy. God wasn’t surprised. He knew what to expect from people. God had always known what he was dealing with. Wearing Out Your Welcome God let Abraham know that the future of his descendants would be challenging. He was honest. Genesis 15:13, Then the Lord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. That was the bad news. God provided some hope in Genesis 15:14: But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. Sure enough, the descendants of Abraham, now led by his grandson, Jacob, whose name God changed to “Israel,” eventually wound up in Egypt under the thumb of Pharaoh (Exodus 1). They’d gone there with God’s approval to avoid a famine (Genesis 45:5-11). Where they went wrong was that they didn’t return to the land God had given to them after the famine was over. Instead, they stuck around in Egypt way too long. While in Egypt, the Israelite nation grew numerically, so much so that Pharaoh got paranoid about being able to stay in charge of the country (Exodus 1:8-10). He put them into forced labor and exterminated new babies if they were boys (Exodus 1:14-16). But God intervened and made them grow even stronger (Exodus 1:8-21). All told, Israel spent four centuries in Egypt under harsh conditions. Eventually, God intervened and preserved the life of a baby boy named Moses. God engineered circumstances, so the baby was raised in Pharaoh’s house, right under his nose (Exodus 2:1-10). Moses led a life of privilege but one day committed a capital offense, murdering a man in a fight that began as a defense of a helpless Israelite. He fled Egypt to escape justice. Moses found a new life in a desert place called Midian. God met him at Mount Sinai in a burning bush (pre-incarnate Christ), an encounter that would change the history of his people and the world (Exodus 3:1-15). God sent Moses back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh. He was to demand the release of God’s people. God promised to protect Moses and empower him (Exodus 3:16-22). The rest of the story is one of the most famous in the world. Even if you’ve never read the Bible, you’ve probably heard of it or seen one of the movies about it. God sent ten plagues against Egypt and its gods when Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go (Exodus 7-12). God used Moses to force the release of multitudes of Israelites from Egyptian bondage. He parted the Red Sea to save them when the Egyptians chased them into the desert to slaughter them (Exodus 13:17 through Exodus 14). The crossing of the Red Sea is far and away, one of the most spectacular miracles of the Bible. But it wasn’t showmanship. It was about preserving a people. God wanted his family. Law and Loyalty Eventually, God brought his people back to where he initially spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai. There, he gave the Israelites his laws—the Ten Commandments. He made a covenant promise with them. It’s important to realize that Israel was already God’s people before the Ten Commandments were given. God had referred to the people as his family when Moses confronted Pharaoh (Exodus (3-7) 3:7, 10; 4:23; 5:1; 6:7; 7:4). The laws weren’t about earning a place in God’s family. Israelites were already God’s family. We need to unpack this distinction. It’s pretty essential. Rather than earning a place in God’s family, God gave his people laws to show they wanted to be in the family. God’s laws were about showing God they wouldn’t be disloyal and align themselves with some other god. Being loyal believers would allow God to use the Israelites to minister to all the other nations like “a kingdom of priests” (Bulletin Insert) (Exodus 19:5-6). 5 Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to me. 6 And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.” God wanted humanity in his family. He was restarting with one group—Israel. If they were loyal believers, they would be a blessing to all the other nations (Genesis 12:3). 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” There’s one more angle to understanding this covenant. God’s laws also weren’t about being good enough to make God love them. God already loved Israel (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). 7 “The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! 8 Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors. That is why the Lord rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He had supernaturally enabled the elderly Abraham and Sarah to have a child from which Israel, in time, would come. Having a family was the whole point. God didn’t create a list of rules so they would qualify as family. They were his family. God’s laws were designed to help his children avoid other gods and live happy, peaceful lives with one another, not to improve God’s disposition toward them. True to form, God would not dismiss their free will. He just asked that they believe in him—who he was, and that he had created them out of love—and to forsake all other gods. Any member of Israel could reject God’s love if they wanted. They could choose not to believe. They could choose to worship some other god. As we’ll see, many did just that. Once the Israelites left Mount Sinai (where God gave them the law), God led them in the form of a man (an angel-Pre-incarnate Christ) to the Promised Land (Bulletin Insert) (Exodus 23:20-23). 20 “See, I am sending an angel before you to protect you on your journey and lead you safely to the place I have prepared for you. 21 Pay close attention to him, and obey his instructions. Do not rebel against him, for he is my representative, and he will not forgive your rebellion. 22 But if you are careful to obey him, following all my instructions, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will oppose those who oppose you. 23 For my angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, so you may live there. And I will destroy them completely. Along the way, the people constantly complained about insufficient food and water. God provided (Exodus 15:22-27; 16:1-30). They had to fight for their lives against lethal enemies in the land. God saved them from destruction (Deuteronomy 2-3; Joshua 11-12; Psa 136:10-24; Acts 13:19). The Downward Spiral You’d think that after God brought Israel into the land, the Israelites would have felt an overwhelming love for God—their believing loyalty would be at an all-time high. Not so much. It became a downward spiral. Instead, they decided that co-existence with evil could work. They refused to drive idolaters (people who worshipped other gods with idols) out of the land. It’s like the Israelites knew nothing of the past, how rebellion brings disaster. Their disloyalty and lack of love for God led to this demoralizing scene in Judges 2:1-3: (same as in Exodus) The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said to the Israelites, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I swore to give your ancestors, and I said I would never break my covenant with you. 2 For your part, you were not to make any covenants with the people living in this land; instead, you were to destroy their altars. But you disobeyed my command. Why did you do this? 3 So now I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides,[a] and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.” God had to judge his people . . . again. He basically said, “I’m out of here. Let’s see how you do on your own since you don’t want me.” We’ve seen that before. And, as we’ve seen before, God’s people did very poorly without their God being present. And since we’re rehashing history, God’s response also looks familiar—he kept coming back to Israel to lift them out of trouble. We all know people like that. Maybe you’re one of them. You stick to helping someone because of love, even to the point that it seems irrational. And if you think about what God was doing, it does seem insane. But God wants a human family even when he’s unwanted. His love defies logic. The whole biblical book of Judges, from which the scene above was cited, is about a seemingly never-ending cycle of spiritual rebellion, the suffering it brings, crying out to God for help, and God coming back in love. That cycle persisted for a few centuries. Then, finally, it reached a climax when the people within the nation of Israel demanded that Samuel, a priest, and prophet, anoint a king to rule them. Not surprisingly, the people’s choice of a king (Saul) was an unmitigated disaster. You know things aren’t going to go well (or ought to know) when your choice for a king has to be dragged out of hiding to take the job (1 Samuel 10:22). Eventually, God chose David to replace Saul. David was a moral mess, but he was better than Saul. He never showed disloyalty or a lack of love for God. He broke several of God’s moral laws but repented and never worshipped another god. Therefore, God made a covenant promise with David that said only his sons could be legitimate rulers of Israel. This covenant was about creating a dynasty for David. God would only consider one of his descendants the legitimate king. Sadly, the rest of Israel’s history in the Bible’s story included many men with the correct lineage who were otherwise unfit to be king. God had to remove many of David’s descendants because they were disloyal to him, choosing to follow other gods. (inclusion/exclusion in God’s family) A descendant of David inheriting the throne was supposed to love God and have the proper family history. This is why every king was supposed to keep a copy of God’s laws with him (Deuteronomy 17:18; 2 Kings 11:12). The king was to be the most excellent example (imager) of a loyal believer. David’s son, Solomon, was the greatest king in Israel’s history (if land holdings and wealth are the litmus tests). But, sadly, his believing loyalty in the true God wavered. He sacrificed to other gods and had a series of political marriages that brought the worship of other gods into Israel (1 Kings 11:1-8). In other words, Solomon began a cycle of spiritual compromise and rebellion that led to national ruin. The Final Betrayal After Solomon’s death, ten of the twelve tribes revolted against his successor (1 Kings 11:41-12:24). The kingdom of Israel was divided into two parts by tribes and geography. God’s family was now a broken home, so to speak. Sadly,/ many kings during the ensuing period /had never even seen a copy of God’s laws (2 Kings 22:8-13). The northern part of the divided nation (the ten tribes that rebelled politically) immediately plunged into spiritual rebellion (1 Kings 12:25-33). Instead of showing believing loyalty to the God /who had given them the land/ and supernaturally brought them into existence,/ most of Israel betrayed God. This is why the prophets who roamed about the countryside preaching during this time compared the spiritual rebellion to “playing the whore” and spiritual adultery. It was a vivid analogy. The southern part of the country (two tribes) went into spiritual rebellion more slowly. But gradual sin is still sin. Abandoning God never goes well. As the Bible says in Numbers 32:23, But if you fail to keep your word, then you will have sinned against the Lord, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out. As he had done at other times, God let his people exercise their freedom and pay the consequences. In 722 B.C., the northern part of the nation was eventually overrun by a people I like to call the Klingons of the Old Testament—the Assyrians. (Star Trek Reference) If the Lord of the Rings is more familiar to you than Star Trek, think of the Assyrians as the hordes of Mordor. I like the analogies because the Assyrians had a well-deserved reputation for cruelty. They scattered the ten tribes throughout the ancient world, breaking up families and robbing them of everything they owned. (It reminds me of another Star Trek analogy as being the Borg…Resistance is Futile; you will be assimilated.) The two remaining tribes in the southern part of the nation were conquered by the Babylonians a little more than a hundred years later (586 B.C.). As a result, thousands of Israelites were forcibly exiled to Babylon. However, they were permitted to keep some traces of their Jewish culture. A remnant returned to Jerusalem from this group to rebuild the walls and, eventually, the temple. The remaining ten northern tribes were not brought back to Israel until Pentecost, when all the world nations were brought together under Christ. Let’s be honest. We’d understand if God forgot about his people at this point. They had rebelled repeatedly for well over a thousand years since the time of Abraham. So it’s hard to avoid the conclusion they got what they deserved. But that isn’t how God works. Rather than just calling it quits, God decided that He still wanted a human family. But getting his people—and the rest of humanity—back into his family required a change of tactics. God had made a series of covenants with his people. But people are, obviously, mere humans. They fail. . . a lot and with predictable regularity. The rest of humanity had been assigned to supernatural beings (the “sons of God”; Deuteronomy 32:8). When the Most High assigned lands to the nations, when he divided up the human race, he established the boundaries of the peoples according to the number in his heavenly court.[a] These supernatural rulers had become enemies of their creator, the God of Israel. Things were complicated. God had a two-part solution to all this. When the last children in God’s family were on the verge of exile, God prompted two prophets (Jeremiah and Ezekiel) to tell people they were not wholly forgotten. God would make a “new covenant” with his children, one marked by the coming of his Spirit (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:22-28). There was a new day coming. But the “new day coming” didn’t address the question of how God could honor the older covenants without scrapping or changing them. A lot of Israelites rejected God and worshipped other gods. They showed their contempt for him by breaking his laws. This grieved God. He wanted to honor his promises, but so many of his children were seduced into worshipping the gods of other nations. That was the path of death. Remember, because of what had happened in Eden, every human being was destined to die and not have eternal life unless they turned to the true God and believed in his love and promises. Far too many Israelites forgot all that. They couldn’t just pick and choose gods whenever they felt like it from a spiritual buffet. They had to believe in the true God and keep believing. The situation was especially problematic when it came to Israel’s kings. God had promised David that his heirs would inherit his throne, but many of them turned away from him. God couldn’t ignore this lack of believing loyalty. He also couldn’t just scrap his promise. That would be like admitting the whole thing was a bad idea—and a God who knows everything can’t have a bad idea. So how could God honor his promises to a people who had rejected him and were estranged from him? They needed new hearts. They needed his presence to guide them. WhatTranscripts
WHAT DOES GOD WANT? - GOD WAS BETRAYED BY HIS FAMILY
Last week, we continued our series with the overall theme, which is to answer the question: What does God want? The answer we discovered was that God wants you along with every person who will ever live. In other words, God wanted a human family. God wants co-workers to take care of His creation. God wants you to know/ who you are/ and why your life has value to him. /He loves you /and desires that you also love Him. Last week’s message explored the three rebellions in Genesis 3-11. After those rebellions, God chose to restart his human family with Abraham and Sarah, which resulted in the nation of Israel, God’s portion or, as we refer to Israel, as chosen God’s people. Deut 32:9: “For the people of Israel belong to the Lord; Jacob is his special possession.
The history of biblical Israel was a long, meandering affair filled with triumph and tragedy. God wasn’t surprised. He knew what to expect from people. God had always known what he was dealing with.
Wearing Out Your Welcome
nging. He was honest. Genesis:Sure enough, the descendants of Abraham, now led by his grandson, Jacob, whose name God changed to “Israel,” eventually wound up in Egypt under the thumb of Pharaoh (Exodus 1). They’d gone there with God’s approval to avoid a famine (Genesis 45:5-11). Where they went wrong was that they didn’t return to the land God had given to them after the famine was over. Instead, they stuck around in Egypt way too long.
While in Egypt, the Israelite nation grew numerically, so much so that Pharaoh got paranoid about being able to stay in charge of the country (Exodus 1:8-10). He put them into forced labor and exterminated new babies if they were boys (Exodus 1:14-16). But God intervened and made them grow even stronger (Exodus 1:8-21).
All told, Israel spent four centuries in Egypt under harsh conditions. Eventually, God intervened and preserved the life of a baby boy named Moses. God engineered circumstances, so the baby was raised in Pharaoh’s house, right under his nose (Exodus 2:1-10). Moses led a life of privilege but one day committed a capital offense, murdering a man in a fight that began as a defense of a helpless Israelite. He fled Egypt to escape justice.
Moses found a new life in a desert place called Midian. God met him at Mount Sinai in a burning bush (pre-incarnate Christ), an encounter that would change the history of his people and the world (Exodus 3:1-15). God sent Moses back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh. He was to demand the release of God’s people. God promised to protect Moses and empower him (Exodus 3:16-22).
ert to slaughter them (Exodus:Law and Loyalty
Eventually, God brought his people back to where he initially spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai. There, he gave the Israelites his laws—the Ten Commandments. He made a covenant promise with them. It’s important to realize that Israel was already God’s people before the Ten Commandments were given. God had referred to the people as his family when Moses confronted Pharaoh (Exodus (3-7) 3:7, 10; 4:23; 5:1; 6:7; 7:4). The laws weren’t about earning a place in God’s family. Israelites were already God’s family.
We need to unpack this distinction. It’s pretty essential. Rather than earning a place in God’s family, God gave his people laws to show they wanted to be in the family. God’s laws were about showing God they wouldn’t be disloyal and align themselves with some other god. Being loyal believers would allow God to use the Israelites to minister to all the other nations like “a kingdom of priests” (Bulletin Insert) (Exodus 19:5-6). 5 Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to me. 6 And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.” God wanted humanity in his family. He was restarting with one group—Israel. If they were loyal believers, they would be a blessing to all the other nations (Genesis 12:3). 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
There’s one more angle to understanding this covenant. God’s laws also weren’t about being good enough to make God love them. God already loved Israel (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). 7 “The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! 8 Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors. That is why the Lord rescued you with such a strong hand from your slavery and from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He had supernaturally enabled the elderly Abraham and Sarah to have a child from which Israel, in time, would come. Having a family was the whole point. God didn’t create a list of rules so they would qualify as family. They were his family. God’s laws were designed to help his children avoid other gods and live happy, peaceful lives with one another, not to improve God’s disposition toward them.
True to form, God would not dismiss their free will. He just asked that they believe in him—who he was, and that he had created them out of love—and to forsake all other gods. Any member of Israel could reject God’s love if they wanted. They could choose not to believe. They could choose to worship some other god. As we’ll see, many did just that.
and (Bulletin Insert) (Exodus:The Downward Spiral
You’d think that after God brought Israel into the land, the Israelites would have felt an overwhelming love for God—their believing loyalty would be at an all-time high. Not so much. It became a downward spiral. Instead, they decided that co-existence with evil could work. They refused to drive idolaters (people who worshipped other gods with idols) out of the land. It’s like the Israelites knew nothing of the past, how rebellion brings disaster. Their disloyalty and lack of love for God led to this demoralizing scene in Judges 2:1-3: (same as in Exodus)
The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said to the Israelites, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I swore to give your ancestors, and I said I would never break my covenant with you. 2 For your part, you were not to make any covenants with the people living in this land; instead, you were to destroy their altars. But you disobeyed my command. Why did you do this? 3 So now I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides,[a] and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.”
God had to judge his people . . . again. He basically said, “I’m out of here. Let’s see how you do on your own since you don’t want me.” We’ve seen that before. And, as we’ve seen before, God’s people did very poorly without their God being present. And since we’re rehashing history, God’s response also looks familiar—he kept coming back to Israel to lift them out of trouble. We all know people like that. Maybe you’re one of them. You stick to helping someone because of love, even to the point that it seems irrational. And if you think about what God was doing, it does seem insane. But God wants a human family even when he’s unwanted. His love defies logic.
The whole biblical book of Judges, from which the scene above was cited, is about a seemingly never-ending cycle of spiritual rebellion, the suffering it brings, crying out to God for help, and God coming back in love. That cycle persisted for a few centuries. Then, finally, it reached a climax when the people within the nation of Israel demanded that Samuel, a priest, and prophet, anoint a king to rule them.
Samuel: s laws with him (Deuteronomy:David’s son, Solomon, was the greatest king in Israel’s history (if land holdings and wealth are the litmus tests). But, sadly, his believing loyalty in the true God wavered. He sacrificed to other gods and had a series of political marriages that brought the worship of other gods into Israel (1 Kings 11:1-8). In other words, Solomon began a cycle of spiritual compromise and rebellion that led to national ruin.
The Final Betrayal
Kings: Kings: As the Bible says in Numbers:I like the analogies because the Assyrians had a well-deserved reputation for cruelty. They scattered the ten tribes throughout the ancient world, breaking up families and robbing them of everything they owned. (It reminds me of another Star Trek analogy as being the Borg…Resistance is Futile; you will be assimilated.) The two remaining tribes in the southern part of the nation were conquered by the Babylonians a little more than a hundred years later (586 B.C.). As a result, thousands of Israelites were forcibly exiled to Babylon. However, they were permitted to keep some traces of their Jewish culture. A remnant returned to Jerusalem from this group to rebuild the walls and, eventually, the temple. The remaining ten northern tribes were not brought back to Israel until Pentecost, when all the world nations were brought together under Christ.
Let’s be honest. We’d understand if God forgot about his people at this point. They had rebelled repeatedly for well over a thousand years since the time of Abraham. So it’s hard to avoid the conclusion they got what they deserved. But that isn’t how God works.
Rather than just calling it quits, God decided that He still wanted a human family. But getting his people—and the rest of humanity—back into his family required a change of tactics. God had made a series of covenants with his people. But people are, obviously, mere humans. They fail. . . a lot and with predictable regularity. The rest of humanity had been assigned to supernatural beings (the “sons of God”; Deuteronomy 32:8). When the Most High assigned lands to the nations, when he divided up the human race, he established the boundaries of the peoples according to the number in his heavenly court.[a] These supernatural rulers had become enemies of their creator, the God of Israel. Things were complicated.
oming of his Spirit (Jeremiah:But the “new day coming” didn’t address the question of how God could honor the older covenants without scrapping or changing them. A lot of Israelites rejected God and worshipped other gods. They showed their contempt for him by breaking his laws. This grieved God. He wanted to honor his promises, but so many of his children were seduced into worshipping the gods of other nations.
That was the path of death. Remember, because of what had happened in Eden, every human being was destined to die and not have eternal life unless they turned to the true God and believed in his love and promises. Far too many Israelites forgot all that. They couldn’t just pick and choose gods whenever they felt like it from a spiritual buffet. They had to believe in the true God and keep believing.
The situation was especially problematic when it came to Israel’s kings. God had promised David that his heirs would inherit his throne, but many of them turned away from him. God couldn’t ignore this lack of believing loyalty. He also couldn’t just scrap his promise. That would be like admitting the whole thing was a bad idea—and a God who knows everything can’t have a bad idea.
So how could God honor his promises to a people who had rejected him and were estranged from him? They needed new hearts. They needed his presence to guide them. What was needed was a descendant of Abraham and David, who could be the ultimate king and perfect imager of God. That descendant also needed to overturn the curse of death on the human race. But how could a mere human conquer death? He’d have to be God as well. How was all that supposed to work?
No problem....with God…
I realize we covered just a summary of the family and nation of Israel…but that is by design. These first three messages prove that God wanted a family, regardless of how we respond to Him in return. God would have to become one of us to have the human family he desired and loved. That is precisely what happened. “What does God want?” We will see that God Joined His Human Family. Please read John 1:1-18 & John 3:16-17 in preparation for next week.