Be Strong and Courageous! by Linden Malki

                                                                                                                                                             
Moses left this advice as Israelites moved into the Promised Land, still dealing with the other people among them:" Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6) There were people still in the land, and there were hostile neighbors, like Moab.

Moab was one of the two tribes that are descended from the daughters of Lot after the destruction of Sodom; they lived in the hills north and east of the Dead Sea. They intermarried with Canaanites and other pagan neighbors, and offered human sacrifices to the pagan god Chemosh. In Judges 3 we read that, with the help of neighboring tribes, they conquered and ruled the Israelites for eighteen years.  As we see repeatedly in Judges, the Israelites had lost touch with God, but they eventually came around to calling upon God for deliverance. Last week Pastor Chris told the story of God's deliverer, Ehud, who took advantage of being left-handed to bring a knife into the Moabite king's presence and kill him.  When he got back to Israel, he blew a trumpet to gather the Israelites, and went to the Jordan River. They blocked all the places that were used to cross the river, and struck down  the Moabites, and  Moab was subject to them for eighty years--in peace.    A century or two later, a famine in Judah led to a family from Bethlehem moving to Moab, and when the father and both son died, the mother  Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth came back to Bethlehem, and Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David. David at one point sent his parents to live in Moab for safety when Saul was harassing David.  After that, they were fighting off and on with the kingdoms of Judan and Israel, and we last hear of them as helping the Babylonians in their conquest of Jerusalem.

The Old Testament tribes and then kingdoms of Judah and Israel were entangled with each other and their neighbors for over a thousand years, and we read of short periods of relative peace amid battles and invasions, politically and religious. All of their neighbors, even the ones of Abrahamic ancestry like Moab and Ammon, and Edom, descended from Esau, were idol-worshipping pagans and religious rivals as well as military threats. After the split between the two groups of tribes after Solomon, all of the kings of the northern kingdom were following their pagan neighbors until they were conquered by the Assyrians in the 700's BC. Some of the remnants became the Samaritans, who did have a tradition of God but who did not recognize the Jerusalem Temple and do not have most of the Old Testament other than the Torah and Joshua. After Saul, David and Solomon, the most obedient kings of Judah in the south were Hezekiah and Josiah; but there were more bad than good ones.  Still, there were enough courageous kings, prophets and people who did follow the instructions God had given Adam, Noah,Abraham and Moses to keep the promise alive.  Yes, it was often a bloody story; but God told Moses very early in the game that  ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ (Numbers 14:18) His Chosen People were often not good at recognizing the dangerous influences of their non-godfearing neighbors, and this was a common problem throughout their history. 

There have always been those who are not good neighbors.  We truly need the words of James in this day: "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.  (James 1:19-21)

"Peace" is harder than it looks!--by Linden Malki

When does "peace" fail?  It can be a very scary situation; often what seems like a good idea has unpredictable results; sometimes better than expected, and sometimes not. We don't usually think of Abraham as being short-sighted, and of course we don't necessarily get the results we expect, but Pastor Matt's telling of Abraham's unexpected consequences remind us of the power of decisions that we make.

The conversation with God over the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah ended the way God knew it would (of course), but there are some interesting points along the way. One is that the conversation seemed to end with the agreement that the presence of 10 righteous men would have been enough  to save the cities.  At that time, there weren't 10, but  the angels pushed Lot and and his family to leave. (His daughters' future husbands turned down the chance,Lot's wife couldn't resist the temptation to look back; the daughters seem to think they were the last people on earth and took matters into their own hands.) The result was two tribes of people who were trouble for the Israelites over hundreds of years--one of them was the Ammonites that David was fighting at the time of the Uriah incident about 900 years later. And it is tempting to ask questions like "Why was Abraham OK with Lot settling in Sodom?"

The longest lasting side-effect historical side-effect of Abraham's attempt at peacemaking was actually Sarai/Sarah's bright idea. Rather than waiting on God to make them the promised heirs of the land, she talked Abraham into taking action themselves. It seemed easy at the time--babies are little and cute, and Abraham had his son, whom he loved. He also had two women who were no longer able to live in the same tents.  We know the story; Hagar was forced to leave, and was miraculously led to a spring that allowed her and Ishmael to survive, and eventually thrive.  Isaac was the answer they should have waited for, and was Abraham's heir.  (Ishmael did keep in touch; we know that both sons together buried Abraham at Hebron.)  Ishmael had twelve sons, and the next we hear from them is as slave-traders who sold their cousin Joseph in Egypt.  They were traders and nomads in the Arabian trading routes, and are said to have become ancestors of the Quaraysh tribe on the Red Sea coast, the tribe of Mohammed. We know that there were Jews and Christians living in that part of the world in the first few centuries of the Christian era; the Christians apparently were mostly from sects that were no longer in touch with the mainstream churches of the Mediterraean population centers, and their theology was affected by writings that were rejected by most of the larger communions.  This is the religious enviroment that Mohammed grew up in, and we find traces of Jewish and unorthodox Christian ideas in the Koran. Ishmael is revered as the ancestor of the Arabs, and there are parts of the Islamic pilgrimage that are based on early stories of Ishmael and Hagar.

History is more powerful than we realize, both good and bad. Things echo down through the years that we're often not aware of.  There are several ideas that live on from Abraham's time that are still part of the Jewish heritage today: one is that 10 men comprise a "minyan" that is the minimum that can meet for prayer and worship; that 10 rightous men in a community protect it from evil, and God's  promise in Genesis 12:3 "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed in you."  We who have been grafted on to this heritage need to appreciate the intercession that God has made through millenia for all of His people.

We find God's strength in challenges! --by Linden Malki

Life is full of challenges! Some people thrive on looking for ways to use their strengths, some wisely, some not so much. One strong character was Joseph, who let his mouth get ahead of his better judgment (if any), and told his brothers about dreams in which he was a sheaf of grain, when the other sheaves bowed down to his sheaf; and when he saw the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him. His older brothers already considered him a spoiled brat, and they hatched a plot that ended in Joseph being sold to slave-traders headed for Egypt and his father led to believe him dead. Joseph met the challenge: he became the head housesold manager for the man who bought him.  That led to the next challenge, which we still see all the combinations and permutations of: a false
accusation of rape, which he met with honor (and was unjustly imprisoned).  He met this successfully as well: he become a trusted manager in the prison. He probably thought he was stuck forever, when a released prisoner got word to the Pharoah that Joseph had the gift of reading dreams. We know the story: Joseph received from God the interpretation of Pharaoh's dream of impending famine, a

nd found himself challenged with the arrangements for dealing with the situation--which led to the reunion with his family, who had been forced to come to Egypt for food during the famine. He could have taken advantage of his family's situation to take revenge, but we find him being the protector of his family in their time of vulnerability.

There are usually two parts to a challenge: "... the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide:  Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. ..(Joshua 1:2-3) And a promise: "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them." Joshua faces a series of challenges: crossing the Jordan River, destroying Jericho, assigning territories to the various tribes,dealing with the pagans who are in the land and the additional challenge of not allowing the Israelites to become involved; and renewing the covenant between God and the people.

Another man who met challenges is one we're not as familiar with: King Hezekiah, who was king of Judah in the 700BC's, when the Assyrian empire conquered and scattered the northern Kingdom of Israel and besieged Jerusalem. He built a tunnel into the walled city of Jerusalem from a spring outside the wall so the city would have water in case of siege (it has been excavated and I have walked through it);  he kept the morale of the city up while the rest of the country was being conquered, and by a miracle, the soldiers around the city were hit by a plague as well as a recall back home; the story of Isaiah's prayer is one of the most dramatic in Scripture: "The angel of the Lord put to death one hundred eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When they woke up in the morning they were all dead." (2 Kings 19:35KJV) Hezekiah is also, unfortunately, an example of a challenge that he flubbed: He was succeded by his son Manasseh, who got heavily involved in pagan stuff until late in his life.  Being challenged is always a risk; God often challenges us beyond what we can do on our own; and sometime we do flub it up. St Paul said this well: "For when I am weak, then I am strong." --because he had learned that God is the source of strength. we

Is It Fun Yet?--by Linden Malki

T he  biggest party in Scripture shouldn't have happened.  It wasn't like they didn't know better; but people haven't changed much in 3500 years. We know the story: Moses has just led the Israelites out of Egypt with a major miracle at the Red Sea. They have moved out into the desert, and have arrived at the base of a mountain (after a few miracles along the way). In Exodus 19, Moses gathers the people together, and God tells Moses to start seriously teaching the people. The people reply:  “We will do everything the Lord has said.” Moses comes down with the Ten Commandments, and finishes with this:  “Tell the Israelites this: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven:  Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold."  Moses makes two more trips up and down the mountain, and each time the people make the same answer. Then Moses set out with Joshua, went up on the mountain of God, and he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

Fast forward to Exodus 32: When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods."  Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. And then..Moses came down from the mountain, and was not happy.  And Aaron had an answer:   So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

The problem with parties is that they can end badly. Three thousand people died by the swords of the Levites, and there was a plague. And Moses had forty more years in the desert with thousands of crabby #7's who never seemed to figure out that what God offers is better than the world's best attempt

We can have good times with good people, who encourage and strengthen each other, people we can trust to have good values and tastes; people who are kind to each other, funny in ways that don't have sharp edges.  We can teach our kids to choose well who they hang out with. We can keep our mind clear and mouth under control. And we have the best banquet--beyond our wildest imaging--waiting for us at the end.