Rebuild by The Barking Fox

The Spectrum of Redemption

Redemption is one of those words we repeat in the context of our faith, but do we know what it means? More importantly, do we know how it connects us across time, distance, and culture to the heart of our Redeemer - and to the others he is redeeming? 
Psalm 103:6-13; John 4:22, 19:7; Acts 6:33-42; 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, 5:1-8, 15:20-28
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: The Spectrum of Redemption
 
Paul teaches that, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed,” and therefore we should celebrate the feast of Passover. Many followers of Messiah Yeshua now do exactly that. They have found that Passover isn’t merely a Jewish feast, but is actually a living remembrance and faithful demonstration of the redemptive story God initiated through Abraham and the nation of Israel long ago.
Surprisingly, Paul’s Passover comment appears in the context of a rebuke. He upbraids the Corinthian believers for tolerating, and even boasting about, a scandalous incident of sexual impropriety. This comes on the heels of his harsh criticism of the divisions within the Corinthian community of faith, with factions proclaiming their attachments to Paul, Apollos, Peter, or Messiah. We surmise that these factions acted arrogantly toward one another, each upholding their revered teacher as superior to the others. Being so divided, they were open to the grievous immorality Paul addressed. That’s the context of his Passover declaration:
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:6-8 ESV
What the apostle means is that Yeshua’s followers have missed the point, not only of the feast, but of their redemption. As he says,
Is Christ (Messiah) divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
1 Corinthians 1:13 ESV
This is the core of our Christian faith handed down through the ages. Our connection to the Creator comes through his initiative in connecting to us. We could not reach him on our own, but he fixed the problem by becoming human like us, paying the penalty for our transgression, and defeating death so that we could, though him, gain eternal life. We were not only saved from destruction, but redeemed to join with our Creator and serve him for eternity.
This is the beautiful hope we sing about in our hymns, spirituals, gospel songs, and worship sets. It’s what we’re supposed to remember at this time of year, when we observe Passover, eat unleavened bread, and celebrate our Messiah’s resurrection as the firstfruits of those who sleep in death.
The irony of our faith is that we received it from our Jewish brethren, but they do not share it. That is, they do not share the reverence for the Divine Messiah even though they celebrate the same redemption story at this same time of year. The sad irony is that we, though brethren in the faith, regard one another as strangers and outcasts.
John summarizes the Jewish position on this matter is his gospel. He records the Jewish leaders declaring, “We have a law, and)according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” (John 19:7) That is still the Jewish position, and it’s why traditional Christian evangelism has little impact on observant Jews. This wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction to the upstart rabbi from Galilee, but a response to the Babylonian exile. The exile happened because of blatant idolatry practiced by both Houses of Israel. When the Jewish exiles returned, they determined to guard against that error – an insidious error in a world where Pharaohs, kings, and Caesars claimed to be gods. Messiah would come from God, but to the mainstream sects of Second Temple Judaism, it was inconceivable that Messiah would be God in the flesh.
That is the baggage our Jewish brethren carry. It may be that God chose to reveal Messiah to uncircumcised Gentiles because they did not have that baggage. The good news that God had come down from heaven to redeem the world found fertile soil in pagan hearts. We know from the Christian transformation of the ancient world, and from our own testimonies, that the message is true. If it were not, then it would have come to nothing long ago.
And yet, we have baggage of our own. When we listen to those wonderful songs of faith, we hear about going to heaven, crossing the Jordan, entering Beulah Land, walking golden streets in the New Jerusalem, and other expressions of our eternal hope. It is right to sing of such things, but what Yeshua said to the Samaritan woman applies still to us:
You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
John 4:22 ESV
We know the King, but we have little knowledge of his Kingdom. That’s why, through the ages, we have looked to Rome, Constantinople, Moscow, London, Salt Lake City, and other places as the temporal centers of our Christian faith. Jerusalem, if we think of it, is a spiritualized place in the age to come, not the physical capital of the very real nation of Israel in the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants.
That is our baggage, and the reason we desperately need the connection with our Jewish brethren. They have always known that God’s redemptive promises involve an actual people, a body of laws and instructions established by the Creator, and a geographical location. We know this is true because the Jewish people, as the visible remnant of Israel, have clung tenaciously to the Torah, have survived to be resurrected as a nation, and have returned to the land God gave their ancestors. If this were not of God, then they would have ceased to exist long ago.
This is the spectrum of redemption. At one end are the people to whom God has revealed his King, and at the other are the people to whom he has revealed his Kingdom. The revelations have matured separately for reasons only our God fully knows. We are blessed to live in the time when those revelations are becoming one. This is the moment of redemption for Israel and the nations which all creation has awaited since time immemorial. As always with the things of God, we can choose what to do with it. Let us choose wisely.
 
Cover photo by Vlad ION, March 27, 2022, Snegiri, Moscow Oblast, Russia, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Navigating the Narrow Path

This path of life our God wants us to walk is filled with hazards. The most dangerous hazards are the ones that look perfectly safe, but lead us off the path. 
Leviticus 6:8-8:36; Jeremiah 7:21-8:3, 9:23-24; Malachi 3:1-4:6; Proverbs 6:16-19; Matthew 5:14-16, 7:12-23; John 8:12, 13:34-35; 14:15
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Navigating the Narrow Path
 
Did you ever notice that the path of the Kingdom is easy to miss? Even those who are walking on God’s path seem to be ever in peril of slipping off. Stray too far to one side and there’s a tendency to lapse into lawlessness. Stray too far to the other side and the danger is legalism. These are labels we throw at people who don’t believe as we do, and whose lives reflect values we deem incompatible with true service to our Creator.
What exactly is true service to our Creator? The answer is in the Torah he gave to Moses. The Torah is more than law; it’s the body of instructions, commandments, and standards of righteous conduct God first explained to Israel so that his chosen nation of priests could carry it to the world. That’s what being the light of the world is all about, as Israel’s Messiah Yeshua said both of himself and of his followers. And yet we, just like our Hebrew spiritual ancestors, still tend to miss the point – which means we tend to emphasize our particular interpretation of righteousness as the only correct one.
Here’s an example. For most of Christian history, and even today in much of the church, the emphasis has been on what Yeshua and the Apostles taught, not on Moses and the Prophets. The Torah, and especially the so-called “ceremonial law” of sacrificial offerings and ritual cleanness, has been considered irrelevant. What we have missed is that Yeshua and the Apostles drew from Moses and the Prophets, including the instructions about the Temple service and priesthood. Since there has been no Temple and no functioning priesthood for nearly 2,000 years, we have lost the best example of what it means to be holy, separated to the Creator. That brings us to our present day, when certain segments of the church emphasize God’s saving grace to the point that even the most egregious errors are justified or ignored. That partially explains why 67 million or more babies have been aborted in the United States since 1973, including those lives lost since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. The truth is, no law can prevent people from doing whatever they want if their hearts are set on it.
Abortion isn’t the only problem, of course. There are many things God calls abominations, meaning practices that grieve his heart, but we categorize them into “acceptable” and “unacceptable” abominations. The unacceptable abominations are the ones we don’t admit to doing, but the acceptable ones are what everyone does, or at least excuses. Maybe it would be better if we ask God what’s on his list, and whether any of them are acceptable. His list of abominable categories is in Solomon’s proverbs:
There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19 ESV
It’s interesting that some of the most obvious things on our “unacceptable abominations” list don’t appear on God’s list. That doesn’t make those things any less grievous to him, but it does give us reason to consider whether we really understand and practice God’s priorities. If we don’t do that from time to time, we end up doing things he never intended, and miss completely what matters most to him. He explained that to ancient Israel through his prophets. Here’s an example from Jeremiah:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.”
Jeremiah 7:21-26 ESV
Jeremiah delivered this message to Judah in the days after the great revival under King Josiah. The Temple was still operating according to the procedures Moses had explained in Leviticus. The priesthood and the Levites knew their jobs, the sacrificial offerings were going up daily, and the people thought all was well. Yet the façade of holiness masked the lawless core of the people and the nation, just as it did in the days of Messiah Yeshua, when he spoke similar indictments.
The lesson for us is this: there is no substitute for loving the Lord and obeying his commands. Messiah Yeshua said as much when he said if we love him we would keep his commandments, and gave as his most important commandment that we love one another as he has loved us.
It’s good to understand what the priests do and discuss how things will be when the Temple is in operation again, but that’s not as important as learning how our God wants us to live, and then making the effort to live that way. That’s how we get ready for that day when the Lord whom we seek comes suddenly into his temple.
 
Cover photo by Joyce G, September 16, 2020, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

The Protocol of Reconciliation

Somewhere between cheap grace and letter of the law is the path our Creator has charted for us to be at peace with Him and with others. 
Leviticus 1:1-6:7; Isaiah 43:21-44:23; Luke 17:1-4; 1 John 2:1-6
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: The Protocol of Reconciliation
 
Not long ago I caused offense to a good friend. It happened in a public meeting when I asked a question of the speaker. Although I tried to word my question carefully to avoid offense and misunderstanding, the offense came all the same. My friend was so wounded that she couldn’t help but speak out loudly. At that instant, I and everyone in the room knew that something was wrong, and that my words were the cause.
I was not able at that moment to deal with the offense. Our speaker was already answering me, and when he was done he turned to another question. Nevertheless, a little voice inside my head kept telling me, “You’ve got to make this right.”
There was never a question about dealing with my trespass; I was definitely in the wrong and my friend needed to be made whole. The question was when and how. Since the offense happened in a public forum, it was proper that my corrective action be public as well. That’s why I determined to address the issue as soon as I had the microphone again.
As one of the hosts, I was expected to step in as soon as our guest was finished with his presentation and introduce the next item on the agenda. That gave me the opportunity to acknowledge my error to the group and apologize to my friend. She graciously forgave me, and all was made right.
I hope that I never offend my friend, or anyone else, again. However, the probability is that at some point someone will find something I say or do disagreeable and take offense. It might be that their offense is not because I have done something wrong, but because I have done something right and they don’t like it. If so, then there is little I can do to fix the problem. However, it’s just as likely that I will be in the wrong, and if so it’s up to me to go through the protocol of repentance and reconciliation. We learn that from Messiah Yeshua in teachings such as this one Luke recorded in his gospel:
Then He said to the disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”
Luke 17:1-14 NKJV
As always, Yeshua was expounding on principles God first explained through Moses. The Torah is filled with instructions about how to make things right with God and with other people, but we tend to get bogged down in the details and miss the principles behind them. The first chapters of Leviticus, for example, contain instructions for the various offerings the priests are to present to God on the altar. If we’re not paying attention, we’ll miss the fact that everyone among God’s people of Israel at some point is required to bring an offering. The priests present the offerings on the altar, but it’s the people who bring them. There are designated sin offerings for the priests and leaders, for common people, and for the congregation as a whole. The context of these offerings is in atonement for something done unintentionally or in ignorance – in other words, an offense that happens by mistake, like the one I caused for my friend.
The principle is that offenses must be made right both with God and man. Leviticus establishes a protocol for this, of which the offerings on the altar are only one part. The altar protocol will be reestablished when there is a new Temple in Jerusalem, but it’s as yet unclear whether it will be only for Jewish people, or for anyone who wants to bring an offering. Even so, the protocol still applies to everyone, and especially to all who are included in the Commonwealth of Israel, both Jews and Greeks, as Paul says.
Lest there be any doubt, compare these instructions from Moses with Yeshua’s teaching. It might help to pay attention to how much, or how little, is said about bringing a sacrificial offering:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely—in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby—if he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely, he shall restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt. And he shall bring to the priest as his compensation to the Lord a ram without blemish out of the flock, or its equivalent, for a guilt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord, and he shall be forgiven for any of the things that one may do and thereby become guilty.”
Leviticus 6:1-7 ESV
We Christians know a little about atonement, or propitiation, as in Messiah Yeshua “is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Yes, Jesus paid it all, as the hymn says, but we still have the responsibility to do our part. The protocol of reconciliation isn’t simply a ritual God created, but a mark of our obedience and maturity in him.
 
Cover photo by mark tulin, Palm Springs, California, July 27, 2021, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

But First, Abiding

The Bible says the devil knows his time is short and therefore he's full of wrath. God, however, has no lack of time. That means God is never in a hurry - which might be one reason he wants his people to take a day off every week.
Exodus 35:1-40:38; Ezekiel 45:16-46:18; Mark 2:23-28; John 15:1-11
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: But First, Abiding
 
When a Christian leader as highly regarded as Charlie Kirk writes a book about Christians observing the Sabbath, it’s reasonable to ask why. As Charlie himself says, “I desire to bring all humanity back to God’s design to rest for an entire day. To cease working, to STOP, in the name of God.”[1]
It’s easy to go straight from here to the old argument that keeping the Sabbath, or Shabbat, is a Jewish thing that no longer applies to Christians. If we do that, though, we miss the deeper meaning behind this sacred place in time that God set apart for his creation. In fact, we miss something fundamental about our Messiah’s intent for our relationship with him and with one another. It’s the element of abiding.
Yeshua talked about that in his last conversation with the disciples before the cross. John reports that conversation like this:
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
John 15:4-11 ESV
Abiding is the opposite of doing. We are created to do works, of course, but if those works are to be of lasting value and glorifying to our Creator, we first have to understand what He wants us to do, and then learn how to do it. It also helps to be rested and ready to take on the challenges of the doing. And while we’re in the midst of the doing, we might need to know how to recognize God’s communication so we know when he tells us to make adjustments. We can’t do that unless we have become accustomed to hearing from the Lord, which is another benefit of abiding in him.
This is the consistent lesson of the scriptures. The first thing our original ancestors did was rest as the Creator rested. Having breathed them into existence, God walked with them in the cool of the day as they all rested from labor. That unhurried, undisturbed communion with him equipped Adam and Eve to embark on their task to subdue the earth as the first day of the week dawned. When we look at it this way, we begin to understand why Yeshua said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
We might get the impression from reading the Gospels that the Sabbath is all about rules and legalism, and it was for some people in Yeshua’s day. We point fingers at those Jewish leaders for their legalism, but then we establish a rule-based legalism of our own, only on Sunday instead of Saturday. The truth is, any religious observance more encumbered with human traditions than infused with God’s Spirit can be nothing more than a legalistic exercise. That’s why we have to learn the discipline of abiding.
Yeshua didn’t make this up on his own. He simply reminded the people of his day what Moses taught. When we study Exodus, we see the emphasis God continually placed on the Sabbath. Even before the Israelites reached Sinai, God was commanding Moses to teach them not to work on the seventh day. In other words, to abide in him. If the people had taken that lesson to heart, they might have been content to abide in him the whole time Moses was on the mountain receiving the Torah. Instead, they got anxious and decided they had to do something, so they created a golden calf to worship as their image of God. That’s why Moses had to go back up the mountain and receive the Torah a second time. When he returned, the first thing he did was to remind them about abiding:
Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them, “These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do. Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.”
Exodus 35:1-3 ESV
That part about being put to death is probably what we Christians get concerned about when discussion of the Sabbath comes up. It is a serious command, but what’s more likely to happen is that those who disregard this solemn rest end up putting themselves in an early grave through anxiety and exhaustion. That’s why our Creator is concerned about us taking time off for a whole day so we can recharge with him. As he said,
You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, “Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.”
Exodus 31:13 ESV
This is what Yeshua was explaining to his disciples. What better sign can there be of connection with our Creator than making it a priority to abide with him before we do anything else?
[1] Charlie Kirk, Stop, In the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life (Winning Team Publishing, 2025), xiv.
Cover photo by Jon Tyson, June 13, 2025, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Pressed into Light

Are we really the light of the world? What exactly does that mean - and how do we do it?
Exodus 27:20-30:10; Ezekiel 43:10-27; Isaiah 6:8-13; Matthew 5:14-16, 6:22-23, 13:10-17; 2 Timothy 3:1-17; Hebrews 12:25-29
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Pressed into Light
 
The world is such a dark place that it takes considerable effort to imagine the coming age when the light of the heavenly realm floods our reality. The first question might be whether we go to that heavenly realm, or heaven comes to earth. Perhaps the answer is both. What’s more important, though, is preparing ourselves to be part of that realm of light. And what better way to do that than here in this dark place, where the little light we have can shine all the more brightly?
Our Creator is the source of all light, of course. That should be easy to grasp – as long as we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand. Those who lack such ability to comprehend God are the people we might call heathen and sinners. They are the blind ones stumbling around in the dark, groping for answers, always learning, but never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth, or so we suppose. But are the heathen really the people God means when he talks of those who can’t or won’t perceive his light?
This can get uncomfortable very quickly. The truth is, it’s God’s people who are the blind, deaf, and uncomprehending ones. That’s the testimony of Moses, Isaiah, Paul, and Messiah Yeshua about the very ones the Creator called out from the nations to be his light in the world.
Let’s take at face value what scripture says about people called out of the world and into covenant with the Creator. They are called Israel, whether they are Jewish or not. The important thing is that these are people who wrestle with God and man and prevail, meaning they succeed in moving out of this world’s darkness and into the Creator’s light. It’s not helpful that both halves of God’s Covenant people keep trying to exclude one another from his Covenant, even though the evidence of the light is on and in both. Neither are the source of the light, but the way they conduct their lives indicates that the light of the Creator burns with the fuel they contribute.
That’s the pattern Moses described in the instructions for the Tabernacle and the Aaronic priesthood. God gave the people of Israel the responsibility to bring pure beaten olive oil for the light. The oil wasn’t the light; it was the fuel the priests used in the lamps of the menorah. Yet even that wasn’t the light; the menorah was simply the means by which the light was diffused throughout the sanctuary. The light itself was neither liquid like the olive oil, nor solid like the menorah, nor gas like the air filling the holy place. Light, along with heat, is the product of those elements coming together and being consumed in a self-sustaining chemical reaction.
That’s the simple explanation of fire. We might be satisfied with that explanation if we were simply material beings, but we’re not. Our existence extends beyond this physical plane, connecting at a profound spiritual level with our Maker. There’s a reason scripture describes him as a consuming fire. That makes him perilous and uncontainable, much though we like to think we can put him in a box – or in a house dedicated to his Name. We can’t fit him into our human institutions, such as denominations, yeshivas, and governments. We wouldn’t even be able to comprehend him if he hadn’t revealed himself to us through the ages. Yet he not only reveals himself, but he has also chosen to become one of us so that we humans can be the living expression of the Creator into his creation.
What that means is that we, the images of God, become the light of God through the intimate connection he established. We come closer to understanding that connection as we enter into relationship with our Messiah. After all, he is the one who said we are the light of the world – which means we are that pure olive oil put into the lamps to fuel the illumination of God’s creation.
That’s nice to think about until we realize that he is the fire that consumes us. It’s not just that he consumes all our impurities. That’s an essential part of the process. The trials and troubles we face in life are not simply the result of sin. Even if our first ancestors had never rebelled against the Creator, he still would have found a way to mature and purify us to be vessels worthy of his Presence. Our sin and rebellion simply complicate the process. That’s because our first inclination is still to preserve ourselves at all costs and cling to sovereignty over our own tiny portion of creation.
This is why our Creator indicts his people for claiming to be enlightened while actually being blind, deaf, and insensitive. That’s something our Messiah said: if our eye is bad, then the light we think we have is actually darkness. We’re not really illuminating the world with the Creator’s light, but with some kind of false light that leads us off his path of true light and life.
As usual with the Creator whose ways and thoughts are so far above our own, this is a paradox. We’re supposed to be consumed by his fire, and yet we remain in existence just like the burning bush Moses encountered. We’re supposed to be bruised and crushed to produce the pure oil for the Creator’s fire, yet that bruising is what makes us capable of replicating his light. We’re made in his image and have the freedom to act like little gods, but if we do we miss his light altogether and end up corrupting whatever we touch.
We’re always in peril from one side or another – either the consuming fire of our God, or the deceptive consumption of our sin. The remedy is to make him our highest priority. That’s why we pray, meditate on his word, and associate with others who love him. We don’t know exactly what this will mean in the age to come, but we do know that it pushes back the darkness of our present reality.
 
Cover photo by Tal Surasky, September 16, 2021, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Why Freedom?

We say that God is love, and He is. It would help, though, if we understood what that means - and what it costs.
Exodus 25:1-27:19; 1 Kings 5:12-6:13, 12:1-19; 2 Samuel 20:1-26; Matthew 26:47-54; Romans 11:29; Hebrews 8:8-12
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Why Freedom?
 
What are we to think about the fact that the man who drafted workers to build Solomon’s Temple was stoned to death when Solomon’s son took the throne?
The man’s name was Adoniram. We read of him in the account of Solomon’s public works projects, of which the Temple was the beginning:
King Solomon drafted forced labor out of all Israel, and the draft numbered 30,000 men. And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in shifts. They would be a month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the draft. Solomon also had 70,000 burden-bearers and 80,000 stonecutters in the hill country, besides Solomon's 3,300 chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work. At the king's command they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones.
1 Kings 5:13-17 ESV
We first read about Adoniram in 2 Samuel 20, which tells us he held that same position as the man in charge of forced labor under King David. If we wonder why such a position was necessary in the kingdom ruled by the man after God’s own heart, we need only read what happened in the previous chapters. All was not perfect in David’s kingdom. His son, Absalom, raised a rebellion that nearly toppled David from the throne, and no sooner had that been put down then a Benjaminite named Sheba renewed the rebellion. That’s the context in which we read of how David organized his kingdom in the latter part of his reign, with his cousin Joab as commander of the army, Benaiah as commander of the foreign mercenaries, and Adoram (which is Adoniram) in charge of the forced labor – along with Zadok and Abiathar as high priests, and Ira as David’s personal priest.
Even in David’s reign, Israel was organized and functioned just like the other kingdoms of the earth, although still retaining special status as God’s chosen nation. After all, the gifts and the callings of God cannot be revoked. That doesn’t mean those who walk in God’s gifts and callings are immune from human failings. Individuals and nations remain susceptible to temptation and diversion from God’s perfect way if they are not wary.
That’s how Israel’s Golden Age featured a man whose job was to compel God’s Chosen People to do the work not only of building his Holy Temple, but whatever other public works projects seemed wise to the monarch. For about fifty years, Adoniram was the face of the realm for the masses who had to send their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers to serve for a month at a time at labors dictated by far away bureaucrats in Jerusalem. Did those Israelites consider how closely their lives resembled the lives of their ancestors who were compelled to give their labor to projects dictated by officials in Pharoah’s service? No wonder they rebelled and split the kingdom when Solomon’s son Rehoboam chose to harden his heart just as Pharaoh had when Moses confronted him.
Lest we blame those ancient Israelites too quickly, we should recall our own history. There is no such thing as an everlasting utopia of human making. However splendid our creations, they are sown with the seeds of their own destruction. When those seeds sprout and mature, they bring the downfall of families, institutions, businesses, nations, and global orders. It’s the inevitable result when God is removed from the throne.
It’s ironic that the Creator of the universe steps aside when anyone, including his redeemed children, decide to do what only he can do. When the people of Israel rejected him and demanded a human king, he had Samuel the Judge warn them what would happen, and then let them proceed. Adoniram’s career was merely the fulfillment of that solemn warning. The people traded the God who asked them to choose him of their own free will and opted for a human government that ran roughshod over their free will. That’s the difference between the Tabernacle in the wilderness, where God specified that people be given the choice to contribute their material goods and labor to its construction, and the Temple, where the labor (and perhaps the materials as well) were levied as taxes.
Our Creator made his universe to function through relationships. People are supposed to align with him and with one another through love freely given and freely received. Alignment can be achieved temporarily through coercion, but such enforced alignment cannot endure. In time, those whose love is forced from them will find ways to change the equation, perhaps by seizing the reins of power themselves and starting the cycle all over again.
This is why God must be king over us, and why we must choose him of our own free will. That’s the outcome promised in the New Covenant, when we won’t have to tell people to get to know the Lord because we will all know him. He won’t force himself upon us. That much we know from Messiah’s example, when he chose not to call legions of angels to rescue him, but willingly laid down his life for our sakes. God can do this because he holds all the cards. He is the God who kills and makes alive, who wounds and heals – not because he is cruel and capricious, but because he is perfecting a creation populated by his image bearers.
If we have learned anything from these thousands of years of our collective story, it is that we humans fail. We can’t even pass our values from one generation to the next without corruption. If we want to survive, we really have no choice but to submit to the unchangeable, incorruptible Being who alone is capable of ruling over us. Eventually we’ll make that choice freely and willingly. How much more pain we must endure before then depends largely on us.[1]
 
[1] Dr. Douglas Hamp provided inspiration for this commentary from his forthcoming book, The Relational Universe: Why Relationship, Not Matter, Comes First (New York: Staten House, September 15, 2026).
 
Cover photo by Christopher Stites, December 28, 2024, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Looking Beyond Offense

Living for God isn't about keeping a list of rules. It's about abiding by the principles behind the rules - which is much more difficult.
Exodus 21:1-24:18; Jeremiah 33:25-26, 34:8-22; Matthew 6:21-26; John 13:34-35; 1 Corinthians 6:1-11; Galatians 3:19; 2 Peter 3:14-18
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Looking Beyond Offense
 
Let’s look into one of those difficult things Paul wrote. We have to be careful, though. If we’re not diligent in seeking the full counsel of the Pharisee Apostle, then we might end up twisting his words, which ignorant and unstable people do, as Peter the Fisherman Apostle warns us. It’s not that they have an evil agenda, but simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s the ignorant part; the unstable part is that they might not be inclined to accept correction. That’s when ignorance becomes obstinance, and innocent error becomes defiance.
In this case, the difficult thing Paul wrote is this:
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
Galatians 3:19 ESV
This is one of those passages that occasionally gets presented as proof that Messiah Yeshua did away with the Torah, which is what Paul means by “law”. Actually, it’s more than that; the Torah is God’s instruction on how we humans should live. It’s his designer’s specification pointing us to his concept of how an ideal society filled with people made in his image is supposed to operate.
But then, we turn to the Torah and find things in there that just don’t seem right. Why, for instance, would God have told Moses to include this among his directives?
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
Exodus 21:7-11 ESV
We would be correct to say that regulation of child marriage or slavery isn’t right in God’s ideal society. There is the question of what this really meant nearly 4,000 years ago to cultures very different from our own, but we still can’t get around the point that fathers apparently had the right to commit their daughters to a status that might be demeaning, oppressive, or even life-threatening. Some cultures still do this sort of thing, but our Western culture with its Judeo-Christian foundation has laws that prevent it – at least in theory. Laws don’t prevent people from doing whatever they want to do if they are determined. That’s why we still have a grievous human trafficking problem.
And that’s precisely the point of Paul’s comment that the Torah was added because of offenses. That regulation about child marriage follows the Ten Commandments, when God spoke directly to his people to give them the principles by which he expected them to live. His intent was that they would each take these principles and apply them to their own lives, and come back to him for further instruction when they encountered difficult situations that didn’t easily resolve according to those principles. That was too much for most of the Israelites, though. In fact, it’s too much for just about all of us at any point in history.
Going to God for answers is difficult. It means we first have to acknowledge that he exists, and then have to acknowledge that he has standards by which he expects his human image bearers to live. Then we have to learn what those standards are by studying what he gave us in his word, and by consulting one another and sages and saints of the past to find out how those standards have been applied or disregarded through the ages. All of that requires a lifestyle change. Ideally, it’s a change born of inner transformation, which is what God intended when he said he would circumcise our hearts. That’s another way of saying he would put his Spirit in us so we would have the ability to live by his principles.
Living by the Spirit is better than living by a list of legal requirements. The legal requirements give the bare minimum of acceptable behavior, along with the maximum punishment for unacceptable behavior. Anyone can abide by strict rules, at least on the surface. It’s easy to maintain the appearance of righteousness, at least until we’re caught doing what we know is contrary to the rules. That’s why the rules must remain in place.
Even those who live by the Spirit instead of by the letter of the law still need the rules. Messiah Yeshua taught us that. In fact, the rules he gave us are even more strict – things like not hating someone because that’s the same as murder, and not looking with desire on a woman because lust is the same as adultery. Paul even said it would be better to suffer wrong than to accuse another brother in a court of law.
This sheds more light on what Paul said about the law being added because of offenses. Maybe it’s not so much the offenses we cause God, but the offenses we cultivate among ourselves. If all we’re trying to do is keep our own little fiefdoms intact, then we’ll do the minimum for others. Someone who takes that approach might arrange to give his daughter to a rich man in hope of keeping his family out of poverty. If, however, we take seriously what Messiah said about loving one another as he has loved us, then doing the minimum doesn’t matter. What matters is doing what we can to lift up our brothers and sisters. Someone who does that might see a family struggling to pay the bills and find a way to bless them. That’s how we build the ideal society our Creator has had in mind from the beginning.
 
Cover photo by OSPAN ALI, September 29, 2020, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Meeting the Real God of Abraham

No one wants to be called an idolator. But then, what exactly is an idolator? Maybe the answer isn't in what we worship, but the image of what we profess to worship.
Exodus 18:1-20:26; Isaiah 6:1-7:5, 9:6-7, 2 Kings 18:1-4; Job 23-1-17; Matthew 21:33-41
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Meeting the Real God of Abraham
 
My Mother told an amusing story about a friend of hers whose husband was a pastor. One Friday evening, when our high school football team was playing against one of our chief rivals, Mother saw her friend getting caught up in the action. Her husband, however, was engrossed in a deep theological conversation with one of the men from the church. At one very tense moment, Mother said her friend punched her husband in the shoulder and said, “Stop talking church! It’s time for football!”
This story illustrates why we all admired this woman of God. She was deeply devoted to the Lord and his people, and could relate to people where they were – both in the sanctified setting of church, and in the raw reality of daily life. However, there is another way to interpret this story. The truth is, we exist in a world, or worlds, of our own creation. In these little worlds, we seek to keep things organized according to our own preferences. This is true of both of the most reprobate, godless people, and the most devoted saints. The difference is merely a matter of degree: the reprobates make no pretense of having anything to do with God, while the saints put their godliness on display, and justify or hide those moments when the godly mask slips.
This applies not only to high school football games in Alabama, but to any sports. It’s not that sports are evil of themselves, but they do too easily become idols. In fact, anything can become an idol – even our devotion to our Creator. That happens when we shift our attention from the Creator himself to our image of him. That’s what happened to the bronze serpent Moses constructed at God’s direction to bring healing to the people of Israel in the wilderness. Centuries later, that bronze picture of God’s grace and mercy had become a substitute for the Almighty and an object of worship.
This is what we have always done. Our service is more to the image of God than to God himself. The images take many forms: icons, holy books, relics of saints, and even doctrines and creeds. Anything that places man’s filtered perception of God above the real thing can be an idol. It’s a chronic failure of the human condition. God’s thoughts and ways really are so far above our own that we can never figure him out. There’s something about the eternal, infinite Creator that will always be beyond the capacity of our finite, mortal selves to comprehend or even recognize. We learn that from Job:
Today also my complaint is bitter;
my hand is heavy on account of my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his seat! . . .
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,
and backward, but I do not perceive him;
on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;
he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
Job 23:2-3, 8-10 ESV
This is the man who was blameless in all his ways, yet when he encountered the Living God he was struck speechless at the indescribable glory of the Almighty. Even at this early stage of his ordeal, Job comprehended the vast chasm between his own mortality and God’s infinity. As he said:
My foot has held fast to his steps;
I have kept his way and have not turned aside.
I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;
I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food.
But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back?
What he desires, that he does.
For he will complete what he appoints for me,
and many such things are in his mind.
Therefore I am terrified at his presence;
when I consider, I am in dread of him.
God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me;
yet I am not silenced because of the darkness,
nor because thick darkness covers my face.
Job 23:11-17 ESV
There is hope in those last two lines. Our Creator is terrifying, yet he chooses to make himself known to us, and desires to dwell intimately within us. That’s a thing Moses understood at Mount Sinai, but the native and foreign-born Israelites with him did not. When God spoke the Ten Words directly to them, the experience was too frightening. Beyond the heavenly shofar that vibrated their bones and the cosmic voice that spoke visible words, their terror may have been linked to the realization that this God of the Universe didn’t want to be a component of their existence, but the core of it. That’s why they pleaded for Moses to be their mediator. As long as God’s commands and instructions came to them filtered through Moses, they could continue relegate to God the things he required while maintaining the fiction of being in control of the rest of their lives. In other words, even the direct revelation of God could become another idol.
This is why God became one of us, with the expectation that we would respect his Son more than we respected his messengers. Of course, we know how that has turned out so far: some rejected the Son, some ignored him, and some turned him into yet another idol. We have all done some or all of this. Even those who reverence the Son and, through him, the Father, still are susceptible to relegating him to a compartment of our lives so that we can maintain the fiction of being in control of the rest.
The good news is that our Creator expected this. That’s why this entire millennia-long human story is really the tale of us coming to the end of ourselves so the real story can begin. He’s not seeking devotees who can relegate him to categories of their lives, but intimate partners with and through whom he can govern the universe. That’s why he became one of us. It was the only way to cut through our idols and images and introduce himself as the real God of Abraham.
Cover photo by Jacob Diehl, April 13, 2023, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.