Genesis 1-25 Recap Part II

No, you didn't miss Part I. That will come later, hopefully Friday.

However, today I'm glancing backwards at the latter half, so it seems appropriate to call it Part II. I never said I was a great writer, after all…

This past Sunday night I finished preaching the first half of 50 sermons in Genesis. I'm going chapter-by-chapter, and though the first thought was to go straight through Bible, finishing sometime 13 years from now in Revelation, I'm going to take a break. I'll be more topical for a few weeks, then we'll go to Luke. After Luke, I'll finish Genesis, then back to the New Testament, then back to the Old Testament. The goal is still that, by the end of 13 years or so, I will have preached once on every chapter in the Bible. More than once on a few, but once on every one of them.

Having just done Genesis 1 through Genesis 25, I've spent a good deal of time on Abraham. Not enough to be a great Abrahamic scholar, but enough to be the Almyra area expert. He occupies the latter half of this section of the Bible. He gets chapters 12 through 25, which covers more than the thousands of years of human history that precede him.

Here's a few basics on Abraham:

• 1. He's the first person in the narrative that we have a very definite location for. We can place Babel in Shinar, but not exactly where. Abraham is definitely in a city that we know where was: Ur of the Chaldees.
• 2. He's the first person in the narrative that we can place a pretty good date on. Within about a 100 years, at the least, that is. While I respect the efforts of Archbishop Ussher and look forward to reading his complete works in the year to come, I am somewhat concerned that we cannot quite ascribe precise dates to the first 11 chapters of Genesis. These things are true: they happened. They happened at definite points in history. But when? Abraham, though, has a pretty good date range: 1900-1800 BC. (that's pretty good for a 4,000 year old target.
• 3. He is considered by Judaism, Islam, and Christianity to be the originator of monotheism. Even secular philosophy pegs him with that idea, though the identification is often that he invented it. He's important to all 3 of the major monotheistic religions, to the cults that have bizarred off of them, and so to all of world history. The vast majority of people on this planet are theists of some sort, and most of the monotheists will recognize Abraham as important.

Those are facts on Abraham. There's more in the text, and then even more in the Talmud and Jewish traditions. Islamic and Baha'i traditions provide other stories of Abraham (or Ibrahim), and Christian tradition tends to lean most heavily on Judaism for Abraham (and most Old Testament people).

Here's my thoughts on Abraham: We tend to focus on the great moments in Abraham's life. Whether moments of great faith or moments of great failure, he's always larger than life. There's no sense of the general life of the man.

This is also true when you start digging into the legends. He's teaching his father the falsehood of idolatry. He's here, there, and everywhere.

Yet we need to remember that while Scripture is adequate, it's not comprehensive. Abraham has a lot of life that's unmentioned. He's got thoughts that aren't recorded. I wonder about those. I wonder if he had days of self-doubt, or times that the silence of God was overwhelming to him.

If there were times that he thought "Great nation? Right, I can't even keep up with all my sheep!" "Great name? My shepherds are laughing at me behind my back. Some name! I'll never be anything!"

Maybe he didn't. Maybe he was the great hero that we've always made him out to be. Yet I think he was as human as you or I. He had mediocre days, ordinary days---and the reason his life turns out significant is not because he had a few great days, not because he survived a few great calamities.

It's because he hung on in between. In the days between the great calling and birth, between circumcision and sacrifice, between speaking with God Almighty as a friend and fleeing Abimelech's territory, in the days when he got up, fed sheep, looked for water, and ate a little bread with honey. On the monthly chats with Sarah that there was no baby coming, on the weekly attempts to steer Lot to the right path….

He stuck with it. He fought the monotony and was where he should be. Let us be the same. Let me be the same.

OBU Blogabout: The Finale

In finishing a month of celebrating 125 years of Ouachita Baptist University, they've asked for blog posts about What does Ouachita mean today or how has it helped you get to where you are today?

That's a tough one. If you've read the prior posts in the OBU BlogAbout, both mine and others, you'll get a glimpse of how many of us have gotten where we are thanks to our alma mater. What else can be said?

I've spoken of Ouachita as home, of professors that remain an inspiration, and of friends made and lost along the way. OBU has contributed to the fabric of both our state and our nation, to the heritage and culture, and to the religious tides in Baptist life.

Has my OBU degree opened doors for me? I think so---but I can't guarantee that it opened doors that a UA degree wouldn't have. Have I worked my Ouachita Alumni network? Not too much, but maybe a little. I haven't been called on by our famous political alums, like Mike Huckabee or Mark Darr, for any great purposes. The great religious leaders that sprouted from OBU don't call me for sermon tips. (or with sermon tips, though I could use some )

I was a student at OBU when maintenance, in their infinite quest to fill the hours, built the lovely decorative wall around the main part of campus. It's not one that could be used to keep anyone out or in. I'm not sure what the purpose was for it, other than a hard point to mow against. Yet we had a lot of conversations around campus in those days about "life beyond the wall" and how we lived in a bubble on-campus.

As if the real world couldn't touch us and we weren't actually dealing with it. As if there was no connection between where we were and what we would be. As if it wouldn't echo back in the days to come.

But it does. The academics are there for future access, the relationships are part of life, but the time spent. Ouachita may wall out certain things, but there wasn't spoon-feeding when I was there. We learned to find for ourselves what we needed. It was a time that fed my faith while challenging my faith. The nearest moment to it was the satisfaction of a Boy Scout experience that required a lot of effort to cook a single egg. That was about the best egg I've ever eaten: more for the work than the flavor! Yet OBU was more than physical nourishment and challenge. Really, the stairs up to the 3rd floor of Conger Hall were more difficult than PE courses.

I grew, I learned to fight hard for truth that had been hard won. I learned when the OBU-ABSC relationship was a little rocky that even friends have disagreements and that right was more important than history.

Life beyond the wall hasn't been that much different. The bills are bigger, but the paychecks are a little bigger to pay them. The friends are fewer but deeper. The challenge remains the same:

Take the faith, take the knowledge, take the study and do something with it.

Don't think about the assignment. Write it. Don't consider serving. Put on a t-shirt and get your hands dirty. Don't think about speaking. Get up and say it. Savor the moments that make the life, because it's fleeting.

All this was a part of OBU, but it's a part of every day life now.

What does Ouachita mean today? How am I where I am because of OBU?

Because God works through nouns: people, places, and things are in His hands to accomplish His purposes. Ouachita is that noun for much of what I've learned that I go back to when I'm weak, tired and worn.

It's a good place. I wouldn't trade my years with OBU for anything. Not even a complete elimination of student loan debt

Doug

Saturday Sports Rant: Saves

This week, Mariano Rivera broke the Major League Baseball record for saves in a career. Now, you might wonder just what in the world a save is in baseball. Thinking about this record, I wonder about it as well.

Now, this isn't just about my distaste for the New York Yankees. While my loathing of the Bronx Bombers would be legendary if more people knew about it and it lasted longer, this is about a stat that hovers around 50% meaningless in baseball reality.

Let's look at the definition of a "save" (MLB rules on the web, section 10.19): a pitcher that did not start but finishes a game, pitches at least 1/3 of an inning (gets 1 out), and enters under one of these conditions:

1. A lead of 3 or fewer runs
2. The tying run is on base, at bat, or on deck
3. He pitches at least 3 innings.

So, a pitcher can come into a game after another pitcher has pitched the first eight innings, the offense has provided him a 3-run lead, and as long as he doesn't screw it up and throw a few home run balls, he gets a save.

Really. It's a stat that is awarded as often for just not blowing what your team is on the verge of accomplishing as it is for anything else. Yet now most baseball teams have a specialist in getting saves: he's called a closer.

Here's what happens: the team selects one of their relief pitchers to be the closer. He then almost exclusively pitches in situations that will result in him adding a save to his statistics. If the team is losing, he doesn't pitch. If the team is winning by too much, he doesn't pitch.

Now, I understand the need for someone who can come in calm-headed and straighten out a tense situation. That's valid. However, when you look at baseball history, there's barely a mention of "closer" until the late 70s, and not much until the late 80s. Then, the talk picks up in the 90s through now. Once upon a time in baseball land, pitchers pitched the whole game (they batted too, you American League wimps!) unless something happened to make them leave.

These days, a pitcher goes 6 or 7 innings and then he's done. Give it to the closer. Or to the poor guy that goes in when things are considered beyond fixing.

Where did all this insanity come from? Some, like baseball historians, will link it to Goose Gossage and others. I am not a baseball historian. I blame it on Charlie Sheen.

Why, you ask?

Ever see Major League? The movie, with Sheen, Berenger, and a host of other people….Corbin Bernsen, I think was in it as well. It's a movie that predates Florida baseball teams. The owner of the Cleveland Indians was trying to make the team so bad that no one came, so she could move it to Florida.

Anyway, Sheen plays a good-looking, edgy, pitcher. He's got the looks, the bad-boy attitude, and no baseball stamina. A few innings a night is all he's got. So he becomes the closer. It glamorized the role, and now every team's got to have a closer. That whole "come on the field to rock music" that happens with a lot of closers? Started with Sheen in the movie. Not with baseball necessity.

So, what do I think about this?

Time to dial back the madness. Only award saves that are truly earned: pitcher comes in with the winning run at the plate or on base and it doesn't score. Add that more than 50% of the outs must be by strikeout.  Why?

Not because I dislike Charlie Sheen. Hot Shots remains one of the greatest lousy movies on the face of the earth. Navy Seals was ridiculous enough to keep the world confused about whether SEALS were even real for a few more years. He's been great at being the pretty-boy pain in the neck for years.

What I dislike is how baseball has allowed a low-grade movie to change the face of the game. The stats are padded, the reality of the games as a team effort is downplayed. You read the closing line of a game and you see: winning pitcher, home runs, and save. What about the teamwork that made it happen?

What about the 2B/SS combo that turned 4 double-plays to make it possible? The bunts, the sacrifice fly balls? It's not about the guy on the mound, it's about the nine on the field.

That's my sports rant for the day. Congrats to Rivera for setting a record for a stat that hasn't mattered for the majority of the history of the game. Now, you want to talk about his postseason ERA? That's impressive….

Genesis 23

Ever wonder what you can learn from Abraham buying a grave?

Me too, though there were a few thoughts Sunday night. This is, to me, one of those passages of Scripture that's there more for the historical record than for any specific application.

Which is worth considering for a few moments. Do you understand that sometimes, life is just, well, what it is? There are ordinary, day-to-day life events that we all go through. When you read the Bible, you see people going through extraordinary moments in their life.

Consider this: Eric Metaxas' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is 608 pages. Eberhard Bethge's biography of the same life is over 1000 pages. Yet Pastor Bonhoeffer does not live past middle age, and even so the combined force of these 1600 pages still leaves questions unanswered, events deemed minor left out.

Abraham lives more than 100 years longer than that Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His life is no less integral, in fact it's more important, yet Genesis records his story in 13 chapters. That means that most of the life of Abraham is deemed unnecessary for us to know.

How does that come into life for you or me?

Simple: every day isn't noteworthy. It's really not. You will have some days that you get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, hug your family, eat dinner, and go to bed. Note that I'm not saying this isn't a blessing or the grace of God for you: it is certainly that.

It's just not earth shattering. It's the day-to-day of life, and it feels dull sometimes. We tune in to TV programs that highlight grand moments, that skip past the mundane. Really---you never saw someone sweeping on the Enterprise, did you? No.

You don't see reality, even in reality TV. A biopic will condense a life into 2 hours---you don't get the whole life.

I think that one of the side benefits of the Lord God including Genesis 23 is just this: we see that even the Patriarch Abraham handling business. Boring business.

And we take heart, because we have boring business to attend to. We have the ordinary of life to live through.

That's where our legacy lies. Why?

That's where we see great things, in the sum of the boring things. After all, negotiating for a cave doesn't sound like much, but it's the end of a lifetime of marital commitment. It's the end of a family connection to walk with Christ together. It has to remind Abraham, somewhat, that he's not got too much longer.

Yet we see the life that's left behind. One small step in obedience. One day, followed by another day.

Don't fret that you're plodding. Find the right direction, and plod away. You may take years to grasp what, when you look back, you think should have taken minutes. You can't recover it, and you can't change it. Take it from here and go forward.

Because that's what our heroes of the faith did as well: they were faithful in the little things that bear almost no mention, and when the great moments came, they were ready. Your great moment is coming: have you been faithful in the unknown enough to be prepared for it?

BookTuesday: The Faith of Leap

BookTuesday is the weekly book review feature here on the blog that will, next week, return to Tuesdays.

Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve been the happy recipient of many books for review. While I’m no Tim Challies and don’t guarantee a best seller with a positive review, it’s been very nice to get to voice my opinion on various works. However, sometimes I get a book by committing to write a review and then I dread the writing.

This is one of those times. On the surface, the idea of The Faith of Leap seems like a good one. Too many people who are believers in Jesus Christ in the Western World live very safe lives in their faith. We do not take risks, we do not attempt things beyond our grasp, and we just settle for the basic things that come our way.

Frost and Hirsch want to push readers as people of faith to take risks. To live dangerously rather than to make the same safe decisions we’ve always made. The end-goal is one well worth the having, and if I had a book that would help church members see the Biblical case for charging forward in faith, I’d use it for a teaching series.

Unfortunately, The Faith of Leap isn’t that book. The intent is there, the idea is there, but the weaknesses are just too great for a recommendation. There are three major issues I had with this book:

1. Invented words. This is not just a complaint for this book, for it applies to many of the modern books on religion. We’ve substituted the 17th Century parlance of the King James for invented words that mix Latin, Greek, and English into a hodge-podge that means nothing. Present in this book are words such as “communitas” and “liminality.” The intent of the authors is to delve behind the words that have become clichéd in modern American Christianity, like “community,” but instead the reader is left flipping back for the definition.

Moreover, the invented words system makes it difficult to interact with the work. One of the claims made early in the book is that there are no major works about the concepts in the book. Well, no, if you search English-language writings for the last 400 years, there’s no real mention of communitas. There are a good many about community, brotherhood, relationships, bonds, and so forth---but the authors are right, there’s no “communitas” books. By formulating words, the authors elevate themselves beyond normal readers as great ones. This is counter to the idea of community, and I think it’s counter to “communitas” as well.

2. Quotations and characters. I’m a huge fan of Tolkien and Lewis and the adventure found in their stories. If we could all live as intensely as fictional characters from their works, we’d be in great shape. Who wouldn’t want to be Aragorn or Frodo or Samwise? Arwen or Eowyn? Great stuff.

The authors seem to quote from fictional works, however, nearly as much as they draw from Scripture. If we were looking at an interaction with literature and media, that would be fine. However, the standard for the Christian is God’s Word. Even running 50-50 between sacred and non-sacred text falls short.

Additionally, I fail to see the reason to illustrate with fiction at all. The history of the Christian faith is replete with biographies of those who have risked in obedience to Christ. With John Hus, Jim Elliott, Gladys Aylward, and Lottie Moon, who needs Frodo or Eowyn? We will not live in the days of elves, but we will live in the days of tyranny and religious warfare: from the real lives could come illustration beyond adequate.

3. Orthodoxy. Within the opening chapters, the authors speak of the theological movement called open theism. This is the idea that there are things that God does not know, that God is growing, changing, and sometimes is caught by surprise. This is left standing rather than blunted or denied. The authors present that God takes risks with humanity, pursues actions without knowing the result.

That just doesn’t cut it. Without going Systematic Theology on you or getting Medieval Scholastic on the authors, one of the prime characteristics of God is immutability: God does not change. You want to build a theology of risk? Build it on the foundation that God can sustain you, because He knows what you’re up against, not that God will be just as surprised as you are when it works.

This is where this book breaks down utterly for me: the overall reading left me with the feeling that the church should become spiritual adrenaline junkies. To fly from one extreme experience to another, living extraordinary lives without a shade of boredom.

Except real spiritual life has boring moments, real life carries mundane days, and our faith in Christ can be strengthened through that. We can see that God is ever present, even when we feel nothing.

In all, I can’t bring myself to recommend this book. If you want to build a theology of risk, start with Jim Elliott, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Lottie Moon. Find the adventures of real people living real risks to obey. Let that grow you in Christ. Let it grow you in following a God who takes no risks with you, but holds you closely in His hand.

Genesis 22 Extended

Sunday morning's sermon came from the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22. If you want the audio, it's here to hear. Here's a few additional thoughts:

1. Ritual child-sacrifice was not uncommon in the Ancient Near East. It's really not uncommon in ancient cultures around the world. No matter how common of a practice it was, it's still evil. Going all the way back to the Flood: don't take the life of another. The only exception granted there is for the guilty-in-no-uncertain-terms murderer who is to be put to death for the crime. Majority opinion does not equal right behavior before God. Most of the Canaanites around Abraham would have normally practiced some form of ritual sacrifice, and the record shows that human sacrifice, while not everyday, it wouldn't have been foreign to them.

What have we to do with this? Something to keep in mind is that the God of the Bible is not like most gods of human religion. Without getting too crazy into the history of religion, most religions start with someone seeking meaning in life. They are meditating, searching, whatever---but Biblical religion starts with Abraham who is apparently minding his own business and God speaks to Him. Likewise with Noah. Nobody's really sure what happens with Enoch at all…The point here is that our practices of worship ought to be different from the world around us. They ought to reflect differently on both us and our God, because we are serving God as He requires, not as we desire. That's important. Very important.

2. I firmly believe that the Bible contains all we need to know, though here's a place that I find the Bible does not have all I want to know. I want to know—does Abraham object at all in this situation? He just seems to very willingly take his son up on Moriah and sharpens his knife. If that's the test of faith, one thing I recognize is that I'm toast. As best I can, I would not put my kids in danger much less willingly sacrifice them.

So what about it? We don't get to know. We do get to know the point: whatever Abraham may have said, this story isn't about him anyway. It's about God. It's about the fact that Abraham is told not to put the knife into his son. The story is the foreshadowing of the one time that a Father willfully sacrificed His Son. It happens in the same neighborhood, just about 2 millennia later. At the Cross, when the Lord Jesus took all of our sin and died for us, taking the punishment we deserved.

3. On the less applicable side, let's talk history for a moment. Tradition holds that the mountains of Moriah are in the same general area as Jerusalem. Further tradition places the Temple Mount as the specific peak that the events of Genesis 22 took place on. In truth, there's not clear Scripture to answer this specifically.

I think it might be a shade different. There's another hill in the Jerusalem area that is more significant in the life and faith of Christians than the Temple Mount is. That's the hill called Mount Calvary, or Golgotha, or the Place of the Skull: where the sinless Son of God offered Himself, where God provided Himself the sacrifice (Genesis 22:8).

Reading through Genesis 22 is quite the challenge. There are points of application throughout for all of us. Read it, consider it…what would you do?

OBU Blog-About: Student Life

In the continuing celebration of 125 years of Ouachita Baptist University, we've got a month-long batch of blog posts going up here, there, and everywhere. It's part of the OBU Blogabout, and you can find all the links at this link.

This week's task: write about memories of involvement with Student Life or Campus Organizations. OBU really has some good campus groups: there's ministry groups, social clubs (fraternities and sororities), and specialty folks (like business majors or music majors). I hope you'll check out the link above to the links out there, because there's bound to be some great memories.

I, however, did not really belong to any campus life groups. Didn't pledge a social club (fraternity), wasn't heavily involved in campus BSU/BCM activities, and I really didn't get into much else. That was a choice that was more blundered into than willfully selected, but it was what it was.

So, what am I going to do to fill a blog post?

Tell you about the 2 minutes of playing time I got in intramural basketball for The Flaming Tongues? Not a chance. I'm more fit now than I was then….and that's not good. Tell you about all the reason why I was too awesome for any one social club (fraternity)? Nah---you either already know that or wouldn't believe it.

Actually, as I type this, I can think of one small organization I did belong to. Well, for a time, at least, I belonged. It was a group that existed to discuss, endorse, and recruit people to a specific theological viewpoint. Rather than dig up that whole point and turn this from a good memory to a battle over diphthongs, burnt heretics, and historical theology, I'll try to word this without isolating the issue or group.

We were, really, a small group. Mostly religion majors, though guys like me who kept floating into and out of the religion department (now the Pruet School of Christian Studies, and if had had a cool name then, I would have gone to class more often!) were involved as well. The first time we met as a group, Dr. Buckelew let us use his office for a short meeting.

Then we moved elsewhere, so that he could work and we could have space. Being religion guys, we gathered in the religion department some of the time, and I don't really remember where else we met.

My involvement didn't really last long, maybe a little over a semester. We were really little more than college students who thought they knew everything and that we needed to meet, solidify our arguments, and go show the world why they were wrong. Our points would be irresistible if people had the sense to listen. Really, we were arrogant windbags.

The pivotal moment with this group was when it dawned on me that the professors that allowed us to use their rooms for meetings disagreed with us. They were gracious and calm while we were agitated and angry.

At this point, I don't know if there's a vestige of the group left on campus. For the purposes intended by the students who had started it, I hope there's not. But for the maturity that came from learning better how to handle disagreement that I caught from wiser heads, I hope there's still a few folks around to learn and listen.

After all, that's what college student life is about: an accelerated course in how to handle real life. It's a good thing, and it's a good thing at OBU.