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May 02, 2004
Giving Better than We Get
Giving Better than We Get
I Samuel 11: 12-15 / Matthew 11: 25-30
May 2nd, 2004
The story of King Saul in the Old Testament is one of the great tragedies of history. Probably what you remember best about Saul was his jealousy of David, the shepherd-lad who with his slingshot killed Goliath, the nine-foot-six-inch Philistine giant.
After David killed Goliath, admiring women sang popular songs about him: “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten-thousands.” Saul hated David because of this song. It became a morbid fixation, to kill David. Poor Saul. Something snapped inside him.
But this wasn’t how Saul started out. In the few verses from I Samuel that Lois just read for us, we see he started out as a humble, modest young man. He was tall, good-looking, the very image of a king, except that he was so shy that he hid himself in stacks of baggage when the prophet Samuel came looking for him to anoint him. This is hardly how we think of a king.
But the contrast is pleasing. Imagine a humble king, a humble president, and a self-effacing hero! When they found Saul, they brought him out. I suspect he finally realized he didn’t have the right to hide any longer. He had to face his adoring public. What was the look on Samuel’s face when he said to Israel, “Do you see whom the Lord has chosen? There is none like him among all the people.” I can just feel Saul squirming. Let me outa here!
But there were some men there who winced for a different reason. They despised Saul. I suspect it was because he was from the Tribe of Benjamin. What’s wrong with that, you ask?
Men from the Tribe of Benjamin had committed one of the most heinous crimes in the history of Israel. It was so imaginably awful that it caused civil war in Israel.
Some scoundrels from the town of Gibeah, in Benjamin, gang-raped and murdered a young woman from Bethlehem who was passing through their town. But rather than punishing these rapists and murderers, the men of the Tribe of Benjamin defended them.
We find this hard to imagine. What seems to have happened was that suppression of women had sunk to such a low that men had cauterized their consciences. Their own women were objects, servants, play things. So they looked at this totally helpless young woman whom they did not know, who was passing through Gibeah with a Levite—a man without territory of his own, and did not see a human being. Here was an object they could torment for the fun of it—with total abandon. And their fellow countrymen did nothing. They defended them, treating it as a matter of "honor."
The cauterized consciences of the men of the Tribe of Benjamin precipitated a civil war in which their whole tribe was almost destroyed.
I must digress here to remind us all how fragile a thing is conscience. Conscience is an inner voice. But it may be the voice of God or the voice of the devil. We choose who speaks in our consciences.
NBC Primetime recently had a depressing exposé of cheating as it is taking place on high school and college campuses. The interviews showed that young people who said they believed that cheating was wrong did it anyway in order to “make it” in a competitive society. They cheated, they said, in order to make it in the world we adults have created. How fresh in our memories are the business executives who cheated to make personal profit! The high school youngsters spoke of a recent president who lied about his sexual misadventure.
The drift towards deceitfulness has penetrated our society. We are consumed with appearances. We deceive ourselves that life's important matters are at the surface, in the shape of our bodies, in the fashions we wear, in the things we own.
Deceitfulness has penetrated even the church. How exhibitionist the church has become in America. We cover over our depths as long as we can, then we explode and everyone is shocked—even though everyone who is shocked hopes his closet door stays locked!
How many other aspects of life in our world are sinking with consequences that would be unthinkable in a society not penetrated with deceit? I seldom speak of these things. But I must now.
In our courts prosecuting has become like big-game hunting. How fearful to be caught in the cross-wires of a prosecuting attorney’s telescopic rifle! We put extravagant, terrible sounding labels on venial offenses against a law that is no longer majestic, and often it is the poor who bear the brunt. We have become the most litigious people in the world, while making up crude jokes about lawyers. Something is amiss in our justice system.
TV programs about cops show our fascination with catching flawed people—so often miserable folk, poor, wretched in misery already. Justice has become what justice is not and we turn away because it is too painful to admit. There is a tide at work here.
Ironically, our right to privacy is a Pandora’s Box with the lid taken off. Sexual looseness is no longer furtive, in private, it is now mainstream—in public. The scum reality TV shows increase because people watch them. Last year’s Super Bowl half-time show was the tiny tip of an iceberg. American society is becoming so coarse that something very beautiful—our alluring, glorious difference as man and woman--is becoming ugly.
But it’s not only a matter of aesthetics and sexual morality that has been set adrift. Babies’ lives are held hostage. Abortion is a major issue on our national scene as a consequence. When the holy ideal of “women’s rights” is mixed with the unholy ideal of total sexual looseness so that terms like “reproductive rights” are coined, we have created an ethical monster. Unborn babies, the most defenseless of people, are the victims. Our unborn have the rights that the young woman from Bethlehem had in Gibeah in this tragic OT story. Any reasonable person from a society that values humanity would see this. But our consciences have been shocked and suppressed. There is a drift in our land we recognize only in periodic moments of alarm.
When women were treated as non-persons by the Tribe of Benjamin long enough, the result was this rape and murder of a helpless young woman with no sense within society that these men did something wrong demanding that they should be held to account. But the rest of Israel was outraged.
What happened in Benjamin? They had the same heritage as the rest of Israel bequeathed to them by generations that learned of ways that please God from Moses. While it is true that "all we like sheep have gone astray," as Isaiah put it, Benjamin went so far astray that such violent and outrageous behavior toward a young woman could go unpunished—even defended.
In the civil war that followed the outrageous defense of the rapists by the tribe of Benjamin, this small tribe was virtually wiped out. The other tribes killed all the women of the tribe. It was revenge on a massive scale for one woman’s rape and murder taken out against women who were already victims of their men's predations.
Killing all the women of Benjamin was also a means of guaranteeing that no more Benjamites would be born. Representatives of the other tribes swore at Mizpah, a place with special significance for oath making, “no one of us shall give his daughter in marriage to Benjamin . . . Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin.” Thus, the tribe that represented their ancestor Jacob’s beloved youngest son was on the verge of extinction.
How unnecessary this was. But here don’t we see a tragically common trait of human nature? By nature we defend ourselves rather than conceding when we have done wrong. We may formally ask God’s forgiveness for sins that we have done that we ought not to have done, and for our sins of omission. But when we’re presented with evidence of particular wrongs, our human nature rises up in self-defense! How shortsighted this is. It need not be.
David wrote in Psalm 32, “When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away . . . I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; . . . then you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
It is so wise to confess our wrongdoing rather than to rush to defend ourselves. Why? For three reasons: First, for our sake. Second, for the good of others. Third, for our peace with God.
Psychological illness arises from consciences that are at unrest. You go to see a psychiatrist because you are depressed. You can’t sleep. You want to be told it is some mysterious syndrome to which someone in the profession has given a name. But hearing this doesn’t help. Your heart is still sick.
Sometimes the cause of depression is a chemical imbalance that can be addressed with medication. I know about this personally. But often enough depression can be traced to a conscience that screams for relief. We are deep and our depths desire to be well.
A very cheap cure is at our right hand. Honest confession of sin, and the warm wash of forgiveness would solve many a soul's distress. Confession is awfully good for the soul.
Second, when guilt metastasizes and takes on a national flavor, terrible things happen in a nation and between nations. Our natural love of country may desensitize our conscience as a nation. How good it would be if America would lead the way in self-examination! What if we as a nation were to stand in front of the world, wrapped in our precious flag and say, not “America right or wrong,” but, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors?!” If only we would dare to do this before rattling our mighty sabers as a deterrent to evil on the other side.
Third, peace with God demands a clean heart. Thus the David prayed at a time when his conscience seethed with torment, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." What peace we often forfeit, because we did not take our sin to God in prayer.
But now back to the men who despised their new king, Saul. They hated him because of the great sin of his tribe. How short their memory was! They forgot what their ancestors did to their second-youngest brother, Joseph. He not only forgave them—after they sent him into slavery, but he was so kind as to see God’s hand of blessing in their evil deed. “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.” Not only did he not take revenge, he said, “Do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.”
This was Saul’s kind of character at the start of his career as king. He would not allow any revenge against these men who despised him: “Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has brought deliverance in Israel.” What magnanimity. What grace! He gave better than he got. He anticipated Jesus.
Jesus said not only, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” He also said, “Come, learn of me for I am meek and gentle of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
If we come to Jesus and learn about justification by faith alone, and about God’s foreknowledge, and about the absolute authority of the Bible and about the importance of proclaiming the Gospel, and about the importance of standing against this or that evil tide in society—but never learn about meekness and gentleness of heart, we have rejected Jesus’ invitation. Meekness and gentleness are honest virtues and bear good fruit.
Paul Tournier, the wonderful Swiss psychiatrist who was popular reading thirty years ago, observed how we foster guilt among each other as a means of coping with our own guilt feelings. We live with hidden fears of criticism, so we lash out with criticism. Criticism of each other is an epidemic. Why? Isn’t it self-defense? If I show you your faults, mine will seem less. How much joy and creativity is throttled by the fear of criticism!
As an antidote to this, a philosophy of “I’m OK, you’re OK” evolved. Instead of censuring even what is really wrong, this ideal says, “if you like it, do it.” What used to be called “situation ethics” developed as the theory supporting this outlook. Situation ethics is the hole at the bottom of the ethical barrel. It offers no guidance. Under its spell a culture drifts away.
The Bible offers a much finer way. We little realize the depths of wisdom in Jesus’ invitation, “Come, learn of me, for I am meek and gentle of heart and you will find rest for your souls.” This was in line with what the prophet Isaiah wrote of him, “A bruised reed he will not break. A dimly burning wick he will not quench.” Paul said, “If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.” “Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Jesus' brother, James, wrote, "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty and insincerity." Where did he learn this? How deep and wide are effects of meekness and gentleness of heart. They are the breeding ground of honesty and every other virtue.
When we do not follow Jesus’ gentle way, we create a hostile church, a hostile world, and deceitfulness becomes the means of self-defense. Deceitfulness is the apparently logical defense against the attack of deceitful people. Deceitfulness is the breeding ground for many forms of evil.
By contrast, if we will, in our hearts, stand before God who knows us inside and out, who loves us with an everlasting love, and say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in ME, and lead me in the way everlasting,” we will be on to something finer.
And this something is contagious!
See that table before us today. On it is the bread, Jesus’ body broken for you and me. There is the cup of wine, Jesus’ blood shed for you and me. Take it not only into your mouth, but also into your soul, and be thankful. And purpose in your heart that Jesus did not die in vain as far as you are concerned. “I will follow You, Lord Jesus.” Let Jesus' way infect you and me.
O Lord God, we thank You for your infinite mercy, giving so lavishly of yourself to us. Give us a like mind as Jesus had. For our sake and Yours, Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)