Obil.

1 Chronicles 23-27 details the jobs that David assigned to various people as part of the Temple-building project near the end of his life. There were men in charge of music and sacrifices, military divisions and the city gates. The Twelve Tribes were reorganized and leaders were assigned. David is transitioning his kingdom from a wartime footing to a peacetime footing in preparation to hand it all over to his son, Solomon.

Obil was in charge of camels. Not the divisions or the musicians or the treasury - just camels. That's what God called him to. Camels.

The thing is, somebody had to watch the camels so that they'd be where they were supposed to be when they were needed. I mean, you couldn't have camels wandering all over Israel could you? In that part of the world, Camels were (and still are to some degree) an important piece of the economy. They provided milk, and meat. They were pack animals, able to endure conditions that would have killed another animal. Camels were the means by which Israel transported goods to market, so they were probably the most important animal in terms of Israel's economy.

But...man. Camels are boring. Not only that, but they're cranky and they STINK. Predictably, there was little status associated with watching camels, or any other herd animal. It was a job for the lower class. Obil would never cross class boundaries to become a leader of the tribe. Watching camels was his lot.

The fact that the passage spends exactly zero time articulating Obil's opinion of his station is telling. Clearly, the Bible doesn't seem overly concerned with how Obil felt about his lot. It simply assumes that some people are called to watch camels, and that there's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, why would any of us assume that we're *not* Obil? Are we so presumptuous as to reject what God calls us to in favor of something that comes with a more promenent status? Why would we think that God would never call us to give up something we love to watch camels?

I think scripture teaches precisely the opposite. It's better to herd camels, if that's what God calls you to, and never aspire to anything else than to spend your life trying to achieve something "better." If you do, then you'll be miserable if you don't attain it, and even more miserable if you do. Doing the ordinary thing that God has called you to, the thing that's right in front of you today, is better than anything else you could be doing at this moment.

Obil watched camels, and I think he was happy.

The Argument for "professional" Pastors...

This may come across as self-serving, but can I make a case for full-time, professional Pastors? By "professional" I mean that he or she gets paid to do it and doesn't do anything else. Let me just say that my wife and I happen to pastor an amazing church full of people who really want to take care of us, so I'm not really writing this for our benefit specifically. It's just a general discussion. Good. Here we go.


First, to answer the question "what do you do all day anyway?" Let's just say that anytime you try to get a large group of adults and about as many kids to all move in the same direction at roughly the same time, you'll have some practical details to work out. By "some" I really mean LOTS. Believe it or not, the work of God actually has a very pragmatic side that your Pastors never expose you to.


Second, people's crisis don't follow bankers' hours. Your Pastors don't shut off their phones at 6pm. If you call me at 2am with a broken heart, I'll answer. I do it all the time. Oh yeah, and we work on Sundays. And Saturdays. And Christmas. No complaints, either. It's the best job in the universe.


Then there's the spiritual point, which actually inspired me to write this. I'm reading 1 Chronicles during my morning devotional time right now, and in chapter 24, after David has made plans to build the Temple, he assigns divisions of Levites to serve in it. Context, as always, is important.


David is not inventing something new; he's going back to the way it used to be, when the Ark resided in the Tabernacle in the wilderness. It was God who'd set aside the Levites for the work of the Temple, to serve him and to minister to Israel, and Israel had drifted away from that over time. God had been decentralized. After a time, Israel became unwilling to devote much in the way of resources. They no longer defined themselves as a people who had been rescued from bondage by God, and then taken through the wilderness. They were a kingdom now, a regional power, and a force to be reckoned with. What did they need God for? They were doing great on their own.


I mean, they'd left the Ark of the Covenant to languish in pagan hands for years. That symbolic gesture says everything. Earlier in 1 Chronicles we see that the first thing that David does when he ascends to the throne is to recapture the Ark and move it back into Jerusalem. The lesson on priorities is critical. It's the same lesson that the book of Ezra teaches. When Israel comes back from Exile, the first thing they do is rebuilt the altar so that they can resume worship. Remember that they were surrounded by enemies; it was a significant risk to put off building the walls. First things first. David applies the same thinking in reestablishing the centrality of the Ark.


So, to the point: setting aside people, like the Levites, is one of the ways that we give first priority to God. In so doing, we put our money where our mouths are in more ways than one. There's the giving issue, since that's how our Pastors are paid, but there's also the idea that we're taking these men and women, the vast majority of whom are intelligent, educated people, out of the market economy. We're devoting people who could be doing something more "productive" to something that seems more nebulous. In David's time, that person would have been taken out of an agrarian culture, where every pair of hands mattered in terms of sowing crops, harvesting, caring for animals, and so on. Devoting 38,000 people to service in the Temple was a significant economic risk. We do the same thing with Pastors today. They could be bankers, or lawyers, accountants or college professors. Most of them have that level of education. Instead, we free them for a life of vocational ministry.


Ultimately, it's a slap in the face of consumerist idolatry and quasi-religious capitalist ideology. By setting people aside for ministry, we are tithing people whom God will use for his purposes. We don't get to be in control of their time. We don't get to impose standards of productivity, or evaluate their job performance using spread sheets and pie graphs. Profitability is not the goal. We get to let go of all of that, and trust God to use these people as he sees fit. It's just another example of the way we keep God at the center, by letting go of the need to control and evaluate.

So...that's my argument. Thoughts?

The List

After telling Timothy to avoid the pursuit of wealth for its own sake and warning him of its corrupting influence in the process, Paul goes on to tell Timothy what he should be pursuing instead. It's easy to read over the list without really paying much attention to what's on it. Of all the things Paul could have told Timothy to concentrate on, what did he emphasize?

Righteousness: this has to do with covenant membership, NOT BEHAVIOR. The Greek word dikaiosune isn't about doing the right things or being a good person; it's about being the right sort of person. It's about being turned toward God, about choosing to be a part of his covenant with mankind in Christ. This is of utmost importance to ensure that the things that one does come from the right place. After all, one can be a perfectly good, ethical atheist.

Godliness: this is more behavior oriented, but it first requires letting God have access to our inner selves so that he can fix what he needs to fix. Only then does behavior change, and that's why it's senseless to focus solely on behavior. When God has done his work, or while he's doing it, then we can turn away from the lives we've settled for and toward the lives he intends for us.

Love: this one is so easy to gloss over isn't it? Paul uses the Greek word agape here. This is other-centered, choice-based love given at cost to oneself if necessary. Notice its position on the list...#4. The whole list pivots on this point. It's the fulcrum. Nothing happens without this love.

Endurance: there is an element of discipline to this stuff. If we are not willing to make up our minds to keep our commitments despite notable inconvenience and difficulty, then we make it hard for God to give us his best. Our capricious natures will lead us back to the same paths we've always traveled. To put it another way, if you do what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always got.

Gentleness: neither the words on this list nor their order are random. "righteousness" was first for a reason. "Love" was in the middle for a reason. Paul has a purpose behind putting "gentleness" last on the list. Pursuing the five other things on this list can make us hard...on ourselves and on other people. We might develop inflexible concepts of "right" and "wrong", then hold everyone else accountable based on them. We might decide that we are the final arbiters of truth and turn our churches into austere courtrooms where the guilty are tried in abstentia, summarily convicted and sentenced. It's easy to do that. Paul urges gentleness. Fight the urge to become rigid and judgmental.

Choose to stay soft. Be kinder than necessary. Risk being taken advantage of. Love irrationally. Always default toward inclusiveness and acceptance. Don't let your circle shrink. If your circle isn't expanding to include more and more people, something is wrong...because God's does. He's a God who loves and reconciles. We see it over and over in the bible.

After all, God usually responds to the question, "well, when do we just call sin sin" with, "Always. Let's start with yours."

This is the season of Lent, where we focus on repentance and change. There is a hymn that we've been singing at RHVC over the last few weeks. It's called "Here is Love". It was written during the Welsh Revival in the middle part of the 19th century. Here's first verse.

Here is love, vast as the ocean, Lovingkindness as the flood, When the Prince of Life, our Ransom, Shed for us His precious blood. Who His love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise? He can never be forgotten, Throughout Heav’n’s eternal days.

There are so many competing visions of our Savior. If your vision tells you that God sent Jesus so he could take out all of his violent rage on him, and that he might do the same to you if you're not careful, then read this second verse of the same hymn.

On the mount of crucifixion, Fountains opened deep and wide; Through the floodgates of God’s mercy Flowed a vast and gracious tide. Grace and love, like mighty rivers, Poured incessant from above, And Heav’n’s peace and perfect justice Kissed a guilty world in love.

God sent our Savior not because he hates sin, but because he loves people and cannot bear to let us go.

There are so many competing visions about what our response to the cross should be. If your vision tells you that God tolerates you as long as you don't screw up, that you have to be really careful not to break the rules and make him angry, and that your response to him should be obedience out of sheer terror, then read this third verse.

Let me all Thy love accepting, Love Thee, ever all my days; Let me seek Thy kingdom only And my life be to Thy praise; Thou alone shalt be my glory, Nothing in the world I see. Thou hast cleansed and sanctified me, Thou Thyself hast set me free.

God accepts you completely, every single part, exactly as you are at this moment. When you are mired in the most revolting sin you can think of, that's when his love blazes with the most intensity.

Repent of your misconceptions of Him. Repent of the pain you bear because you think that you have to. Turn away from the life you've settled for and accept his best for you. That is the message of this hymn. That is the message of Lent.

Ignorance and Unbelief

The season of Lent begins today. We pass from Epiphany, where the focus is the mission of the Church in response to the gospel, to a season of Christ-centered repentance in preparation for the transformational season of Easter. The first day of the season of Lent is Ash Wednesday, a day where many Christians observe an imposition of ashes as a way of turning us back to the proper perspective: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. "From ashes thou hast come, to ashes thou must return."

τὸ πρότερον ὄντα βλάσφημον καὶ διώκτην καὶ ὑβριστήν: ἀλλὰ ἠλεήθην, ὅτι ἀγνοῶν

ἐποίησα ἐν ἀπιστίᾳ

"Though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and a man of extremes; but I received mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief." - 1 Timothy 1.13

None of us are without stain. We err not just through ignorance, but because of unbelief. We don't believe the things that our Lord says about us, that we are accepted (Eph 1.3-8), secure (Rom 8.1-2) and significant (Eph 2.10); the result is deep woundedness, which we act out to the detriment of others and ourselves. We don't believe that he loves us, and so we accept tragically less than his best for us. We may not believe in the miraculous rescue of the cross at all, in which case we sin in ignorance; it's hard to blame someone who accepts stale water from a cistern when he or she simply doesn't know where to find clean water.

πιστὸς ὁλόγος καὶ πάσης ἀποδοχῆς ἄξιος, ὅτι Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ἦλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον

ἁμαρτωλοὺς σῶσαι: ὧν πρῶτόςεἰμι ἐγώ

"This saying is reliable and deserves full acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: of which I am foremost." - 1 Timothy 1.15

The emphasis on "sinners" indicated by the italics is provided by the Greek. Greek is not a word-order language like English; in other words, one can put the words of a sentence in any order, and one determines the subject and object through the use of case endings. Since there is so much freedom, the word order a writer chooses becomes very important with respect to what he wants to stress. In this case, Paul puts amartolous (sinners), before sosai (to save); Paul is saying that Jesus came into the world to save sinners specifically, so the fact that one finds oneself before the cross in a state of fallenness is no cause for self hatred. It's to be expected. That is, in fact, why the cross exists. Paul is not literally foremost among sinners; we all are. In the same way the pain each person suffers is all the pain there is in the world, the sin each one of us indulges is all the sin there is. No one is better than another. We all stand before the cross equally fallen and are saved on exactly the same basis: faith.

Tonight many (if not most) churches worldwide will observe Ash Wednesday. It is not a goal unto itself though; it's the start of a season. Ash Wednesday is the "start here" sign on the path that is the season of lent, a path that leads not to condemnation but to glorious resurrection life. The last words of the season of lent are "it is finished." After that a new season begins with the words "Christ is risen."

The Goal of Faith...According to Paul

In Christianity we make our own priorities, and much of the time they say more about our culture than they do our faith. It's an odd coincidence that the people the Church rejects most concertedly and vocally are minority groups culturally as well. The bible, on the other hand, shows us a God who rejected the socially dominant groups in the first century: the religious elite, the fabulously wealthy, those at the top of the power and status ladders. The principle is a simple one: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23). We are all saved on an equal basis; by faith and faithfulness.

After a critique of endless genealogies that promote speculations compared to divine training that is known by faith (or "faithfulness", depending on your translational philosophy...1 Tim 1.4), Paul drops a bomb in 1 Tim 1.5:

But the aim of such instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience and sincere faith (again the Greek word 'pistis' can go either way, "faith" or "faithfulness")

Lest that fly by us without impact, consider what Paul is not saying: the goal is not perfect behavior; the goal is not astute learnedness; the goal is not status in the Christian community (the Religious Elite had that); the goal is not this set of political beliefs or that set; the goal is, as it always is with Paul, love. He does the same thing in 1 Corinthians 13, right in the middle of a dense discussion on spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12-15). This is not a regular ol' love, the best that we can produce from our most concerted efforts; no, this is love from a katharas kardias...love from a purified heart, implying an outside agent that has accomplished the purification. We can't drum this up. It will never be a product of our emotional efforts. We'll never get it aside from an act of revelation from God.

Paul doesn't stop there though. He knows that there's more to it. We also must have a suneideseus agathes...a good conscience. Notice again what Paul does not say: he does not say a "clean" conscience. Don't you think he would have said that if that's what he'd meant? It's not like Greek doesn't have terms available to say that very thing. Paul means that we must have a conscience that is in good working order, one that points us toward what God desires and away from the things he doesn't. It's like having working smoke alarms in your house.

Paul rounds everything off with pisteus anhypokritou...a genuine faith. This is the product of the first two elements; it grows organically and can't be faked or forced. We can't broker somebody else's faith; We have to own our version through purification and the application of a working conscience, both of which are established as a work of God, then walked out by us.

In the end, Paul sticks to his usual guns. Love is the endgame, a goal unto itself from which everything else flows naturally. We can't make it up though. All we can do is seek the presence of God, then be open and available. We are plants and God is sunlight. We can't avoid being changed when we place ourselves in his presence.

He's Standing Right in Front of Us

John 7 tells the story of Jesus at the Festival of Booths with the rest of the Jews. The Festival of Booths recounts the time that Israel wandered in the desert, living in tents and trusting in YHWH for everything. The whole point was to remember their faith, to recall the way YHWH came through for them, and to look ahead to the day when he would provide the permanent solution to their wanderings in the person of the Messiah. If you get this, then you get the irony of the passage: the Messiah is standing right there in front of them, and all they can do is doubt based on a misunderstanding of his birthplace (Jesus grew up in Galilee, but he was born in Bethlehem...see the first few chapters of Matthew and Luke).

I'd like to feel self-righteous about this, except that I do the same thing all the time. Jesus stands right in front of me all the time, his works plain to see, and all I can think to do is ask questions based on the data I *don't* have. He wants to guide and bless me, while I want to "know" him by the proper application of the scientific method. He can't be known that way - no one can. He can only be known through relationship, and that starts by taking him at his word and experiencing his being.

We must love our Lord as he presents himself to us and not by building constructs, boxes into which we place his various attributes, filing them away into neat, distinct compartments. We cannot know our Savior by the study and correct application of doctrine; we must take him as he reveals himself to us, first in scripture, then by practice.

Relationship is the goal. If Jesus has become a bug, ready to be pinned to a board, STOP. Something is wrong.