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In one of my previous CHN posts, I mentioned the writing conference that we are running jointly with CASE. This is a one-day conference for Christians interested in exploring the ministry potential of writing, paid or otherwise.
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Ralph made the observation that some parts of the Old Testament are, to our reading, quite boring. After the fast-paced and dramatic action of chapters 1 and 2, Joshua 3 and 4 seem to take forever to bring the people of Israel into the land. This entire section of narrative could have been summed up in a zippy little paragraph.
But when the Lord of Israel is in the midst of fulfilling promises first given to Abraham many hundreds of years earlier, well, why shouldn't a writer (or a reader) take a little time to enjoy the sovereignty of God? It's like, said Ralph, eating a pudding slowly to enjoy the taste.
Ralph offered as a basic element of Old Testament interpretation that we really ought to not so much bring our own ideas and questions, as allow the Old Testament generally, and the emphasis of the passage in particular, to govern what we discovered.
As an example, Ralph pointed out that the preoccupation we bring to Joshua 2 is that when Rahab the prostitute offered shelter to two Israelite spies, she told a lie. There it is in Joshua 2:
Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.” But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, “True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.” But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof. (Josh 2:3-6)
Worrying, isn't it? Especially as the subsequent success of Israel's invasion is aided by the prostitute's protection, and that Rahab is later listed as one of the honoured women in Jesus' genealogy, and as a hero of faith in Hebrews 11. So this lie may well be an issue that needs to be addressed (not, however, in this CHN).
Ralph, however, points out that the stress of the chapter lies elsewhere. We discover where the stress lies when we see that Joshua 2 is structured like a sandwich (a piece of bread, the meat itself —which is the important bit—and another piece of bread). The two pieces of bread in the Joshua 2 sandwich concern the protection of individuals. In verses 2-7, and again in verses 15-21, the individuals protected are Rahab and the spies. But what is the meat in the sandwich? Why, it's verses 8-14, in which Rahab confesses that Yahweh, the God of Israel, has given the people of Israel the promised land, and that he is “God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath”.
He is indeed! What an extraordinary confession from this foreign, immoral woman who by rights has no part in the household of God.
Ralph suggested that to forget this astonishing statement, and to focus on the woman's lie, was a mistake. It's a bit like him ignoring the food his wife had worked to put in the fridge and instead point out the dirty, dusty smear on the fridge top. Ralph spoke like a man who had learned from experience to focus on the meat.
Recently I've been noticing a rather curious trend in evangelical preaching. In sound Bible-based often rousing sermons where the word of God has been thoroughly expounded in context with appropriate reference to Jesus and his work on the cross, when it comes to applying the passage in question to the lives of the hearers, a number of preachers have been resorting to challenging us in the same areas in the same ways. These challenges are, more often than not, concerned with what you do with your time and what you do with your money, and they normally go something like this:
Think about how you spend your time. Do you spend hours each day sitting in front of the box? Are your hours being whittled away by World of Warcraft or mindless internet searching? Do you spend more time on your make-up than reading your Bible or praying? Perhaps you need to give up some of these things so you can spend more time immersing yourself in the Word, helping out at church or meeting up with that non-Christian friend to talk to them about Jesus.
Or think about how you're spending your money. Are you exercising good stewardship of what God has given you? Are you using it to support the work of gospel ministry or is it going towards storing up your earthly treasure? Are you more excited about getting that new pair of shoes or the latest gadget than seeing children in Nairobi going to Sunday school? Can you do without that daily cappucino?
On the one hand, we all struggle in both these areas, and it is worth evaluating how we are making the most of both our time and our money. It is also well worth considering whether our use of these resources is an accurate reflection of our passion for God, and whether we need to address this spiritual lack before we can address any practical ones.
But on the other hand, applications like these reveal a fatal error: they reduce our godliness or commitment to the gospel to almost Pharisaical quantities. They cause us to ask, “How much time am I spending praying/reading the Bible/serving in my church? How much money am I setting aside to give to the work of God's kingdom? Is this much enough? Is this much too much?” We need to remember it's not about quantity; God will not be pleased with more if it creates sin in other areas of your life—for example, if your zeal for running the Sunday school impinges on your relationship with your spouse, or your extreme generosity robs your children of their dinner. Living your life according to God's word is about obedience, which springs from love, not duty. The quality of our relationship with our heavenly Father is more deserving of scrutiny than our diaries and bank accounts.
Furthermore, such applications are a little one-sided in focus. Yes, some of us really do need to get up off the couch or from in front of the computer, and take stock of how we are spending our time. Some of us need to question whether we should be spending less on things we've always thoughtlessly consumed—whether it be coffee, cosmetics or CDs. But not everyone is the same. Just as not everyone is a coffee-drinker or a World of Warcraft player, not everyone stumbles in the same way. Whereas some people need to be told to switch the TV off, some need to be told to sit down and watch some because they need to relax and not be so busy. Whereas some people need to be rebuked for their obsession with fashion, others need to be told not to feel so guilty about buying a new dress. It's a matter of balancing Colossians 4:5 (“Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time”) with Psalm 46:10 (“Be still, and know that I am God”), Matthew 6:19-20 (“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”) with 1 Timothy 4:4 (“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving”).
At times it can be hard to work out how a particular passage applies to our individual circumstances. At times it can be tricky to identify the particular areas of sin and areas of godliness we need to work on. This is why we need preachers to construct an appropriate framework to help us think through how to live the Christian life in the circumstances God has given us—preachers who are aware of the full spectrum of struggles and compromises that make up the spiritual lives of their parishioners—preachers who will take the time to challenge their listeners with helpful and relevant applications without laying on them the blanket charge of too much coffee-drinking.
Ralph's take on the movement of Joshua—from divine initiative, via a ‘hinge’ of three or four verses, through to a response by the people—made a comparison that would not have occurred to me in a month of Sundays: he pointed out that this is exactly how Romans is structured!
Both passages give us a record of Yahweh's (the God of Israel's) faithfulness to his people in both Joshua 1-21 and Romans 1-11. Both passages contain thematic statements that lead us right to the heart of what is going on which include the main ideas raised so far (Josh 21:43-45 and Rom 11:33-36). Both passages contain statements regarding the responsibility of Yahweh's people (Josh 22-24 and Rom 12-16).
All this was spoken by Ralph Davis at bullet-like speed in a Southern US accent, whizzing by at such a pace that I really wondered whether I was hearing it right or simply dreaming thoughts about Joshua that showed I hadn't yet had my Monday morning coffee.
I did like Ralph's suggestion that it was only people from the Northern States of the USA that would refer to it as a ‘Civil’ War (that's the one in the 19th century United States, not the one in the book of Joshua, which was a war of the settlement of Canaan by Israel).