Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
I left off where BJ had just introduced “Abba said so? Or someone said so. In God’s name. It’s there in Numbers 31” (p. 39). Yes, Yahweh said so. No, “someone” did not say so. Yes, the Holy Spirit carried a man along so that what he wrote were the breathed-out words of God. And yes, that is right there in Numbers 31.
Although I can’t cover everything in the Old
Testament Scriptures BJ doesn’t like, I looked at Numbers 31 to see if there
was anything inconsistent with how Yahweh is revealed throughout the Scriptures
that were in the hands of the Jews at the time of Jesus’ earthly life. I say
this because, if there was something wrong with the way Yahweh was portrayed by
any of the biblical writers, Jesus would have something to say about it. After
all, he is the truth, he taught the
truth, and he constantly exposed the deceptions of the religious elite, the
world, and the devil. If the devil was in the book, Jesus would have told us.
First, the claim of the biblical writer was,
“The Lord (Yahweh) spoke to Moses,
saying” (vs 1). Now, BJ makes a big deal about the significance of the word and
the Word. The biblical writer appears to have the same concern, albeit without
already being proven wrong on so many counts. So, “the LORD” means Yahweh,
Jesus’ Abba. Yahweh “spoke”, which means we are dealing with the “words” of
God. He spoke “saying”, which means what comes next is the “word of God”. That
is the claim of Numbers 31. The Scriptures the Jews had at the time of
Jesus’ ministry would have made this same theme clear time and again. Yahweh is
the God of Israel, Yahweh spoke to his people, this is recorded in the
Scriptures, the Scriptures of the time of Jesus’ ministry were believed to be
the written collection of the words of God, and this included the Torah, the
books of Moses (where we find Numbers 31).
So, did Jesus correct that in any way? This
is huge because, if the people of Jesus’ day believed Numbers 31, et al, were
Scripture, and they believed what the biblical writer wrote down was an
accurate record of the words of Yahweh their God, Jesus would have had to say
something precise about that for those people then, and us people now, to
believe the BJs of the world that the Jesus they found in the Bible denounced
those writings as not the words of his Father. Modern writers imagining they
see something does not cut it!
Question: what did Abba Yahweh say that BJ
has decided his different Jesus wouldn’t approve of? After all, he wants you and
me to believe that his Jesus would take exception to the way his Father is
portrayed here, and he must have something Jesus said in the gospel records
that would show this disapproval, so what exactly are we to believe should be
demoted from “God’s word” status?
Answer: “‘Avenge the people of Israel on the
Midianites. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people’” (vs 2). This
is the theme of the chapter, Abba Yahweh instructing Moses to avenge God’s
people, Moses leading the people, and the people carrying out God’s vengeance.
Question: was there anything about Abba
Yahweh leading his people to carry out vengeance against the Midianites that
would make him unjust in how far he went in avenging his own people?
Answer: Absolutely not! I mean, not if we treat
the Scriptures as breathed-out by God, and that God’s thoughts and ways are
higher than our thoughts and ways. In other words, as long as we know God is
God and we are not, we can humbly appreciate that he is the only person in this
account who had perfect knowledge of every heart involved, perfect holiness
that would view everyone’s sin without favoritism or partiality, perfect
justice that would only avenge his people against their enemies to the extent
of what would be righteous, and perfect mercy that would pardon and forgive
anyone involved who repented and put their faith in Abba Yahweh (Rahab would
prove that point not long after this).
One of the situations that was addressed in
this chapter is that the Israelites did not carry out God’s instructions for
vengeance. They did not avenge as completely as God commanded. Moses confronted
his men about this with this challenge, “Behold, these, on Balaam's
advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the Lord in the incident of Peor,
and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord” (vs 16). The point in this is that
God was communicating that he had defined the full measure of vengeance, he
recounted the horrible things that Balaam and the women had done to his people,
but his army decided the Midianites deserved less justice than that (sounds
familiar). When they claimed the right to decide that God’s justice should be
toned down, Abba Yahweh rebuked them.
So, what about more than a few millennia
later when people find a Jesus in the Bible who apparently thinks that the
Yahweh the Jews were shown in the Scriptures was far too severe in his
vengeance? Any parallels? Maybe with a sense that Abba Yahweh would say the
same thing to his modern critics as to his people of old?
Now, note that the rest of the instructions
that follow is God working with what his people had done in rebellion against
him. They did not exact vengeance as completely as justice required, so now
there were people and plunder to deal with. Whatever we think about these
additional instructions, it is God reapplying his justice, mercy, and
faithfulness to the mess his people had made of the situation.
There is nothing else in this that answers
the challenge of the BJs that there was something unjust about the vengeance
Abba Yahweh carried out against the Midianites. In my decades of getting to
know the Word through his word in real and personal ways, I can’t think of
anywhere that the prophets, Jesus, or the apostles, corrected the ancient
biblical writers. So what we will watch for is how BJ has discovered that either
the word or the Word put into words some denunciation of God’s
application of vengeance in this or any other instance.
Note: In the footnote, I put three links from www.gotquestions.org that respond to some of the feelings and concerns about the way God was portrayed there.[1] Thankfully, they are not following BJ’s different Jesus in their replies.
One of the deceptive thoughts/phrases in
BJ’s challenge to God’s right to vengeance is “the Abba Jesus revealed”. For
example, “Could the Abba Jesus revealed say…?” and, “Could the Abba of Jesus
issue these commands?” (p. 39) This is a claim that the author has the right to
decide how fully Jesus revealed Abba Yahweh. The question isn’t whether Jesus
came to reveal Abba Yahweh. We know he did because, “the only God, who is at
the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18). Rather, we need to know
if anything in the Scriptures about Jesus’ first coming indicates whether he was showing every aspect of the Father’s nature as a perfect match to what
happened in Israel’s history, or whether the full revelation of Abba Yahweh
through his Son would require the second coming of the Christ as well.
You see, BJ claims that in Jesus’ first
coming there is such a complete revelation of Abba Yahweh that if we can’t find
Jesus showing us the Father the way he is revealed in Numbers 31, I Samuel 15,
et al, then that’s not the way Abba Yahweh really was. In other words, if Jesus’
first coming didn’t include his Abba/Father exacting vengeance on someone the
way he did with those old enemies of Israel, then Yahweh must not be like that.
I hope you see that this is nothing more than human reasoning. If Jesus’ first
coming had a different purpose than matching the activities of Christ to Yahweh's activities in the Old Testament, who are we to tell God that he isn’t
as complete as the Scriptures had already revealed just because Jesus didn’t
come to focus on that?
You see, there is a second coming! And in
that second coming is the final judgment of the lost. And Jesus is part of
that, according to the Scriptures. So, we aren’t going to limit our look at the
way Jesus revealed Abba Yahweh in the gospels. We are also going to look at
what was said about Jesus himself in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets
(because that’s what Jesus used to tell people who he was), and what is
described of his second coming and how he will handle both his vengeance on
sinners and his vindication of his church.
The next false dichotomy BJ gives is, “I
could only conclude that either God is not who Jesus revealed him to be or, as
my friend Anna (seven years old) suggested, the narrators are sometimes
confused” (p. 40). No, those are not the only options!
First, this statement is with the assumption
that BJ has made his case that the Jesus of the gospels reveals Abba Yahweh
differently than the biblical writers (hence the need to have us think we must
choose between the word and the Word by this point). He hasn’t made this case,
and his track record is zero wins in any attempt to do so.
Second, the pendulum BJ is using only
includes the two extremes of “God is not who Jesus revealed him to be” or “the
narrators are sometimes confused.” When you swing the pendulum from one side to
the other, it makes sense that the extremes would look like that. No argument
there.
Third, the plumbline between those pendulum
extremes has other “truth in love” elements. It answers the left-swing of the
pendulum by showing that there is no need to imagine the Abba Yahweh of the
Scriptures is different than Jesus revealed him. It answers the right-swing of
the pendulum that the biblical writers were confused about what Abba Father was
like by presenting them as men carried along by the Holy Spirit to write down
the words breathed-out by God. And it calls us to see the ways Jesus did reveal
the Father in his first coming, along with how he will reveal the Father in his
return.
From here I skimmed through his assessment
of Calvin and Zwingli, along with a listing of how people responded to his
exploration of these themes. For today’s journal journey, I will finish with
this viewpoint over the sordid trail. In responding to some who warned about
what might happen if he took this view, he replied, “For what? For asking why
the same God who became flesh looks and sounds, at times in the Bible, more
like the satan he came to save us from?” (P. 41).
The problem is not with us feeling the need
to ask God how to understand what is revealed in his word. The problem is in
insisting that the way we see something is the way it has to be. In other
words, we see ourselves as having a greater view of what is holy and just with
a holy and just God than the way God revealed himself in the Scriptures. After
all, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the
prophets,” which included Moses and David. Which means that the Bible views the
Bible as the word of God from beginning to end. So, when we live under the new
covenant in Jesus’ blood, we know that “in these last days he has spoken to us
by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he
created the world” (Heb 1:1-2). We know this, that God moved from speaking in
so many ways as revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures to speaking to us
through his Son. But never once are we told that his Son dissed the way his
Father spoke in those ancient times. Moses wrote that God “spoke… saying”, and
the writer of Hebrews wrote that “God spoke” just as it is recorded. That’s a
pretty tall order for someone to show that Jesus corrected what both the Old and New
Testament writers claim was God speaking.
As this day’s journal journey ends, the
author has claimed that the God who expressed his vengeance against his enemies
in the Scriptures looks more like Satan than the Savior. And we’re right back
to the main point: where does the Word say that in the word?
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible
Systems
[1]
Why did God command the Israelites to completely destroy the Midianites in
Numbers 31:17?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Numbers-31-17-Midianites.html
Why did Moses tell his men to spare the Midianite
virgins for themselves in Numbers 31:18?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Midianite-virgins.html
Who were the Midianites?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Midianites.html
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