No More Manna?

Passage: Joshua 5:10-12

On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover. The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain. The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan.

The Israelites have spent the last forty years living in the desert. During this time they’ve subsisted mainly on manna – a grain substitute that has literally fallen from heaven. God has promised to provide his people enough to eat every day of their journey. And although the manna has been a source of regular contention (you try eating the same thing every day for forty years), it’s been consistent. The Israelites have been able to depend on it.

As the Book of Joshua opens, the Israelites have finally reached their destination: the Promised Land. Soon after they cross the threshold of Canaan, they celebrate a very special Passover – their first in the new country. As part of their Passover meal they enjoy grain that the land has produced. This Passover Day, as it turns out, is also the last day the Israelites will ever eat manna. The very next day the people wake up, leave their tents, and find the ground bare. No more manna.

Now I assume that this is, for obvious reasons, cause for great celebration. But I wonder if it also creates temporary panic for the people. After all, many of them have never seen a day without manna. Every day of their lives there has been a ready source of (albeit boring) nourishment. Not anymore. Does this leave God’s people wondering where their next meal will come from?

Of course, the manna is simply God’s way of making good his promise to feed his people. God doesn’t promise to provide manna; he promises to provide food! But if the only food you’ve ever known is manna, the sudden absence thereof might create doubt; insecurity; even fear. How will God provide, if not the way you’ve come to expect?

God provides for us in many different ways. Sometimes God meets our needs in predictable, consistent ways for years on end – a steady job; a committed spouse; a healthy body. Sometimes God takes one of these things away. When this happens, we panic. How is God going to provide, if not in the way to which I’ve become accustomed?

The challenge for the Israelites in the Promised Land is trusting in God rather than in the stuff God provides. This is the challenge for God’s people today, too. The means by which God provides may change. But God never fails to provide what he's promised.

Hell

Passage: Deuteronomy 28:15-68

In this chapter God delivers a litany of all the bad things that will happen to his people if they turn their backs on him and his commands. The list is graphic and fairly exhaustive. Just about any bad thing that could happen to a person is on the list. God tells his people, “If you disobey me and turn your back on me, this is what will happen to you.” Now on the surface this speech sounds jealous and petty. God wants the people’s exclusive devotion, and he’ll hurt them if he doesn’t get it.

But closer examination of the list of potential consequences reveals something important: this is just a sampling of the bad things that can and do happen to people all the time. The world the Israelites inhabited was a world in which nations were routinely routed and destroyed by other nations. It was a world in which plagues decimated communities. It was a world in which famine wiped out the natural resources of a people group, forcing them to move or perish. There’s nothing supernatural about the judgment with which God threatens his people. These are all horrendous things that the Israelites have been spared so far; they are nonetheless things that could happen to the Israelites - things that happen regularly to their near neighbors.

When God warns his people of the dire consequences of disobedience, he’s warning them not of new threats that he’ll impose, but old threats he will allow. As the people of God, the Israelites have benefitted from God’s constant intervention and protection. God has protected them from plague and famine and slavery. What God threatens to do, should the Israelites disobey, is simply walk away. What God describes as the judgment that will befall his people should they turn their backs on him is life without God. Life in a broken world; a world in which evil is left unchecked. God is describing Hell.

Hell isn’t a physical place so much as it is a state of being. It is the state of being wholly and utterly removed from God’s presence. This may not seem so bad. After all, countless people in our world live without any real relationship with God. However, they live in a world governed by God, and enjoy the fringe benefits of living in close proximity to God and his people. Life without God is life as described in Deuteronomy 28: unchecked suffering and unmitigated evil and no hope of any relief. This is the inescapable end of all those who spend their lives pushing God away.

So, You Didn’t Like that New Praise and Worship Number?

Passage: Deuteronomy 27:9-26

At a previous church Melody and I were once invited to lunch after Sunday morning worship by a member who, it turned out, had something to say about the morning’s music selections. “Our church has such a broad hymnody, and such a tradition of theologically rich hymns,” she said. “It’s a shame we’ve resorted to these shallow, repetitive praise choruses. I don't think a lot of them are even biblical!” I’m not sure whether she was aware Melody and I had picked much of the music for the morning’s service. I’m inclined to believe she was. I wonder what she, and other detractors of “contemporary” worship would have thought of the musical selection for the worship service prescribed in Deuteronomy 27.

In this passage, Moses commands the tribes of Israel to celebrate their arrival in the Promised Land by singing blessings – and curses – in chorus. The prescribed blessings aren’t recorded; the prescribed curses are. The Israelites are to sing a hymn of judgment on a pretty specific list of sins.

I think it might be interesting if we incorporated a "biblical" song like this into our worship services. We could sing, “Cursed is the one who cheats on his income tax…” or, “Cursed is the one who gossips at the water cooler…” or any of a number of our other sins. I can't help wondering how that number would go over.

Tithes and Offerings

Passage: Deuteronomy 26:1-15

The church I grew up in has always maintained a strong ethic of “tithing”. Traditionally this has been understood as giving away one-tenth of one’s income – either exclusively to the church or to the church and a collection of other causes. 10% was held up as the baseline for Christian giving – an expected bare minimum or starting point.

This has changed dramatically in recent years, both in my denomination and in most other mainline denominations in North America. If you Google “tithing”, you’ll come across all kinds of commentary on the subject. Some defend the practice. More attack it, mainly based on the fact that there are no New Testament passages that explicitly require it. Although a case can easily be made against today’s churches requiring Christians to donate 10% of their income, many of the arguments for and against tithing are so noisy and passionate that the purposes for the original tithe are missed almost completely.

In Deuteronomy 26 Moses reiterates God’s instructions for tithes and offerings. God requires his people to make an offering of the first portions of whatever their labor has produced. They are to do so as a regular ritual of thanksgiving, in which they recall God’s history of faithfulness to his covenant people. This "firstfruits" offering is a demonstration of three things: first, that the land and all it produces belongs to God; second, that the people are grateful for what God has shared with them; third, that the people trust God to continue providing what they need. The firstfruits offering is a statement of faith in God.

The tithe is a sacrifice of one-tenth of the people’s livelihood to be offered every three years. The tithe expresses the same things expressed by the firstfruits offering: gratitude for God’s goodness, and trust that God will continue to provide. The tithe also serves a practical purpose: it is used to care for the nation’s poor, and to support the Levites and temple workers (who have been commanded by God to refrain, at least partially, from the kinds of labor by which their peers support themselves). God’s people are thus commanded to give as an exercise of faith and as a means of supporting members of their community who can’t support themselves.

This brings us to the present. It’s true that there is no New Testament imperative to tithe. Instead there are regular appeals for church members to give in response to needs they encounter. There is evidence that members of the early church gave generously, both to support those in their immediate community and to help congregations in other parts of the world. Old Testament Israelites, and New Testament Christians, gave because they understood that everything they had belonged to God. They didn’t ask how much they owed God, or how little they could get away with giving. It wasn’t a question of “What’s mine and what’s God’s”. It all belongs to God.

So Christians today can argue all they want about whether tithing is required. The short answer is that it’s not. But the more accurate answer is that God requires not 10%, but 100%. As people of God we must be prepared to give up anything and everything as God requires. Why? Because it all belongs to God.

As with the Israelites, our regular giving serves two purposes. It is, primarily, an exercise of our faith. It demonstrates our recognition that our money is not our own; and it forces us to trust God to provide what we need, especially after we’ve given funds we think we need. Our giving also serves the practical purpose of supporting those in our communities who can’t support themselves. We have been given the gift of freedom from a set giving standard. But as God’s people we are still required to give. We can’t afford not to.

Whom Have I But You?

Passage: Psalm 73

To this point our reading of the Old Testament has focused on God’s early dealings with his chosen people, the Israelites. God makes an audacious promise to his people – a promise that is repeated throughout the first five books of the Bible. The promise is this: “If you obey my commandments, things will go well for you. You will succeed, even prosper, in your work, your relationships and your communities.” God makes an accompanying commitment: “If you disobey my commandments, things will go badly for you.” Which seems plausible enough until God’s people start looking around. They are surrounded by pagan nations. And within those nations they see plenty of people who thumb their noses at God and enjoy a greater level of prosperity than they do. How does this mesh with God’s promises?

Psalm 73 addresses this dilemma. The Psalmist begins,

…I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.

The implied question is this: “What gives, God? How is it that I, who have done everything by the books, am suffering while my neighbor, who has done nothing but malign you and disregard your commands, has it all?” This is a question God’s people ask today. How is it that some of the most immoral people in our culture, and some of the most ruthless people in other cultures, are the ones who have the most?

The Psalmist answers his own question, and answers ours, too.

Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.

It’s easy to conclude that someone who is wealthier, more powerful, or more popular than you is prospering. The writer of Psalm 73 concludes otherwise. The true measure of prosperity is based not on indicators that come and go and change over time. The true measure of prosperity is eternal: the love and favor of God. So the Psalmist concludes,

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Don’t get so hung up on whether someone is “doing better” than you. Focus on the true measure of well-being and success: a relationship with your Heavenly Father.