By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé
In discussing the subject of this week’s blog, Michael said, “Let’s write about God the Father’s love as shown in the Old Testament.” What a worthy and interesting subject.
We often associate the Old Testament as revealing more of the attributes of God’s justice and even judgment, rather than His love. There is a perception that His love is hardly the centerpiece of this part of the Bible and yet, in truth, it is its actual heart. God’s love in the Old Testament manifests itself in numerous facets of God’s character and, over time, Michael and I will explore all of them. Today, we want to focus on His love as revealed in His patience with mankind. There are myriad reasons why God’s forbearance was needed, but none is more apparent than the clear tendency, on the Old Testament’s pages, of mankind’s propensity to rebel against God in every way imaginable. No verse better sets forth this predisposition than that of Judges 17:6, most likely penned by God’s faithful servant, Samuel:
“In those days, there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” KJV
Samuel’s assessment of these three – four hundred years covered in the Book of Judges (Life Application Bible – Judges’ Introduction) was accurate as to that era spanning from the death of Joshua to the beginning of the Kings. But, today, Michael and I want to look at this verse’s wider application throughout the Old Testament. Thus, the subject matter of God’s love will be covered in a broad sweep of this first half of the Bible.
After reading Judges 17:6, you may be thinking what we were: Were these words written about a timeframe many centuries ago or were they also included in the canon of Scripture to foreshadow our world today? This is an astute way of perceiving what this verse is all about, and we will weave in its continuing relevance, not only for the period during which it was written, but, also, as it prefigured the New Testament and our lives in modern times.
But, to begin, let’s turn to the literal beginning of the Old Testament, as related to this verse which can reflect backward as well as forward in its accurate sizing up of what God was dealing with early in the lives of humanity, i.e. in the Garden of Eden.
I heard a fascinating expression in a sermon delivered by the amazing Pastor Steve Carter, preaching on Easter Sunday at Rock Harbor Church, Costa Mesa. He said that, today, we are “Easter People,” living in a “Good Friday World.” After hearing these words, I began to ponder their meaning. Clearly, we are a delivered mankind as a result of the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning, 2,000 years ago. So we are “Easter People.” And our “Good Friday World” – what is this? As Michael and I have written in more than one of our previous blogs, without the Resurrection, there is no deliverance. As Paul wrote, unless Jesus came back to life, we are “still in our sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:17) NIV. Thus, a “Good Friday World” was one of death, one where all appearances would seem to have said, there is no longer a Jesus, a Messiah, a hope for eternal life after this brief sojourn on Earth.
Now, to return to the Old Testament and God’s love manifest there. How far should we go back? As stated, let’s travel in our mind’s eye to Eden, because it is there where we will discover the original “Easter People.” Of course, Jesus had not yet appeared on Earth, for there had not yet been a need for rescue from sin. It is critical to keep in mind that God sent Jesus to Earth to defeat death and restore mankind to life eternal – precisely what was enjoyed by Adam and Eve in Eden …before the Fall. What God envisioned in His love for His human Creation was brought into existence in Eden. If there were ever “Easter People,” these inhabitants of the Garden, were it. Death was not a factor; it was only a warning at that point in time. Here, God is speaking:
“Of every tree of the garden, thou mayst freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt SURELY DIE.” (emphasis added)
Genesis 2:16-17) KJV
They had everything – with one exception. There was this tree…Why then, were they “Easter People?” Because they had eternal life wrapped up with a bow on it. It was theirs! We talk about the love of God in the Old Testament, as Michael said. Now, this was love: We were made in the image of the Godhead. (Genesis 1:27) NIV It was God’s intention, in His immeasurable love, for us to live forever – just like Him!
This God of love began with the kind of love that says, “What I have, (eternal life), the greatest gift possible, is yours.” He didn’t create us with the idea that someday, while He lived on eternally, we would not be so fortunate. When God made us, in our modern parlance, He left it all on the court. We were created to be with Him forever. There was never going to be a goodbye. When we want to reflect on whether God is a loving God in the OLD Testament, may we consider this fact first.
The mind can wander though, can’t it? We wonder then…if God is so loving and truly wanted us to live with Him eternally, why did He include a way in which this plan could all fall apart? What about the presence of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, looming in the Garden and the warning not to eat from it, with the consequences of doing so being death itself? Would a genuinely loving God have planted this tree?
The answer to this question is that, upon creating mankind, God had a choice, Himself. Should He create us in such a way as to not give us personal autonomy in our lives? If so, how would we have differed from the persona of robots? We would have spoken robotically: “Yes God, we will not think on our own. We will obey you. We are machines and are mechanically subject to your will…” And so on. God loved us too much to create us for an eternal life of this emptiness. He loved us so much that He gifted us with free will, personal agency. He took the chance that we would, indeed, exercise that free will in such a way as to be obedient to Him and not, through disobedience, cause an infinite amount of anguish and trouble for Him, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
(Of course, God always knows the future. As stated in the last blog, God looked down the years and saw His Jesus suffering on a cross and yet, His love for us was so great that He went right ahead and gave us free will and, therefore, the ability to disobey Him, setting in motion a Roman cross for His Son.)
So, there was the tree with the forbidden fruit. As already stated, God knew that for us to actually have free will, a non-robotic life, there would have to be a crossroads. Is there love in the God of the Old Testament? Yes! Though Scripture is silent on this, don’t you know that, along with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, He must have put thousands of other trees there also, all with delectable fruit and all perfectly permissible from which to eat? In other words, God is so loving that He made it so easy to obey Him. He MINIMIZED THE TEMPTATION element so that mankind had endless amounts of beautiful options.
There are some theologians who emphasize that one tree, falsely implying God is solely a God of judgment and that He was just waiting for man to cross that line and eat that fruit, so that He could bring down the hammer and send them away from paradise. Oh how unfairly they represent our Heavenly Father, our Abba, – how erroneous THEIR judgment of Him! Michael’s choice of God’s love in the Old Testament is so needed, another welcome opportunity to set the record straight.
Do you recall the verse, stated in an earlier blog, where we quote Jesus when he said,
“I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven.”
(Luke 10:18) NIV
Isaiah records an aspect of this, also:
“How you have fallen from heaven,
morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth
You who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
Above the stars of God…
I will make myself like the Most
High.”
(Isaiah 14:12-14) NIV
Before we turn to the Fall of mankind in the Garden, let’s come full circle and return to the words of Samuel in Judges 17:6, KJV:
“In those days, there was no King in Israel, but everyman did that which was right in his own eyes.”
You recall that we said that Michael and I want to apply this verse widely throughout the Old Testament and even into modern times and, thus, far beyond its chronological context. Here, we will use it with regard to two Falls: Satan’s and mankind’s.
In this verse, the King who is spoken of is God. When Lucifer/Satan used the free will that God, in His love, has, apparently, even bestowed on the angels, he rejected the King of Heaven, i.e. God. For Lucifer, there was no King except himself, whom he worshiped. By rebelling, he “did that which was right in his own eyes.” He made himself his own god. It was with this state of mind and hell bent on seeking revenge against the One True God who had expelled him from Heaven, crushing his ambitious plans, that Satan approached the Garden of Eden.
“He said to the woman, ‘DID GOD REALLY SAY, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?” (emphasis added)
(Genesis 3:1) NIV
She corrected this Satan, the master of confusion and misrepresentation, by stating that there was only one tree from which God had forbidden them to eat. (Notably, she incorrectly added that God had said that they couldn’t even touch it, a misstatement of what God had actually said. We must wonder whether she had really been listening very closely to what He was saying, in general.) She explained to the devil that eating from this one tree would result in their not living forever, that they would die, as a consequence of violating God’s one rule for them.
Satan then countered,
“You will not certainly die…For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, (Satan’s failed goal, what had successfully tempted him!)”
And so, the Fall of mankind was on, taking these “Easter People,” living in a world without death, destined to live forever, as God had intended, and death entered the picture, as God had warned. They, too, did that which was right in their own eyes.
Michael raises such an insightful point:
“Man is the only one of God’s Creation who goes against God. All the others, the animals, birds, fish, etc. do exactly what they were created to do.”
What an irony that we, who, alone, were made in God’s image and were given the closest relationship with Him, along with every imaginable blessing, are the very ones who turn on Him and go our own ways.
What would a God of great love do next, after such a massive betrayal? Our next blog will continue with the story, this love story, between the very God of love and His created mankind, the beneficiary of His divine, abiding, amazing and eternal affection.