BETTER THAN DAVID!

In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah became king of Israel. He ruled in Samaria for nine years. As far as God was concerned, he lived a bad life, but not nearly as bad as the kings who had preceded him. (2 Kings 17:1-2, MSG)

Hezekiah put his whole trust in the God of Israel. there was no king quite like him, either before or after. He held fast to God--never loosened his grip--and obeyed to the letter everything God had commanded Moses. And God, for his part, held fast to him through all his adventures. (2 Kings 18:5-6, MSG)

The two kings I've quoted above are unusual in all the records of the kings of Israel and Judah. Can you guess what it is?

Hmm. Hoshea had the misfortune of ruling Israel at the time her sins came home and she was taken into exile in Assyria. I say "misfortune." This record suggests Hoshea wasn't bad, as far as Israel's kings went. He is one of the few (the only one?) who wasn't compared to Jeroboam I, the king who set Israel on the path to sin. If God graded on a curve, instead of pass/fail, Hoshea might have managed a C.

On the other side, Hezekiah was compared to David favorably. The author goes so far as to say, "There was NO KING quite like him."  Not even David! Hezekiah also took the final step that the earlier "good" kings had failed to do: he smashed the altars to Baal and the Asherah poles.

Of David and Hezekiah, I think Hezekiah had the harder job at following God's laws. Imagine Americans trying to go back to 1776 and living by the laws and cultural mores of the times.

Of course, he might have relied on the wisdom of the priests to understand what the laws looked like in his time, much as we have the Supreme Court to help us interpret the Constitution.

Still--he was a traditionalist bucking the trend. I'm sure people opposed his reforms.

I'm a person who will rarely rate anything a 10 (or a 1).  I'm not comfortable with extremes.  But look at the extremes used to describe Hezekiah:

• He put his WHOLE trust in the Lord. 
• He NEVER loosened his grip on God.
• He obeyed EVERYTHING God commanded Moses

(By the way, I doubt he was that perfect, but he would have received an A+ on a curve.)

Instead of bemoaning the state of the nation in his day, Hezekiah set about changing it. Of course, he was king. He wielded influence we can only imagine. 

But . . . we can't let the daunting task before us keep us from attempting the impossibly difficult. Like Hezekiah, we have the same responses available to us. We can trust God, we can hold on to God, and we can do His will. 

And the rest, as they say, is history.

WITHIN REACH (Deuteronomy 30)

This commandment that I'm giving you today isn't too much for you, it's not out of your reach. The word is right here and now--as near as the tongue in your mouth, as near as the heart in your chest. (Deuteronomy 30:11,14, MSG)

God calls keeping the law easy. It's not too much. It's within your reach. Come on, you can do it.

I don't understand this statement any more easily than one I talked about yesterday. (In case you haven't guessed already, there's a lot about the Bible that I don't understand.)  Because as Paul argued in Romans, no one could keep the law. The law showed us our sin. I feel as if God is telling me I can fly to the moon if I flap my arms long enough.

But that's not God's intention at all. The intervening verses, that I didn't quote, say it's not on a high mountain or across an ocean. We don't need someone to fly to Mars, find it, bring it back and translate it into English for us to understand.

We have it even easier than the Israelites did. We can open up one of the several Bibles we have in our homes (if you have as many Bibles as I do) at any time and read.

God wants our obedience--but He knows we can't keep it perfectly, and He sent His son to make the way for us.

What God does want for us is to make His word part of our here and now. He wants us to keep it on our tongues and in our hearts. Those words that follow the great Shema in Deuteronomy 6 come to mind: Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.


Today we might say listen to Bible tapes, sing scripture songs, get a Bible tattoo, tape Bible verses to your bathroom mirror, hang them from your rearview mirror and post them on your refrigerator. Use a Bible tear off calendar to read something new each day. The point is, make the word of God part of your life everywhere you go and in everything you do.

That much is within our reach.  (P.S. I selected the image below because the Bible looked used. Open it up!)

NO FAIRY TALE ENDING (Numbers 36)

I knew that today I would be reading the last chapters of Numbers. I looked forward to some great climax, something that would end the story of the Wilderness Wanderings with appropriate fanfare.

Instead, the book ended with a summary statement: These are the commands and regulations that God commanded through the authority of Moses to the People of Israel on the Plains of Moab at Jordan-Jericho.

I confess, I was disappointed. As a writer, I was looking for a different ending, something that made me feel good, gave me a glimpse at the future happiness of the main characters, and tied up all my questions.

But Numbers is no fairy tale, with a happily ever after ending. Instead, Moses repeated the one theme of the book, of everything he had written from Exodus forward, that lay at the center of God's revelation. These are the commands and regulations that God commanded. 

If there was one thing Moses (and the Holy Spirit, who inspired the writing) wanted the people of Israel to remember, it was this:  These are the commands of God. Obey them. 

As the Israelites prepared to move forward into the Promised Land at last, they must remember all God had commanded.

The Bible doesn't have to be exciting or heart-tugging to be important.

And God's commands always matter.

ON PAROLE: SIN STOPPERS (Numbers 15)

Back on February 14, I wrote about sin served three ways, and the provision God made for deliberate, willful rebellion against God.

So today when I read that a person who sins defiantly must be kicked out of the community. Ostracized. Excommunicated, although that word isn't used. I was surprised.

Perhaps it's a matter of continuing in willful rebellion, choosing a different lifestyle than the one God gives in the law.

When a few verses later, I read about adding blue tassels to their garments, to remind them of God's commandments, my mind said "ahah! This is about practical ways to avoid temptation."  In God's words, "not get distracted  by everything you feel or see that seduces you into infidelities."

In fact, the instructions reminded me of rules for parolees from jail: Don't associate with former friends and criminals. Stay away from them. As God told the Israelites, remove them from your vicinity.

And how about those nifty ankle bracelets that some parolees have to wear? That's a visual clue to stay within the confines of the law.

Are there people who tempt me to sin? Should I stay away from them?  Do I need to use a rubber band to train my thoughts away from a sinful path? How about posting a Bible verse during the day? A necklace with a religious symbol? What are visual clues I can give myself to remain in God's will?

Let's join God's sin-stopper program, and accept His forgiveness when we fail.

HIGHER STANDARD (Exodus 4)

God said to Moses in Midian: "Go. Return to Egypt. All the men who wanted to kill you are dead." (Exodus 4:19, MSG)

God repeated the order He had already given to Moses at the burning bush: It's time for you to go back to Egypt. He had answered all of Moses's questions and sent Aaron to meet him. Moses had taken the first step: telling his father-in-law Jethro that he was leaving. 

After Moses had taken the first steps, God stepped in with the reassurance, "all the men who wanted to kill you are dead." 

Why didn't God say so in the first place? Why did God wait until after Moses obeyed to offer reassurance? 

All along, God seems a little abrupt with Moses. If I wrote dialogue like occurs between God and Moses, when He says "And who do you think made the human mouth?", I might say he snapped. God got downright angry when Moses said, "Please send someone else." 

On top of all of that, God didn't deliver that piece of vital information until Moses was packing his bags. 

Purely a guess: But I think God wanted to toughen Moses up. You know that verse that says God won't give anything more than we can handle? I have often retorted that I wish I was weaker, so I wouldn't have to endure so much. (You've read bits and pieces of it in this blog. If you want to read a fuller story of my travails, starting with my daughter's suicide, check out my other blog, http://darlenefranklinwrites.blogspot.com/)

In the near future, Moses would face off with the most powerful ruler of his time, the Pharaoh of Egypt. He would spend 40 years (and not the maximum of eight years afforded to an American president) leading the people of Israel through the desert, their security and well-being resting on his shoulders. Moses had to have absolute, clear-cut, no-questions-asked kind of faith in God to fulfill his calling. 

Of course God supernaturally enabled Moses.

But along the way He toughened him up. Starting with calling him back from Egypt. 

If it ever seems like God has given you more than your fair share of trials--maybe God has something extraordinary He is calling you to do. 

NOT FAR ENOUGH (Genesis 33-35)

Jacob must have thought he had the worst of his problems behind him. God had protected him from Uncle Laban's anger and given him a miraculous reconciliation with his brother Esau. When he arrived in Shechem, he built an altar to "El Elohe Israel," The Mighty God of Israel. He was praising God, and perhaps bragging a tiny bit as well. 

Oh, yes, not to mention the name change from Jacob, heel or supplanter, to Israel, God-Wrestler.

Instead Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi put him the greatest danger yet. One of the local boys fell in love with their sister, Dinah. He raped her, but loved her enough to wish to marry her. Jacob and Shechem arranged a treaty for intermarriage and exchange on one condition: that the men of Shechem be circumcised.

While they were recovering from the procedure, Simeon and Levi slaughtered all the men in the town. Jacob scolded them. "Now everybody will want to kill us!"

Funny how God appeared to be quiet all through these events. 

When God did speak up, He told Jacob, "Go back to Bethel. To where I appeared to you in a dream."

Jacob had returned to Canaan - but perhaps he hadn't gone far enough. Settling near Shechem left him and his family vulnerable to the temptations of intermarrying with the Canaanites and becoming indistinguishable from the people of the land. 

God directed him to go farther. To go all the way back to Bethel, in fact. To revisit the place where he met God in a time of renewed commitment. 

I suspect we all do this to a certain extent. We obey God--up to a point. And often God has to prod us to go all the way. 

I'd love to hear your stories of times God prodded you to go farther.