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A STIFFNECKED PEOPLE [Part 1]

As a variation on the incredulous query of Nathanael in John 1:46, “Can any good thing come out of Israel?”

AGAINST ALL ODDS

As I’ve written here many times, it is truly a great wonder that the ancient nation ever survived as long as it did. Without God’s ongoing support and supreme faithfulness Israel would have had no chance. Sadly, it was not so much that it was vulnerable to outside attack, though this was certainly the case, but it was much more about national suicide. As the Lord God stated directly on numerous occasions, starting way back as early as shortly after the Exodus from Egypt (1446BC), the emerging nation had a serious attitude problem and could be described perfectly through the use of just one word, which was first used here:

And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people…” [Exodus 32:9 KJV]

Also, we see that it was the Lord God Himself who first used this term. And with regard to this perfect descriptive, God actually referred to His people in Scripture as “stiffnecked” a total of four times in the KJV Old Testament (out of eight overall) and once, through the prophet Ezekiel, as “stiffhearted.” In the KJV New Testament, Stephen, under a powerful spiritual anointing, used the term only minutes before his murder at the hands of, well, the stiffnecked, who were enormously convicted because the descriptive term described them so well:

Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. [Acts 7:51] …When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. [Acts 7:54] …Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him… [Acts 7:57-58]

The evocative –S– word was later cleaned up somewhat in later Bible versions. For example, what follows is the NASB95 translation of the first OT occurrence which also includes verse 10 for context:

The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation.” [Exodus 32:9-10]

Whoa. That’s pretty harsh. If God said that today He would be censored and accused of, well, you know.

Here is the same passage in the KJV, which is just a tad more descriptive:

And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. [Exodus 32:9-10 KJV]

Now, why in the world would God be so powerfully angry at His own people not long after showing great love by miraculously rescuing them from abject misery and hopeless slavery in Egypt? What could they have done that would want to make Him trash the entire plan He had for them and consume/destroy them and start again from scratch making a new nation with Moses?

Oh yeah. The golden calf. And they had lost all moral control and had “rose up to play” and “have corrupted themselves.” All this while the Lord God was up on the mountain delivering grand plans for the nation’s bright future to Moses who was fasting for forty days in order to effectively commune with God, receive the Torah, come down in glowing joy bearing great gifts and a wonderful message, and would later lead them to the Promised Land.

That.

Therefore, it is absolutely perfectly understandable why God was so extremely wrathful that He wanted to off them entirely. We must note, of course, that the golden calf was in reference to the Egyptian deity Apis which in part portends to a love of money and which also means Israel quickly reverted back to idolatry and vile immoral behavior as soon as their deliverer was gone for a while. They were always doing this. They always required, by their inability to control themselves and live a holy life, a powerful anointed man of God to deliver, shepherd, and maintain them since they possessed so little personal discipline and desire for spirituality and closeness to the Lord. There was thus Moses, and then Joshua, and then after they arrived in the Promised Land one Judge after another over not just a few decades but centuries.

However, the actual much bigger issue regarding the very quick fall from grace Israel made on that momentous occasion of the revealing of the Torah is that God allowed His perfect mind to be changed and that He eventually relented of inflicting due justice by wiping them off the face of the earth. How did this happen?—

PUTTING UP WITH GOATS TO SAVE THE SHEEP

The same as it always does. Someone stepped in and did some heavy duty interceding. Someone got on their face before God and pleaded and prayed and wept and wailed. Someone proved to God that though the great majority may be hopelessly hell bound by their own choosing, there are others, though few, who really, really, really love the Lord and want to serve and honor the Lord no matter what and are willing to put up with any humiliating circumstance, every indignity, much longsuffering, and even pain if that’s what is required to do it. Some people will choose to try very hard to live holy lives and not rise up to play or corrupt themselves. The Lord God knew that Moses not only had a great heart for God but also a spiritual passion for God’s people and God’s great plans for them, and that he was willing to do whatever and put up with anything to see it all come to pass as impossible it appeared to be, in part because he knew all things were possible with God.

So Israel was saved to live another day yet again—saved from itself—due to the righteous Remnant of Israelites of which Moses was a part—the few and far between—being faithful to God and standing in the gap and taking it on the chin and interceding in prayer and suffering persecution from the very people they kept praying for and preserving in hope of their eventual salvation which never came for the majority.

I remember long ago when the Lord first gave me the revelation that the greater the particular ministry the more time it would take to prepare for it. Thus, Moses would not only have to be a very strong man, and he was, but would also need much preparation because he was being tasked with one of the hardest ministries of all time.

He would have to deal with the great cloud of stiffnecked goats in order to minister to the few faithful sheep.

REAL MEN OF GOD

It goes without saying, of course, that the people of Israel were in general a very hard people to shepherd (understatement alert). Moses, the man God chose for the task, was surely a monumental figure in history—one of a kind—since he actually fulfilled for forty years a ministry which was not only akin to herding a million cats but effectively far more difficult and which involved eternal proportions. He also spent his first eighty years preparing for those last forty, first as a member of royalty “educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22), and secondly as an obscure unknown sheepherder in the land of Midian. Yet Moses was just a man and could never have successfully completed the immense preparation requirements and then the massive task of transforming a great multitude into a cohesive nation able to conquer the wicked interlopers in their given land of Promise without the Lord God in complete control due to the humble man’s willing submission and the Lord’s powerful anointing, guidance, and strength.

For greater perspective on the actual nature of what had become a thoroughly sinful people deserving of not only ongoing rebuke but severe judgment back into exile, consider the following prophetic word of Ezekiel delivered eight and a half centuries later in 593BC in the midst of the Babylonian invasion (God uses the adjective “rebellious” four times!):

Then He said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!” As He spoke to me the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet; and I heard Him speaking to me. Then He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the sons of Israel, to a rebellious people who have rebelled against Me; they and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day. I am sending you to them who are stubborn and obstinate children (stiffhearted KJV), and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ As for them, whether they listen or not—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, neither fear them nor fear their words, though thistles and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions; neither fear their words nor be dismayed at their presence, for they are a rebellious house. But you shall speak My words to them whether they listen or not, for they are rebellious.” [Ezekiel 2:1-7] [1]

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Tags: America, Ancient Israel, Christian Pharisees, Christian Zionism, Discipleship, Ezekiel, Israel, Lord Jesus, Moses, Prayer and Fasting, Promised Land, Prophetic Warning, Real Christianity The Nature of the Church, Rebellion Against God, Serving MONEY, Sheep, Sheep and Goats, Slavery, The Exodus from Egypt, The Great Awakening, The Nation of Israel, Torah

DEFINING SIN: The Lord Jesus Endorsed the Old Testament Definition of Sin (2)

Jul 2

Posted by RJ Dawson

**Many Christians erroneously believe the Old Testament has been eliminated by the New Testament but the Lord Jesus NEVER said this. In fact, He said the following:**

“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” [Matthew 5:17-19] [1]

In this passage, the Lord Jesus grants full approval of the entire Torah, accepts it in every respect without question, and allows for no elimination of any single law. He is saying that the Law of Moses is perfect and complete, just as the apostle Paul later taught in his writings, and He endorses the Law wholeheartedly. The Lord Jesus put His entire ministry and mission on the line by doing this, tying Himself entirely and absolutely to the Torah and its existence at least until heaven and earth passes away.

Therefore, the notion that the Old Testament or the Law of Moses is no longer viable or in play could not be more wrong: Every definition of sin regarding personal human behavior is still 100% in effect. So if people say, “Well, since Jesus never said anything about this sin or that sin, it must be okay to practice such,” the correct response is that He actually did since He endorsed the Law and the Prophets. If the Law of Moses said something was a sin, it is still a sin to this day and the Lord Jesus agrees.

Also, if the Torah said a particular action or behavior was a gross sin, or a complete violation of God’s intent, or an abomination, then it was and remains an abomination. You can tell which sins were the worst by the penalties attached to them. The worst sins had the sentence of death as the penalty, signifying the outright heinousness of the behavior and ultimately the total contempt for the Lord and His Law.

Therefore, even though the Gospels do not address every single specific sin or the worst sins that required the death penalty, the Lord endorsed the written Torah, which does.

THE ORAL LAW

Of course, the original written Torah was added to in a sense and amended with the addition of the unwritten oral law, which began about the time of the Babylonian Captivity and grew in content until the first century A.D. This oral law did not change the written Law (the Torah—the Law of Moses) which remained intact, but it had changed and corrupted the original intent of the written Law. The Lord Jesus addressed this corrupting influence on many occasions, rebuking those Torah-teachers who advocated for its use in altering the original.

(Many Christians are guilty of the same practice, having altered the original teachings of the Lord Jesus to suit their own taste and limited understanding, and in some cases changing His intent and meaning entirely.)

Since the New Testament thus defines sin by the Lord’s support of the Law and the Prophets, there is actually no distinction between the two in defining sin. Sin is still what it has always been and it still incurs a penalty. Many people do not understand they are paying a penalty for sin in some form or another at present based on some past or present sin, which they do not recognize as sin. They do not consciously make the cause and effect connection between the two.

But God is not mocked. What we plant is what we will harvest. The ultimate penalty for unconfessed sin comes after physical death. It is not the Lord’s fault if people choose to die in their sins having rejected the only cure and the only cleansing agent—the Blood of Jesus.

The worst sins require the death penalty. The Lord Jesus paid that death penalty in full on our behalf. He fulfilled the requirements of the Law regarding sin and whoever applies the penalty He paid toward their own sins will have their long list of violations against God and man expunged, and their official record of sin will be erased as if it never existed.

This is the Lord’s grace. This is His mercy. This is His love.

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DEFINING SIN: The New “Evil is Good-Good is Evil” Paradigm (1)

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