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The Not in the Devil’s Tale

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We continue with the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve as the devil, the serpent, subtly lies about God and lures Eve into three appeals for her heart: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. John the Apostle corroborated these three temptations in 1 John 2:16-17:

For everything in the world–the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life–comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. – 1 John 2:16-17

We can see the irony of John’s comment in verse 17 as he says we live forever by doing the will of God. Living forever pertains of course to our resurrection to eternal life, something Adam and Eve likely did not understand in the garden of Eden. Their disobedience meant certain death in a physical sense.

But how does the devil trick Eve? He says, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” He plays on her innocence. Eve of course knew that God specified the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fact that the tree was forbidden gave it special importance. The moment they ate from that tree, their knowledge would replace their innocence and they would know good and evil. So Eve answers the serpent fairly accurately but with some subtle differences from the facts. Perhaps because she was getting her information second hand through Adam, she made some slight variations, such as, “You must not touch it.” She says, “You will die” rather than “You will certainly die.” The serpent said, “You will not surely die,” directly contradicting God and casting doubt on God’s word and His motive.

The serpent crafted his words carefully and said, “For you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” This has an element of truth to it. God said later, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22). Eve looked at the fruit, and it seemed good for food (the lust of the flesh) and pleasing to look at (the lust of the eyes). She thought it would make her wise (the pride of life), knowing good from evil. Probably she did not understand good and evil, because she could not yet discern the difference.

How many of us long to be the captain of our own destiny, in charge of our life, completely independent, with no boss but our own will? We want to be like God. The most arrogant want to be God. Emperors in history have demanded worship of themselves! Think of Nebuchadnezzar, or Caesars Nero and Domitian, or Emperor Hirohito. Eve’s temptation was therefore universal and arises from our own will taking priority over the Creator’s will, and over what is right and good.

I say that the temptation is universal, although it is tailored to the individual’s psyche and circumstances. Let us consider the temptation of Jesus in Luke chapter 4. Satan said to the very hungry Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3). He appealed to the lust of the flesh when Jesus was weak with hunger.

Next Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms from a high vantage point, saying, “I will give you all their authority and splendor…if you worship me, it will be all yours.” He appealed to the lust of the eyes.

Finally Satan appealed to pride, telling Jesus to throw Himself down from the temple. Jesus’ feat of survival would have been a show of His divine nature. What a spectacle this would have been, like Superman leaping tall buildings with a single bound! But the man Jesus would have tested God the Father, contrary to Scripture. Deuteronomy 6:16 forbids testing the Lord your God with false gods and further, testing Him by complaining and demanding things from God. Anyway, in Jesus’ case, this would have been a demand to rescue Jesus from His own folly of throwing Himself off a building. Pride would become apparent from seeking to make Himself a spectacle for His own benefit.

What about you and I? What’s your weakness? For some of us the weakness of the flesh pertains to physical pleasures, such as gluttony or sexual promiscuity. The lust of the eyes may fall into impurity with pornography, or the longing for treasures that are visually pleasing, such as a mansion or sports car. Bigger, better, faster! The dream house, the corner office, the Ferrari. But houses and offices and Ferraris in themselves are not evil! Yet they can lure your heart away from righteousness. How you acquire them can become all consuming and lead to crimes.

In 1 Timothy 6:10 we find St. Paul’s sanction against the love of a good thing, money!

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

This touches on the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and furthermore, when such pursuits become entangled in our pride, further sin is born. I know of a man serving twelve years in prison for fraud who was so thoroughly entangled in lust and pride that he defrauded people of many millions of dollars to feed his lusts and his desire for prestige as head of a busy company. He even gave interviews on national television as the CEO and posed as an expert in his field before his fall. He pierced himself with many griefs.

Our lesson has focused thus far on Satan’s modus operandus, that of appealing to our lust and pride, even as Satan casts doubt on God’s honesty, God’s care for us, and even God’s very nature. God’s word we know to be reliable. Reading the entirety of the Bible we see the consistency of God’s promises that begin in Genesis 3:15 (the prediction of Jesus versus Satan) and develop into a nation dedicated to God through the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The call of Abraham begins in Genesis 12. Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau, and Jacob becomes patriarch of twelve tribes. The nation of Israel begins shakily in captivity in Egypt, but is brought out in spite of the Egyptian stronghold, settling in the land of Canaan, developing for hundreds of years into many millions of people, until a monarchy is established, ultimately leading to a king above all kings, the Savior and Messiah. We know this from reading the testimonies and the history found in the Bible.

But let us focus again on Genesis chapter 3 to see how God cares for Adam and Eve. Can man live forever in a fallen state? God’s answer was no, in Genesis 3:22-23. He could not allow the man to live forever as a sinner, separated from the holy God. Can you imagine Adolf Hitler living forever? Death is the curse given for sinning in the first place. However, living forever in this condition cannot be. Eternal life comes only after we are freed from the curse of sin, but it comes with our redemption and resurrection. There are very few exceptions (Enoch, Elijah, and the chosen at the Rapture predicted in Revelation).

Now the science lovers among us certainly know about the law of entropy. Entropy has never been refuted and means that things deteriorate. Putting this simply, things eventually fall apart unless someone shepherds them along. We call this “someone” God. Speaking of the Son of God, Paul wrote:

For in Him all things were created…all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. – Colossians 1:16-17

The universe holds together by God the Father through His Son, Jesus. Otherwise, things would go chaotic. So our bodies also deteriorate, and we die. Now in the garden of Eden there was also the tree of life, which God mentions in Genesis 3:22. Overcoming entropy, in the case of man’s body, could have been intended through his eating from the tree of life. We do not know, but this seems implied. Man could no longer have access to the tree of life, because he was not allowed any longer to live forever. This was a kindness from God. Instead God provided another way, the way of redemption through Messiah. The first strong hint for this is found in Genesis 3:15, when God told the serpent:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Satan was the serpent and the heel bruiser, who put Jesus on the cross. The Messiah, Jesus, was the head crusher, destroying Satan’s plot to destroy mankind, and eventually throwing Satan into the place of fiery torment – hell – prepared for the devil and his angels. (See Matthew 25:41.) The devil’s offspring may be interpreted as his angels (the demons) or wicked humans who follow his commands. The woman Eve’s offspring is the child of the promise, Jesus, who would save the people from their sins, as predicted in Matthew 1:21, and who would reign on the throne of David forever and rule over the house of Jacob forever, as predicted in Luke 1:33. Luke 1:33 is quite similar to the prediction of Daniel 7:13-14, referring to the Son of Man who would be given all honor and glory and power, and who would rule forever over a kingdom that would never be destroyed. Jesus triumphed by overcoming the temptation to avoid the cross and through His atoning death for our sins, as well as through His resurrection.

Therefore, we may view God as kind to Adam and Eve and us by assigning the curse of death for sin, but providing eternal life through faith in the Resurrected One, Jesus. Jesus, the way, the truth and the life (John 6:14), is the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Him will live, even if he dies (John 11:25).

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. – 1 Peter 1:3-4.

Now we know that we live in a fallen world. We know this from Scripture and from the evidence around us – the decay in nature, wars, animosity, depravity, hatred of the good, love for evil, and blasphemy against the holy God. Even “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). Creation suffers decay because of the sins of humanity, the crown of God’s creation. Beginning with Adam and Eve in their fallen state, they were separated from paradise and from God. Furthermore, animals were now sacrificed on their behalf. The blood of the innocent animal allowed a temporary relief as a sin offering. God even sacrificed an animal by providing animal skin or hide for their clothing, in Genesis 3. God proved to be kind to them, even though they had disobeyed Him. We shall see through further study that there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:22); the sacrifices provided a temporary atonement as a type for the permanent solution to our redemption given us through the blood of Jesus.

The First Murder – Genesis 4

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“What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” God’s anguished words of accusation against Cain told a truth that rings out to us throughout history — no secret sin can be hidden from God. We know this truth even in forensic science today: you cannot expunge human blood. The murderous crime leaves a trail that cannot be erased. Others may not find the trail of blood, but the record still remains. Just as the Lady Macbeth ordered the blood stain removed in guilty delirium, cursing it, “Out, out…!” (Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1), she could not erase blood from her guilt-ridden hand, even though no blood was physically there. The blood speaks, whether it be found or unfound. In God’s record book, there are no secrets that will not be revealed.

Cain did not seem to bear a conscience or the madness that overcame the Lady Macbeth, yet his guilt rested on him as surely as his brother Abel’s blood was received by the ground, which God used as a testimony against him. A consistent theme in the Bible says, “…be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23).

“My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.” – Jeremiah 16:17 [The Lord God speaking to His people]

For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. – Ecclesiastes 12:14

God honored Abel’s sacrifice of worship, but did not have regard for Cain’s sacrifice. Abel offered the firstborn of his flocks with the choicest portions of the fat of his livestock. Cain brought some fruit from the ground, as he raised crops for a living. One opinion of scholars supports the idea of Cain’s produce itself being unacceptable, as the ground was under a curse. A similar view expresses his produce as improper or prohibited, as animal sacrifice was assumed to be required. According to either argument, Cain would have needed to buy some type of livestock, whether lambs, goats, bulls, etc., in order to present an acceptable offering on the altar. Nothing is said about whether Cain offered the “firstfruits” of his crops, but something was wrong with it. The firstfruits means that the first crops to ripen are offered as a sacrifice, an act of reverence. Now the scripture supports the offering of both the crops of the ground and livestock as a sacrifice (grain offerings and animal sacrifice in Deuteronomy, depending on the type of sacrifice). Therefore, the substance of Cain’s sacrifice was probably not in itself displeasing to God. No, Cain’s flawed sacrifice came from a heart that did not give the best of his produce. This is interpreted in the New Testament:

By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead. – Hebrews 11:4

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. – 1 John 3:11-12

Writing about religious violence, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed, “The story of Cain and Abel is the most profound commentary I know on the connection between religion and violence.” (Quoted from Jonathan Sacks, Genesis: The Book of Beginnings; New Milford, CT: Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, First Edition, 2009.) Perhaps Rabbi Sacks’ assessment overstates the case of religious violence, considering the lack of religion in Cain’s heart. He cites the theories of Freud, Rene Girard, and postmodernists as possible explanations for modern religious violence, but in Cain’s case, one simple explanation might be that of telling oneself that he is indeed doing the will of God. Did Cain think that God was wrong about his sacrifice? Another possible explanation for exerting his wrath on the favored one (Abel) would be to assert, like Nietzsche, that there is no God, and his rival did not deserve to live. As Cain was in conversation with God, such a perspective would not be possible. However, if one were to bear contempt toward God while not questioning His existance, it makes sense to likewise bear contempt for God’s creation. Cain cared not for God’s authority, nor for His advice to do the right thing in order to gain acceptance. Neither did he care for the life of his brother. His actions began with his paltry sacrifice to God, then his downcast countenance, and then steadily moved toward the wrathful act itself. Note the progression of Cain’s attitude, his evil deed, and finally his answer to God:

God: “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Cain took his brother into the field and murdered him.

God: “Where is your brother?”

Cain: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

God: “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse….”

Cain: “My punishment is more than I can bear.”

The fact that one’s gift or sacrifice was not accepted could elicit either a self assessment — what did I do wrong? — or anger over the rejection. The first reaction issues from a humble and caring heart. In the case of a worshipper, such an attitude means one is genuinely trying to worship the Lord. The other reaction — anger, Cain’s reaction — signifies a quid pro quo, or appeasement, or placating God, which is known as the “gift relationship” (Richard Titmuss, The Gift Relationship; New York: Pantheon, 1971). The gift relationship in the ancient tribal world was used as a means of control, whereby the leader would bestow gifts as a means to power; the practice was further exercised to influence the gods for favor, such as a sacrifice to a god in exchange for bounty of rain and harvest, or protection from enemies. Even today, a criminal kingpin fosters dependency and coercion by debt through giving. “You owe me” exerts control over one’s subjects. Insincere worshippers who live a double life, attending church or temple on the holy day but practicing evil during the week, may deceive themselves, thinking God is placated. Does God owe them something? God’s answer emphatically condemns trying to placate Him with meaningless worship, as indicated by 1 Samuel 15:22: “To obey is better than sacrifice.” In Isaiah God proclaimed:

“Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me…I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.” – Isaiah 1:13

“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood!” – Isaiah 1:15

We immediately know that Cain’s heart had no humility or concern for pleasing God when he reacted in anger at the rejection of his gift. Cain was not worshipping, not humble, not caring, not in fear of the Lord God. Taken to the extreme, the gift relationship as far as the giver is concerned states: I give, therefore I rule (Sacks, Genesis, 2009). Cain wanted to rule by his own will and acknowledged no master, not even God Himself. With such an attitude, Cain took no responsibility for his actions and showed no remorse. In response to Cain’s fear of being killed, God, out of kindness, placed a mark on Cain as a warning to the rest of mankind. The warning signaled vengeance seven times for anyone who would potentially kill Cain.

Cain’s obvious contempt for God is synonymous to willing God’s nonexistance; in a sense Cain wanted to replace God with his own will to power. Even in this scenario, God was kind to him, offering a way for self-rule first when He said, “…sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Following up our quotation of Ephesians 4:26, verse 27 says, “Neither give place to the devil.” The serpent in the garden of Eden tempted Eve with this same argument for being like God. Taking the place of God, or being like God, and exerting one’s own will with contempt for others — the height of arrogance — truly places Satan on the throne of one’s life. However, as the Lord recommended to Cain, self control provides the avenue toward honor and acceptance. In contrast, a Nietzschean will to power denies God and places oneself (rather, the devil) on the throne as the lord of one’s life. It is no wonder that the Bible often refers to God as the Lord God, using God’s own title for Himself, I AM, and translating it to HE IS (Exodus 3:14-15). We call God “Lord” to acknowledge that HE IS and to make the distinction between the Lord God, who is our Creator and Master, and ourselves, His subjects.

Adam and Eve had now lost their second-born son, righteous Abel, who was murdered by his wicked brother, Cain. Their third son, Seth, came and issued forth a more righteous lineage. As we follow the line of both Cain and Seth, we see some similarities in names, such as two Lamechs and two Enochs. Seth’s Enoch walked with God and was taken to heaven without dying. Nothing noteworthy of Cain’s Enoch may be determined, except for Cain’s naming a city after him. As for Cain’s Lamech, he was evil, establishing polygamy and killing two people. Seth’s Lamech fathered Noah and prophesied that Noah would be a comfort to the people after the struggle of working the ground that God had cursed. “Noah” means “comfort” or “rest.”

Genesis chapter 4 ends with some hope with the life of Seth. People began calling on the name of the Lord. This worship likely issued from the progression of righteousness from the line of Seth that culminated in Noah’s life as the ray of hope in God’s upcoming judgment on mankind, the Great Flood.

The Sanctity of Human Life

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Recent history includes two world wars that killed scores of millions of people. Hitler’s evil empire attempted to wipe out the Jewish people in the Holocaust. Despots have continued attempted genocide and barbaric cruelty in several nations. Let us pose these questions: What would our world look like if all human life were valued? What would become of death at the hands of murderers and warmongers? Would genocide be unheard of? Would slavery and human trafficking be nonexistent? Would pornography and prostitution and drug vending and kidnapping be abolished? After the Great Flood desribed in the book of Genesis, the Lord God commented that “every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood” (Genesis 8:21).

God has shown us a better way. Respect for life even extends to other creatures. Animal sacrifice included one purpose of atonement for our sins. As the wages of sin is death (Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23), the penitent would offer the life of the innocent animal on the altar to pay for his sin. God accepted this offering and forgave the sin, but the life of the animal had to be respected by abstaining from consuming its lifeblood.

“For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” – Leviticus 17:11

The taking of another person’s life indicates contempt for God Himself, as the murderer effectively despises God’s creation, man, who is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). We are God’s image bearers and have many unique abilities that set us apart:

  • Reason and ingenuity
  • Communication
  • A sense and acknowledgment of eternity
  • The capacity to worship our Creator
  • Some limited creative power (but unlike God, we cannot create material out of nothing)
  • Choice with regard to good and evil
  • An eternal spirit
  • The capacity for the fruits of the Holy Spirit to be manifest in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

Murderers discard their relationship with mankind and their Creator by demonstrating the utmost contempt for others, as well as God Himself. Jesus described this attitude of heart as murderous from its core, which is expressed in human wrath and words of contempt. In fact, Jesus regarded such hateful words of contempt as the moral equivalent of murder (Matthew 5:21-22). The Apostle John wrote of this:

Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. — 1 John 3:15

For this reason we are commanded not to commit murder (Exodus 20:13), but to love one another (John 15:12). The act of kindness foils the evil tendencies, such as spiteful and hateful words tantamount to murder. As we nurture the good things of bearing God’s image, such kindness becomes apparent, even in how we greet one another (Matthew 5:47).

The punishment for murder varies, and in the United States its most drastic punishment comes after “capital murder,” defined as multiple killings, assassination, or murder combined with another major felony such as bank robbery, etc. These examples and the punishments vary from state to state, while some states have banned capital punishment. The Scripture gives one punishment, which is capital punishment — the execution of the murderer, also termed a life for a life. The rationale for biblical capital punishment is that we are made in the image of God, and the murderer is therefore accountable for the life of another by the forfeiture of his own life.

“Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.” – Genesis 9:6

However, is abortion murder? Perhaps legally abortion is not murder, but the laws of man and God’s word may not always agree. Now the arguments for and against abortion in the United States recently became quite heated after Roe v. Wade was overturned, with abortion regulation turned over to the states. The same arguments continue over so-called reproductive rights (an ironic misnomer) or the right to choose — the choice to kill the life within the mother’s womb. The attempt to justify abortion with semantics, referring to a fetus as a tissue mass and other euphemisms only serves to cloud the issue. This covers the fact of baby killing with a lie attempting to negate the reality of the infant’s death, which then strikes many women with remorse for a lifetime after the act. The word of God shows the Lord God’s attitude toward the fetus, the life of the unborn:

15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. – Psalm 139:15-16

Two brief accounts in the Bible refer to babies (not fetal mass or tissue mass) in the womb. The first example actually calls the fetuses babies. Genesis 25 relates the pregnancy of Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, who was suffering from twins in her womb (Jacob and Esau) who were jostling each other so much that she inquired of the Lord what was happening. His answer came with authority:

“Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” – Genesis 25:23

The seminal account of Jacob and Esau became the archetype of God’s sovereign choice that at times chose the dominance and blessing of the younger over the older offspring, which rings true in Hebrew and Jewish history in the lives of Jacob, Joseph, Gideon, and David. More important in this current discussion, the account of Rebekah’s twins tells us that God cares for children in the womb and foresees their future.

The second account of the child in the womb comes through the testimony of Jeremiah, who was called by God to be His prophet in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 1. God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born I set you apart” (Jeremiah 1:5).

I cannot help but wonder if our nation will be held accountable for some 63 million lives taken for the sake of convenience or the “right to choose.” Violence is condemned, and continuous and unabated violence brought about God’s judgment of humanity by the Great Flood. The next judgment will come by fire, according to 2 Peter 3:3-7,11. The prophet John the Baptizer emphasized this in Matthew 3:11 and Luke 3:16, when he said Jesus “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Baptism of the Holy Spirit we receive as believers in Christ; the fire of judgment those receive who are unbelievers. Jesus’ winnowing fork will gather up the wheat (the faithful) for His barn, and reserve the chaff (the wicked) to be burned with “unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17). Judgment is coming for those who take human life lightly, including devaluing the helpless in the womb for the sake of one’s convenience. The question for the guilty must be this: What will you do about it?

Repent, says the Lord. Confess before the Holy God and He will lift you up. Your confession, repentance, and faith helps you receive God’s gift, your salvation. Nothing you did in the past cannot be cleansed by the blood of the Lord Jesus, whose atonement is available to all who come to Him. By the mercy and grace of God through your receiving His Son, you may become a son or daughter of our Lord God (John 1:12).

Babel – Genesis 11:1-9

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Located in the plains of Shinar of northern Mesopotamia, Babylon, or Babel, ushered in the world of many languages and nations scattered over all the earth. The brief Babel narrative finds people in opposition to God, and tells of the scattering of the nations developed from the descendants of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. How did the peoples of the earth in chapter 10 – the Table of the Nations – become so distinctly different and settle over the whole earth? In brief, God scattered them. The Babel account begins and ends with the Hebrew words, kal-ha-eretz, all the earth. This framing device gives a clue to the writer’s ingenious, compact method of imparting wordplay, repetition, and an hourglass literary device intended to convey the contrast between man’s foolish arrogance and the Lord God’s majestic power. Babel’s secrets are unlocked in just nine verses. The hourglass account of Babel presents itself like this:

The first two verses and last two verses provide two opposite narrations. Kal-ha-eretz, all the earth, had just one language and one common speech or vocabulary. This is the top of the hourglass. However, God confused their language and scattered the people over kal-ha-eretz, all the earth. This is the end of the account and the base of the hourglass.

The second set of two verses (verses 3 and 4) and the second-to-the-last set of two verses (verses 6 and 7) give two opposing discourses. In the first discourse the people say, “Come, let us bake bricks and use mortar,” and “Let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens to make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of kal-ha-eretz.” In the opposing discourse, verses 6 and 7, God says, “If as one people with one language they can do this, there is no limit to what they can do. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not understand each other.”

The central verse (5) serves as the transition between the discourse of the people and the discourse of God and says that the Lord came down to see the city and the tower they were building. The fact that God “came down” gives us a clue that the heavens were not reached!

The final narration in verses 8 and 9 presents the opposite effect of the first narration. Their languages are now different and the people become scattered over all the earth, kal-ha-eretz.

They were building a tall ziggurat, a tower to reach the heavens, so that they could make a name for themselves. The tower of Marduk in Babylon reached a height of 300 feet and demonstrated the new technology of bricks of mud and mortar made of tar or asphalt. The new method of construction gave taller structures more strength, and for certain, gave them confidence in their enterprise. The city was very possibly under the supervision of Nimrod, a descendant of Ham and Cush, and a king of this region. Mesopotamia included ancient Sumer, the cradle of the first civilization after the Great Flood. Unfortunately, God’s directions to the people included being fruitful and multiplying – a task they had no problem accomplishing – but also spreading out over all the earth, kal-ha-eretz.

The ancient problem of hubris so famous in the Greek tragedies of Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles had a much earlier beginning with Babel. This in part is what God meant when He said, “If as one people with one language they can do this, there is no limit to what they can do.” He was not speaking of great undertakings, but of great sin, arrogance, hubris. Essentially, the people succumbed to Eve’s temptation in the garden of Eden, the idea of being like God. In this case, to be as gods the people thought they could reach the heavens and make a name for themselves. The wordplay becomes a mnemonic for the sin. In Hebrew the phrasing sounds alike for name – shem – and heavens – shamayim. “Let us reach shamayim and make shem.” If we consider the dominance of consonants over vowels, the two words sound remarkably close. The phrasing of wordplay and the tight structure of this account would have been helpful to Moses’ listeners as they heard the reading of the new scripture. Availability of the manuscript would have been limited and many people were illiterate, a good reason for getting their attention orally in a memorable way.

Moses, the presumed author, further enhanced the wordplay by repeating the words for heavens and the earth – shamayim and ha-eretz – echoing Genesis 1:1, the first sentence of the Bible:

In the beginning created God the heavens and the earth.

Bereshit bara Elohim et has-shamayim et ha-eretz.

– Genesis 1:1

The account of Babel therefore has something to do with the distinction between the heavens and the earth. A Psalm of David gives an important clue:

The highest heavens belong to the Lord,

but the earth He has given to mankind.

– Psalm 115:16

The peoples’ overweaning presumption was their attempt to become God, in effect doing away with Him – Nietzsche would say killing God – as they would take His place and make a name for themselves. This sin contained the seed of perhaps greater arrogance than their disobedience to the commission God had given them at Ararat, when the Lord spoke to Noah and his three sons, saying to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1). Surely they had multiplied, but they chose to remain concentrated on the plain of Shinar, the land between the rivers (Tigris and Euphrates). They even said as much in 11:4 – “Otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.“

In a sense the Lord God laughed at their prideful arrogance. Imagine the Almighty One examining their ziggurat, the 300-foot tower of Babel, as He descended from the highest heavens to see their paltry work. The confusion of the language occurred easily, at God’s command, just as God said to Abraham,

“Is anything too hard for the Lord?” – Genesis 18:14

Further wordplay occurs with the words for brick, L-V-N in Hebrew, and confuse, N-V-L. This reversal reinforces how God reversed their intention by confusing the language and scattering them.

We may further observe that the name they made for themselves had quite the opposite of the intended effect. The name of the city became Babylon, or Babel, which sounds like confusion.

Now mankind did not fully learn the lesson of Babel. At least 30 ziggurats have been found in ancient Mesopotamian ruins. Some have inscriptions about reaching the heavens. Many cultures have built pyramids and tall structures to reach the heavens for religious purposes, making a “shem” for themselves by reaching “shamayim.” However, in effect, God’s purpose for mankind – to fill the earth – came about from God’s will exercised at Babel. The moral for readers today may be found in the words of Jesus as he taught His disciples the Lord’s Prayer:

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Oh, that we could deny our tendency for self-glorification and self-deification and self reliance, independent of our Creator! If we could only spurn the temptation of Eve to be like God (Genesis 3:5). The better path follows our Lord’s example. We may pray this: “Lord, may your will be done.”

The Battle for Self-Control

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The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 7 that he waged a war with himself. In Paul’s day, the battle of self-control was not a new concept by any means. Solomon wrote of this in Proverbs.

Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city. – Proverbs 16:32

We know of course that the battle of self-control is a universal human condition that is not confined to Judeo-Christian Scriptures and writings! About four centuries after Solomon, Plato wrote of this as the war against oneself. In his Socratic discourses, Laws, Book I, Plato asserted that victory over oneself was superior to victory in war or battle, while self-defeat was both “the worst and the most shameful” defeat. We may ascertain the moral implications of self-defeat from such sins as unholy wrath, violence, hatred, profanity, impurity, intemperance, immorality, dishonesty, graft, self-indulgence in myriad ways, and the more “socially acceptable” indulgences such as gossip, complaining, and even worry. The long list of our potential self-defeating sins, which goes beyond what I’ve only begun to name, suggests that we have a sin problem that even the best of men and women struggle to keep in check.

Even the Apostle Paul struggled, writing to the church at Rome that although his mind wanted to do right, his sinful nature would at times get the better of him. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! – Romans 7:19-25

As humans, the wiser of us crave deliverance from the sin that wages war against our minds; more so, as Christians in love with God’s moral code of conduct in His Holy Book, we long for deliverance from the sin that wages war against our mortal body and wrestles against our spiritual being. We cannot win this war alone, which is one reason why God has given us His Holy Spirit to resist temptation.

11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. 12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. – Romans 8:11-13

Now Paul, of course, was writing about spiritual life and death, just as Jesus claimed in John 11:25, when our Lord said, “He who believes in Me will live, even if He dies.” Our spiritual living, even though we die, is our resurrection, just as Jesus said in the same passage, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Yet with faith, our active belief and trust in Christ, we are able by the promised Holy Spirit in us to go about putting to death the sinful deeds of the body. Therefore, Paul and we the faithful can say, “Thanks be to God who delivers us through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 7:25).

Do you have trials and temptations, as the hymn says? Then “Take it to the Lord in prayer.” Do not fight the battle for self-control alone. We have the promised Holy Spirit within us who came to our aid the moment we first professed Christ as our Savior. As the Apostle Peter said, the promised Holy Spirit “is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39). Now this is how we know the Spirit of God is in us: by how we live our life according to the Word of God. Check yourself against His Holy Book. This is a beginning to see the evidence of Christ in us: Galatians 5:22-23, which says “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

We put to death those evil deeds and desires on a daily basis, even as we take up our cross (Matthew 16:24). Paul wrote to the Colossians that they “died,” and their life was “hidden with Christ in God,” so that they, therefore, could put to death their earthly nature (sin), while Christ was their life (Colossians 3:3-5). How then is our life “hidden with Christ in God?” Perhaps you have heard the hymn, “He Hideth My Soul.” Jesus is our strength, and He covers us as we stand behind His greatness, a bulwark against the wiles of the devil. We do not stand alone against the forces of evil, but as Michael the archangel said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you” (Jude 9). Satan the accuser fights against us to use our own sinful past to weaken our faith, and by all accounts we are not worthy for salvation, and not worthy to stand before the Lord’s throne of grace, and yet by the grace of God who has redeemed us, we do not stand by our own power, but rather, we stand by the power of the cross and the risen Savior. Therefore, we stand in the power of the resurrection of our Lord. We overcome the evil one “by the blood of the Lamb,” Jesus, and by “the word of [our] testimony” (Revelation 12:11). When we deny ourselves according to Matthew 16:24, we become dead to self, but alive to Christ. Is your life “hidden with Christ in God?” Ask yourself: Is Christ your life? Where do you focus your attention each day? Just as your thoughts govern your actions, then your thoughts of Christ will fill up your mind and your actions. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).

By the power of the cross and our risen Christ, whose testimony is sure and whose promised deliverance is our steadfast hope, the Lord bless your spirit with His Holy Spirit within you. Amen.

What’s in a name? – Shem’s Legacy for the Messiah

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After the Great Flood, Noah and his family began their new life on an unpopulated planet earth. Noah planted a vineyard and got drunk tasting his wine. We can make special note of the aftermath of Noah’s drunken nakedness after he and his family exited the ark and settled down. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham revealed Noah’s nakedness by telling his brothers, Shem and Japheth. Then good Shem and Japheth walked backwards into Noah’s chamber with a blanket, averting their eyes and covering their father. Now Shem was not only his name, but actually was the Hebrew word for name. There is more to a name than its pronunciation. In the Old Testament, which mirrored much of ancient Hebrew culture, the naming of the newborn would at times attempt to capture the person’s anticipated character, or the circumstances of his birth. Today we say that we want to honor a person’s good name. In this sense, the Old Testament referred to the good name of a person, and even his renown or fame. We could say that Shem meant not only “name” but also “fame” or “renown.”

The use of the word shem for fame may be found in examples such as this one, which addresses Solomon’s fame for his wisdom:

We know so little of Shem from the Flood account and thereafter, but we do read of the blessing that Noah pronounced after he woke up from his drunken state. Noah blessed Shem and Japheth, and especially noted the future of Shem’s descendants. There developed a Semitic group (“Shemites”) that resided in Ur of southern Mesopotamia – Ur being a Chaldean city. Abram, later named Abraham, came from Ur as the tenth generation from Noah after the Great Flood. Now Abram’s family had moved northward to the Mesopotamian city of Haran, and from there God spoke to him. We make note of the commissioning of Abram to leave his home and family and travel to an unknown country, Canaan (Genesis 12:1-5). The blessing of Shem given by Noah was realized through Abraham’s descendants, who became the Hebrew people. The promise God gave Abraham through a sacred covenant pledged that all nations would be blessed through Abraham. Most of Genesis tells the beginnings of the redemptive story that began with Abraham and his descendants and ultimately resulted in the life of the Messiah, the anointed kingly One who would save all people of all nations who place their faith in Him.

As an aside to our theme and complementary to it, consider Solomon, whose name became synonymous with wisdom:

For he [Solomon] was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Carcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame [shem] was in all the nations round about. – 1 Kings 4:31

How much more does the name of the Messiah, Jesus, apply for all humanity! The theme of the entire Bible focuses on how we find eternal life through this Messiah, this Anointed One, who in Greek of the New Testament is known by the word for Messiah, which is Christ. This may be a lot to digest if you are new to the Bible, but the history and prophecy gradually becomes manifest through the entire Bible as we proceed.

What’s in a name? The name of the Holy One gives His character of faithfulness, holiness, mercy, and grace. God’s name (Exodus 3:14-15) represents Himself, and His Son, Messiah, also holds the essence of His greatness. We first begin at the beginning by acknowledging that the promised offspring who would drive back the devil was mentioned in Genesis 3:15, as the One who would destroy the devil’s head. As mentioned in “The First Sin,” a previous article on this site, Genesis 3:15 is known as the first citing of the gospel of the Savior of mankind. The verse is therefore called the protoevangelium. By this kernel of the gospel imbedded at the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 3:15, we understand that God’s gospel is for each of us. In fact, He knows each of us by name. How can we assert this? We know from the pronouncements of God and His servants in Scripture:

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. -Psalm 139:16

Thus wrote David, the Psalmist, of his own beginning in the womb as God formed his body. The Lord Himself affirmed this when He commissioned Jeremiah as a prophet to the nations in the book of Jeremiah:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” -Jeremiah 1:5

The Lord Himself looks into our hearts and deeds; He cares about what we think and do!

“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” -Jeremiah 17:10

We know the Lord is watching each of us:

13 The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. 14 From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; 15 He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works. -Psalm 33:13-15

David wrote of a relationship with the Holy God in Psalm 23:

You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. -Psalm 23:5

We have a similar Scripture in the New Testament, in Revelation 3, by the voice of Christ:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with Me.” -Revelation 3:20

God watches you; God knows you. His knowledge is infinite (Psalm 147:5); how much more may He know about each and every one of His image bearers, human beings (Genesis 1:27)! Whoever calls on God will be saved (Acts 2:21), and the Lord even calls you to bring you unto Himself (Acts 2:39). By these personal details ordained between God and people, we know that He knows you by name! What’s in a name? It is your personal invitation to trust the Lord in faith and call on the name of the Lord.

The Standard for Ethics

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How do the laws in human history relate to ethics today? We may read of the laws of mankind from ancient times, such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments, combined with the laws in the Hebrew people’s teachings, the Torah. Many centuries later, Plato wrote an extensive, though unfinished, dialogue entitled Laws, which attempted to analyze legal codes of various Hellenic countries of the 5th Century B.C. In comparing these ancient codes and commentary, we find one particularly significant property in common, which is the appeal to deity in one form or other for establishing the authority of the laws. The rationale for appealing to such authority has its basis in the absolute standard of purity, without equivocation or error; otherwise, ethics and faith in God Himself have no standard but are reduced to mere relativism. Therefore, a comparison of ancient legal codes and commentary with the Bible would seem not only appropriate but vital.

Even though earlier legal codes of a Sumerian culture are also extant, these appear much more fragmented and incomplete than Hammurabi’s. The Code of Hammurabi dates back to the 18th Century B.C. under a Mesopotamian leader, probaby King Hammurabi himself, in the region of the Euphrates. Oddly, the most complete preservation of the code, the basalt stele of Hammurabi, was discovered in Susa, Iran (Persia) near the border with modern-day Iraq, and stands reassembled today in the Louvre Museum. Scholars surmise that the stele had been moved to Susa by force of war; nevertheless, other fragments found in the Near East point to the code of Hammurabi having a lasting influence across several cultures over some centuries in the overall region. The stele has a prologue and 282 legal paragraphs inscribed in cuneiform in the Akkadian (Semitic) language, followed by an epilogue, and it prescribes the legal requirements for such topics as family and civil law, business law, property law, and criminal law. The legal paragraphs are amazingly advanced in both format and concept. The casuistic style for each legal paragraph states “if” such-and-such, “then” such-and-such shall apply as to the legal remedy, and either a reward or punishment. Probably the most notable paragraph similar to a biblical nature mentions exacting punishment for the crime of violence – “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” as later cited in the law of Moses: Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21; and repeated in the New Testament in Matthew 5:38. The carved relief at the top of the stele depicts the king revering Shamash, also known as Utu, the Babylonian god of the sun and justice.

Another remarkable code chronologically after Hammurabi’s would of course be the law of Moses as found in the parchment manuscripts of the Hebrew books of instruction – the Torah, consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (written c. 15th Century BC). The earliest extant manuscripts of the Torah today, along with many other Hebrew scriptures and Jewish writings, were discovered between 1946/1947 and 1956 at the caves of Qumran near the Dead Sea. They were probably copied by Essene scribes dating between the 3rd and 1st Centuries BC, with some manuscripts even earlier, and some later. The advance in scholarship and corroboration finds a remarkable similarity in the wording and clarity of translation between the previously “oldest” extant manuscripts and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The law of Moses found in the Torah reveals the law code of God to His people that organizes around the Ten Commandments presented to the first generation of the liberated Hebrews who exited Egypt (Exodus chapter 20), and then a second time to the next generation as the people prepared to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy chapter 5). We may note that the Ten Commandments give four “vertical” commandments on how to relate to the Supreme Being, followed by six “horizontal” commandments on how to relate to fellow humans. The summary commandments for each of these two categories may be found in the narration and admonitions by Moses to the people. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 provides the famous “Shema,” meaning “Hear,” which states the oneness of God and the Greatest Commandment – to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. The first four of the Ten Commandments relate to honoring God as the only true and living God, the use of His name, and keeping the Sabbath, and all fall under the Greatest Commandment, Deuteronomy 6:4-5 – the Shema. The Second-Greatest Commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself, lies deep in Leviticus in the context of not holding a grudge, but to love instead, in Leviticus 19:18. “Love your neighbor as yourself” provides the primary emphasis and reason for the last six of the Ten Commandments, which include:

  • Honor your father and mother.
  • Do not murder.
  • Do not commit adultery.
  • Do not steal.
  • Do not bear false witness.
  • Do not covet.

This law code includes the simple major and universal Commandments but branches out into the sacrifical system of worship and animal blood atonement for sin, as well as various cultural regulations, sacred holidays, and worship requirements that provide a type for Christ, the projected Messiah, who was to come centuries after Moses. We may state unequivocably that the law of Moses points to the Divine, and as Bible believers, we say on faith that it comes from God.

We now come to the bulwark of Western legal and political thought, the philosphers of ancient Greece, which included the Big Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Of these, we may focus on Plato’s final work in his old age, his dialogue, Laws. Today Plato’s discussion of laws may be criticised for its style and antiquated opinions, which at times seem to border on the naive. However, the major point comes from the statements of Plato’s character in the dialogue, the Stranger of Athens, as he propounds the divine nature of good law. “The laws of the Cretans,” he says to Clinias the Cretan, “are held in superlatively high repute among the Helenes. For they are true laws inasmuch as they effect the well-being of those who use them by supplying all things that are good. Now goods are of two kinds, human and divine” (Laws, Book I). He further expounds on humanity’s dependence on divine direction. We may wonder whether, assuming pagan gods to be nonexistent, a “divine” order or direction from the ancient Hellenic world would have any relevance, even in the 5th Century BC. The answer must come from their perspective, which would be affirmative. Although at times Plato’s Athenian Stranger mentioned God as the source for good law, we may only gather that he referred to someone in the ancient Greek pantheon. In the reading, one may find a reference to Zeus and Pythian Apollo. Now Zeus in general would be regarded in Hellenic culture as of highest rank, the deific king of Olympus. However, Apollo, a god of great influence in multiple areas of human endeavor, specifically became involved in Greek religious tradition as the source for the power of the oracle at Delphi, the ancient Greek center of the universe. There at Delphi on the Bay of Corinth, Pythia, the oracular priestess, practiced her art of divination. Belief in law from the mouth of Apollo through Pythia had great weight to the Hellenic peoples.

Our thesis, after some comparison of legal and religious cultural references, lays out the universal need for authority for objective ethical principles, which we may further focus as commandments and laws of religious importance; namely, there must be a standard by which ethics are judged that stand independent of mere opinion and relativism. Even as Bertrand Russell, a self-described agnostic or atheist, admitted, he could not definitively judge goodness and badness (right and wrong) without requisite “non-natural properties of goodness and badness” (Stanford, 2021). Therefore, we may surmise that, according to Russell, without the supernatural ethical standard, objective ethical correctness would be reduced to debate. God must exist for an objective ethical standard, and as God said, “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Remarkably, the ancient philosophers and lawgivers tended to agree on divine direction, if only ostensibly to justify the laws. Divine decree was invoked by Hammurabi, Moses, and Plato. Bible believers say that God will judge the people of the world, past, present, and future, and His judgment is right. We have His Book by which we may know His standard, in the pages from Genesis to Revelation.

For God shall bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. – Ecclesiastes 12:14

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. -Hebrews 4:13

We are fortunate to have the hope of God’s promises to believers, and may call on the name of the Lord and plead in faith for His grace and mercy, turning to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith (Romans 10:9-10; Hebrews 12:2). We are privileged to live out our faith, not under judgment, but under grace and a sound mind in Christ (Romans 8:1; 12:1-3). May the Lord’s peace be with you.

REFERENCES:

Britannica Online, britannicaonline/topic/Britannica-online. “Code of Hammurabi.” Accessed 10

February 2024.

Britannica Online, britannicaonline/topic/Britannica-online. “Dead Sea Scrolls.” Accessed 10

February 2024.

Britannica Online, britannicaonline/topic/Britannica-online. “Shamash.” Accessed 10 February 2024.

Plato, Laws. English trans. by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1926.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Russell’s moral philosophy,” under subtitle “1. The open

question argument and its aftermath: Moore’s influence on Russell,” revised 4 May 2021.

The Cost of Following Christ

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Jesus had much to say about the cost of being His disciple; in fact, true discipleship will cost you everything, and yet, the value of His grace is limitless! This quote from Jesus compares such a cost with the practicality of war:

31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. -Luke 14:31-33

We also know of the cost of a stronger nation at war against a weaker power, which holds out with great resistance and perseverence, because the weaker power’s homeland means everything to the people, even life itself. The stronger power must be forced to weigh the cost, even weighing the diminishing returns from a seemingly endless war. America has witnessed this from the Vietnam War and the war in Afghanistan. Russia may be experiencing this principle in its war against Ukraine, and also suffered heavy losses in the 1980s in the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, the principle of diminishing returns goes back in history to ancient times. Aristotle referred to the fading Persian empire’s struggle against Atarneus, a stronghold town on the coast of Asia Minor (Politics, Book II, iv, 10), in which the city’s mega-wealthy financier, Eubulus the Bithynian banker, suggested to the Persian general, Autophradates, that he count the cost in time, expense, and lives to take the city. Autophradates wisely withdrew the seige from Atarneus.

Now Jesus’ example in Luke chapter 14 refers to the weaker power offering peace terms when the cost would be too great. We have therefore two examples from history: the diminishing returns of the stronger power in one example, and the likely defeat or excessive cost of the weaker power in another example. Our moral of these illustrations pertains to becoming a Christian. To be a Christian, Jesus says, you must go “all in.” The cost is your life, whether literally in the case of your martyrdom, or the cost over your natural lifetime as a slave of Christ.

Then He said to them all: 23 “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” -Luke 9:23-24

Self-denial places others ahead of yourself, and the motivation is love. The cost of discipleship is everything, but the gain is everything for eternity. Oh, the amazing riches of Christ (Romans 9:23; Colossians 1:27; Hebrews 11:26)!

Now the cost of discipleship to Jesus may be regarded, in the case of the strong Christian, as the stronger power waging war on the weaker, who may perhaps find himself casting his pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6) in the hope of saving the irretrievable, only to sink himself in the mire of the other’s depravity. Once you have laid out the gospel and your arsenal of prooftext – that is, your memorized Scriptures that show the way of repentance and salvation in Christ – it becomes necessary to “dissolve the bands” (T. Jefferson) that may lead to evil influence. As the apostle said, once you have warned the wayward one, watch that you yourself be not tempted. Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good character,” which Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:33, quoting from the Greek Poet, Menander.

In the case of an ordinary Christian, or a new Christian, or even a weaker Christian, how do you ask for peace against the stronger power? One must not negotiate with evil, especially the devil. Surrender, not to evil, but to the risen Savior. Do as Paul described in Colossians 3:1-3; namely, hide your life in Christ. As you deny self and hide your life in Christ, the Lord Jesus stands between you and evil. We are all weak in one way or other, and Jesus knows your every weakness. Call on Jesus for protection. Take that temptation to the Lord in prayer. Such is the resistance of the saved, calling on the name above all names, Jesus. As James wrote, resist the devil, and he will flee (James 4:7). Is he fleeing from your power? No, he is fleeing from you because of who is in you, Jesus, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

Hell Is Real

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The Friday edition of The Wall Street Journal features an essay series, “Houses of Worship,” written by a different specialist each week on a topic of interest related to religion. On Friday, March 8, 2024, p. A13, Lance Morrow presented his article entitled “How We Think About Hell.” It seems every unpleasantry imaginable occupies our thoughts about hell, if we think of hell at all, although the plethora of concepts tend to marginalize the truth from God’s Word. Pope Francis, when asked what he thought about hell, said, “What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty. I hope it is.”

Mr. Morrow went through a vivid list of observations by writers and thinkers on the topic of hell. Pope Francis described hell as “eternal solitude.” Jean Paul Sartre, the existentialist “pontiff,” commented that “hell is other people.” Great writers published their own particular twist on hell. Dante’s Inferno “set the standard,” says Morrow. Milton wrote a tortuously lengthy tome, Paradise Lost, putting words in Lucifer’s mouth: “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” James Joyce’s novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, apalls the senses with the smell of rotting flesh and boiling blood of sinners, even as the fire “gives off no light.”

Then we are given a glimpse of hell on earth, such as World War I’s Battle of the Somme, which introduced mass insanity of 300,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries in a barrage of shelling, destruction of human life and limb the likes of which had never been seen before. Survivors were prone to take decades to speak of it, if at all. The butchery continued through wars and terrorism throughout the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-first. Of course, Hitler teed up a nuance to hell on earth, delivering genocidal annihialtion to his Holocaust victims in the dehumanizing of human life as ghoulish as the hated Nineveh of the ancient Assyrian Empire.

Nowadays it seems that relativism takes the front seat of people’s concept of laying blame for sin, which is the reason for hell in the first place. But has sin become dependent on the situation? Are we no longer responsible for our actions if our psyche is the product of our genetic and social circumstances? Consequently, Morrow raised a pointed question: “Has the old idea, fire and brimstone through all eternity, gone out of business?” After all, who is responsible in Twenty-first Century thinking? Artificial Intelligence raises new possibilities of transferring blame away from a potentially punishable culprit. Do you blame the “occupant” of a self-driving vehicle when a computer glitch causes the death of a hapless pedestrian? Nevertheless, the author concludes that there is somehow a basic truth to be ferreted from human nature and our sense of justice. I would say that therein lies the problem – the finding of justice by human standards rather than God’s.

I would add that the groundwork for such dubious ideas of justice began long ago. Novels and speeches and articles over the modern era laid the foundations of relativism. Dostoevsky, Hardy, Dreiser, and Steinbeck – each contributed to the idea of the extenuating circumstance and the perpetrator as victim. Today we see this in the news as criminals are given a pass. If the criminal is a victim, then how can you punish him? Is not society itself responsible? As far back as Thomas More’s Utopia, first published in 1516, and in English in 1551, the foundation for such warped thinking had been laid.

“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?” -Thomas More, Utopia

The book had a lengthy Latin name with various English translations that could be simplified to this: On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia. We best recognize the book, of course, as Utopia, and its rather loose treatment of crime became woven into Western culture in popular works, including the motion picture, Ever After (1998). In the movie, Drew Barrymore directly quoted the above English rendition of Thomas More’s indictment of punishing thieves.

Sin as sin can only be, at its core, a simple concept that – without grace from above – predicates the inexorable conclusion: judgment. Therefore, hell becomes crystal clear in the moral code of God’s Holy Word, the Bible. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the Eighteenth Century evangelist and author of the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” ignited the proper fear of the Lord God in thousands of Americans’ hearts and helped bring about the Great Awakening, the great Christian revival in Colonial America. His basic examples from Scripture atested to the reality of hell, a real place of torment for those who have earned the wrath of God, not the least of which results from intransigent rebellion against the evidence of God’s existence, beginning with unbelief in the miracle of His creation (Romans 1:20) and extending to unbelief in the miraculous, incarnate Son of God.

“Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.” –John 3:18

We have the Biblical illustration from one of Jesus’ parables, “The Rich Man and Lazarus,” in which poor Lazarus dies and goes to heaven, resting on Abraham’s bosom, while the wicked rich man is tortured in the eternal fires of hell (Luke 16:19-31). Now hell was originally reserved for the devil and his angels, the fiery eternal place where Satan would be locked up as he justly deserves (Matthew 25:41). However, mankind, who is made in God’s image, was not intended for such a fate until after the Fall, when the sin of man came into being. What do we have now? We have an alternative: either to enjoy God’s grace as we look to “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2, KJV) or to face an eternity in hell. Its description leaves no doubt of its physical reality. Isaiah 66:24 describes the scorched bodies of the wicked who are the objects of God’s wrath in a place where the worms consuming them never die and the fire is never quenched; and Jesus relates this illustration from Isaiah as the place of hell, emphasizing the worms and unquenchable fire three times (Mark 9:42-48).

As mentioned, there lies before us God’s boundless grace and his unmitigated holy wrath; the choice is yours. “As for me and my house,” as Joshua said in Joshua 24:15, “we will serve the Lord.” We will turn to God’s grace freely offered, not due to our own merit, but because we look to Him in faith (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The Testing of Abraham — Genesis 22

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The Lord God spoke to Abraham and said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go sacrifice him as a burnt offering in the land of Moriah.” The Lord emphasized how dear Isaac was to Abraham, and this is the first use of the word love in the Bible. Abraham’s heart must have sunk. He had waited until he was 100 years old before he could have a son with his 90-year-old wife, Sarah. Isaac was the child of the promise God had given him to make a great nation through his offspring. In fact, God had told him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned” (Genesis 21:22). What could possibly come of killing his own child, now a boy or young man?

But Abraham did not hesitate. He cut up the wood for the sacrifice and left Beersheba, his current home in the south of Canaan, early in the morning. He had loaded his supplies, mustered servants and taken Isaac with him. They traveled for three days to Moriah, the mountain of the Lord close to Jeruslaem. Mount Moriah would later become the temple mount in the days of King Solomon, and eventually, it is believed, the site of Islam’s Dome of the Rock. On the third day, as the mountain came into sight, he went ahead alone with Isaac, saying to his servants, “Wait here while I go with the boy to the mountain to worship, and we will return to you.” He used the impersonal term, the boy, as he spoke of his beloved Isaac, perhaps to distance himself from the gruesome task ahead of him. How could God, whose promises he believed, now renege on the promise, and make him sacrifice his only son of the promise? This was a precedent never ventured before: a commanded human sacrifice from God Almighty. It was unthinkable. Yet the order rang in his ears to sacrifice his son like an animal for atonement and devotion to the Creator. He did not have the written law code of Moses, dictated by God Himself, saying do not murder and do not offer human sacrifice to a god. No, the law code would not come until over four hundred years later. It is possible he knew of the law code of King Ur-Nammu, who might have been contemporary to Abraham. Otherwise, he was not schooled in law, at least not in the way of the still nonexistant Hebrew tradition. But Abraham knew something about God from conversations with Him, and he thought he knew God’s nature: holy, faithful, dependable, righteous, everlasting.

God had said to Abraham, “Leave your land and your people and go to a land that I will show you, and I will make you into a great nation.” Later God told him, “Go out and look up at the stars and count them, if indeed they can be counted. So will your offspring be.” And then the book of Genesis says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Then at age 99, Abraham saw the Lord in human form – the Theophany – and heard him say, “This time next year you and Sarah will have a son.” In spite of Abraham and Sarah’s laughter, it happened, and the Lord told him to name the boy Isaac, meaning He Laughs. Now he must kill the boy and burn the boy’s body like a carcass in worship of the Living God. Had God changed His mind? No, God must be up to something he did not understand. Would he raise Isaac from the dead? God is faithful and does not do evil. God must provide him a way, and he must not try to take a shortcut or circumvent the plan of the Lord, even in this. Somewhere on that journey a resolve came over Abraham that kept him in pursuit of the Lord’s orders. It had to be faith that only God knows and that God would work out to satisfaction.

After the three days of travel, and his thinking about God’s command, the thought would be like burying his son for those three days, or counting Isaac as good as dead. Isaac was oblivious to the plan now, as they drew close to Moriah. Abraham had placed the wood load on Isaac’s back as they traveled on foot this last distance alone, unaccompanied by servants or beasts. Abraham carried the knife and the fire, probably a lit torch.

“My father?”

“Here I am, my son,” said Abraham. He had kept things impersonal in referring to his son as “the boy,” but now the words could not be withheld. He was saying what we might say: At your service, my son.

“We have the wood, the knife, and the fire, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” The whole burnt offering became codified in the book of Leviticus, far into the future, but the practice was known in Abraham’s time and before. The whole animal was consumed by the fire as a symbol of the worshipper’s total devotion, and as atonement for sin. The lamb could also be another creature such as a ram, the mature male sheep. Abraham knew this. With the thought of what he had been instructed to do, but knowing no other recourse, Abraham relied on his only hope – that God would show him what to do. “God Himself will provide the lamb,” he said to his son.

They built the altar now and arranged the wood for the fire. Then the unthinkable happened. Somehow Abraham succeeded in getting Isaac on the wood and binding him there. At some time during this last procedure, Isaac must have realized that he was the sacrifice. Did they discuss this? It is possible that Isaac as a youth was stronger than his father, but did they have a wrestling match? If Isaac consented willingly or was talked into stretching out on the altar, then he was foreshadowing the Christ, who willingly would go to His execution on the cross some two thousand years in the future. In fact, to Christians the whole incident presents a type, also known as a foreshadowing or prefiguring, for the passion of the Christ. These uncanny similarities to the Crucifixion of Jesus presented themselves:

  • Abraham, the father, prepared to sacrifice his only legally recognized son as atonement and devotion, just as God the Father allowed His only begotten Son to be sacrificed for the sins of the world. Jesus is called the Lamb of God (Isaiah 53:7; John 1:29,36; Acts 8:32; 1 Peter 1:19; Revelation 5:6,8,12,13). The details for the lamb motif begin in the book of Leviticus, which outlines sacrifice for sin and devotion to the Lord. The burnt offering and the guilt offering would include, depending on circumstances, a young bull, a female sheep, a ram, or a goat. The poor could sacrifice doves or fine flour. However, the lamb became an enduring symbol of such sacrifice throughout the Israelites’ sacrificial period, from the Exodus through the First Century A.D.
  • As mentioned, Abraham spent three days traveling to Moriah, where the sacrifice would occur, and in the process his resolve to obey God placed him in the position of thinking his son was as good as dead. Christ lay dead in the tomb for three days before His resurrection.
  • Isaac carried the wood for his own sacrifice; Jesus was compelled to carry His own cross.
  • As mentioned, if Isaac willingly cooperated with his father, he foreshadowed the very purpose for the Christ’s coming to earth (Mark 10:45).
  • In a sense there occurred a resurrection for both Isaac and Jesus. Hebrews 11:17-18 says that Abraham believed God could raise his son from the dead; he had faith that God could do anything necessary to fulfill His promise of blessing Abraham’s descendants through Isaac, even if it meant raising him from the dead.

Let us inspect some Bible passages that support the above prefiguring list.

He was oppressed and afflicted,

    yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth.

-Isaiah 53:7

The above verse is from Isaiah 53, known as the chapter of the Suffering Servant. Orthodox Jews do not recognize the Suffering Servant as the Messiah, but rather picture the Messiah as a conquering Lord of righteousness. Christians reconcile the two concepts – the humble Lamb of God and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (also seen as the Son of Man) – as one and the same Person. Our point in the context of the sacrificial Lamb of God arises from God’s love, even to the point of sacrificing His only Son for the sins of the world. Isaiah 53:12 further clarifies the idea of the Messiah who is given all glory and power and honor because of His sacrifice.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,

    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,

because he poured out his life unto death,

    and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many,

    and made intercession for the transgressors. -Isaiah 53:12

Consider the book of John, which refers to John the Baptizer as he recognized Jesus.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” -John 1:29

This provides a direct reference to Jesus the Lamb of God, the sacrifice once for all humanity, as cited in Hebrews 7:27, as well as several other references in the book of Hebrews:

He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. -Hebrews 7:27b

We may refer to the words of Jesus Himself in the Gospel of Mark, where he referred to Himself as the Son of Man, a title equated with God Himself from Daniel 7:13-14:

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” -Mark 10:45

In the above sentence, regarded as the focal statement of the Gospel of Mark, we have the reconcilation of suffering with the power of God that rests on Jesus the Messiah, the Son of Man. Hence we understand the passage giving all power and glory and honor to the Son of Man in the prophetic passage from Daniel. He earned it!

13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” -Daniel 7:13-14

A good summary of the earned glory of Jesus, Messiah and Son of Man, which reconciles His glory and His suffering, comes from the author of Hebrews:

…let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

–-Hebrews 12:1c,2

As Abraham reached for the knife, the voice of the angel came from heaven with urgency: “Abraham, Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he said, now realizing with hope of all hopes that God was intervening.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy…. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from Me your son, your only son.” Only then did Abraham see the ram that had caught its horns in a thicket, the sacrifice provided by God. Isaac was spared!

Debaters may say, does God not know everything? Psalm 147:5 says His understanding is infinite. Jeremiah 23:24 says no one can hide from Him. How then would God not know that Abraham would do anything for Him? He did not know with the knowledge of experience! The Rev. Tony Evans wrote that God wanted to feel Abraham’s devotion. Just as God enjoys our worship and feels our devotion, so it was with Abraham. However, another reason penetrates the mystery of the sacrifice; this enactment was a testing of Abraham, God’s prophet.

Now God does not tempt people, as asserted by James 1:13. However, from 1 Peter 1:7 we understand that we are given trials which should strengthen us in our faith. By such a principle Abraham was tested, at times failing, and at times more frequently, to his credit, passing the “test.” He passed one test in a great way by first believing God, and this was credited to him as righteousness. He failed a trial of patience, short-cutting God’s promise of an heir by taking the slave, Hagar, as a second wife in order to have a son. However, even our failures can teach us. In Abraham’s case, he learned that God is faithful to His promises, even when he, in his finite human understanding, did not see how God could carry out the promise!

Therefore, we have the Lord’s assurance of our growing strength as we face our trials in faith, “looking unto Christ, the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). May praise and glory be given to the God of infinite understanding, whose love for His created humanity endures forever. We ask our Eternal Father in the name of Jesus, Messiah, Son of Man, to strengthen us in His righteousness so that we endure to the end.