Word for the Church: Rhetoric and Holy Boundaries

A friend ribbed me after I took one of my state exams required for my teaching license, and I was lamenting how nervous I was that my answers on the essays wouldn't garner enough points to get me through. He said, "You write so many, many words, that the answer has got to be in there somewhere." 

Lol. How true. The wordy part, that is. :) It turns out I passed the exam, so I guess he was correct.

I woke up this morning, troubled by a conversation I'd had with another friend yesterday. That is, I wasn't troubled by the conversation itself, but by what had begun it, I suppose. We touched on the idea of holy boundaries in the church -- and this is what has been troubling me, for a long while, it seems.

Holy boundaries are Biblical... but often... are ignored by the church, who are fairly well known for claiming to adhere to the Bible. I guess I'm asking here: Are we? Or have many of us let God's Word... go? 

I remember the first time I encountered this thinking: A young man in one of my college undergraduate classes argued that Scripture was not inspired. In fact, most of it was outdated and old-fashioned, and certainly did not keep up with the times, and why anyone still paid attention to it was frustrating to him.

Not all of the church is so blatant about this mindset, but there's been a subtle shift over many years that I've seen. Someone else I know mentioned not too long ago that he only pays attention to the words in red, and then only from the synoptic gospels, not the book of John. 

How did we get here?

I started out intending to do my next chapter in Joshua and got diverted by the Holy Spirit first to Ecclesiastes 5:1-3: "Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words."

I'm already in trouble. What is this blog if not thousands upon thousands of words? Here's the core of the matter, though: Every last one of these words I write is written or spoken out of a sincere desire to honor and obey and study and reflect the Word Who was with God in the beginning and Who is God (John 1:1).

"Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God..." 

So there's this story in 1 Samuel 15 about Israel's King Saul and the prophet Samuel. The Lord tells Samuel the prophet (paraphrased): "Tell Saul to go attack and destroy the Amalekites. Make sure he knows that everybody, plus all the animals, must be killed. Don't leave anyone alive." 

It's hard to understand this kind of warfare today: Indiscriminate civilian casualties belong to terrorism, not "just war." In the Old Testament, though, God is the God of Israel, a single nation, and while they had other people who lived among them (see Rahab's story, Ruth's story, Moses' wife Zipporah, etc.), the New Covenant with salvation for all people through the blood of Christ has still to be introduced. Foreign nations led Israel, over and over and over again, to idolatry, and this is why they were commanded to destroy entire nations. Like I say, it's difficult to wrap our heads around this mindset, because we live in and understand the New Covenant, salvation for all people.

Anyway, so Samuel goes to tell Saul what God says. "Hey, here's something pretty difficult, but you can do it, because the Lord says to do it."

And Saul rubs his chin and nods (the paraphrasing continues, in case you didn't notice), and he gathers his armies -- 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men from Judah -- to go attack the Amalekites. He routs them, and he... sort of... obeys the Lord.

He destroys a lot of Amalekites. And animals. But he leaves the Amalekite king Agag alive, and he leaves the fatted sheep and cattle alive (the ones that would be good for herd-building, etc.). Then what does he do? He goes to Carmel and "sets up a monument in his own honor and then turns and goes on down to Gilgal" (1 Samuel 15:17).

The moment pride takes over, the word of the Lord is drowned out. Saul can't hear anything but his own glory. He won the battle, by his strength, which deserves his very own monument, don't you think?

Meanwhile, Samuel the prophet hears again from the Lord, who says: "'I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from Me and has not carried out my instructions.' Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the Lord all that night" (1 Samuel 15:10-11).

Somehow, Saul rationalizes to himself that He is obeying the Lord, while the Lord sees right through the smooth rationalizations he'd set up, and the Lord tells His prophet about what Saul is doing.

The thing about prophets, y'all: They get burned. Poor Samuel "is troubled, and he cries out to the Lord all that night." He's got a hard word to deliver to Saul the next day, and it's not going to be fun, not even a little bit. But because true prophets don't pull punches (see all of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.), and because it's not always their job to deliver fluffy, pleasant words about peace and prosperity, and because true prophets act as mouthpieces of the Lord -- Samuel spends a night in prayer, preparing himself to change Israel's trajectory by the word he's going to deliver to Saul the next day.

This next scene is tragically funny: Samuel finds Saul and approaches him, and Saul greets the prophet of God, the mouthpiece of God, the man who has set many precedents of hearing clear words from the Lord and speaking them -- Saul greets him with these words: "The Lord bless you! I have carried out the Lord's instructions."

Uh. No, you haven't. It takes me back to the story of the Emperor's New Clothes that I wrote out on my blog post A Word for the Church: The Thorny Vine from February 8th of this year: The king is so convinced he's wearing invisible clothes, that he convinces everyone else he's wearing invisible clothes, too, and no one dares to tell him he's being a doofus -- except a little girl who isn't afraid to speak the truth.

Samuel stares at Saul and says: "What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?" 

Saul says: "The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally destroyed the rest." 

First things first: Look at "the Lord your God." Saul doesn't claim God as his God.

Second things second: He points fingers of blame: "They spared the best (not the Lord's command), but we totally destroyed the rest (the Lord's command)."

In other words: I followed God's instructions partially, so therefore, I was obedient.

When I tell my kids to vacuum and dust their rooms, and I walk in and find them lazily kicking their heels on their beds while reading, and there's a thin film of dust still across the headboard and dresser, I want to know why they haven't obeyed me. 

"But I vacuumed." But you didn't dust.

"But I vacuumed." But you're not done.

Saul seems like he honestly believes what he says. He's rationalized his way right to the point where he has taken the word given to him by the Lord and twisted it into something else, and then he stares the prophet of God right in the face and tells him how Samuel actually has it wrong, how the Lord actually has it wrong, because he is obedient.

Wow. 

I had a pull-out-my-hair-by-the-roots moment in my classroom once when I tapped the blank paper of the project my students were working on, and I told my student, "You need to finish this," and he responded, "I did." I shook my head. "There's nothing on the sheet." He just as stubbornly shook his head. "I finished it."

There's no good outcome to something like that. You can point to a gray elephant and insist that it's pink all day long, but nothing, aside from maybe a complete bath in calamine lotion, is going to make that elephant pink.

Samuel isn't having the excuses and the rationalizations: "Stop!" he snaps. "Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night."

"Tell me," says Saul.

Samuel says: "Although you were once small in your own eyes (Saul used to be humble), did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And He sent you on a mission, saying, 'Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; make war on them until you have wiped them out.' Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?"

"But I did obey the Lord," Saul says. "I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal."

Saul is still talking. He's still issuing words and words and words to justify why he's right and the Lord is wrong...

Again, wow.

Look at the rhetoric, y'all. See how smoothly twisted it is? Completely destroy (*cough* except for Agag). All the animals, too (*cough, cough* except for the ones I brought back). Oh, here's an idea, those animals can be set aside for sacrifice to the Lord -- that's why I did it. I'm so holy. Look at me.

Samuel nails him to the wall: "Does the Lord delight in offerings and sacrifices as much as obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams."

The story goes on with Samuel stripping King Saul of his blessing from the Lord, and telling him that he will be removed from his position as Israel's king: "You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel!" Even the exclamation point is there. 

The Lord does. not. tolerate. pride. He does. not. tolerate. the twisting of His Word.

Okay, and here's where the Lord led me as I was asking Him about how this applies to today, to the church, to how we view His Word.

Romans 16:17-18: "I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned (rationalization). Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ,  but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the minds of naïve people."

But, but, smooth talk and flattery is everywhere. Division is everywhere. How can we the church "keep away" from this, as Paul says?  

Paul sets up some holy boundaries in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13: "I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people -- not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case, you would have to leave this world (he ain't kidding). But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man, do not even eat."

Ah. That's a hard word. Slanderer? Someone who talks about someone else behind their back? Someone in the church who talks about someone behind their back? Sexually immoral? Someone who lives in a pattern of not following the directions in Scripture regarding fornication (sex before marriage), adultery (sex with someone you're not married to, or even romantic attraction to someone who is not your spouse -- Matthew 5:28)... there's a whole list of these patterns were are to avoid in the church in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Paul goes on: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. 'Expel the wicked man from among you.'"

So this is the hard word this morning: We as a church body have taken compassion and made it our "sacrifice" to the Lord.

We, as Saul did, cry out: "We did obey the Lord!" We showed mercy and compassion on all in our ranks -- ourselves included -- but we've allowed ourselves to continue as we have been, because it's not kind to kick anyone out."

Just as the foreigners among the Israelites led the Israelites to worship foreign gods, so our acceptance of sinful lifestyles broke that fence and led to paganism. 

Here's the thing about holy boundaries: The Lord gives them to us to keep us safe, and by keeping ourselves safe, we keep our brothers and sisters safe, too. But if we instead grasp the hands of our brothers and sisters and declare: "United we stand; we're being compassionate!" and then we plunge over the cliff, we drag our brothers and sisters right over the cliff's edge with us.

Samuel says: "To obey is better than sacrifice." 

Imagine, church, what would happen if we stopped the rhetoric, stopped twisting the Word of the Lord, and simply... obeyed it. 

Is there a place for grace? YES. At the other end of repentance. Jesus raises His gaze to look at the woman caught in adultery. "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

"No one, Sir," she says.

"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declares. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Stop talking around what I want you to do, and actually do it. Obedience is better than sacrifice.