Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts

By

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights







Romans 1: 21-27
 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.


 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Okay, let’s read through this. Because men neither glorified God, nor thanked him, their thinking tended to futility (uselessness), their hearts were darkened, and they became fools.

Their trajectory is set away from God–and so God allows them to continue on the trajectory they have chosen.

He surrenders them to their own lust. And to be surrendered to one’s own lust, without restraint or governance from God, is a very scary thing indeed.

And some men and women experienced lust for one another. “And received in themselves the penalty for their error.” What is this referring to? A prophetic reference to AIDS–a common interpretation? Or to the health risks of gay sex?

Homosexuality is a controversial topic in liberal Christian circles–is it, or is not, sinful– and since it is not a sin, or otherwise, which I am/have been particularly tempted by–and I have plenty of my own temptations–I am not going to blog further about it.

Of course this is Paul’s letter to the Romans, not mine. He is a first century Jew; he may or may not be homophobic; and the words he uses to describe homosexuality, not surprisingly for his era are “unnatural,” and verse 27, “shameful,” which is either a reference to homosexuality, or to particular homosexual practices. 

What do you think? How do you read this passage?



Jesus evades verbal traps–then springs one of his own.

By



Matthew 22 23–45, Blog Through the Bible Project


Jesus comes across here as strong, intelligent, resourceful, with considerable presence of mind and courage. He thinks on his feet, fast and calmly.
This one man, along, can stand up to a crowd of pharisees, saducees and lawyers.
Go, Jesus, go, and give us your spirit, please. 
                                                                  * * * 

Okay, so the Pharisees and the Herodians unsuccessfully had a go at Jesus. Now it is the turn of the Sadducees to try and trap him theologically. Would this woman be guilty of incest?

 23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

 29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
They do not know the Scriptures well enough to know that Scripture teaches the reality of the resurrection, and they do not know the power of God to create a far more wonderful world than anyone can now imagine.
30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

The present tense in the quotation from Exodus 3:6 logically implies that when God spoke these words to Moses, God was still in covenant relationship with the patriarchs, who had been dead for centuries. If the Pentateuch implies that the patriarchs are still alive, and if the rest of the OT points to the resurrection, as it does, then the Saducees should recognize God’s power to raise the patriarchs and all God’s people to enjoy his eternal covenant in eternal life. 


 33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
At his cleverness. At his nimble mind. At his depth of understanding.

Matthew 22 34–37

The Greatest Commandment


 34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
 Again, he brilliantly evades a trap. The two commandments he chooses are unassailable, and in a sense, they encapsulate the decalogue.
 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” from Deut. 6:5, repeated twice a day by faithful Jews expresses the idea of total devotion to God, and includes the duty to obey the rest of God’s commandments. 

And 7 of the 10 commandments deal with one’s relationship to one’s fellowmen, summed up in Lev. 19:18, You should love your neighbour as yourself.

Whose Son Is the Messiah?

 41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
   “The son of David,” they replied.
 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
   44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
   “Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
   under your feet.”’e]”>]
   45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

They did not dare to ask him any more questions, because they acknowledged the messianic import of the Psalm, Ps 110, and did not want Jesus to go on to prove that he was whom he had claimed to be–the long-awaited Messiah himself.


Jesus having answered all their questions–cleverly, or with the use of counter-questions, asks them a rhetorical question of his own: 

Is the Messiah greater than David?  



He raises the question of the Messiah.  If they had asked further he may well have told them as he told the Samaritan woman, I who am talking to you, am He. 


Fearing that, they did not dare to ask him any more questions. 

Share on site of your choice … Wikio

One Year of Blogging: Taking Stock. 10 Reflections and Resolutions

By

Happy First Birthday to Dreaming Beneath the Spires.
And time for taking stock.
1) Am I glad I started blogging? Is it worth it?
I think so. I have never before had my writing read on a daily basis by so many people, between 200-300 most days.
2) What do I like about best about blogging?
The Writing
Wrestling down stray thoughts into shapely posts.
Writing every day.
Beginning to write more easily and fluently than I ever have
The People.
I have met a whole lot of interesting fellow-bloggers over coffee and lunches over the last few months–Lesley Fellows, Simon Cozens, Michael Wenham, Alan Crawley, Louise Lister.
And have had lunches and coffees with blog readers, whom I would not otherwise have met.
And have got to know several other blogger through mutual reading and commenting on their blogs-Ray in Aylesbury, Red, Jen in Oregon, Penny in Georgia, Emma in Eastbourne,  Lucy Mills, among other.
Blogging enlarges one’s world. No question about that.
2B Other benefits?
Psychological. I process things through words and images. Processing things on a blog, for public consumption, rather than a journal, does mean that I will follow my thoughts through a lot further than if it were in my journal.
(Risks) Constructing a psychological profile of yourself on the world-wide web is not without risks, and I am not blind to the risks. However, I am trusting my blog and blogging to God, and rightly or wrongly believe that I am under his protection.
Spiritual–Ditto. I tend to follow thoughts through in my blog to a greater extent than in my journal.
3 The Vocation of Blogging
To some extent, I see my blog as a vocation.
In Frederick Buechner’s words, “The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.”
 I would like my blog to be a bit of a ministry–a place where my deep gladness in writing might–by the God’s grace and mercy– feed some of the world’s deep hunger.
I would like my blog to be an offering of love to my readers.
I have written about this at length, here
4) What do I like least?
Easy. Its impermanence. People read the most recent few posts at best. They only read the archive through google searches or Link Within.
The number of people who read a post partly depends on how strategic you are in the time/day on which you post it. I have just realized this.
When I was aiming at a post a day, I published them, even though the thinking could have been more rigorous and the writing more concise.
 It takes more time to do a short disciplined logical post, than a longer, stream of consciousness one.
And when I was writing late at night with a post to complete before I sleep I was guilty of baggy, sloppy posts.
4B) So, what am I going to do about that?
i)  For past posts, go through my archive. My readership naturally has increased several times over in the course of a year. I am going to go through my archive posts, expand, edit or contract and post the best of them again.
ii) Try for the best writing I can in as many posts as I can, which I can later include in a book of short pieces.
5) Is blogging compatible with the writing of books?
It hasn’t been so far, but I will have to make sure it is.
I see my calling and the “life work” I would like to do with the rest of my life as writing “little books” “What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.”  C. S.Lewis
6) So what am I going to do differently? 
Set a timer for 45-60 minutes
I wanted to blog thorugh the Bible in a year, then found there was no way I could comment intelligently on several chapters a day that I would need to do to blog though the Bible in a year. Or two.
So I now muse on as much as I can in an hour, post one passage, and save the rest for a day on which blogging is not possible.
I will have to limit my posts on Dreaming Beneath the Spires to 45-60 minutes a day. That does not feel excessive. What if I want to do a long post and it takes more than an hour to get a finished polished post? Well, then, do what I can in the hour, and finish and post it the next day. The world has survived for 4.5 billion years without my blog, and can survive another day more.
No more posting last thing at night because I had committed to do a post a day. Better no post than an incoherent last thing at night post.
If one day I can do 2 or 3 short posts in an hour, I will save up the posts for another day. Writing is always better for being revised
7 Yeah? What difference will limiting blogging to an hour a day make to my blog?
It will be better. A sin against “the Spirit of Writing” to write when you don’t have something to say. It’s better to have no post than to have people waste their time reading a fluffy post posted for the sake of posting something.
Samuel Johnson enigmatically said that the good thing about knowing that you will be executed the next morning is that it wonderfully concentrates the mind. It’s the same with knowing you have  just one hour to blog. You get a whole lot more written, and better. It becomes more important to try to get it right the first time.
I  will try to write more posts to publishable standard for a possible short book of the best of the posts .
Limiting the time I spend on blogging will also ensure that I only write on subjects of genuine interest to me, and not write on what is of current interest–and will be of no interest to anyone in a month.
I either read blogs and comment on them too much– or not at all. I am now going to increase/limit it to 15-20 minutes a day. Keep a balance between blogs I know, and blogs I don’t know, between blogs from the United Kingdom where I now live, and the United States, where I lived for 17 years, and of which I happen to be a citizen!
8 Mr. Holland’s Opus
Do you know Mr. Holland’s Opus? To me, it’s a deeply sad film, though it’s meant to be inspiring. Mr. Holland’s dream is to write the great American symphony. He teaches high school music for 31 years, all the while trying to write his symphony in the ever-dwindling, exhaustion-challenged nibbets of free time.
But he invests in this students, he passes on his love for music. They love him.
When the school cuts the music budget, and he retires, his past and present students play “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”
His opus, he realizes, his life’s work, is the lives he touched and inspired, not the piece of great music he hoped to write.
Many bloggers, I suspect, would like to produce a beautiful, long-lasting piece of work over and above their blogs.
Some do not succeed in this. Blogging is time-consuming and addictive, and their blog becomes their opus.
I have struggled with this for several months now. Do I want to only blog? To let my blog be my opus? All the writing I do?
A  blog, perhaps, is read by more people on a daily basis than a book is.
It is easier to achieve “success” and recognition as a blogger than as a writer. For instance, this blog has been among the top 25 religious blogs in the UK and Ireland and in the top 150 religious blogs in the world (technorati rankings) a few times. But that does not parallel the sales rank of my books on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.
I came to the conclusion that the longing of my heart is really to write more books, not to have a successful blog. And so I will pursue that goal.
And if my blog becomes my opus?
So be it.
 9) Monetization?
Hmmm. Jury’s out on that one. There is a corner of my soul that’s four years old (I suspect several people have such a corner), and that part likes to check my google adsense every day and see how much money I’ve made!!
The amount isn’t keeping me afloat by any means; on the other hand, doing totally unremunerated, unremunerative work goes against the grain with me.
10) Rankings.
Wikio started ranking Christian blogs in November. My blog has fluctuated between 25-34 in the UK and Ireland.
A successful blog gains an audience for one’s other writing. However, given my low energy levels if I put the energy into driving my blog up in the rankings, I won’t do other writing.
Thoreau talks about a man who went to India to make a fortune so that he could be a full time writer later. He comments, “Better he went up attic at once.”
So rather than focus on backlinks and stuff to increase the rankings of my blog, and earn an audience for books to come,  I am just going to focus on writing more books.
And trust God for their audience.
                                                                * * *
So I have decided not to worry about blog rankings.
Being concerned about blog rankings subtly changes a blog.
And not necessarily for the better.
An obvious temptation is to blog about what everyone else is blogging about, which will increase your odds of getting linked to.
However, if you are not really interested in the subject, and don’t have passionate feelings about it, writing about it is a waste of time, whether you get linked to or not. Bloggers who often get linked to soon develop an intuitive sense of what will get them backlinks. However, these topics may not be those which are the closest to their hearts. Which are most uniquely them. Their unique contribution to the symphony of the blogosphere. So the short-term success can be at the cost of making their  blogs truly unique and interesting (though perhaps to a smaller audience).

“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves.  They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God.  They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their lives.

        They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint.  They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to write somebody else’s poems or possess somebody else’s spirituality.

        There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else.  People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular–and too lazy to think of anything better.

        Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.  They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves.”

Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation.
Anyway, I changed my template on March 7th, after which backlinks appear not to have been credited to me.
So I am thinking of changing my URL, which of course would wipe out a year’s stats–and would remove the tempation to pay attention to rankings, rather than the writing. Will update you guys if  I do so.
                                                                              * * *
I have a competitive streak, and it is not easy for me to do something without at least trying to be one of the best in my field.
But for blogging, I have decided NOT to try to scale up the blog rankings, because it will prove to be too addictive and time-consuming–and will devour time which could have been spent in reading and writing.
I will spend 45-60 minutes a day on blogging, write the best post I can in that time, and leave my position in the rankings to God.

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot however mean or high,
Toward which time leads me and the will of heaven.
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great taskmaster’s eye.
John Milton, Sonnet VII
10 B) Stats.
And here are some stats, if they are of any interest to man or beast.
Last 30 days, Google Analytics

Site Usage

  • 3,993

Visits

  • 6,033

Pageviews

  • 1.51

Pages/Vi

TOTAL PAGEVIEWS

40,466

 

11) Request for feedback
What do you like best about my blog?
 What would you like to see more of?
Any feedback or suggestions would be most welcome.
And thank you for reading my blog:)

Share on site of your choice … Wikio

Jesus evades verbal traps–then springs one of his own.

By


Matthew 22 23–45, Blog Through the Bible Project

Jesus comes across here as strong, intelligent, resourceful, with considerable presence of mind and courage. He thinks on his feet, fast and calmly.
This one man, along, can stand up to a crowd of pharisees, saducees and lawyers.
Go, Jesus, go, and give us your spirit, please. 
                                                                  * * * 

Okay, so the Pharisees and the Herodians unsuccessfully had a go at Jesus. Now it is the turn of the Sadducees to try and trap him theologically. Would this woman be guilty of incest?


23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

 29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
They do not know the Scriptures well enough to know that Scripture teaches the reality of the resurrection, and they do not know the power of God to create a far more wonderful world than anyone can now imagine.
30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

The present tense in the quotation from Exodus 3:6 logically implies that when God spoke these words to Moses, God was still in covenant relationship with the patriarchs, who had been dead for centuries. If the Pentateuch implies that the patriarchs are still alive, and if the rest of the OT points to the resurrection, as it does, then the Saducees should recognize God’s power to raise the patriarchs and all God’s people to enjoy his eternal covenant in eternal life. 


 33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
At his cleverness. At his nimble mind. At his depth of understanding.

Matthew 22 34–37

The Greatest Commandment

 


 34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
 Again, he brilliantly evades a trap. The two commandments he chooses are unassailable, and in a sense, they encapsulate the decalogue.
 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” from Deut. 6:5, repeated twice a day by faithful Jews expresses the idea of total devotion to God, and includes the duty to obey the rest of God’s commandments. 

And 7 of the 10 commandments deal with one’s relationship to one’s fellowmen, summed up in Lev. 19:18, You should love your neighbour as yourself.

Whose Son Is the Messiah?

 

 41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
   “The son of David,” they replied.
 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
   44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
   “Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
   under your feet.”’]
   45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

They did not dare to ask him any more questions, because they acknowledged the messianic import of the Psalm, Ps 110, and did not want Jesus to go on to prove that he was whom he had claimed to be–the long-awaited Messiah himself.


Jesus having answered all their questions–cleverly, or with the use of counter-questions, asks them a rhetorical question of his own: 

Is the Messiah greater than David?  



He raises the question of the Messiah.  If they had asked further he may well have told them as he told the Samaritan woman, I who am talking to you, am He. 


Fearing that, they did not dare to ask him any more questions. 

Read more: http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2011/04/jesus-evades-verbal-traps-then-springs.html#ixzz1JKhcRg00

A fifty percent chance of cockiness!

By

Zoe

We are breaking Zoe into contact lenses. I would like Irene to have them too, but Roy says, “Just one girl at a time.”


I remembered the hassle it was getting me contact lenses at 16. Jamshedpur, the small Indian town we then lived in did not have a contact lenses clinic, so my dad took a train to Aligarh, and I took a train there from boarding school. We met up, stayed in a hotel, ate out, and got me lenses.


Why? Because we believed that people are more confident if they look more attractive, and so we believed shedding glasses might boost self-confidence!  


I can’t believe how vain I was at 16, and how much hassle I put my dad through!!
                                                                         * * * 


And now we are going through the break in to hard (rigid gas permeable) lenses with Zoe, and she’s giving us a bit of trouble to keep in them. Braces for her next month, fingers crossed. I never needed them. 


Irene asks, “Did you know we’d have weak eyes when you got married?”


Me, “Yes. Both of us have weak eyes.” 


Though mine are getting better each year with aging, and I may soon no longer need contacts, but reading glasses!!


Irene, “Was there anything you could have done?”


Me, “We could have not got married.”


She, considering this, “Oh!”


Roy, “But we also knew you would definitely be smart.”


Irene, cheering up, “Oh.”


Zoe, “And you also knew we’d have at least a 50 percent chance of cockiness.”


Roy and I in unison, “Oh, who do you think you got your cockiness from?”


Zoe, “No comment.”



Share on site of your choice … Wikio

What are REALLY the idols of your heart?

By

Tash in C.S. Lewis’s Last Battle, Image by Pauline Baynes




 Romans 1 21-23


For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.


Honouring God, and being grateful to him is a safeguard against our thinking becoming futile (useless, pointless, senseless) and our hearts becoming darkened and foolish. (See more on this idea–how intelligent people can become stupid.)


If we do not thank God, we are focusing on just part of the picture, not the whole thing. Focusing on the minor patches of bleakness alone. It can lead to out “thinking becoming futile, and our foolish hearts darkened. Though claiming to be wise, we can become fools.”


Trying to keep our focus on the glory and wonder of God saves us from idolatry–worshiping and focusing on idols: things which are trivial, non-life-giving, and cruelly demanding of ever more attention and energy and devotion.


So What Are Your Idols?

David Powlison has a list of questions in Seeing With New Eyes.

Ouch, ouch, and ouch

1. What do I worry about most?

2. What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live?

3. What do I use to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?

4. What do I do to cope? What are my release valves? What do I do to feel better?

5. What preoccupies me? What do I daydream about?

6. What makes me feel the most self-worth? Of what am I the proudest? For what do I want to be known?

7. What do I lead with in conversations?

8. Early on what do I want to make sure that people know about me?

9. What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?

10. What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?

11. What is my hope for the future?

Ouch, they hit close to the bone, don’t they? 

What are REALLY the idols of your heart?

By


 Romans 1 21-23


For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Honouring God, and being grateful to him is a safeguard against our thinking becoming futile (useless, pointless, senseless) and our hearts becoming darkened and foolish. (See more on this idea–how intelligent people can become stupid.)

If we do not thank God, we are focusing on just part of the picture, not the whole thing. Focusing on the minor patches of bleakness alone. It can lead to out “thinking becoming futile, and our foolish hearts darkened. Though claiming to be wise, we can become fools.”

Trying to keep our focus on the glory and wonder of God saves us from idolatry–worshiping and focusing on idols: things which are trivial, non-life-giving, and cruelly demanding of ever more attention and energy and devotion.

So What Are Your Idols?

David Powlison has a list of questions in Seeing With New Eyes.
 
Ouch, ouch, and ouch

1. What do I worry about most?

2. What, if I failed or lost it, would cause me to feel that I did not even want to live?

3. What do I use to comfort myself when things go bad or get difficult?

4. What do I do to cope? What are my release valves? What do I do to feel better?

5. What preoccupies me? What do I daydream about?

6. What makes me feel the most self-worth? Of what am I the proudest? For what do I want to be known?

7. What do I lead with in conversations?

8. Early on what do I want to make sure that people know about me?

9. What prayer, unanswered, would make me seriously think about turning away from God?

10. What do I really want and expect out of life? What would really make me happy?

11. What is my hope for the future?

Ouch, they hit close to the bone, don’t they?

You might also like:

Share on site of your choice … Wikio

You Meant it for Evil but God meant it for Good. Gen, 49, 50. Blog Through the Bible Project

By

A Father’s Blessings and Curses; Blog Through the Bible Project

Genesis

Genesis 49

Close to death, Jacob pronounces on each of his sons a blessing that, reflecting something of their past actions tells how their descenants will prosper in the future.
Jacob Blesses His Sons

1 Then Jacob called for his sons and said: “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come.

 2 “Assemble and listen, sons of Jacob;
listen to your father Israel.
 3 “Reuben, you are my firstborn,
my might, the first sign of my strength,
excelling in honor, excelling in power.
4 Turbulent as the waters, you will no longer excel,
for you went up onto your father’s bed,
onto my couch and defiled it.
Though Jacob said nothing at the time, the moral consequences of Reuben’s sin–sleeping with his father’s concubine– was that moral authority and leadership slowly shifted away from him. 
 5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers—
   their swordsa]”>[a] are weapons of violence.
6 Let me not enter their council,
let me not join their assembly,
for they have killed men in their anger
and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.
7 Cursed be their anger, so fierce,
and their fury, so cruel!
I will scatter them in Jacob
and disperse them in Israel.
God’s judgement, voiced by Jacob on his deathbed is slow, but sure. These two tribes are scattered among the other tribes to prevent either tribe from dominating the rest, and bringing destruction on Israel.
 8 “Judah, your brothers will praise you;
   your hand will be on the neck of your enemies;
   your father’s sons will bow down to you.
9 You are a lion’s cub, Judah;
   you return from the prey, my son.

Like a lion he crouches and lies down,
like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?
10 The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,c]”>[c]
until he to whom it belongs shall come
and the obedience of the nations shall be his. 

11 He will tether his donkey to a vine,
   his colt to the choicest branch;
he will wash his garments in wine,
   his robes in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes will be darker than wine,
   his teeth whiter than milk.

Judah was the fourth son, but Reuben, Simeon and Levi had forfeited the right to leadership because of their moral failings. So leadership is given to Judah, and the double portion of the first born given to Joseph.

For God’s inscrutable reasons, the tribe of Judah was chosen to be the one to whom the Messiah was born. See lion imagery associated with the tribe from the first book of the Bible to the last, when Jesus is referred to as “the lion from the tribe of Judah.”

ESV In these words, Jacob predicts the great empire of David, and the greater Kingdom of Christ, the second David. Messianic expectation in the OT: the way that Abraham’s blessing will come to the Gentiles will be by the ultimate heir of David, reigning and incorporating the Gentiles into his benevolent empire. 

The royal line of Judah culminates with Jesus Christ.
 13 “Zebulun will live by the seashore
and become a haven for ships;
his border will extend toward Sidon.
 14 “Issachar is a rawbonedf]”>[f] donkey
lying down among the sheep pens.g]”>[g]
15 When he sees how good is his resting place
and how pleasant is his land,
he will bend his shoulder to the burden
and submit to forced labor.
 16 “Danh]”>[h] will provide justice for his people
as one of the tribes of Israel.
17 Dan will be a snake by the roadside,
a viper along the path,
that bites the horse’s heels
so that its rider tumbles backward.
18 “I look for your deliverance, LORD.
Jacob interrupts his pronouncements here by a brief prayer that highlights his concern for his descendants.  Without divine deliverance, they will not survive.
 19 “Gadi]”>[i] will be attacked by a band of raiders,
but he will attack them at their heels.
 20 “Asher’s food will be rich;
he will provide delicacies fit for a king.
 21 “Naphtali is a doe set free
that bears beautiful fawns.

22 “Joseph is a fruitful vine,
   a fruitful vine near a spring,
   whose branches climb over a wall.k]”>]
23 With bitterness archers attacked him;
   they shot at him with hostility.
24 But his bow remained steady,
   his strong arms stayedl]”>[l] limber,
because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob,
   because of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel,
25 because of your father’s God, who helps you,
   because of the Almighty, who blesses you
with blessings of the skies above,
   blessings of the deep springs below,
   blessings of the breast and womb.
26 Your father’s blessings are greater
   than the blessings of the ancient mountains,
   than the bounty of the age-old hills.
Let all these rest on the head of Joseph,
   on the brow of the prince among his brothers.

In spite of his brothers’ hostility towards him, Joseph has survived, sustained by the Mighty One of Jacob. Jacob prays that Joseph’s descendants will experience blessing upon blessing, blessings which will exceed those shown to Abraham and Isaac.

The hand of the mighty one of Israel enabled the bow to stay steady in Joseph’s hand.
 27 “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf;
   in the morning he devours the prey,
   in the evening he divides the plunder.”
 28 All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them, giving each the blessing appropriate to him.
The Death of Jacob
 29 Then he gave them these instructions: “I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30 the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan, which Abraham bought along with the field as a burial place from Ephron the Hittite. 31 There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried, there Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried, and there I buried Leah. 32 The field and the cave in it were bought from the Hittites.p]”>[p]”
 33 When Jacob had finished giving instructions to his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last and was gathered to his people.
Jacob does not forget that it was Canaan which was his God-appointed homeland.


You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. Genesis 50

 Marc Chagall - The Tribe of Joseph

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good

Genesis 50

 1 Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him. 2 Then Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So the physicians embalmed him, 3 taking a full forty days, for that was the time required for embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
 4 When the days of mourning had passed, Joseph said to Pharaoh’s court, “If I have found favor in your eyes, speak to Pharaoh for me. Tell him, 5 ‘My father made me swear an oath and said, “I am about to die; bury me in the tomb I dug for myself in the land of Canaan.” Now let me go up and bury my father; then I will return.’”
 6 Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear to do.”
 7 So Joseph went up to bury his father. All Pharaoh’s officials accompanied him—the dignitaries of his court and all the dignitaries of Egypt— 8 besides all the members of Joseph’s household and his brothers and those belonging to his father’s household. Only their children and their flocks and herds were left in Goshen. 9Chariots and horsemena]”>[a] also went up with him. It was a very large company.
 10 When they reached the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan, they lamented loudly and bitterly; and there Joseph observed a seven-day period of mourning for his father. 11 When the Canaanites who lived there saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “The Egyptians are holding a solemn ceremony of mourning.” That is why that place near the Jordan is called Abel Mizraim.b]”>[b]
 12 So Jacob’s sons did as he had commanded them: 13 They carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre, which Abraham had bought along with the field as a burial place from Ephron the Hittite. 14 After burying his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, together with his brothers and all the others who had gone with him to bury his father.
Joseph Reassures His Brothers

15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?”
Sometimes, peace and contentment and shalom is all the reward one gets for virtue. Conversely, dread, fear, worry and anxiety is often all the punishment one gets for one’s evil deeds.




16 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: 17 ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.
Joseph wept because they were the same old manipulative brothers, still untruthful. Because they still did not trust him.

 18 His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said.
And thus, Joseph’s dream came true.
 19 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21 So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.
God can bring good out of the sins we have committed–and the sins committed against us.
ESV–The principle that God ultimately overrules human sin for his glory and the ultimate good of mankind is important in scripture. The crucifixion is a prime example of this. 
As in the lives of Jacob and Esau, Joseph’s life was marred by the deadly hatred between brothers. In each case, the story ends with the wrong brother offering full forgiveness. 
Is this fair–or not? It is certainly the best thing for the injured brother’s mental, emotional, spiritual and perhaps physical health.
The Death of Joseph

22 Joseph stayed in Egypt, along with all his father’s family. He lived a hundred and ten years 23 and saw the third generation of Ephraim’s children. Also the children of Makir son of Manasseh were placed at birth on Joseph’s knees.c]”>[c]

 24 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” 25 And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.”
 26 So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

Share on site of your choice … Wikio