David the Anointed King
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land. Today it is me, Bryan Broome, who has usurped power and has gained the authority to post this podcast. I’m joined by our former, now fallen from grace host Emily Maxson.
Banished to third chair, get thee hence to a nunnery. Greg Uttinger is here as well.
Today we’re going to be talking about King David. Last week we discussed Saul and the rebellious attitude that he had towards the authority of God and the prophets and priests and really the entire system. We now get to see a wonderful contrast with David, who is not yet king but he has been anointed. Greg, why don’t you take it from there.
This is one of those stories that one either tells in detail and takes a really long time because it covers lots of chapters, or one says, “There is no time. I will sum up.” We’ll do it that way.
We left Saul rejected by God with the warning that God had sought out a neighbor of his, a man after his own heart, who would inherit the kingdom. That was chapter 15. In chapter 16 God sends Samuel to anoint a young boy named David. He is the eighth child of a rather large family. He is of the tribe of Judah. God, having rejected his older brothers one by one, because God looks at the heart, finally says, “This is the guy.”
Samuel takes a horn of oil and anoints David in the midst of his brethren, and the Spirit of the Lord comes upon David from that day forward. But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.
The thing is, David of course is not made king by the anointing. God has simply pointed out, “This is the man who will be king,” but it’s not that simple. He has to be received by the elders of Israel. That would mean telling them, but then see there’s this guy who’s already king. Yeah, it’s kind of awkward so nobody says anything at this point, but Saul’s advisors note that things are not going well with him. He is apparently demon-oppressed, if not possessed. An evil spirit continues to trouble him and he has bad moods.
The servants say, “Well, how about someone plays music for you?” and someone pipes up, “I’ve seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who’s cunning in playing and a mighty valiant man.” He seems to be exaggerating here, because at this point David wasn’t even old enough to serve in the army, but there was this thing about killing a bear and a lion, and he was a skillful harp player.
So they summon David, and David stands before Saul, and Saul loves him because he’s just this innocent little boy, a godly young man, a hard worker, plays beautifully, so he keeps him there for a while. And every time that David plays on his harp the evil spirit goes away for a while.
Then comes the story that we all know, so I won’t spend much time with it. The Philistine armies gather together. Meanwhile, David has gone back to his sheep.
The Philistines are on one side of the valley, Israel on the other, and out comes this champion, this giant who we all know. His name is Goliath. Yes, he was a real giant of around 9-1/2’ I think, and he defies Israel, defies God, and asks basically for a champion from Israel. He wants to do a duel. Whoever wins, wins for the army.
If anyone was going to take him up on this it obviously should have been Saul. First, he’s king. Second, the whole reason for having a king was so he would fight our battles for us. Three, he’s head and shoulders taller than everybody else in Israel, so although he would still be quite a bit shorter than Goliath, he would be the closest approximation they had. But he’s not going out there.
David returns to check on his brothers at his father’s instructions and hears all this, sees all this, and makes a commotion of, “Why isn’t anyone doing anything? What happens to the guy who deals with this uncircumcised Philistine?” Word gets to Saul and eventually David gets permission to go out and fight.
Now, this is ridiculous. David is probably 16 or 17, maybe 18, maybe 19 if you stretch it. He’s not in the army or he’d be there, and military age was 20. Saul is the one who should fight, because David has no standing whatsoever, and yet Saul sends him out. It’s hard to understand what he was thinking.
Side note – here might come a lot of moralistic applications of, “Yes, little child, you can go out and fight giants, too.” No. First of all, David is not a small 5-year-old, and the reason he’s going is because he knows he’s anointed to the office of king and, if the king isn’t going to do it, he figures that makes him next in line and God has prepared him.
About the time that Santa Claus was punching out Arius…something else that never happened.
And Die Hard was declared a Christmas movie, except that one actually happened.
So David throws the stone with his sling, crushes the head of the serpent-like intruder with a rock, brings him down, pulls his own sword and cuts off his head, and thus turns the tide of battle.
Just because it’s cool, I also want to point out one Hebrew fact that I know is that Goliath’s armor is described with the word “qasqesethiym,” which means scales like a serpent’s.
That’s where the snake resemblance comes in. And can I throw something out? I’m third chair now so it’s not my responsibility to keep us on track. Last week we had this whole conversation about the mark of the beast and loyalty and foreheads, and where does David’s stone strike Goliath? Right in the forehead.
Saul is thrilled and all Israel is thrilled. They chase off the Philistines and Saul says, “I’m keeping you.” Jonathan, Saul’s son, who hasn’t been on camera yet, knowing his faith and courage he probably simply wasn’t there, but he shows up at the last minute or comes in and hears about it and he does something amazing.
He takes David aside and the text says he loved him as he loved his own soul. People have made horrible deductions from that. This is an honorable, pure love of an older brother for a younger brother. Jonathan was probably about 50 by now and he sees this young man who obviously God has great things for. In fact, he knows what those great things are because here when the king would not do his job, David did it.
This was miraculous. David was great with a sling and all, but this was the work of God, no question. So Jonathan gets it, and without a grumble, without a complaint, without a bit of envy or jealousy, he takes off his robe and his weapons and hands them over to David, saying in effect, “You’re the next king,” and he’s okay with that.
It takes Saul a little bit longer to figure out what’s going on. In fact, it really doesn’t happen until David leads a war band out, and as he returns in triumph the women of the city go out and sing, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” – exaggeration probably, but Saul puts it this way –
They have ascribed unto David ten thousands and to me they have ascribed but thousands, and what can he have more but the kingdom?
“You’ve been told you’re out. You deliberately failed to do the king’s job. You were expecting what exactly?”
It seems like quite a jump, like there are no shades of gray between being loved by the people and being actual king? Maybe a lesser prince? A general? Something in-between those.
Someone who will take over when you retire? Do we have to push for escalation here? But he does.
There’s also a type there that even the people recognize. All of Israel for generations have been looking for the seed of the woman to come, the great king etc. We even see that in Israel’s blessing to Judah before his death.
Also there’s a recognition here that whoever is coming is going to be greater. And in type – and many other instances, but this is just a small one that I’ve noticed here – the tens of thousands that David has slain compared to Saul’s thousands, we can think of every type of Christ that we see in scripture have slain their dozens, whereas Christ has slain all.
Yes. And speaking of such things, David, it would soon be known, is of the tribe of Judah.
Again, it would have been possible for Saul to sit back and let David be, and David would have fought faithfully for him until God arranged otherwise. But no. We should be reminded here I think of Herod the Great. “God’s put someone new on the scene. I can fix this. I can kill him.” No, you can’t. You can try, and do a lot of damage along the way and kill other people, but you keep missing.
David picks up his job as court musician as well, and Saul sees him there and decides, “I’m going to deal with this. I’ll smite him to the wall,” and he throws his javelin at him on two occasions, and he misses. David makes his dexterity roll and is able to flee, in God’s providence.
Then here is where we’re going to speed up our summary. Things happen. Saul tries to put David in more danger. It doesn’t work. He tries marrying him off to one daughter, but that doesn’t work. He marries him off to the other, on the condition of a very dangerous dowry. David comes back with more than that, and Saul is just really frightened here. He goes on to tell his son Jonathan to kill David, and Jonathan talks him down out of that.
The evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand, and David played with his hand. And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin, but he slipped away out of Saul's presence.
This time Saul just doesn’t let it go. Again he pushes for escalation. He sends messengers to the house to collect David and bring him back for execution, but David’s wife Michal, Saul’s daughter, helps him escape. David runs and flees to Samuel. When Saul goes to Samuel, God intervenes now miraculously. “You’re going to be in a trance and make a fool of yourself, thank you very much.”
David goes back to Jonathan and Jonathan sorts it all out, or tries to, but then realizes when Saul throws a spear at him as well, we’ve crossed the line. There’s no coming back this time. He warns David to flee, and David flees to the city of Nob where the tabernacle is, and that’s a whole story in itself.
Then from thence he tries running away to Gath, to the Philistines, and they don’t like him because those ten thousands he slew were Philistines, so David has to act insane for a time until he can escape. Then he flees into the wilderness and a band begins to collect about him – his father’s house first and then everyone that was in distress, everyone that was in debt, everyone that was discontented.
They gathered themselves unto him and he became a captain over them, and there were with him about four hundred men.
So he’s got this little warrior band, but these are not the cream of the crop here. Everyone who was discontented? Try building a church on that principle. Well, actually, people have.
Saul ends up killing all the priests. David tries hiding in one city that he’s actually rescued, hoping for their support, but they won’t give it. He has to run again, and so it goes. There’s this on-again off-again. Whenever Saul has an opportunity and has some idea where David is, he chases after David, and David runs.
There are two particular stories in all of this that I think we should look at. First, David and his men are in the wilderness and Saul is pursuing with 3,000 men, and David and his men have hidden in a cave. Saul doesn’t know where they are, but he needs to use the facilities, so he sees a cave and says, “There’s a great place to use as a bathroom. It’s very private. I’ll go in there,” and drops his gown and does that.
David and his men are in the sides of the cave and his men are saying, “David, behold! Look!” They’re very spiritual. “Behold! This is the day the Lord said.” The Lord said no such thing, but they’re trying to get him to kill Saul and end all this.
David response is he kind of ignores him. He doesn’t kill Saul, but he sneaks out and takes part of what the King James calls his skirt. The word there is the word for wing, because God’s people and their garments are pictured as birds or angels flying in the midst of heaven with parts of their robe as wings. This was where the blue fringe was attached that every Hebrew was supposed to wear.
At the very least, the robe was a symbol of Saul’s office, and if it is the part bearing blue fringe, when David cuts it off he’s saying two things at once. He’s saying, “You’re not fit to be king, and you’re not even one of God’s people.”
The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.
And David won’t let his men do anything, either. Saul goes his way and David comes out and shows him what’s happened.
Behold, this day thine eyes have seen how that the Lord had delivered thee today into mine hand in the cave, and some bade me kill thee but mine eye spared thee and I said, I will not put forth mine hand against my lord; for he is the Lord's anointed.
The Lord judge between me and thee, and the Lord avenge me of thee, but mine hand shall not be upon thee.
The Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see and plead my cause and deliver me out of thine hand.
He gets very emotional, very like Esau, and turns away for a time, but it’s not over yet.
When word gets out again, this time in a different city, that David is out and about, again Saul comes with a host. It’s very similar. This is chapter 26. At this point Saul is camped out among the hills and God throws him and his men into a deep sleep.
David, with his nephew Abishai the son of Zeruiah, go down into the camp and they take the spear and the pillow and the water bottle and come back out, and then at a distance shouts over. This is one of the questions that people often ask, “How is it that people can shout at other people and be heard so clearly?” Apparently the air in Palestine is just of that quality that it carries voices a long way, because they’re at a safe distance when they do that.
They call out first to the captain of the guard and then to Saul. Saul says –
“Yes, it’s my voice,” and again the whole thing again. “I had the chance to kill you, and I didn’t.
If the Lord have stirred thee up against me, let him accept an offering. But if they be the children of men, cursed be they before the Lord, for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve other gods.
Because God is worshiped in Israel. To be exiled from Israel is to be chased into the territories where other gods are given their freedom, where demons run things.
Saul says, “I’ve sinned,” and asks David to return, and Saul gives him back his spear and such, but he doesn’t trust Saul. Saul goes his way and then things go downhill. David, having this small victory, decides very logically, “I’m going to die someday. Saul’s going to win. It’s all over. I might as well go to the Philistines.”
So this is where we’re going with all this. David is the anointed of God, anointed by an official prophet, not self-anointed, not in a private vision that no one has seen. He has shown himself publicly to be worthy of a king. In fact, he’s done the king’s job in killing Goliath. He has become the military commander of Israel under Saul.
Jonathan, the heir apparent, has transferred his inheritance to David, and yet when Saul turns on David, apparently nobody beyond Jonathan does anything about it, expresses any horror, or tries to stop Saul in any fashion. There are elders in Israel who in theory could have called him into account, but they never do. The priests have no authority because the one time that they do something that Saul doesn’t approve of he kills them all, so David is out there on the run.
Think of someone hiding in the American West from federal marshals and you would not be too far off. There’s a lot of places to run, none of them pleasant, none of them enjoyable, all of them fraught with difficulties. David has an army and he will use it against the Philistines and against other enemy tribes, but he will never use it against Saul.
Speaking of the American West, here’s a good point of comparison and contrast, and I think a fit starting point for the rest of what we need to talk about. In a typical American western, the good guy, who generally holds no office – if he did, he doesn’t now, probably an ex-confederate or maybe a Union soldier – he’s out there on his own. He’s really good with a gun, and when the bad guys come he shoots them. When the bad good guys come – that is, people who do have authority but are bad – he kills them and that solves everything and he rides off into the sunset.
Exactly, because they were all bad, and that is very much engrained into the American psyche, vigilante justice. I mean let’s face it, the whole Marvel franchise is built on the idea of vigilante justice.
Captain America has actually been duly instituted by the United States government to do things.
Captain America is the only one also to use a gun, to my recollection, which gives me no end of satisfaction. Finally, somebody is willing to pick up a weapon and take care of the problem, but maybe that’s me being an American vigilante, I don’t know.
To step into the neighboring universe, the DC universe, when Batman was created he did use a gun, but that didn’t go over well, especially since comics were for kids, so they very quickly had him abjure any kind of lethal force from there on out. He would never use a gun.
So vigilante justice. There are tyrants. There are dictators. There are people who have usurped authority. There are people who are commanding us to do things that not only are irrational, senseless, and dangerous, but in some cases they’re commanding us to do things that are at odds with scripture. So in those extreme cases we can get a gun and shoot them, right?
It’s not on the list. I don’t know, I feel like there’s a dot-dot-dot at the end of this page. Maybe it’s on the next one.
Turn it over. It’s on the other side. It’s in the middle of the other side. It’s folded, quotated, italicized.
I work with teenagers and right now many of the young people we do work with are from the ex-Soviet Union and they call tyranny tyranny. I do have to keep reminding these teenagers the solution is not assassination. It is not anarchy. It’s not raising up a militia and going and shooting people.
This is a situation where you could argue these people nominated and elected David to be their leader, and they are an army. They are a militia. Can’t they go and take down the bad guys? Look what we’ve got against Saul. He has been rejected by God, rejected by God’s prophet, and the clear successor stands in line, who he is now trying to kill. He’s trying to kill the Lord’s anointed. Then he murders all the priests, except one.
A lot of people would say, “You know…” I mean what would we think if some random governor of some random state or province decided to kill all the pastors in his territory? Might not we be tempted to say, “This is time for an assassination”?
David didn’t do that. He ran. Now this is a point. He did commit civil disobedience. The king clearly wanted him to come back for execution, and David said no and ran away. He did disobey the king.
He did not submit at this point. Jesus said to his apostles, “If they prosecute you in one city, flee to another.” There is a point where fleeing from persecution, tyranny, and lawlessness is a valid option for Christians, even if the people who are doing the persecuting are people who have legitimate authority. It is lawful to get out of the state, crossing borders that are guarded, crossing them secretly at night dressed like a raccoon or whatever, and defying all kinds of state laws to preserve your life from those who are lawless.
David is out there in the wilderness with God’s complete permission. In fact, God sends a prophet to hang out with him named Gad, and he eventually sends the one priest who did escape, along with the Urim and Thummim, the means of getting yes or no answers from God, that belong to the priests, so God is honoring him in many ways.
But David is not allowed to do anything violent to the king, or on the one occasion he doesn’t, and when he’s slightly tempted on the second he doesn’t. He just makes a big deal of this, turning it into a show of, “Look, I’m the good guy here. You’re the bad guy. Leave me alone, please.” So there are things here that he does that are not the humble, submissive, “I am here, please kill me” kind of attitude that sometimes we see passivists exhibiting. But he does not raise armed resistance against his lord, his king, for he is the Lord’s anointed.
I guess that’s where we go now. The basis for all this is not the fact that Saul was elected by the people. First of all, he wasn’t, although they all approved, but his authority comes from God. Here we insert Romans 13. The powers that be are ordained of God.
No, they don’t. That’s not a Christian doctrine. Now, if by that you mean that the authority passes through human hands in that we recognize God’s calling – the elders had to confirm Saul’s and later they would have to confirm David – then that’s okay, and some of that hangs about the Declaration of Independence at that time in our history. But the underlying theology of most of the churches was covenantal.
They called elders and pastors, the congregations did, but it wasn’t a popularity contest. It wasn’t who holds the best opinions. It was who has God called. We will now recognize that, so in civil government the same. We have this position. We’ve drafted a constitution that specifies its nature. Now, who would God have there? We need to recognize who this is.
But if you mean, “Yeah, the people have this inborn authority somehow because, ya know, we have that by nature and natural law or something, and we can if we want somehow give up this inalienable right in an inalienable way…” I don’t even understand what that is all about. “Then we can give them authority, then we can take it back because it’s all about us.”
That’s John Locke and that’s Tom Jefferson and that’s one way you certainly can read the Declaration of Independence, but that’s not biblical. The authority is God’s. God dispenses it, but he does in different ways and different fashions sometimes allow people to set out how this will be. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Your son, and your son after you to 1,000 generations.” Sometimes it’s, “Alright everybody, who are we voting for? Raise your hand,” but the power is God’s. The authority is God’s, and therefore the powers-that-be are ordained of God.
There’s nothing outside of God’s providence. Nobody gets into office accidentally. They may have committed evil to get there, but that too is within God’s providence. God gives us exactly the rulers that either we deserve or that he needs to be there for some other purpose, so we have nothing to complain about along those lines.
God says very simply that we as private citizens are to obey and to submit, the exception being here that David is a private citizen. He is allowed to run. He’s allowed to hide. We can show other places in scripture where others who share his sentiment and who want to be on his side can hide him, even to the point of – and here a lot of good Presbyterians and Reformed people will disagree with me – to lie about it. “They went that way. There’s no one in that well over there that you can’t even see because I covered it up,” and things like that.
It’s interesting too that Romans 13, which you’ve quoted a couple times now, is there in the context of a discussion of vengeance. While Saul has attacked David, he has not managed to bring him to any harm, so there’s not a vengeance to be taken, even justly.
The best he’d have is like a self-defense if in the moment he was being attacked.
And the Bible does allow for that, but we have to be very, very careful. What if the bad guy is a crooked cop who has a gun, and you’ve done nothing wrong and you do have a gun. What do you do then? Those are hard calls, and anyone who doesn’t think that’s a hard call doesn’t get it. “Oh, that’s obvious. I’d blow him away.” Well, you may have a problem there with your attitude, because that’s something that we should really struggle with. Sometimes we have to trust God in such matters.
It's so engrained into the American consciousness – “No, no, he’s the bad guy.” I kind of referenced one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lines, I think it’s in True Lies, where his wife discovers he’s a spy.
That’s the justification. They were bad and therefore I was alright to kill them. Well, you’re not a magistrate. You’re not a king. You’re not a judge. This is not a legal process.
Romans 13 when it talks about their authority, it mentions they don’t bear the sword in vain. The ceremonial sword that you see on Caesar’s hip, it’s not just for looks. There’s an actual weight of punishment behind their authority, and that authority is derived from God dispensing it to them. You don’t get to just say, “Well, I get to decide who dies, because they did something bad to me.”
There’s an implication here for the so-called problem of evil, which I like to reframe as the problem of good. There’s a line in a song by HB where it’s talking about looking out in the world and saying, “How could God let all of this happen – all of these horrible things?” The song goes, “Well, should the Lord remove all evil? I’d be first in the line.”
Yeah. You mentioned the context. I’d actually like to read Romans 13 in context, because the context is this. It starts in chapter 12.
Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves…
The allusion is to the avenger of blood in the old covenant, who did have the right to execute people responsible even for accidental lives.
…but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.
Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same, for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
The implication, of course, is that rulers ought to recognize where their power comes from, and ought to use it the way God says, and that God himself will hold them accountable one day. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way,” the Psalmist says to the judges and kings of the earth.
Now, having said that, does that mean that you can’t do anything with a bad ruler but grin and bear it? Our country was founded upon an idea. Someone secularized it, but it was rooted in part in Presbyterian and Puritan covenantal ideas which says this. Calvin hints in it in the last chapters of his Institutes, but doesn’t develop it. He says, “Look, there are other magistrates that God has put in power. They all have responsibility to enforce God’s law.”
By the way, Calvin insisted that they needed to enforce both tables. So although the private citizen should never rise up as an anarchist or an assassin or revolutionary, those who have been put in positions of power, who themselves also legitimately bear the sword, should pull in the reins on the wicked rulers who aren’t doing their job.
The American system was built on this – the balance between the federal government and the state governments. If a federal official does something wacky, run to the local cops. If the local cops do something wacky, call a federal marshal. If the state courts won’t give you justice, then can there be a debate on the basis of the Constitution to a federal court, to civil rights? Can you appeal your case from the local corrupt judge up to a higher court who may give you a solution, even up to the Supreme Court? If the Supreme Court is not doing its job, there is this thing called impeachment. We’ve never done it to a Supreme Court judge, although we’ve done it to a few presidents.
There are a lot of options actually built into our system that allow us to peaceably remove people. One of the chief ones is term limits. Everybody has to come up for reelection, even in the original system. The President was four years, a senator was six, representatives are two. The only ones who are stuck there for life were Supreme Court justices.
Yeah, they’re there for good behavior. They could be yanked. And as one or two presidents have tried to do, you can also stack the courts with guys who are on your side and see if that works, so there are options, checks and balances built into the Constitution.
More broadly, as Christians we do have the right to turn to other magistrates, other rulers at other levels, and call for them to lawfully deal with an existing problem. That’s a far call from getting a bunch of your buddies together with your rifles and going out and shooting at people. There’s no similarity there at all, because in the one case you’re submitting to God’s due order, and in the other you’re pretending to be God yourself.
The Bible is very clear about which we ought to do. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard because we have tempers, we’re selfish, we’re stubborn, we want things our way, and it’s so nice when the other side gives us the option of saying, “But they are all bad. I can kill them, right?” No, you can’t.
As we reach the end of an age in America, as things are going under tremendous shifts in what we accept, what we don’t, what’s possible, what’s not, I think the Church really needs to get a hold of this and needs to preach this. There may be a time for reworking our government, but going out and rounding up a bunch of the bad guys and killing them and then taking over is not it. God will not bless it, and it will generate a whole lot more trouble than solutions.
We’re impatient. We don’t want a majority. We don’t want a vast majority that we have won through evangelism to Christ. We want me and my buddies and our guns, and that’s not it.
I’m also thinking of some more broad principles. We know that love is the fulfillment of the law, or that the doing of the law is the fulfillment of love in a feedback kind of loop situation. So generally speaking, if you ever find yourself in a position where you are hatefully dehumanizing someone else because you don’t like them, you’re not really fulfilling the law.
One of the ways that I see it is in the way that we speak about our leaders, whether they are on our side or not. If they don’t do something we like it is often very quick towards name-calling, insults, mocking appearance, things like that, mocking names. This is a very, very mild one but Governor Nuisance is what I’ve heard him called sometimes, and I get it. It’s funny.
I laugh at it, but it’s also not the honor due to a minister of God, even if he doesn’t realize that he’s a minister of God and even if he is wrong in how he’s wielding his power and the authority that has been granted to him.
We have as Christians a higher duty and higher calling to find the middle way between adoration and demonization. We need to respect them for the image of God that they bear in their being, while saying, “But the things they’re doing are wicked or evil,” if they are in fact wicked or evil.
We also owe to every man the fulfillment of the ninth commandment, which is to deal honestly with them and speak honestly about them and not slander them. The Westminster catechism or confession has a laundry list of the implications of “Do not bear false witness against your neighbor.” I just think social media has been the absolute worst thing for keeping the ninth commandment because it is so easy to fall into the easy habits of vitriol and hate.
You can see vitriol and hate coming out of social media, and then you can spew vitriol and hate at the vitriol and hate. It just multiplies. We can be so quick to judge our Christian brothers and sisters because they tweeted such-and-such and I don’t think that’s sufficient honor. I think that’s slander. We should just stop.
For all the cringe that it was, I always remember this one line from a Bibleman episode, where in typical fashion the villain was an anthropomorphized version of the demon of pride. They’re watching Bibleman through their little Star Trek computer screen and they’re like, “Aha! It’s working!”
“Don’t you understand, minion? He’s being prideful about not being prideful. We’ve got him on both angles!”
And yes, there’s danger there. This is one of the many reasons I’m not on Facebook or any other social media platform.
You’re not missing out on much. Even if I have a soft spot in my heart for some of the people and interactions I’ve had on Twitter, you’re not missing much.
I mean the cat videos my wife shows me, so that’s fine, or the recipes and things like that. But actually as an elder I don’t want to have to police Facebook and say, “Okay, that was out of line.” How am I going to do it? On Facebook? Yeah, right, that’s brilliant. Now maybe running away from it is cowardice, but it is amazing how many grown-up Christians don’t get it. The law applies here. You’re still under Jesus’ authority here too.
And cyberspace is so decontextualized. James Cary in his book The Sacred Art of Joking talks about how humor is entirely dependent on an understanding between the comedian and the audience, and this shared experience of being together. So you take any joke and you read it out on the 6:00 news and you say, “Do you think that was appropriate to say?” Well, no, nothing sounds appropriate to say if you say it on the 6:00 news.
There’s no shared experience on Facebook or on Twitter. It’s a whole different kettle of fish.
But the brother concept here, as you pointed out, is that we are to love even our enemies, let alone our rulers. That means praying for them, blessing them, doing good to them, not slandering them. So here we are again. We don’t get to invent ethics in terms of how people are treating us or how we feel they’re treating us.
Ethics are something that spring out of God’s holy nature, the eternal love that exists among the persons of the Trinity, and that has been spelled out for us in scripture as practical application. In some ways second only to, “You need to trust Jesus for your salvation,” is this extension, “and that will mean then that he will set the agenda for your life, and he will at times tell you things you don’t want to hear and don’t want to do, and you will find them incredibly hard and impossible.”
I remember coming out of a Bible class when I was quite young, and the pastor had been teaching on “love your enemy,” and one gentleman who had been in the church for years came to me and said, “Can you believe that? I can’t believe that. How could you do that? That doesn’t make any sense! Have you ever had someone really hate your guts, I mean really hate your guts? How could you love someone like that? I know the Bible says it, but that old Bible says a lot of things. You’ve got to go by common sense, too.”
Something I forgot to bring up earlier was sort of a rejoinder to the discussion about authority and about rebellion, and that is a story that takes place in Genesis with Simeon and Levi, both sons of Jacob, actually the chapter right before he becomes Israel. Their sister is raped by the son of a ruler nearby. I can’t remember if the city was named Shechem or if the ruler’s son was named Shechem, but Shechem is involved as a name somewhere in the story.
Oh, thank you. What essentially happens is the man is apparently either remorseful or very full of lust for this woman, so he has his father come to Jacob and ask for her hand. “Look, we’ll let your sons marry our daughters, and we’ll have our sons marry your daughters, and it’ll be great. It’ll be a big old thing. Just name your bride price.”
So the brothers “deceitfully answer,” it says. They say, “Circumcise yourselves and become like us. We can’t give our sister to someone who’s uncircumcised.” Then on the third day, when the pain is very great from the circumcision, they march in and slaughter every man in the city and take the women and the children, and there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jacob is not happy with this, and it is to be assumed neither is God. That act is an act of vigilantism because they have determined for themselves the extent of the punishment, not only on the one who is actually guilty of the actual sin – it is a sin, I want that to be clear – but also to everyone in the city.
This is the only time I can think of in scripture where there was a large city that said, “Yes, we will take on the covenant sign.” In the Old Testament an entire city said, “Yes, we will be circumcised.” Maybe their hearts weren’t all there, but that is putting them in the position of the blessings of God, and the response of the two sons, Simeon and Levi, is to murder them all in vengeance.
It’s not the duly appointed authority of Simeon and Levi to execute anyone, but they take that on themselves. In consequence of that, they are both stripped of any inheritance in the Promised Land. God turns it around for Levi at least. I don’t remember if Simeon is bound up in that.
Simeon gets dispersed amongst the boundaries of Judah, which saves them from the apostasy of the northern tribes, because they go with Judah to fight the battle first. But they remain scattered. The words hold true that God turns the curse into the blessing when they kiss the rod and submit to it.
So with all of that being said, they undertake this authority that does not belong to them, and in doing so they are actually rebelling against God’s established authorities by not going through these things. But then I really want to emphasize this point. They lost people that would have come under blessing.
Vengeance is something that not only will it have consequences for you and your own soul, even if you only have the heart attitude of desiring vengeance. It will destroy you from within. But it also has a very blatant, a very, in its fullest expressions, temporal damage to the other people.
As Christians, if fulfilling the law is the expression of love, and God tells you, “Don’t take vengeance on people,” you need to be aware of how what you are enacting is not just disobedience to God, but it’s hatred of your fellow man. It’s saying, “Nope, these people don’t matter. If I hate them, then that’s good enough for me and my sword or gun or poison pill,” or whatever method you decide to use, and that is wicked.
Like Jesus says, offenses will come, but woe to him by whom the offenses come. I’m thinking of Jonah, too.
Oh yes, Jonah is another excellent example here – hatred of your fellow men.
Inviting a whole bunch of people to church so that you can kill them when they walk through the doors…no. The way of the Lord is hard in that it is so contrary to the flesh, and I find this in myself all the time. We want to solve things by practical easily manageable methods with the facilities we have at hand, whether it be a word or a bullet or the media. “If I just did this, this, and this….”
Sometimes I find myself sitting back and saying, “And that would all be in the flesh, and God would get no glory, and it therefore would not work and I would be at odds with the gospel.” It’s hard lessons.
I don’t mean to just bring in a Marvel reference again. We already mentioned that at least once this episode, but spoilers. In the Avengers Infinity War movie, the first one…
So if you haven’t watched it and you plan to, hit mute right now and wait like 30 seconds.
…Thanos explains his plan to save the universe, and it is not the hard way. He says, “The hardest choices require the strongest of wills,” but the irony is that that’s not a hard choice at all. Deciding to – spoilers again – kill half the population so the other half can thrive – and let’s be real, it’s about thriving, not surviving, there’s no high morality here – is bad. That’s the easiest way to put it. It’s just bad.
With that, that’s probably a good place to draw things to a close, don’t you think?
I think so. We’re doing our characteristic thing of ending on a downer note.
We’re still in the Old Testament. We’re still in the covenants of promise, not the fulfillment.
That’s true. It’s going to be a bummer. The early Church, and even through to today, we celebrate Advent because we look back to the time when the Church in Israel was still waiting for the Messiah, and it’s sad because sin is sad and it sucks to deal with its effects every day.
Here’s the reverse of the downer note we ended on – Jesus did come. Joy to the world. Let’s do recommendations. Do we have recommendations today?
Okay, first I’m going to recommend something to eat, and that is real sugar. It’s better than all of the zero-cal sweeteners. It’s better for you. I am willing to die on this hill.
Second of all, something to watch, and this comes with a caveat. My recommendation is the TV show M.A.S.H. – not the movie, the TV show. My husband hates it. Well, he doesn’t hate it but he doesn’t like it the way that I do. I enjoy it very much. The caveat is, of course, everyone is always having an affair with everyone else and it’s dreadful, but it’s so much better than so much stuff you watch on current TV.
First of all, it’s objectively hilarious. The funniness is legit funny. But I feel like the moral problems I have with it are so much easier to recognize as evil and dismiss because the writers take them so lightly. It’s not like Friends, where we’re supposed to feel good that these people are committing fornication. We’re supposed to be happy for them. No, we can recognize that this whole situation is stupid and ridiculous, and we can laugh at it and move on. So M.A.SH.
Then my third recommendation – I’m taking lots of liberties today – I’m going to recommend, because soon I’m pretty sure I won’t want to recommend it, is being pregnant. I’m still enjoying it so I want to say that it’s very cool, and if you are a married woman, I would encourage you to seek pregnancy. The baby moves and she’s all cuddly inside and it’s fun.
With reference to the second and not the third point, I will now recommend something to watch. I do this because my wife and I the last couple nights have binge-watched Lost in Space. Anybody who remembers the old version will look askance at this recommendation, and rightly so, or who remembers the movie, which was horrible, although in some ways better than the TV show.
I found myself crying last night. I don’t know why, exactly, but one element most certainly was the emphasis upon family. There’s a point where the children have been separated from their parents and basically they’ve been told, “Run!” and there comes a moment when some of them say, “But we have a chance to save our parents now.”
“Your parents don’t want that. They’ve told you to run. We don’t even know if we can save them.” And one little boy stands there and says, “But I want to try,” and each of the children says, “Yes.”
It was a very moving moment for me, and as we watch the series develop we go from what is really a very dysfunctional family to a family that has learned to love one another. It doesn’t involve moral compromises to love one another, but they are overcoming their moral compromises to love one another, to become more moral in the process. They conform themselves, unconsciously perhaps and yet more clearly closer to God’s law as they learn to love each other. They don’t have to cut corners and cheat.
At the end of it it’s like this is a family I would love to have living next door. They are learning how to die to self, how to be humble, how to admit they’re wrong, and how to risk their lives for one another. That’s against some very fast-moving rather exciting sci-fi action, if you like killer robots, so Lost in Space.
Yes, it is. The second season is even better than the first. The first is pretty good. The second is excellent. Oh, my wife says this is the third season. I’m not sure about that.
That’s good to know then. I always look askance at most Netflix series that come across my screen when I’m browsing, mainly because the majority of them are horrible, so that’s very good to know.
For my recommendations, I think I have two, if I can keep them in my head long enough while I’m explaining the first one. The first one I’m also going to recommend a show to watch, which I’d be honestly surprised if any of our listeners have not watched it yet, and that is Firefly. My wife and I have been watching, and it also comes with caveats. You’ll have to fast-forward through scenes involving the state-sanctioned prostitute character, but it’s very good.
There’s been multiple times where we’ve been watching it and we’ve just kind of thought, “Wow, Mal is unironically acting like a Christian right now.” It’s great, so many times. And of course it’s witty and it’s funny and very well-paced and very well-written, all of the things that you would want a show to be that is good. As proof of its goodness, Fox cancelled it after the first season, before the first season was even done. I’m still not over it.
My second recommendation is a thing to do, and that is to bake bread. I will say when the pandemic happened and everyone was stuck at home and there was that whole thing where everyone was baking bread sometime in May or June of that year, I adamantly refused to take part, so I want you to know this did not come about because of the pandemic.
I will be a hipster, dang it! Anyway, I picked it up towards the end of the year. I work full-time and the normal bread recipe takes like 9 hours, because you mix the dough, then let it stand, then let it rise, then you check it and deflate it, and then you let it rise again, and each of the risings is like three hours. There’s no way you do this in an evening.
I found a recipe that takes 2-1/2 hours total, so I’ve made it twice now and it is really, really delicious. We will include a link in the show notes to this one.
You can also find it real easily by searching for no-knead bread dough or quick bread or something. It’s very easy. It’s what goes into most bread, but there’s something – I hesitate to say spiritual – but there’s something spiritual about making bread because of all of the things that bread represents in scripture. It’s like, “I am making the bread. Yes, the little lump of leaven I have placed into it, and it is the kingdom of God, this bread loaf that I have made!” so I recommend that.
So those are our recommendations. Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. Thank you to Emily and Greg for joining me. If you would like to follow us you can find us on YouTube, Rumble, and you can follow our Facebook page where we occasionally post some dank memes for you to laugh at. You can listen to us through any podcast catcher of your choice.
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Finally, thanks to David, Emily’s lawfully-wedded husband, for all the work that he does.