Get to know the landscape of this fallen reality.
Paul’s admonition to “rightly divide” the Old Testament means that you and I have a duty to examine what it says. We need to know what it said to the people who are the primary subject of the narrative. God is the Author of the story, if not the writing itself.
We have a duty to discover the Living Word standing behind the narrative. Built into that narrative is the understanding that there is some flexibility in the Law; there are priorities. So the Sabbath Law was flexible, but the prohibition on adultery was not. However, did you know that it was up to the aggrieved party of adultery to decide whether to bring a case? If they chose to forgive and work toward restoration and redemption, the Lord would honor that.
Thus, Jesus offered that quote about how compassion and mercy mattered more than ritual sacrifices. Execution of adulterers was a form of sacrifice, of shedding blood to cleanse the land.
No two victims of adultery would be the same. Each had to search their own hearts on the matter. So it is with the New Testament interpretation of the Law of Moses. We all have our tendencies in how we see things. It’s rather like the tendency of folks in the same household to see things in pretty much the same light. God’s Laws assume we are going to seek out folks who think like we do on enough different subjects that we can live with each other.
That’s what churches are supposed to be. Since that business of family household unity is only a tendency, and not universal, it’s better to seek out folks with the same spiritual DNA. A church is meant to be a covenant family, not necessarily a literal family. At some point, you’ll have kids who grow up and want to leave. You can’t control all the influences in their lives these days, and it gets harder with each generation.
In some settings leading up to the collapse of a civilization, your assumptions about how God is going to work in your covenant fellowship will be different from the expectations you hold after a new civilization is born, and yet another set of expectations in the middle of its lifespan.
The Laws of God are flexible for the most part. They point to deeper principles of understanding this fallen existence. That’s what we are obliged to see when we “rightly divide the Word.” And no two churches are likely to hold exactly the same ideas about it. It’s very much in the Law of Moses to divide into groups of fifty — which is more or less the same as ten households, the minimum number for a synagogue to form.
The church is the New Testament analog of the synagogue. Once you get past a certain point in numbers, you have to develop the formal procedures typical of synagogues. That means women sit in the back with the children. Boys roughly 12 and up sit with the men down front. The division is so that men can more easily converse with the teachers about things of the Law and ritual. The deeper spiritual meanings are supposed to be covered in the sermons. It’s not a question of being closer to God, but a question of establishing a way to live in this fallen realm. By God’s Law, men are in charge of that. By God’s Law, women have to work alongside their men to implement what the Law indicates is the right way to do things in a covenant life.
And we don’t get there by man’s reasoning and logic, as the Pharisees did. We get there by a deeply mystical approach through heart wisdom as the ancient Hebrews did. We get there by holy cynicism about fallen human nature, and a distrust of fleshly comforts. We get there by realizing that Satan has been granted a certain amount of authority over the situation even when we are compliant with the Law. The Devil is the “Prince of the Power of the Air” — a fancy phrase meaning that he rules wherever mortal humans are breathing. Your resurrection body won’t require human breath, but the breath of God. But this is the Devil’s realm; he’s the warden of this prison existence.
There are limits on his power, but those limits aren’t concrete so that human reason can discern them. They are contextual like the Word itself. A lot depends on what God grants to either party at the time. A big fat majority of all we do in Christian living is praying; that makes us a party to the ongoing courtroom drama in Heaven. And it behooves us to cultivate a heart-led posture so that we can hear the proceedings with our spirits, because the flesh is never a party in God’s Presence.
One more coming in this series.
“At some point, you’ll have kids who grow up and want to leave. You can’t control all the influences in their lives these days, and it gets harder with each generation.”
It gets harder, for sure. Sometimes, a parent being too strict is about as bad as a parent who is being too libertine.
Yes. Way back a decade or so on the other blog, I mentioned negotiating with your teens and this is what I meant. Unless you live in an enclave where the social factors are controlled, you have to find a path that encourages your kids without overly frustrating them. If they don’t buy into it, your efforts are not just wasted, but you will likely drive them away.