Community Sin
Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Flickr User marsmettnn tallahassee, CC License = Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike
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There are a few messages on the Flickr site to go with this image as well.
Why is it so hard to stand for the right these days? I mean, it’s even hard for those who want to stand for the right things because there is such a rising up against standing for God’s holy word and standing against any kind of sin. People try to tell those who stand for the right things that what others do is none of our business. The popular culture of music has kids being harassed in the lyrics just for wanting to live on the right side of the law. There are even songs that warn people not to report a crime to protect the innocent. In those songs, they’re called snitches, and they’re threatened with violence.
But what happens if we all just give in and let the bullies win? The picture above is a good example of a land where sin became so accepted that it infiltrated the church and led to the slaughter of The True Messiah and later the destruction of the temple. Sure, Yeshua went silently as a lamb before the slaughter because He chose to give Himself as our Passover sacrifice to cover our sins, but does that mean we are supposed to watch silently as people commit one sin after another? Do we allow the innocent to pay the price of being sacrificed to gods of comfort and convenience through sins like abortion? Do we keep silent while the music steals the souls of the young by loudly proclaiming to them that life is better on drugs? Where does it cross the line between the individual’s sin and become the community’s sin because too many are turning away and pretending it doesn’t exist?
In today’s reading from Leviticus 20:1 through Leviticus 20:7, God talks to Israel about those in the land, including foreigners, who sacrifice their children to the god of Molech. I’ve been taught that in this sacrifice, women would self-abort and throw their fetuses into the fiery mouth of the stone god, and fathers would sacrifice infants after they were born. Supposedly, they have excavated jars with tiny remains in them, but I cannot verify that information. I did find some interesting information in an article at Wikipedia.
God tells Israel that if they see anyone at all performing this disgusting practice, they are to stone the person because it defiles God’s tabernacle, and it defiles the land. He goes on to say that if the people turn away and try to pretend they did not see this vile sin, God will set Himself against the sinner. Then, in addition to the person who committed the crime being cut off from his people, God will also cut off his family and all who follow after him. The cost of turning away is greater than the cost of making a person responsible for his own behavior.
For me. I would have trouble with the whole idea of being in the judgment seat to the point of stoning a person to death, but I understand why God wanted people to follow His will in this. I have yet to see a case where a person got away with a crime against the innocent and became a better person by getting away with it. In the end, many more members of their family, and often even their friends, end up paying prices for ignoring the original crime. It’s hard to find the line between having mercy for the sake of winning a person’s soul to Christ, and becoming a party to community sin by ignoring that a price must be paid and refusing to make the guilty person pay it himself.
But the fact is, God is a holy and a just God, and His laws and rulings are holy and just. If we ignore the laws of the harvest (men reaping what they sow), and if we decide that a person should not pay a price for a sin he commits–especially against the innocent, we are symbolically saying that we know more than God. And, we are also saying that it’s okay for the innocent to pay a price while the person who harmed them should go free. There is no balance or justice in that. Let us not participate in community sin by hiding our faces when evil is done because a price will be paid, and we do not want to get any part of that bill.
A Good Rule of Thumb
Storytelling Rules of Pixar by Flickr User Alex Eylar, CC License – Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike
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The rule above, and the other Pixar Rules of Storytelling, are great rules of thumb for creating a successful story. Rules, like ingredients in a recipe, are there to make sure that your end result is exactly what you plan from the beginning. A lot of people don’t like rules, but put one of them at a busy intersection with no lights or stop signs, and they’ll wish there were rules to keep everyone from crashing into each other. Many years ago, when Grissom was still a character on CSI, he mentioned that people liked sports because they represented a perfect community; the rules are the same for everyone, and the violations and penalties are acted on swiftly and exactly. Rules bring us peace.
Our newest portion, Parashah 18 is titled Mishpatim which is Hebrew for “rulings.” The full portion runs from Exodus 21:1 through Exodus 24:18, and today’s reading is from Exodus 21:1 through Exodus 21:19. It begins with the sentence, “These are the rulings you are to present to them,” and it goes into the beginnings of the rules Yahveh set forth in order for Israel to live in a peaceful community.
The first set of rules concerns the purchase of Hebrew slaves. I’m not a fan of what we equate with the word slavery, but I feel that if this is something God is governing, anyone who is obedient to Him, is going to treat his slaves as the human beings they are. I believe it is only out of sin that any man has ever treated another man as if he is less than human, whether or not the one doing the mistreatment would call his victims slaves, servants, employees, or any other name. Of course, all these rules follow the 10 Commandments, so if we are loving God first, how we treat others will reflect that.
After the rules about the treatment of slaves, this reading covers the laws that take place when a human hurts another human. It tells what to do when the victim is injured, and when the victim is killed. And it differentiates between the person that is victimized by accident and the one where it was premeditated. Verse 14 is quite strong in that it says if someone kills another person by premeditated planning, they should be taken to their death even if they are at the altar of God.
In these rules, even kidnapping and cursing your parents are causes for death, but fistfighting is apparently not a death penalty unless the person dies. The person who injured another is, however, responsible for caring for the injured person until he recovers. It would be nice if people kept at least that latter rule since it would mean we wouldn’t need all the crazy lawsuits to make it happen.
I’ll close now with a wish that all my readers will keep the law of love as the government over their hearts, so they would not even have to be concerned with these or other rules that come down in Scripture with harsh penalties. And I praise God for the mercy and grace He has given us in sending Yahshua to shed His blood to cover all the rules we do break. Amen.
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Getting Rich Off the Poor
Rich Poor Divide by Flickr User David Blackwell., CC License = Attribution, No Derivative Works
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The following true story might make you angry, but remember that it makes God even angrier. There was a pastor who collected one-hundred percent of the tithe from his parishioners. He had quite a large church, so he made a lot of money. But that’s not the part that stirs anger. There were people in the church who were on fixed incomes and food stamps. One of these people, an elderly woman, received a monthly call from the pastor with his shopping list for her to tithe on her food stamps. While she shopped for steak and chicken for him so she could comply with the demands of her tithe, she purchased cat food to feed herself.
In today’s reading from Leviticus 25:29 through Leviticus 25:38, we read more about property ownership, but we also see more of God’s heart in how we should treat the poor. The portion begins with an explanation about buying property in a walled city. Unlike the ownership of fields that always require the right of redemption and revert ownership in the year of jubilee, the person who sells a property within a walled city only has one year to redeem it. If he doesn’t, the ownership passes permanently to the new owner, and will not be returned at jubilee.
The reading goes on to talk about the houses and cities owned by the Levites. In those cities, the houses will be redeemed at Jubilee, and the lands can never be sold because they are under permanent ownership of the Levites as their possession. This means that if someone is truly called into ministry by God, they can trust that God will always provide for them. They do not need to ask people to charge up their credit cards or send in their gold fillings as an act of faith. They do not need to promise riches in Heaven to their audiences in a bid to get them to sell their precious family heirlooms as a way to prove they love the man who brings them the gospel. And they do not need to do as one famous televangelist and demand millions of dollars to keep God from killing them. (They do need to repent of serving a spirit of manipulation, though.)
In the final part of today’s reading, God gives instruction on how to deal with those in the community who have become poor. First, God tells the people to assist the poor the same as they would assist a foreigner or temporary resident who lives with them. And then He tells the people to make sure they do not charge interest or make any money off of the poor, but instead they are to fear God. He reiterates the command to say that even if they loan the poor person money, or if they sell him food, they are not to charge interest or make a profit. And He reminds them once again that He is the God who delivered them from Egypt in order to give them their new land and to be their God.
Going back to the story at the beginning, I have to wonder if that preacher truly feared God. And I don’t just mean fear in being afraid of what God could do with his misuse of a ministry position, but fear as in respected Him and His holy word. The verse that talks about not making any money off the poor says that instead a person should fear God, so that tells me that the person who does not care about the poor is one who does not fear God.
We know that God cares for the poor, especially if He sees the demise of each little sparrow. He knows how we treat each other, and He knows what is in our hearts when we cross the path of a poor person. I feel shame for the preachers and pastors out there who receive tithe and offering from those who actually need support from the church more than they need to be paying into it. Letting people tithe to honor their own obedience to God is one thing, but that doesn’t mean the pastors have to keep the money. May each of us trust God to lead us in being better stewards of all God gives us and in learning how to deal with the poor that cross each of our paths in a way that blesses and glorifies Him. Amen.
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April 30, 2014 Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Adonai, Almighty, Bible, Bible Gateway, Bible reading, Bible study, community, Complete Jewish Bible, Creator, crystalwriter, God, Holy Bible, Israel, Levites, Leviticus, Lord, Old Covenant, Old Testament, Parashah, poor, Portions, property, provider, provision, rich, Scripture, The Complete Jewish Bible, Torah, Torah commentary, Torah Portions, Torah Reading, Word, Word of God, Word of the Lord, www.biblegateway.com, Yahveh, Yahweh | Leave a comment