Countermanding the Words of God

Four Treasures of Adventism

A lecture series for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Lecture Four: Law

Sabbath afternoon, April 6, 2013

Text: Genesis 18:25

One of the truly distinctive elements of Adventist theology is its elevation of law. According to Adventist theology, the personal, idiosyncratic will of God is not the last word. Rather, we view God himself as subject to the grand principles of law.

You've seen the bumper sticker, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” It's a nice slogan expressing confidence in God, but in some Bible stories God's words are not necessarily the last word. Sometimes when people argue with God, the people win the argument because there is a law that God himself has to obey.

Example One: Genesis 18

God told Abraham he was going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness. God did not ask Abraham for his opinion. God did not invite Abraham to critique the destruction plan. God simply announced his intentions, “his will.” Instead of bowing and saying, “You are God. You must be correct,” Abraham challenged God, accusing him of injustice.

“Suppose you find fifty righteous people living there in the city—will you still sweep it away and not spare it for their sakes? Surely you wouldn't do such a thing, destroying the righteous along with the wicked. Why, you would be treating the righteous and the wicked exactly the same! Surely you wouldn't do that! Should not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?” Genesis 18:24-25.

Clearly, here, Abraham is referencing a standard, a law or principle, something outside the person of God himself. Abraham emphatically does not approach this conversation with God as a sycophantic courtier. He is not the president's lawyer inventing legal justification for drone strikes or “enhanced interrogation.”

Abraham confronts God. “Whoa! Wait just a minute. You can't just willy-nilly obliterate a whole town. Just because there happen to be bad people there, that does not allow you to disregard the innocent as 'collateral damage.' You have to do what is right.” Abraham is not naïve. He acknowledges that as supreme judge God has the power to do whatever he wants. But having the power to do something does not automatically confer the right to do it. In Abraham's mind God's indisputable power does not confer indisputable authority.

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right!

God did not rebuke Abraham for impudence. God agreed with him. God even allowed Abraham to set the conditions that had to be met if the cities were going to be destroyed. When it turned out that the cities failed to meet even Abraham's conditions for preservation—at least ten righteous inhabitants—God honored Abraham's scruples by sending angels to evacuate Abraham's four relatives before the fire fell. (Genesis 18, 19)

To summarize: God announced his intention in unmistakably clear language. Abraham judged God's declared intention to be a violation of some universal law. When Abraham challenged God, God did not tell him to shut up, God bent to meet the demands of Abraham's conscience.

Example Two: Moses' Rebellion, Exodus 32

The people of Israel were camped at Mt. Sinai. Moses was up on the mountain communing with God. After Moses had been on the mountain for weeks, the people began to fret. They worried that Moses was dead. They needed a god to lead them. So Aaron made a golden calf and the people began dancing around this idol in worship. God informs Moses of this problem and then gives Moses a direct order,

Now leave me alone so my fierce anger can blaze against them, and I will destroy them. Then I will make you, Moses, into a great nation. Exodus 32:10

There was no hint of diffidence or ambiguity in God's command. Moses understood it perfectly. But instead of obeying and getting out of the way, Moses questioned God's judgment. “God, I don't think you really want to do that. If you do it, you'll be sorry.” Later, Moses upped his protest. To paraphrase, Moses said to God, “Over my dead body! I will not step aside. To kill them, you're going to have to go through me.”

God bends. He does not destroy the people en masse.

Abraham's argument against God's proposed action was: That's not right!

Moses' argument was: That's not wise. Then, I will not acquiesce.

In both instances, the human challengers are validated. Their opposition to God's words is celebrated as acts of righteousness.

Example Three, The Gibeonites, Joshua 9

The people of Israel invaded Palestine. Following God's instructions they annihilated Jericho. Every man, woman, child and animal—except Rahab and everyone she manages to squeeze into her Hotel Rwanda. It was a brutal, savage extermination, ordered by God according to the narrative in the Bible.

Next, the Israelites destroyed Ai. But this time they didn't kill the animals, just the people.

The Book of Joshua reports that when tribal groups throughout Palestine heard about Israel's success against these two cities, they formed a league to fight the Israelites. Everybody joined except for the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites sent a delegation to ask for a peace treaty with the Israelites.

When the emissaries arrived, Joshua interrogated them. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”

The ambassadors answered, “Your servants have come from a very distant country. Stories of your exploits have reached even as far as our country. We've heard about what your God did to the Egyptians. We've heard how he gave you victory over Sihon King of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan. Our elders, and in fact, all our people, commissioned us to come and offer ourselves as vassals. We're prepared to pay tribute. We just want to be on your side. We want to connect with the God who is able to do what your God does.”

Joshua was suspicious. “You do realize that God has forbidden us to make treaties with any one in this area, right? How do we know you live far enough away for us to even be able to talk about making a treaty?”

“Look at our bread,” the Gibeonites protested. “When we left home it was fresh out of the oven. See how dry and moldy it is now! These wine skins—when we filled them at home—they were brand new for the trip. Now see how cracked and weathered they are. Our sandals were new. Now, they're worn out.”

Joshua and his assistants peered at the moldy bread. They ran their hands over the rough, weathered skins. They could see the ratty clothes. No self-respecting ambassador would deliberately show up to make a treaty dressed like that. So, Joshua and the elders agreed to a treaty. Three days later the Israelites discovered they'd been fooled. The Gibeonites lived only three days away from the Israelite camp. The Israelites were outraged. They marched the three-days journey to the region of Gibeon and set up camp.

The soldiers were impatient. These people were Canaanites. It was extermination time. But Joshua refused. “We gave our word,” Joshua said. “And even when it comes to pagans, when we make a promise, we keep it. When we make a treaty, we honor it. When we sign a contract, it's binding.”

The entire army was outraged at Joshua's refusal to exterminate these worthless people. There was a threat of mutiny. But Joshua was adamant. “Yes, they are Canaanites. Yes, they fooled us. Yes, they are on God's extermination list. Yes, God forbade us to make a treaty with people like this. But, no, we are not going to break our word. A treaty is a treaty. An oath is an oath.”

The Gibeonites watched all this nervously, to put it mildly. If Jericho hadn't been able to withstand these people, the Gibeonites didn't have a chance. Their fate was in the hands of Joshua. If he blinked, they were dead.

Joshua summoned the Gibeonite leaders. He was not happy. “Why did you deceive us, saying you lived a long way away?

The Gibeonites answered, “Your servants had heard definite, detailed reports about the command your God gave you to wipe out all the inhabitants of the land. We've seen your God's power in Egypt and in the battles against Sihon, king of Hesbon, and Og, king of Bashon, and Jericho and Ai. We are helpless against you militarily. We did the only thing we could think of to save our lives. We are in your hands. Do to us whatever seems good and right.

So Joshua saved them. He imposed severe “tribute.” They were consigned in perpetuity to serve as temple slaves. But they were alive. Contrary to the explicit annihilation decree of God.

Note, God's command to wipe out the people of Canaan was so emphatic, so clear, so unmistakable, the pagan people themselves had memorized it. There was nothing fuzzy or ambiguous or uncertain in God's directions. God ordered the Israelites to exterminate these wicked people. Joshua countermanded the words of God. When his warriors urged him to implement God's command, Joshua refused. He over overruled his soldiers and God on the basis of a simple law: integrity.

There is a law that is higher than the “word of God.” There is a law that is higher than the idiosyncratic will of God.

A few generations later God demonstrated his approval of Joshua's integrity in protecting the Gibeonites. It's a macabre story: King Saul violated the treaty and tried to exterminate the Gibeonites in obedience to the historic words of God. During the reign of the next king, David, God sent a famine to punish Israel for Saul's massacres. To atone for the genocide, David executed seven of Saul's descendants. Whatever else we make of this story, it clearly endorses Joshua's adamant insistence on honoring a treaty, even though doing so meant Israel was acting directly contrary to the explicit command of God.

“Doing right is more important than obeying God.”

Of course, as believers, we would prefer to say this differently. We would say that doing right is the truest, purest interpretation of God's words. If obeying God's words leads someone to mistreat people, we would insist that the perpetrator has misunderstood God, that God's words didn't really mean what they thought they meant. But I put it the other way, because sometimes we are so sure we know what God meant by what he has said, that our conscience is anesthetized. When a parent spanks their child into unconsciousness because the child is being rebellious, the parent is not intending to do evil. The parent is simply being obedient to the Bible admonition, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” When an Arkansas Republican last year proposed legislation that would allow parents to seek the death penalty for an incorrigible child, that legislator was simply attempting to be faithful to his understanding of the words of God recorded in the Bible.

Mature religion does not ask simply, “What did God say?” Rather it asks, “What is right?” Mature religion assumes the existence of a law that is so noble, so exalted, so universal God himself is not free to violate it. And we are not free to violate it even if it seems God's words require us to do so.

If something looks unfair, even if it appears to be the will of God, mature Christians will speak up. They will join with Abraham and protest. They may even join Moses and defy the plain statement of God. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to challenge God himself. This is the real life application of the Adventist notion of the supremacy of law.

In the Bible God explicitly approved and regulated slavery. Christians, beginning in the 1600s, started asking questions of fairness. This questioning is perhaps most beautifully modeled in the life of John Woolman who traveled up and down the east coast in the late 1700s bearing witness in favor of liberty for slaves.

The Bible explicitly prescribes death by stoning for Sabbath-breakers, adulterers, rebellious sons, homosexual unions, women unable to prove their virginity at their wedding, blasphemers, witches, and rape victims if the rape occurred within the city limits. Even fundamentalists who advocate capital punishment, reject it in connection with every one of these categories. (Except for the Arkansas Republican I mentioned earlier.)

So what is this “law” that is superior even to the words of God?

In the Bible, two criteria show up as effective arguments against the “words of God.” First, is some notion of justice or integrity. Once the treaty with the Gibeonites was signed, the binding obligation of honoring that treaty, of keeping a promise, took precedence over the explicit words of God ordering their destruction. Abraham's argument regarding Sodom was along the same lines: A real judge, a just judge, cannot ignore collateral harm to innocents in his punishment of the guilty.

The second criteria, one that shows up repeatedly is mercy. In each of the instances I mentioned—Abraham pleading for Sodom, Moses defending Israel, Joshua defending the Israelites—the plea for mercy trumps the verdict of condemnation.

Example Four, the Sidonian Woman, Matthew 25

When a pagan woman from the neighborhood of Sidon asked for Jesus' help, he first ignored her, then told her that helping her would take him away from his God-given mission. He compared her to a dog. She then argued that even dogs get crumbs. Finally, Jesus, capitulates. Even though he has said helping her was contrary to God's will, he goes ahead and helps her.

To make sure I am crystal clear, I'll say it again: Jesus told the woman that it was contrary to God's will for him to help her. His God-given mission was to Israelites. She was not an Israelite. She refused to accept his words. She understood his words. She simply rejected them as “the last word.” She insisted that he help her daughter, even though doing so would be a contradiction of his words.

Jesus agreed with her. Jesus took action which he had already pronounced as contrary to the directions he had received from God. In this instance, the woman is countermanding the explicit testimony of Jesus regarding the will of God! To dramatize his capitulation, Jesus says to the woman, “May it be for you as you wish.” Notice, that if we take the words of the Bible at face value, it is the will of the mother that is done, not the will of Jesus.

With these Bible stories as a background, it is easy for Adventists to justify our rejection of eternal torment. No human being could possibly do enough evil to deserve to be tormented for billions and billions of years. Even if they could somehow manage to earn such a horrific fate, mercy would compel God to modify it. God's people in heaven would join Abraham, Moses and the Sidonian woman in begging for mercy. They could not enjoy heaven knowing that someone, somewhere was being tortured at God's direction.

Beyond our rejection of eternal torment, Adventists also reject reject classic Christian soteriology which damns to hell (however long it is) all people who do not have an explicit faith in Jesus. We believe God is capable of saving people who live outside all the traditional (and beautiful and helpful) formulas. We reject the notion that all Buddhists and Hindus and people with severe mental disabilities are automatically excluded from salvation. (For an authoritative expression of the traditional narrow, exclusionary soteriology see Albert Mohler: We dare not retreat from all that the Bible says about hell. We must never confuse the Gospel, nor offer suggestions that there may be any way of salvation outside of conscious faith in Jesus Christ. (http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/03/16/we-have-seen-all-this-before-rob-bell-and-the-reemergence-of-liberal-theology/). Without conscious faith in Jesus Christ, there is no salvation. (http://www.albertmohler.com/2009/07/08/evangelicalisms-terminal-generation/)).

Yes, we know the words of John

"There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God's one and only Son. John 3:18

But it would be unfair to condemn people for not believing something they had no knowledge of. We privilege texts like Psalm 87 and 1 John 2:2 over the texts that describe salvation in very restrictive terms.

The story of the Gibeonites has obvious implications as we think about homosexuality and the church. The Gibeonites were explicitly condemned to annihilation by God. The extermination verdict was pronounced repeatedly. They knew themselves to be under the explicit condemnation of God. Still they were drawn to God. They had to trick their way into the community of God. The community of God did not want to receive them. When the community was forced by the integrity of Joshua to include the Gibeonites, the Gibeonites were received as second class citizens. But, they were, in fact, members of the people of God. They were under the protection of God. And their official role included serving the temple! When they were mistreated by Saul, God acted in judgment against Israel. In light of this story, how can we justify continuing to exclude homosexuals from our community?

Shall we continue to act like the soldiers of Israel using the words of God as a basis for destruction or will we join Joshua (a type of Jesus) in protecting those who seek sanctuary among us?

There is a higher law than the denunciations of Leviticus and Romans.

Adventists believe that law in its most fundamental form is not an arbitrary imposition of rules by God upon humans, rather law is a description of the habits of God, or in the language of Ellen White, “law is a transcript of the character of God.”

God is not right merely because he says so. God is right because there is an absolute congruence between what he requires and what he is/does. Our inescapable human sense of right and wrong is a reflection of God. God must do right. Not simply in the sense that if God does it, it is right, but in the sense of that God is held to the norms expressed in creation and expressed in our own best thoughts and sensibilities.

One stream of Christian theology argues that human questions about divine justice are simply irrelevant. If God calls something right, it is right just because God said so. God is the legal authority. There is no higher law. There is no criteria by which the Creator can be evaluated. This is the view of the Reformers. Martin Luther and John Calvin argued for the absolute sovereignty of God. Human questions about divine justice were silly or worse because God was beyond question.

Adventists, on the other hand, believe that human questions matter. Law may be a divine creation, but having created it, God himself is defined in part by law and will not violate it.

Just as we understand God's love through a variety of earthy metaphors—father, mother, shepherd, dog owner, husband, hen—so we understand God's justice through human metaphors. If a putative action or judgment of God strikes us as unfair, especially when our sense of injustice remains after thoughtful consideration and respectful conversation and study, then it is right that we begin to question whether the putative judgment is, indeed, God's last word. Perhaps what we thought was God's last word was rather a provisional word, a word that was right for a particular situation, but subject to correction and perfection in the movement of God across time.