When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, “Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.” She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi. And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Therefore she called his name Judah. (Genesis 29.31-35)

Leah, through no fault of her own that we can discern, found herself in in a disagreeable position—her father pushed her into a marriage with a man who wasn’t at all interested in her; then her new husband and her father agreed to add her younger sister Rachel to the mix—the bride Jacob had really sought in the first place.  The result was a twisted mess, a corruption of what God designed marriage to be.  Who could blame Leah for feeling inadequate and rejected?  God saw her affliction, and blessed her with a healthy child to raise and love.  What did Leah see, though?  She perceives the situation in terms of her relationship with Jacob, saying, “now my husband will love me.”

Yet it is clear from the story’s progression that little Reuben didn’t bring about her desired effect.  Leah was still dissatisfied, even though Rachel remained unable to conceive.  It’s apparent that Jacob continued to obviously favor his second wife over Leah, because when God blessed her with a second healthy son, her response was again to focus on the shortfall in her relationship with her husband.  She said that God had “heard” of her plight, and given Simeon, whose name is tied to the Hebrew word for heard, to improve her lot.  Once again, God gave her a blessing of tremendous value, one that should have brought her immeasurable joy—and all she could think about was how another person in her life didn’t live up to her expectations or treat her well.  She had a steadfast rock for a foundation—a Lord who clearly loved her and watched over her.  But while she appreciated his blessings, she viewed them primarily as tools for improving her standing before her husband, who constantly disappointed her.

It happened again: God provided a third son, whom she named Levi (“attached”) in the hope—by now obviously deluded—that this one would produce a different result and bring Jacob to value Leah more highly.  She’s looking the gift horse in the mouth, to use a modern proverb.  Her frustration with another person’s ill treatment of her has kept her from simply appreciating the incredible blessings God kept showering upon her, conspicuously singling her out above her sister.

But God doesn’t give up.  He gives Leah one more son, and this time, she has learned the lesson.  She doesn’t expect her husband to love her, to treat her with greater kindness or dignity, or to feel more closely attached to her.  She has come to accept that Jacob will persist in favoring his second wife over his first.  How does she respond?  She names this boy Judah—“praise”—saying, “This time I will praise the Lord.”  Instead of looking around her on earth for the meaningful relationship she desires, she has finally learned to look upward, to God.

The story isn’t over—Rachel ups the ante some time later and pulls the same foolish trick Abraham and Sarah tried when they brought in Hagar to bear children by proxy.  When Rachel’s servant Bilhah has borne two sons to Jacob, Leah is drawn back into the competition, and gives her servant Zilpah to Jacob in order to do the same thing.  Eventually, after many years of this struggle and conflict, God blesses Leah with three more kids, before finally allowing Rachel have two—although she died in the process of birthing her second son, Benjamin.

It’s not as if the birth of Judah ushered in a new age of joy and bliss for Leah, but at least for a little while, she’d learned to just be grateful and give glory to God, rather than diminishing the value of his blessings over the failures and offenses from other people.

This is a lesson each of us ought to learn.  No matter our expectations of other people; no matter how hard we strive; no matter how carefully we scheme, God’s plans are the ones that really matter, as Solomon reminds us: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (Pr 19.21).  If you live by fleshly desires and plans, how will it work out for you?  It’s nearly guaranteed you’ll be disappointed far more often than not in this life, and absolutely certain you’ll face nothing but disappointment in death and beyond.  Your friends and family will disappoint you.  You’ll disappoint yourself.  The world will disappoint you—but God will not.  He gave his Son not only to redeem and restore you, but as a pledge that “He will not leave you or forsake you” (De 31.6).

Whether you’re just at the beginning of your walk with God through this life, or struggling and stumbling along the way, learn to be content; to trust him; to appreciate his blessings; to take human failure in stride.  Learn to be confident that

for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8.28)

Jeremy Nettles

We don’t pay enough attention to the book of Jonah.  For one thing, it’s in the middle of the misleadingly labeled “minor prophets,” which are some of the least studied books of the Bible.  These are usually studied in a setting that attempts to cram an entire book into about 40 minutes of class time, only to move on the next week and do the same thing again with another.  There are 66 books in the Bible, and while they’re all very important, there’s no denying that some of them—like the gospels and Acts—are more important than others—like Song of Solomon and 3 John.  But the trouble with Jonah doesn’t end there—it actually stands in a somewhat privileged position in comparison to the other minor prophets.  This is the only one that is commonly taught to kids.  The reason for that is somewhat obvious given the simple structure and length of the story; and it’s great that the children learn it.  But this has an unfortunate side effect: adults tend to think of it as a “kids’ story.”  It’s not.

To begin with, while it’s easy to focus on the thread introduced in the first three verses—Jonah’s foolish attempt to run from God—there’s a lot more to this story, particularly when it comes to Jonah’s motivation for fleeing.  We’ll skip ahead to the point here: the book of Jonah is supposed to teach Israel about racial bigotry, and to highlight their own failures to live up to the standards by which they happily judged the Gentiles.  The details here are a topic for another time, but if you’ve read the book, it should be easy to see those themes.  That’s some pretty heavy material for a cute kids’ story!

However, while there is plenty to learn from Jonah about God’s broad, unchanging moral expectations and his abundance of grace, mercy, and steadfast love (Jo 4.2), this book also looks forward keenly at the New Testament.  Chapter 2 records the prayer Jonah spoke “from the belly of the fish” (2.1):

“I called out to the Lord, out of my 

               distress,

        and he answered me;

out of the belly of Sheol I cried,

        and you heard my voice.

For you cast me into the deep,

        into the heart of the seas,

        and the flood surrounded me;

all your waves and your billows

        passed over me.

Then I said, ‘I am driven away

        from your sight;

yet I shall again look

        upon your holy temple.’

The waters closed in over me to take my

               life;

        the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped about my head

        at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land

        whose bars closed upon me forever;

yet you brought up my life from the pit,

        O Lord my God.

When my life was fainting away,

        I remembered the Lord,

and my prayer came to you,

        into your holy temple.

Those who pay regard to vain idols

        forsake their hope of steadfast love.

But I with the voice of thanksgiving

        will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay.

        Salvation belongs to the Lord!” (Jonah 2.2-9)

The first thing to note here is that Jonah is describing salvation in progress—not in the future, although he’s still in the belly of the monster when he prays these words.  It’s also not fully accomplished, yet.  He says that God “brought up [his] life from the pit,” but he also voices faith that he “shall again look upon [God’s] holy temple,” an event as yet unrealized, as is the case with the vows he promises he will keep.  In fact, this recorded prayer tells of an earlier, unrecorded and already answered prayer: “I called out to the Lord…and he answered me.”

The surprising conclusion is that Jonah does not view being swallowed by a giant sea creature as a punishment for his disobedience.  On the contrary, he sees this as an instrument of God’s salvation!  From what?  From death by drowning.  The dangers he lists in this prayer are all about the sea—“the flood surrounded me” (v3), “The waters closed in over me” (v5), “weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains” (vv5-6).  We could list more of these, but would quickly run out of space.  He was drowning in the sea, and as he recognized he was dying, as his “life was fainting away” (v7), he “called out to the Lord” from “the belly of Sheol”—from the grave (v2).  Yet even in that state, he trusted that God would bring him back up from the grave.

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12.39-40)

Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection follow the same pattern as Jonah’s—both were willingly sent to their deaths by Gentiles, remained three days in “the grave,” and then arose, transformed, through the power of God.  The reasons were different, and parts of these two experiences are connected only symbolically, but that’s the “sign of Jonah” Jesus predicted.

Today, he expects his followers to imitate that same sign, and undergo a death, burial and resurrection that’s connected to Jesus’, but looks a lot like Jonah’s, too!  As Jonah appealed to God for salvation from his watery grave, and at the same time vowed obedience to God, so today baptism is “an appeal to God for a good conscience” (1Pe 3.21), a transforming encounter with death.  Learn from Jonah.  Leave the old rebel in his watery grave, and pay your vows to the Lord.

Jeremy Nettles

…if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. (Ezekiel 33.4-5)

In this passage, God explains the prophet’s responsibility by comparing his role to that of a watchman for a city.  This man is selected to bear the burden of keeping the whole populace informed of an invading army’s appearance on the horizon.  In our safe and cushy society we struggle to comprehend this, but in reality there is always the danger of invasion by a hostile force bent on taking our property and killing or enslaving us.  None of those outcomes is acceptable, so we ought to be on guard; yet if all we ever did was to patrol our borders, we wouldn’t get anything else done.  We might say it’s a sacrifice worth making for security, but then we’d eventually realize that we need things like food and shelter, and here we’ve ignored those inevitable necessities in order to focus on a definite maybe.  What’s the solution?  Select a trustworthy person whose job it will be to constantly watch for that invading army.  Now we can all focus on doing our jobs in relative safety, knowing that the trumpet will sound if danger appears.  That’s the prophet’s job, and it’s a huge responsibility.  If he falls asleep on duty, or just doesn’t bother to watch and warn, the people of the city will be caught completely unaware and unable to effectively fight off the danger.

However—and this is just as much a part of God’s point in telling Ezekiel all of this—even if the watchman does his job, that’s no guarantee the populace will heed the warning.  In the text quoted above, God makes it clear to Ezekiel that he’s not liable for the people’s response, only for carrying out his own duty.  When he blows the trumpet, he has fulfilled his obligation, and now the responsibility to act upon that signal rests with the people who hear it.

This is a principle found in the New Testament, as well.  Wrapping up a parable about servants left to tend the manor while their master is away, Jesus said:

“And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating.” (Luke 12.47-48a)

It’s not that ignorance excuses bad behavior (although it may lead to some degree of mercy).  Rather, the point is that some people unequivocally know the master’s expectations and yet reject them, and those people will be shown no mercy.  He follows up the parable with a broad moral:

“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” (Luke 12.48b)

Nehemiah provides an excellent example for us to follow.

…Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” (Nehemiah 1.1-3)

Has the situation at Jerusalem really changed lately?  It’s not as if the walls and gate were just recently destroyed—that happened when Nebuchadnezzar took the city, all the way back in the year 586 BC.  It was now the year 445 BC.  The exiles who’d returned at the decree of Cyrus apparently at least had aspirations to rebuild the walls, but had met resistance and made little or no progress.  This problem was not new.  But this is the first Nehemiah is hearing of it.  How does he respond?  “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying” (Ne 1.4).  After some time to reflect, he takes his opportunity when he comes before the king to request of him, “send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it” (Ne 2.5).  The king agrees, and Nehemiah’s life changes drastically from that day onward.  He travels back and forth, acts as a governor, a militia leader, a spiritual leader, and a construction foreman, for a period of at least twelve years.  He wasn’t born into this authority; he wasn’t elected; he wasn’t really even appointed by an official.  He made the plan, he approached the king with it and got his stamp of approval, and then showed up at Jerusalem and started telling people what they ought to do.  God granted him great success in all that he undertook.

The time is past when we didn’t know what God expected of us.  God took that into account, calling them “the times of ignorance” (Ac 17.30).  But now, the trumpet has been sounding for 2,000 years.  Almost everyone has heard it, and is responsible for heeding the warning.  Those who have already responded to the trumpet have a further responsibility—to continue the fight against Satan and his minions, and to repeat the trumpet’s warning for those few who haven’t yet heard.  Now, God

commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17.30b-31)

Jeremy Nettles

Sometimes God gives us hints.  For example, he told Abraham, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Ge 12.3).  With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that this refers to Jesus, but there’s no way Abraham could have figured this out when God first made the promise!  God has given some of these hints to us, too, and we’re still left speculating as to what exactly they mean.  To be clear, he’s revealed to us far more than to Abraham, or anyone in the Old Testament era.  “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness,” and this is more than the understanding, but the actual substance of those things!  They come “through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2Pe 1.3), meaning Jesus.  But there are still some mysteries remaining. 

One of these topics concerns the nature and involvement of angels in the world today.  From the hints and tidbits God has shared with us, mankind has built a detailed and often amusing set of conclusions.  Examples include guardian angels, longs lists of angels by name, a hierarchy of different types of angel (cherub, seraph, archangel, etc.), elaborate stories about Satan’s angelic origins, and more.  It’s not fair to say that all of this is complete nonsense, but much of it is the equivalent of attempting to recreate an elaborate work of architecture based on observations of two or three tiny bricks that may have come from the original building.  It’s a foolish pursuit; but there’s a kernel of truth at the center, a small hint God has shared with us, and while we ought to toss out the whole set of man-made ideas and stories about angels, we also ought to hold on to what God has actually told us.  Angels appear far too often in the Bible for us to consider each instance here, but a few are worth mentioning and examining.

When Elisha was surrounded by an army dedicated to killing or capturing him, God sent an army of angels to assist him, but they remained invisible.  His servant was afraid, but Elisha reassured him,

“those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2 Kings 6.16-17)

We could easily dismiss that as the product of another time, under a different covenant, and far different from our own situation today.  Yet, in one of the most contentious and confusing passages of the New Testament, Paul strongly implies there were unseen angels around in his day, too!  He says that “a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels” (1Co 11.10).  What exactly this means will be debated until Christ returns; but Paul had been talking about worship, and especially the worship of the assembled saints, and here he says that angels are at least somehow involved in that worship.  Are they actually present?  We don’t know—but Jesus tells us in Matthew 18.20 that he most certainly is, and angelic participation is no great leap from there.

In that same chapter Jesus says something about angels that should get our attention:

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 18.10)

Their angels?  Does each child have his own angel?  Does each adult?  What’s going on here?  Again, we don’t know, but when Peter was supposed to be in jail and yet showed up outside the house of Mark’s mother (in Acts 12.12-17), the Christians inside “kept saying, ‘It is his angel!’” In chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, letters to the churches of Asia begin, “to the angel of the church in” each city.  Perhaps these are all unrelated, and in Peter’s case the story could reflect a misconception among early Christians, not so different from when they insisted Gentiles converts be circumcised.  But in any case, it’s easy to see how, through the centuries, people turned this sort of hint into the concept of the guardian angel.

The author of Hebrews throws us another curve: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (He 13.2).  This reason doesn’t matter much, unless it’s still possible to encounter angels in the New Testament era.  It’s worth noting that during the life of Christ and the early church there was also tremendous demonic activity on earth, some of which left little doubt something both evil and supernatural was going on.  It’s understandable that God may have loosened their chains, so to speak, in order to more clearly demonstrate the power and goodness of his Son.  Perhaps he also increased angelic activity on earth at the same time, and both have since stopped.  But that’s speculation, just like the elaborate catalogue of angels’ names and jobs—we really just don’t know.

But although we don’t see obvious angelic activity around us today, God has at least hinted that they are still here, doing his bidding on earth, and generally going unnoticed.  We shouldn’t assume we’ll get—or have already gotten—angelic assistance with our battles and struggles in this life.  Even if they’re right next to us, we’ll be like Elisha’s servant, completely blind to their presence.  But it is good to ponder the hints God has given us, and to appreciate that he would consider sending his agents to help us.  Then, we should trust him all the more as we seek to do his will in this world.

Jeremy Nettles

“You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19.17-18)

The latter part of that passage is quoted 9 times in the New Testament and upheld as the basic rule for how to manage all our relationships.  When we view it along with just a little more context, it seems more narrow than that.  God’s law uses three terms interchangeably here: brother, neighbor, and son of your own people.  That shouldn’t be too surprising—after all, he gave this law to a relatively young and small nation who all descended from the same father, Israel.  God appeals to their sense of familial devotion, since nearly everyone forms strong bonds with the members of their immediate family.  God wanted the Israelites to extend that kind of love to the rest of the nation, so he reminded them constantly that they were brothers.  Paul says

the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13.9)

Nevertheless God thought it necessary to add an enormous amount of commentary to further explain how this principle is properly applied in this or that situation.  This fills most of the law presented in Exodus 20-23, Leviticus 18-20 and 25, Numbers 27 and 35-36, Deuteronomy 17-25, and assorted tidbits in between.  To be clear, this amounts to only a fraction of the text devoted to laws that fall under the umbrella of the greatest of all the commandment in the Law of Moses: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (De 6.5).  There’s a lesson to be learned there, but also much to gain from examining the conflicts God anticipated among his people, and his prescriptions for solving them in a manner that was just, loving, and gave him honor.

Jump forward into the modern day, and while we may still at least try to subscribe to the notion we are all one big family and brothers with the whole human race, we certainly have not maintained that as the working definition for our term, “neighbor.”  We usually reserve that word for the people who happen to live immediately adjacent to ourselves.  We’re occasionally willing to extend the label to cover others who live nearby, but we’d never say the our neighborhood covers the entire earth, and even when using the slightly expanded definition of “neighbor,” we feel obligated to add a qualifier to set apart those who live closest to us.  They become next-door neighbors to us, in contrast to the perhaps dozens of other neighbors who don’t deserve that same, highest degree of neighborliness from us.

Even under this restricted sense of the word, the Law of Moses has plenty to teach us.  God told Israel, “You shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set” (De 19.14).  He told them, “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another” (Le 19.11), and “You shall not see your bother’s ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them.  You shall take them back to your brother” (De 22.1).  He told them,

If a man borrows anything of his neighbor, and it is injured or dies, the owner not being with it, he shall make full restitution. If the owner was with it, he shall not make restitution; if it was hired, it came for its hiring fee.  (Exodus 22.14). 

How many disputes between next-door neighbors today fall into one of these categories?  There are more of these specific scenarios in the Law, and they help to remind us that even over thousands of years and thousands of miles, people are people.  We continue to create the same basic conflicts over property lines, broken promises, ignoring each other’s setbacks, and failing to return borrowed items.  If only our neighborly gripes were limited to these!  Yet the principle God taught to Israel so long ago would address every one of our conflicts.

He didn’t go silent on the topic after the Law of Moses.  Jesus mentions an apparently common saying among the Jews during his ministry: “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (Mt 5.43).  Sometimes we complicate this even farther, and our next-door neighbors actually become our enemies.  Yet, Jesus’ instructions still cover our situation here: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5.44).  It’s not easy to love an enemy—to desire and pursue what is good for someone who harms or seeks to harm us.  It’s difficult to pray on their behalf, too.  But Jesus tells us that loving our friends is nothing to be proud of—that’s easy, and many awful people still love their friends.  This is also the point Jesus makes in his parable of the Good Samaritan.  A lawyer, “desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Lk 10.25)  and Jesus’ response in the next several verses demonstrates that God doesn’t care what your enemy says to you, does to you, or thinks about you. Your enemy may very well hate you, and take every opportunity to inconvenience or harm you.  You still have an obligation to “do good to everyone” (Ga 6.10).  Take your cue from Jesus himself: 

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Ro 5.10)

Jeremy Nettles