The Haven Church
Making Jesus Known in Sovereign Harbour
Bible soap 5
Episode 25
Pretty Woman
We come now to one of the worst family situations in the Bible. Hosea was a prophet who lived around the time of Isaiah and Hezekiah who we looked at last time. This was the 8th century BC and this was the
Hosea’s was the most unusual calling. There was Jonah who spent time in a big fish; there was Ezekiel who did some weird and wonderful things. But Hosea!
In the OT laws there were rules about who a priest could marry, and this is how it goes: Leviticus 21: 13-15.
And yet Hosea is told to marry someone who shouldn’t be marrying in white.
And this is how the Bible reports it: Hosea 1: 2-3. Now there are two ways of looking at this. Was she adulterous before he married her? Well not adulterous because you have to be married to commit adultery. She could have been a fornicator, but it doesn’t say she was – fornication is sex outside marriage, assuming neither partner is married.
In reality it probably was a white wedding.
My reasons for saying that are found in why God told Hosea to marry Gomer. It was to be an illustration of the relationship between God and
We know this because of the names that everyone has. We know nothing of Hosea’s dad, Beeri, but he named his son Hosea, which is like Joshua, which is the Hebrew equivalent of Jesus, which means ‘salvation’, or ‘may the Lord save’.
The children of Hosea were given significant names as well: (1: 4-5). This was the name of a town where a great crime had taken place a hundred years earlier. It would be something similar to calling a child Hungerford, Dunblane, Columbine, or any place you can think of in which a tragedy has happened. It was a time in
History is never just history to God!
And so the massacres that King Jehu committed are to be punished by his dynasty coming to an end, which it does soon after this prophecy; and the kingdom itself is destroyed.
Then there is another birth in Hosea and Gomer’s happy home. This time it’s a girl (1: 6-7). This is where the doubt sets in. It says that Jezreel was born to Hosea, but little Lo-Ruhamah was just born. Who was the father?
The name means, ‘not loved’ or ‘not pitied’. An unfortunate name for any child to have. Its prophetic significance is that God no longer cares about his people! This doesn’t mean that God has given up, but He has tried again and again to be their God and they have persisted in turning away from him. At some point the end comes and this is it! God can do no more!
People like to argue against the idea of hell by saying that a God of love would never send anyone to hell for eternity; but this passage shows what is really involved. God loves us, but if we keep pulling away He eventually says, ‘Enough’ and lets us go.
There is always hope, for people and for nations, until the very end, as Jeremiah says in 18: 7-8.
But going back to that child with the awful name: Not loved! What a name to give to a child!
But how many times do you come across children with that name? Not wanted; not loved; not valued; not important!
It happens a lot, and it may have happened to you. I have met plenty of people who have this name.
And there is hope for them/you. In Isaiah’s prophecy God says this: Isaiah 49: 15.
It is possible! Mothers do it all the time! There are thousands of unwanted babies and there are thousands of women who do not feel anything for their children.
But then Gomer had another baby. And his name was worse than his big sister’s (1: 8-9) 'Not my people'.
And again I have heard children given this name. Usually adopted children who didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to.
It takes a hard-hearted parent to tell their child that he, or she, is not theirs. In Hosea’s case it was true. Gomer for the second time had become pregnant with someone else’s child.
And you have to feel something for the poor man – it does get worse as well.
But I worry about the kids! I’ve heard so many kids being given these names and others just like them. And it’s true that words and names do hurt and they do stick and they can scar for life.
That certainly wasn’t God’s intention. I’m sure that Hosea was a very good step-dad to these kids, but we don’t hear about that.
I do know that Gomer wasn’t a very good mother!
But the point that God is getting across, or trying to anyway, is that He is not a distant tyrant. He is a loving husband who wants to establish a relationship with his wife – his people.
The problem is that his people go off after other gods. Someone asked that question last week: “Why can’t men and women follow their chosen religion and live in peace?”
The answer is that God wants everyone to know him and know the truth. He says in 3: 1 that this is what Gomer’s lifestyle represented.
God tells Hosea that he has to go and bring his wife back from the man she is now living with.
Can you imagine the humiliation?
He has to buy her back! She has prostituted herself so much that her own husband has to buy her back.
And he does! What a man! He could have had her stoned to death for adultery, but he listens to God first.
And that is why God hates religion. It is like adultery to him. Worshipping idols; praying to anything and anyone that isn’t God.
The reason we can’t just pick which religion we want is because the one true God wants us for himself, and He is prepared to pay the price to buy us back from all the religious worship and devotion that we think will satisfy us.
It cost Hosea the price of a slave.
That’s the end of Hosea’s family, but the point is that it cost God a lot more to buy us back. We don’t hear whether Gomer came back or not, whether she stayed faithful or not.
We know that Hosea paid the price for her.
We do know as well that God has paid the price to buy us back from whatever religion we find helpful or entertaining. It cost him the life of his Son.
The question is: have we gone back to him and are we remaining faithful, or are we still sleeping around with other gods?
Episode 26
Who Gets the Dog?
This is the end of the Old Testament as far as Bible Soap is concerned. Family life is about to be sorted out as best as possible and although there is no specific family in this episode, it is a wrapping up of all that has gone on before. We started with Adam’s family and descended through to the moral mess that caused the Flood. Then it became more focussed on Abraham’s family and that is what became the people of
We finished last time with the 10 northern tribes of
They were to go away for 70 years (Jeremiah 25: 8-11). When the 70 years were over a new empire had taken over – the Persians – and they had a policy of sending exiles back home, and so we read from one of the exiles that 70 years later they go back (Daniel 9: 1-2).
This must have been an exciting time. The older people would have been children when they were taken away from
And when they got back they knew whose fault it was that they had grown up in exile. It was their parents’ fault!
If their parents had listened to God, they would have had a good upbringing, instead of being brought up in
Now there are two ways of looking at how to deal with bad parenting. The first is a favourite modern-day way. This admits no personal blame and it goes like this:
Psychoanalysis
I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalysed
To find out why I killed the cat and blacked my husband`s eyes
He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find,
And here is what he dredged up from my unconscious mind:
When I was one, my Mummy hid my dolly in a trunk;
And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.
When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day,
And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.
At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence towards my brothers,
And so it follows, naturally I poison all my lovers.
But I am happy; now I’ve learnt the lesson this has taught;
That everything I do is someone else’s fault.
(Anna Russell)
The second way of looking at the sins of the parents is the way the Israelites did back then.
They knew it was their parents fault, but if we begin with Daniel, who we have just heard from (Daniel 9: 3-8) and Nehemiah who was still in Babylon after the first wave had gone back to Israel, we can see how they interpreted it (Nehemiah 1: 5-9). They confessed the sins of their parents!
Then when they are all gathered together to have the first 5 books of the Old Testament read to them – imagine how long that would take – Ezra the priest says this (Ezra 9: 5-7).
They all assumed the responsibility of their parents. They personally hadn’t sinned. It was their parents. But when it came to repentance they assumed the guilt. And they had actually followed in their parents’ footsteps.
While they were going into exile their parents had been told to settle down because it was going to be a 70 year stay. There was to be no SAS rescue; Rambo wasn’t going to break them out of POW camps. They were to settle down, get married and have kids. Here’s what Jeremiah said to them (Jeremiah 29: 4-6).
This is like God telling Abraham that he is going to have a lot of kids. Abraham knows that his wife can’t have kids so he takes her maid (at his wife’s suggestion) and has a child with her. God didn’t precisely say that Sarah was to be the mother.
Well God told these exiles to marry and for their children to marry. He didn’t specifically say not to marry foreign wives. It was written in the Law for anyone to see, but Jeremiah wasn’t specific, so they married foreign wives. And now at the time of Ezra the exile has been over for about 80 years so effectively another generation has passed and they have carried on following their parents.
And Ezra reacts in a way that gives scope for the Monty Python team and others to make a sketch from (Ezra 10: 1).
But he gets the message across and there is a confession from one Shecaniah, son of Jehiel, who tells Ezra that some of them have married foreign wives. Not just that some of them have, but we have. Yet it is Shecaniah’s dad, not himself, who had married a foreign wife so it seems from 10: 26. The problem with foreign wives is that they bring foreign gods and that was what got them exiled in the first place.
So Ezra called a meeting. If you didn’t go to the meeting you lost your house (Ezra 10: 7,8). Drastic stuff! If you did go to the meeting you got wet, cos it was raining (Ezra 10: 10-13).
We’ve sinned, but it’s raining! We can’t repent when we’re wet! If someone would invent the umbrella and plastic mac we could repent, but not just yet. That’s what they were thinking, even if it wasn’t recorded.
So they did it. They held interviews with everyone who had married a foreign wife. Imagine that! If your wife was unsuitable you had to be interviewed by Ezra the priest. There is no written account of the questions he asked, but this would be like the opposite of premarital counselling. This was, in effect, pre-divorce counselling.
‘You married a Moabitess? You have to divorce her! Children? She gets custody!’
It all sounds a bit extreme and if ever there was going to be trouble and rebellion this would be the time.
As it was there were two rebels, with their supporters.
50,000 people returned from exile; 80 years had passed, so the population must have increased, but only 2 people rebelled.
That is pretty impressive. It lets you know that these people were committed to God no matter what the cost. If they had sinned, they were going to repent fully, not half-heartedly.
But would you do it? I don’t want to get into the New Testament and mention what Jesus said about priorities because that would get us off the point, but maybe this was the generation that finally learned the lesson. We are accountable to God.
We can’t just say that what goes on behind closed doors is no one else’s business – not if we claim to be Christians. Everyone else can do what they like and God will judge them later. But Christians should recognise the accountability.
And these Old Testament people of God did recognise their accountability. The reason they had grown up in exile was because their parents had decided that what goes on in my family is no one else’s business.
If we had family life sorted out Social Workers would never have been invented and imagine what a better place the world would be! We never seem to get it right though and the Old Testament shows from beginning to end that family life has always been a problem.
And the book of Ezra finishes with a list of all the priests who had married foreign wives. It was the first officially sanctioned divorce and it was the first mass divorce.
What a way to finish the Old Testament teaching on marriage and family life. And yet that is how it ends.
But there is a prophecy about what’s coming next. In fact this prophecy is the final word of the Old Testament. The prophet Malachi lived at the same time as Ezra and his book finishes the Old Testament, at least in the way the books are laid out. His final word is the final word of the Old Testament. Elijah is coming back and he has a major task to fulfil once the New Testament gets under way (Malachi 4: 5,6).
What a way to finish the Old Testament! Better than Ezra’s way! Family life will get sorted out!
Jesus makes a few controversial remarks about family life and He sounds like Ezra in some ways, but the overall teaching of the New Testament is positive about family life, while being realistic. In fact there is an interesting connection made between family life and spiritual warfare.
Writing to the Ephesian Christians Paul talks about family life and then concludes his teaching with instructions about the armour of God (Ephesians 6: 1-18). There is no naïve thinking in the Bible. There are difficulties in families. It is not an easy way to live, but it beats loneliness and isolation, and it is God’s idea.
So if yours isn’t running as smoothly as you would like, don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that you are unique.
The rare family is the one without problems. We live in a fallen world. There is no such thing as compatibility. We can see that from Genesis 3.
Just trust God to see you through the difficulties and know that He only allows what He can use to perfect you.
Episode 27
The Family
The story of Jesus’ family begins in the
Zechariah the priest is on duty in the
While he was in there he was praying. He wasn’t praying about the fact that he had no children. He was old and childless (Luke 1: 7). But that was not the focus of his prayer in the
What he was praying for was the needs of his people. He wants God to come back and bless his people once again and God says to him (Luke
So this is how it begins. This family was important. Both Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were descended from Moses’ brother Aaron (Luke 1: 5).
This is the tribe of Levi and there is no mention of the promised Messiah coming from this tribe, but their son is going to bring in the beginning of God’s deliverance, so this isn’t just the story of a woman who can’t have children suddenly being given a son.
Gabriel, the angel sent with the news, is a bit annoyed that Zechariah doesn’t believe him and so he asserts his importance and shuts Zechariah’s mouth (Luke 1: 19-20).
And we get a description of John, the promised son: Luke 1: 14-17.
He will be well-behaved! A joy to his parents – not an embarrassment. Zechariah and Elizabeth are described as righteous people, but in the Old Testament we have seen that just because the parents are holy it doesn’t follow that their kids turn out well. Holiness doesn’t automatically make you a good parent. But in this case it seems that they are good parents as well.
John was to be a Nazarite from birth. We looked at this with Samson and Samuel. It meant that he would drink no alcohol and never take a funeral, or go to one. The Bible never actually condemns alcohol, but makes it plain that you can’t serve God under the influence or control of it.
Six months later (Luke
This time he is visiting Mary (Luke
We don’t get much information about Mary. Most of what we get from history is made up. But we can pick up relations along the way. She is related to
She has a sister, Salome. And that sister has children, James and John, but more about them later.
As for Joseph, we know nothing about him, except that he was from the tribe of
But back to Gabriel and his announcement. He accepts Mary’s doubt, unlike with Zechariah, and he tells her that her son is going to be great – Luke
It’s kind of hard to imagine how that must have made Mary feel!
But then we go back to the hill country of
And then John is born and I imagine that Mary was there at the birth. My reason for saying that is biblical. We have already seen that it was when
Eight days after he was born John was to be circumcised and named and it is interesting to see that the neighbours decided to give him his name. When
And we don’t hear anything more from this side of the family until John comes out of the desert preaching repentance and judgment. And he baptises cousin Jesus just before he gets his head cut off – John that is!
So we go back to Mary who finds herself pregnant with a fiancé who is a little suspicious (Matthew 1: 19). Joseph could have had Mary stoned to death, but he loved her and as disappointed as he was with her, he didn’t want to hurt her. But then God steps in (Matthew 1: 20-21).
Engagement was really serious back then, as it still is today in Middle-Eastern countries.
And so we get to the traditional Christmas story. Luke tells us this took place when Quirinius was governor of
They had been there for a while when Mary’s waters broke. It didn’t happen the moment they arrived in
And they had a few visitors, but this is Bible Soap so I won’t mention them. He gets circumcised too. And this lets us know that Jesus isn’t born into a rich family – Luke 2: 22-24 cf. Leviticus 12: 8.
There are a few threats on Jesus’ life, but God did right by choosing Joseph to look after Jesus and he helps to keep him safe and then…. One childhood incident – Luke 2: 41-51. This lets us know that they were a good Jewish family, because we see that Joseph took the family to the
We don’t hear about the brothers being born, but we get the names of 4 of them later – Matthew
Brother Judas, or Jude for short, apparently wrote the letter of Jude (Jude 1).
It is likely that when he was choosing his disciples Jesus picked a couple of cousins to join him. James and John, the sons of Zebedee (Matthew 4: 21-22) and of Salome (Mark 16: 1 & Matthew 27: 56) were possibly related. This would explain why they were in his inner circle along with Peter. And it would explain why they ask for a place of honour in his kingdom. I’ll not look at those incidents.
During the ministry of Jesus we have a couple of mentions of Mary his mother. She goes to a wedding with him – John 2. There is Jesus’ comment on family life in Mark 3: 31-35. And at the crucifixion Mary is there – John 19: 25. Her sister Salome is also there as we have seen.
There is a happy ending for Mary as she sees Jesus raised from the dead. And then she, along with the disciples is filled with the Spirit (Acts
I don’t have anything critical to say about this family. The dad did a good job, and as the mum was ‘highly favoured among women’ by God, I’m not likely to criticise her.
It just seemed appropriate to include this family in Bible Soap. It is the only New Testament family after all! There will be one more episode when we look at a family of neighbours who I’ve left to the end because although they are in the Bible they are not Israelites.
The one lesson to learn from the family of Joseph and Mary is that it doesn’t matter who you are related to, you still have to make a decision for yourself to follow Jesus before you can be his disciple.
Mary was his mother, but she had to decide and she had to be filled with the Spirit. James and Jude are two brothers that we know of who had to repent – change their minds about Jesus – and decide to follow him.
And the same applies to each one of us. We have to decide to follow Jesus. No one can do it for us.
Episode 28
Neighbours
This is the final episode of Bible soap, with a look at the family of Job. I left Job to the end because he is not part of the Abraham family. He is part of the Adam’s Family, so he gets included, but he’s one of the neighbours, so I put him here, after everyone else is dealt with.
I feel the need to justify the inclusion of Job because a lot of people think he wasn’t a real person. The argument goes that because most of the book is written in poetic form, then the person, Job, could not be real. Another argument is that he faced so much tragedy it is better if he wasn’t real.
My problem is that the Bible believes in Job. He is used as an example. A fictitious character is not an example to follow!
Here is what it says: Ezekiel 14: 14, 20; James 5: 11.
Job lived around the time of Abraham. There is no mention of
Also, Job, who was an Uzite, his friends: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite and Elihu the Buzite, all believed in one God. After the time of Abraham all the surrounding nations became worshippers of pantheons of gods. There is no belief in polytheism (many gods) or evolution in Job, as was common in all the nations a few generations after Abraham.
And then the other tribes that are mentioned: the Sabaeans and the Chaldeans occur round the time of Genesis 10, but not after that time.
Job lived in Uz, which was in the Edomite territory (Lamentations
So who was he? Well, he was an important man in the town (Job 29: 7-10). He was very important (Job 1: 3).
And he was a bit of a family man. He was married and he had 7 sons and 3 daughters (Job 1: 1-2).
He was an unusual dad. He didn’t know his children too well. His sons were party animals. They regularly had parties to which they invited their sisters (Job 1: 4). By the time the story opens Job’s children had all grown up because they had their own homes. There is no mention of grandchildren, but it would be unusual for a son to leave home unless he was married. So there would be seven brides for these seven brothers. There may have been grandchildren and that would just add to the sadness of the story.
But I said he was an unusual dad. He wasn’t invited to these parties. Who invites their parents to their parties, except characters on soaps? So Job didn’t know what they got up to at these parties and so when they were over he prayed for them. He offered sacrifices for them, just in case they had sinned against God while they were partying (Job 1: 5).
That makes him an unusual dad by Bible Soap standards, because most dads left God at work. No matter how good they were as prophets, spiritual leaders, or whatever. When they went home they neglected their children – sat them in front of the telly, or PSP or Wii or DS lite, or whatever the Ancient Near Eastern equivalent was! Job wasn’t like that! He was concerned that his children might have sinned, so he prayed for them!
What a difference that would make in the church if when you go home you take God with you. You actually introduce your children to God instead of finding somewhere with a crèche so you can get something else for yourself without the distraction of kids!
Generally Job was having a good life. He was worried about his kids, even though they were full-grown, but what decent parent doesn’t? When disaster strikes he says, (Job
I am assuming you don’t know what happened to Job, but we’ll come to that in a moment. He lived, during his time of prosperity, with a feeling of dread. He was the complete opposite of a soap character. You see in the soaps when someone is injured and ends up in hospital, or someone is struck down with a crippling mystery illness, one of the other, non-medically qualified, characters will say, ‘It will be alright.’ Job would never have said that. He would say: “Panic!”
He was a bit of a pessimist, and it turned out to be the right outlook given what happened.
So, what happened? Well we get some background information by being taken to the heavenly realms where God is surveying the world. The Flood is over and the human race has been scattered and the devil has been wandering around looking for trouble. He appears before God, which doesn’t fit in with some people’s theology, but he does anyway, and God asks him if he’s noticed Job. And God is impressed with Job. Job 1: 8 is very complimentary.
There is no one on earth like Job! This does not mean he was perfect and without sin. It just means he was better than everyone else. We later find out that he had a bit of a problem with pride. He was far from perfect, but in a world where ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ Job was quite good.
And the devil says, ‘Ha! He is only good because he believes in prosperity theology!’ The devil thought Job believed that God rewards those who trust him, with material prosperity.
So God allows the devil to test Job. And that is an important point! God allows the devil! He sets limits on how far he can go.
So if things go wrong in your family you can know that God has allowed it, but set limits.
And so Job experiences one really bad day. Everything that happens happens in a day. He later curses the day he was born, but in reality this is the day he should be cursing (Job
What a day! The first thing that happens is that his oxen and cattle are stolen and the servants protecting them are killed. Then his sheep and the shepherds were killed in a freak thunder-storm. Then his camels were stolen and the servants guarding them were killed. And then, just as this was starting to sink in he hears that all 10 of his children are killed! ‘What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.’
It happened! You know, if you are a parent, how it feels when your kids get sick; or if they are late getting home; or if they start rebelling and leave home. Imagine how Job felt when he heard that all of his were dead!
His reaction is brilliant (Job
How would you feel? There were people who stole from him – he could have gone after them and got his property back, like Abraham did when it happened to him; but there was that storm and a tornado – natural disasters. You can’t fight against that. But he is deflated by the fact that his kids were all killed by a natural disaster.
The will to fight back would have gone. But his attitude was right: if God has blessed us, how can we complain if He decides to take the blessing away? Not a popular position these days! But we are quicker to blame God for bad days than we are to thank him for good days.
Before the tsunami of Boxing Day 2005 the Philippine islands were wonders of evolution. Since the tsunami we have asked where God was!
Chapter 2 begins with the words, ‘On another day’. We don’t know how much time passed before the devil wanted another go at Job. How long for him to pick himself up and start again? How long does it take to come to terms with the death of all 10 of your children? Does it ever happen?
It couldn’t have been too long afterwards, because Job’s friends all visit him when they hear the news. Assuming their e-mails were down and there was no signal around Uz, communication would have been a bit slow. But if they are friends you would expect them to come to the funerals!
As it is, they don’t turn up until Job has another bad day. This is described in 2: 1-8. Again the devil is limited in what he can do. We are not tested beyond our ability to endure. And so Job gets sick. And if I was doing a character-study on Job I would show you all the symptoms – they are scattered throughout the rest of the book – but this is Bible Soap, so I’m sticking with his family.
And so we are introduced to Mrs. Job here. She only appears once and not in a very good light – Job 2: 9-10.
Curse God and die is her advice! Give up! Where’s the benefit in following God? What’s in it for me?
But, to be fair, she had lost all her possessions and she was the mother of those 7 sons and 3 daughters. She would feel it a lot worse than Job did. The loss of a child can cause the end of a marriage. Imagine the strain that losing all 10 of your children could put on your marriage. This was Mrs. Job. They were her children. There are no concubines producing other children for Job. This is it.
And then his friends arrive. And for a whole week they sit and empathise with him. They share his pain!
And then he tells them how he feels and these ‘miserable comforters’, as he later calls them, tell him why all the bad things happened to him.
And I only want to look at the words of Bildad, because he’s the only one who mentions the family. In 8: 4 he says:
With friends like that…. Most of what is written in the book of Job is bad advice. If you want to study it, make sure you know whether it is Job speaking or his friends. Job is pretty accurate in what he says. His friends talk nonsense. And at the end – and this conversation would only have taken a few hours – God appears and says, ‘Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?’ (Job 38: 2).
So God doesn’t think much of prosperity theology either.
What is good about this, and maybe this is where people doubt its historicity, is that there is a happy ending. The book doesn’t finish with: ‘And they all lived happily ever after’. But there is a happy ending.
The answer to the question: ‘Why?’ is never answered, but once Job humbles himself before God and forgives his friends for talking nonsense, God restores him. This fits with what Jesus taught in Matthew 6: 14.
And so Job gets twice as much as he had before – 42: 10. He gets twice as many sheep, camels, oxen and donkey as he lost (42: 12). He gets his popularity back – 42: 11.
His health is restored so he gets to live another 140 years and he has another 7 sons and 3 daughters – 42: 16-17 & 13-15.
His first 10 children were safely in God’s presence, so 10 more means twice as many children. He had a total of 20, where before he only had 10. And now there is the mention of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. So he was reconciled with his wife as well – the poor woman – 20 children!
I’m sure there was still sorrow over the loss of his first 10 children, but Job now had the assurance that he didn’t have before, that his children were under the protection of God. I imagine he prayed for these new children as much as for the others, but I don’t think he would have worried so much. He found a faith in God that would sustain him as the father of these children – 42: 5.
That is what we all need to have successful families – a real faith in the real God.
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