So after Abram has defeated the kings, with the LORD granting him deliverance, the word of the LORD came to him in a vision. This appears to be the first vision of the LORD granted to Abram, though he appeared in different ways earlier and spoke to Abram. But Abram’s response is not to remember the help that the LORD had previously granted, but only what he has thus far failed to do: give him an heir, a true son. The LORD had already promised that he would make Abram’s “offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.” [Genesis 13:16] Abram’s response is fear, because he does not believe and trust yet in the word of the LORD.

His complaint is that someone else is his heir – not his son. LORD, be faithful to your promise! Abram is looking for something that endures, realizing that he is an old man, and that whatever else he might receive, the thing he wants most is to become a father and receive what the LORD had promised through that.

He uses a new name for the LORD here, “Lord GOD”, that is “Adonai Yahweh”, or the “YHWH the Lord”. He recognizes that YHWH is the Lord, and is his Lord, and is in control. And his only recourse is to ask him to fulfill His promise.

The LORD responds, reiterating his promise. Where before he compared the offspring of Abram to the dust of the earth, he now compares them to the stars of heaven. And apparently the LORD is very persuasive, because now Abram has no more excuse; he is satisfied. Then comes the familiar Pauline refrain, “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

Now what what was counted to him as righteousness? It was that he believed the LORD. Not that he believed in the LORD, or in the existence of the LORD, but that he believed the LORD. He believed what the LORD had said; Abram believed in the LORD’s promise that his offspring would be as the stars of heaven. So his belief in the LORD’s promise (or similarly, in God’s faithfulness), was counted to him as righteousness.

But why would this be counted as righteousness? What would righteousness look like under these conditions? Well, if there was a covenant, being declared righteous would mean that you had not broken the covenant. But how could Abram have broken the covenant? The promise was fully up to the LORD, and as we had seen previously with Pharaoh, the LORD is unwilling to allow Abram to mess things up. Righteousness in this covenant is wholly in the LORD’s court. So what is there left for Abram to do? There isn’t anything for him to do – this promise is something given and delivered by the LORD.

So since there isn’t anything for him to do – all he can do is choose whether to believe in God’s promise or to not believe him. And believing his promise is counted as righteousness, because that is the closest you can get to righteousness in a promise not dependent on you. This has nothing to do with God “imputing” righteousness on Abram, that is, covering him with His righteousness or looking at him holistically in terms of everything he has done, but is all in regard to the LORD’s promise. Abram’s faith is counted as righteousness because he is in relationship with God and is depending on God’s fulfillment of the promise.

“And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.” [Genesis 15:7-11]

God starts off with who he is and what he has done, and the purpose that he has called Abram for. But Abram still isn’t convinced – even though he just believed God with respect to his promise about his offspring. He wants further proof of God’s ability to follow through. “How am I to know”? And he uses that name again – Adonai YHWH, declaring both God’s name “I am” as well as the title “Lord” – he recognizes the sovereignty of the LORD in his life. But still he wants assurance. The LORD’s response is odd – his response to Abram is, ‘make a sacrifice’.

Now this might make sense in the sense of the pagan gods. In order to guarantee that you had the rain for the year, or a large number of new births for your flock, you needed to procure the god’s favor, typically by sacrifice. In many of the religions of that time (especially those surrounding where Abram lived) it may have involved child sacrifice (think Abraham and Isaac) or other sorts of rituals and sacrifice. But here, it looks like the LORD is pandering to the viewpoints of Abram, as opposed to Abram appeasing the LORD.

Thus far, the LORD has made several promises, and only the first was conditional (his leaving Ur for Canaan). All the rest were simply God promising, and fulfilling his promises in the face of Abram constantly mucking them up. He didn’t require sacrifice to get them done, he didn’t even require obedience, though he didn’t fulfill his promises until Abram trusted in him. God didn’t require sacrifices at this point either – he just made promises. But this time, at Abram’s behest, he wants to give evidence.

Evidence? What happened to blessing Abram, giving him peace, delivering him miraculously from Pharaoh, and destroying the kings before his eyes? Were these miracles not enough? Was appearing to and speaking to Abram not enough to grant him faith in the promise? Did he so easily forget what he had seen, had the LORD not shown himself to be good?

Perhaps by giving something in sacrifice, Abram will think the LORD obligated to fulfill his word, and that will give more weight to his mind than just the LORD’s simple promise. Abram follows the LORD and prepares the five animals as a sacrifice, driving away the birds of prey. I wonder if there is any symbolism to using livestock three years old. Some might call this foreshadowing of Jesus, who was three years in ministry before he was crucified, but I think it might be difficult to draw to direct a conclusion (and it doesn’t really help our understanding, I don’t think).

A much closer relation to draw is that of the offerings of Levitical priests (See Leviticus 1:1-17), which speak of five animals that can be sacrificed as burnt offerings: cattle, sheep, goats, turtledoves, and pigeons. The livestock are to be cut into pieces, where the birds are not to be torn completely. The difference in animal was to allow people of different economic status to bring offerings to the LORD, with the rich bringing bulls or heifers, and the poor bringing birds. The animals were to be burned on the altar to the LORD in the tabernacle (or temple). From there, it is not a long jump to connect these sacrifices to Jesus. For a fun study (really, quite fascinating), read Leviticus, take notes, and then read one of the gospels (Matthew or Luke, preferably). Pay special attention to the sacrifices and the laws of cleanliness, and note how Jesus fulfills and transforms them.

Back to the story:

“As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that our offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” [Genesis 15:12-20]

The LORD caused great darkness to fall upon Abram, as well as sleep (was this another vision?), and He spoke to him. You want proof, Abram, that I am going to do what I said? I gave you my promise, I spoke to you, I gave you miracles and deliverance. Let me give you one more thing: my presence. And even more than that, I’m going to tell you how things are going to play out. You probably would have been happier not knowing, but you’re not going to live to see this land given to your offspring. You will live to see your offspring, but you will not see the fulfillment of the promise. Furthermore, your offspring will have to leave this land to be servants elsewhere.

What must Abram have been thinking then? Not only is he surrounded by darkness and dread, he children, who he hasn’t even gotten to see yet, are going to be servants (slaves, really) and be afflicted, far from home. I am no parent (yet, God willing) so I can only imagine the emotions of a father who learns that his children are going to have to leave home and be afflicted as servants elsewhere. I can’t imagine how I would handle it. I would probably shout back, “no LORD, please let it be different – how about you give the land to me now, and let my children live here in peace”, or maybe, rather cynically, “thanks for the darkness and dread, because that’s exactly what I’m feeling right now. Sorry I asked.” At least I’ll get to live to a good old age and die in peace.

I suppose if the end result is considered, that after 400 years they would return with great possessions and live in the land that was promised, that it’s a comforting thought. (It’s probably also comforting that Abram wouldn’t live to see this affliction.) Go to school and study hard, and after you’ve paid your dues for a good 400 years or so, you’ll get a good job and be able to live where you want. It seems a bit harsh. A little note here – the LORD uses fourth generation an 400 years interchangeably here, indicating that at that time, a generation was a hundred years (which foreshadows the birth of Isaac later on in Abram’s life – when he’s 100).

But what was the reason for this wait of time? Why did the LORD call Abram out of his plush life in Ur now when it would be his descendants 400 years later that would finally get all of the land? There are several good reasons. The first is so that the LORD could show his truthfulness and faithfulness to his promise. Second was for the benefit of Abram and his offspring; yes, it would be a hard time as servants, but when they were finally ready to claim this land, they would have great possessions – far greater than those that they would have gotten in Ur – and would be identified with the LORD through Abram. Thirdly, and extremely important, was that “the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete.”

Now one of his allies was Mamre the Amorite, in whose company Abram just destroyed the kings. No doubt he had been given a window into the relationship between Abram and the LORD, had experienced the glory of the LORD in battle, and had worshipped him by his own Oak trees (Abram settled in and experienced the LORD at the Oaks of Mamre). If anything, it was assumed that the people of the land were familiar with the LORD. The people of Sodom, for starters, were great sinners “against” the LORD – they were acquainted with him and had rebelled against Him, just as they had rebelled against Chedorlaomer.

Several objections are often made about the “God of the Old Testament”, in terms of the Israelite’s conquest of Canaan, many dealing with xenophobia, genocide, and the idea of forcefully attacking a peaceful people and killing and driving them out of their lands.

But here, we have the LORD’s statement: “their iniquity is not complete”. In other words, it would be unjust for me to throw them out of their lands yet, or I wish to have more mercy on them first, or they haven’t violated our relationship irrevocably yet. But in 400 years they will have, even through my pursuit of them, and their knowledge of me and my ways will count agains them. Then I will be just to punish them. It would be unjust not to.

For wrath, in many fundamentalist and reformed circles (as well as some Catholic and evangelical ones), wrath is shown in conjunction with God’s holiness. Since God detests sin, he must have wrath upon all sin that he sees, and his wrath must be satisfied. For those of us in a modern context that see wrath as a emotional response (and often an irrational one), this can be difficult to understand. The question comes up: “what happened to God’s grace and mercy? Why can’t he just forgive them and purify them, as he did to Isaiah with the burning coal?” And then comes a long discussion that involves pitting God’s love against his holiness, or his law against his grace, and finding some dialectic synthesis somewhere in the tension. I prefer to start elsewhere.

Let’s start in God’s covenant. Not this one with Abram – let’s go to the one the LORD makes with the nation of Israel. In short, it is a contract between them – a solemn oath. God promises to fulfill his end: giving them physical blessings if Israel follows the Law, and giving them severe physical distress (famine, plague, slavery, war, death, … see Deuteronomy 28). It is a promise like the one he made with Abram, except that it has a conditional part for the nation of Israel. As history would show, Israel consistently and drastically broke the Law. The only result, then, was for the LORD to fulfill his end of the contract – and bring these curses upon them. To not do so would be dishonest, to show that his promise was not grounded solidly in truth.

Long before the LORD revealed to Abram that he was a God who judges evil (Sodom and Gomorrah), he revealed that he was a God who was faithful and fulfills his promises. Why can we trust that God is never going to leave us? Because he is always faithful, and always keeps his word. We take comfort in God being loving, and indeed God is love, but he first reveals himself to Abram through his name, showing he simply is, and then through his truthfulness in his promises.

So back to the Amorites – could it be that the LORD already has a relationship with them (though not as intimate as the one he has with Abram)? And that by judging the Amorites he was fulfilling his revelation to them? He certainly revealed himself to people other than Israel – look at Balaam, or Melchizedek, for instance. And similar things could be said about the other nations in the land of Canaan.

Now as for the land covered by this promise – from the river Euphrates to the river of Egypt, it is certainly much greater in extent than modern day Israel. It is possible that this extent (or most of it) was covered in the time of Solomon, David’s son, but otherwise it has not yet been fulfilled. But that was the promise the LORD made with Abram – and he made it with a covenant.

By accepting the sacrifices with fire (passing between the pieces was a sign of accepting the terms of the covenant), the LORD ratified the covenant with Abram. But what was Abram’s part in the covenant? The only possible part was that of the sacrifice – the rest was up to God. It was his promise to fulfill to him, as it was his promise to bring Abraham offspring. It is up to the LORD.

“In the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, these kings made war with Bela king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). And all these joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea). Twelve years they had served Chedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled. In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, and the Horites in their hill country of Seir as far as El-paran on the border of the wilderness. Then they turned back and came to Enmishpat (that is, Kadesh) and defeated all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who were dwelling in Hazazon-tamar.  [Genesis 14:1-7]

So there’s a ton of names and places and kings and peoples here. A whole study could be done on the geography of the land, but I will spare those gory details. The basic idea is that Chedorlaomer was the king of the realm, and that the king of Sodom (king of wicked men) rebelled against him. The text doesn’t note whether they agreed to serve Chedorlaomer out of agreement, or whether they were in forced subjugation (he had conquered them), but regardless, they rose up against him in rebellion. And Chedorlaomer returned their rebellion in kind with an attack, and defeated the kingdoms around for some space. But they had yet to destroy the king of Sodom and those with him.

“Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out, and they joined battle in the Valley of Siddim with Chedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goiim, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar, four kings against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to the kill country. So the enemy took all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and went their way. They also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who was dwelling in Sodom, and his possessions, and went their way.” [Genesis 14:8-12]

So this ended in utter defeat for Sodom and those with him. It even seemed that God was against them: they had five kings (one more than the other), but yet they had not the courage to stand up and instead fled, falling into pits on their way out, the land helping Chedorlaomer in his wrath. This foreshadows the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah after this, as they had rebelled against God, and were cast down in His wrath. But instead of bitumen pits and swords, it was to be fire, brimstone, and salt. The marsh and oil pits were to be more full of death, being completely inhabitable with salt water. But like the story coming, there were survivors here.

The key part in how it relates to the story is the last verse – that of Lot also being taken by the kings as well. This is the only reason for deliverance for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah; it was a grace in two ways. Firstly, that on account of Lot, because he is the kindred of Abram, who is blessed by God, the people are blessed with deliverance from their physical trials. This is not because of their goodness, because it was already declared that they were “great sinners to the LORD”. It was also a grace, because it gave insight into their error – namely their rebellion – and directed them toward Lot as a good person to heed.

“Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eschol and of Aner. There were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsman Lot with his possessions, and the women and the people.” [Genesis 14:13-16]

Abram, remember, was living in the place where the LORD met him previously, before his faithless wandering to Egypt and after his return. God has now graciously given him peace and allies in the place he once afraid to live. In this, the LORD shows his faithfulness to his promise. And we can see that he has begun to bless Abraham, as he has 318 men that have been born in his house as servants. And now the report comes that Lot has been captured by the kings with Chedorlaomer, due to his association with the people of Sodom. His lot was thrown in with them, so to speak.

And he goes out with those men, and went quite a ways out pursuing them, with his 318. Now, I don’t know how many troops a king had in that day, but I would imagine that 5 kings would have considerably more troops than that, especially considering the number of enemies they had just defeated without difficulty. It was almost that the LORD had given their enemies into his hand. But here, Abram routs them, as the LORD turns the tables on them. He once again is true to his promise to bless Abram, which included protected his kindred, and especially from 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse,” curses his enemies and delivers them into his hand, allowing him to not only bring back Lot with his possessions, but also the women and the people of the other kings who were attacked. All of this, due to Lot’s association with Abram. There aren’t scales here, with Lot’s goodness weighing greater than the evil of the Sodomites – there is only the LORD’s promise and his pursuit. He had exacted punishment on the physical rebellion of the people of Sodom, but showed them grace due to Lot. This was a precursor to the later episode when the LORD would judge the spiritual rebellion of the people of Sodom, and would once again try to save them through Lot, but they would not listen.

“After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said,

“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,

Possessor of heaven and earth;

and blessed be God Most High,

who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”

And Abram give him a tenth of everything. And the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have lifted my hand to the LORD, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me. Let Aner, Eschol, and Mamre take their share.”" [Genesis 14:17-24]

This is such a rich text, that books could be written on the subject, and I will merely take the top layer. After the defeat of the kings, Abram is met by two people, the king of Sodom and Melchizedek king of Salem. He is met by the king of an evil people, and by the king of peace, who was priest of God Most High. I would imagine that Abram expected the king of Sodom to return, since he had rescued all of his people and possessions, but who was this Melchizedek? And who is this God Most High?

This is the first time that Abram encounters this name for the LORD – God Most High. But his response shows that it is clear to him that this is the LORD, which would make this Melchizedek the priest of the LORD – the first recorded priest of the LORD (and the only not descended from Abram). And he makes it clear that God Most High has not only blessed him and delivered his enemies into his hand, but that he is also possessor (or creator) of heaven and earth. He reveals more of the LORD to Abram, who had only known him as a powerful god who had thus far kept his promises, and had intervened powerfully and miraculously to keep them.

And Abram’s response is worship – a gift of sacrifice. A gift of giving back to the LORD what he has already given to us – showing that we are completely dependent on him for our nourishment. Abram gave him a tenth (tithe) of everything. Is that everything he owned, or everything he gained by the victory? Most likely the latter, as he would have left the women and children back at his tents in Mamre. So it was his latest income, which is where we get the idea from the tithe (which is given in more detail in the Mosaic Law). The key takeaway is that not only is the tithe a great form of worship for God Most High, but that all that we give him is what he has already given to us. None of this would have been Abram’s if the LORD had not blessed him – it was a rout only due to divine intervention.

The most interesting part is that Abram gets nothing for all of this – the remaining 90% goes back to the king of Sodom, as well as his friends Aner, Eschol, and Mamre. Abram swore to the LORD that he would not take anything from this possessions. Why? Because he was blessed by the “Possessor of heaven and earth” – there was no reason for him to find other ways of gaining possessions. All of it was already the LORD’s and Abram was to trust that he would fulfill his promises. In this instance, Abram is able to point toward the promise of being a blessing to all the families of the earth – by showing that his blessing comes from the LORD, and that those who blessed him and were connected with him, would receive blessings.

Additionally, it should be noted that he refused to take anything from the king of Sodom – that is, he refused to benefit from evil, or to take any help from evil people. He could not be accused of using dishonest means of achieving his success.

Now back to the interaction with Melchizedek. First it says that the king of Salem (his name also means king of righteousness), brought out bread and wine. Then right afterward it says that he was priest of God Most High. In other words, this bread and wine was not just the main forms of sustenance, but also a primary act of worship to the LORD. By eating the bread and drinking the wine, Abram was worshipping the LORD with the priest king of peace and righteousness – he was participating in both the peace and righteousness of the LORD. The bread and the wine weave themselves through the Passover (especially in the seder), and have their climax in the Last Supper, which was where Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples before being crucified as the Passover lamb. Thus, our current participation with Christ in communion takes us back to this first instance of worship with the priest king of the LORD.

We’re now going to dive into a much different form than the Sermon – that of the narrative. While Jesus uses a number of parables and metaphors and delicious hyperbole to punctuate his great pronouncements on morality and anxiety and love, the narrative doesn’t necessarily have a clear application. It isn’t written for the sake of a lesson on morality. Certainly this can be derived from sufficient analysis, but that is not the main point of the section, and to try to reduce it to a law or rule of thumb would miss the entire point of having a narrative.

A narrative is about the characters involved, and this particular narrative is about God. Well, actually the entire narrative of Genesis is about God – well, the Bible actually, as far as it is a narrative, but I digress. When we’re reading such narratives, we should be asking “what does this teach us about the characters?”, “why was this written down at all?” (in other words, why would this matter to the original audience), or a more basic question: “who are the characters?” “Why are these characters compelling?” is a great question, but prone to error, unless we first understand the others. But jumping directly to how this applies to our own conduct is exactly that – a far leap, with a large gap in between to fall into.

Here we begin in the book of Genesis, chapter 11:

“When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran. [Genesis 11:26-32]

So we’re introduced to some of the major players here – Abram (who would be later called Abraham),  Sarai his wife, and Lot his nephew. We don’t know too much about their roots, except that they come from Ur in Chaldea, where one of the principle seats of the Sumerian moon god Sin was. The story would indicate that Terah and his descendants here were all followers of that moon god, as he was the principle god of that area. In that time, gods were thought to rule over geographical areas, with greater gods having further influence. So in Egypt, there were many gods, but Ra, the god of the sun, would have held a similar place as Sin, the moon god.

Now they left Ur in the South (modern-day Iraq) and came to Haran in the North (near the Southern border of modern-day Turkey) on the way to Canaan (modern-day Israel), which is actually more West of Ur than North. A couple of questions naturally arise. Why were they heading out to Canaan in the first place? And why did they go North instead of going West? For the first question, we really don’t have a good explanation, but we can make some justifiable guesses. One guess will have to wait for a little bit later. But for the other…

Ur was quite a city in their day. They probably weren’t rich, or they wouldn’t have had much of a reason to set out into the countryside (Canaan was significantly more wild). If they were looking for fortune through land, it would have been because they were looking for farmland or pasture for flocks. Now the best choice for farmland would probably have been close to the river and not too far from the city, so that they could both have a constant water supply for their crops, and be able to sell their goods to the local populace. If they were going afar into more open country, they were probably looking at flocks and herds, as they would not have to continually sell off their goods, but could continue to amass wealth through breeding and roaming across the countryside; additionally, they could more easily sell their livestock in large quantities to traders for more durable goods, such as silver or gold. So let’s go with that. There wasn’t many other jobs that would pay out in the country – you certainly couldn’t telecommute.

But why were they going North? Ur is on the Persian Gulf, seated on the banks of the river Euphrates, and Haran is located in a fertile area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. If you’re traveling with flocks, then you’re going to want a good water supply, either through a river, or through springs and rainfall. Flocks can eat as you go, but they’ll die quickly without water, to say nothing of the servants and family with them (at least animals can do pretty well eating grass with dew). Much better than a land route through the desert, which probably had few roads through. Canaan actually held a pretty good locational advantage for trade, as people going to Mesopotamia from Egypt (and vice versa) would of necessity travel through there instead of through the Arabian desert, unless you were traveling by water. So you travel along the river until you get to Haran, and then you turn South across the coast of the Mediterranean, which got higher rainfall and had better springs and rivers than the desert.

But Terah didn’t quite make it Canaan. It isn’t clear why. Maybe he found a profitable business venture there. Tired of being a vagabond? Was scared of going forward? Of note is that Haran was the second seat of the moon god Sin (the other being Ur). He was considered a powerful god, ruling over this vast area, but they had come to the limit of that realm. Moving on would not only mean venturing into a new land, it would mean meeting new gods, new languages and cultures, and maybe was just a bit much. So Terah and Abram and Sarai and Lot were in Haran, feeding their flocks and worshipping their god Sin.

There was a problem, though. A big problem – Sarai, Abram’s wife, was barren. In the ancient near-East, this was considered one of the greatest curses to have. And this means that Abram would not have his own son as an heir – a curse to him. Lot may have been traveling along as a possible inheritor of Abram’s possessions.

Then the story continues:

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:1-3]

The LORD enters into the story of Abram. This must have been quite an event for him. He had probably only interacted with stone statues of Sin, or perhaps more directly worshipped with the moon was full. The LORD doesn’t even given Abram a name – He just gives him a promise. But when he asks Abram to leave his home country and his father’s house, he is setting himself apart from Sin – the god of his country and his father’s house. the LORD was a God powerful enough to enter into the domain of Sin, and give visions. So perhaps He was powerful enough to be god of “the land” he promises to show Abram, and even to fulfill His promise.

Sidenote on “LORD”:  It is fully capitalized to indicate that the Hebrew says YHWH, which is the name the Hebrews used for God. The Jews were fearful of pronouncing the name of God incorrectly, so would pronounce “Lord” instead. But the writing itself is YHWH, which is spoken by trendy preachers as “Yahweh”, though we don’t actually know the vowels used (as the vowels written were those from the Hebrew for lord – “adonai”)

On the surface, this seems like a pretty good deal. If the LORD can do this, then this is really good news! His name will become great, while he is now a nobody, and he will have a son – in fact, numerous descendants. In addition, he would be protected by the blesses and curses of this god. And if it so happens that everyone else benefits, then so be it. That would be awesome, too. But will the LORD really come through? And where is this land that he will show? And who is He, really? Let’s continue:

“So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.” [Genesis 12:4-9]

Now while according to a modern reading, we would interpret Terah dying in Haran as happening before Abram received the visitation, this happened while Terah was still alive. If Terah was dead, then Abram would have inherited his father’s house, being the firstborn, and the statement to “leave your father’s house” wouldn’t have made much sense. It is simply the way that genealogies were presented then – it wraps up the children and final age of Terah

as parenthetical aside from the story. Terah died around when Abram was 135, but Abram was only 75.

It’s interesting that Abram set off to the land of Canaan, as that was were his father Terah had started going toward, before settling in Haran. Had the LORD revealed himself to Terah, but Terah had failed to leave? The text doesn’t say. But neither does the LORD tell Abram where to go. He tells him to leave his father’s house and his country and his kindred. And being toward the Western border of his country, and having already had some idea of his father going to Canaan, perhaps he set on that as a decent destination. The LORD would show him – he just had to go.

I think when it comes to prayer, the hardest response to receive is “wait”. Wait for me to tell you at the proper time. Because almost assuredly, God doesn’t want you to sit on your laurels, waiting until He answers you, He wants you to go do other things instead. The idea of setting out without knowing the ultimate destination is a really hard one to accept, especially for those of us [read: "me"] who try to plan out everything. He simply had to trust in the promise. But how much trust did he have at this point?

An interesting point here is that the LORD tells him to leave his kindred – that would presumably mean to leave his nephew Lot as well. But Lot went with him. Was this fear that the LORD wouldn’t be able to follow through, or unintentional?

Now a little bit of geography here. Canaan refers to a large geographical area inhabited by the Canaanites, which includes parts of modern day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. The Biblical reference to Canaan probably refers to a more constrained area, forming what is today Israel and Palestine. Shechem is in the northern part of Israel (modern West Bank), and Bethel is further south, close to Jerusalem. The location of Ai (meaning ruins – probably a later name) is debated, but is probably close to Jericho, not too far to the East of Bethel. The Negev (meaning dry) is the Southern part of Israel, and “towards the Negev” is another way of saying “South” in Hebrew. So, through this journey, Abram is traveling South through the flatter, more fertile regions, to the hill country, and finally to the desert in the South.

So Abram is traveling through Canaan, finishing the journey his father Terah started, but still unsure of “the land” that the LORD has promised him. but then he came to the oak at Moreh in Shechem. Now Moreh, which means “oracle” or “teacher”, was probably a location of Canaanite worship – possibly where their oracles would go to divine. Large trees and hills were seen as optimal points for divination and worship, as it is closer to the stars or life or antiquity. It must have been a large oak in a prominent hill (in a region mostly filled with plains) to be able to be used as a place marker. So he comes to a place of Canaanite worship, and without performing any rituals, the LORD appears to him.

The LORD appeared to him! Previously the LORD had only spoken to him, which was enough to get him to leave his country. The LORD had spoken to him at the seat of the moon god Sim’s power, and now He had appeared to him at the Canaanite Oak of Oracles. Not only was He a god who could traverse a large geographical distance, he was not in the least intimidated by the gods of the peoples of those lands. Who is this LORD?

The LORD shows him the land that He was talking about – which happened to be the land of the Canaanites, who were still living there – and promised that He would give it to Abram’s offspring, his seed, his son. So now he had an idea of the land that the great nation would be set upon, but he still had two major problems: the Canaanites were in the land, and strongly planted there, and Sarai was still barren. The LORD was more explicit this time about giving Abram a son, but did Abram trust the LORD to fulfill it?

Regardless of whether a son was coming, the Canaanites were still around, and so Abram continued moving toward the Negev – toward the hills and toward the desert, the drier regions less fitting for flocks; but they probably wouldn’t have tons of Canaanites in them either. Still, he remained in the promised land.

On coming to Bethel, Abram pitches his tent (builds a house for himself) and builds an altar to the LORD (probably seen as a house for a god) and calls upon His name – YHWH. So, somewhere in the appearance or the first promise, he ascertains the name of the LORD. To use the name of one’s god in that time would be an invocation – used as a spell by the pagans. The name was also seen as representative of the character and power of the God. Now it is unclear whether Abram understands the meaning of the LORD’s name, which is related to the verb “to be”, and could be translated “I AM”. But he begins to call on that name.

But the LORD doesn’t respond. He invokes the name of the LORD, but there is silence. This isn’t at all how gods were supposed to react! They were supposed to respond when you asked, not speak in places they weren’t called and appear in places they weren’t expected. But the LORD wasn’t anything like those gods. He wasn’t like anything Abram had experienced.

And so, even though Abram had built an altar and pitched his tents (meaning that he was looking to stay a while), he didn’t hear any direction from the LORD, so he kept on going. Perhaps he was scared that the LORD had abandoned him, or maybe he thought that the LORD couldn’t be relied on, since he didn’t respond when called. So he jumped ship. He continued moving toward the desert. Isn’t that what we do? The hardest response to prayer is silence. Even the answer of “wait” is reassuring; silence is deafening. Complete isolation is a terrible thing, and so is isolation from one’s god. And so instead of believing the promise of the LORD, doubt creeps in through the cracks opened by that silence, and Abram fears the Canaanites, moving to the more desolate areas (which are really not good for flocks).

Now I could be reading into this quite a bit. Abram could just be traveling South to get a view of the reaches of the promised land, or bored waiting for his son to be conceived. But it seems to me that if he fully trusted in the promise of blessings and curses, he wouldn’t fear for his life, and would stay in the fertile plains of the North, where the LORD first appeared to him, and where his flocks would prosper. But Abram continued South, and the story continues.

“Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.  When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.” [Genesis 12:10-16]

Okay, now this is all sorts of weird.

But first, there was a famine in the “land”. It is unclear whether the famine is the whole land of Canaan, or just where Abram was at the time – in the Negev desert. Now Canaan was very dependent on rain for crops, but especially in the hill country and desert. If the rains didn’t come, then famine would inevitably come. This is why many of the poor desert regions of Africa (e.g. Somalia) have so many famines.

Now regardless of if the famine is in the entire land of Canaan, the area of the Negev would be hit particularly hard; possibly hard enough that there wouldn’t be grasses to feed his flocks. So what could have been a survivable famine around Shechem became unbearable in the desert of the Negev. So Abram, by journeying along, had put himself (and the promise) into jeopardy. But there was an apparent light – Egypt – which would have been less hit by famines, due to the abundance of water from the Nile river.

So he went down to Egypt to “sojourn” there. Now the word “sojourn” is the same kind of word as when we say “I’m moving”. It isn’t necessarily permanent, but more than a visit, and significant enough that we would bring all of our things with us. So went down to Egypt for an indeterminate amount of time – but certainly for long enough to wait out the famine. He couldn’t believe that the LORD would make him great through the famine, so he took matters into his own hands.

Now the weirdness hits. So apparently Sarai was hot. That’s not weird. But Abram is at least 75 at this point, and while they haven’t yet given an age for Sarai, she’s either old and hot, or married to someone WAY older than her (complete violation of N/2 + 7)! Her age isn’t mentioned yet in the story, so let’s not peek ahead – it’s not that important for this part. And so we’ll ignore the weirdness for now.

Abram is afraid that the LORD won’t fulfill his promise – he’s afraid that he’s going to be killed by the Egyptians, and that Sarai would be taken by them. So he devises a plan – the plan is to dangle a carrot in front of a herd of horses (it’s Biblical to compare Egypt to horses; Ezekiel compares Judah’s lovers to horses…) and then run off with the carrot – the very tasty-looking carrot, his wife, Sarai.

His logic is (somewhat) sound. If a beautiful woman was married in that time, the only way you could get her was offing her husband. Maidens, on the other hand, would be under the authority of their father (or oldest brother); but to kill all of her male relatives wasn’t seen as very sporting. Instead, it was usual practice to try to woo the maidens (and their guardians) by giving them gifts, leading up to the dower (bride price) given to the bride’s family in exchange for marrying her. The prior gifts would get a suitor into the good graces of Father and Daughter, and the dower would seal the deal. The bride price was not a bad thing, though it could be misused, as most things. While it may seem to be selling off the daughter for profit, the goal was for financial security. This was paid to her family so that her husband couldn’t spend it. This way, if her husband died or divorced her, she would still be able to support herself through the dower. Anyhow, back to the story…

Abram’s idea is to get a bunch of Egyptians to compete over Sarai, making him wealthy through gifts, and then possibly run off back to Canaan before a wedding is necessary (preferably after the famine in Canaan is done). Not a bad plan, though a bold-faced lie, as it hinges on the assumption that they’re not married. Even if you are married to your sister, which is gross, though (as a guy I heard preach on this said) “it’s bound to happen at some point if you start with two people”. Even if you are married to your sister, she is firstly your wife, and then your sister. It’s like referring to your wife as “my dance partner”, which I have heard done at times. It conjures up the idea that they just dance with each other, but are married (I see the rings on their fingers) to other people. Wait, are they kissing? What? And I digress again. So Abram lied about Sarai, and probably didn’t think this one completely through. He certainly wasn’t trusting in the LORD to rescue him from the Egyptians and keep himself alive. So he hatched this plan. Unfortunately for him, there was something he didn’t plan for – something so obvious he missed.

The fact was that Sarai was really hot. So hot that the Egyptian princes bragged about her to Pharaoh. And this is where Abram’s plan succeeded in making him rich – Pharaoh gave him all sorts of animals, servants, and even camels (camels were not a common domesticated animal then – unlike our conceptions of Egypt, they were a bit exotic). Abram’s plan succeeded with flying colors – so well that he lost Sarai in the process. There were no elongated discussions and successions of gifts flowing to Abram. Pharaoh decided that he wanted Sarai, and took her. “It’s good to be the king.” He probably made Abram rich beyond dreams of avarice, and Abram kept his life, but at what cost?

Sarai being “taken into Pharaoh’s house” has some serious implications to it. The ancient kings had large harems, and when they brought a new girl in, the king would have sex with her. If he liked her, she might get to see him again (in the same context), and if he didn’t, then she would be taken in and cared for by the king’s house, but as a mere concubine out of favor with the king. While the Hebrew doesn’t say “Pharaoh knew her”, the ambiguity in “taken into his house” is about the same as when we might say about a couple nowadays – “they’re sleeping together.” True, they might just be sleeping, but they’re probably having sex. And that’s what we mean by the statement.

So by trying to save himself and preserve the remote possibility of an heir, he instead loses Sarai to Pharaoh, and he puts the LORD’s promise into jeopardy. What is he to do now? Should he tell Pharaoh that he lied – that Sarai is his wife? Would he return all of the goods and repent – would he regain his wife? Would Pharaoh just kill him, or simply ignore him?

The story continues,

“But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.  [Genesis 12:17-20]

The LORD afflicted Pharaoh with plagues? Why not Abram? He was the one who told Sarai to lie about her marital status, and he confirmed it saying, “she is my sister.” He is the only deserving of the LORD’s punishment. Abram was the one who doubted the LORD, ran away to Egypt, and lied. He was the one who put the LORD’s promise into jeopardy. And Sarai followed suit, deceiving Pharaoh to the point of having sex with him. “I took her for my wife” is quite clear – he consummated the marriage (none of the slight ambiguity of being “taken into Pharaoh’s house). Abram and Sarai are the ones who caused Pharaoh to commit adultery (which was often punishable by dead in the ancient near-east, not just by the nation of Israel). Why weren’t they struck?

The LORD sent plagues because of Sarai; what are we to make of this?

We need to get out of our head the thought of this being a lesson in morality. It isn’t one of our sanitized Western moral stories. This isn’t a fable, nor a fairy tale – it has a completely different objective in mind. Those would have ended with Sarai and Abram getting plagued by the LORD – with the lesson being that your dishonesty will be punished by the divine, and quickly, so don’t lie, or let someone else have your spouse. Or it could have ended with Pharaoh finding out, asking Abram why he didn’t tell him, and then skewering him. “She’s my wife now, Abram.” Or Abram could have just lived a tortured existent, banished from Egypt without getting to even say goodbye to Sarai. But that isn’t the ending.

The LORD is apparently not too interested in dealing instant retribution to offenders. We may say that “God is just”, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll get to see his justice worked out, even in our lifetimes. The LORD has deeper interests at heart. Let’s back up a bit (almost to the beginning of the story):

“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:1-3]

The LORD’s promise. It is conditional – on Abram leaving his country [done], his father’s house [done], and his kindred [ooo, what about Lot?]. So Abram hasn’t quite fulfilled his conditions, but that doesn’t stop the LORD. The LORD so greatly desires to bless “all the families of the earth” and see his promise fulfilled on both ends. He’s seeking to uphold his word and his plan.

The LORD sent plagues to rescue Sarai.

What could Abram have done? Just go there and tell Pharaoh, “dude, sorry about that, but she’s actually my wife?” Would he be met with laughter, scorn, or death? What was his response when Pharaoh rebuked him: “Why did you say, “She is my sister”, so that I took her for my wife?”? Abram’s response: ______ Yes, it seems he was speechless. He was out beyond his rope – ain’t nobody gonna save him now. Except the LORD.

So the LORD comes in such zeal and ferocity after Sarai came to Pharaoh’s house; Pharaoh had to be quickly retracing his steps. “Let’s see, I did all my usual oblations to the gods, what could it possibly be? Why is all this happening to me? Well, I did just marry some hot foreigner – maybe one of her gods is taking vengeance because I didn’t give them sacrifices. Or maybe there’s something deeper… Send for Sarai!” – and being convinced that it has to do with her or her gods, the story just falls out. Maybe he puts the whole thing together without even asking. Either way, he comes to the correct conclusion: he just had sex with Sarai, and her god is pissed!

So Pharaoh calls in Abram, screams at him (in a dignified fashion), and gives Sarai back to him. He doesn’t ask for his bride price back (the camels and servants, etc.) – he gets them out as quickly as possible. And then he ensures that Abram doesn’t come back again. He sends out men to escort him out of Egypt, and presumably to make sure he doesn’t come back. And we hear nothing more of plagues – the promise is no longer in jeopardy.

So Abram makes off quite well. Servants and livestock and even camels! He just had to sell his wife’s body!

So if we were to make this into a moral lesson, or a proverb, what could we take away?

If you want to make a lot of money and have a beautiful wife…

Or how about, if your husband is trying to get you to sell yourself for money, don’t!

Or…

The wise man trusts in the LORD, for He fulfills His promises.

The foolish man doubts the LORD, and plagues a lot people in the process.

We’re starting to get an idea of what this LORD is like; Abram and Sarai are likewise. Is he the kind of god that they would want to worship? They certainly like the promise made, but do they trust him?

“So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb.

Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the LORD.” [Genesis 13:1-4]

So now we see the pilgrim’s regress. He has travelled as far as Egypt and now is on his way back, through the Negeb, back to the place he made the altar. Back to where he had first called upon the name of the LORD, where he had first made the altar. And he did the same again – he settled into the land in the hills (he was wise enough to not spend much more time in the arid Negeb), and once again called upon the name of the LORD.

What is the LORD’s response? Silence. Again, silence! What sort of a god is this, that comes in furious plagues, and then doesn’t answer when we call on him? Who is this LORD?

Perhaps he hadn’t traced back his steps far enough? Perhaps he hasn’t remembered fully the promise? The story moves on:

“And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together; for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together, and there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites were dwelling in the land.” [Genesis 13:5-7]

So apparently they had made it out of Egypt quite rich; perhaps they had made quick deals with the Egyptians while they were still in vogue. Or this could just be that they prospered over time, quickly multiplied their flocks, and so forth. But this seems to be quickly after the flight from Egypt – so this was likely what they had gained there. Apparently Pharaoh must have treated Lot well in addition to just Abram. And Abram had silver and gold as well – quite precious in that time, especially for a keeper of flocks – he could then buy food and water when he needed it, and would not be gouged when in need. He was not completely reliant on flocks anymore. So the LORD had begun to fulfill his promise, “I will bless you”. And apparently Abram noticed, and called on the name of the LORD.

Now the comment about Canaanites and Perizzites (another tribe of people in that area, though not as prosperous as the Canaanites) was very similar to the one before about the Canaanites, right before Abram left Shechem for Bethel. The implication is that they couldn’t support them both dwelling around Bethel, and they couldn’t go into the more fertile areas (like Shechem) because there were opposing peoples there. But this was a big problem – there simply wasn’t enough food or water to support them both, and that means that conflict wasn’t far off.

“Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.” And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD.” [Gensis 13:8-12]

So now, with the Canaanites and the Perizzites in the land, to the North and West, and the Negeb to the South, being too dry for such herds, there was two choices remaining (the right and the left). There was the place that they were currently, in the hills near Bethel, and there was space further East, toward the Jordan river valley. Now there is considerable debate as the location of Sodom and Gomorrah; the only real consensus is that they don’t exist anymore. There are speculations about them being under the Dead Sea, or on the East shore of it (either the North or South side). Zoar is on the West side of the Dead Sea, which would have been East or Southeast of where Abram and Lot were. So, that would have been the “direction of Zoar”. However, Lot journeyed East, which from Bethel would bring him to the current location of the Jordan river. Now there are more tributaries on the East side, making it the likely spot for a “well watered” valley. Now it may certainly be added that the “cities of the valley” were spread out quite a ways North and South, so that Sodom and/or Gomorrah could have certainly been on the Dead Sea. And as Sodom is described as being far away, it is almost likely that it is far to the South. But all of this isn’t overly important to the story.

The primary piece of importance is that Abram has settled in the land of Canaan, which the LORD had previously promised to give his offspring, and that Lot had left Canaan for the Jordan Valley.

There is some interesting contrasts set up, though, between the land of Canaan and the Jordan Valley. While there appears to be a fear of the people of Canaan, they are not afraid of people of Sodom, even though they were wicked (Lot and Abram may not have known this). Additionally, Canaan appears to be an arid, hilly land, while the Jordan Valley is well watered like Egypt and like the garden of the LORD. So it had this great appearance – a peaceable people in a fertile valley. But Abram stayed in the land of the promise; not because he expected to receive the LORD’s promise (since for him the Jordan Valley would have been just as fine), but because he wanted to avoid conflict – the same reason he avoided the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the same reason he lied in Egypt.

We may wonder what would have happened had Lot chosen the land of Canaan. What would have happened to the LORD’s initial conditional promise to Abram? Certainly the promise to give Canaan to Abram’s offspring would happen – but at what cost? More plagues, as in Egypt, or something worse? Luckily, we do not have to dwell on this, for Lot chose what appeared best to him, and Abram was left in the land of promise.

But Lot was left in the hand of those who were “great sinners against the LORD”. This was not those who were unaware of the LORD – they were great sinners “against” the LORD. They strove with him, cast down his laws, purposefully rebelled against him. And had Abram left Canaan for Sodom, he also would sinned greatly (as he did in Egypt) against the LORD – by mistrusting the promise given.

“The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the LORD.” [Genesis 13:14-18]

So finally Abram has fulfilled the terms of the initial promise: he has left his father, left his homeland, and now he has finally left all his kindred. (Or rather, they have left him.) So he now has fulfilled his end of the deal, allowing the LORD to do as he said, “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”.

And in addition to those things, the LORD once again speaks to Abram – and not only repeats the promise, but piles on the blessings. And this time it is without condition. Previously, he had promised to give this land to Abram’s offspring. Now he has promised to give this land to Abram, and to give it to his offspring forever. He previously promised to make him a great nation – now he will make his offspring far greater than any nation then known – he would make them like the dust of the earth.

And then the LORD encouraged Abram to walk through the length and breadth of the land – as a step of faith in His promise. “Arise, walk … for I will give it to you.” And once again finding faith in the LORD, he obeys. And after seeing the land, he settles by the oaks of Mamre, at Hebron. And he built an altar to the LORD. This was where the LORD first appeared to him! This was the place he started from, where the LORD promised to give the land to his offspring. The irony is that he ended where he began.

What could have he avoided, had he simply followed the command at the beginning? If Abram had set off without Lot (without his kin), and not feared the Canaanites and left Hebron? He would have avoided famine, he would have avoided plaguing the house of Pharaoh, he would have avoided whoring out his wife, he would have avoided having his nephew settle in the land of the wicked.

So Abram blunders along, hurting everyone he comes into contact with, but the LORD will not let his promise fall to the ground. He is truthful, and will take drastic measures to fulfill his word. And that is a bit unnerving; that is more than a bit scary.

Now the conditions Abram needed to fulfill were both easy and terrifying. He had to leave his home and his kindred, and travel to a land far away. He had to trust in the promise of the LORD, since that’s all he had to rely on. The hard parts – blessing and cursing others, giving offspring to Abram, parceling out the land, and making his descendants numerous were all left to the LORD. Abram just needed to trust that the LORD would fulfill it.

And that is why righteousness (meaning to fulfill or be in just standing in a covenant contract) with respect to the LORD has a basis in faith. Whenever Abram trusted the LORD, the necessary actions flowed effortlessly, and the LORD fulfilled his end of the bargain. But doubting the promises of God was to doubt the LORD’s very nature – his name – “I AM”. It is to doubt His constancy. And whenever Abram doubted, he was unable to fulfill his end of the contract – he blundered along, relying on his own strength and insight, scared stiff.

One final note. The LORD decided to give these things to Abram, though he was completely undeserving, and often showed his lack of faith in the LORD. And if an honest god is scary, then one that gives according to His own plans is terrifying. This “gift equity” is so unlike our ideas of what “people deserve”, that it is quite unnerving, even unnatural. How can we learn to trust a god who gives gifts at will? How can we ever be sure of being “in the right” or “deserving the next gift”? Well, we can’t “be sure”. Rather, we are to be “of faith”. Once we learn that the LORD keeps his promises, we only need to reflect and see that his promises are good. So why not trust Him?

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” [Matthew 7:24-29]

The storms are coming. The certainty of them is written across this section quite thoroughly. Regardless of whether you are wise or foolish, you will have to face storms. Except it’s no the men in this parable that are facing the storms – it’s the houses they are building. What are the houses that we build? What are the storms that they face. While it might be theologically nice to look at the house as our souls and the storms as the final judgment (and it would certainly fit in with the preceding context about the end – “that day”), that may not be what Jesus is getting at. Perhaps if he added that the foolish man was squished by the falling of his house (or if we presume that he was inside) we could come to that conclusion – and then it’s not the storm that kills but the house itself.

I think a reasonable explanation is that the house refers to is the legacy of our actions their permanence in this world. Just as possessions were transitory, and perished with time and use, so our actions that are not based on Christ’s teaching will bring decay. I guess in that sense, the storms would need to be interpreted as some sort of final judgment – that measure the worth (endurance) of our houses. If they endure the end, then it was wise for us to build them.

The Apostle Paul uses a similar metaphor in his first letter to the Corinthians [3:10-15]: “According to the grace of God given to me , like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw – each one’s work become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”

So in this passage the Day of Judgment is certainly in view, and if I revisit my earlier paragraph, perhaps such a view fits best into the context; Jesus had just finished talking about “that Day” and entering the kingdom of heaven, as well as His judgment of the “lawless”. Perhaps they can be seen as parallel thoughts. And it fits in with his previous statements about following God rather than money, since the treasure of God doesn’t wear out. I suppose that there is an aspect of personal well-being, though, if we go a little deeper. If we look at the house as a place to live – then we want one that will endure the storms. If we enter the kingdom, then there surely will be a place for us, but if we seek our housing elsewhere, we will find ourselves homeless after the storms have broken our house.

In Paul’s metaphor, he is speaking of building up the Church in Corinth. And while he is looking at this in a collective sense, the church is formed of individuals, and so building upon the church involves personal development as well. But as Paul says, “the foundation is Jesus”. Elsewhere, Jesus is referred to as the “cornerstone” (which is the principle part of any foundation at that time). Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians [2:19-22], that they are “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

So in acting according to what is heard in the Sermon, we build on the foundation that Jesus has laid, and if we don’t respond accordingly, then we build elsewhere and our house will crash (or burn). There, I suppose, is a third category of individuals that might be referred to as an “ignorant man”, though Jesus doesn’t speak of these – he only speaks to those who heard the sermon. It leaves a giant question mark for those who haven’t heard his message.

A more temporal interpretation would be to see the house as our current mode of life that we are living, and the storms as the trials of life. In this place also, Jesus assures us that we will have storms – regardless of whether we follow him or someone else. But the difference will be that our mode of life will not be impacted by the weather, whereas others may be greatly impacted. If your desire and life is to get rich or have awesome things, then a little change in the market may bankrupt you. If you are following God instead of money, you will be able to serve him whatever your financial status is. This is definitely a compelling idea as well.

My brain is so done right now – phew, long day! But I will try to write a line or two about Matthew’s line two lines – about the response of the crowds. The first thing that stands out to me is that the crowd’s response, right after speaking of the parable of the houses, is astonishment. Matthew doesn’t denote a desire to follow these teachings, necessarily, but simple astonishment. They could hardly believe what they were hearing. And Jesus continued to astonish people throughout his ministry. He astounded Nicodemus when he told him, “you must be born again”. He astonished the disciples when he told them, “how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”.

They were astonished because of how different he was from the scribes (the Jewish teachers of the Law). The most notable difference was authority – he taught as one who had it. The scribes had a very different approach – a more ‘academic’ one, though certainly different from a modern academic approach. They cited numerous sources – a vast lineage of rabbis through the centuries – with the difference being that the oldest reference was considered the best and most accurate (whereas we would prefer to cite newer sources), as it was an interpretation of Scripture, which itself was old. So a scribe would cite and quote a number of famous rabbis and then make his own conclusion based on those sources.

Jesus was quite different. He only quoted the scribes to make a distinction between his teaching and theirs: “you have heard it was said, …, but I tell you…”. He quoted the scribes, and then interpreted the text directly. But even that doesn’t bring us to the level of “authority”. Authority has the same root as authorship, and this is what Matthew meant by authority – he spoke as if he had written the Law. He put himself (implicitly) on the same level as God, who gave the Law to Moses. And as a writer, he did more than merely interpret the original source – he plainly described the original intent behind the Laws. He didn’t just stop at the letter of the laws – he gave the purpose of the laws. It was astonishing because if you regarded Jesus as a prophet, then you now had a clear path to follow, if you were going to claim to follow the Law. You could no longer quote your handpicked list of Rabbis.

The other part that is astonishing is the vastness of topics Jesus covered, juxtaposed with the hardness of the message. It was not easy to understand, nor was it easy to follow. Far from it. By all outward appearances, it was impossible. And that is why the crowd wasn’t enthusiastic about following it – they realized the gravity of the situation – if there were self-righteous among the the crowd, there certainly weren’t now. They were astonished at – ‘what can this new teaching mean?’ ‘What does this say about how I have been living my life?’ But what should our response to the Sermon be?

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased true bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” [Matthew 7:15-23]

Let’s start with the where we got to last week, as it will have definite impacts on how we interpret this section. Firstly, noting Jesus’ oft allusion of his followers to sheep and of himself variously to “the door”, “the way”, and the “the life”, as well as “the good shepherd”, I take the interpretation of the previous passage,

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few”, [Matthew 7:13-14]

that Jesus is the “narrow gate”, and following him is the “hard way”. In connecting it with the Law and the Prophets, the only way to fulfill them is through his power, since we are fallen beings, and to not follow him or enter through him is to discard the Law and the Prophets that spoke about him, to reject the good gifts of God, and thus to fail to live up to the command to “do to others how you would desire to be treated”. Following Jesus is necessary and sufficient.  And even if we can’t fulfill the Law and the Prophets, due to our failings in following Jesus, we know that he has fulfilled them and will bring us to the perfection necessary to enter the kingdom, even those of us with nothing to offer (the poor in spirit).

So now we see the outpouring of our choice to follow him or not. Going through the narrow gate and taking the narrow path is the way to life. And once we have become completely full of life – once we are healthy, then as Jesus’ metaphor of trees points out, we will bear good fruit. By fruit, we’re speaking of everything in the Sermon, from being salt and light, to not being anxious, to loving God and others. Love is that fruit ripened, the flower in full bloom. Jesus often makes the comparison to fruit-bearing plants, as well as to grain.

Jesus makes a fairly stark contrast here between those who bear good fruit and those who bear bad fruit. What of those who produce a mix? Let’s look at a section in the gospel of John where he talks about the fruit of the disciples (after Judas leaves to betray him):

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and i in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” [John 15:1-4]

Jesus is speaking to the disciples right before the crucifixion – right before Peter betrays him and the rest of the disciples flee and abandon him, and right after Philip and Thomas completely misunderstand and doubt him). And yet he declares that they have already born fruit; the word “prunes ” also means “cleans”, so when Jesus says that they are “clean”, he implies that they have already born fruit. Yet it is not some great visible thing – it is because of the word spoken to them.

So then those who are on the way to life may be bearing fruit that only is visible to God, as they have not fully escaped from disease. But the warning is about false prophets, not just any individual. A prophet was someone who claimed to have inspiration from God, making a false prophet someone who claims to know God and pronounce inspirations heard from Him, but has no connection to God. The nation of Israel had a terrible time of false prophets before her exile to Babylon. And as Jesus has previously put his Disciples no equal footing with the Prophets of God, this is warning about those who claim to follow Jesus, claim to have passed through the narrow gate, and claim to walk to hard way.

The problem of prophets is this: if they are from God, you should definitely listen to them. To do otherwise is to invite danger and judgment on yourself. But it is exceedingly dangerous to follow false prophets – they are not merely individuals who don’t know what they are talking about; they have made claims that they do and that everyone should listen to them. We’re not dealing with seedlings here – we’re dealing with full grown trees who have either grown with such life as to receive oracles from God and bear delicious fruit, or they are so twisted and diseased that they have come to believe that God is speaking directly to them when they are listening to themselves or to demons, and they believe that everyone else must eat their rotten fruit.

As such, there are only two classes left: those who bear good fruit, and those who fail to. Now granted we aren’t always in a position to judge all of the fruit an individual has produced, but whenever we see bad fruit appear, we shouldn’t listen to those speaking. Televangelists and their love of money taking advantage of the poor and dull, priests who love boys, pastors who love power, on and on. We shouldn’t be listening to those people. If they are not bearing good grapes, then we cannot recognize them as a grapevine.

The command, “beware of false prophets” sticks out to me quite a bit here. There is a danger in following their footsteps, but the biggest problem is following their teaching – and that is what we are to be wary of. It might seem that we are judging them (which we are previously warned against), but it is not the judgment of condemnation. We are not the ones saying, “depart from me, workers of lawlessness” or cutting down the tree and throwing them into the fire. That is reserved for God to do. What we are doing is using what we see of their fruit to discern whether we should have them as spiritual mentors and teachers.

We shouldn’t have spiritual mentors who haven’t had an opportunity to experience life with. We shouldn’t listen to those whose fruit we cannot judge. I would give the same advice for anyone reading this – if you don’t know me, don’t take my words too seriously. You haven’t seen how I live. We really need to be in relationship with people before allowing them to impart spiritual wisdom to us. Or if they are writers, then we should be pretty sure of the way their lives are lived before adhering to their teaching. Dead writers are best – you can see how their lives played out. That is the problem that I have with reading spiritual blogs and listening to podcast sermons – you are not in relationship with these people, so how can you judge their words to be good? That is also a problem I have with large churches – if the pastor [lit. shepherd] doesn’t know his sheep, the sheep certainly don’t have a relationship with him – so how can they rely on him for guidance? Certainly there is the witness of others around the pastor, elders and so forth – and so if you trust their judgment, then it may be good.

But it’s definitely difficult to judge the validity of variously philosophy and teachings, ex nihilo. Fruit is much more recognizable than roots, though some can recognize those as well. But false teachings are often purposely obfuscated, making them difficult to decipher and differentiate from the truth. But if the outcome of that teaching is humility, and grace, and love for God and others, then it is much easier to validate. But even if the teaching appears good, if the fruit of the teacher is not, then it’s dangerous to follow. It may be on track now, but will it tomorrow? The brilliance of Jesus was that his miracles and pithy sayings were accompanied by a life of humility and mercy and encouragement and love. His fruit matches his teaching.

In the second paragraph, there is a contrast between those who say “Lord, Lord” and those who do the will of the Father. Jesus strengthens this by adding their statements that they cast out demons, prophesied, and did great works [miracles] in the name of Jesus. These people claimed to have intimacy with Jesus, but his response is that he “never knew” them. There was never any intimacy between them. So whether they actually did these things (the magicians of Pharaoh duplicated the works of Moses, and we are warned elsewhere that false prophets will do great signs and wonders; also, the false prophets of the Old Testament would often say “The Lord Says”, but their inspiration were themselves), or whether they were so deluded to think that they had done these things or that their inspiration had come from God, when they were only listening to their own voices, they had no intimacy with Christ.

This is not the same thing as “calling on the name of the Lord to be saved”, which doesn’t declare intimacy, but is a plea for mercy and an acknowledgement of the power of God. Jesus says that people are “workers of lawlessness”, which contrasts with those who “do the will of the Father”. Lawlessness would be the fruit of action not in unity with the rest of the Sermon – Jesus’ discourse on the Law. The will of the Father certainly includes the command to love God and others, but also includes asking him for grace, and entering through the narrow gate – Jesus – and following the hard path – following Jesus. Without entering into that relationship with Jesus, great works will not save you. And saving is what we need.

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” [Matthew 7:12-14]

Interpretation #1: The “narrow gate” is acting according to the Golden Rule, thus following the Law and the Prophets. It is also the hard way, as it is extremely difficult to follow. The other gate would then be any other way of life that you choose. This has the advantage of being directly in sync with a key passage of the Law, “You shall therefore keep my statues and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.” [Leviticus 18:5]. The Apostle Paul references this in two of his letters: Romans 10:5 and Galatians 3:12.

Interpretation #2: Jesus has concluded his discourse on the Law and the Prophets, beginning by saying he will fulfill them, and ending with boiling them down to a single command. When he speaks of the narrow and wide gates, his reference is to himself as the narrow gate and following him as hard way, and all other conceivable gates and paths as the wide gate and the easy way. This has the advantage of fitting in with one of Jesus’ great “I am” statements from the gospel of John:

“So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his his life for the sheep.” [John 10:7-11]

Note that the next comparison he draws in the Sermon on the Mount is about sheep. So in this interpretation, we find the way to life through Christ.

interpretation #3 – My Take: Jesus has gone at such great depth to expound on the Law and Prophets in the Sermon that it would be unwise (especially when he gives direct commands to do and teach these things) to ignore them in the mindset of “Jesus fulfilled them, so I don’t need to worry about them.”

On the other hand, we must be greatly in error to think that we can fulfill the Law and the Prophets ourselves. In fact, we cannot. We’ve already failed. The Law, as made evidently clear by Jesus’ exposition requires perfection: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Yet even in this statement, Jesus gives a glimpse of his divinity – he has already said that he has come to fulfill the Law and Prophets – he has come to be perfect as God is perfect. We have already failed to fulfill the Law – we are constantly embroiled in anger, lust and complaint, to say nothing of greater grievances against God. How can we claim to be perfect? Even if our previous misdeeds were erased, how long could stay perfect? Could we even make it one conscious thought or action before being dragged down by our own undead muck? I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim that. Perhaps sometimes I could make it a little ways. But upon failing, all of the curses of the Law (and there are many) are upon my shoulders. Jesus was right in saying that anger puts you in danger of judgment, lust in danger of hellfire.

If we take the Law and the Prophets as the narrow door and the hard way, the only conclusion that I can reach is that the way is too narrow to fit through and too hard to travel. It is impossible. Now some might respond by saying, “everything is possible with God”, and yes, perhaps there is a certain superhero of the faith who might attain to that perfection in this life, but I doubt it. Jesus came out openly and said he has come to fulfill the Law, or that his Disciples are on equal footing to the Prophets of God; in contrast, the greatest “Saints” only learned how great their sin was and were perpetually humbled by it. This is not one of those catch-22 moments where they are so humble they have reached perfect. Jesus was at perfection, and at that point, his perfect humility said “I AM”. There was no option of him calling himself “the greatest of sinners” as Paul did. He had never sinned, nor would he.

Additionally, in both of Paul’s letters where he references the Law in terms of the passage from Leviticus (on those who follow it living by means of it), he was dealing with the problem of legalism within the church and the believers trying to follow the Judaic Law. He response was quite harsh. In a nutshell – living by the Law is death, not life. You cannot fulfill it through self-effort; you are not to follow the Law, you are to follow Christ.

But I still haven’t addressed the problem of perfection. Jesus desires us to reach perfection, to act according to Love, to forgive others even as we ask God for forgiveness. We will be perfect – as Paul says, we will become like Jesus. But that perfection is yet to come. Remember that Jesus was addressing the outcasts, the diseased, hungry, poor, those considered unclean, the poor in spirit, the persecuted. He was not addressing the spiritual giants – he was speaking to the ragamuffins. Yet he was embracing them, healing them, and encouraging them with the hope of the kingdom of heaven, which he was ushering in. They had come to him, he pronounced them blessed – not because of their observance of the Law and the Prophets, but because they had come to him.

I read this passage this way, then: the way of the Law and the Prophets is life, but we are unable to fulfill it and find life. But Jesus has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, and in this way he has life in himself. He says elsewhere, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by me.” To say that Jesus is the narrow gate and following him is the hard way does not negate the Law and the Prophets. Rather, they point to Jesus, and find their fulfillment in him. Formerly, the way of life was too hard, and too narrow. We simply could not fulfill the Law. But Jesus has enabled even the most feeble among us to enjoy abundant life and travel through the narrow gate and the hard way. For while the gate is narrow – life is only possible through Jesus, and the way is hard – there will be persecution for those who follow him, our own sin to wrestle against, and constant temptations – Jesus tells us to take his “yoke” upon him and learn from him (i.e. be his disciple), for his “yoke is easy and his burden is light”. So while the way will be hard, we have a constant companion who will take our burdens and walk alongside us. And he will lead us to life.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Do not give to dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” [Matthew 7:1-12]

Now this is an incredibly dense section, so we’ll see if I can get through it in one go.

While it may seem that there are numerous disjointed sayings here, such as “don’t throw your pearls before pigs”, they are all connected together by the last statement: “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” This is his conclusion from these statements. They are interpretations applied to specific contexts – different meanings of “others”.

The first one is a general principle we see many places throughout scripture. “Judge not, that you be not judged.” This is most likely looking at divine judgment, as seen in parallel passages. In the Lord’s Prayer, a little while back, we saw that those who did not forgive would not be forgiven by God. In James’ letter, he writes that judgment is given to those give judgment, and mercy to those that give mercy. He adds that “mercy triumphs over judgment.” We should seek to be merciful, rather than condemn.

But this doesn’t say simply, “Judge not.” but adds “that you be not judged.” Jesus is not saying that we should never judge, but that if we want to avoid judgment, we should withhold our judgment. But judgment does not always mean ‘condemning’, but also means ‘discerning’, which is something that we should definitely be engaged in. And that is the subject matter of his example.

How are we to help anyone if we give a blind eye to what state they’re in? His example shows the common behavior of judging others – we look at people’s faults to feel better about our own, even when are problems are so much greater than theirs. Judgmental behavior is the entire reason, as a friend of mine pointed out, that Reality TV exists. We watch it to judge them, and in so doing feel better about ourselves. But when we judge ourselves, we justify our behaviors – we know the reasons why we do them, the environment factors that shaped us, and our own weaknesses, and give ourselves that grace. But when do we do that to others? And are we not most put off by people with the same problems that we ourselves have?

Jesus demonstrates that we should not avoid helping others – even if that may be painful or uncomfortable, or deal with sin. (Blindness – or problems with the eyes such as specks and logs – are often seen as the causes of sin, because they do not allow the person to see things how they really are. The origin of the word “sin” is an archery term, meant to “miss the mark”, and if you couldn’t see, you’d nearly always miss.) However, we must first deal with our own sin.

The reason is that ignoring our sin makes us less able to help others out of theirs. In order to take a spec out of someones eye without gouging their eyes out, you must be able to see well, and having a major obstruction in yours makes it a painful process, to say the least.

Another thought is that we are to take our sin much more seriously than the sins of others. Since we don’t know their background or why they might be in these sins, we should give them plenty of grace. But if we consider them better than ourselves, we can avoid being a hypocrite, and we will no longer have to worry about judgment. If we judge ourselves more harshly than we judge others, then it is no matter to be judged according to how we judge them. That’s no problem, once we have taken the scalpel to ourselves.

Now let’s recast this in light of “what you want others to do to you, do also to them”. We don’t want others to judge our faults harshly, and we certainly don’t want them poking our eyes trying to remove sawdust when they can’t see. But Jesus assumes here that we would like people to help us out of our disasters, and let us know when there are things in our eyes (or in our teeth). We don’t want to be badgered by hypocrites.

The next statement is one of the more difficult: “Do not give to dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” What sort of people does Jesus have in view here, and what is meant by holy things and pearls? We’ll start with what the crowds may have initially thought, to what he probably means by it.

Now to the Jewish people, dogs and pigs were unclean animals, which meant that they couldn’t eat them, sacrifice them, and in general tried to stay away from them. When Antiochus IV sacrificed a pig in the Jewish temple, it resulted in a tremendous revolt by the people (The Maccabean Revolt). The holy things would likely represent things of the Temple, while pearls could be synonymous. They were likely familiar with the proverb quoted by Peter, “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” [2 Peter 2:22]

As Gentiles were also considered “unclean” by the Jewish people, and there were laws preventing them from fully entering the Temple to worship, “dogs” and “pigs” were often used to refer to the Gentile people (most often the Romans). Elsewhere, Jesus playfully uses the term “dogs” to refer to a Gentile woman and her child (whom he then heals, because of the faith of the mother’s response). However, we see that Jesus starts breaking down these “unclean” barriers, and commands his Disciples to go into all the world making disciples (which is predominantly Gentile). And we see the Temple ceasing to function soon afterward as well, which he also predicted later in Matthew’s gospel.

Earlier in the Sermon he spoke of putting our treasure in the kingdom of God. And Jesus uses “pearl” later in a parable as a comparison to the kingdom of heaven. But if he commands his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” [Matthew 28:19] then he certainly can’t mean withholding the kingdom of heaven from the Gentiles. As Paul later writes, one of the greatest mysteries of the gospel was that he came to reconcile the Jews and the Gentiles. What then can he mean?

Peter’s letter might be helpful on this count; before he quotes the proverb, he says, “For if, after they [false prophets] have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

In other words, for those who have been given the pearl and the holy things – the good news about the kingdom, and the knowledge of Jesus – and have returned to their previous state, having rejected “the way of righteousness”, then don’t continue to give it to them. Don’t try to force it down their throat. Dogs cannot appreciate holy things, nor can pigs eat pearls. They will only get angry, reject you, and possibly attack you. Jesus later instructs the disciples, on sending them out, “if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” [Matthew 10:14] He would have them move on and preach to someone else.

But even if we no loner give them pearls or holy things, that does NOT mean that we cease to love them. We are called to love others. We should not stop our interactions with them. God does not cease loving, or sending rain on the Earth, but when people reject him, then he lets them go their way – he doesn’t force himself on them or force their wills to believe in him.

If we take it as an application of “do onto others”, then it may refer to less enormous things than the rejection of the kingdom, since it may well apply to us. Connecting it with the previous example of helping others out of sin, we may interpret it this way: for those that don’t want help and continuously refuse it, leave them be. They want to be there, and if you try to help they will definitely resist. When you don’t want help, it is taken as a personal offense when someone gives it to you. And that connects us to what follows: “Ask and you shall receive”.

Perhaps the section on pigs is dealing with the contrapositive of “Ask” – that it deals specifically with those who don’t ask. It would imply that in order for someone to be ready to receive pearls and holy things, they must be willing to ask for them. Do we receive forgiveness if we do not ask for it?

Now the following section on asking, seeking, and knocking can possibly be referring to a human principle, or it can be in reference to our relationship to God. The parallel passage in Luke helps a lot in determining what is actually going on here:

“Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” And he said to them, “When you pray, say”

“Father, hallowed be our name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

And lead us not into temptation.”

And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you the, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” [Luke 11:1-13]

So in this passage, which occurs later in Jesus’ ministry, contains some interesting changes from the Sermon on the Mount. Firstly, he directly connects “The Lord’s Prayer” with this section on ask, seek, knock. And he adds an interlude on asking a friend for bread. From this perspective, the lesson on asking, seeking, and knocking is one of perseverance. You keep on doing it, and you’ll get results. But this is merely the human element of it. Again he brings up the human element with fathers giving gifts to their children. He isn’t flattering, calling them ‘evil’, though he does describe their ability to still give good gifts. Both of these are contrasted with the workings of the Father.

The Father doesn’t need to be asked twice (“do not pray like the Gentiles … for they think they will be heard for their numerous words”) – it is not the persistence of our prayers that finally turn him around. And if our fathers on earth will not give us bad things when we ask for good (in general), then the heavenly Father will certainly give us good things when we ask for them. The common strand between them is that asking, seeking, and knocking do occur. We ask the Father for gifts. Our children ask us for gifts.

Putting this in the framework of “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them”, we see the assumption that as parents, we desire our children to ask us for good things; we enjoy giving them good things (and hope that they don’t ask for evil things), even though we ourselves are fallen creatures and don’t know how best to parent, we want them to ask us for good things. And the application of this desire is to do so to our heavenly Father – we are to ask Him for good things. And in Luke, Jesus specifies what the greatest of God’s gifts is – the Holy Spirit. He will certainly give the Spirit to those who ask.

The Law and the Prophets is this ‘Golden Rule’: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” It should form the basis of all our relationships – both towards other people, and toward God. Thus, it is equivalent to both “Love God will all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Jesus synthesizes both of them in this simple statement. So to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, this is the path to take. But as section after section makes completely clear, we have already failed in upholding this – we are already lost. But he gives this statement earlier: “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.” We have already failed the Law – the crowds came to him because we was merciful and loving and he healed and encouraged them, even in their failings. He further comforted them by saying that He would fulfill the Law and the Prophets.

But what does this mean to the rest of us, who have already failed? Jesus has yet to say how this was to happen. Now that he has concluded his discourse on Law and Prophets, he will move into what all of this means for us.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” [Matthew 6:25-34]

This entire passage is basically an application and discussion of Jesus’ previous conclusion that you cannot serve both God and money. With the assumption that you have decided to serve God (since money is transitory and unpredictable, and serving it will make you stingy), the application is more meat about what that means.

The previous section dealt with desiring money and treasuring – avarice, if you will. This section deals with something that I think is much harder to deal with – security. We are anxious because we are insecure, because we don’t know where our next job is coming from, or which way are relationships are going, or where we’ll be in 3 months, or how we’re going to pay off our student loans, or even how we’re going to feed or protect our family. These, at some level, are all basic needs of ours – financial, relational, physical. And that is why anxiety is so hard to get out of our mind. It doesn’t bring up a red flag when it happens because it comes so naturally to us, and is an internal, mental phenomenon (though it exerts itself in numerous ways through our minds).

Jesus takes two primary tacks at anxiety. The second, lesser one, is simply a practical point on anxiety: worrying doesn’t make anything happen. Practically, it does nothing for you or anyone else (other than raising your stress levels and blood pressure). As Jesus says, “which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” And I think we know this – that we really shouldn’t worry – but that doesn’t mean we can implement it in our actions. And it may feel ‘good’ to worry, or at least keep our minds busy for a while, or give us something to chat with someone else about. But there is a far better way.

Being anxious about food and clothing is reverting back to our old manner of life – that of serving our possessions. We found security in our possessions when they were there, and became anxious about them when they became uncertain. But you are no longer serving money, but serving God. And as servants get what they need from their masters, so we no longer get what we need from money, but from God.

Jesus’ primary point is that if you are serving God, then not only is being anxious about money fruitless, but actually shows that you lack faith. You are doubting that God will give you what you need. But this is ridiculous – if you are God’s servant, then he has every reason to give you what you need so that you can do well in your service of him.

Jesus uses the metaphors of birds and grass to speak about food and clothes, to demonstrate the faultiness of such thinking. God feeds the birds of the air, and he clothes the grass of the field. Now this is not to say that the birds do nothing but sit in their nest and wait for manna to fall from heaven – but that God has provided them with ways and means to acquire their food. And while the grass doesn’t toil or spin, it does grow – it isn’t completely passive either. So we must not fall into the trap of thinking that we should be waiting around for God to act. But we are of greater value to God than birds or flowers, and will feed and clothe us as well. We should not be anxious and worry about how we will get these things. We should instead focus on our serving of God – for that will give us the means to get what we need. If we fall back to relying on wealth, will God give us our needs, or will he allow our wealth to fail us that we might turn back to Him?

The Gentiles seek after these things: food, drink, and clothing. These are some of the basic essentials of life, though they also are the bases for many kinds of gluttony and elitism. The Romans of the time of Jesus (the primary Gentiles in view) certainly had their ideas of fashion and parties and the purgatorium (which they used to multiply their pleasure). The followers of Jesus are not to be like this. As we are not to treasure and stockpile these things, but instead be generous to others, we are not to be anxious and run after them. They are necessities, but our needs are now being met by God, who knows very well what we need. Remember in Jesus’ prayer the line, “give us our daily bread” – i.e. our bread for today, our bare necessities. That is all we need ask for. But we are to ask in faith and hope, not in anxiety and doubt.

So what does it mean to ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness’? Clearly seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness is about the same thing as ‘serving God’, which introduced the passage. Certainly this can include nearly all of the Sermon up to the this point. It involves our moral actions; it involves how we relate to God in giving, fasting, and prayer; going further back, it involves Christians being in the world, allowing their light to shine, and enduring persecution. It involves proclaiming the ‘blesseds’ that Jesus did to the crowds, as well as healing the sick and giving to the poor. But it does not end there.

Jesus elsewhere says, “my bread is to do the will of him who sent me [the Father]“. So when he prays, “give me my daily bread”, immediately before he prays “Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Asking for our daily bread is more than asking for our ‘needs’, but also asking for how we would serve the Father today. From following the Father’s will, Jesus was sustained, and that is what he is saying here – we will be sustained by God when we seek his kingdom and his righteousness. The key is to ask in prayer – and then listen with the expectation that he will answer us.

We must not expect that all of our ‘wants’ will be met, but only our needs – and only as they are needed to serve him. Sometimes in our service of God it is necessary to go hungry, to give away our clothes to the poor [see St. Francis of Asisi], or even to die [see Jesus]. We should not mourn when we do not have what we consider to be necessities – but look to God and ask for “our daily bread”. And listen. Perhaps the word will be to act sacrificially, or to endure evil.

One helpful part of this line of thinking is Jesus words: “is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” We may think that we need food and clothing, and without them we will lose our lives and our bodies. And while this is true on the surface – we will physically scar, waste away, and die – there is something bigger here. Life in the kingdom of God is bigger and fuller and richer – more life-full. We may give our bodies and lives to death, but God will not forsake us. Something much bigger is at work here. The treasures of the kingdom endure, and what are those treasures but the people of the kingdom? In seeking the righteousness of God, as the crowds sought the righteousness of Jesus, we seek to enter into His kingdom – and Jesus pronounces us “blessed”.

Jesus closes up by saying, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” This does not mean that we should not plan for the future – certainly we should. But we should not worry about it, and we should plan as God directs. We can only act in the moment, in the present. To focus on the past or the future is pointless. The best result for the future will occur when we put everything into the moment at hand. That is where God directs us – in our current steps. Once again returning to Jesus’ prayer: “give us our daily bread” – give us our bread for today. It is a prayer for the day, for the moment. It isn’t focused in trying to predict every possible future occurrence. We simply aren’t made for that. We need to allow God to direct that – we must focus on the needs and work of the current day. It has sufficient trouble for itself. There will always be more than we can give to the current moment, so let’s focus on just giving everything. In the service of God.

Anyhow, in this passage, Jesus moves from focusing on our spiritual interactions with God to talk about “treasures” – i.e. possessions. We’ll start off with his words and then unpack it:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” [Matthew 6:19-24]

Here, Jesus contrasts two different mindsets: serving God and serving money ["Mammon", which is an Aramaic word for possessions that is transliterated in the Greek].

He starts off by looking at natural possessions – those things that we have, had, may have someday, things that we need, or want, or really don’t need or want but have anyway. Simply put, all of these things only have a limited, short-term value. They will wear out, break, rot, and be taken by thieves or taken by creditors (or taken by death). So if these are all transitory things, why should we put any hope in them? Why should we pile them up since they will not endure our death, and their permanence lies beyond our control?

The contrast is with “laying up treasure in the heavens” – which does not have any of that nasty transitory behavior. But what is that? Misunderstanding of what this means has led to all kinds of horrible things such as “The Richest Christian” board game (I think a product of the 50s) and the idea of giant vaults in the clouds filled with Jesus-money that we can spend at our leisure once we die and ‘go to heaven’. But this sort of thinking misses two primary points: 1) Jesus’ conception of “heaven” and specifically the “kingdom of heaven”, and 2) that this entire passage (including the discourse that follows it) is about what you do with what you have been given, i.e. your possessions.

Jesus has already said numerous times that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”, meaning that he was inaugurating a new kingdom, one that while originating from the heavens (God, his throne, the cosmos, the skies, the atmosphere), it is being put together on the Earth. Jesus’ parables compare the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed that grows into a full tree, or a little bit of yeast put into many pounds of dough that worked itself through. This growth is happening on Earth! Laying up treasures in heaven is not about saving up some invisible currency, and even less about God paying us Jesus-money for all the ‘good deeds’ that we do. Rather, laying up treasure in heaven is investing in the kingdom of heaven now, as it is growing.

We invest in the kingdom with what we have – our mammon (possessions). It is true that ‘good deeds’ and acting according to commands of Jesus have an impact on that kingdom, but that is not what Jesus is talking about here. He has already spoken about that at length. Now he is talking about wealth. While the ‘hypocrites’ we previously spoke of comforted themselves by their ‘acts of righteousness’ (giving/prayer/fasting), there is also the material tendency to relieve our anxiety by stockpiling our resources. Now to be clear, Jesus isn’t saying that possessions are bad. Quite the opposite – he is teaching that we must use them wisely – we should fill the treasuries of the kingdom. But we should not comfort ourselves with our possessions, and should not seek to pile them up for our own use.

But there is the question to resolve of how lasting treasure in the heavens is. For Jesus says that treasure in heaven does not rust or fade, and cannot be stolen. Now clearly, if we give a weekly tithe to a local church, assuming that they are part of the kingdom, that money can indeed be stolen (or skimmed off the top) or used unwisely. Or if we feed the poor or clothe the homeless – those things certainly wear out. But those are not the end results. That is not the ‘treasure’ of heaven. These are investments of our wealth to cure injustice and comfort the afflicted, and they go a long way – but they are not the end themselves. Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, comforted the afflicted, and cast out demons, even raising the dead. But then he called them to do himself. The Sermon on the Mount starts with a giant list of blessings for these outcasts – and they were blessed because they came to him. His aim was that theirs might be the kingdom of heaven. His desire was for them – and ultimately it is people that we gain. We gain brothers and sisters. Paul used the word ‘crowd’ to refer to his ‘reward’ in heaven. In addressing the Philippians [4:1], we lets them know that they are his crown: “Therefore my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.”

And as these sisters and brothers are part of the kingdom – a kingdom that will not fade, reconciled to us and to each other – this treasure will not fade either.

Jesus then moves on to a metaphor, comparing the eyes to the heart (seen by the Jewish people as the center of the will and emotions; ‘mind’ is a fair substitute). Here is the text again: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

There is a play on words here that is necessary to understand the metaphor. ‘Healthy’ implies generous, while ‘bad’ implies stingy. In other words, another way of reading (hearing) it would be “if your heart is generous, your whole body will be full of light, but if your heart is stingy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” Furthermore, Jesus says that when the heart (“the light in you”) is darkness, the darkness is much greater than physical darkness. In other words, it is much better to be blind and generous than to be able to see and be stingy. This reminds me of Jesus’ previous saying: “if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out!”

If your treasure and delight is in material possessions, then not only will you be miserly with it, then spiritually you are wandering around in deep darkness – and in great danger. (The blind in Jesus’ time had no services for them or even nice sidewalks – if they walked around, they would probably fall and hurt themselves badly. The miserly were even worse off.) On the other hand, those whose treasure and delight is in the kingdom of heaven are naturally generous, and their heart is illuminated. There is nothing there to make them stumble.

Jesus then ends with a metaphor of ‘masters’: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” There was no possibility for joint slave-ownership. Serving a master was an absolute task – you were a slave at all times, bidden to obey all that you were asked. While it may be possible to have two masters who never asked you for anything, they would hardly be called ‘masters’, at least in a pragmatic sense. But as soon as they had conflicting requests of you, your devotion would immediately show. You could only obey one of them, and would be forced to despise the other. You obeyed the one you loved. In a similar way, God and money both have conflicting demands. God desires you to be generous, helping others with your wealth, where money demands that you have more of it – continually more, more, more! (Sound like American culture at all?) Certainly our most widespread sin in the West is materialism; we love and serve our possessions. And in so doing, we show that we despise and hate God. Simply put, “You cannot serve God and money.” So let go!

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” [Matthew 6:7-15]

Last time I spent some time speaking about what the prayers of the ‘Gentiles’ looked like, and how the followers of Christ should be different in their prayers. I just want to say a couple of things on this before moving on.

It is not primarily the repetition of words that Jesus is condemning here – he is condemning a view of God where we are heard because of repetition of words – a view of God where he is hard of hearing or must be awoken or appeased or invoked by special words. Repetition does has it’s place – it’s all over the Psalms. But these are not mindless repetitions – they engage the mind by means of their repetition. But that does not make God’s ears perk up. Rather, since your Father knows what you need before you ask, pray like this.

Jesus does say something about repetition and length in prayer. He says to pray like this. It is often a tendency to look deeply at the phrases contained in the prayer, or how he moves from topic to topic, but it is also necessary to consider the brevity of the prayer. He doesn’t repeat things, he doesn’t speak at great length.

So if we are to pray like this, while at the same time following the exhortations by Paul and others to pray continually, how can we do this? We pray about what is currently here, what we need deliverance from, our current needs, help in forgiving others, praise and thanksgiving to God, and so on. But as our lives are constantly changing and we are continuously interacting with ourselves and others, there will be the need for ample things to pray about. But we do not need to be overly verbose or wrinkle our foreheads until our brains hurt to try to force God’s hand to act according to our prayers. And we cannot forget to listen.

The entire prayer is prefaced on this simple statement: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Note that the emphasis is on what you need, not what you want. So the prayer gives light as to what it is we really need. And not just what “I” need, but what “we” need. The address begins with “Our” Father and not “My” Father. This prayer has a communal aspect to it as well, it is not merely an individual thing. It is what we all need.

Since he knows what you need (and since He is our heavenly Father – desiring to give you good things, as we’ll see later in the Sermon), the first response is praise. We start by addressing him as who He is, and then praising His name – presenting who He truly is.

To hallow something is to set it apart or consider it holy – make it awesome in your mind. This phrase also prays that humanity in general might consider God’s name as great. (As opposed to the curses people typically make with his name – both in Jesus’ time and now.)

“Heaven” is not some place off in the distance with clouds and a throne for God and angels with harps. “Heaven” is indicative of God’s throne, but it also includes the air, the clouds, atmosphere, the stars, and the greater cosmos. Basically, everything outside of Earth is what it indicates. So “Our Father in Heaven” is describing a God that is impossibly close and in control of the cosmos, not looking from faraway.

Jesus’ first words to the people were “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” His kingdom was coming and continues to come into the world. So when he says here “your kingdom come”, he is not looking off to some distant point at the end of time when everything will be made right. He is looking to the ongoing work of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a plant and he compares it to leaven in dough. Perhaps a comparative translation would be “your kingdom grow”.

And we are aware of the spread of the Father’s kingdom when his will is done on Earth. In other words, when people do his work. It is the ruling power of the kingdom. When Jesus entered the scene, the will of God was visible in Jesus’ work of reconciliation and healing. His will was being done. Indeed, his will is done throughout the cosmos, except on this little blot of land we call the Earth.

What is so special about the Earth that it resists the will of God? God has granted people with the free will to choose their own way or to choose his, and he does not force his will upon them. He instead demonstrates His love for them and pleads with them to turn around and join his kingdom, to “repent”. So it is Jesus’ hope in this prayer that people will come to revere God and in so doing, come to do his will (and continue the work of Jesus). It is not the fatalistic ‘whatever you want is fine, and will happen regardless of what anyone does’. It is yearning for people to turn around and come to him. When Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, before he was crucified, said to the Father, “your will be done”, he was not merely stating that whatever God willed would happen. He was submitting to the will of God over his own. And that is what this prayer is for.

And while we collectively need the Father to be hallowed and his will to be done on Earth, we also have more personal needs. “Give us this day our daily bread” prays for Him to fulfill our physical needs at the present time. And if the Father knows what our needs are, we don’t have to be anxious about the future but can focus on our work at hand (that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan for the future, but we should be focused on what we are doing now – which may well include that planning). We don’t have to continually remind Him that we’ll have future needs, but He knows them in advance. So pray for the troubles and needs of today.

But some may, “why then should we pray?” Some may respond that prayer is more about the development of the individual conscience then actually getting material things. But this stops well short of what Jesus is calling us to here. Yes, God is at work in the heart, but he is also at work in reconciling people, guiding our steps, and supplying our needs, including our physical ones.

The key point is that God does not force Himself upon us. By praying, we ask him for what he desires to give us. It is quite voluntary.

Now set in the same line as “give us our daily bread”, we have “forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors”. Certainly forgiveness is something we need on a daily basis – not that we must continually confess or be lost forever, but that experiencing forgiveness is a necessity for our spiritual and mental health. It is one of those great needs. We’ll come back to this verse in tying the section together.

And one more: “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”. Why would God lead us into temptation? I don’t think we need any help being led into temptation. We do that just fine. We desire that God helps us avoid such things. In regard to temptation, he has promised to allow us a way out (which may involve running away) from it, so that we may be able to endure it.

There are many passages, spoken by both Jesus and Paul, to the effect that the “one who endures to the end will be saved”. Taken by itself, many people instantly jump to the idea of eternal salvation, with the implication that if you don’t endure to the end you will be lost. But the Greek for “saved” is the same as the Greek for “delivered”, as here in the prayer: “deliver us from evil”. Those passages are always in the context of persecution, which is probably in view here in the prayer. The first phrase deals with temptation (to sin), and the second with “evil” (or the “evil one”), which has an external actor in view – hence persecution. This could have been translated “save us from evil”. So what those passages are saying is that if you “endure to the end [of persecution] you will be delivered [from that persecution].” It is notable that sometimes that deliverance is through death [see Philippians], which has the resurrection as the hope, but also through physical, temporal deliverance [see 1 Thessalonians as well]. In enduring these things, one of our primary tools is prayer – asking the Father to deliver us.

Forgiveness is the highlight of the passage, though. First, it is the only thing where the pray-er is active, “as we have forgiven our debtors”, and it is reiterated at the end: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This is a very harsh passage in some senses, especially because of our weaknesses, prejudices, and inability. We hold grudges so well. We don’t like this passage because it attaches strings to God’s forgiveness and grace, which we like to present as a completely free and unlimited resource. It also seems to present a God that requires you to be perfect before you can come to him.

A parable of Jesus might illuminate this a bit:

“Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”” [Matthew 18:21-35]

Here the order is reversed. The king was first to forgive the debt of the servant (which is tremendously, ridiculously high – say, $5B, yes billion), and then the servant went out to get the money from one of his debtors – on the order of $15,000. A large sum – quite large, in fact. But nothing compared to the larger debt. It was only after he failed to have mercy that he was given over to the jailers. It should also be noted that when Jesus went around, he forgave people of their sins. And he didn’t ask for a comprehensive list of everyone that they forgave. In Paul’s list of commands to the Colossians, he says “…bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” [Colossians 3:13] So here also we were forgiven first.

By not forgiving others, we show that we are not sincere and that our hearts are not ready for forgiveness. It shows that we have not truly repented, but that we were just afraid of death and punishment. This is not a sincere desire to follow God, it is a bestial response. That should not be our behavior, as followers of Jesus.

We must forgive. And if we are going to truly be a part of the kingdom, it is a necessity. Just as we will someday be made perfect, fulfilling Christ’s requirement set in the Sermon on the Mount, so also will we someday fully forgive others. But instead of waiting until the last moment, let us forgive now, and continue to forgive as troubles arise – and so multiply the love of others. As Jesus elsewhere said, “those who are forgiven little, love little; those who are forgiven much, love much.”