Were Israel’s elders asking for a threesome? They came to God and asked that they be like the other nations worshiping wood and stone (v. 32). The were in covenant with God, they just wanted to add other lovers. You can imagine what God had to say.
“what you have in mind will never happen” (v. 32)
He then goes on to say that judgment will come for their sins. He then recalls the covenant they made willingly with God, how often they rebelled against Him, and how he didn’t bring judgment upon them previously but gave them mercy when they didn’t deserve it. He spared them for the sake of His reputation.
Over and over and over Israel rebelled. They rebelled in Egypt, in the desert and now in the Promised land. It wasn’t only their fathers generations but their own sins. The audacity of them to ask to serve other gods is the same audacity of a husband who asks his wife to be part of a threesome.
In the middle of all this, when is describing their rebellion against all the commands and ordinances of God that were meant for their life (v. 13), there is a rather startling verse:
“I also gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances they could not live by” (v. 25).
Wait….what?
The context here is judgment. God was bringing upon themselves the bad side of their judgments. Here’s the context as it’s important to look at the verses immediately before and after:
- v 23 – “I swore to them in the wilderness that I would disperse them among the nations and scatter them among the countries“
- v. 26 – “When they made every firstborn pass through the fire, I defiled them through their gifts in order to devastate them“
The Lord had to enact the negative sides of the laws. Laws and ordinances that they agreed to but did not live by.
It’s not that they “couldn’t” live by them but that they “wouldn’t” live by them. We know this because of the regular calls to repentance and the LORD’s pronouncement on the people that were actually righteous.
I do know that some commentators say that this is about the laws and ordinances that they would have to be under in Babylon. And while that is a possibility, the context lends itself to the fact that the LORD had to enact that negative side of the laws–the judgments. It’s the “if you don’t do ______, then I will have to __________.”
But here’s the big picture. The one that is most important. The elders, literally the God appointed spiritual leaders, came to God with an idea. Why don’t you endorse evil and sin and then everyone will be happy?
God does not function like that. That’s like a husband coming to his wife and saying, let me be with other women and stay married to you and then everyone will be happy. Or the wife saying the same thing to her husband. It just doesn’t work like that.
We live in a time where this is exactly what is happening. I can be a Christian and basically live how I want. I know that God loves me. He wants me to be happy. Love is what matters. That’s what’s important.
So we see the Christian community without much difference in morality than the non-Christian world. But God isn’t someone who we make in our own image. We cannot craft him to fit our needs and desires. But rather we mold ourselves to His because only He is perfect, good and knows what is life for us.
If we know that we have sin in our hearts and we are unwilling to repent, will God first not want us to deal with that sin? Say a woman is cheating on her husband. He found out about it but hasn’t yet told his wife he knows. She comes home, cooks an amazing meal, says how wonderful of a man he is, says he can buy the motorcycle he has always wanted and does all the right things. Will he receive these things? Not if he knows she is cheating on him. In fact, those very things she blesses him with will be as a curse. The sin has to be dealt with first.
Is it any less with God?
If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; Ps 66:18
