re-framing God's claiming

One of the things that Dr. Mike Graves often mentioned in his preaching class was the importance of preaching against the text. Most often Christian pastors preach from the New Testament. This testament is all about how God is at work through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.
From time to time, we need to preach from the Hebrew texts because they are an important part of our history and how we have arrived where we are now as a religious institution.

The older texts can be hard to read and are unfortunately almost always read out of context.

Today I finished Psalm 105. It is primarily a psalm remembering the Israelite's exodus out of Egypt, however, the main body of it is couched between sections of praise.

Verse 44 caught me off guard because it was in the context of praising God.

"God gave them the lands of the nations, and they took possession of the wealth of the peoples..."

It's lines like these that justify modern people to take lands from others.It's lines like these that justify our inclination to want to build walls between peoples, or not take care of the broken and wounded.

In truth, the Bible does say God gave the land to the Israelites - but God also exiled the Israelites from the land because they were not upholding the law God set before them. If you look at the whole of Psalm 105, the psalmist is remembering the grace that God gave FIRST to the Israelites. The psalm ends with a reminder to keep God's statutes. It's really a warning embedded in praise.

Praise God, keep God's commandments - don't mess up. The Hebrews, like us, had such a hard time following the law that God had to come in the body of Jesus Christ to rectify the world.

I don't think God is in the habit of testing us with spiritual warfare, but God certainly wants us to grow closer in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. So in Jesus, God simplified the laws to two:

Love God - Love Neighbor.

Simple. How hard can it be? Terribly! We continue mess it up even though we know that keeping these two commandments lead to abundant life! We mess up and then often go a step further and justify our actions by choosing select passages that support them.

One thing I do know about God - when we as humans think we can outsmart God, God acts. At the heart of all that we do, everyone, regardless of religion should aim to love each other. It just makes good sense.