But Moses protested to God, “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?… What if they won’t believe me or listen to me?… I’m not very good with words. I never have been, and I’m not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled….Lord, please! Send anyone else.” [Exodus 3:11,4:1,10,11 (NLT)]
When I learned about people like Abraham, David, Moses, and Samson as a girl, they were the Bible’s version of super-heroes like Batman or Superman. The Bible’s heroes were larger than life, obedient, invincible, and seemed to overcome their obstacles effortlessly. Appearing perfect in their faith and actions, they weren’t people to whom I could relate. In reality, they were as flawed as the rest of us but, for the most part, their imperfections and failures were redacted from the stories we learned in Sunday school.
As a child, I learned that David killed Goliath, was a great warrior, and wrote psalms but I didn’t learn about the 70,000 Israelites who died because he took a census or his sins of rape, adultery, and murder. When I colored pictures of Samson destroying Dagon’s temple, I didn’t know about the disobedience, lust, and pride that got him in such trouble! Although I learned that King Solomon was wise and wealthy, I didn’t know he disobeyed his father, broke God’s law, and over-worked and over-taxed his people.
Truth be told, the Bible’s heroes and heroines were as fallible, insecure, and willful as you and me. The apprehensive Moses listed all his shortcomings while arguing with God and the faint-hearted Gideon tested Him! Barren Hannah struggled with her sense of worth and Naomi grew bitter in widowhood. Moses let his anger get the best of him and Elijah prayed for death in the depth of despair. Abraham was a coward who, to save his skin, gave his wife to another man twice! Timothy’s youth made him timid and insecure and even John the Baptizer had doubts!
The families of our Biblical heroes were as dysfunctional as ours. There were bad marriages—Abigail was married to a brute and Gomer wasn’t faithful to Hosea. There was bad parenting—Eli and Samuel turned a blind eye to their sons’ sins, David failed to discipline his boys Amnon and Adonijah, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob played favorites with their sons. There was sibling rivalry—Miriam and Aaron grew jealous of Moses, Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and blessing, Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, Leah and Rachael competed for Jacob’s attention, and Martha and Mary had issues! There even was fratricide—Absalom murdered Amnon, Solomon had Adonijah killed, and both Jehoram and Abimelech executed their brothers! Their tangled stories rival the drama of “reality television.”
Indeed, there’s enough sex and violence in the Bible that children only learn the G versions of its stories in Sunday school. We, however, are not children and we need to look at the heroes and heroines of the Bible with the eyes of an adult. My purpose is not to throw mud on the Bible’s heroes and heroines—it’s to make them relatable.
Rather than super heroes, God used people as flawed and imperfect as we are and from families as screwed up as ours. Like us, they struggled with challenges, pain, infertility, temptation, impatience, anger, jealousy, depression, and even their faith. They faced real challenges, made mistakes, sinned more than once, questioned God, and even failed at times. If God could use such flawed people to accomplish His purpose, think of what He can do with you and me!
There will be no “knights in shining armor” in God’s kingdom; our armor will have many dings and dents. No, no perfect Hollywood heroes will ride to save the day; just wearied saints to look to God and, in weakness, find Christ’s strength. This, indeed, is the essence of God’s kingdom: divine greatness manifest in common people. [Francis Frangipane]
The email from my dentist asked, “Would you recommend us?” When I answered in the affirmative, I was hyperlinked to a site that added my five-star rating to that of other patients. The following day, I received a longer survey regarding my recent visit. Once done, it again asked if I would recommend his services and requested use of my name in an on-line testimonial. It’s clear that my dentist wants more than feedback; he wants the public approval of his patients. Although I like him, I like my privacy more, so I declined!
Having quoted from Isaiah when proclaiming the Messiah’s arrival, we know John knew Isaiah’s prophecies. The Messiah would “bind up the brokenhearted [and] proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners,” [61:1] but, after spending more than a year confined to a dark cell, John had neither liberty nor freedom. It’s no wonder he doubted.
At the time, Herod Antipas was the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. While married to the daughter of Aretas IV, king of Nabatea, Antipas visited his half-brother, Herod Philip and his wife Herodias (who was the daughter of another half-brother, Herod Aristobulus) in Rome. While there, Antipas became enamored with his brother’s wife. After divorcing their spouses, he and Herodias married and lived in Herod’s palace with Herodias’ daughter Salome. Their divorces and marriage were politically explosive and religiously scandalous and John the Baptizer was outspoken in his condemnation of their incestuous sinful relationship. While marrying a niece wasn’t uncommon, Mosaic law prohibited marrying a brother’s wife except in what was called a “levirate marriage” when a brother died childless. Philip, however, was very much alive at the time! Both Herod Antipas’ reputation and his political security were threatened by John’s public condemnation of his marriage as well as his Messianic message.
While we now know what is meant by an iota and dot, jot and tittle, or yod and kots, we wonder what Jesus means by “the least of these commandments!” If the smallest letter is as important as the largest and the smallest flourish on the smallest letter in Scripture was not to be eliminated, how can there be a “lesser” commandment? The confusion again comes from reading an English translation of a Greek rendering of the original Hebrew. Jesus probably was using a popular Jewish idiom “mitsvot kalot” meaning “light” commandments, rather than “mitsvot ketanot,” meaning less important or small commandments. While this seems a bit like splitting hairs, it reflects Jewish thinking in Jesus’ day when a distinction was made between “light” and “weighty” commandments when comparing one to another.
What is a jot or a tittle? Found in the King James version, the words “jot” and “tittle” date from the 15th and 16th centuries. “Jot” comes from jota, an alternate spelling of the Greek iota (the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet) and, at the time, meant something very small. “Tittle” was a translation of keraia, a Greek word meaning “a little horn” that referred to an accent mark over a vowel. While those English words were good translations of the New Testament’s Greek, Jesus wasn’t speaking Greek when He gave the Sermon on the Mount. He was speaking Hebrew or Aramaic and the words He used weren’t iota and keraia. He would have used yod, which was the smallest Hebrew letter, and kots, meaning thorn, which was the little curve or flourish at the yod’s top distinguishing it from other letters. The tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, yod sounds like a “y” and looks a bit like an apostrophe.
Devotions of the Heart 