The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 6 – 2
Most of the world is content believing that God wants them to go to church once a week, do a certain number of prescribed rituals like kissing wafers and praying and tithing and washing and charity and fasting and celebrating and, of course, not doing bad things. But if that really were so important to God, everyone would know what right and wrong was! And if God had wanted all men to do the right thing, no man could do otherwise! And yet God deliberately left righteous men in ignorance of His laws (Revelation 2:24-25).
Look at that closely; these are not random people God doesn’t care about. These are people who are in the church. These are people He is trying to get into His Kingdom. And yet He deliberately doesn’t bother to teach them certain things! We are taught, quite adamantly and dogmatically, that doing the right thing is what God wants from us. And, to a certain point, that is true. But only to a point; because really, God couldn’t care less what you DO.
That’s a deeply disturbing statement, coming from me after all these lessons – but let me explain. The reality is, our doing right and wrong isn’t that important to God. If it were, the Bible would be a lot easier to understand. I mean, let’s take keeping the Ten Commandments for example – if God had really wanted the world to keep them, He could have made people be born with them tattooed on their hands (they have the right number of fingers, after all). He could have made certain that the angels told every single person what the law is, and that it should be kept. Failing that, He could at the very least have made it impossible for anyone to deny that the law must be kept in the Bible.
Now I’ve already given you many answers for questions like this in Lesson 1-15; so you’re probably thinking “well yes, but God left us ignorant because He wants us to choose to be righteous!” Sure He did – I taught you that, and I meant it. And it is true. But it also isn’t… Because like everyone, you’re reading that with the emphasis on “to be righteous”, as if that were the point, and it really isn’t. The emphasis belongs on the word “to choose”. Choosing righteousness is not really the point. The point is the choice itself!
THE CHOICE
Not long ago, a friend of mine, observing I wasn’t eating the shrimps, commented “well, I sure hope God has more important things to do than to follow me around to see if I eat the wrong thing!” This makes sense! Because why would God really care? It’s not like shrimps aren’t swallowed by the thousand by whales, so what if I eat a few? With a universe to run, is God really so bored that He has nothing better to do than follow me around to see if I look too long at a pretty girl?
If, as He Himself has said (Job 35:6-8), me murdering a shrimp (or for that matter murdering another person) doesn’t hurt Him at all, why does He care? Why does it matter to Him what we eat, what we do, when we rest, what we think? Ironically, the world which is in a state of constant disobedience believes God is obsessed with right and wrong, and that what He wants from us is to fulfill a certain checklist of actions and beliefs to be saved.
Setting aside all the disagreements in the world about what constitutes “good things” and “bad things”, the idea that you must do a certain amount of good things while not doing more than a certain number of bad things is universal in all religion. Does God really want people who have checked off a list of pilgrimages, people who have put in the time and done the required work? Does He want people who just haven’t done bad things, but have done good things?
Remember, He deliberately left man in the garden, knowing full well what Eve and Adam would do behind His back. If He really wanted us not to eat that fruit, why not put up a fence? But He didn’t. Nor did He learn from that catastrophe, and went on to let the Bible be written by men, copied by men, translated by men, and most foolishly of all… explained by men. Rather than giving us a spirit with a complete copy of the law books which He certainly could have done, He gave us an empty spirit and dumped us in the middle of a herd of already-evil spirits, knowing the only thing that COULD happen is that our spirit would be corrupted by them!
And worst of all… He left man with a selfish heart, knowing beyond any doubt that the tyrannical heart would wind up in charge of our soul and spirit! No, I said that wrong… for “He left” implies a passive act, when in reality God actively CREATED a selfish heart, and saddled us with it! Did we choose to have a selfish heart? Romans 8:20. Did God know that would get in the way of our righteousness? Galatians 5:17. Now pay attention to the emphasis coming up: If God had wanted us to choose to do the right thing, He designed the worst universe possible!
If God wanted us to choose to do the right thing, He did a terrible job of showing us what it was! …But if God wanted us to choose to do the right thing, we have the perfect universe, the perfect spirit, and the perfect heart. God doesn’t care what you DO. That’s an external law anyway, which matters only to the flesh. Nor does He care what you think the RIGHT thing is; that’s a spiritual thing, which matters only to the spirit. God cares what you CHOOSE; because that is a judgment made by the SOUL, and THAT is what God wants from you!
A SOUL THAT JUDGES WELL
Why does God want that? Why does making the choice matter more than the result of the choice? Because there is something God needs from us. Something all the money and power in the universe cannot buy. If you ask your religious friends what God wants from us, they’ll say “our worship!” But isn’t that needy and narcissistic of Him? Doesn’t He already get plenty of worship from the angels? (Revelation 7:11). Does God really need your flattery? Isaiah 1:11-15. Someone else might say God wants us to serve Him. But again, if He wanted servants who could be told “Go, do this”… He already has angels (Psalms 103:20-21). Does God need our offerings? Psalms 50:12-13.
You might answer that God created us to learn to be righteous, but does that help God? Job 35:6-8. Academically, God no doubt prefers us to be righteous; but when we aren’t, it doesn’t hurt Him in any way. And when we are, it doesn’t help Him at all! Before you say it, God didn’t create us to have faith in Him, either. Our faith doesn’t feed Him; if anything, trusting God creates more work for Him! So if not for worship, service, righteousness, or faith, why did God create us? Because there is something no being in the universe – except Jesus – can do for God. The one thing He actually NEEDS, something beyond righteousness and obedience, beyond faith and humility.
The most precious commodity in all creation… souls He can trust to make good decisions. God doesn’t care if you rest on Saturday or rest on Sunday. If it mattered to Him, He’d have made certain that everyone knew the right day! Man was not created because the Sabbath needed someone to keep it (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath was created to give us a way to prove our willingness to obey God (Exodus 16:4-5, 22-30) (among other things, some of which you already know).
So if He doesn’t care what day we keep, what does He care about? Romans 14:5. If you are absolutely convinced that Sunday is the right day to rest, that’s the day you should rest! To do otherwise is a sin, even if Sunday is the wrong day of worship! (Romans 14:20-23). God doesn’t care if you rest on Sunday or Saturday. What matters to Him is that you choose the right choice based on the evidence in front of you. If you’ve genuinely never heard that Saturday is the Sabbath, God expects you to keep Sunday!
But if you had heard, had reason to doubt your actions, and didn’t bother to investigate and decide… what sort of a judge would you make in His Kingdom? Sure, you’re willing to do what He says if He spells every step out for you… but if God has to do all that, He might as well just do whatever it is Himself! God needs you to be able to make the best choice you can with the information you have available. And if you can learn to make good choices based on what you do know, God will reveal the rest to you in time (Philippians 3:12-15). Because at the end of the day, being objectively right is not that big of a deal. Being subjectively right is what matters to God (Psalms 101:6) – making a good judgment even if you made the wrong objective choice!
GOOD JUDGMENTS
We never have all the facts. Ever. Not even on the most basic, simple subjects. For example, keeping the Sabbath. That’s simple, right? But when exactly is sundown? Where do we measure it from – Jerusalem? The top of the nearest mountain, the bottom of the deepest valley? The exact spot I’m standing? What if it’s cloudy and we can’t see the sun? And on the Sabbath, what can we actually do? Can we walk? Swim? Run? If so, is there a limit on how far or how fast? Jesus implied that pulling an ox out of the ditch is permissible on the Sabbath. What if the ox falls in the ditch every week? What if we know it’s going to fall into the ditch and don’t fix the fence? What if we take a job pulling other people’s oxen out of ditches on the Sabbath?
On a different law, if there is pork pepperoni on the pizza it is unclean, even if it’s been peeled off (Leviticus 11:32-35). But what if it’s sliced with the same knife? On the same cutting board? What if it’s prepared in the same restaurant? What if you really can’t be sure? What if your beef brisket was smoked next to a pork butt, but they never actually touched? What if your hamburger is clean, but it was butchered by a butcher who butchered pigs the same day? What if it might have been, but you aren’t sure? Do you see my point?
Firm, tidy, clean answers on questions like these are impossible. And the fact that it’s impossible means God must not care! What He cares about is that, with each of these things, we consider the facts and make a good judgment. The judgment might be wrong; the guy might swear it’s 100% beef sausage, but it might actually be 20% horse. Does it matter? You made a good judgment based on information you had every reason to treat as credible. What more does God want from you? Nothing.
Does it matter whether you’ve earned the death penalty in ignorance 57 times or 58 times when He pays for your sins? What matters is that you make the best decision you can and stand behind it! JUST TO BE CLEAR… When I said God doesn’t care, I mean He doesn’t care about whether you made the objectively right choice. But He does care that you made the best choice you were capable of making. If, armed with this understanding, you say “so if it doesn’t matter, I’ll just eat the pork” you’ve missed the point. (Proverbs 16:17).
DOING the right thing is unimportant. Doing your absolute best to figure out what the right thing is, and doing THAT, is! Eating sausage that turns out to be made of horse won’t keep you out of the first resurrection; not caring that it might be, will! Your judgments will never be perfect. You will know many of them by their results (Matthew 7:16-20). Some you will never know (1 Corinthians 13:8-9). But all your judgments should lead you closer and closer to true objective righteousness.
And if your decision to eat at Long John Silver’s was wrong, if the reasoning behind your judgment was flawed, it doesn’t matter as long as the judgment itself was made impartially, without respect of persons, without preferring the heart or the spirit, but based on the evidence. At first, you will be given very easy judgments to make; Saturday IS the Sabbath, and overwhelming evidence proves that. Can you make that judgment, a “slam-dunk” case for any prosecutor in the land? Many can’t, which tells God all He needs to know about them.
But if you make the right call, a new question will soon arise… how can you keep the Sabbath if there aren’t any Sabbath-churches nearby? This is a harder question. This, too, you must make a judgment about – probably the wrong one, at first – but then you will realize that and make a better judgment after a few months. But then new problems will arise; is it wrong to go out to eat on the Sabbath?
This is a different question, and a harder one. Is it wrong to use electricity on the Sabbath? Is it wrong to drive a car, call an elevator, eat hot food? Is it wrong to build a fire for heat?There are thousands of questions like this just about the Sabbath. And the objective answer to these questions is pretty meaningless. What matters is the objectivity of your own judgments. Let’s take“kindling a fire on the Sabbath” for example.
KINDLING A FIRE
Yes, the Bible does specifically say not to kindle a fire on the Sabbath day (Exodus 35:3). A lazy soul will say “that’s just a law for the OC, that doesn’t matter to us!” and kindle a fire regardless. Is that a good reasoning process? Or a lame dismissal of a valid point? Some might say “God wouldn’t want me to eat cold food!”; this, too, is a lazy, sloppy argument. It clearly shows that your beasts’ discomfort must be more important to God than your spirit’s law-based objection! Is that the mark of a good soul?
Of course, a dominant spirit would say “Ok, no more cooked food on the Sabbath ever again; cold leftovers it is!” And that is certainly a safe conclusion… but then really, it isn’t a conclusion at all, is it? It’s just the arrogant spirit absorbing a new law without your soul judging it. But what about people who live in cold regions, and would freeze to death on the Sabbath without fire? Any law that doesn’t take this into account isn’t a good law, and your soul should tell your spirit that before this law is permanently etched in stone.
So here’s what you should do; first, immediately stop kindling a fire on the Sabbath day. Remember Lesson 5-4 – the first thing an honorable judge does upon hearing of a valid case is issue an injunction against the accused! That verse is valid, and says exactly what it sounds like it says. The beast is already making objections, saying things like “but what if we starve, what if it’s cold out, what if, what if”, not to try to answer the facts, but to try and dismiss them as impossible to obey or unimportant!
But your soul must insist on hearing the facts. So, have a hearing. My soul doesn’t care whether we kindle a fire on the Sabbath or not. I only want to know what God meant. So silence the heart by making it fear: Numbers 15:32-35. This should make the beast tremble and realize that this is a big deal, and since it cares about nothing so much as its own life. Then quiet the spirit with the opposite argument – because many questions that seem like they would be huge deals to God (“what if eating meat offered to idols makes me an idolater”) are actually completely meaningless (1 Corinthians 8:8).
What matters is that your decision is made justly, caring about the good of your fellow man and obedience to the law, and not out of preference for your own heart’s lust and laziness (1 Corinthians 8:9-13). Having established order in the court, it’s time to ask “what else does the Bible say?” God kindled a fire on the Sabbath day (Exodus 13:21-22, which lasted for years without missing a day). There were sacrifices which the Levites performed daily, in particular on the Sabbath, which were BURNED (1 Chronicles 23:31).
“Yay,” cheers the heart “see, we don’t have to keep that law!” That isn’t what we said. These scriptures don’t trump or dismiss the other verses. And God allowing fires for His use on the Sabbath doesn’t automatically permit all fires, everywhere! We still have to make an effort to explain why the original command was given, and what God meant before we can decide whether it’s safe to disregard that commandment! To do any less is to be an unjust soul, whether you happen to guess the right answer or not!
So now let’s go back to the original verse and look at it with the perspective we’ve gained from the rest of the Bible. There is almost no context, and this verse is in a very odd place sandwiched between a Sabbath reminder and instructions on furnishing the temple. That means something, but what, I can’t say. That means my soul is going to have to render a verdict without all the facts! Because if I don’t understand the context, I’m certainly missing something! And yet I have to decide this in less than a week, because we have to do something by next Sabbath; and doing nothing is itself a judgment!
So I can’t necessarily insist on having all the facts before I make this ruling! I should get as many as I can, of course, but there is never enough time to understand everything before judging anything! So we’ll do the best we can; let’s try to put ourselves in the Israelite’s sandals – why was this law given in the first place? What were they doing that made it necessary? Remember, this was desert in early summer! That time of year (June) at Mt. Sinai, the typical nighttime temperature is 85F (29C)!
So they definitely weren’t using fires for heat! So what could they have been doing? An unworthy soul might simply guess… or we could look for facts in the Bible. A search for “kindle” yields Jeremiah 7:18. Idolatry aside, this shows that a lot of work went into this process to bake bread. Remember, this was desert. Gathering wood wasn’t easy, particularly when two million other Israelites were also looking! So this implies – but doesn’t specifically say – that the command was about kindling a fire to bake bread on the Sabbath. To support that, we can see Exodus 16:23 – it was specifically forbidden to bake or boil meat on the Sabbath day. Both of which would have required kindling a fire!
These processes that were extremely labor intensive were supposed to be done the day before, for obvious reasons (Jeremiah 17:27). So since they gather wood, carry it through the gates, and kindle a fire to bake bread, God will kindle a fire to bake them in poetic justice. And yet, would God have cared if “kindling a fire” had only involved turning a gas knob? When “seething” a roast involves only popping a pan in an oven and turning a knob to “350”? Preparing food in ancient times took lots of work. Does that really apply to pressing “start” on a microwave? I don’t know. Do you?
So… that’s all I have. I don’t have all the facts. As near as I can tell, the Bible doesn’t specifically say we can kindle a fire. But I do have reason to doubt that the Bible meant we were never meant to kindle a fire on the Sabbath for any reason. My soul now has to render a judgment; can we build a fire on the Sabbath? The “safe” answer will be “I don’t have all the facts, so I’ll err on the side of caution”. Down that road lies Judaistic rituals, man-made laws to prevent the accidental breaking of God’s laws. We are meant to judge righteously, not cowardly!
Anyone can judge right and wrong when they have all the facts and everyone tells the truth! But no judge in history has ever had that luxury! BEING a judge means making good decisions with insufficient information from unreliable sources. That’s what judges do! We do not have enough facts to make an airtight case on kindling a fire on the Sabbath. But we have enough facts to make a good decision. These facts almost all point to kindling a fire being permissible for most reasons. And so that’s what my judgment will be.
Am I right? Who knows! If I’m wrong, and God (or you) shows me that, I’ll change. What more could God want? I honestly don’t believe God cares whether we do or not; what He cares about is that I am willing, and able, to do what I just did! He cares I have the courage now to abide by the decision I’ve made, and the willingness to live with the consequences, good or evil… and the humility to be willing to change if the fruits it bears are evil! This is what it means to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
AN INFINITE EMPIRE
You not killing someone doesn’t help God. You believing God exists doesn’t help God. You being His child doesn’t even help God, since He’s already the father of all flesh. All of the things we do or don’t do in this life are absolutely and completely meaningless as far as their direct impact on God goes. But God wants us to do something that actually helps Him. So what does God need that we could possibly help with? Isaiah 9:7. As always, this is based on the Golden Rule. God doesn’t need food, servants, sacrifices, flattery. He can get those anywhere. But what would you want if you were God?
What is His biggest problem? Ask yourself, if you were starting a small business, keeping the family farm afloat, or ruling an empire, what would be YOUR biggest problem? Finding competent help! People you can send to do a job in a far country and know that it will get done right! Your business/farm/empire can grow as fast and as far as you have reliable people to manage it! What is God’s grand plan? Isaiah 51:15-16. What is missing in that plan? Isaiah 51:18. And right now there is no one to guide Jerusalem, symbolically the church, among all of her sons.
Jesus fulfilled that prophecy but one man, even Jesus, isn’t a government – He’s a Lord! God also needs earls, barons, knights, priests, apostles, and teachers! (John 14:2). But they must be competent! They need to be trustworthy! This is why God really doesn’t care if you choose to eat a pig. I mean really, it’s a dead animal just like a lamb. But He cares deeply whether or not you choose to eat a pig! Because if you can’t do what you’re told in one area, He can’t trust you in another! (Luke 16:10)
If you can’t follow the law, you can’t judge righteously. And the law says that lamb was cleansed for the sacrifice, and its life was purchased by God, and given to us for meat. The pig’s life was not. If you’re the sort of soul who would eat that which doesn’t belong to you, you cannot judge righteously in His Kingdom! As with all truth, this is clearly displayed in symbol throughout the Bible – once you know what to look for.
Read Exodus 18:13-23, which sums it up in a single passage. Moses represents the Father,the Lawgiver, throughout the Bible. So here Moses is judging the people all the day long, and having to wait in line for hours or days to hear Moses’ answer is exhausting the people – to say nothing of Moses. So at Jethro’s suggestion “…Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves” (Exodus 18:24-26).
A FINITE EMPIRE
The world sees God as able to do an infinite number of things simultaneously, but that simply isn’t what the Bible shows. However far above us God may be, cause must precede effect, and the Bible repeatedly shows God involved in bureaucratic actions that take time. For example, Acts 10:2-4. How many months or years had Cornelius been praying before his prayer made it to the top of the stack on God’s desk? How long had God been sick of Ahab’s actions, before He called a meeting to take care of it? 2 Chronicles 18:18-22.
How many years had Sodom been sinning, before God pried Himself out of His throne and came to see for Himself? Genesis 18:20-21. Angels had told God what was going on in Sodom, and God, though He had every reason to trust them in principle, had to see for Himself before making a judgment! God’s Kingdom is real. By that, I mean that it has reports, meetings, judgments, commands, obedience and disobedience; wars and covenants, heirs and nobility. It is not a nirvana-like ball of warmth and love, it is a functioning empire.
And like every empire, its growth is limited by a lack of competent, trustworthy nobility. And right now, God’s empire has grown as far as it can as long as He is the only one He can trust (1 Corinthians 4:2). Today He governs through angels. And they do… OK. But can God trust righteous angels? Job 4:18, 15:15. Does He fully expect some of them to betray Him in the future? Mark 13:25, Hebrews 12:26-27. If God could trust their word, He wouldn’t have to go to Sodom and see for Himself! So while righteous angels obey God, even the best of them need supervision; even the best of them cannot be trusted to accurately report what happened.
God hates to micromanage, but important decisions simply can’t be left to the angels! And He doesn’t like that! He wants people in His government who think just like He does. People who can be trusted to solve problems without bothering Him. Unfortunately, right now, God’s governmental system is full of incompetent bureaucrats. Both in the physical world and in the spiritual world, what God commands gets done… but not always exactly like He asked.
As long as the king has to personally visit every backwater corner of the empire to approve every major decision, as long as every single judgment in the universe is done by one person, there is a finite limit – however large – on the size of that empire! God needs YOU to be someone He can trust to do something without supervision; angels can’t do that. Men can’t do that. But the first resurrection saints will be able to do that. That is why judgment will given to the saints of the Most High (Daniel 7:22), people whom God knows can make good decisions without His help. And then God’s family, no longer limited by the abilities of a pair of Gods, can fill the universes!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Jesus wasn’t saved because He had or hadn’t done certain things; sure, He hadn’t sinned but that really wasn’t the point. The point was that He never would. Likewise, the life of a true Christian is not counting up all the things you’ve done on some spiritual checklist. Because what we do isn’t really the point. The point is what we become. Not whether we’ve managed to skirt around sin our entire life, avoiding temptation and focusing on “just getting there, no matter what it takes”. Hiding from sin isn’t the same as overcoming it. And God doesn’t care what you have or haven’t done.
He cares what you would or wouldn’t do. Paul told us “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Corinthians 6:12). This scripture, like most things Paul said, has been greatly abused. But at the end of the day… it isn’t about right and wrong. It isn’t about doing and donting. It’s about making judgments using the law to help others – not to help yourself (1 Corinthians 10:19-33).
And the results of these choices, hopefully, will be good; but in reality, you’re going to make a lot of bad choices and some of them will hurt people, and of course yourself. And so you make new choices, and better judgments. And learning how to do that is far more meaningful than the sum total of your actual obedience and righteousness in this life. Jethro told Moses to “provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens” (Exodus 18:21).
What part of us must fear God? Acts 2:43. What part of us loves truth? John 4:24. And which part of us must learn to hate covetousness? Psalms 119:36. Thus, Jethro told Moses that in order to be able to un shoulder some of the work of judging, He would have to find men who have good souls, good spirits, and good hearts! Exactly as God the Father is doing! God can’t trust any angel to make major judgments; not even about people so patently evil as Sodom. They’ve proven that (Jude 1:6). So God is creating people whom He CAN trust.
This is what He NEEDS from us; because the scarcest resource in the universe is souls who can be trusted to make good decisions.God created us for His pleasure (Revelation 4:11), because without people who can make good decisions, He will be unable to “plant the heavens” (Isaiah 51:16). Yet He wants His government to continue to grow exponentially, without end! (Isaiah 9:7). And the only way for that to happen is for US to help Him do it! But we can’t do that yet, not as long as we are willing to sell our souls for a piece of bread (Proverbs 28:21).
As long as we will listen to our beast because it’s our beast, or for that matter, as long as we will ignore our beast because it’s our beast, we cannot be trusted (Leviticus 19:15). God needs people who have been tested so thoroughly, in such extreme situations, that He can be confident that no matter what happens in the future, their judgments would be as good as His own judgments would be! And that’s why God doesn’t care what you do. He cares that you care what you do.