Judges 17. The first appendix: What is God's prosperity?

Title: Judges 17. The first appendix: What is God's prosperity?

 

Lamentations is a book in the Hebrew Bible in which five lamentations are written about the fall of Jerusalem and Judah. The original title to this book in the Hebrew is eeykaah, the first word of the book, which means, "alas, how?..." How did it come to this? Picture Jeremiah looking over the ruins of Jerusalem, the city he loved because it was God's city, the temple that he loved because it was God's abode, and the people that he loved because they were God's elect, and writing five poems of lament.

 

LAM 1:16 "For these things I weep;

My eyes run down with water;

Because far from me is a comforter,

One who restores my soul;

My children are desolate

Because the enemy has prevailed."

 

LAM 1:17 Zion stretches out her hands;

There is no one to comfort her;

The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob

That the ones round about him should be his adversaries;

Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them."

 

The lesson is clear. Unclean hearts flounder in misery and pain and eventually in painful death if they don't recover in turning to the Lord, which Jeremiah also writes of in the third poem (Lam 3). I encourage you to read the entire poem.

 

JDG 17:13 Then Micah said, "Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, seeing I have a Levite as priest."

 

Micah makes an expression of superstition and not of faith. The Levite is his good luck charm. The people and the priesthood have been Canaanized.

 

A right thing must be done in a right way. Right actions done for the wrong reason do not build the internal quality of virtue and character.

 

It is also made clear in the scripture that tribulation is necessary to produce character because it produces perseverance.

 

Micah seeks prosperity from Yavah, and that is a right and good thing, but he goes about it in a very wrong way. Jonathan the Levite seeks to serve the people of Israel by representing them before Jehovah, this is also a right and good thing, but he goes about it in a wrong way.

 

LAM 4:12 The kings of the earth did not believe,

Nor did any of the inhabitants of the world,

That the adversary and the enemy

Could enter the gates of Jerusalem.

 

LAM 4:13 Because of the sins of her prophets

And the iniquities of her priests,

Who have shed in her midst

The blood of the righteous,

 

The right thing is all of Christianity and not the parts of it that we may like. It is to be expected that each of us will find plenty of parts of Christianity that we don't like. Christianity is perfect and we are not. When we enter Christianity we still have many ideas and values that are not Christian. The identity of those things are different from person to person, so some of us will like aspects of Christianity that our brother in Christ does not and vice versa. God never gives us the opportunity to pick and choose. We are accountable to all of it.

 

One of the lies that we tend to believe when it comes to seriously attempting to practice these things is that it will be impossible, and so, why bother.

 

We are to know it is possible, for all things are possible with God. That it is possible should not be our concern once the promise of God is believed. We don't ask ourselves if something is possible every time we set about doing it. Christ told us to do, and so we do.

 

You must console yourself with the truth that this life of Christ is not optional, but compulsory.

 

We find sometimes that there seems to be no help. We tried in earnest and failed. Where was the help? Never mind. God is not playing games with you. Pick yourself back up and try it again.

 

Very often what God helps us towards is not the virtue itself but the power of trying again; the power of perseverance and depending upon Him. Practice means training habits. Habits only come to man when he has failed and tried again.

 

It seems confusing that God tells us to keep asking, seeking, knocking. Wouldn't it be far easier to ask once and receive, seek once and find, knock once and watch the door fling open? Wouldn't we see and trust more? Maybe another creature might, but not fallen humanity, and not even born again humanity. God wants creatures of a certain sort, filled with His virtue, and trained up in the way they ought to go, and that takes formed habits.

 

Before we learn the virtue, God teaches us the perseverance of trying again and again and thus knowing who we are and how much we depend upon Him.

 

We learn on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves apart from God even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst moments, for our failures are forgiven.

 

The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection in God's plan.

 

Settling is fatal to the Christian way of life. Settling is akin to leaving the fight, throwing in the towel, and abandoning the good fight of faith. Satan would love for you to do this. He is always scheming a way that would lead you to it. God says, "Do not grow weary or lose heart in doing good," while Satan says, "None of it matters in the long run anyway. No one deserves such good, when was the last time anyone noticed or said thanks? Life is too short. You're too old. You're too young. No one who is normal does this." etc. etc.