Sodom and God's F-word: Prophetic insights on surviving economic meltdown - Part Seven
59Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: she and her daughter had pride, fullness of food and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit. (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
If you could hear the voice of God, would you listen? If you could know the will of God, would you obey?
In this series we have looked at many parallels between today’s society and ancient Sodom, and examined some of the causes and consequences of the current economic downturn. We’ve discussed where we are, where we’ve come from and where we’re headed from a number of perspectives and in Part Six, began to look at what we might do to avoid, escape, or at least ameliorate the worst effects of the ongoing economic crisis. We looked at three of the four things God has shown me are profitable practices to adopt at this time: One) Get out of debt, Two) Tithe and Three) Commit to a second tithe.
There remains now only number four, God’s F-word: Forgiveness.
Remember a passing we read in Part 3, in Job 42:7-8?
'And it was after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, that Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job. “Now, therefore, take for yourselves seven young bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him lest I deal with you according to your foolishness; because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job.” '
This dovetails nicely with something Jesus revealed after his resurrection: 'Then Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you. As my Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Of whomever sins you remit, they are remitted to them. Of whomever sins you retain, they are retained.”' (John 20:21-23)
Here Jesus empowered his disciples to forgive sins, just as said we should do in Matthew 5:43-46. 'You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy." But I say to you: Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you, so that you may become sons of your Father in Heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same?'
I suspect this is an even less popular doctrine than tithing, but giving and forgiving are very close to God’s heart and part of his very nature. But notice that Jesus also said that we are not just to forgive in secret; wherever possible we should tell the person we are forgiving that we forgive them and also what we forgive them of.
'Take heed to yourselves. If your brother trespasses against you, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he trespasses against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turns again to you, saying, I repent, you shall forgive him.' (Luke 17:3-4)
I’ll warrant more people remember verse 4 than verse 3, but much of the value in forgiveness lies in letting the one who hurt you know what you are releasing them from. That’s why, when things settle down, I will be writing to those creditors who have dealt unmercifully with us to tell them so, but also to inform them that I forgive them. I am not naïve and am perfectly well aware they may scoff, or even consider me a right religious nutter. That’s not my problem, because I am not answerable to them but to God. By releasing them, I release myself.
‘Ah,’ some may object, ‘but Jesus said to forgive our brother, and how do we know whether they are brothers?‘ That’s a reasonable question, but answer me this: What kind of brother was Caiaphas to Jesus, or Pilate or the soldiers who scourged and crucified him?
‘Father, forgive my brothers, for they know not what they do’?
Nah! – Asking who my brother is, is rather like the scribe who once asked Jesus who his neighbour was. Jesus’ response was the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
In releasing those whom I forgive, I fulfil something dear to Jesus’ heart that he spoke of in Luke 4:18. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because of this he has anointed me to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those having been crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
This was no random scripture but Jesus is quoting Isaiah 61:1-2, which he said was fulfilled in him. It specifically refers to ‘the acceptable year of the Lord’ which is also known as the Year of Jubilee, a momentous occasion when all debts were cancelled, all leased property reverted to its original owner, and all slaves were released from their captivity.
Jubilees occur only once every fifty years. There was one when I was born, while the last one, ended just last year on Yom Kippur 5769 in the Hebrew calendar. It was the fortieth Jubilee since Jesus day, which is notable because 40 is the number of trial. What was also key however, was what happened towards its end, just ten days earlier on 29th September 2008. That day made the news around the world as, in the wake of the growing Credit Crunch, the American Dow Jones stock market index fell by the all time record amount of 777 points. It was a financial cataclysm, yet, so pervasive are anti-Semitism and Biblical illiteracy today that pretty much the whole world missed its true significance: Indeed, to begin with, so did I.
As I watched the news reports unfold on television, my spirit leapt and I knew something important had just occurred. The number seven is highly significant in the Bible: The number of completion and rest: The number of Shabbat. In addition, the repetition of any word in scripture usually signifies emphasis, and double repetition points to absolute emphasis. It’s the equivalent of God shouting. Nevertheless, co-incidences are common enough in life, not to get superstitiously hung up on every triplicate occurrence of a digit, so I immediately told my wife Deborah that I thought it meant something but would check the Hebrew calendar to confirm whether it was of genuine significance. ‘Oh’, she replied, ‘that’s easy. Yesterday was the start of Rosh Hashannah’.
My God! Rosh Hashannah in the Year of Jubilee – the year of forgiveness of debt – and the Dow Jones had dropped by 777 points. This was a portent.
Most people know of what they call the Jewish Sabbath: Every Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. In fact, Shabbat is not Jewish, but a holy day of God and the one that occurs every Saturday is only the weekly Sabbath. Indeed it is the only Hebrew weekday with a name; every other day is just a number. Beginning with our Sunday, the Hebrew weekdays are simply called, First Day, Second Day, Third Day, Fourth Day, Fifth Day, Sixth Day and Shabbat. So Shabbat is the seventh day of the week, the Day of Rest.
But there are also seven annual Sabbaths, of which Rosh Hashannah is one. A relatively recent term, Rosh Hashannah literally means Head of the Year. The Bible calls it the Feast of Trumpets, an annual holy day. Every seventh year is a Sabbath, a land Sabbath, when the Lord commanded Israel to rest the earth. Then, every forty-nine years (seven times seven) was the special land Sabbath that preceded the Jubilee. So, you see an event containing 777 on an annual Sabbath in a Jubilee was more than mere coincidence. God was sending a message, and that message was Forgiveness.
Look again at the Jubilee proclamation: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because of this he has anointed me to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those having been crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
Remember that God considers debt a form of slavery and Jubilee was the year of debt-cancellation. Now consider that the Credit Crunch began with the collapse of the American sub-prime mortgage market. What do you suppose God was saying? And do you suppose anyone in politics or banking listened?
This recession is God’s judgement on a system that enslaves and exploits the poor and the needy; and God wants to see it changed. But do you know of anyone with their hands on the levers of economic power trying to change it? Not a bit! In fact the knee-jerk reaction of just about every government and every bank has been to shore up their corrupt system with more of the same. That’s why it isn’t working. And that’s why it isn’t going to work.
But what can we do about it?
The answer’s still the same; Forgiveness: Because the power of forgiveness releases the mercy of God. And until we understand that, things will simply get worse.
But who must forgive whom, and of what? To answer that question, follow me:
As part of the Abramic blessing in Genesis 12:3, God told Abram: “…I will bless those that bless you and curse the one who curses you…”
Abram was the patriarch who later became Abraham and God blessed him and his posterity is perpetuity. The New Testament reveals that believers in Jesus share in that inheritance as grafted-on branches and adopted heirs of Abraham, so the Abramic blessing (and curse) apply to us also. So, any person who curses a Jew or a Christian falls under the terms of God’s promise to Abraham, that he will curse them in return. And, unlike Malachi’s curse, this one is unassuaged by the Blood of Jesus because it is not ‘a curse of the Law’. That’s one reason why Jesus told his disciples in John 20:23, “If you forgive people's sins, they are forgiven. If you retain people's sins, they are retained."
Once we understand that those who hate us are accursed by God, we begin to see why Jesus gave one of his most difficult and controversial commands in Matthew 5:44, “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” And forgiveness is also the answer to the conundrum of true need, mentioned in Part One: The real need of the ‘pseudo needy’. We all need it, but by excusing and indulging sinful behaviour as victimhood, Sodom has imprisoned the pseudo needy in unforgiveness, because excuses are a contrived avoidance of repentance, and we can never repent of what we refuse to acknowledge as sin. These people need more than anything to know about God’s forgiveness, and to forgive themselves as well as anyone in their past who may have contributed to their situation.
In conclusion, let’s return to Job 42:7-8. '…Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has…go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering. And my servant Job will pray for you. Surely I will lift up his face so as not to do with you according to your foolishness…”'
Here at the very end of the Book of Job, the oldest book in the Bible, God admonishes those who offered Job grievous counsel in his suffering. ‘I’m angry with you’, he warns them, ‘but you have this one chance: my servant Job will pray for you and I will hear him, and not punish you as you deserve’. Is that awesome, or what? But it gets better. Because while Job was under the Old Covenant, we are under the New: 'And because you are sons, God has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, saying, Abba, Father. So that you are no longer a servant, but a son; and if a son, then the heritage of God is yours.' (Galatians 4:6-7)
God heard Job because Job was a servant. How much more will our Father listen to a son?
It’s a key to understanding the whole Bible, that true authority is always balanced with equal responsibility. If you want to throw your weight around as a believer, healing the sick and raising the dead, then you must accept your responsibility not only to forgive others but bless them – even your enemies. These are the ‘true riches’ Jesus says God will only give to those he really trusts.
So, if you want to stop playing at church and start living like a Christian; if you really want to escape Sodom, you do well to give to God and forgive others. When you do that, your brother is not the only captive whose deliverance you proclaim; you proclaim your own as well – from the captivity of debt and the captivity of unforgiveness which, let’s face it, are pretty much the same. And who knows, maybe you’ll do more than just escape the recession; you might even discover you’re a prophet.
