The Challenge 16 January, 2004

Wow, late again.  I usually write these on Wednesday mornings and both Wednesday and Thursday have been entirely jam-packed days for me this week so this is the 1^st time I've had to sit down and write.  I think I'm going to say that the challenge comes out on Friday's and then when i put it out on Wednesday's I can be early!  haha! :-)   

For those of you who don't know this, I write this portion of the Challenge for a man who has been like a father for me for the past couple of years now.  He holds me accountable to let him know what's going on in my life and to make sure I am right with God before continuing to write and Challenge you.  Recently (very recently), I received some good news that I had been waiting/hoping for, for a long time.  Because he worked with me and in the same field I do, he understood what I was going through, as I was disappointed over and over again for the last two years or so.  As I would waiver in my faith, wonder why things were happening the way they were, or lose confidence in myself, there were two key people in my life who held me up - foremost my wife and secondly Bob.  He displayed God's faithfulness, trust and confidence on a regular basis. God spoke to me through him more times than I can ever count.  Thanks!  Thanks for being there, thanks for encouraging me, thanks for taking on the role of my father, thanks for reflecting God to and for me!

How bad do you want it?

I read almost every book on eradicating sin from my life.  I'm involved in not one but two different accountability groups (one men's and one teen's) but some sins seem to plague us on a regular basis.  Anyway, in my accountability groups we've discussed many different ways to work on defeating sin from our lives.  While we know that sin cannot be totally eradicated from us until we are brought home to live with Christ, we are constantly striving to reach for the higher calling of Christ and to run the race with endurance.

Many months ago one of my friends was discussing this verse:

"However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting." Matthew 17:21

We had decided that God was speaking to us and telling us that sometimes there are sins caused by evil spirits warring against us that are only eradicated through prayer and fasting.

Then last weekend we were discussing the hatred of sin and the view that says that we should hate sin the way God hates sin.  With that kind of view towards sin we would decrease the territory that sin occupies in our lives and increase the area that the Holy Spirit occupies.  One of the things we were discussing was the fact that we sometimes don't "hate" our sin enough. Deep down inside ourselves we rationalize it, want to keep it, or don't want to make the effort it would take to eradicate it from our lives.

Then, just a few days ago I heard a recorded sermon that related to this topic quite well.  As with most of my Challenges to you, they are not original thoughts.  I've heard a sermon, read a book, or studied a devotional and relay to you what God has put on my heart.  Today is no different.  I recently re-heard a message given by Rob Bell at Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, Illinois.  I'm going to try to summarize what he said in this Challenge but I'm afraid that he teaches the story much better than I ever will.  So, if you're interested in getting this sermon write me and I'll give you the web site to get it from.

The teaching was from Numbers 6.  I've copied the first 8 verses here for you but the whole paragraph goes to verse 21 and you need to just crack open those bibles and read it all for yourselves.

"Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ²"Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: "When either a man or woman consecrates an offering to take the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the LORD, ³he shall separate himself from wine and similar drink; he shall drink neither vinegar made from wine nor vinegar made from similar drink; neither shall he drink any grape juice, nor eat fresh grapes or raisins. ⁴All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, from seed to skin.  ⁵"All the days of the vow of his separation no razor shall come upon his head; until the days are fulfilled for which he separated himself to the LORD, he shall be holy. Then he shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow. ⁶All the days that he separates himself to the LORD he shall not go near a dead body. ⁷He shall not make himself unclean even for his father or his mother, for his brother or his sister, when they die, because his separation to God is on his head. ⁸All the days of his separation he shall be holy to the LORD." Numbers 6:1-8

The point of the teaching was that this type of vow was a completely radical thing to do in ancient Israel.  For a Jew to not have wine of grapes meant for him to not participate in any of the holy feasts and to not participate in the Sabbath dinner every Friday evening.  Wine was a part of the live they lived back then.  While many Jews let their beards grow without shaving them it was unusual to not cut your hair.  Picture a person in your community who just let everything on his head grow for a time until he looked like a vagrant or something.  And while many of you will never have a problem with the last part, "touching a dead body" this is not how it was in ancient Israel.  There weren't emergency rooms, big hospitals, ambulances, and funeral homes.  You lived with your family.  Your mother and father lived VERY close to you.  Your brothers and sisters may have lived right next door.  The life expectancy in those days was not very high.  I've heard on scholar say that if you got into your 40's you were doing VERY well.  If someone in your family died you had to bury them.  You had to carry them out of the house, you and your family had to take care of the dead body.

The point here is that we all eat or drink whatever we want in most cases.  We grow our hair however we want.  We never touch a dead body in our daily lives (obviously some of my friends in Iraq may but most of us don't).  So this part of scripture does not mean much to us unless you understand the Jewish culture of the time.  What this is saying is that someone who took a Nazirite vow completely separated him or herself from the society and ways of life that were going on in ancient Israel.  It would be like saying that you needed to stay away from drinking anything but water from a well, abstain from showering or grooming or for you ladies abstaining from make-up in any way, and not talking to your friends or participating in any family activities.  It was a radical thing you were doing when you took a Nazirite vow!  You were completely separating yourself from society, withdrawing yourself from daily activities in order to concentrate on the Lord and as the verse says, "be holy to the LORD."  Not only were you separating yourself from society but, everyone knew it.  By taking this vow and doing these things everyone who saw you knew that you had taken a Nazirite vow and that you were separating yourself to the Lord.

It does not really tell us in the Bible why someone might take such a radical vow - a Nazirite vow.  It's just kind of there.  Now there are a couple of people who take these vows throughout the bible and they are separated to God for various reasons but, Rob Bell suggested that maybe this was a vow taken by someone who was extremely desperate to change something in their life.  So desperate that they would basically remove themselves from society in order to be holy to the LORD!  So, desperate that they would do anything at all to change something in their lives that they would take this completely radical step!  Rob suggested and provided some scriptural basis that said that maybe one of the reasons that an Israelite would take such a vow would be to eradicate some sin from their lives.  How bad do you want it?

Towards the end of the paragraph on the Nazirite vow in chapter 6 it goes on to tell the Israelites how to finish their vow.  You'll have to read it on your own (Numbers 6:13-21).  Basically, the person who made the vow had to bring male lamb, one ewe lamb, one ram, a basket of bread, cakes of fine flour, unleavened wafers, grain offerings and drink offerings.  You're thinking to yourselves that these Israelites were farmers, Shepard's, and such and they just had all this stuff.  Again you must understand the times they lived in.  They were not like Americans with houses and cars and TV's and play stations and such.  These were simple people.  Basically, the law required an Israelite to give up everything he had in order to make the offering to the Lord to finish his vow.  This was like,

"Honey, ya I know that we only have one sheep and one lamb but the law says I've got to give it up so I can complete my vow.  I have no clue where I'm going to get a ram so I'm going to have to sell off most of what we own to buy a ram.  Yes, I'm using all the grain we own to make a basket of bread, wafers, grain offerings and I'm also offering all our Sabbath wine.  Yes dear, I know this is all we own, but that is what the law says."

This is what it may have been like.  Rob Bell teaches that not only did you have to separate yourself from society at large but you also had to give everything else you owned up to the Lord to complete your vow.  Very radical!  Who would take a vow like that?  Someone who was very desperate, someone who had had enough of one thing or another, someone who was at his wits end with trying to figure out how to change something in his life.  How bad do you want it?  Someone who wanted it really bad is a person who took a Nazirite vow.

A friend of mine and I, after listening to the sermon, were wondering how to apply that to our lives today.  The preacher who gave the message did not really suggest any specific ways to do this in our lives here in modern day America.  But we both decided (I think) that we know of things in our lives that we have tried everything to get rid of but still can't.  I do not know what the daily application is of taking this kind of vow, but I do know this, it has to be a radical shift in your lifestyle and it has to cost you something significant.  My friend and I (he does not know this until he reads this) are going to pray about this and see where God leads us.  I just know one thing; there are things in my life that I am starting to want out of my life so badly that I am starting to be ready to do almost anything to eradicate them - sins that I am sick and tired of repeating day in and day out.  I'm starting to want it really bad!

How bad do you want it?

Until next week ~ Dave