Day 51: Though You're Just A Worm...

Where The Jews Are. Img By Skalskal [Public domain]

Isaiah 41:9-10

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁹ I have called you back from the ends of the earth,
    saying, ‘You are my servant.’
For I have chosen you
    and will not throw you away.
¹⁰ Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.
    Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
    I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

***

As I read through the Bible, I see so many examples of Israel's rebellion, even from the very beginning. These were His chosen people, who He brought out of slavery in Egypt! He parted the Red Sea for them, and then flooded it behind them killing their enemies.  When they wanted food, God provided Manna from heaven for them to make cakes and bread from. The original Angel Food Cake. But it wasn't good enough. They wanted meat. So God gave them enough dead birds to provide meat for a month, til they were sick of it. Were they happy yet? No! The ungrateful people whined that they didn't have water. So God brought water out of a rock. This was a lot of people, and you can count on the fact that they didn't line up one by one with their Dixie cups to get a drink. There had to have been enough water from that rock to create quite a river to quench their thirst! And still it wasn't good enough.

When Moses spent time on the mountain with God, the people decided that a calf made of gold would be a better god than one they couldn't see. Forget that the golden calf wasn't going to be parting any seas or providing them food, they wanted something pretty to worship. Or how about, generations later when they were in the Promised Land, all the times that they burned incense to other gods, or worshiped at pagan shrines and in Asherah groves? Some of them even sacrificed their own children to Molech, the god of the Moabites! Oh, how that angered God.

I don't have time to write down all their rebellious acts any more than you have time to read them. But they were many, and they were frequent. God was angry with them a lot... and He warned them that if they didn't start living for Him, that He would scatter them all over the world. 

But they wouldn't listen, so God made good on His threat. You can see by the map above that they really are scattered to the four quarters of the earth, just as God had warned. But that warning also came with a promise. His love for His people is unconditional, and no matter what He has to do to get their attention, He's never going to completely abandon them. He will always call them back. He's doing that even now, and has been for decades. Despite having no homeland for centuries, the Jewish people retained their identity. And in 1948, Israel once again became a nation. It was a hard-fought victory, and the battle for independence has never really ended. They've been under constant attack for more than 60 years since, and yet Jews are still returning to their homeland. It doesn't really matter how many nations oppose them, God will never let them lose their land again. And despite the fact that they're still just humans, stubborn and headstrong and tripping over themselves all the time, He's going to protect His people, because He is their God.

³ 

For I hold you by your right hand—

I, the Lord your God.

And I say to you,

‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.14 

Though you are a lowly worm, O Jacob,

don’t be afraid, people of Israel, for I will help you.

I am the Lord, your Redeemer.

I am the Holy One of Israel.’

(Isaiah 41:13-14)

It's a great history lesson, isn't it? But the best lessons are those that we can learn from. We need to apply what we glean from scripture to our own lives. Do you really think that this story is only about the Israelites? You don't have to be Jewish to experience God's grace, forgiveness, and protection. Listen, if He has put a calling on your life, He's going to strengthen you however you need to be strengthened so that you can fulfill the calling He's given you.

How do you know if He's called you to anything? Well, duh! You're here, aren't you? He has a purpose for anyone who answers His call. But whether or not you answer is entirely up to you. He won't force you. But He is calling. Don't think you're not good enough. Seriously, nothing you have ever done or could ever think of doing can be any worse than the things that have been done already. God has put up with Israel playing the whore, being the drunkard, worshiping trees carved in the likeness of penises, burning their own children alive for the sake of some mythical, non-existent god that they wanted to please. Do you honestly think you can top that? 

No matter how far down you've gotten, God's at the top throwing a lifeline down to you. If you'll just reach out and take the help that He's offering you, He's going to lift you up with His mighty right hand. No matter what kind of enemy you're facing, God will handle it. He's telling you, he's called you from the abyss! No matter what gutter you've crawled into, He's calling you out of it! And He's telling you to trust Him... Don't be afraid or discouraged, because He is God, and He will be your God, if you'll let Him be.!

Come on, what are you waiting for?

Days 31 & 32: Gods & Godesses

2 Chronicles 17:3-6

New Living Translation (NLT)

By Hanay (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 ]

³ The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he followed the example of his father’s early years^[a] and did not worship the images of Baal. ⁴ He sought his father’s God and obeyed his commands instead of following the evil practices of the kingdom of Israel. ⁵ So the Lord established Jehoshaphat’s control over the kingdom of Judah. All the people of Judah brought gifts to Jehoshaphat, so he became very wealthy and highly esteemed. ⁶ He was deeply committed to^[b] the ways of the Lord. He removed the pagan shrines and Asherah poles from Judah.

***

We read a lot in the Bible about various gods and goddesses. Two of the most common ones we see in scripture are Baal and Asherah. Well, not Asherah herself, so much as Asherah poles and groves (sites of numerous poles). Who exactly are Asherah and Baal, anyway?

I guess I should start with a bit of a disclaimer. I believe in only one God, the living God, our heavenly father. I don't believer any of the other gods and goddesses worshiped throughout history, including biblical times, were real. They were real to the people who served them, of course, and they certainly were real in the sense that Israelites were known to "play the harlot" and worship them instead of God... And we know that God expressed His jealous anger over other gods and goddesses. But that doesn't mean they really existed, other than in the hearts and minds of humans. That is the biggest threat to our relationship with God, isn't it? The fickle nature of our hearts and minds, to go chasing off after anything that we give priority over our Father?

Anyway, back to who these two idols were. Before the Israelites were brought into the Promised Land, which was the land of Canaan, the native people there worshiped the male "creator" god, named El. This wasn't creator in the same sense as our God, this was creator in the sense of fertility. As is the case with any mythological gods, El had wives, the first of whom was Asherah.  She was a fertility goddess, the mother of life, and gave birth to El's son, Baal, and 69 others. El also had another wife, Anath, but it was Asherah alone who was believed to be the mother of all gods.

The day came when Baal grew up and got too big for his britches, and decided to overthrow his daddy. According to the myths, he launched a surprise attack on El's palace and took not only the throne, but his father's wives, as well. Yes, you read that right... his mother was now one of his own wives. 

Incest was not Baal's only sexual deviation, though. Before going down to meet with Mot, the god of death, Baal, the god of fertility, mated with a cow, and the cow bore him a son. Remember here, I'm just relaying the mythology behind he gods who were worshiped by other people in the Bible. Who knows the outcome of that battle when Baal met with Mot, but his mother/wife started looking for a replacement for him, at the request of her former husband El, and the other wife, Anath, went off in search of Baal's corpse. Apparently she found him, and because of her, both Mot and Baal reappeared in mythology, and Mot finally surrendered to Baal as the supreme deity.

So the gods and goddesses of fertility were pretty nasty, engaging in everything from incest to bestiality, and if one believes that Baal was actually dead for 7 years, necrophilia. Can you say "ewwwwww!". Yeah, gross.

Let's get past who they were now and look at how people worshiped them. Asherah was known not only as the goddess of fertility, but the mother of all gods, and the mother of life. Near to the altar where sacrifices were made to Baal were what are known as Asherah poles, or Ashera groves (numerous poles.) It's interesting that these poles were actually made from trees that had been stripped bare of branches and then carved to resemble either the image of the goddess herself, or the image of a phallus. I'm not making that up, you can actually find photographs of poles still in existence that are carved in both symbols. There seems to be some link between the modern day "tree of life" symbol that is so popular in jewelry and wire sculptures that represent "Mother Earth", and Asherah, the mother of life. I guess it's pretty easy to draw the comparison, especially since Asherah poles were made of trees. Still, I have decided I'll never make jewelry with the popular tree of life symbol.  It doesn't seem so innocent in light of all this information.

The celebrations of worship centering on the god and goddess included shrine prostitutes, both male and female who had no particular preference as to which gender they cavorted with, and all sorts of ritualistic sex. No wonder God abhorred Baal and Asherah so much. Sex was designed to be this beautiful gift that God gave to married couples, and this religion twisted it into a celebration of every kind of perversion and deviance possible! It's a celebration that seems to have never dissipated, either. Even in today's culture, sexual perversion is celebrated. And just like in those days of old, we who worship God and view sex as a sacred gift between a husband and wife are viewed with contempt by the secular world.

I think that's why I selected this topic. People always think that they're coming up with something new. But really, each generation has its own 'sexual revolution', which is really not a revolution at all. Instead, it is a revulsion of every good thing from God. As a society, we wonder why God doesn't hear our prayers. Maybe we should look back at history for the answer, and remember that God turned His back on His children when they abandoned God in favor of their Baal's and Asherahs.