Know Before Whom You Stand

Da Lifnei mi atah Omed - Is often inscribed over the Ark in many Synagogues.  Know before whom you stand.  I stumbled on that and it rolled over and over in my mind as I was studying the Bible. It reminded me where Paul tells the Corinthians, we see through a glass darkly, we know in part but a time is coming where we will know as we are known of God.  

All through the bible, God gives us instruction that "they might know that I am the Eternal."  He gave them His Sabbaths, and He held things back from them and He even sent His Son to them so that they would know before whom they stood.  

But they didn't know.  So often we don't know the One before whom we stand.  How many times did Christ ask, Don't you understand?  Do you know who I am?  Do you hear what I'm saying?  Can you hear me?  Are you listening?  

In Psalms 50 there is a chilling reminder that it is not beyond our capacity to assume we know and understand God because we think He is like we are.

"These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes." (Psalms 50:21 KJV)  Or as it is rendered by Samuel Horsley,  "These things ye have done and thought that I AM (Eheyeh) is such an one as thyself."  

The statement is proceeded by pointing out that they hated instruction and ignored His Word, slandered their own brethren and stole and lied and lived contrary to the laws and ways of God.  And yet, these were people who knew his covenant and his law.  People who bore his name and assumed that they were close to God.  People who lived contrary to the ways of God unaware they were falling dreadfully short of the requirements.

One would have to come to that conclusion by making a determination that wickedness does not lie within themselves but only all around them and in their piety of creating a religious aura about themselves, they missed the point of their religion and did not know before whom they stood.  It means they didn't get to Know God on His terms.  They misunderstood because they perceived his intent through a carnal morass of all things finite.  

He is a God of infinity.  He sees all things through to their conclusion from the beginning.  He knows the destination of every path we choose.  He not only sees what we're doing but he knows our intent in our doing it.  We are the ones who fall short in our assessment of God.  We are the ones whose heart is deceitful above all things because we lie to ourselves best and most of all.   We seldom consider the end of a matter, where it will all end up.  We assure ourselves we know what we're doing, We convince ourselves that we're using sound judgment. We rationalize immorality based on circumstances and acceptability.  We create complicated exceptions where God uses simplistic terminology.  

Thou shalt not.  Do Justly.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.  Fear God.  Keep the Commandments.

He pulls back the wrapping and exposes the contents.  He lives in reality but we surround ourselves with exception clauses, postulations, conditions prerequisites, fine print, stipulation and compromise and are shocked to find He wasn't negotiating.  

If we stand on His ground, we take our shoes off.  If we sign the contract, we've made a blood pact.  He was willing to lay it all on the line for us... and did.  

Da Lifnei mi atah Omed 

Know Before Whom You Stand

Reading Daniel

I've been working on reading the bible.  I figured it should be about a year long project.  But one year has dragged into 2 and according to my Kindle, I'm only 51% into the book.  And, its not that I don't find what I read interesting.  its just that life is hectic and other things get pushed in front of doing it.  Its a matter of prioritizing... and I find that I am somewhat inclined toward a rather imprecise nature in optimizing my daily itinerary.  I'd like to say that I have attention deficit disorder, as distraction does come easily... but then you might say that Pinocchio also suffered the same affliction.  I fear, like the nephew of Uncle Albert, of the Yellow Submarine Album, I'm so easily drawn away... 

Presently I'm reading about Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, brilliant princes of Israel who were captives, carried into the land of Shinar and groomed to be made into counselors for the King's court.  It doesn't give their exact age but refers to them as "children" which seems to indicate they were probably in their later teens.  And as such, they seem remarkably principled for a group of such young men.  

Of course, its not like its the first time I've read the Book of Daniel, nor the first time I've heard the story...  but, recalling my own youth, and that of my children, these boys, really, are incredibly dedicated in their faith.  

The King, the undisputed world ruler of his day, has ordered that these boys are provided with all the necessary fare, schooled in court etiquette, fitted in royal attire, and provided with the same accoutrements as would be necessary for anyone of their status, even fed  the  same food served to the royal court--rich and decadent cuisine presented to these four enslaved young men who declined to eat it, worried for their health, asking instead to be given a vegetarian diet.  

While it doesn't state an exact reason, my summation of their concern was the food might be common or unclean or the clean meats obtained from a pagan sacrifice, and eating such would push against their conscience and damage their systems. Despite being basically slaves and fortunate to be alive, they're bold enough to refuse the food that's offered to them, even when the Prince of the Eunuchs advises it is a command from the King.  During their tête-à-tête with their overseer, they come to an agreement that he would extend them a test period and, as it is so often with God, it works out to their advantage.

In time, and we don't know how long after, the King has a troubling dream that puts the entire advisory board at risk and young Daniel ends up saving all their lives and the lives of the rest of the wise men by not only interpreting a dream by a revelation from God, but he is also able to tell the King what the dream was. 

The King was so excited with the power of Daniel's God and the interpretation of the dream that he promptly built an image, probably the very one he'd dreamed about and then commanded that all in the land, upon hearing the band start up, stop what they're doing and fall down in worship to the image.  

Daniel's (Belteshazzar) three friends, Hananiah, (Shadrach) Mishael (Meshach) and Azariah (Abednego) who were set as overseers of the King's affairs, get caught  by certain Chaldeans, not worshiping the image, who apparently feel a certain "moral" obligation to report it to King Nebuchadnezzar.  

The King commands they be brought into the court and in a display of favor, which seems out of character,  offers them a chance to comply to his decree (at which point he will forgive them of their breech of protocol).  But the lads all refuse.  
In fact as he's giving them the deal, they interrupt him, and I can just imagine them poised in resolute tenacity.  "Let us be perfectly clear, Our God, if He chooses, is able to save us and we will be delivered from your hand, O King.  However, and make no mistake, whatever He will choose to do on our behalf at this time, we will not serve your gods or worship your golden image."

And it says in the old King James Version, "He was full of fury and the form of his visage changed against Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego." 

What pluck.  There they stand in the highest court, before the worlds most powerful man, dressed in the royal garb of his court, it says their coats, their hats, their hosen and their other garments, and these three young princes, stolen from their homes, probably made into eunuchs, and given a peach of a position, especially under the circumstances, inform the King of the whole known world as they knew it, that it ain't gonna happen.  

So the King tells his very best and strongest and bravest, most decorated mighty men of his soldiers to bind them up and cast them into the fire.  Now these soldiers were simply following orders, because if they would refuse, they too would be tossed in along with those idiot kids.  But as they got near the fire, the flames licked up and destroyed the soldiers who tossed them in.  

And as the King looks on, he sees not three but four men in the flames.  And he goes up the edge of whatever contraption they're in and calls to them, "come forth and come hither."  It appears that the only thing that might have been burnt up, besides however many of the King's guard who were dragging the boys to their death, was the binding applied to their arms and legs prior to being thrown in.  

And the story gives me pause at how diminished life's lessons can become over the course of time.  

When Daniel was brought before Nebuchadnezzar, to not only interpret the dream, but to expound in detail the dream and advise him that God was revealing kingdoms well into the future to this king, a feat no magician in the kingdom could perform, Daniel made plain to him that he could not interpret or reveal the dream and that no one other than the God in heaven can reveal this secret.  And Nebuchadnezzar was so impressed, he said that  Daniel's God was a God of gods.  And Daniel requested that his friends be made his advisers in the province of Babylon.  And yet... and yet, he failed to bring all that to mind when the 3 young men declined to bow before his image as they only prostrated themselves before their God... this same God who reveals secret dreams.  The eyewitness of the power of a miracle was completely lost on the King.

But it isn't only pompous Kings who remain oblivious to transformative power of miracles.  The children of Israel every day were shaded by a cloud that went before them.  They woke every morning to manna on the ground and ended every day with a flock of quail presenting itself for their evening meal.  They witnessed the opening of the Red Sea for their passage and the closing of it upon their enemies.  They watched water pour from a rock.  All these miracles they witnessed and yet, just like Nebuchadnezzar, there was no lasting memory of all that had transpired. God never seemed as real to them as the trial they were facing and as they would say, "Is God among us or not?"  

It is stunning how easy it was for them to have witnessed these magnificent miracles and go forward as though it were not a life-changing event.  And almost every other miracle described in the bible was also met with the same suppositional acceptance held by the children of Israel.   The Jews witnessed in-step and without awe, miracles of healings, and the raising of the dead and the many being being fed with the lunch of a boy.  I'm sure they were impressed in the moment but in the end, it was merely a great story to tell but not the fulcrum of reform.

And yet, in every story, all through the books of the bible, it indicates that we must change, to overcome, to repent, to put on the new man, to be holy and righteous and complete and perfect.  Example after example that shows us what to be and what not to be... And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;   We are supposed to be discerning the good from the evil and the clean from the unclean... not in judgment of others but in understanding of being godly and holy and righteous in our own hearts and minds.  

The lesson I get from Daniel isn't that the Babylonians were evil and that Daniel and his friends were good, but that but that despite the obstacles, and despite the consequences, they still strove to behave in a Godly fashion.  They saw life beyond this side of death and they clung onto it and they looked to God and God was there for them.  They looked for a city whose builder and maker is God.