God’s Epic Disappointment

God watched over, led, protected, fed, and taught the progeny of Abraham and Sarah for nearly 1,000 years. God gave them great leaders in Moses and later Joshua and Caleb to bring this nation of people out of slavery in Egypt and into the land God had promised Abraham. God did all this even though God realized soon after delivering this people from the slavery of Pharaoh that they were a stiff-necked¹ people given to disobedience and corruption no different, perhaps, from humankind before and after Noah (Ex. 32: 7-9). God wanted to destroy them all right then and start over with Moses, but relented after Moses pleaded with God to accept God’s people and remember God’s promise to Abraham (Ex. 32: 11-14). When the people were afraid to enter Canaan, lacking faith, God threatened again to destroy them all, saying to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them?” (Num. 14:11) God kept them in the desert another 40 years until the unfaithful died off before supporting the invasion of Canaan led by Joshua and Caleb (Num. 14: 20-24).

During the period in which the Israelites settled the land of Canaan there was little joy for God as God observed these people (Judg. 3:7,12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:11-16; 13:1. But God continued to preside over the people in God’s steadfast effort to turn them away from their inclination to evil and corruption. For me, the most poignant passage in the entire OT is a conversation between God and God’s servant Samuel in which God acknowledged failure. As Samuel was aging without a successor, the elders came to him asking for a king to govern them like other nations. Samuel objected, and reached out to God for guidance. God said to Samuel, “‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you.'” (1 Sam. 8:7-8). Then at God’s request, Samuel solemnly warned the people of the ways a king would reign over them, taking for himself all the finest animals, crops, land, daughters, sons and slaves plus a tenth of all they produced, making them all the king’s slaves (1 Sam. 8:9-17); concluding “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day” (1Sam.8:18).

The people ignored Samuel’s warning and demanded a king. Thus commenced a succession of kings over a period of about 500 years, ending in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, dispersal and exile. During the age of the kings, God withdrew to communicate through God’s prophets, expressing God’s displeasure (wrath?) as God witnessed a steady deterioration of the culture through widespread failure to obey God’s commands given to the people through Moses. The last straw is followed by Jerimiah’s accurate prophecy (Jer. 15:1-17:4) of death and destruction as God executed God’s judgment. The surviving Jews lived in exile for 70 years, after which a remnant was permitted to return to Jerusalem and rebuild (Ezr 9:8-9). The Jewish remnant remained just that for another 500 years, vassals of Persia, Greece and Rome, surviving by God’s grace (Ro. 11-5).

We are taught to approach the Old Testament of our Bible as the saga of the Israelites, the chosen people, who fashioned their own story of Creation. But what if this saga is in reality the saga of God’s experience with God’s humankind creation. For the first two thousand years God watches what God has wrought and finally decides to start over. God’s next experience after the flood (in roughly three 500 year phases) is to nurture the development of a people, lead these people directly into their own land, and then cede control to the people to manage their own affairs. There is nothing in this experience to be found pleasing to God. It was an epic disappointment that ended very badly for both God and the people Israel (see Jer. 32: 26-35). Yet in the same breath, God vowed to bring the survivors back to Jerusalem to live in safety as God’s people, giving them a singleness of heart and action (Jer. 32: 37-41). God declared that God would make a new covenant, not like the old one they broke, saying, “‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts…No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest'”(Jer. 31: 33-34). Another 500 years passes and so ends Act II of this grand drama.

At this point what do we know? We know for sure that God is not giving up on humankind. There are more arrows in God’s quiver. God will persist. So is it any wonder that God might then have taken a different tack from the law, judgment and wrath?

Some things to think about. What might God have meant by God’s intention to write God’s law on our hearts? How might it come to be that we would all know God? Also, God’s time is not our time. What for us may seem like incredible patience in God’s forbearance may seem to God as just the beginning of our Creator’s relationship with us. What for us may seem as an epic disappointment for God might seem to God as just one episode in a very long saga.² What for us may seem as unforgivable weakness may seem to God as the behavior children in need of love and teaching. Next week we move to Act III, God’s Attempt at Reconciliation.

1. The term ‘stiff-necked’ is a metaphor for unwillingness to be bridled or restrained as a horse or an ox might behave. It seems not altogether pejorative, but its usage is such when referring to one’s refusal to be subjected to legitimate authority or to be set in one’s ways in a manner considered uncivilized.
2. In Enoch’s vision, God’s judgment would come after 70 generations. In those days, a generation might have been thought to be a minimum 100 to 200 years, or a total of 7,000 to 14,000 trips around the sun. Perhaps since then we have made 6,000 trips.