Genesis 32

¹ Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. ² And when Jacob saw them he said, “This is God’s camp!” So he called the name of that place Mahanaim. ³ And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, ⁴ instructing them, “Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. ⁵ I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.’”⁶ And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and there are four hundred men with him.” ⁷ Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, ⁸ thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape.” ⁹ And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’¹⁰ I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. ¹¹ Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. ¹² But you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’” ¹³ So he stayed there that night, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau, ¹⁴ two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, ¹⁵ thirty milking camels and their calves, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. ¹⁶ These he handed over to his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove.” ¹⁷ He instructed the first, “When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?’ ¹⁸ then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a present sent to my lord Esau. And moreover, he is behind us.’” ¹⁹ He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, “You shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him, ²⁰ and you shall say, ‘Moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us.’” For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.” ²¹ So the present passed on ahead of him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp. ²² The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 

I would like for us to consider the prayer of distress, that prayer that arises in moments of great fear, danger, and uncertainty. Dan Crawford has told the amazing story of Cindy Hartman and the power of prayer when she found herself in a dangerous situation.

            An Associated Press article showed a yes answer for Cindy Hartman’s prayer when she encountered a pistol-toting burglar in her home. Hartman, of Conway, Arkansas, said the burglar confronted her when she came in to answer the phone. He ripped the cord out of the wall and ordered her into a cramped bedroom closet. Then she dropped to her knees.

            “I asked if I could pray for him,” she said.

            Hartman said the man apologized, used a shirt to wipe his fingerprints

from the gun, and he even dropped to his knees to join Hartman in prayer. Then he yelled to a woman in a pickup truck, “We’ve got to unload all of this and return it. This is a Christian family. We can’t do this to them.”[1]

Fascinating. This is not to say, of course, that every prayer of distress results in the alleviation of danger. Sometimes it does not. But every prayer is heard and every prayer of distress is vitally important for the child of God.

Herbert Lockyer has concluded that “[e]xclusive of the Psalms, which form a prayer-book on their own, the Bible records no fewer than 650 definite prayers, of which no less than 450 have recorded answers.”[2] The Bible is a prayer-saturated book. So should our lives be as well. And, in times of danger and fear, the prayer of distress is a powerful source of comfort but, more than that, a powerful statement about who we are as God’s children and who God is as our God.

Jacob prays a prayer of distress in Genesis 32 and, in so doing, offers us a model for how to pray as well.

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Matthew 8

¹⁴ And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever. ¹⁵ He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him. ¹⁶ That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. ¹⁷ This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”

One of the coolest and most moving archaeological discoveries in Israel in recent times is the discovery of Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum, excavations of which began in 1968.

Roni recently pulled out her photo album from her last trip to Israel (she has been twice) and showed me what it looks like. The Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary offers some fascinating information about this site.

The majority of scholars now believe that excavations undertaken in 1968 have basically confirmed the authenticity of this claim [i.e., that this is Peter’s house].

            The building was used as a typical home for an extended family from approximately 63 B.C. until A.D. 50. Peter and Andrew apparently moved the family fishing business from Bethsaida to Capernaum and established their residence in this house, large enough for an extended family. Mark tells us it was the home of both Peter and Andrew (cf. Mark 1:29).

            During the second half of the first century A.D. the use of the house changed. Domestic pottery ceased to be used and the walls of the large center room were plastered—quite unusual for the region except for where groups of people gathered. Graffiti that mention Jesus as “Lord” and “Christ” in Greek were found. These pieces of evidence indicate that during this time the house became a center of Christian worship.

            The house-church continued in existence for nearly three hundred years, as is evidenced from over a hundred Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, Latin, and Hebrew graffiti scratched on the plastered walls, along with numerous forms of crosses, a boat, and other letters. Among the graffiti are at least two possible occurrences of Peter’s name.

And later:

Pottery shards, oil lamps, and coins discovered in the ruins date back to the first century, along with artifacts that included several fishhooks in the earliest layers of the floor.

The commentary also quotes Princeton New Testament scholar James Charlesworth as saying, “The discovery is virtually unbelievable and sensational. Despite the sensational nature of the find, learned archaeologists and historians have slowly come to the same conclusion.”[1]

I love stuff like this, when major finds have so much evidence that they earn the acceptance of the oftentimes very skeptical field of archaeologists and historians. If Charlesworth finds the discovery of this house to be “virtually unbelievable and sensational,” I bet he must find what happened in this house to be off the charts! It is here, in the home of Peter and Andrew, that Jesus’ next miracle takes place.

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There is a lot going on in Stephen Haynes’ The Battle for Bonhoeffer. As a blow against Bonhoeffer hagiography it is very effective, showing how Bonhoeffer was, like most people, complex, ever-evolving, and a person who sometimes fell quite short of his own ideals. This book will go a long way toward demolishing overly-simplistic and romantic depictions of Bonhoeffer while increasing the reader’s appreciation for Bonhoeffer in many ways as it shows that Bonhoeffer’s acts of great courage truly were committed by a real, flesh-and-blood, flawed human being. I appreciated the book’s assault on the kind of hagiography in which Christians across the spectrum oftentimes indulge when it comes to Bonhoeffer. (I have been guilty of the same!)

As an evaluation of the Bonhoeffer industry in the United States the book is also effective. Haynes does a good job of demonstrating how Bonhoeffer truly is a phenomenon in the United States by chronicling the various books, movies, plays, and other offerings that show no sign of slowing down. I really was not quite aware of just how big this phenomenon is, though I did know it existed and seemed to have picked up steam since the Metaxas biography.

As a take-down of Eric Metaxas and his Bonhoeffer biography, Haynes’ book is devastating. I must say that I have grown increasingly wary of Metaxas’ book even though I wrote, I now believe, a naive review of it nine years ago when I first read it. Metaxas’ biography of Bonhoeffer is very well-written and I think I was a bit caught up in it. I suspect one reason for this was I had spotted and still do spot liberal appropriations of Bonhoeffer that I think are absurd and appreciated that Metaxas’ was hitting back against such. But I am not trying to excuse my review. I see it now as too optimistic to say the least. I am leaving my review of it up but have added a caveat to it concerning my own changing views on the book.

Haynes does a masterful job of demonstrating what anybody who follows Metaxas on Twitter (as I did before I got off of Twitter) knows: that for a champion of Bonhoeffer Metaxas holds some shockingly non-Bonhoefferian views. I shan’t go into them now. Feel free to follow Metaxas then read Bonhoeffer. It should be evident pretty quickly. Anyway, yes, following Metaxas on Twitter will make one, retroactively, very cautious and curious about his book and will, upon further reflection and review (along with listening to Bonhoeffer scholars), lead one to be much less inclined to agree with Metaxas’ recasting of Bonhoeffer as essentially an American Evangelical in his sympathies.

That being said, one may (a) recoil at some of the musings of the post-Bonhoeffer-biography-Metaxas and (b) agree that the book is indeed hagiographic (contra my own regrettable assertion to the contrary when I first read and reviewed it) and yet (c) not necessarily go as far as Haynes goes in condemning the Metaxas book. I personally now believe, the more I read Bonhoeffer himself, that he is very difficult to categorize. I feel that Haynes, in his efforts to lampoon the Evangelical appropriation of Bonhoeffer, at points overstates his case, even though, as I said, his critique is devastating overall. (Does that make sense?). For example, while Haynes references a number of times, and seemingly dismissively, Evangelical appreciation for Bonhoeffer’s condemnation of abortion in his Ethics, he never actually explains why Evangelical appreciation of this aspect of Bonhoeffer’s thought and application of it to the modern scene is necessarily misguided or represents the same kind of crass appropriation of Bonhoeffer by Evangelicals in other areas. (By the way, I have long found the notes on Bonhoeffer’s abortion section in the Fortress Press English critical edition to be laughable.) What Bonhoeffer says about abortion in Ethics is damning indeed and one may argue that Evangelicals do read him rightly on this point while conceding that Evangelicals have read him wrongly on others. The efforts of more left-leaning Bonhoeffer scholars to argue that we must be careful not to draw any substantive equivalency between Bonhoeffer’s views of abortion in Ethics and the modern abortion scene ring, in my opinion, hollow and betray a tendency on the left to shape Bonhoeffer to their desired ends just as Evangelicals have been guilty of doing in other ways. (I do note that Haynes is indeed aware of the reality of the liberal appropriation of Bonhoeffer, and acknowledges this in his book.) But enough about all that.

This seems like a good way to segue: As an evaluation of how both the theological/ecclesiological left and right claim Bonhoeffer, Haynes evidence is helpful, though it is weighted very very heavily against the right’s baptizing of Bonhoeffer with much less (I do not say “no”) attention given to the left’s tendencies to do this. (And I consider the pass and even legitimacy that Haynes grants to Marsh’s theories about Bonhoeffer’s alleged homosexuality to be inconsistent. He admits that this view is held by a minority of Bonhoeffer scholars even as he uses it to swipe at Evangelical employment of Bonhoeffer for the cause of traditional marriage. This seemed strange to me.) To be clear, Haynes, a former Evangelical, for all of his admirable efforts to remain balanced, cannot help but grind some axes along the way.

As a commentary on the modern American political situation, the book is predictable though helpful to a point. One may largely agree with Haynes (I do) without completely agreeing with Haynes (I do not). One may find oneself saying (as I did), “True enough. Good point. Of course, on the left…” etc. etc. etc. I do not say this to relative and dismiss his argument. I essentially agree with the thrust of his argument. Bonhoeffer, I rather expect, would indeed have much to say about our President. How can one deny this? But if one honestly thinks, after reading Bonhoeffer, that he would not also be horrified by certain emphases on the left, one has done violence to the Bonhoeffer legacy from the other side. (Take a look, for instance, at Bonhoeffer’s letters to friends concerning the vacuousness of the liberal theological pursuits at Union when he was in America.)

It’s an interesting, if sometimes irritating book. I don’t regret reading it, though I did chafe a bit under the book’s indecision (again, it seemed to me) about what it wanted to be and also against some of the imbalances in it. Of course, in the book’s final section, Haynes makes it clear that his goal is not to be a dispassionate observer. He has a point to make, and he’s free to make it. I appreciate much of the point he made. Other aspects I found short-sighted.

Overall, I think the book is worth reading. See what you think.

Matthew 8

⁵ When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, ⁶ “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” ⁷ And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” ⁸ But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹ For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” ¹⁰ When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. ¹¹ I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, ¹² while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ¹³ And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

The idea of somebody healing somebody else from a distance is a fascinating idea, and not one without historical attestation. For instance, Walter Wilson has noted that “the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana…was credited with a miracle that amounted to performing an exorcism through the mail” when “[u]pon hearing the appeal of a woman to help her possessed son, he produced a threatening letter, instructing her to deliver it to the demon in question.”[1]

Well! That is something sure enough. An exorcism through the mail! Here is another alleged instance:

In b. Ber. 34b is an account of a miracle associated with a mid-first-century Palestinian, Hanina ben Dosa:

Our rabbis say, once upon a time Rabban Gamaliel’s son got sick. He sent two men of learning to Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa to beg him mercy from God concerning him. He saw them coming and went to a room upstairs and asked mercy from God concerning him. When he had come back down he said to them, “Go, the fever has left him.”…They sat down and wrote and determined exactly the moment he said this, and when they came back to Rabban Gamaliel he said to them, “By the temple service! You are neither too early nor too late but this is what happened: in that moment the fever left him and he asked for water!”[2]

In this instance, Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa allegedly healed Rabbi Gamaliel’s son from a distance. What are we to make of these claims? It is not for us to say. Surely God is a healing God and may do so in unusual ways. We do know this: Jesus once healed a person from a distance. This physical miracle is fascinating and illuminating, to be sure, but what makes this account so much more interesting are the social and political dynamics that were also at play and the way that Jesus’ character and love and power are further demonstrated against this backdrop.

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Just a head’s up that our favorite singing monk has a new album out containing songs written during quarantine. Ordering and further information can be found here.

Matthew 8

¹ When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. ² And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” ³ And Jesusstretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. ⁴ And Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

Matthew 8:1-4 records one of the truly beautiful healing episodes in the New Testament. Here, Jesus heals a leper, a person accustomed to being ostracized and kept at a distance from society. In so doing, Jesus demonstrated not only the wideness of His love for lost humanity but also His sovereign power.

If you have been following this series you might be curious why I have jumped from the last verse of Matthew 4 to the first verse of Matthew 8. This is because Matthew 5-7 is the Sermon on the Mount and from Sunday, January 27 to Sunday, October 6, 2013, I preached a 33-part sermon series through these chapters. While I would very much like to return to the Sermon on the Mount and will certainly do so again, at this point I will simply refer you to that earlier series and we will press on beginning in Matthew 8.

To understand what is happening in Matthew 8 it will be important to understand what the Bible is talking about when it refers to lepers or leprosy. The Anchor Bible Dictionary sets the stage and lays out the issues well.

A disease in humans (also known as Hansen’s disease) caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium leprae. This term “leprosy” is commonly used (more for convenience than medical accuracy) as a translation of Hebrew sara’at in the OT and Gk lepra in the NT. Scholars now generally agree that OT sara’at is not leprosy nor does it include it and that NT lepra, if it refers at all to leprosy, does so only as one among many skin conditions…There is some evidence, however, suggesting that though the NT term leprafollowed OT tradition concerning sara’at, true leprosy could have been included under the term lepra. The best historical reconstruction of the spread of leprosy argues that the disease appeared in the Near East about 300 B.C.E. (at this time the Greek physicians in Alexandria became familiar with the disease) and began to spread to Italy, for example, just two centuries later. This allows the possibility that the disease existed in Palestine shortly before the time of Jesus. Some Greek writers, too, confused the beginning stages of leprosy with other skin diseases called lepra. This shows that people at the time of the NT could have included leprosy under the term lepra…[1]

Let us summarize like this: in the Old Testament leprosy is used to refer to a wide range of skin diseases and is not directly analogous to the what we call Hansen’s Disease (i.e., leprosy) today. In the New Testament, the same is true to an extent, but the fact that leprosy as we know it appeared around 300 BC means that it is possible that what is meant by the term in the New Testament might refer to what we mean when we say leprosy today. All of this interesting and helpful, but, truth be told, one wonders if it really matters for how lepers were treated in the Old and New Testament, regardless of the exact nature of their skin diseases. Whatever specifically was meant by the term, it clearly referred to unsightly skin diseases that were frightening to people, considered to be contagious, and that led communities to distance themselves from those who suffered from these maladies. In other words, to be a leper was to be alone and shamed because of one’s skin disease, regardless of the exact nature of that disease. The Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary lays out nicely what this social ostracization looked like.

            All those with leprosy were required to be examined by the priest, who after examination could pronounce a person clean or unclean (Lev. 13:22ff.). If found leprous, the diseased individual was to be isolated from the rest of the community, required to wear torn clothes, cover the lower part of his or her face, and cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” (Lev. 13:45-46; Num. 5:2-4). The rabbinic tractate Nega’imdistinguishes two categories of two types each of leprosy: the Bright Spot, which is bright-white like snow, the second shade of which is the white like the lime of the temple; the Rising, which is white like the skin in an egg, the second shade of which is the white like white wool…[2]

Imagine living with this stigma, this isolation, this shame. Imagine what it would have been like to yearn for community, for a friend, for love, and to know you would not have it. This is the position in which the leper of Matthew 8 found himself, and this is the leper through whom Jesus decided to demonstrate His great love and power.

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Genesis 29

¹⁹ Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” ²⁰ So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. ²¹ Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” ²² So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. ²³ But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. ²⁴ (Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her servant.) ²⁵ And in the morning, behold, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” ²⁶ Laban said, “It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.²⁷ Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” ²⁸ Jacob did so, and completed her week. Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. ²⁹ (Laban gave his female servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her servant.) ³⁰ So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years. ³¹ When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. ³² And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, “Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.” ³³ She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon. ³⁴ Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi. ³⁵ And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.

Genesis 30

¹ When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!” ² Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” ³ Then she said, “Here is my servant Bilhah; go in to her, so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even I may have childrenthrough her.” ⁴ So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went in to her. ⁵ And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. ⁶ Then Rachel said, “God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore she called his name Dan. ⁷ Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. ⁸ Then Rachel said, “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed.” So she called his name Naphtali. ⁹ When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. ¹⁰ Then Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. ¹¹ And Leah said, “Good fortune has come!” so she called his name Gad.  ¹² Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. ¹³ And Leah said, “Happy am I! For women have called me happy.” So she called his name Asher. ¹⁴ In the days of wheat harvest Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” ¹⁵ But she said to her, “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?” Rachel said, “Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.”¹⁶ When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come in to me, for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” So he lay with her that night. ¹⁷ And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. ¹⁸ Leah said, “God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband.” So she called his name Issachar. ¹⁹ And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son. ²⁰ Then Leah said, “God has endowed me with a good endowment; now my husband will honor me, because I have borne him six sons.” So she called his name Zebulun. ²¹ Afterward she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah. ²² Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. ²³ She conceived and bore a son and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” ²⁴ And she called his name Joseph, saying, “May the Lord add to me another son!”

We continue with our strange love story, this story that is more than just a story. It is more than just a story because it is also a foretelling, a shadowy depiction of the love that would arrive in Jesus in full splendor and glory. As such, this story of Jacob and Rachel (and, as we will see, Leah), needs to be read on two levels: the lower level—a fascinating, interesting, and strange story about a man who wanted to marry a woman and the upper level—a picture, oftentimes pale and muddled and marred by human fallenness, of the love of God in Christ.

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Did you know that starting with the March 15th Sunday morning service & the March 25th Wednesday evening service, Sunday & Wednesday videos can now be accessed through the Central Baptist Church NLR app and website? All future sermons posts there will include a video link as well. Check it out!