Absalom was the pride of Israel. He had it all, good looks and good locks,
when he cut his hair the weight of what was cut was five pounds. He had perfect kids, everything. Did you notice his daughter’s name? Tamar,
the name of his sister who was defiled by their brother Amnon. David allowed him back into the land but not
into the king’s house. What Israelite
who knew the story of Amnon and Tamar, and it seems likely that Absalom would
have made certain that everyone knew why he had his brother killed, could have
held that murder against him? More than
likely, it made him a good man in their eyes to have avenged his sister in this
way. Absalom is man who will not be
denied. He summons Joab twice without response
and finally he finds a way to get his attention, setting Joab’s field on
fire. This gets him his audience with
the king who kisses him and restores him as a son. His impetuous nature paid off.
Interestingly, Jesus’ answer regarding the commandments
leaves off the first few doesn’t it? He doesn’t talk about the commands that
relate to God, only those to do with other people. The young man can say that he has kept these
but Jesus will show what he “lacks”, setting God first. The man comes seeking to inherit eternal life
but he is unwilling to relinquish his earthly inheritance for the eternal
one. He is tied to his money in such a
way that he cannot lay it aside at Jesus’ command in order to receive what he
says he wants. There are things in all
our lives that keep us from having the best of and from the Lord, things that
we must have rather than secondary things.
This is a perfect, living example of what Jesus meant in telling us to
seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. The man seeks the kingdom but seeks it
secondarily. We can only hope that he
re-evaluated this decision after the resurrection.
The charge against Paul made by the zealous Jewish converts in
Jerusalem was that Paul was teaching Jews to forsake the law of Moses. The Jerusalem council had ruled that Gentiles
were not bound by the law except in certain matters but it wasn’t clear what
that meant for Jewish believers in Jesus. Paul did not, himself, maintain
strict observance to the ceremonial law among Gentiles, he ate with them in
their homes. There are two kinds of law
in general, ceremonial law, that which relates to the temple worship, and moral
law. Nowhere does Paul lessen the moral
strictures of the law but with respect to the ceremonial law, Paul set the
proclamation of the Gospel first, the ceremonial law of the temple was null in
his eyes because Jesus had supplanted the temple. He is, however, talked into taking men under
vows to the temple to complete their vow in order to show that he has value for
such things that the Jews might see and their objections be dropped. Good luck with that.
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