After Paul had left Titus in Crete to complete a very necessary task in the churches Titus found that there was no little discouragement and some opposition to the work. Paul therefore wrote a letter to him in which he included clear instructions and warnings. When we read the letter it is obvious that Paul intended it not just for Titus but also for the churches with whom Titus was working. He wanted them to know that the work Titus had been given to do had been given with apostolic authority and therefore from the Lord himself. Whether you accept that latter point or not is neither here nor there, as we shall see in another instance shortly, it was enough that Titus had apostolic authority for his work. Paul had some difficult things to say to Titus, and in order to avoid any charge of xenophobia (at least so I infer), he enlists one of the Cretans’ own poets to make a point that would have been obvious to anyone, and was probably the root cause of the difficulties and discouragements that Titus faced when he first began. Coco shall not quote it here, you, dear reader, may easily look it up. In itself it and what it says are not relevant to what Coco is going to say here, but the importance of the manner of its use should not be overlooked.
There is much division in this world, and particularly in recent weeks, one of those divisions has been brought, in a tangible and most brutal way, to the surface. The astonishment, and perhaps irony, is that whilst part of it is called anti-semitism, the division is between two semitic peoples, the peoples who now inhabit the land of Philistia and the inheritors of Canaan. A similar division between the descendants of Ham and of Shem resulted in the well-known encounter of the then future king, David with the giant of Gath, Goliath. It was also the reason that an older and proven warrior David was not permitted to march with the armies of the Philistines against the armies of Saul, the king of Israel.
Some five hundred years later the prophet Jeremiah was raised up in Israel and pronounced some words which in part at least bear witness to the cause of something of what we see in the world today and which suggests perhaps reasons for the persistence of this attitude for the past two and a half thousand years:
I shall scatter you to the nations….and you shall become a byword to be spoken against.
Now had Coco have said these words, even though clearly Coco would not be able to put them into effect, then you could rightly accuse him of antisemitism, in the narrow sense of being anti-Jew, for they were spoken primarily against the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, though there were people of the other ten tribes mixed in among them, and the charge may stick if you could also prove intent to stir up hatred, except that the words do not indicate any attempt to stir up hatred at all if you read them carefully. If hatred is found in the people towards those who were exiled among them, the cause is not the scattering, nor the utterance of the words but rather it derives from the hearts of those to which the people were scattered, not from the mouth of the utterer of the words.
But Coco did not say these things, they were spoken the one of Israel’s own prophets, hence my reference above to Titus’s work among the Cretans, and Jeremiah was merely reporting what the Jehovah had said to him. You will find them in the 25th chapter of Jeremiah. Again, whether you accept the latter point is neither here nor there, it was a Jewish prophet who spoke those words against his own people.
There will be some who would say that this simply proves how bad the OT religion was, but no, if you understand it incorrectly then yes, but read this carefully. The Lord is simply setting out what the inevitable consequences will be. This is hinted in the Jonah’s account of his attempt to escape his assignment to Nineveh. During the storm the sailors berated Jonah for not calling upon his god to save them. When the Jews were scattered to the nations, of course the nations would understand that they had been scattered because they had been unfaithful to their god. That would be the inevitable consequence for in any animistic religion if you did not appease your gods then bad things will happen to you, and the only reason for not appeasing them is that you are yourself a bad person. There is a truth hidden in this partial mis-understanding but we shall not explore that here. The nations, in their own minds and understanding of the way the world worked, apart from any possibility of the presence of xenophobia, would come to the conclusion that these people, who had betrayed their own god, are to be a byword to be spoken against. And that attitude would be entirely in line with their own moral code.
We need to read on in Jeremiah to understand more fully what is happening. The nations, whilst thinking they were right, were actually wrong. The attitudes that would grow up among them would be bad attitudes. The religion of the OT says exactly that: the stranger within your gates shall be as one of you. Moses made that very clear in every way. The stranger would be permitted even to take part in the Passover feast. The religion of the God of Israel is to benefit the whole world not just one nation.
As we read on we find that though the attitude adopted by the nations is entirely predictably, the Lord is not pleased with it. At the end of the 26th chapter of Jeremiah we read:
He shall judge
The prophet Habakkuk is troubled in much the same way by the wicked actions of wicked men, who are destroying the innocent in the most violent of ways they could imagine. Again however the Lord shows him that the actions of these men, though necessary, shall not go unpunished. They shall give an account of what they do. Notice the word necessary. It was necessary that the people be scattered in Jeremiah’s day. It was necessary that the Chaldeans build an empire in Habakkuk’s day. Later it was necessary that Greece and Rome build their empires but once the purpose of each had been accomplished in the providence of God, they gave way the next.
We have in our day seen actions undertaken by men against men which, from whatever perspective you look, are wicked. We can also, from all perspectives see necessary reasons, which may be contradictory reasons, for the actions taken, just as the pagan nations of Jeremiah’s day would reach their conclusions concerning the scattered people. We may be, and we must in some respects be, incorrect in our conclusions for we do not see everything that takes, and has taken, place, nor do we see into the hearts of the men who initiated or performed the actions.
We know this however, that those who take part in this wickedness shall be brought to account. Both Jeremiah and Habakkuk, having had to announce a righteous judgement on the nation of Israel, were then shown that the executors of that judgement would themselves be held to account for the wicked things that they did as they executed that judgement.
It is beyond our understanding how this will be done, but it shall, in the words, which we sing to the Londonderry Air (perhaps Coco should say Derry Air) written by William Young Fullerton (1857-1932)):
I cannot tell how he will win the nations,
How he will claim his earthly heritage,
How satisfy the needs and aspirations
Of east and west, of sinner and of sage.
But we know this, Peter saw an even greater wicked act than ever Jeremiah or Habakkuk saw and reported it in these terms, echoing words that Joseph had spoken to his brothers some twenty five hundred years earlier:
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it … Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ … Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.
This Jesus whom you with wicked hands handed over to the Gentiles, God has raised from the dead, and now commands you to repent. God intended their wicked act for good. It was necessary that this wicked act take place, just as we mentioned earlier of others though the reasons for the necessity are partially obscured from our view, but if he can turn the most wicked of acts for good, what will he not do for the good of his people?