In a world of growing skepticism and
atheism, there are many who mistrust Scripture and find fault with the God of
the Bible. As an example, in his book, The God Delusion, popular atheist
Richard Dawkins, using some of the most unflattering and blasphemous terms,
says this of God:
We should pray for Dawkins, and people
like him, that they would come to know the true
God and not an extremely warped version of Him.
One Example
Skeptics will pick passages out of the
Bible that they don’t like in order to try and “prove” that God is somehow
flawed. One such passage is Numbers
15:32-36:
32 – “Now while the sons of Israel
were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood [sticks] on the Sabbath day.
33 – Those who found him gathering
wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation;
34 – and they put him in custody
because it had not been declared what should be done to him.
35 – Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘The
man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with
stones outside the camp.’
36 – So all the congregation brought
him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the Lord had
commanded Moses.” (NASV)
Many skeptics and atheists will jump
on this passage and say, “See! Your God
is evil! You Christians worship an
unfair God. There is no reason for Him
to kill this poor man simply for gathering sticks!”
Is God Loving?
The argument above is a very common
one. But how should a Christian answer
such an objection? It may sound like the objector has a valid
point: Wouldn’t a warning have been
enough? Why would God take such drastic
measures against a seemingly innocent act when, according to the Bible, He is
supposed to be loving and forgiving?
First of all, God is indeed both
loving and forgiving. But you can’t put
God in a box and confine Him to only those two characteristics. The nature of God is a “total package” and there
is more to Him than just love and
forgiveness. You can’t just expect to see
those characteristics and never the
others. He is also sovereign, holy and
just (Colossians 1:16-17; Isaiah 6:3; Romans 3:26). He is a loving and forgiving Father, but He
is also to be honored and obeyed, even feared (Joshua 24:14), since He
must punish evil.
The truth is, God gave the command to
keep the Sabbath day long before this event in Numbers 15. All Israel knew about this commandment. That’s why those who witnessed the man
gathering sticks brought him before Moses in the first place (Numbers
15:33). So, it is not like he
was innocent because of ignorance (Exodus 20:8-11; 31:13-16; 35:1-3). He was certainly aware of the
commandment.
The second point is that if God tells
us to do (or not do) something, we must obey.
Mature Christians are fully aware, from experience, that they can trust
Him in every circumstance. We may not
always know why He wants us to do something, but God, being sovereign, is not
obligated to tell us why He gives every
command. But sometimes He does tell us, like in this very case. It is because the Sabbath is a special day of
rest (Deuteronomy 5:14). It is
holy and it stood for something. The
Israelites would learn an important lesson that day: Don’t trifle with God and
His commandments!
What It Points To
So, the question remains, why did God act so harshly toward this
man? I firmly believe that it was
because of what the Sabbath stood for, what it symbolized, what it pointed to. There
are many symbols that point to things we respect. For example, if someone spit on the American
flag (a symbol), many veterans who gave their blood, sweat and tears,
experienced loss of limbs, and have friends who even gave their lives for this
country - this act of spitting on the flag would be a serious insult to them.
If someone in the Old Testament would
have defiled the temple and its ceremonies, or profaned the covenant of circumcision
(both are symbols), this too, would have been an incredible insult to the Jews. The man gathering sticks violated the
Sabbath, which is a symbol of the believer’s rest. We must remember that this rest has been
purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ.
Ok, this blog is about Catholicism, so
where do Catholics fit into this article?
What does this topic have to do with what the Catholic Church
teaches? Well, the Sabbath rest could be
looked at in different ways, but I believe that the main thing it stood for was
a salvation / justification based on Jesus’ work on the cross, and not on our
own work mixed with it. This is a
stinging reminder that trusting in your works of righteousness (Titus
3:5) to contribute in any way toward your justification, as the
Catholic Church teaches, will find you in the Lake of Fire (Revelation
20:15).
The man gathering sticks on the
Sabbath snubbed his nose at what would become the greatest and most important
event in the history of mankind… Calvary.
The Sabbath pointed to the cross, therefore, in essence, he was saying,
“No thank you, Jesus. My work is
sufficient to save me, and I don’t need your rest!”
Rest from the Merit of Our Works
Jesus promised rest to His followers:
Come to Me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30 - NASV)
But what kind of rest does Jesus give?
Is the “rest” that He gives us ONLY the
rest we will have in Heaven, or does it include a rest from one’s works today? Must we try to live up to the Law so that we
can merit our way to Heaven?
The continual answer from Scripture is
no, we cannot live up to the
Law. No one can. To make it to Heaven, we must put our
absolute trust in Jesus’ work alone. Our works will never earn eternal life, nor do they contribute to our
justification. As we have said many
times on this blog, the right intent in doing good works is not TO BE saved by
them, but we do them because WE ARE saved (Ephesians 2:10).
Conclusion
I believe that two basic lessons can
be learned here. First, there is a great
need for Christians to learn to respectfully, but adequately, address questions
that atheists and skeptics will ask us, like the ones at the beginning of this
article. To be fair, I have in the past
seen some Catholics successfully answer some of the deep questions from
skeptics. Kudos to them.
The second lesson is that Catholics,
because of their training and their devotion to “Mother Church,” are unable to
render a consistent biblical answer
on the role of works in salvation. They
are guilty of basically the same thing as the man in Numbers 15 who despised
the true meaning of the Sabbath and violated the intent of this holy rest. The
thing that this man had done was a special insult to Jesus, perhaps the ultimate insult. He failed to honor that to which it pointed. We can be assured that his punishment was
just.
