Cultural Blessing – How May We Prosper?

As our nation becomes increasingly lawless, out of control, we can find wisdom in the ancient stories of Scripture. God’s people have often become culturally wrecked. We think our situation is unique, but God’s word gives us perspective as we see our own brethren, gone before, relearning Godly morals, law, and culture. The insights I found in Nehemiah, apply so directly to us, I knew they would bless your soul. Remember with me that some of God’s people had returned to Jerusalem after 70 years of exile under Babylonian captivity. The northern tribes had been carried away by the Assyrians, and never returned. The southern kingdom of Judah and Benjamin had spent 70 years in captivity, but had finally been granted, by God’s grace, a chance to go back to their homeland. There, they rebuilt the walls and temple in Jerusalem. In some ways everything had changed, but in other ways, nothing had.

After the walls were completed the nation had a huge celebration, days of worship, and days of hearing God’s law read and explained. In chapter 8:12 we read that “all the people went away to eat, to drink, to send portions and to celebrate a great festival, because they understood the words which had been made known to them.” As we read this narrative we come to understand that the chosen people had departed so far from God’s will and law that they had to have His law newly taught to them. They had little memory of anything the Lord had taught the nation hundreds of years before. In the next part of this same chapter we are told that, apparently, for the first time in their lives, they heard about the Feast of Booths established under Moses. After having the law read and explained, they immediately set up the feast and did what the law of Moses (the law of God) told them to do. Along with hearing came obedience.

It is common with our Christian brethren, when confronted with the specifics of God’s law, to dismiss it by stating that it was designed for a different culture. That was ‘Bible times’ and they say we live in a different culture now. The idea is that culture has changed and that righteous law has also changed to meet the needs of current culture. Culture is viewed as the dynamic that measures and establishes law. Hence, law is an ever-changing structure to be remodeled as needed for any current age or culture.

This concept stands in contradiction to what God says about His law. Everywhere we read about the law, Old Testament or New Testament, we find statements by the Biblical authors talking about the historical permanency of God’s law and word. 2 Kings 17:37 warns, “And the statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment, which He wrote for you, you shall observe to do forever…”  The Psalmist in Psalm 119:44 rejoices over the law exalting, “So I will keep your law continually, forever and forever”. When we look in the New Testament we discover Jesus proclaiming, “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill.” From this and other Scripture, particularly the book of Hebrews, we can learn that Jesus fulfilled (meaning that He was the completion of, the very reason for, aspects of what Scripture calls ceremonial law), but that the remainder of God’s law is to be retained forever; for instance, when the Old Testament calls for thieves to pay restitution, that civil law, is not abolished. It still stands as the law we ought to live by as a nation.

This idea that God’s law is out-dated, was given for a different culture, does not come out of Scripture. Rather, it derives from the minds of sinful men. It ignores the very fabric of Scripture, such as the story of renewal under Nehemiah. By the time the events of Nehemiah’s story take place, about 1,000 years of Israeli history had already transpired. During that millennium, the nation had gone from being wondering nomads in the desert, to being a conquering army under Joshua, to living for about 360 years under the governance of the Judges as God had commanded. They had eventually thrown out the Judges and set a king in place, which system had survived for around 500 more years. Finally, they had been forced to live in pagan Babylon for 70 years where virtually all memory of their former law and culture had been erased. They did not even know about their own holidays any more.

These were not the only changes within their nation. For instance, when the nation was formed gold and silver coins, the later staple of commerce, were not being used. Instead, we read only of the shekel of the temple, which describes a weight measure used in trading. Thus, the entire system of commerce had been transformed over that 1000 year time. Other major cultural changes included the creation of their first standing army under the kings. This transformed the nation by militarizing it. Taxes went from a low head tax under the Judges to heavy taxation under the kings. The amount of written Scripture had changed from nothing, to the law of Moses, to the entire Old Testament we have today. The amount of direct revelation through prophets had then ceased for 400 silent years as historians refer. World politics had changed from mostly small tribal people squabbling over issues to large nation-states advancing massive armies in pursuit of empires. At the time of Moses the nation had no national history. By the time of Nehemiah, the nation had 1,000 years of history that had effected change in their everyday thoughts and lives, in their whole manner of living.

We tend to think that Bible times were static, unchanging in regards to culture. This could not be further from the truth. Culture, then as now, was changing and bending and being transformed by pressures from surrounding nations, and from disobedience and sin from within. When Nehemiah and Ezra led the move to re-establish God’s law for Israel, they were working counter-culture. They were calling God’s chosen people back to the law of God. This was a time of cultural restoration. It is law that defines any culture in its larger aspects. Biblical culture is culture that accepts, defends, and obeys the written law of God in the Bible. It is that law that is the framework for the structure of Christian civilization. All other law distances us from the holy God who has given His law and word.

We live in a nation, an era, that has disposed of God’s law, and put in its place a different law of man. Our culture is dying under this false and immoral law. The Lord, however, is raising up an army of men and women who love His law more than their own lives. We are calling the culture, particularly the church, to return to God’s law and the Biblical culture defined by it. If we will not be defined by His law we will continue to falter and be over-thrown by the competing law and cultures of rebellious men. We have no other path back to God as a culture. We may evangelize, but if those who believe our message copy our cultural disobedience, then no ground is gained. They become hypocrites like us. The entire civilization continues to rotate downward. We are like, or could be like, the nation of Israel at the restoration under Nehemiah. We must reject the dwindling comforts of the current lawless (Biblically lawless) culture that has so entangled us. Evangelism is always good, but now, in this time, the church needs to repent and return to God and His law. We have to begin rebuilding our culture on His principles for society, or we will surely self destruct. There is no other choice for renewal. God’s kingdom does advance from victory to victory in history. May we all repent and start to recover that which will unfailingly succeed against this dying culture. The future belongs to Christ and His church.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach

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