In The Beginning

Having recently moved to a new area, we found a nice little church to attend.  It stands in the village of South Cadbury, in Somerset, and behind the church is a fortified hill that is considered to be the most likely situation of King Arthur’s legendary Camelot – indeed, not far away we have the river Cam, and another village called Queen Camel, both not far distant from Glastonbury.  Eminent archaeologists, including Dr Raleigh Radford, took part in detailed excavations of the site back in the 1960/70’s and established that there was indeed an Iron Age fortification.  In fact, if you make your way to the top of the hill, you can walk around the ridge, a good vantage point, and get a fantastic view all the way around – easily on a par with the view from Glastonbury Tor.  And of course, you can clearly see the Tor from Cadbury Hill!

But I digress, so let us get back to the little church, nestled on the side of Cadbury Hill.  We attended a Communion Service, made all the nicer for using the original Book of Common Prayer.  A lovely service – however… 

The Vicar, a semi-retired white haired gentleman with the hint of a white wispy beard, who would have been a good candidate for the role of ‘Merlin’, gave his sermon.  He seemed a very nice and sincere man, and it is not my desire to criticise him, but I was quite taken aback at his understanding – or apparent lack of it – of the Old Testament.

His main theme was that God is Love, and he reminded us that in the New Testament we are told by Our Lord Jesus Christ that; “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great Commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (See Matt 22 v 37 -40).

There is nothing wrong with that!  If we love the Lord God, and we love our neighbours, as so instructed, then we would naturally take Almighty God’s good advice in His other Commandments because we would wish to please the Lord, and to do our best for our friends and neighbours.  What a shame that we have erred and strayed from this!

But concerning the Old Testament, our Reverend friend indicated that the Israelites had completely misunderstood Almighty God, because they often made out that if they lost a battle, or had problems in their land,  it was because they had turned away from the Lord, and He was punishing them.  In our Reverend friend’s opinion this was not so at all….!

And concerning Abraham – whom God chose to be the man through whom He would create a special people for Himself – the Rev seemed to think that in being prepared to sacrifice his promised son, Isaac to the Lord God, Abraham was in error!  God didn’t want human sacrifices.   Actually, as quoted above, the Lord asked Abraham to do so   It was of course a test of his faith, and the Lord sent an angel, and supplied a ram trapped in the thicket to be sacrificed in his place, to stop Abraham carrying out this request.  But the important thing was that this whole scenario set the scene for the ultimate Gift of God to mankind – that of the willing sacrifice of His Own dear Son, Jesus Christ.

Sadly, our Reverend friend did not seem to understand this!  But you see, many Christians do not like or understand the Old Testament.  They think the God of the ‘Old’ was violent and angry. And as for Genesis, well they either ignore it, or spiritualise it, even though this is the beginning of the whole story.

Without knowledge of the beginning, it is very difficult to grasp the rest of what the Bible tells us.  Our Lord Jesus Christ – Who often made reference to various parts of the Old Testament (which was the ‘Bible’ at that time) – is the Beginning and the End.  Alpha and Omega!  He is also everything in between.

I well remember at a British Israel conference a few years ago, Pastor Ken Kemble gave a wonderful sermon on how every part of the Bible is about Jesus Christ.  He mentioned each Book and stated its reference to Our Lord.  It was very powerful, and very true.

On the other hand, an ex-work colleague who was a nominal catholic referred to the Bible as; ‘That old book of fairy tales…’.  I said to her, ‘I thought you were religious. ‘Oh well yes, I am..’ she replied. (In what way, I wondered…).

Jesus Christ came into this world to save us from Sin.  People with no understanding will consider this is only just our daily sins, and our Church leaders in many cases tell us the Laws of God are null and void.  The truth is that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God the first – original – sin occurred, and the price of that sin was death.  “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

After that event, mankind has dwelt in a fallen state ever since, subject to death.  Jesus Christ has by His great sacrifice taken away the curse of the law – the curse being death.  This curse came upon us all at that first sin. That is why in the Old Testament there had to be animal blood sacrifices – a temporary reprieve – until Our Lord’s one off and forever sacrifice His pure, innocent, blood.  Through Him we are freed from the price of sin and given the hope of eternal life with Him.  But ONLY through HIM!  The scenario with Abraham and Isaac was a prophetic shadow of what was to come, as well as a test of Abraham’s faith.

Hopefully our Reverend friend is one of a minority of church officials who consider that Abraham ‘misunderstood’ Almighty God’s request.  Indeed, Abraham is known as the friend of God – and may it be the desire of us all, to likewise be a friend of God.