Waiting on the Urim and the Thumim

Suggested Reading: Ezra 2:1,55-63, or Ezra 2:1-63

So, I was reading through one of those passages. You know, one of those passages where the entire chapter (or entire group of chapters) is a list of names. "So and so begat so and so" or "The leaders of the people were So On and So Forth and So Good and So Keep Going." The kind of passage where you are tempted to skip it and instead sit back and start moving through the list hoping something worthwhile jumps out at you but knowing you are likely to be too bored to see it if it does. Please tell me I'm not alone on those passages.

Anyway, the passage I was reading was from Ezra and it was an account of all of the Israelites that King Cyrus sent back from captivity so that they could rebuild the house of God. In this passage, the priests encounter an interesting problem. Some of the returning priests could not find documentation that they actually belonged to the family of priests, and so "The governor ordered them not to eat the most holy things until there was a priest who could consult the Urim and the Thumim." (Ezra 2:63 HCSB)

The Urim and the Thumim were a way that God had given the Israelites to ask God yes/no questions. They were, most likely, a pair of stones which were both black on one side and white on the other, and the priest would ask God the question and drop or toss the stones. If they both came up one color the answer was "yes," if they both came up the other color, the answer was "no," and if they came up mixed it was God's way of saying that He wasn't going to answer the question. We think. (Most of that is educated speculation). But the Urim and Thumim aren't really important in this passage.  What is important is that these priests had to wait to eat from the sacrificial food until God could be consulted to confirm their status as priests.

See, we live in a world where we never want to hurt anyone's feelings and we go out of our way to include everyone in everything. But God had set up the priesthood as something different, as something holy, as something that was supposed to be set apart. Not just anyone could be a priest. A priest could only be a Levite and he could only be a Levite from a particular lineage. For someone outside the tribe or outside that lineage to serve as a priest would invalidate and defile the sacrifices being brought. The people who returned to Jerusalem from their time in exile were not taking any chances that they could lose the blessing of God in their lives because of uncertainty about whether these people should actually be serving as priests. They wanted to make certain that their acts of worship were absolutely pure.

The ethic of these returning peoples stands in stark contrast to our worship ethic today. How often is our worship less than pure because we don't want to take the time to do things right? How often do we miss out on the blessing of God because we don't make sure that what we offer is what God actually wants from us? How often do we treat the worship of God as less than an act of pure and holy devotion because of our impatience? We skimp on prayer time because we could be off doing other things. We stop paying attention in church because the hands on the clock are ticking past noon. We skip over having a time of worship on Christmas day in order to gratify our desire to open presents as quickly as possible. We miss out on entire chapters during our quiet time because we are too busy thinking about all we have to do, and our eyes skim over the words of scripture without ever absorbing them.

Today, let's make sure that we take the worship of a holy God seriously enough to get things right. Let's not do things the wrong way just because we are afraid someone might be offended. Let's not rush through things we should pray through thoroughly just because it is more convenient. Like those returning to Jerusalem, let's do things the right way, no matter how inconvenient or how great the risk is to our feelings. 

Saving a Town from Loaded Dice

Suggested Reading: Proverbs 16:22-33

Several years ago, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was in a movie called Walking Tall, based on the true story of a man whose town had been taken over by a drug ring and who got himself elected Sheriff to clean up the town. In the movie, The Rock's problems began when a friend invited him to a casino. While he was there, he noticed that one of the men running the games was using a pair of loaded dice. When he attempted to call the dealer on the carpet, the dealer denied it but the Rock took the loaded dice from him and told every one to place their bets because the dice were going to come up seven. Without even looking, he tossed the dice down and the place erupted as everyone who had listened to him and placed bets won. The Rock knew that the roll of the dice was not random and he bet on it.

For people living in Old Testament times, the idea that the roll of the dice might be random was a completely foreign concept. Proverbs 16:33 reads, "We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall" (NLT). Numerous other places throughout the Proverbs echo similar themes. The Urim and Thumim, God's way of answering yes/no questions through the priests, relied on the same concept. For the ancient Israelites, nothing was truly random. The Lord was in control of everything. Even during the Early Church era, the disciples cast lots to determine God's will for Judas Iscariot's replacement among the twelve apostles

Now, I'm not necessarily saying we should return to casting lots to make decisions. After all, shortly after choosing that replacement apostle, the Holy Spirit fell on the believers and we now have access to God's Spirit to help us with decisions. But I do think we could stand to learn a lot from these biblical characters when it comes to how we view "randomness." We must remember that nothing is truly random when God is in control of even how the dice tumble and which side of a coin lands facing up. That person setting across from you at the restaurant is there for a reason. Your neighbor was placed there by God. That light you caught on the way to work delayed you with purpose. God is a master weaver and has spun the threads of our lives with intricate detail and design.

We must learn to watch for God's hand in the day to day "randomness" of our lives. We must keep our eyes open for those hurting people God brings across our path, for the Gospel-hungry souls we "bump into" throughout the day, for those brothers and sisters God wants to match us up with for the work of the Kingdom. The dice of our lives are loaded and we must bet on them with the way we live.