Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:
Genesis 12:10 “There was famine in the land.”
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
I read in Jewish literature an interesting twist to this verse in Genesis 12:10. The word for “there was” (yehi) can also be rendered “and he was becoming.” Of course we do not translate it that way because it does not make much sense to say; “He was becoming a famine.” Or, then again, maybe it does. Jewish literature teaches us that this is a play on words. The passage is not only speaking in a physical sense but a spiritual sense as well.
Sure there was a literally famine, a lack of physical food in the land, but suppose we also rendered this “and He was becoming a famine in the land.” This little play on words gives us a double meaning. Our Jewish friends did not overlook this play on words and in fact they come right out and said that not only were people suffering a famine for physical food but for God as well. The sages render this as: “There was a lack of faith in the land.”
Today our pastor spoke on wanting more of God and it’s relation to faith. My first reaction to hearing that was: “Well, should it not be that God wants more of us? We already have all of God we will get.” As he spoke on this topic, I began to realize that what he was saying is that as believers we become more and more hungry for God and His word and only faith not sermons can fill that hunger. I could not help but think of the word “famine” and as the sages teach in Genesis 12:10, a lack of faith.
I, like most Americans, have never really experienced a famine. So the words in the Bible that speak of famine, have little significance for me, unless I give a verse like Genesis 12:10 it’s optional rendering. “And He was becoming a famine in the land.” I thought about this. Could there be a famine of God in our land. Here I am sitting in church listening to a pastor who loves God and preachers his word. I am really getting fed, I should not be hungry. If that is not enough and I want more I will just pop in a CD, or DVD, or turn on the radio or television. I can hear the Word of God taught and preached 24/7. There is no reason for any Christian in this country to go spiritually hungry.
Yet, you may be like me, starving for more of God and His Word. I can not help but think of the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, Water everywhere nor any drop to drink.” Here we are surrounded by all the preaching and teaching we can ever want, yet we are starving.
Perhaps we look for our preachers and teachers to do what they were never called to do. Having been in the ministry myself, I know how people come up and express their disappointment that they are not being fed enough. Yet, as much as I studied and prayed, as a pastor there was a hunger that I could not meet.
In Genesis 3:16 we learn that because of the sin of Adam God declared to Eve that her “desire will be for her husband,” but he will rule over her. I have heard it said that in the Hebrew this is putting a curse on a woman who will desire to rule over her husband but he will rule over her and thus there will be conflict in the home. I have always had a problem with that not only because I find it hard to believe that God would put a curse on the home to cause conflict but I believe the person who came up with this “from the Hebrew” was looking at this verse from a very Christian perspective and using Christian principles of exegesis. Looking at it from a more Jewish or rabbinic understanding of the Hebrew language we find that what God is doing is making a statement of fact. Because Eve had chosen to seek that which was forbidden, rather than letting God meet the need that eating the fruit would bring, she will also do the same with her husband which will create a conflict in the home. In other words she will seek certain comfort, certain intimacy that her husband can not give her, she will seek from her husband only that which God can give her. She will reach out to her husband for that fruit that only God can give. When her husband is unable to give her that fruit, she will grow angry with him rather than realizing that what she is seeking is to come from God and not her husband.
I suggest that this is the very same reason we have spiritual famine in this land. People are looking to their pastors and teachers to give them something that they can only find in their own intimacy with God. They grow so hungry for the Word of God or some experience that they fire the pastor or go to another church that really “moves in the Spirit.” All the time the problem is not in the church or the pastor, it is in themselves. They are too lazy to search the Scriptures on the own. They are too full of the flesh to “ask, seek, and knock” to search for God with all their hearts, soul and might. To them the church is nothing more than a spiritual restaurant. Christians want to pay someone to cook their own spiritual meal. Well, that may work in the natural, but in the spiritual a pastor, preacher or teacher can only be like the chefs you see on the cooking channel on TV. They serve up some delicious looking meals, but you can’t eat them, you have to follow their recipe and cook it up yourself.
There is no easy route to the heart of God. The Bible clearly tells us in Deuteronomy 4:29 that we will find God, He will feed us with spiritual bread that will satisfy that hunger in us if we seek Him and search for Him with all our hearts. “ALL OUR HEARTS.” We can not fill that hunger, that starvation if we seek Him with half a heart, by listening to sermons or tapes. We need to spend time before His face and in His word personally. Otherwise to paraphrase Coleridge ‘the Word of God and Sermons everywhere, but not a drop to sooth our parched tongue.
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