DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS! TO ME, THEY MATTER!

Since I came to faith in Jesus way back in 1975, the Lord has given me opportunities to teach the Bible.  I admit I wasn’t very good at it at first.  I hadn’t read a good deal of the Bible at the time, so having to teach necessitated becoming a student!  I attended Bible studies taught by others, did correspondence courses in Bible study, bought fill-in-the-blank type studies, and  absorbed the teaching of every adult Sunday school teacher whose class I could attend.

Then in the mid-1980s I started attending Bible Study Fellowship.  Wow!  Nicknamed the “Marine Corps of Bible studies” by some, BSF was foundational to my growth, first as a student and then as a teacher.

After serving in many leadership capacities in BSF, I one day found myself the teaching leader of a women’s class here in New Jersey.  One of the stumbling blocks to my teaching was a tendency to get so fixed on details that I had a challenge finding the big picture of a passage.  Thankfully, the Lord provided a substitute teaching leader who was really good at that!  Many times she would express in a word or a short sentence something I just could not see right away.

My love for details made today’s time in God’s Word a treat!  At the end of last year I decided to challenge myself in the New Year, 2014.  I went through my Bible checking the dates on which I last studied particular books (I always mark the reading dates in the margins) and made a list of those I hadn’t read in quite a while, both from the Old and New Testaments.  I ended up with a list of ten.  I began reading in January, alternating between the Old and New Testament books and have just begun my third, the Old Testament book of Judges.

In chapter 3, which I read this morning, there was a little detail that intrigued me.  With the help of Dr. David Jeremiah, whose study Bible I am using, I discovered something detail lovers like me live for!

Verse 15 records this about Ehud, Israel’s second judge:

“When the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them: Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a LEFT HANDED MAN.”

As soon as I read that I wondered, “Now why did the Lord include THAT little detail about Ehud?”

Apparently, Dr. Jeremiah did too, because he wrote this in a footnote:

“God’s answer to Israel’s cries was Ehud, a Benjamite (Benjamin means, “Son of my right hand” – remember, he’s LEFT HANDED).”

Judges 3 tells us that Eglon king of Moab, along with some allies, came against Israel and for 18 years forced them to pay him tribute.  When the time for the yearly paying of the tribute arrived, a cadre of messengers, including Ehud, was appointed to bring it to Eglon.  Before they left, Ehud fashioned a daggar in order to assassinate the king, and in that way deliver Israel.

Dr. Jeremiah goes on to say:

“Note how God used Ehud’s left handedness to the benefit of Israel in this scene: Ordinarily, since most soldiers were right handed, the king’s bodyguards or soldiers would only check the left hip of a soldier, because right handers kept their sword on their left side in order to draw it quickly in battle.  Ehud was able to conceal a doubled edged dagger on his right thigh and then use it to fatally stab King Eglon.

The entire episode encourages us with the truth that when God’s people find themselves in bondage, God delivers them in the most surprising, unexpected ways.”

I don’t know about you, but details like that really grab my attention!  The Lord can use ANYTHING, any little detail, to bring out spiritual truth!  AMAZING!

So, maybe my attention to detail will explain why I went on a rant last week on Facebook about my disappointment in the movie, “Son of God”.  (Although I had to repent of my critical spirit toward the well-meaning people who made it).

 I’ve been a Bible teacher for so long, I value God’s Word so much, and I love the many details that seem insignificant, but which so often turn out to be profound – that I’m bothered when people fiddle with the details.  There was much detail fiddling in that movie.  Let me give you one significant example – at least to me!

Take chapter 11 of John’s gospel.  For me the first part of this chapter is critical to our appreciation of the account of Jesus’s raising of Lazarus, which begins at verse 17.  Before that, Jesus had been preaching in the villages on the other side of the Jordan River from where Lazarus lived in Bethany, not far from Jerusalem.

When Lazarus’s sisters sent word to Jesus that their brother was sick, Jesus did not immediately leave for Bethany.  He simply said, “This sickness will not end in death”, and he remained where he was. 

We’re told that he loved Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s sisters, YET when he received the news, he stayed where he was for 2 more days, so that later, when he finally did arrived, Lazarus had been dead for 4 days!  All of that was left out of the movie’s telling of the raising of Lazarus.  How could they leave out something so powerful???  At least that’s what THIS detail oriented teacher thought!

And then, when Jesus finally arrived, the most powerful moment for me was when he told the onlookers to roll away the stone.  In the biblical account he never entered the tomb.  Rather, he stood outside and simply said:

“Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing her, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Then, while the crowd held its collective breathe, he said, “Lazarus, come out!”, and Lazarus did!

When the movie had Jesus entering the tomb, with Mary alone, and speaking in a soft voice as he stooped at Lazarus’s head, so much was lost!  Jesus’s prayer, designed to inspire faith in those standing by, and the power displayed by the sound of his voice ALONE to awaken the dead was minimized.  I’ve heard it said that if Jesus didn’t specify that it was Lazarus he was raising, if he had simply said, “Come out!”,  every dead person in a tomb would have come forth! 

That was one of many details fiddled with by the producers of the movie – and I was so greatly disappointed – for myself, the Bible purist, but also for those who would see the movie but not know what they’d missed.  If they decided then to read the biblical account themselves, which would they believe?  Would they decide the biblical account was too rigid, not human enough, and set it aside?

When it comes to the Bible, we shouldn’t mess with the details.  The Bible needs no editing, no detail fiddling, no human help to spice it up or make it more audience friendly, no politically correct changes.

The Bible says of itself in 2 Timothy 3:16:

“All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correction and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Who are we to think we can improve on something, breathed into being by God Himself?   Don’t even get me started on “Noah”!