 Tonight's topic is talking about Israel's Biblical report card, Pass or Fail, which reminds me of a story about a teacher who had a group of young teenagers and she wanted to give them a test, but she saw that she wasn't going to be able to have them complete the test at school. And so she asked, would you please all take the test home and fill it in at home? But remember, there's no cheating. Remember that a person cannot cheat and live with themselves. Well, all the students take their tests home and the next morning they bring them back. Well, the teacher is sitting there marking the tests and she finds that one of the tests is perfect, every answer. But at the bottom there's an explanation. The note says, I find that I can cheat and live with myself better than I can flunk and live with my father. And so when it comes to passing and failing, everybody has a sense of being hard on themselves, not being able to deal with this sense that perhaps I wasn't perfect when we look at things that we've done, we tend to feel I could have done that better. Now I just remembered something that I wanted to say then, it's such a shame and we give ourselves a really hard time. We set standards very high for ourselves. But what's true is the same for the way God seems to place his expectations with us. God also, throughout the scripture, seems to set a very high standard and so when we examine some of the passages in the Bible in the Jewish scriptures which speak about God's, so to speak, evaluation of our performance we find ourselves exposed to harsh criticism which is often connected with divine retribution where we are punished for our sins. And when we walk away reading these texts, especially if we read them in isolation we tend to walk away feeling that perhaps we failed, perhaps we failed, perhaps we haven't done as we should have done. And so what do we do? What do we do about it? And so what I want to do today is I want to look a little bit closer at some of the criticisms that we find within the scriptures and hopefully give a fuller picture of what's going on. One example in particular that I found very enlightening it really helped me understand how God often deals with the Jewish people is a story that we find in the book of Joshua. So we know that Joshua led the Jewish people into the land of Israel and he led them in battle and was able to conquer cities in miraculous ways. One of the most famous stories probably is the story in Jericho where they surrounded the walls and they blew trumpets and the walls came crumbling down and they defeated the city of Jericho with no resistance at all. And what we find is in chapter 7 of the book of Joshua Joshua sends some spies to go to a place called Ai and he wants them to see whether it's fortified, how many troops need to go up and the spies come back and give a report that really we don't need to send a large army up there they're not that many people up there. Two to three thousand is more than plenty and what happens is they send up around three thousand men and to everybody's shock the resistance was incredible. The Jewish people sustained a loss of 36 men and Joshua is distraught. What's happened? Why has all of a sudden God's favor turned from us? And in Joshua chapter 7 verse 11 God responds to Joshua and he tells him Israel has sinned. They have violated my covenant. Now when you hear those words, that's heavy. The nation of Israel. What did they do and how come Joshua doesn't know about it? I mean you think the leader of the nation somebody who's so close, someone who's taken over from Moses would really know that Israel had sinned and violated the covenant and yet here he is. He doesn't understand why God has removed his favor from the Jewish people. He continues and he says this is a they violated my covenant which I commanded them to keep. What did they do? They've taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen. They have lied. They have put them in their own possessions. So we know from the previous chapter chapter 6 Joshua had commanded the Jewish people that they were not to touch any of the booty that had been taken from Jericho. And we read at the beginning of chapter 7 verse 1 about a particular individual. Joshua chapter 7 verse 1 says But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing. For Aham, the son of Kami, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah took of the accursed thing and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. So here what we see is a typical example of where one person from the Jewish people sins but God does not only look at that person as an individual. God sees them as part of a corporate entity and so therefore there's the collective guilt of the nation which God demands from the Jewish people and we see this with quite devastating results and consequences for the Jewish people. So here you have one man sinning and yet in the eyes of God it's as if all Israel had sinned. Another example in the Jewish scriptures where you have this idea of collective guilt is when some of the Israelites went out not only during the weekdays to collect the manna but they went out on the Sabbath when God had told them there'd be no manna on Sabbath but they go out to collect the manna and in Exodus chapter 16 verse 28 God turns to Moses and he says how long will you refuse to observe my commandments and my teachings? Who's you? And here you in the passage is in the plural and it refers to all of Israel including Moses and we find throughout the scriptures that any time there's any kind of rebuke to the Jewish people most often the prophets include themselves in that rebuke as if they are part of the people who are being rebuke but the fact that the nation is declared guilty doesn't preclude that there are some in the nation that are righteous. In fact we read in the prophets where Elijah says that God had preserved 7000 prophets even though the rest of the nation had gone off and worship idols another important point to consider when we start looking at whether we've passed or failed and how to evaluate is that God sees the same people from different angles let's take the nation of Israel for example at times God describes us as a stiff necked people people who have turned their backs against him and yet there are other times such as in Numbers chapter 23 when Billum is speaking on behalf of God where they're described as the people that God sees no iniquity or perversiveness and which one is it? Have they been stiff necked or does God not see any iniquity in them? A similar contradiction is actually found with the life of David David sometimes describes his sin and sometimes in great detail and yet there are other places where David describes himself as righteous so for example in Psalms chapter 7 or Psalms chapter 18 verse 25 David refers to himself as being righteous and so which one is it? Was he a sinner or was he righteous? When we understand that God judges people on different levels we'll begin to understand that it's not so simple we'll begin to understand that there are allowances that God makes because God reckons that we are frail people we're just human beings as it says in Psalm 103 that God forgives us often because he recognizes our frailties because he recognizes our humanity the fact that Jewish people often suffer for their sins or somebody once said we're not punished for our sins but we're punished by our sins but the fact that we often are met with consequences because of our sin is something that is plainly clear in scripture many times where God tells us that as a result of our sins we will suffer but at the same time the same Bible describes us as those who have not violated God's covenant such as in Psalms 44 verse 18 where the Jewish people are praised for their commitment and for their devotion to God the prophet tells us that in the messianic era Israel will ultimately be vindicated and their righteousness will be obvious to all this can be found in Isaiah 62 verse 2 the prophet Isaiah also tells us that Israel will be rewarded for having hoped to God throughout their long exile you can find this in Isaiah chapter 25 verse 9 26 verse 2 and Isaiah 49 verse 23 and so to summarize it's very nuanced when it comes to the record of the Jewish people there's no question that we demand more from ourselves and God demands more from ourselves at the same time God recognizes all the virtues and all the devotion and the commitment that we've had to God throughout the ages despite all the trials and tribulations