{"id":13813,"date":"2022-07-01T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-02T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/?p=13813"},"modified":"2026-03-10T18:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:10:23","slug":"of-perils-and-tyrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/of-perils-and-tyrants\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Perils and Tyrants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In his excellent book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction<\/em>, Eugene Peterson writes, \u201cAll the wisdom and strength of the ancient world were in Mesopotamia and Egypt\u2026Mesopotamian power and Egyptian wisdom were strength and intelligence divorced from God, put to the wrong ends, and producing all the wrong results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is very well said and I entirely agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peterson then begins the next paragraph with this almost-there conclusion: \u201cSo Israel said no and became a pilgrim people, picking a path of peace and righteousness through the battlefields of falsehood and violence, finding a path to God through the labyrinth of sin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Close, but not exactly. Did \u201cIsrael say no\u201d or did Yahweh\u2014Israel\u2019s God\u2014say no? Did Israel \u201cbecome a pilgrim people\u201d or did they simply follow Yahweh\u2019s lead into the unknown?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yahweh delivered His people, indeed His \u201cfirstborn son\u201d (Exodus 4:22), from the furnace of Egyptian bondage and cruelty. That miraculous deliverance, from top to bottom, was exclusively Yahweh\u2019s work. Israel did not \u201cbecome a pilgrim people\u201d in the sense that they, at long last, having had their fill of Egyptian oppression, made the settled decision to leave. No, a thousand times no. But for Yahweh, there would have been no deliverance or uncertain, if exciting, opportunity to become a \u201cpilgrim people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This world\u2019s repositories of wisdom and strength are foolish and weak. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Israel\u2019s ancient path was not only \u201ca path to God,\u201d as Peterson writes, but a path made by <\/em>God. Yahweh delivered and led. Israel feared and followed. That\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So too with us! There are modern Egypts and Mesopotamias that serve as today\u2019s reservoirs of so-called wisdom and strength. They are nations, companies, ideologies, political parties, and more. They promise much: peace, safety, equity, happiness, wisdom, and virtue, but deliver bondage, not altogether unlike that experienced by Israel anciently. However, God, in Jesus Christ, has shown us the truth of all this, the truth about this hostile world. This world\u2019s repositories of wisdom and strength are foolish and weak. \u201cWhere is the wise?\u201d Paul asked tauntingly, \u201cHas not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?\u201d (1 Corinthians 1:20).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul knew what we can all learn: that God alone, in Jesus Christ, has opened the Way of deliverance for His beleaguered people (John 14:6). He is as mighty to save us from the perils of modernity as He was from the perils and tyrants of old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boil it all down\u2014all <\/em>of it\u2014and just two words will remain: Jesus saves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his excellent book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson writes, \u201cAll the wisdom and strength of the ancient…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Of_Perils_and_Tyrants.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-3AN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13813"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15480,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13813\/revisions\/15480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}