Stories of men in the Bible: Real men, real consequences

Men in the Bible have not received as much of the necessary attention that men today can learn from and identify with. It is true that there were grievous transgressions, but these men were loved by God and they loved Him back. How is it then that they made such poor decisions and remained in God’s favor? We need to explore this line of thinking because David and Adam, Noah and Samson were no different than you and me. They were men who dealt with being very male and loving God at the same time. They battled the flesh in the spirit just like we do. What are their stories and what can we learn from them?

WEEK 1 Adam: (temptation and shame) Means “first man” or man in general. Though it is often Eve who is given the dubious honor of being both tempted and temptress, it is critical to note that Adam agreed with his wife without any apparent arm twisting. Thus a decision was made that we believe affects us all. This is a vivid metaphor for the suffering that ensues when a man chooses unwisely. What we do does matter, and it does affect others … even those of us who were not in his presence at the time the fruit was picked and eaten. Even if done privately, God knows our activities.

Genesis 3:4-7 “No! You will not die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

WEEK 2 Noah: (humiliation and consequences) Because he walked with God and stood blameless among the people at that time, God selected him to build an ark by which they would survive the flood. Sadly, in addition to many animals, the sinful nature of humanity is one other thing that was preserved on the vessel. Once on dry land, Noah planted a vineyard, drank of the wine, and exposed himself in his tent. His sons had to cover him, and one of them, Ham, who only informed his brothers, was cursed. Ham’s curse: he did not act.

Genesis 9:20-25 Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. 21 He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 Then Shem and Japheth took a cloak and placed it over both their shoulders, and walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father naked.

24 When Noah awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said:Canaan will be cursed. He will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers.

WEEK 3 Abraham: (disodedience and history) While the father of many monotheistic faiths, Abraham was unbelieving, and was not willing to wait on God to bless him and his wife, Sarah Sarah was impatient as well, and that affected the life of her maidservant Hagar and Abraham’s eldest son, Ishmael. The children of Islam believe they are Ishmael’s descendants, which is born out in Scripture: this is in keeping with God’s promise to Hagar to prosper him as a father of many nations, though he was born outside of the covenant. This is an earthly prosperity, not one with an eternal spirituality benefiting the descendants.

Genesis 16:9-12 Then the Angel of the LORD said to her, “You must go back to your mistress and submit to her mistreatment.” 10 The Angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will greatly multiply your* offspring, and they will be too many to count.”

11 Then the Angel of the LORD said to her: You have conceived and will have a son. You will name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard your cry of affliction.

12 This man will be like a wild donkey. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him; he will live at odds with7 all his brothers.

WEEK 4 David: (adultery and murder) His relationship with Bathsheba is so well known that we often overlook his likeness in our own lives … and some of his other consequential shortcomings. Occasionally we justify our own actions by siting David’s indiscretions as being far worse than our own. David was hot and cold, never lukewarm; David was a complex individual prone to acts of both pronounced disgrace and grandiose worship. David in the Psalms comes across many times as a manic depressive and larger than life. And yet, David’s greatest harm was his example to his family. His son Solomon eventually fell back into pagan worship, his eldest Amnon raped his sister Tamar, and Absalom overthrew him. And do not forget that he had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed. There are consequences, always consequences. And yet David was a man after God’s heart. There is hope for us, too.

2 Samuel 11:2-4 & 14-17 One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing a very beautiful woman. 3 So David sent someone to inquire about her, and he reported, “This is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. Now she had just been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Afterward, she returned home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to inform David: “I am pregnant.”

14 … David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote: Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting, then withdraw from him so that he is struck down and dies.

16 When Joab was besieging the city, he put Uriah in the place where he knew the best enemy soldiers were. 17 Then the men of the city came out and attacked Joab, and some of the men from David’s soldiers fell in battle; Uriah the Hittite also died.

WEEK 5 Lot: (incest and issues of sobriety) We assume Lot was passed out from wine and had no way to defend himself from the intentions of his daughters. This was most likely untrue and does not justify Lot’s behavior. The truth is that the daughters plotted and Lot accepted out of lust. There may have been other factors which will be explored, one of which is the long term distortion of the father-daughter relationship which should be considered sacred. However, I assume that the notion of being the last man gives one considerable liberties. Yet, this line of thinking is how many of us justify our behavior, whether, incestuous, adulterous, media-based or otherwise. Lot convinced himself that he had no choice. We often do the same with equally disastrous results. The Moabites and the Ammonites were to be two of Israel’s most troublesome enemies. (see the story of Solomon in 1 Kings)

Genesis 19:30-38 Lot departed from Zoar and lived in the mountains along with his two daughters, because he was afraid to live in Zoar. Instead, he and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 Then the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man in the land to sleep with us as is the custom of all the land. 32 Come, let’s get our father to drink wine so that we can sleep with him and preserve our father’s line.” 33 So they got their father to drink wine that night, and the firstborn came and slept with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she got up.

34 The next day the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, I slept with my father last night. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight so you can go sleep with him and we can preserve our father’s line.” 35 That night they again got their father to drink wine, and the younger went and slept with him; he did not know when she lay down or when she got up.

36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father 37 The firstborn gave birth to a son and named him Moab. He is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger also gave birth to a son, and she named him Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites of today.

WEEK 6 Solomon: (wisdom is not enough) Obedience is required to accompany great wisdom if it is expected to be truly beneficial and God-honoring. Solomon attempted to serve two masters during his lifetime, both before and after his wisest years. Solomon was wise beyond measure, and for all of his wisdom he struggled with the burden of supernatural knowledge. Reading Ecclesiastes makes it apparent that for all of the Prophet’s insight, he was depressed by what he saw. (Maybe that is why Proverbs tells us that an awareness of out ignorance is the beginning of wisdom). Consider the observations, “All is vain striving.” Or “For with much wisdom is great sorrow; as knowledge increases, grief increases.” Or “What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.” The danger in amassing knowledge only, and for its own sake, is cynicism, apathy and despair.

1 Kings 3:1-3 Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt by marrying Pharaoh’s daughter. Solomon brought her to live in the city of David until he finished building his palace, the LORD’s temple, and the wall surrounding Jerusalem.

2 However, the people were sacrificing on the high places, because until that time a temple for the LORD’s name had not been built. 3 Solomon loved the LORD by walking in the statutes of his father David, but he also sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. (High places are places of pagan worship)

1 Kings 11:3-8 King Solomon loved many foreign women in addition to Pharaoh’s daughter: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women (Moabites and Ammonites are Lot’s offspring with his daughters) 2 from the nations that the LORD had told the Israelites about, “Do not intermarry with them, and they must not intermarry with you, because they will turn you away from Me to their gods.” Solomon was deeply attached to these women and loved them.

3 He had 700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines, and they turned his heart away from the LORD. 4 When Solomon was old, his wives seduced him to follow other gods. He was not completely devoted to * Yahweh his God, as his father David had been. 5 Solomon followed Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the detestable idol of the Ammonites. 6 Solomon did what was evil in the LORD’s sight, and unlike his father David, he did not completely follow Yahweh.

7 At that time, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the detestable idol of Moab, and for Milcom1 the detestable idol of the Ammonites, on the hill across from Jerusalem. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who were burning incense and offering sacrifices to their gods.

WEEK 7 Samson: (arrogance and lust) He was one of Israel’s judges, though not in the vein of Gideon or Deborah; and like King David he is a hero to most of us. Samson still looms larger than life in popular culture, and is a person we admire because of his fantastic strength. Often we focus solely on his relationship with Delilah, and his destruction of the Philistine meeting place; but there is more to his lifestyle that we should pay attention to. In this larger-than-life drama was a man whose acts also placed him in a company of common slaves; he was ultimately blinded as a lesson on obedience. Samson was born a Nazirite, or one who was set aside from birth, to bring honor to God. These men were visibly noticeable because of their unshorn hair, and abstinence from fermented drink. His visibility and power were also Samson’s undoing. Pride, unbridled lust, and vengeance place us in unholy company. Yet, what we learn is that our personal failures do ultimately glorify God, though at a steep price for our disobedience. Remember, because God can use our disobedience, it does not give us license to sin without consequence.

Judges 16:1-4 Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went to bed with her.

2 When the Gazites heard that Samson was there, they surrounded the place and waited in ambush for him all that night at the city gate. While they were waiting quietly, they said, “Let us wait until dawn; then we will kill him.” 3 But Samson stayed in bed until midnight when he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate along with the two gateposts, and pulled them out, bar and all. He put them on his shoulders and took them to the top of the mountain overlooking Hebron.

4 Some time later, he fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the Sorek Valley.

5 The Philistine leaders went to her and said, “Persuade him to tell you where his great strength comes from, so we can overpower him, tie him up, and make him helpless. Each of us will then give you 1,100 pieces of silver.”

Judges 16:28-30 He called out to the LORD: “Lord GOD, please remember me. Strengthen me, God, just once more. With one act of vengeance, let me pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.” 29 Samson took hold of the two middle pillars supporting the temple and leaned against them, one on his right hand and the other on his left. 30 Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” He pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the leaders and all the people in it. And the dead he killed at his death were more than those he had killed in his life.

WEEK 8 Paul: (thorn in the flesh) Saul of Tarsus, later called Paul after his conversion, is often referred to as the father of our faith. But even Paul had a past he would rather have forgotten, and had “a thorn in his flesh” that God would not remove. In his new role as ambassador for the fledgling Christian faith he spent significant time in prison. He called himself “an ambassador in chains.” As a Pharisee his most notorious claim is supervising the stoning of St. Stephen. His conversion on the road to Damascus is an iconic event that we often site as “the way God is supposed to intervene.” This is a common way for believers and nonbelievers to illustrate a changed life. Paul is the most prolific author in the New Testament.

Acts 7:57-60 and 8:1-3 Then they screamed at the top of their voices, covered their ears, and together rushed against him. 58 They threw him out of the city and began to stone him. And the witnesses laid their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 They were stoning Stephen as he called out: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit! ” 60 Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin! ” And saying this, he fell asleep.

1 Saul agreed with putting him to death. On that day a severe persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria. 2 Devout men buried Stephen and mourned deeply over him. 3 Saul, however, was ravaging the church. He would enter house after house, drag off men and women, and put them in prison.