Brains in a Bag--Using Your Head to Save Your HIde

This is Rose, proudly holding her brains in a bag.

Well, you know, they weren't her brains. Actually,they were the steer's brains salvaged by the butcher from our steer's skull.
Rose asked the butcher for the brains. She needed them to use to tan the steer's hide.

 Here is the hide, with the butcher's helper sprinkling it liberally with lots and lots of salt to preserve it. Most hides are sent to a hide processing plant in Nebraska, they told us, from which the hides are then sent all over the world to be turned into leather and leather products.

 But Rose wanted the hide to tan and process herself, so she had to pay $35 for it.
You can see the salt being dumped all over it.

Rose later froze the hide in four pieces to work with when cooler weather arrives.
In Rose's research about preserving rabbit or elk or deer or cow hides, she has learned that there are enough brains in each animal to rub on to preserve its own hide.
There is something in the brains which, when you rub it on the backside of the hide, helps to preserve it.

And sometimes we need to use our own brains to save our own hides.

Like the Rechabites had to do in the book of Jeremiah.

Sometimes, we have to do things we don't normally do, because prudence calls for it.

We have to use our brains and be wise. 

The Rechabites had been commanded not to live in houses but to dwell in tents, and they carefully kept this commandment until Nebuchadnezzar came and took over the land.

Matthew Henry writes, "These Rechabites would have tempted God, and not trusted Him, if they had not used proper  means for their own safety, notwithstanding the law and custom of their family."

This clan fled to the city of Jerusalem to live there (in houses) for their safety's sake. 

They could have made a big deal about Great-Great-Grandfather Jonadab's stipulations to only live in tents, but instead they used wisdom.

It's called using your head. 

Matthew Henry says, "The rules of a strict discipline must not be made too strict, but so as to admit of a dispensation when the necessity of a case calls for it."

In simpler words, "Rules may sometimes be bent when necessity calls for it." 

Usually, for example, toads don't sleep beside hens, but after a hail storm, both a hen and a poor toad were rescued by our children and put to sleep for the night in a box of straw.

Now what is interesting is that all at the same time as this Rechabite clan was obliged to bend the rules in order to live in houses in Jerusalem, instead of in tents as they had been commanded to do,
they still kept the other commandment of their father--not to drink wine.

So they temporarily kept the first, while not the second of their father's commands.

They didn't throw out the baby with the bath water.

When Jeremiah tested the Rechabites' resolve by offering them wine, they didn't reason with themselves, "Well, we broke one of our clan's rules; we may as well break the second rule, too."
No, they made a difference between a rule broken
in an emergency and out of necessity, and one broken deliberately and with no necessity.
They lived in Jerusalem in houses rather than in the wilderness in tents,
but they didn't decide to get drunk while they were at it.

So there may come along one or many circumstances where we will have to use our brains to save our hides. When Samuel was afraid Saul would hear of his anointing of one of Jesse's sons to be king, God gave him a way to be wise, by going to the town to offer a sacrifice. This reason covered for the real reason, which needed to be kept secret for Samuel's and David's safety.
When Jeremiah was about to be killed for talking to King Zedekiah about the future fall of Jerusalem, Zedekiah told Jeremiah to tell the questioners that he had been asking the king about a better place to be imprisoned. Jeremiah did this. It was a wise cover to save his life.
Corrie ten Boom did not feel it necessary to reveal any facts that would endanger the lives of the Jewish people she and her family were trying to save.

While we must draw a line at denying Christ to save our hides, there may be other things we can do for safety's sake.
There will be other circumstances that won't be as difficult or dangerous as risking our very lives,
but which will nevertheless be tough and dangerous to ourselves, our children, our safety, our reputations, our beliefs. How will we preserve them?
We must pray for discernment and use wisdom.

God has given each one of us exactly enough brains to "preserve our hides," exactly enough freewill to make wise choices and to do what is good and wholesome and right. We might have to do something temporarily at times that we wouldn't normally do, but we don't have to throw all our personal convictions and beliefs out along with that temporary decision.
God has said, "I have set before you life and death.
Therefore, choose life."