Move Forward In Your Understanding of the Bible: the Exodus stories (part 3 of 5)

'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be more me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'

What a fascinating summary God has of the exodus experience!

He glosses over the whining and doubt, the resistance and fear while re-emphasizing why he delivered them from slavery and to what end he envisions the purpose of their new life.

To move forward in our understanding of the Bible, we need to go deeper in understanding the connection between the exodus story and the rest of the stories.

There are five big over-arching narratives in the Old Testament (the Hebrew Scriptures): Creation, Covenant, Exodus, Kingdom, Exile.

The story of God and Israel is always moving forward: in relationship with God, each other, and the world. It grows more complicated as more people join the story, and it grows more intriguing as we wonder how God is going to continue to move his plans forward in light of the real people he is choosing to work with.

There is so much to be said about the Exodus story and how it undergirds the Hebrew Scriptures (or First Testament) and the New Testament (or New Covenant). It reveals so much to us about the God of Israel: he is the initiator of deliverance, he calls men and women to serve, he works with real people, he influences without forcing his will, his work is rooted in justice/righteousness/goodness, he is faithful, loyal, patient, understanding - but he is also angered by blatant and repeated mistrust and rebellion. As we would be, and He should be.

Below is a brief overview of the exodus: an exit from and an entrance into a place, participation, and perspective. 

PLACE: Exodus From Egypt; Entrance to Promised Land
In Exodus chapter one we read and discover the centrality of place to this story. It recounts the original place Jacob's family sojourned from years ago. They had come from Canaan and settled in Goshen to escape famine and be cared for by Joseph. But the years pass, the famine ends, and the people of Abraham stay in the place of abundance and safety. Eventually a new dynasty comes to Egypt and the place becomes dangerous for the Israelites, they become a threat to the new rulers. What was once a place of peace and prosperity becomes a place of slavemasters and empire construction projects.

By Exodus chapter nineteen Moses has led the children of Israel from a place of slavery to Mount Sinai, the place where God is waiting for them. Here he will instruct them and re-covenant with them as the descendants of Abraham, the nation promised to him long ago. This is preparation for entering the Promised Land, which is part of the covenant-promise. The Promised Land: a place of prosperity and flourishing, where they will be a light to the nations and kings of the earth will come to this place to see the glory of God.

PARTICIPATION: Exodus From Pharaoh-slavery; Entrance to YHWH-covenant
In chapter six of Exodus God explains to Moses why he is being sent back to Egypt to deliver the Israelites from slavery. God initiated a covenant-relationship with Abraham many years ago. God intends to keep the promise he made to Abraham - not just about place and a people, but about a special kind of relationship. God would be there God, and they would be his people. God intended to bless all the world, and he wanted to do it through the people of Abraham. They would be like a kingdom of priests, mediating between the nations and God. As a holy nation set apart for this purpose, they would be an treasured instrument in the hand of God by which the nations of the world would be blessed and praise the Creator of the heavens and the earth. The covenant wasn't just what God could do for Israel, or what Israel ought to do for God, but about participation together for the blessing of the world.

It's a beautiful plan, and unique. The Ten Commandments (or 10 Words) in Exodus twenty are an example of what the covenant-laws were for Israel, defining a way of life that made them holy or different from the other nations. They were laws that also shaped them into a way of life where justice, mercy and humility would prevail amongst the people. These laws would direct them into a way of life that resulted in prosperity and flourishing for all, which would inspire the other nations to come and learn from them. The laws shaped the kind of participation required of Israel in order to produce the blessings that God had promised to Israel and through Israel to the world. What a stark contrast the YHWH-covenant with Israel is compared to the expectations and plans Pharaoh had for the house of Jacob.


PERSPECTIVE: Exodus From Godisnowhere; Entrance to Godisnowhere
At the burning bush, which you can read about in Exodus three, Moses is introduced to God. It's maybe more dramatic then when Noah or Abraham meet God, but it's probably just as startling and disturbing. And unforgettable. There Moses perspective is completely changed about himself, God, and reality. Moses is eighty years old, forty years a shepherd in the Sinai peninsula, having been an exile since he was age forty when he became a murder. Moses had no idea he was being prepared for anything. But his perspective is radically altered: the God of Israel had been non-existent to him - and now the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is here present and calling him to deliver his people from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.

It would be a similar radical introduction for the people of Abraham - when Moses announces that their God had sent him to rescue them, they doubted it. For them, Godisnowhere. But Moses was proclaiming: Godisnowhere! Even though they couldn't see him, touch him or smell him (in contrast to the Egyptian gods and goddesses they had become accustomed to) - here is wild and dangerous Moses returned after forty years to declare deliverance. It's actually what they had been praying or, crying out for, but with no idea on how it would occur. So even though Moses is announcing the good news that Godisnowhere, it still seems like Godisnowhere.

For those that eyes of faith, they begin to see God at work in the plagues (Exodus seven), but they never actually see him until they actually leave Egypt (Exodus thirteen) and God leads them as a pillar of cloud by day to shield them from the desert sun, and a pillar of fire by night to light their way. Israel's perspective changed - they were introduced to the God of Israel, the Creator of the heavens and the earth how keeps his covenant-promises. There was no other kind of deity like this in the world. Their perspective changed about the gods and the goddesses, about themselves, about their future, and about their purpose.

Most nations have a god by whom they seek to defeat enemies and expand borders and subjugate others into slavery so that they might enrich themselves at the expense of other peoples. But here is a God who wants to establish a nation where justice and shalom prevail, where hospitality marks their politics not just their homes. Their perspective changed on what kind of nation they were to be, what kind of people they were to be, what kind of world it was to be. And they learned that even when it seems dark and it looks like Godisnowhere, Godisnowhere just as surely as the sun will rise in the morning.


Questions from SermonSequel - Exodus 19:3-6
A helpful way to read the Scriptures is to approach it with curiosity. Presume that there is plenty that doesn't make sense. Seek to make connections, to understand by asking questions. During SermonSequel on Sunday I asked the congregation to text in questions they would have about the following text, a central one to understanding the Exodus story.

Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, "This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be more me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.


What does it mean "on eagles wings"?
What does it mean "I brought you to myself?" Sarah


Why didn't he offer the covenant to everyone? - Nate
Why the Israelites? - Jason

Why would he favor one nation above the rest? Jeff
Why does God pick favorites? - Dave

The text says that we will be his treasure. Does that mean everyone or just those who obey him? - Adam

How are we not being Jews now see that we are his treasured possession outside of Jesus - anonymous


How do you know if you are fully obeying God? - Tomi and Marisa

How do you think Moses felt when God chose him to lead his people? - Gary


What did God do to Egypt? - anonymous


What is an Israelite? Sheri

Move Forward In Your Understanding of the Bible: the Covenant stories (part 2 of 5)

"I will bless you, I will make you a blessing, and I will bless all the world through you."

How's that for a promise?

This is essentially how God initiates his covenant relationship with Abraham.

If we want to move forward in our understanding of the Bible, we need to remember the significance of the covenant stories.

There are five over-arching stories in the Old Testament: Creation, Covenant, Exodus, Kingdom, and Exile. They are ultimately tragic stories full of irony and hope. They are very human stories retold by ancient Israel as there way to remember where they came from and where they were headed amidst national uncertainty and existential wandering.

The many stories that make up the Old Testament are about the God of Israel and the outworking of their covenant relationship. It's a stunning covenant - the Israelites believe that the God who created the marvelous, beautifully dangerous, life-sustaining and wonder-inducing universe had chosen them to be his special people. With the gloriousness and unfathomable power of this Creation God, Israel struggles to come to terms with the covenant that he initiates with them.

Like all covenants there are blessings for keeping it and curses for breaking it. The Old Testament is the stories of them continually breaking the covenant and God creatively compelling them to return to keeping it. God demonstrates his loyalty to this newly created nation - undeserved loving kindness and faithfulness to a people who forget, complain, rebel, deny, and abandon him in droves. It's real humanity and a real God interacting in the real Earth amongst real tribes. The stories are shocking at times and inspiring. Much like our stories today.

What is a covenant relationship?

“A covenant is a solemn formal commitment made by one party to another party to one another; its seriousness is normally undergirded by an oath or rite undertaken before God and or before other people. A covenant is thus a little like a contract, but the commitment is moral, not legal. A covenant involves something more like a personal relationship, but no ordinary relationship: it presupposes a level of commitment not required of most relationships, and it involves a formalizing of that commitment that shows we really mean it.” [John Goldingay]

An obvious image of a covenant relationship is that of holy matrimony. The heart of marriage vows are moral commitments, not legal, though it is both. It's the binding together forever of two friends, though it will become unlike all other friendships. It has it's own symbols and public declarations to indicate the sincerity of those making the vows. It's a covenant that requires hard work to keep, which has it's blessings, and when broken has obvious curses.

But within that covenant relationship of marriage is a loyalty that transcends the keeping and breaking of the covenant. Repentance rebuilds trust and leads to re-keeping the covenant, which can lead to blessings that remove the curses. We see this promised in the Torah and throughout the Prophets.

In the Creation story we have the account of God making a covenant with Noah and all humanity to never respond to violence - no matter how vast and ugly the scale - with mass-scale extermination. The rainbow is a public sign of this vow. The creative God must now find other ways to subvert evil hearts and bring about peace in nonviolent ways.

The original covenant for Israel itself begins with Abraham in Genesis 12, 15 and 17. We have three successive stories where God introduces himself to Abraham, and their coming to terms with each other over what the promises and covenant will look like - not only now but in the far future.

The creative God picks a man from a moon-worshipping tribe and promises to make his descendants more numerous than the stars of the sky. This requires unbelievable faith. And some important questions from Abraham about how he and his aged and childless wife will give birth to a son, let alone a new nation. Secondly, they have no land, they have sojourned from Ur to Haran and have never been to Canaan - how and when will they settle into this promised land?

Covenant-encounters with God induce plenty of questions. And some doubt. And the scale of the promises are so grand that it's tempting to take matters into our own hands to help God out. Which lead to tragedy. The creative God is not thwarted by our bumbling faith, but there are consequences to our actions to which we must make the best of in our life.

It was the same with Jesus and his disciples. It took extraordinary trust for them to believe that he was of God and that his instructions and way of life would lead to a new exodus and God's kingdom on earth. When they took matters into their own hands, Jesus had to step in and intervene. And so it is with us today. We can barely believe that the way of Jesus is the best possible response to empire-evil and entrenched-injustice in our culture and economic systems.

Just as the covenant stories with Abraham increase the scope and understanding of the relationship requirements and promises of blessing, so it goes when God connects with Moses and the people of Israel. Prior to the Exodus God re-introduces himself and his covenant with Israel to Moses and to the descendants of Abraham in Egypt. They agree to the covenant and pledge to follow him out of slavery and into the promised land. The story is more complicated then that, as it always is, but they go along. The covenant is formally renewed in dramatic and public fashion at Mount Sinai, on the far edge of the wilderness.

It's here that God is covenanting - not just with a person like Abraham or Moses - but with a whole people, the twelve tribes of Israel and their families numbering in the thousands and thousands. At this encounter it's more then just promises of blessings and curses for keeping and breaking the covenant, but detailed instructions for the basics of life for this new nation so that they more clearly understand the covenant laws.

It starts with receiving the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, and from there and throughout Leviticus we learn more and more laws for ancient Israel for keeping the covenant with God and one another. Much of Leviticus includes laws for what to do when you break the covenant, for God understands the reality of humanity and their penchant for failure.

Reading further into the Old Testament stories we continually learn how often Israel breaks the covenant and God is forced to bring about the consequences of curses. It's clear that Israel is struggling to keep the covenant with God. Moses and Joshua try their best. The judges that follow get progressively worse.

Samuel the prophet is effective for a generation. But his leadership prompts the people to beg God for a real live king like all the other "real" nations and tribes around them. This is a rejection of God as sole king of Israel and a further deterioration of their trust and allegiance to Him. God assents to their requests though, and eventually strikes up a covenant relationship with David and his family, promising that someone from his family would always be king of Israel. 

God is strained by this covenant, as the descendants of David descend into decadence over the centuries. Though God sends prophets to plead with the people to repent and keep the covenant, they end up declaring the coming doom due to the ongoing covenant-breaking. Injustice towards the poor and oppressed, the widows and orphans, the laborers and sick - all this increased the ire of the Lord.

He determined to initiate a new covenant with Israel, one that he introduced through the prophet Jeremiah. He declared that instead of inscribing his words on stone or parchment, he would put his laws into the hearts and minds of his people, drawing closer to them in order that they might keep the covenant and fulfill their destiny as a blessing to the world.

It's centuries though before Jesus of Nazareth walks the hills of Israel, recognized as a prophet who calls his people to repentance. Jesus is full of promises and hope: God's kingdom is coming, he will end the exile and bring forth a new exodus for all those who will turn away from covenant-breaking and recommit to keeping the covenant. Jesus affirms the centrality of love for God and neighbor as the heart of living out the new covenant. How far is God willing to go with helping his people keep the new covenant? Even when his people crucify Jesus, whispers of forgiveness and promises of his Spirit pour forth from his body. God is radically committed to helping anybody who wants to keep the covenant.

The covenant is attractive with its blessings and scary because of its curses. But the covenant-relationship is always initiated by God towards us, and it's about love and flourishing in community within this good yet corrupted world. There are natural consequences for breaking covenant with one another and with God - rarely are supernatural disasters needed to make a point. We create our own hell on earth through our disloyalty and immorality towards one another and God. But God in Christ through his Spirit is present everywhere at work to invite everyone into a covenant relationship.

To those that assent, they become part of a new covenant-people through whom God intends to bless the world. They are a blessing because of how they care for one another and their welcome of the stranger and their love for their enemy. They are a light to the nations for how laws can add to the flourishing of all instead of to the advantage of the powerful and the demise of the weak.

They become like priests who mediate between the world and God, connecting people to this covenant-inducing Creator of the universe. They mediate, not like a bureaucracy but rather as a picture of what God is like and capable of - his faithfulness and patience and creativity and wisdom. An example is worth a thousand words.

Covenant-stories originate in the Old Testament, but they explain the story of Jesus and the early church in the New Testament. The Gospel of Jesus is the proclamation and introduction of the new covenant through this king of Israel from Nazareth sent by God to atone for our sins and empower us to live by his Spirit as participants in the coming kingdom.

We are like kings in the way that Jesus was a king, using his royalty and power to heal and restore, connect and educate, welcome and send with good news. Jesus, and we in this new covenant-community, use power and knowledge to build people up and spread the way of love as a blessing. We are just as human as Abraham and Moses, David and Jeremiah and the people of Israel and Babylon and Rome. It is by grace that we can become kings and covenant-keepers, and this so that we can do the good works for which God has created us to be and do.

The corrupting idea today is that we enter into a primarily enter into a co-dependant relationship with God in order to be saved from hell for heaven. But this does not reflect the reality of the covenant-relationships that God initiated with Abraham or Jesus. The covenant-relationships are first about life now on this good-earth, about love of neighbor and stranger and enemy now. Covenant-relationship with God in Christ is about justice now, the humble awareness that we will be judged for our injustice now, and that it is only by grace that we can repent and make amends for our sins. The reward is not just later, but also now.

God has come to earth in Jesus and is always with us through the Spirit. The covenant-relationship is about this generation right now - and whatever rewards await us in the afterlife, they are directly connected to our love now. If we don't want God and his way of life now, we won't want it for eternity. But if we respond to God's grace and invitation to a covenant-relationship now, the rewards begins now and continues without end.

God's covenant-relationship with Israel was complicated and turbulent and reflected the real interaction between real humanity and a real God.

So it is with us, a real Jesus is really at work in this new covenant-people, redeeming us from our sins and reconciling all people to himself through us without forcing his will on anyone and patiently staying faithful to humanity despite our penchant for destroying creation and abusing one another.

Amidst this terrible tragedy is a new-covenant people who seek to move forward, bringing light and hope and faith and love into the world - themselves in need of it and willing to be an instrument of it. 

The invitation continues to be put out there: Jesus is the new king welcoming all who want to be in a covenant-relationship with him for the good of the world and love of God.

God Has Given The Skill

Exodus 36-40

God has given men the skill to create the works of art he has given them. Put another way, God has given men and women the wisdom to keep his commands. Or: God has given humanity the capacity to participate in the flourishing of the Earth. 

Israel is discovering their identity at Mt. Sinai. God has given them a second round of Ten Words (or Commandments), plus a lot more words and commands to live by. Keeping these commands will lead to them becoming a unique nation in the Ancient Near East. If everything goes according to plan, unique so that they can be a blessing. 

At Mt. Sinai they get detailed instructions on how to worship YHWH. Of course they would, how would they know to honor and praise him, they've been steeped in Egyptian idolatry for hundreds of years. They also were given detailed instructions on how to craft the objects to be used in this worship. We read these details with glazed over eyes. But if we read between the lines, what will we see?

God has given the detailed instructions on what he wants, and then he gives the skill to people to do it.

Think about that.

God is creating a new people, giving them a new way to worship him, to become a blessing to their neighboring tribes, to become a nation of their own having been delivered from an impressive and oppressive empire. And to do this, he not only gives them his presence - as cloud and fire - but words to follow, and then skills to accomplish it. That is good news for Israel. And us.

Alas, the rebellious instincts that lurk deep within us are powerful enough to derail us from the details God lovingly spells out for us. When Israel kept the commands, when the craftsmen hammered out the objects of worship, when the people participated in the worship of a holy God, they were blessed. But when they rebelled, grumbled, turned to idols, and rejected Moses, they became cursed. Despite all God did for them.

When we look around our community, our neighbors, our home, our church - God has details for us on how to get involved and join him in on the work he is doing. And the giving of the details often includes the capacity to do it with skill. Because God works through a community of people, he will place people in relationship to you so that together you can accomplish what he is doing in the world. Good news indeed!

You're Such A Stubborn, Hard-Headed People!

Exodus 31-35

We like to think that if we had been the ex-slaves traversing through the Desert of Sin, milling around the lonely Mt. Sinai, that we would have been much more obedient to God. It's easy to assume that we would have chosen different had we been in those difficult and trying circumstances. Us stubborn? Me, hard-headed? Ha!

Several million Hebrews have been herded along by their shepherd Moses to meet the God who delivered them. There at the mountain God will sign a covenant, much like a king would create for his people, outlining the terms and conditions of his kingdom. The language and elements of this treaty between God and the Israelites is very similar to that of other treaties found in the Ancient Near East. What an unruly crew God was seeking to tame!

It's interesting to note that God grants special wisdom and skill to craftsmen so that they can create the buildings and ritual objects for worship. That encourages me: whatever God is asking his people and church to do today, he will give us the wisdom and skills to accomplish it.

But it's also interesting to note that following the tragic and disgusting episode of the Golden Calf, Moses has to talk God out of destroying the Twelve Tribes of Israel. God is so angry and offended by the blatant disregard for his commands and covenant and commitment to them that he wants to wipe the rescued slaves off the face of the earth. And Moses has to wrestle to get God to change his mind.

This becomes a helpful picture for what Jesus accomplished on the cross when he bore the penalties of our sins. When you think about how angry you get when you hear about sins committed against others, imagine how God reacts.

It's his creation, it's the people he loves, its the world that he is always at work in - and when people sin against Him and one another and creation in all the flagrant ways that we do, it angers him. On the cross Jesus bore the wrath of God for all the sins ever committed, and ever to be committed. Though we would still sin, we live as if already forgiven. 

We're such a stubborn and hard-headed people yet today. God has impressive patience with us still. There are still consequences for our sins though, there are still missed opportunities from our fears and mistakes.

But God is still at work in us and through us to accomplish his work in the world - a work begun with Exodus, continued through Israel, climaxed with the crucifixion of Jesus, and now enlarged through the lives of the church. Jesus is now our shepherd, leading us though we resist and still rebel. But he still leads, he never leaves or forsakes us, rescuing us, and then reforming us. 

Oh, how we still need to be reformed! The work God has for us to do - he makes us capable of accomplishing it. Though we might look at our past and grimace, or our life now and frown, God sees what he can do through us and smiles!

In letting God reform and renew us, in our being honest with God about our stubbornness and pride, we become more humble and useful to him. And to others.

And God Just Stands There

Job 15-16

When you suffer, is it a direct result of your sins?

Yes and no. 

For many of us, our complicated situations flow from our pride, anger, lust, gluttony, greed, envy, or apathy. So in these cases, there is a connection between our hardships and our transgressions.

But what about when someone sins against us? When we are innocent? When they trespass against us and produce hurt and anxiety and fear and woundedness into our life? What then? Are we too blame for the tsunami of difficulties that flow out of that?

For Job, he was convinced that he was innocent, and that God was to blame for his horrors. And to a degree, he was right - since we get to know the backstory, the conversation God had with Satan. For Job's friends, who like Job don't know the backstory, they are convinced that Job is guilty of sin, and this explains his terrible suffering.

Despite Job's protests to his innocence, the friends are sure that deep inside, despite the great reputation Job had for being blameless and upright, despite his life of righteousness, somewhere deep inside was lurking sin that has produced this terrible affliction of suffering.

Here is how Eliphaz puts it:

If you were truly wise, would you sound so much like a windbag, belching hot air?
Would you talk nonsense in the middle of a serious argument, babbling baloney?
Look at you! You trivialize religion, turn spiritual conversation into empty gossip.
It's your sin that taught you to walk this way.
You chose an education in fraud.

But Job resists their simplistic and unfeeling accounting of the situation:

I've had all I can take of your talk.
What a bunch of miserable comforters!
Is there no end to your windbag speeches?
What's your problem that you go on and on like this?
If you were in my shoes, I could talk just like you.
I could put together a terrific harangue and really let you have it.
But I'd never do that. I'd console and comfort, make things better, not worse!

And then Job speaks directly and forcefully to God about his dire situation:

People take one look at me and gasp.
Contemptuous, the slap me around and gang up on me.
And God just stands there and lets them do it,
let's wicked people do what they want with me.
I was contentedly minding my own business when God beat me up.
He grabbed me by the neck and threw me around.

Do you ever feel this way towards God? That the hard times you're going through are undeserved? We'd be wise to contemplate the thoughts of both Eliphaz and Job. There are times when our sins produce chaos in our life, and thus our repentance and return to God put us on the path to healing and restoration.

But sometimes, when we get sinned against, and life turns upside down, we have a choice: of either retaliating, of sinning in response, or crying out to God for intervention and rescue.

Job is caught in deep tension: he's convinced that the hard times are undeserved, and yet from God. He's also sure that God is the one that can rescue him. Job must wrestle with relying on a God who has seemingly been so unfair to him. Job is forced to reach out to a God who just seems to stand there.

Job is being tested. And in his rage against the injustice of his situation, he still trusts God for resolution. Even though he sees God as the cause of the storm, he's willing to believe that God will bring it to pass. And that God will have a good reason for all of this. But in the meantime, it's as if God just stands there.