Michael Goforth’s Kindle Notes & Highlights for Christ from Beginning to End: How the Full Story of Scripture Reveals the Full Glory of Christ

God’s promise of blessing to Abraham has deep roots. God made Adam and Eve and he blessed them. Then he told them to multiply and fill the earth. Noah left the ark and God blessed him. Then he told Noah to multiply and fill the earth. There is a theme here, a pattern of genealogy and geography.

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But in an important way yet undisclosed, we are told that through Abraham God will bless all of the nations of the earth, all ethnic people groups.

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1. Election by Grace

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Nothing in Abraham’s heritage or religious practice merited the Lord’s call on his life.

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Abraham reminds us that salvation is all of grace—undeserved and unmerited by our actions, lifestyle, or obedience. In grace, God chose Noah and Abraham, as he does when he chooses each of us.

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2. Righteousness through Faith

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we stand righteous before God by grace through faith in his promises. Abraham’s story reveals that a right standing before God is attained not based on our own works but because God declares us to be just by faith.

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3. Salvation through Substitution

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Abraham’s walk with his son to Mount Moriah foreshadows the journey of another Father and Son on another mountain many years later.

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4. Circumcision for a New Heart

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“The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live”

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The first sense in which we follow the “seed” of Abraham is by looking at Abraham’s children by natural birth.

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The second type of Abraham’s “seed” hints at this. Isaac and Ishmael are both Abraham’s natural children, but only Isaac is the promised seed.

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We also find a third “seed,” even among the chosen covenant people: the believers within the nation descended from the patriarchs.

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Finally, there is a fourth sense in which we should understand Abraham’s seed: the true, singular seed who is Jesus, the fulfillment of the “seed” promise first given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15 (Gal. 3:16).

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5. Abraham’s Sons for God’s Global Purpose

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If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

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6. Waiting for a Heavenly City

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This was Abraham’s hope. He was not looking forward to another land like where he had come from. He looked forward to a land far better, new and different.

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Given the promised conflict between the woman’s and the serpent’s offspring, we shouldn’t be surprised to find Abraham’s children enslaved to Egypt’s king.

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He will redeem them to display his glory and demonstrate to Israel and Egypt that he alone is God, the one who is faithful to all his promises (Ex. 6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:14–16, 29; 10:2; 11:7; 14:4, 18).

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Exodus opens with God’s people in servitude in Egypt, and it ends with them in service to God. It opens with God’s people building cities for an oppressor, and it closes with the building of a tabernacle for God’s glorious presence. It opens with the drowning of Israel’s children, and it ends with Pharaoh’s army drowned under the waters of the Red Sea.

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First, God delivers his people from Egyptian bondage through Moses (1–15). Second, God speaks through Moses to his people in the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai (16–31). Third, God dwells with his people in the tabernacle that Moses built (32–40).

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From the beginning to the end, Moses’ success would be God’s doing.

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First, God judged Egypt.

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First, the Law’s context is expressed before any word of command is uttered:

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God rescued Israel from slavery, and the context of the Law is a relationship.

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Second, if we consider the first of the commandments God gives, we see that it expresses the Law’s center: “You shall have no other gods before me” (20:3).

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Third, we find that the Law’s content is diverse.

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People often divide the Law into three parts: civil laws that govern Israel’s life as a nation, ceremonial laws that regulate Israel’s religious life tied to the sacrificial system, and moral laws such as the Ten Commandments. This is a helpful way to think of how different laws functioned in the nation’s life, but ultimately it is best to think of the Law as a single covenant unit or package.

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Fourth, the Law comes with blessings and curses. And the blessings and curses of the Law reveal its consequences.

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Fifth, we should note that the culmination of the Law is “rest”—the rest that was first introduced on the seventh day of creation.

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Rest was the goal of the Law, a recovery of what was lost in creation because of sin, and something, as we’ll see, that anticipated a far greater rest than was promised in the Law.

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Recall that God’s covenant with Abraham was a reestablishment of God’s relationship to humanity to bring about his original purposes for humanity. This means that Israel functions in a similar role to Adam in relationship to God and God’s global purposes. As a nation, the people are to image and represent God. Furthermore, as a son is to a father, so Israel is to God.

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The tabernacle points back to Eden as well—its construction in seven steps, ending with rest, echo the seven days of creation. The menorah reminiscent of the tree of life and the embroidered cherubim representing the cherubim remind us that the way back to Eden is guarded because of sin. Even as we approach from the east, we must be protected from God’s holy presence—or we die.

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The Holy Spirit designed the old covenant to teach God’s people about what they really needed and to point beyond itself to something greater: a solution to sin and access to God.

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The story of Exodus is a dramatization of this point: God alone saves.

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1. We Participate in a Greater Exodus

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Isaiah speaks of a greater redemption, tied to a greater exodus, brought about by the Servant of the Lord, who comes as our substitute and pays for our sin (Isa. 52:13–53:12).

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2. We Experience a Greater Rest

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Through the Law-covenant, God structured foretastes of ultimate rest into the life of the nation.

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There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his” (Heb. 4:8–10).