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January 27 - February 5, 2019
I encourage parents not to underestimate what children can learn about the Bible. Unlike many books of theology, the content of the Bible is fairly easy to grasp. Even (especially?) a two-year-old understands what happens when someone’s head is bashed with a tent peg.
“the Old and the New Testament taken as a whole tell the same story of the same people of God.”
Modern Christianity, by contrast, has not quite known what to do with the Old Testament; or, better, it has known precisely what to do with the Old Testament—toss it in the rubbish bin.
Interpretation of the Old Testament must be grounded in grammar and history, but if it does not move to typology, it is not Christian interpretation.
Puns, metaphors, similes, and other “tropes” fall into this category, and the Bible is full of them. The Bible’s tropes, however, are never merely artistic adornments; they carry significant theological content.
how words are used throughout entire books of the Bible. Like great novelists, the biblical writers repeat a theme, word, or image throughout a book, and it accumulates significance as it goes.
Similarly, in Leviticus 8, the description of the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests is divided into seven speeches that are marked off by the phrase “as the Lord commanded Moses” (8:5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 29, 36). As Aaron is brought through these seven “words,” he is made a new man. This
Deu-teronomy 32:11 speaks of the Lord “hovering” over Israel at the time of the Exodus, and this is the same (rare) word used in Genesis 1:2 to describe the Spirit’s hovering over the deep of the original creation.23
Recovering the Old Testament as a text in which Christians live and move and have their being is one of the most urgent tasks before the church.
Like most good stories, the most exciting and important parts come toward the end. In this case, the most important part comes when Jesus is born, lives, dies on the cross, rises again, and ascends to heaven. But to know why Jesus comes and what He is doing when he dies and rises again, we need to know the story that goes before. A man kisses a sleeping woman in a wood and she awakes. That’s a nice ending to a story, but if we don’t know the woman is Sleeping Beauty and the man is Prince Philip, then we don’t know the story very well. A beginning is nothing without an ending, but an ending
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God builds the creation as His house, and Adam, as the image of God, is also to be a builder.
Still, Adam has to work hard to subdue the world. Even before Adam sins, it is not easy to rule creation. Animals need training, trees are tough to cut, the earth is hard to dig, and rocks are hard to break.
Adam’s job is not only to make the world more useful for him, but also to make the world pleasing to God.
If you want to return to the Garden, you have to travel west, and moving east is moving away from the Garden. All through the Bible, east and west have this meaning.
Every time God meets with man on a mountain, it is a return to the Garden.
Adam’s job is not only to build for God in the world, but also to serve God as priest in the Garden. When God divides the earth into a “garden” and the “world” outside, He is pointing to the two jobs of Adam: king and priest. In the Garden, Adam meets with God and worships Him; in the world, Adam is to rule and subdue.
tower and deciding whether or not it will stand.36 Their reason for building the tower is to avoid being “scattered,” but the end result is that they are scattered more widely than they were to begin with. They want to make a name for themselves, but the name they receive is Babel, which means “confusion.” The name “Babylon” means “gate of God,” but the Old Testament name for these efforts to establish a gate to heaven is “confusion” and “folly.”
God’s promises to Abram also reflect back on the story of Babel. The Babelites intend to achieve a great name, but Yahweh tells Abram that He will make his name great (12:2). At Babel, the Shemites hope to unite the whole world, but it is Abram who will be the father of a great nation.
God promises to build a house for Abram, a large household that includes many nations. In light of the events at Babel, this promise implies that Abram’s household will one day build the Lord’s house. More specifically, the Lord promises that the son will build the house.
Circumcision is a cut in the flesh, and it speaks of the cutting off of the old in order to receive the new.
At Bethel, the Lord reveals His answer to Babel: He will build a way to connect earth and heaven; He will build it in the land; and He will build it through Jacob’s seed
Like all great kings in the Bible, Joseph rules in order to serve. When he becomes the second ruler of Egypt, he does not use his power to do selfish things. Instead, he uses his power to give bread to the world. He does not take revenge against the brothers who mistreated him. Instead, he feeds them too and invites them to come live with him in Egypt. Here too, Joseph is like the Last Adam, who is raised up above all kings and rulers to give Himself as the bread of life to hungry sinners.
In the law of Moses, a woman who is having her monthly flow of blood is unclean. Anything a woman sits on during this time becomes unclean, and her seat also makes other things unclean (Lev. 15:19–24). Laban’s gods are unclean because Rachel is sitting on them.
Why do Jacob and his sons go down to Egypt? Because there is no food in Canaan, and Abram goes to Egypt for the same reason. Pharaoh enslaves them, as Pharaoh takes Sarai into his house. So, the Lord strikes Pharaoh with plagues until he is willing to let Yahweh’s people go. Like Abram, Israel leaves Egypt with great wealth.
Like a preview at the movie theater, the exodus of Abram is a preview of the Exodus of Israel. Long before Israel goes to Egypt, God is the God of exodus, the God who delivers His people from slavery.
The number seventy is the number of the nations in Genesis 10. When we learn there are seventy in the household of Jacob, we are learning that Israel replaces the “seventy nations” that fell at the tower of Babel
In Hebrew, the word for “basket” is the same as the word for “ark,” and this word is used only in these two places in the Old Testament. Noah’s ark, like Moses’, is lined with pitch (see Gen. 6:14). Moses is a new Noah. All around him the children of Israel are drowning, but Moses’ ark passes through the waters of death and gets to safety. The same water that kills other Israelite children saves Moses. After the flood, Noah and his family come out from the ark and enter a new creation. Moses, the one who has passed through the waters in an “ark,” is going to bring Israel out of Egypt and into
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Moses sees an Egyptian “striking” a Hebrew, and so he “strikes” the Egyptian (Exod. 2:11–12). The same word is used in both verses. This means that the Egyptian is trying to kill the Hebrew, and Moses delivers his Israelite brother from death. Moses uses deadly force to stop the Egyptian from using deadly force. Like Yahweh, Moses acts on the principle of “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, stroke for stroke.” Stephen the martyr calls this an act of “vengeance on behalf of the oppressed” (Acts 7:24), and that’s a good thing to do. Moses is permitted to do this because he is a prince and ruler in
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Moses is the head of Israel, and whatever happens to the head will happen to the body.
But there’s more to the story in the book of Exodus than Moses delivering Israel from slavery. The book doesn’t end like the movie Prince of Egypt, with Israel crossing through the Sea. Israel passes through the sea in Exodus 14, and there are forty chapters in the book. The end of the story happens at Sinai.
Because Israel has been redeemed from slavery, they are to release others from slavery. God does not forbid slavery (Exod. 21:1–11), but He spends a lot of time telling Israel how to set slaves free. In Deuteronomy, God tells Israel that every seventh year they should let Hebrew slaves go free (Deut. 15:12). When the Lord brings Israel out of slavery, they are not empty-handed; God gives them the treasures of Egypt (Exod. 12:35–36). Israelites are supposed to treat their slaves the same way: “when you set him free, you shall not send him away empty-handed” (Deut. 15:13).
In the New Testament, the church is the temple of God, made holy by the Spirit. If anyone messes with us, he is attacking God’s holy things and messing around with the furniture of God’s house. As the history of Israel shows, the Lord gets angry when people mess with His stuff.
The tabernacle is like Sinai, a building made like a holy mountain. When Israel leaves the mountain, they take the mountain with them.41
Fire destroys, but here the fire destroys the animal to change it into something new. Passing through the fire, the animal is purified, transformed, and glorified.46 The animal is burned and becomes part of the cloud that represents God’s presence over the altar.
The end—the goal and the conclusion—of Israelite worship is a fellowship meal with God, and this renews the covenant.
All the offerings make it possible for Israel to live safely with the house of Yahweh in their midst. With Yahweh living just next door, sins and uncleanness became very dangerous.
God is making the world new and putting Israel in it so they can be a nation of new Adams and Eves.
God begins to make a new world while Israel is still in the wilderness. For many readers, the first ten chapters of Numbers are boring, with long lists and lots of numbers. What these chapters tell us is how God is organizing His people at Sinai. One part of this is the way that Israel camps around the tabernacle. At the end of the book of Exodus, Yahweh comes down in His glory-cloud, the same glory-cloud that hovers over the original creation (Gen. 1:2), to sit on the throne in the Most Holy Place. With God ruling as King in their midst, Israel is called together, and each tribe is told where
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When Moses counts, he finds that the fighting men number 600,000, and that means that there are perhaps as many as two million if you include women and children. Even though Pharaoh has tried to kill off all the Israelites, Israel has been fruitful in Egypt. God is not only keeping His promise to Abraham. These numbers also show us that Israel is doing what Adam was told to do: being fruitful and multiplying
Numbers might well have the title, “Rebellion in the Wilderness.” But where Israel’s sin increases, God’s patience and mercy increase all the more. Even though Israel refuses to go into the land, Yahweh promises to give them what He’s promised. But the Israel that gets to enter the land will not be the old Israel, the Israel that rebelled in the “garden” at Kadesh. It will be a new Israel. During the nearly forty years in the wilderness, the old Israel gradually dies off, and a new Israel takes its place. This is why there is a second counting of the people at the end of the book. And the
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The death of a High Priest is also important in the law. A man who accidentally kills his neighbor may flee to a city of refuge and live there in safety. When the High Priest dies, the blood he shed on the land is cleansed and he may return home (Num. 35:22–34). For forty years, the wilderness has been a “city of refuge” for all Israel. When Aaron dies, they are allowed to enter the land of promise. Aaron is not a perfect High Priest, but his death points ahead to the death of another Priest, Jesus, whose death and resurrection means the death and resurrection of Israel. Because of the death
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The goal of the conquest is to set up God’s house in the land and to worship Him, and even the battles sometimes look more like a service of worship.
The battle at Jericho sends a clear message: When Israel worships God, He brings the walls down.
Joshua conquers the land through faithful worship, and his conquest is based on Abram’s worship. Long before Joshua, Abram moves through the land, setting up altars in various places.
But the big point in the book of Judges is this: If Israel worships the Lord, they will win their battles and enjoy blessings, but if Israel turns to idols, their enemies will defeat and enslave them.
In the first six books of the Bible, we see priests a lot: Aaron and his sons, Phinehas, Eleazar. But in Judges there are almost no priests at all. Where are they? The book of Judges doesn’t tell us much about priests because the priests aren’t doing much. And when they are doing something, it is often bad.
Naomi is a picture of Israel, and the Lord’s mercy to Naomi is a promise of mercy to His people.
Toward the end of the period of the judges, the Lord visits Israel with both judgment and mercy. Judgment falls on the sanctuary established at Shiloh, but at the same time, the Lord is raising up Samuel as priest and prophet and judge to prepare the way for the coming of a new order of things.
Eli’s sons do not give the Lord His portion first; they serve the Lord only after serving themselves.
The end of the Shiloh sanctuary is a disaster for Israel. As bad as the period of the judges has been, nothing like this has happened since Israel entered the land. Nothing like this happens again until Nebuchadnezzar destroys Solomon’s temple and takes the people into captivity.
