Category Archives: General

Bible Study, General

Reading Plan Round-Up

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How’s your New Year’s Bible reading  resolution going?

It’s February and a notoriously difficult month for those of us who are attempting to read through the Bible from cover to cover or for those of us who are spending a large amount of time reading the first 5 books of the Old Testament.

It may be a good time to review the post, “How to Fail at your New Year’s Reading Plan” to keep an eye out for those areas where failure is most often rooted.

Here I want to offer some additional encouragement to point out some of the obstacles that you may face and help you navigate through them efficiently.  One primary principle that will help in the majority of these sections is the macro-view, or looking at the forest instead of the trees.  What I mean by this is that it may help to look at these books, chapters, sections as a whole and ask, “What is the big idea being communicated through all of the intricate details?”

For example, if you’ve finished Genesis and moved into Exodus, you’re likely to encounter some difficulty in the later chapters of Exodus, particularly as they relate to the instructions given to Moses for building the tabernacle and its appurtenances in chapters 26-40.  One way to approach this is to pair this up with the New Testament, particularly Hebrews, to see the purpose of the OT tabernacle, ordinances, and priesthood were to point to their greater fulfillment in Christ.

Second, you may note the intrinsic details of these chapters and meditate on the gifts that God bestowed upon His people to construct and fabricate all that He commanded.

Third, you may want to meditate on the fact that if God went to such extremes to construct this earthly tabernacle, how much more amazing is the incarnation of His Son Jesus Christ, the True Tabernacle?

Finally, understanding these chapters are descriptions of how God is ordering the worship of Himself, meditate on how God has ordered the worship of Himself under the New Covenant.  Has he just giving it up to Christian liberty?  Has He left us to our own devices to worship Him how we see fit?  Certainly if God was this prescriptive in the Old Covenant, there must be something for us to glean for our worship today.

A second obstacle may come from the book of Leviticus with its detailed descriptions of sacrifices and offerings.  This post on the correlation of Leviticus with Hebrews may be a helpful tool to navigate these chapters.  From the macro-view, highlight how often Leviticus (and Numbers) uses the phrase “the Lord spoke” or “the Lord said”.  What does this say about a God who speaks? (See also Hebrews 1:1)  What does it communicate about Moses?  Second, Leviticus is particularly concerned with the Principle of Separation, namely the clean from unclean, holy from unholy, and the sacred from profane.  Let this impact how you read and understand the necessity of all of these sacrifices and be overwhelmed at the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the EXTREME amount of blood and detailed sacrifices, and then let that carry you into worship of THE Sacrifice, THE Lamb without blemish, THE final sacrifice, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The third obstacle will most likely be the book of Numbers.  This is a difficult book for me.  There are genealogies, complaining, wilderness wanderings, sacrifices, rebellions, complaining, narratives, law, grace, prophecy, complaining, censuses, and more complaining.  One macro-view for reading Numbers is to dwell on the Wilderness, the reason why they are wandering, the oft “from one wilderness to the next”, how this is downstream from Adam and Eve’s exile, how this is upstream from Christ’s wilderness (See Matthew 4:1-11), and how the Church today may be in the wilderness like the Church of old (See Acts 7:38 and Hebrews 3&4).

Finally, if you’re looking for more help,  there is an excellent video series published by the folks at The Bible Project.  Below are two on the book of Numbers, but every book is available and provides and excellent big picture overview, much like an introduction.

Bible Study, General

Remembering Egypt

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The Israelite exodus from Egypt was a historical, monumental act by God to redeem the people whom He would set apart for His own ultimate purpose, the establishment of a lineage for the Messiah.  The promise for this began in Genesis 3:15, but continued with the covenant to Abraham, then his son Isaac and eventually his son Jacob (see Romans 9:6-13 for additional context).  Beginning in Genesis 46, the family of Jacob relocated to Egypt to survive the widespread famine that had stricken the region.  While there, the people begin to enlarge so much that the Egyptians began to worry about their numbers, resulting in enslavement of the people as a form of control (Exodus 1:10).

Throughout the Old Testament God was constantly reminding His people of His gracious redemption from their bondage to Egypt.  This occurred not only during their 40+ year exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, but was used as a reminder by the prophets of God’s care and mercy towards His people.  They were to look upon this merciful act with eyes of worship, recognizing that Yahweh had condescended Himself to redeem for Himself a people.  This great act was not to be forgotten in a generation but passed along to future generations.

Conversely, the people were constantly remembering Egypt, but not for the right reason.  Their hearts were set on the idolatry and delight in the pleasures of the flesh that they enjoyed while in their captivity.  Observe Numbers 11:4-6 “4 Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. 6 But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

We can see in this example during the Wilderness Years that not only were the Israelites grumbling about the provision of manna from the hand of God, but they were longing for the pleasures of Egypt even if it meant their enslavement.  Think about this.  They failed to remember their slavery, forced to work for little to nothing, forced to make bricks without straw, forced to labor for an idolatrous leader for idolatrous purposes; all forgotten as their focused turned to what they enjoyed during that time.  What God had provided them was unsatisfying because they failed to appreciate their redemption and worship God for providing their daily bread.  Instead their insatiable appetite lusted for the pleasures of Egypt.  How true is that for us today as believers?  Though we have been redeemed by Yahweh from the enslavement and bondage to sin, we often find ourselves complaining about the provisions of God and longing for the days when our fleshly desires were fulfilled.  All too familiar is this idea conveyed in the Israelites of our own bondage and slavery.  We forget all about the lack of reverence toward God, our failure to delight fully in Him and love Him with all our hearts, mind, soul, and strength.  We forget about the guilt and shame that our sin brought on us or the pain that we caused others because of our enslavement to sin.  Worst of all, we forget that our sin was an affront to the holiness of God.  Instead, we remember the fleeting pleasures of the flesh.  The momentary satisfaction that sin brought us.

Ezekiel 23 provides a helpful comparison and contrast of remembering Egypt for the wrong reasons and includes the account of how God feels about this.  Please take time to read that in its context, as it is quite provocative. While the force of God’s disdain towards those who would remember the lusts of Egypt cannot be fully expressed apart from the entire chapter in context, we can get a sense of it in verse 27 “Thus I will put an end to your lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.”  God’s desire for the Israelites was to remember His gracious goodness in their redemption and His providential leanings towards them throughout their Exodus.  However, as they looked in their rearview mirror at Egypt, they overlooked this and failed to give God the worship due His name.  In actuality, they perverted the goodness of God by embracing the lusts of their flesh experienced during their time in Egypt.

Too often, we look back on sin, our own person Egypt, with delight in our eyes.  Perhaps it is a memory that we allow to linger or a thought that we fail to take captive, but sin has a surprising way of appearing crystal clear in our rearview mirror.  Would that our hearts would be moved to focus more on the gospel of Jesus Christ; that our memories would be set upon the redemption that is only found in Him; that the cross would be vivid in our rearview and the glories of heaven a desire for our destination.  Set your minds on things above and not on things below.  Remember your redemption from Egypt and give no thought to her pleasures.  Her allurements are unsatisfying and she wishes nothing more for you than re-enslavement.  But you, believer, have been bought with a price; ransomed from Egypt by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.