Blogging the Bible

What a beautiful picture begins to emerge in this development of the tabernacle. It is a place for the priests to make an offering for the sins of the people. If you can keep from getting lost in all the detailed description there is a very vivid picture here that foreshadows the plan of God in using Israel as a vehicle for the salvation of all people. In chapter 28 we read about the priest entering the holy place with the breastplate and ephod which bore the symbols of the 12 tribes of Israel.  In this way 28:29-30 says that the priest “bore the names of the sons of Israel over his heart” and also “bore the means of making decisions over his heart” before the Lord.  The priest carried the people and the decisions of the leaders of the people with him and brought them before the Lord. The sacrifices that were offered, in this way, were offered for all the people and the decisions that were made for the people were made in the presence of the Lord.

In chapter 29 another powerful symbol is revealed.  Those acting as priests before the Lord laid their hands on the head of the animal that was to be sacrificed (vs. 10 and 15). This represented the animals becoming the substitute for the punishment of the sins of the people. In laying their hands on their heads they were transferring the guilt and the punishment then was carried out in the sacrifice of the animal.  This kind of treatment of animals may be hard for most 21st century Americans to understand. But in the ancient culture the practice was common.  So, once again, the Lord takes the culture of the people of the time and uses common events to communicate his uncommon holiness and love.

Verse 45 of chapter 29 has the evidence of the meaning of tabernacle that we saw in the last two days readings.  Hear the Lord declares that he will dwell among the people and he will be their God.  This holy and awesome and powerful God desires to dwell with us! How can this be? We would never guess this. It takes God revealing himself to us through common means that we can understand to begin to grasp his awesome holiness and his awesome love.

A final note from the final verse in this section. 31:6. However you interpret it, the meaning is clear.  This God who is revealing himself to his people is a God who is intimately involved in all that he does with and for his people.  The law of God, the Ten Commandments given to Moses at Sinai are written “by the finger of God.” However he did this the significance is that it was not an aloof and remote God who carried the message through a series of couriers or messengers. He came himself.  He spoke with Moses directly and he somehow personally crafted the tablets for his people. Whoa! This is an amazing God. Tomorrow we will see the contrast in the depths of human sin.  In the short time Moses was on the mountain, the people of Israel became restless and began to go against everything they had learned about God and themselves so far.  Read on. The awesome God who miraculously delivered them from the bondage of slavery in Egypt is quickly abandoned with shattering consequences for all.

There are volumes and volumes of books written about the tabernacle and its significance to religious practices. These are all very interesting and fun to explore. The cumulative effect or the purpose of the maticulous and lavish instructions regarding the construction of the tabernacle was to help the people to begin to understand just how great and holy was this God. His splendor and majesty are incomparable. But even more important is the very meaning of the word tabernacle.

The meaning is most significantly revealed in the fact that John 1:1 in the new testament says that “The Word (God) became flesh and dwelt among us.” The word dwelt comes from the same word translated “tabernacle.” The significance of the tabernacle that God instructed Moses to build was not in its lavish and beautiful parts, but in the lavish and beautiful God that would inhabit it! The God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the whole world is a God who wants to be with his people. He is a God who desires to dwell with us!

This is the most amazing truth revealed in these chapters. In all other religions, gods are far away, hard or impossible to get to, and keep themselves removed from human beings. But God, the Holy One of Israel, the true God, is a God that longs to live with us. This is worth thinking about and meditating on. This is why we fall down and worship. We fall down, not only because we are sinners and need forgiveness. We fall down because we are in awe of this holy and powerful and majestic God who has chosen to come down and to live with us and in us! Wow! What an amazing God is revealed in these pages!

Chapter 20 contains some of the most well known and least understood content of the bible. The Ten Commandments are often referenced. The problem is they are only taught in regard to what they prohibit, when their primary intention was to teach the way we ought to act and live.  The commandment against murder communicated God’s high value of life.  The commandment against adultery expressed God’s view that faithfulness in  marriage between a man and a woman is what God requires. Each of the commandments have something they prohibit and something they proscribe.  My brother, who is a comedian, came to this realization when thinking about one of our family dogs.  My brother says that one day he realized that our dog did not do any of the things that we were taught a good Christian doesn’t do.  The problem is that our family dog did not do anything that a good Christian is supposed to do, either! You get the point. God requires of us holy behavior, not just the absence of sinful behavior.

Exodus 21:24 is perhaps one of the most abused verses in all of scripture.  The saying, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is often quoted by people. Most people use it to communicate the rightness of getting even with someone or the justice of a person who has done something wrong being wronged even more.  This could not be farther from the truth of the scripture.  In its context the principle was one that helped to put in check the cultural practice of vengence and retribution.  The principle meant that a person could not take justice into their own hands and get back at an offender.  The punishment, whatever it was, must fit the crime. There was no “double even” with God’s people.

There is alot in these chapters hard to understand because we do not  understand  how very different the ancient world of the old testament is from our world. Though many of the laws and their explanation sound unjust to us, in the context they came in, they were extremely merciful and began to move humankind toward the ideals that would fully be expressed in the teachings of Jesus.  In a time and place where slaves were treated totally as property, laws were given to protect them.  Eventually, Jesus and the New Testament teaching will declare that a servant must be first treated as a brother in Christ (see Philemon).  This, in effect, did away with slavery and servitude.

This just scratches the surface of this amazing book of the people of God moving out of slavery in Egypt and journeying in the desert and entering the land god promised them. Through it all they were learning how to live like the people of God–or not!  In its most basic form, Genesis reveals the God who created all things and explains who we are created in his image.  Exodus reveals how God begins to gather a people for his own glory and how he would have us live as his people. Most important it already begins to reveal God’s relentless pursuit of us to redeem us!

Hope you are using your study bible notes and reading the other scriptures that are in the reference part of your bibles. They are full of help in putting into the whole biblical perspective these “Books of Moses.”

The Israelites have now started a new journey. Pharaoh and his people were left behind, but the new path before them has the potential to be even more challenging than Egypt’s slavery.

Freedom is great, but how could the Israelites handle this new reality? Maybe they were happy but terrify too. Through a very long and difficult process they will learn that the same God, who brought them out slavery, will teach them how to live in freedom.

Exodus 16:2 tells us that “The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” And sadly that would be their regular behavior for a long time. God would have to teach them through many different ways, that what they really needed was an inner liberation from sin and their bad attitude towards life.

Miracles were not enough, even though God did many of them for the Israelites. They would have to learn to be “A Nation under God” not only a nation blessed by God.

Organization and accountability would be part of their learning process. Jethro, Moses’ father in law appeared in chapter 18 to remind Moses and the entire people of Israel that, the Lord is willing to bless more people if there are more people carrying on the calling of God.

 Will you be willing to join God in his call to bless more people? I think God needs more workers and fewer complainers. And this will be the great challenge for the Israelites, to learn how to join in God’s work instead of complaining to him for their problems.

Passover is a great word for Jewish people. For them it’s always a reminder of God’s grace and compassion for those who were under oppression. The Passover helps them remember that God always sees and hears what others cannot or do not want to, which is the suffering and necessities of the powerless.

Another important lesson that we can draw form the Passover is that God not only saw and heard the afflictions of his people but he  did  something else  “I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians” ( Exodus 3:8 ) he got involved with them in  their burdens and found a way to deliver them.

When Moses sang his song in chapter 15, he credited God for the final physical liberation after crossing the red sea. But now, it will be a new liberation, the inner liberation of the people of Israel that will cost them more and will be more difficult than the one that occurred under Pharaoh.

Do you know that in the New Testament it states that The Lord Jesus is our Passover?

“Clean out the old yeast so you may have a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1Corinthians 5: 7-8)

If he already saved us, our lives should be not only different, but our actions towards other should be too.Are we observing and hearing as God does?

Partnership with God sounds great but is also risky. First of all you have to get out of your comfort zone and then you have to get into a faith zone. The faith zone is where you lose control over people and circumstances and somebody else greater than you is in charge.

Moses was not only a messenger of deliverance but also a messenger of judgment, and because of that he had to confront the “used to be slaves” of Israel but also the “They are my slaves” powerful Pharaoh. None of them would make his job easy but anyway after he decided to serve God with this overwhelming task, there was not a turning point.

We tend to see the Israelite’s deliverance from Egypt as a very amazing event that happened in just one night, but the reality is that this deliverance was a very hard, long and painful process. When we read these entire chapters carefully, we will find out that many people were suffering because one man (Pharaoh) was playing to be god, and preferred to lose everything than to give up his illegal “belongings.”

It does not matter how powerful we can be, people belong to God, and only he can rule their lives. Israelites were God’s people and even though somebody else was claiming them as his own, God will demonstrate that when somebody decides to ruin other people’s lives by the same token they will ruin themselves.

The plague over Egypt was a clear message of God. They certainly were plagues of judgment but at the same time it opened up a new opportunity of mercy to Pharaoh and Egypt. They did not want to listen or to see what God was telling them. They just saw a bunch of “lazy” people who wanted to play religion to avoid their responsibilities of being “good slaves” (Exodus 5: 8-9, 15-18)

If we as Moses did, stop watching the “blazing bush” and start watching people’s sufferings  as God told him to do, less people would be consumed by the fire of difficulties and overwhelming hardships of life.( Matthew 9: 35-38)

 Yesterday was a “silent” day in our blog; maybe it represents the transition between the great time under Joseph and the new time without Joseph. What do you think?

 Today we will see a new leader emerging from the shadow. His name is Moses, one who will not enjoy the favor of Egypt but its hate. One who was saved from the waters but whom has to face many “turbulent waters” in his life.Exodus does not begin with Moses but with Israel’s people suffering under the powerful hand of Pharaoh and Egypt’s rulers.

Exodus 1: 8-11 says: Now a new King arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor.

 Oppression will be the regular word that will describe the daily life of the Israelites during this time, and it was so hard that the writer of Exodus said”: “Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God.” (Exodus 2: 23b) And to who else but God could this cry for help go? Nobody else wanted to hear or to see, only God was able to hear because everybody else was deaf to hear or too blind to see the affliction of this people, actually the rest of them agreed with Pharaoh that even though  the Israelites  were helpful they were dangerous, so they have to keep them, but also afflict them.

The interesting thing is that right after God “looked upon the Israelites, and took notice of them” (Exodus 2: 25) the first thing He does, is to call Moses (Exodus 3) and commissioned him to deliver them from slavery. So we might say That God was looking for a partner who wants to see and hear what nobody else wants to.

Today there are many oppressed people unnoticed by the others, their cry is reaching the heavens again. Are you willing to hear and to see them? God will appreciate your partnership.

Great news was delivered to Jacob at the end of Chapter 45.He was so happy, that the author of Genesis says: “the spirit of his father Jacob revived.” (Genesis 45:27) His son Joseph not only was alive but he was a very important man.

Chapter 46-50 will declare again that God is the one who was leading Jacob and his family’s journey even though the circumstances do not look like. God told him: “I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to
Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. I myself will go down with you to
Egypt, I will also bring you up again; and Joseph’s own hand shall close your eyes.” (Genesis 46: 3)

See how different God and we think? While Jacob was thinking about preserving his family, God was thinking about making them a nation. God told him:  “I will make you a great nation” it does not matter where or how, what matters is who, and God told him first  “I am God”   so because of that, you will succeed as your father did in Canaan you will even succeed in Egypt, because “I am God, the God of your father.”

I love the end of Genesis, because there is the powerful foundation of any hope we may need in dealing with any shortcoming in life. Joseph told his brothers: “do not be afraid, Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous amount of people as he is doing today” (Genesis 50: 19-20)

We might not understand at the moment or may be in the future, events that may happen to us or to somebody else, but one thing is sure, God is in control and he can transform everything for our good.I think in some way the Apostle Paul was recalling Joseph when he said: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8: 28)

In chapter 33 we saw the how Esau and Jacob were reunited after 20 years of separation. In today’s reading we have a reunion of many brothers after 13 years of separation. The difference between these two reunions is that Joseph and his brothers go through a long process of reconciliation.

 For some people reconciliation is easier than for others, but definitely we will need time, and a lot of divine grace to find a way out of resentment. Joseph chose a very complicated but useful method to deal with his brothers’ crime against him. He had a lot of overwhelming mixture of feelings that he had to cope with when he met them again.

How do you deal with resentment? Are you facing it or denying it? It’s very hard to say which way is the best to use when facing resentment, but if one thing is true; you have to deal with it sooner or later. Chapter 45 tells us that Joseph discloses his identity to his brothers, and says to them: “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” (Genesis 45: 4-5)

We can see that he never denied the hardship he went through for what they had done to him.  It was evident by the powerful feelings he still showed, but through all of this he had a broader perspective of life, much bigger than the destructive cycle of resentment and revenge. He learned to see life through God and God’s purposes for humanity.

The result of Josephs approach to his brothers was more than amazing. They were reconciled and restored by God’s grace and Joseph’s willingness to forgive them. Joseph himself became a better person in doing so, now he has a great news to share even with his Father Jacob.

He said to them: “hurry and go up to my father and say to him: thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all
Egypt; come down to me, do not delay”

If you want to share your blessings first of all you need to get rid of your resentment. 

The new Jacob moved on and established his family “in the land where his father had lived as an alien, theland of
Canaan” (Genesis 37: 1) New challenges were awaiting for him there. His favoritism towards Joseph will make his life and his family‘s life miserable.

Jacob’s life was not easy; it seemed like he was facing one trouble after the other. Have you ever felt like that sometime? With every trouble he was drawn closer to God. Now Joseph appeared as the main character that would be used by God to bring the chosen family into a new dimension of God’s work and kingdom.

Chapter 38 is more than a pause in the story, is the record of another chosen man (Judah) even though his behavior was very messy, God brought him into the messianic origins. Later on in the N.T we will hear “For it is evident that our Lord was descended from
Judah” (Hebrews 7: 14)

Chapter 39-41 is the amazing story of how a man by the grace of God transformed the nightmare of his life (Exile, slavery and imprisonment) into the foundation of becoming a better person and a great man of God. Obviously we all know that God gave him the dream of becoming a great leader (Genesis 37:5-10) and only God could make it happen, but Joseph learned to cooperate with God during this hard journey.( See Psalms 105: 16-22)

Are you living a nightmare now? Are you going through a very difficult period in your life? Remember the key words that you will see in Joseph’s life are: “The Lord was with Joseph and he became a successful man” and it was so evident that even the Pharaoh will ask: “Can we find someone like this- one in whom is the spirit of God? (Genesis 41:37) Trust in the Lord; keep dreaming his dreams, because with God there is no dark night that will not be changed into a wonderful sunrise. (Luke 1: 37)