Darkness and Light

The Amazing Joanne and I went camping last week for a short vacation.  One of the shocking parts of camping in a state park is how dark it is at night, with no bright streetlights around.  We saw stars -- formations like the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, O'Ryan's Belt (he was the first Irishman in space, by the way), and thousands of others.  That was the fun part.  The difficult part was walking to the potty in the middle of the night.  That same darkness became a hazard, because there were rocks to trip over and stickleburrs that we wanted to avoid.  So we turned on the lantern and walked in its light.

Which reminded us, of course, of Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path."  How do we see that "light" of the Word?  Here are some common approaches:

• The Bible is the instruction book for life; so you should look up the verse that tells you what decision to make or that answers your question.  --This approach unconsciously treats the Bible like a buffet, where we can go in and take just the foods we want, and all we need to do is find the right verse to apply to our questions.
• The Bible is a set of laws and principles that will guide us, although it doesn't always contain an exact instruction for each situation, but we should follow God's laws for a successful life and to avoid sin.  --This approach unconsciously sees God as some sort of rule-giver, like a supervisor at work or in a boarding school, laying down the law and punishing us for getting out of line. 
• The Bible is an ancient book of wisdom and we can learn from it, but it's not authoritative.  --This tells us that we are the superior beings, and the Bible is something we can take or leave at our discretion. 

Each of these approaches is fatally flawed because it leaves you and me as the authority in how (or even whether) to interpret and apply the scripture. 

Here's a better way:  The living Word of God, Jesus Christ, is the One to whom this verse points. (I've written about that in previous weeks).  So how do we read "Your word is a light to guide my feet and a light for my path"?  That the whole Bible, as the inspired written revelation of God, tells us who God is and what he is like, most particularly and clearly in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ himself.  That we look to Jesus, in the Gospel accounts and in the other writings, to understand our relationship to God through him, being adopted into the life and love of God (Eph. 1:3-5) and being filled with Christ (Col. 1:27).  That light in us, Christ himself, is the Lamp for our feet.  "I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life." (John 8:12). 

Let's follow him, being filled with him, and let his Light guide us. 

Understanding God: Pictures from the Old Testament

We come back today to our intermittent series of people from the Hebrew Scriptures, known to Christians as the Old Testament, whose lives picture our salvation in Christ in some obvious or hidden way.  Sometimes it's a parallel, sometimes a contrast, sometimes both in one.

Today we discuss Moses, who is recognized as having founded the nation of Israel.  Modern Jews trace their heritage from the defining moment of the Exodus, when Moses led Israel out of Egypt, just as Christians trace their beginnings from the incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.  What might be revealed in the story of Moses as pictures of Christ?  Here are a few examples:

• Both were born into a life of oppression: Moses into slavery (Ex. 1:8-14, 2:1-10) the Son of God into human flesh (John 1:14, Phil. 2:1-11). 
• Both had to be rescued from a king who murdered children (Ex. 2:1-10, Matthew 2:13-23)
• Moses led his people out of Pharaoh's oppression, (Ex. 12:37-42) Jesus out from under Satan and sin (John 12:30-32)
• At God's direction, Moses helped create a nation as the people of God, united under their 12 tribes and the covenant of law (Ex. 19:1-8, 20:1-20); Jesus created a new people united by grace, not race; not by law but by God's forgiveness (Gal. 2). 

There's a contrast, also, in John 1:17:  "For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ." The phrase "unfailing love and faithfulness," also translated "grace and truth," comes directly out of Ex. 34:6, in which God is describing himself to Moses:  "The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out, 'Yahweh! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.'"  Just as God reveals himself to Moses in these words, Jesus reveals God to us in his entire life: "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known."  (John 1:18). 

The whole Old Testament is filled with pictures of the salvation offered to every person on earth through Jesus Christ. Moses is just one more of those.  What else is in Moses' life that is revealed in Christ to be a picture of future grace?  Who else do you see in the Hebrew scriptures as they anticipate the Savior?  Let's find another one for next time.  

Understanding God, Part 3

The last two weeks I've written about trying to understand God through his Son, whom we know as Jesus the Messiah (Christ).  We looked at some scriptures including Heb. 1:1-3 and John 5:39-40 to show that the written word of God points us to the Living Word of God (John 1:14) who shows us exactly what the Father is like (John 14:9).  So this time, let's look at a passage from the Old Testament that points us to what God was going to do in Jesus Christ.

Skipping over, for now, the first-ever indication of a savior in Genesis 3:15 (second half), and the desperation of the human race without God in the next few chapters, let's go to the call of Abram / Abraham in Genesis 12:1-4.  Here, God says Abram must leave his native land, go to another place, and that God will make him into a great nation, plus make him famous and a blessing to many; God will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who treat him with contempt.  This passage is pivotal for a lot of reasons:  it starts the story of the "father of the faithful" as an example of a life of growing faithfulness to the call of God; it tells about the roots of the nation of Israel; it foretells the birth of the Messiah as Abram's descendent ("All the families on earth will be blessed through you"); and it tells how we are to respond when God shows us his will ("So Abram departed as the Lord had told him"). 

But there's one more level of meaning we can find here:  look again at the command and the promises from God to Abram:  leave your home, go to a strange place; and you will be famous, be blessed and become a blessing to all nations.  That's a picture of what the Father asks the Son to do, and that the Son is willing to do, for our sake.  Paul writes in Phil. 2:5-11: "You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.  Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.  Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."  The calling of Abram is a rough picture, in a way, of what the Son of God would do later, going to a 'strange land' -- the physical earth -- and through his life, death and resurrection for us, become famous and a blessing to all nations. 

The Old Testament is full of word pictures that make sense in their original context, up to a point.  (Some of those stories don't seem to make any sense at all on their own, but that's a story for another day.)  The entire history of Israel sets up for us the larger story of the Messiah to come.  But only in Christ are these stories, histories and concepts given their full weight of meaning; revealing "the story behind the story" as it were; and only as we see them fulfilled in Christ can we understand how they apply to us today.  

Reading the New Testament scriptures and letting them highlight the Old Testament is kind of like seeing the Old Testament in 3-D:  everything jumps out at you in a much different way.  Next time we'll look at someone else's story and see what we can learn.