Of course, the riches that God has already made available to us are the riches of His kingdom, the riches of His Word, the riches of His eternal life in a never-ending relationship with Him. But God will indeed give anyone hundreds, thousands, and even millions of dollars--if it serves His purpose and if that person knows Him well enough.

George Müller, as one example among thousands, was a well-known man of prayer and the founder of the world-famous Bristol Orphanages in England. Müller knew God so well that God gave him millions of dollars--money which that good and faithful servant wisely invested in young lives and in building the kingdom of God.

Knowing God is the key. He wants to be your friend. He wants to pour out the riches of heaven upon your life--"good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over," as Luke 6:38 tells us. But you must get to know Him. And the way you get to know Him is through the pages of Scripture, as interpreted to us by the Holy Spirit.

Notice that all-important linkage: the Scriptures and the Spirit--you can't separate the two. The Bible without the Spirit leads to dullness, boredom, and dead, institutional Christianity. The Spirit without the Bible leads to fanaticism and wildfire. We need both the Spirit, and the Word.

Moreover, we need the entire Bible. For example, the story of humanity before the Fall is necessary that we might know what God made the human race to be and that we might understand the kind of relationship God had in mind when He created the first man and the first woman. The pure, pristine relationship that existed before sin entered the world is precisely the kind of relationship He wants to restore us to now!

We also need to know the lives of the men and women of faith throughout the Bible in order to see how God works in specific situations. What an encouragement these lives are to us! As we read these stories, we see that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Ruth, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Mary, Peter, Stephen, Paul, Barnabas, John, and all the others went through the same experiences we do--and they drew upon the same supernatural strength and power that is available to us! We learn that God placed these people in the crossroads of their own times, recording their actions and reactions, so that we might see God's purpose in our own time and so that our actions and reactions might be guided by the lessons of those who went before us. Viewed in this way, the Bible becomes not merely a "religious book," but a practical, relevant guidebook for daily living!

We need to understand the Prophets in order to see how God is working through human history, from beginning to end. As we study what Paul calls "God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began" (1 Cor. 2:7), we begin to know God's thoughts, which are not our thoughts, and God's ways, which are far higher than our ways. As our Lord put it, "You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children" (Matt. 11:25).

We need to know the Gospels in order to see the perfect life of Jesus Christ--His unique wisdom, His divine power, His human pain, His extraordinary personality, His unparalleled character, and His extravagant love for people. In the Scriptures, we discover the many-faceted richness and depth in the human being who was uniquely the Son of Man.

We need to know the Epistles in order to apply the great truths we learn in the Gospels. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the writers of the New Testament letters have translated His truths into principles for the most practical daily situations.

Finally, we need to know the book of Revelation, because this world is approaching the hour of crisis. As individuals and as a believing community we need the assurance that this present darkness shall pass, that the futility and the horrors will be ended, that our bondage will cease, and that Jesus Christ will be manifested in this universe, and He shall reign.

The story of how the Bible came into being is the fascinating story of a miracle of God. In 2 Peter 1:21, the apostle Peter tells us that the Bible was written by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit:

Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible clearly transcends all human documents; it is far greater than anything human beings could produce. Despite the tremendous diversity of human authorship and the vast span of time over which it was written, this Book has one message, tells one story, moves to one point and directs our attention to one person. It would simply be impossible to take at random any collection of books from literature, put them together under one cover, and have any remotely related theme develop. Such a collection is possible only if behind its many human authors there is one transcendent Author. As Paul wrote to Timothy (2 Tim. 3:16-17):

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The Bible is not only the story of God and of His Son Jesus Christ. It is also the story of your life and of my life, as well as the story of our race. The Bible explains what we are and how we came to be this way. It illuminates the human condition. It instructs us, exhorts us, admonishes us, corrects us, strengthens us, and teaches us. In this book, God has incorporated all the truths we need to know about ourselves.

How did ordinary human beings some from the most common callings of life capture the thoughts and attitudes of God? How did the Holy Spirit lead them in recording the Word of God rather than the mere opinions of human beings? It is a miracle beyond our understanding.

But this we do know: The more we study the truth of the Bible, the more thrilling and compelling it becomes. Like a scientist with a passion for uncovering the secrets of the universe, I am captivated by an intense drive to unfold the wonders of God's Word. After decades of study, I have found that increasing familiarity with this book has only caused it to grow more fascinating, more mysterious more profound, and more marvelous in its implications and applications to my life.

This book has survived countless attempts to suppress it and destroy it. It has been preserved and defended for us through the centuries in ways that can only be called providential. Again and again its pages have been stained by the blood, sweat, and tears of martyrs who have spent their very lives to save this book for later generations.

Why has this book been so important to God and His people? What is the Bible's ultimate purpose? What does God want to accomplish by giving us this Book and by sending the Holy Spirit to interpret it and make it real in our lives? The Bible itself gives us the answer. In Ephesians 1:9-12, one of God's human writers, the apostle Paul, makes this amazing Spirit-inspired statement about God's revelation to us in Scripture:

He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment--to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

Astounding! The Creator of the universe, the Lord of space and time, the great starsmith who has fashioned a billion galaxies and thousands of billions of stars, has a purpose for your life and mine, and He has unveiled that purpose in His Word, the Bible! In Ephesians 3:8-12, Paul extends this soul-stirring thought:

Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Him and through faith in Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

Probably the clearest declaration of God's eternal purpose for our lives is found in Ephesians 4:11-13, where Paul states that the Lord Jesus, having finished His work on earth through the cross and the resurrection, ascended to heaven and gave gifts to human beings:

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

That is God's purpose: to bring us to maturity. God wants us to become mature by becoming like Christ. All that God has done in human history, all of His works recorded in Scripture, and the entire universe in its physical and moral dimensions have occurred so that you and I might become mature in Jesus Christ. God's purpose for the human race is not some vague, distant, far-off, impersonal goal; it is here, it is now, it is personal, it is clear, and it is profoundly intertwined with our everyday lives. Everything that exists has been brought into being so that you and might fulfill God's amazing potential and possibilities for us.

And the measure of that humanity is the measure of the stature the fullness of Jesus Christ.

I used to meet regularly with five high-school-age men. On one occasion I asked them, "Fellows, what is your image of a real he-man?"

"A guy who's really pumped up," said one. "A guy with a lot of muscles."

I knew of one athlete at this young man's school, a fellow with lots of rippling muscles on his body--plus a fair amount of muscle between his ears! "Oh," I said, "you mean like So-and-so?"

Startled, this young man said, "No, of course not! He spends a lot of time on the weight machine, and he has arms and legs like tree trunks--but he's not much of a man."

"Okay," I said, "then I guess muscles aren't a very reliable standard of manhood. So what is it? What do the rest of you think it takes to be a man? Let's make a list."

They all thought some more, then another replied, "Well, I think a real he-man is a guy with guts."

So we wrote down courage on our list. The young men did some more thinking and came up with some additional qualities that we added to our list: consideration, kindness, integrity, purpose, and so on. Soon, we had quite a long list.

Finally, I said, "You know, fellows, this is amazing! Think of it! You could go anywhere in the world and ask any man, and it wouldn't matter whether he was rich or poor, high or low, black or white or any shade in between. Ask him, 'What does it mean to be a man?' and you would get the same answers you have given on this list! Because all men everywhere want to he-men. All women want to be women. The ideal they hold in their hearts is largely the same. There may be small variations in detail but not in the general form. The virtues we have listed are admired everywhere."

The young men nodded thoughtfully, and I continued, "Now, can you name one person who has fulfilled this list of ideals? How about you? Are you fulfilling these ideals?”

"I think I make it about thirty percent of the time," said one,

"No way!" said another. "You wouldn't even make it five percent--and neither do I!"

"Do you know anybody who has accomplished these ideals a hundred percent of the time?" I asked.

Silence and blank expressions. Suddenly, their faces lit up and they said, "Of course! Jesus!"

And they were right. Jesus is God's perfect man, the most flawless and complete expression of manhood and humanity ever to walk the face of the earth.

That is God's ideal for our lives! That is what Ephesians 4:13 tells us: God has planned for us to "become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." The steps toward that goal are twofold.

The first step that brings us to this goal is found in the phrase "until we all reach unity in the faith" (Eph. 4:13). Faith is the operative word. Faith is always the way by which we actually experience all that God has made available.

The second step that brings us to this goal is "the knowledge of the Son of God"--the accurate and full knowledge of the Son of God. We cannot achieve maturity in Christ as God intended if we don't know His Son. By knowledge, God does not only mean biblical information, but personal experience of Jesus Christ. It is faith, the first step, that leads to knowledge, the second step.

The apostle is careful to make clear that it isn't just my faith or your faith but our faith--what he calls "unity in the faith--that brings us to this knowledge. In Ephesians 3, Paul prays that we may come to know with all the saints how high and broad and long and deep is the love of Christ. This means that unless you are in touch with other saints you can't possibly develop as you ought to as a Christian. It is impossible to move to maturity unless we are ready to share truth with each other. We need each other in the body of Christ, and as we fellowship together, share together, worship together, and study God's Word together, we grow together in maturity and in the experiential knowledge of the Son of God.

We will investigate this Book, the Bible, together to learn what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. As we shall see, the Bible is not merely a collection of sixty-six books written by more than forty human authors over a span of fifteen centuries. It is a single book with a unified theme, a coherent message, and an astonishing relevance to our everyday lives here at the end of the twentieth century.

This one-volume "divine library" is a book of wonderful variety. Its beautiful love stories reflect the tenderest and most delicate of human passions. Its stories of political intrigue and maneuvering rival anything we might read about in today's headlines. Its stories of violence and gore almost make the blood run cold. Its poetic passages soar to the very heights of artistic and emotional expression. It has narratives of intense human drama. Its strange and cryptic passages filled with weird symbols and allegories are difficult to penetrate and comprehend.

Yet one subject dominates and permeates this book: Jesus Christ--Creator, Redeemer, and Lord. We first meet Him as one of the voices at Creation who says, Let us make man in our image" (Gen. 1:26). His coming is symbolized and foretold throughout the span of the Old Testament. His life is detailed in quadruplicate through the Gospels, and His character is instilled in us throughout the New Testament epistles. Finally, His kingdom is pictured for us and His second coming is described in the book of Revelation: "Come, Lord Jesus" (Rev. 22:20).

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is a book about Jesus Christ. In symbol, in story, in marvelous prophetic vision, in simple narrative account, in history, in poetry, in every aspect and dimension of the book, the focus is always on God's Son. He is the secret, the thesis, the unifying thread of the book. In learning about Him, we learn God's plan and pattern for our own lives. We understand our problems and find the solution to those problems reflected in Him. We understand our needs and find the satisfaction of our needs in Him.

One of the most transforming truths found in this book is the truth Jesus spoke in John 10:10, where He said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." This is not just "good news," it is great news! Jesus wants us to know that not only are our sins forgiven by His shed blood, not only are we as Christians on our way to heaven, but we can experience fulfillment, joy, peace, and satisfaction, right here and right now! We don't have to merely struggle through this life making the best of a bad situation, muddling through, falling and failing, doubting and despairing, discouraged and defeated, barely hanging on through life until we finally cross over to the other side and find the release we crave. That's not good news!

The good news God reveals to us in this book is that we don't have to wait until eternity to find eternal life. The wonderful, abundant, eternal life that burned so brightly within Jesus is in our reach right now! We can have what He had, we can possess what He is, right here, right now! As Ian Thomas once said, "We must have what He is in order to be what He was." Once we attain that ideal and become mature in our Christlikeness, then God's purpose for our lives will be fulfilled.

Think of it! Who was this man Jesus? He was the perfect human being. He was God's ideal for humanity. For thirty-three years He lived among us on this pain-wracked sin-drenched planet in the very circumstances and under the same pressures we face every day of our lives. It was under these adverse circumstances that the godly perfection of His character shone with such brilliance and power.

"But," you may say, "I can't do that! I can't become what He was! I can't live a perfect life like the one He lived."

Of course not. But then, in the last analysis, it doesn't really depend on us. We will be what Jesus was when we allow Him to come live His life again through us, when--by simple faith--we take Him at His Word. If we dare to believe Him, moment-by-moment and day-by-day, we can allow Him to be what He is in us and through us. This is the good news!

But to do this, we need the Word of Gods revelation. We don't come to the knowledge of the Son of God without a learning process, without a conscious commitment to an ever-increasing understanding of His truth. That is why we are adventuring together through this amazing Book.

What is the "right" way to look at the world?

Most of the time, we see the world with the naked eye. Physicists, however, use expensive particle accelerators to see the world one atom or one electron at a time. Astronauts go out into orbit and look down on the world from a distance, seeing the entire sphere of the world with its continents, seas, and swirling weather patterns. Who has the "correct" view of the world: the physicist, the astronaut, or the naked-eye observer?

Answer: They all do. Each sees the world at a different scale, from a different perspective; each view is valid for its own purpose and in its own way.

Now consider this: What is the "right" way to look at the Bible? Should it be examined minutely, phrase by phrase and verse by verse? Or is a book study--an exhaustive examination of Nehemiah or Ephesians, for example--the right way? Or should we step back and take a wider, more panoramic view, the astronaut's view, surveying the great themes and historical flow of the Bible as if from orbit?

Answer: Each method is equally valid, each offers a different perspective, each serves a different purpose. Our purpose in Adventuring through the Bible is to take the wide-angle perspective, the aerial view of the Scriptures. Our survey of the Bible is divided into nine parts:

Part One: A Panorama of the Scriptures

An overview of the Bible, Genesis through Revelation

Part Two: Five Steps to Maturity

The books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy

Part Three: The Message of History

Applying the historical books, Joshua through Esther

Part Four: Music to Live By

Old Testament poetry, Job through the Song of Songs

Part Five: The Promises of God

The prophetic books, Isaiah through Malachi

Part Six: Jesus: The Focus of Both Testaments

Jesus and His Church, Matthew through Acts

Part Seven: Letters from the Lord

Letters to the church, Romans through Philemon

Part Eight: Keeping the Faith

All about faith, Hebrews through Jude

Part Nine: Signs of the Times

The end--and a new beginning, Revelation

With this as our outline, we will journey through all sixty-six books of the Bible, examining its great themes and following the threads of those themes from their beginnings in Genesis to their triumphant conclusion in Revelation. We will probe the grand design of God's revealed Word and discover how each part of the Bible fits together with every other part. We will see the dynamic flow of God's profound revelation to humanity and detect the hand of God's untying divine authorship behind each book and each human writer.

I encourage you to read through these books of the Bible as we go along. This book is not a substitute for Bible study. In fact, I would rather that you take this book and throw it on a bonfire than use it as a substitute for actually reading and studying God's Word! This book is intended to be opened alongside of, not in place of, the Scriptures.

So join me in the adventure of a lifetime, an adventure of grand discoveries and exciting breakthroughs. Join me as we adventure together through the greatest book of all time!

Chapter Two: The Old Testament

God Spoke in Times Past

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on November 22, 1963? Virtually every American who was alive that day can recall with clarity and sadness the moment he or she heard that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. If you are too young to recall that day, the nearest equivalent might be January 28, 1986, the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded nine miles above the earth killing seven brave astronauts. The emotional aftermath of such an event is one of shock, dismay, and abysmal sorrow. It is as if the sun were suddenly blotted out, and the entire landscape went dark.

If you could magnify that emotional intensity several times over, you might begin to understand how the disciples of Jesus felt in the aftermath of the crucifixion. Luke 24 contains a story of two such disciples walking along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Whenever I read this story I feel a tug inside, a strong wish that I could have been present to witness this event with my own eyes. Even though I believe that since the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost Christ is more real and available to believers now than when He physically walked the earth, I still would love to have been there to watch what was to take place in the lives of these two downhearted disciples.

It was the day of the resurrection of our Lord, and the countryside was already exploding with the incredible news that Jesus had risen--but few would believe it. Indeed, these two disciples were filled with sorrow and despair. Jesus' death had blotted the sun out of their sky and they had no idea which way to turn or what to do. As they walked, they talked about their grief. They were intent on their own conversation, and a stranger drew near and began walking with them. The stranger asked, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?" (Luke 24:17).

They stopped and looked at the stranger in amazement. "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days…Jesus of Nazareth…was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see" (Luke 24:18-24).

When they had finished speaking, the stranger said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!" (Luke 24:25). Then, Luke tells us, "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets," the stranger--the risen Lord Jesus Himself--"explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). Later on, as they were thinking back over the events of that wonderful incident, they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32).

What was it that caused this wonderful, strange, awe-inspiring sensation of holy heartburn, this divine glow of anticipation that lit again the smoldering fires of faith in their hearts? And don't you just wish that you could have an experience like that? I certainly do!

Well, the source of that strangely warmed experience on the Emmaus road was nothing more nor less than the exposition of the Old Testament in the power and clarity of the Holy Spirit: "Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." This is what the Old Testament does: It points to Christ! The Old Testament prepares our hearts to receive the One who truly satisfies. That is the discovery made by the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus is not just the object of the New Testament but of the Old Testament as well.

As Jesus once said to the Jewish leaders who opposed Him, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me" (John 5:39).

In the previous chapter we found that God's purpose in revealing His truth to us through the Bible is to bring us all to maturity as followers of Christ, that maturity being "the whole measure of the fullness of Christ," the complete expression of Jesus Christ in the world. It takes the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, to accomplish this, and it takes the work of the Holy Spirit to open our understanding of Scripture.

In this chapter we will examine the contribution that the Old Testament makes to our maturity in Christ--not in detail, but in an "orbital view" survey. We will gain an overview of the major thrust of the Old Testament so that we can have clear in our minds the part it plays in producing Christlike maturity within each of us.

The Old Testament is deliberately an incomplete book; it never was intended by God to be His last word to the human race. Dr. W H. Griffith Thomas has suggested that if we were to approach the Old Testament as though we had never read it before and take note of all the remarkable predictions of someone who is coming afterward, we would find that this series of predictions begins in the early chapters of Genesis. As the text moves along, the predictions of this person grow in detail and degree of anticipation until, in the Prophets, they break out in glowing and marvelously brilliant colors, describing in breathtaking terms the One who is to come. And yet, after completing Malachi, the last Old Testament book, we would still not know who this person is. Thus, the Old Testament is a book of unfulfilled prophecy.

But the mystery of the Old Testament does not end there. Read through the first thirty-nine books of the Bible again and you will notice that an astounding, strange, disturbing stream of blood springs forth in Genesis and flows in increasing volume throughout the remainder this Testament. It is the blood of sacrifices--thousands and thousands of animals whose blood was poured out in a surging tide across the history of Israel. Again and again, the message is hammered home: without sacrifice, there is no forgiveness, no reconciliation. When we close the book again at the end of Malachi, we realize that it is not only a book of unfulfilled prophecies, but of unexplained sacrifices as well.

If we read through the Old Testament a third time, yet another dimension becomes clear: The great Old Testament men and women of God seem to express, again and again, a longing for something more than life offered them, something transcendent, something eternal. For example, Abraham sets out to find the city whose builder and maker is God. The people of Israel were on a pilgrim journey throughout the books of the Old Testament. In Job, in the Psalms, in the books of Solomon, there is the continual cry of thirsty souls longing for something that has not yet been realized. So, at the conclusion of this third reading of the Old Testament, we could nor help but realize that it is not only a book of unfulfilled prophecies and unexplained sacrifices, but also of unsatisfied longings.

But something wonderful takes place the moment you cross over from the Old to the New Testament. As you open the pages of Matthew, the first words you read are, "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ." It is Jesus arid Jesus alone who fulfills the prophecies, who explains the sacrifices, who satisfies the longings. The New Testament fulfills the promise of the Old, and we have to acknowledge that we cannot fully appreciate the profound meaning of the New Testament until we have first been awakened by the message of the Old.

Clearly, the Old Testament is a book intended to prepare us for something. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews, of course, ties in closely with the Old Testament themes, and the first two verses of Hebrews catch this idea very beautifully:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.

There you have the two testaments side by side: "In the past God spoke to our forefathers . . . at many times and in various ways" (the Old Testament), and "In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (the New Testament). The completion of the Old is found in the New.

The way the writer to the Hebrews describes the Old Testament is significant: "God spoke at many times and in various ways." Just think of the many times and various ways in which God spoke in the Old Testament. Beginning with Genesis, we have the simple but majestic account of the story of creation, the fall of humanity, and the flood--an account never equaled in all of literature for power and simplicity of expression. Next comes the straightforward narrative of the lives of the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We find the thunderings of the law in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; the true drama of the historical books; the sweet hymns and sorrowful laments of the Psalms; the practical homespun wisdom of Proverbs; the exalted language of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah; the touching human tenderness of Ruth, Esther, and the Song of Songs; the vivid, visionary mysteries of Daniel and Ezekiel; and on and on--many and various books, many and various ways of expressing the truth of God.

And still it is not complete! Nothing in the Old Testament can stand complete in and of itself. It is all intended as preparation.

As a first year college student, I was inducted into an organization you may have joined yourself. It is an organization with many members, and it is called The Ancient Order of Siam. Looking as ridiculous as possible in our little green skullcaps, a group of us were led into a room where we were subjected to an assortment of indignities. A number of sophomores stood around with paddles in their hands, ready to enforce their commands. We were lined up in a row, and one fellow stood before us and ordered us to follow him in repeating this chant:

Oh wah!…Tah goo!…Siam!

We dutifully repeated the chant. "Again!" he barked, so we all said it faster. Then again, still faster. Then again, and again. Suddenly, we all realized what we were chanting:

Oh, what a goose I am!

Then we were members of the Order of Siam.

Sometimes, the meaning of a thing doesn't emerge until you put it all together. In a far less ridiculous way, a similar experience takes place as we gain the big picture of the Old Testament. Each book of the Old Testament might be likened to a phrase or a syllable. Each book makes its own sound, but it is an incomplete sound. Only by merging all the phrases and syllables together does the overall meaning become clear. A marvelous expression emerges into view--an expression of the fullness of God's Son.

And where do all the phrases and syllables of the Old Testament come together? In the New Testament! That's where all the many Old Testament voices merge into one voice, the voice of the Son of God. At the very end of the New Testament, in the Revelation, the apostle John writes that he saw the Lamb and he heard a voice like the voice of many waters. That voice booms forth, gathering itself out of all the thousands of rivers flowing together in one great symphony of sound: the voice of the Son!

In its incompleteness, the Old Testament is like a collection of syllables and phrases spoken to us by God--wonderful phrases, rich syllables, yet never quite connected and complete. But in the New Testament, these syllables and phrases become one expressive discourse focused on the reality of the Son of God.

You may think, "Why should I spend time on all this preparatory material? Why not skip the Old Testament entirely and go straight to the New Testament, the final voice of the Son? I don't need the Old Testament at all." That would be a big mistake! Why? Because you cannot really grasp the fullness and richness of the New Testament without being prepared by the Old. Does that sound like a radical statement? Perhaps, but I don't think it can be successfully challenged. While much of the New Testament is very easy to understand, much of it is built on a foundation of the Old Testament. We will never understand all God has for us in the New Testament until we are prepared by exposure to the Old.

Every successful process requires adequate preparation. Why does a farmer take time and trouble to plow his field for planting? Why doesn't he just take the seed out and sprinkle it over the ground? Some of that seed is bound to find a place in which to take root and thrive. Does the farmer really need to spend all that extra time preparing the soil? Yes! Every farmer knows that though the seed is the most important single item in raising a crop, most of it will never rake root unless the soil has been adequately prepared!

Why do schoolteachers always start with the ABCs instead of charging right in and teaching Shakespeare? Wouldn't it save a lot of time, money, and effort to simply take the nation's five-year-olds and send them straight to college? Obviously, we cannot educate students this way. Why? Because that's not the way students learn! Without adequate preparation, all the great knowledge in the world, dispensed by the greatest teachers in the world, would wash uselessly over them, leaving them unchanged.

As Paul says in Galatians 3:24, "the law [of the Old Testament] was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith." Something is lacking in our lives if we try to grasp the reality of Christ without fully grasping the reality of the Ten Commandments. We will never be able to lay hold of all that is in Him unless, like Paul, we have wrestled with the demands of a rigid, unyielding law that makes us say with him, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom. 7:24).

For many years I read and taught the book of Romans, including the great liberating, delivering themes of chapters 6 through 8, without truly grasping the core truths of the book. I failed to experience the mighty, liberating power of Romans in my own heart until I had spent some time with the children of Israel in the Old Testament, living out in the wilderness, on the back side of the desert, with the burning desert heat beating down on me, and the pain of a barren, defeated existence throbbing in my soul. After I had seen what God accomplished in the lives of the Old Testament people by delivering them, I was able to understand--for the first time--what God is trying to tell is in Romans 6, 7, and 8. The "soil" of my heart needed the preparation of the Old Testament in order to receive the "seed" of the New Testament word.

Dr. H. A. Ironside told me a story from his early years of ministry when he was still an officer in the Salvation Army. He was holding evangelistic meetings in a large hall in a major city, and a great number of people were coming every night to hear him. One night, he noticed an alert young man sitting in the rear, leaning forward and listening attentively to everything Dr. Ironside said. The young man returned night after night, and Dr. Ironside wanted to meet him. He tried to catch him before he left the building, but each time the meeting was dismissed, the young man would melt into the crowd and disappear.

One night the young man came in a little late, and the only two seats left in the auditorium were right in the front row. He came down the aisle rather self-consciously and slipped into one of the front-row seats. Dr. Ironside thought to himself, Ha! You won't escape tonight, my young friend.

Sure enough, when the meeting was over, the young man turned to go, but the aisle was full. Ironside stepped forward, tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Would you mind if we just sit down here and talk?"

They sat down and Dr. Ironside said, "Are you a Christian?"

"No," said the young man, "I don't think I could call myself a Christian."

"Well, what are you?"

"I really couldn't say. There was a time when I think I would have called myself an atheist. But of late, I just don't think I could say with assurance that God doesn't exist. I guess you could call me an agnostic."

"Well," said Dr. Ironside, "what has produced this change in your thinking?"

The young man pointed to an older man sitting a few seats away. "It's the change in that man right over there."

Dr. Ironside looked and recognized the older man as Al Oakley, who had been part owner of a popular saloon in that city--that is, before he became his own best customer, ending up a skid-row drunk. But Al had experienced an amazing conversion in a Salvation Army jail service, and his life had completely turned around.

"I've known Al Oakley for years," said the young man, "and I know he hasn't any more backbone than a jellyfish. He tried to quit drinking many times but was never able to. Whatever turned his life around must be the real thing. So I've been reading the Bible lately. I can't seem to get anything at all out of the New Testament. But recently I've been reading the book of Isaiah. I've always been an admirer of oratory, and I think Isaiah slings the language better than anyone! If I could become a Christian by believing Isaiah, I think I would."

So Ironside opened his Bible and said, "I'd like to read you a short chapter from the book of Isaiah. It is about someone who is unnamed in the passage--but when I finish reading, I believe you'll he able to fill in the name."

"I don't know the Bible that well," said the young man."

"I don't think you'll have any problem," said Dr. Ironside. He turned to Isaiah 53 and read:

Who has believed our message

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground,

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities

and carried our sorrows,

yet we considered him stricken by God,

smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Dr. Ironside continued reading to the end of the chapter, then he turned to the young man and said, "Now, tell me, who was I reading about?”

The young man said, "Let me read it for myself.” He took the book and began to read rapidly through the whole chapter. Then he suddenly dropped the Bible in Dr. Ironside’s hands, and dashed down the aisle and out the door without another word. Not knowing what else to do for the young man, Dr. Ironside simply prayed for him.

The young man didn't return for two nights. Then, on the third night, Dr. Ironside was relieved to see him return. This time there was a different expression on the young man's face as he came up the aisle. Clearly, something had changed in his life. He took a seat in the front row, and when a time of sharing testimonies was announced, the young man stood and told his story.

I was raised in an unbelieving, atheistic family," he said. "In my school years, I read all the critics and was convinced there was absolutely nothing to this 'Christian' business. But while I was in Palestine, working for the British government, I was exposed to a number of influences that suggested to me that the Bible might be true.

"In Jerusalem, I joined a tourist group that went to visit 'Gordon's Calvary,' the site outside the Damascus Gate where General Charles Gordon believed he had found Golgotha, the skull-shaped hill with the garden tomb nearby. I went up there with this group. We climbed to the top, and while we were there, the guide explained that this was the place where the Christian faith began. It came home to me that this was the spot where, in my mind, the Christian deception began. It made me so angry I began to curse and blaspheme. The people ran in terror down the slope, afraid that God was going to strike me dead for blasphemy in such a sacred spot."

At this point, the young man broke down in tears. "You know, friends," he continued, "these last few nights I have learned that the one I cursed on Calvary was the one who was wounded for my transgressions and by whose wounds I am healed."

It took an Old Testament prophecy to prepare this young man's heart for the good news of the New Testament. His experience is a beautiful demonstration of the purpose and power of the Old Testament. The Old Testament was written to set our hearts aflame, to cause our hearts to burn within us in anticipation and longing for the Christ of the New Testament. Truly, the Lord Jesus Christ supplies all our needs, but the Old Testament awakens our hearts to the reality of our need of Him.

No book in all the New Testament asks the kind of deep, soul-searching questions you find in the Old Testament--questions that continue to plague the hearts of men and women today. No place in the New Testament will you find the earnest searchings of the human heart expressed all the pain, anguish, and confusion that afflict the modern soul: Why is there injustice? Why do the wicked prosper? What is our place in the cosmic scheme? How can we find meaning and purpose? Do we just live, laugh, suffer, then die and return to dust? Are we loved? Are we valuable? Or is everything ultimately futile?

The Old Testament is designed to articulate our deep spiritual hunger, to put life into terms we can see and express, to define the thirst of the soul, so that we can put a finger on our pain, our need, and our desire. How can we recognize the One who satisfies if we haven't identified the sources of our dissatisfaction?

Until we have seen ourselves reflected in the pages of the Old Testament, all we can really know is that we wake up each morning with a hazy sense of emptiness and incompleteness. As a result, we vainly try this and that and the other thing, hoping that something will satisfy, and always feel disappointed in the end. So life becomes a continual merry-go-round of pleasure-seeking or money-seeking or relationship-seeking or drug-seeking, which ends only in despair, emptiness, loneliness, or addiction.

For thousands of years, right up to the present moment, people of all cultures and backgrounds have turned to the Old Testament, have read its precious, powerful words, and have said, "That's it! That's me! That's exactly how I feel!" And they have gone on to find the answer for their pain and problems in those pages as well. The Old Testament is the book of human experience. It is designed to graphically, realistically portray us as we are. In the mirror of the Old Testament we see ourselves clearly, and this reflection of ourselves prepares us to listen to the Holy Spirit as He speaks to us through the New Testament.

How poverty-stricken we would be without the Old Testament, yet many Christians, tragically, choose to be poor! They ignore the marvelous, preparatory revelation God has given in the Old Testament, so that the rich truths of the New Testament might come alive in our hearts. As we move from the Old to the New Testament in this introductory section of our adventure together, my hope is that you will be challenged and changed in your approach to this great book and that in the years to come, the pages of the first thirty-nine books of your Bible will become as worn, underlined, and treasured as the pages of your favorite New Testament books.

The Old Testament is a living book, a fascinating book, guiding us toward maturity in Christ, preparing our hearts for the good news of the New Testament, May God immerse our hearts in its truths and use it to draw us deeper, ever deeper, into the living reality of His Son.

There are four divisions of the Old Testament, and each of these four divisions is especially designed to prepare us for a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. From the story of humanity's origins to the history of Israel to the great Old Testament poetry to the thundering books of prophecy, each section of the Old Testament lays its own foundation of truth. Each division touches our hearts in a subtly different way. Each helps present the coming ministry and person of Jesus in a subtly different light--so that when He is finally revealed at the critical moment in history, we see Him and we say, Yes! This is the One we have always heard about and read about in the Old Testament!"

Here is a thumbnail guide to the four divisions of the Old Testament:

Fives Steps to Maturity--The Books of Moses. These five books take us from our racial babyhood--the origin of the universe and the origin of humanity--and lead us toward maturity through the introduction of sin (and the first gleaming of the plan of salvation), the first judgment of humankind through the Great Flood, the stories of the heroes of faith Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph), the beginnings of the nation of Israel, the captivity and exodus, the leadership of Moses, the introduction of the Law, the wandering in the desert, and right up to the very borders of the Land of Promise.

Genesis means "beginnings," and the book of Genesis opens with the greatest mystery of our existence: our relationship to the universe and to the Creator of our universe. In its stories, we see reflection after reflection of our own human need. Adam and Eve needed a covering for their sins. Noah needed a boat to save him from the waters of judgment. Abraham continually needed God to intervene, to deliver him and supply him with things he lacked. Isaac needed God to prod him to action. Jacob needed a Savior to get him out of the messes he continually made in his life. Joseph needed a deliverer from the pit, from prison, from life's unfairness. The message of Genesis is the message of God's answer to our human need.

Exodus is the story of God's response to our human need. It is the marvelous lesson of His redemptive power in our lives--the story of the first Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, the lawgiving at Sinai. It is the story of human oppression in the land of Pharaoh--and the story of miraculous redemption and deliverance from bondage. The Israelites did nothing to bring about their own salvation. God did it all. That is still how He works in our lives today.

Leviticus is a book of detailed instruction. It is designed to make God accessible to us so that we will be available to God. It begins with the story of the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God. The tabernacle, of course, is a symbol of our lives, the place God ultimately chooses to dwell.

Numbers is the book of the wilderness of failure. The book begins at Kadesh-barnea, at the very edge of the Land of Promise. The people of Israel wander away from that place, losing sight of God's promise to them for forty years. After wandering in barrenness, loneliness, unbearable heat, and blistering sand, haunted mile after mile by defeat, they finally arrive at the same place where Numbers began--Kadesh-barnea. Numbers is a record of failure--and a warning for our own lives.

Deuteronomy means "second law." It is the story of the re-giving of the Law--and the people's recommitment of themselves to follow it. The book closes with the disclosure of the marvelous blessings that await those who pattern their lives after the revealed will of God. So the thread that winds through these five books, beginning with Genesis and leading all the way to the end of Deuteronomy, is that we are advancing, step by step, book by book, toward maturity, toward a living relationship with the living God of the universe.

The Message of History--Joshua through Esther. The historical books also make a unique contribution to the preparatory work of the Old Testament. While the first five books of the Old Testament gave us the pattern of God's working in the human race, the next twelve books of history present us with the perils that confront us as we daily walk the walk of faith. These books trace the history of one nation, a peculiar nation with a special ministry--the ministry of representing God to the world and of perpetuating the lineage of the One who will be born the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God. In the pressures, perils, and failures of Israel, we see the pressures, perils, and failures that beset us today as believers. And in God's loving discipline and His gracious redemption of Israel, we see His work of sanctifying and saving us from our own sin and failure.

The books of history lead us through the battles of Joshua as Joshua seeks to obey His Lord and take the Land of Promise. We see the intimidating forces of Jericho, followed by God's miraculous victory. We see the failure of the flesh at Ai and the deception of the Gibeonites. Through it all, we see that Joshua steadily marches onward, relentlessly fighting the battle of faith, never quitting or turning aside from the mission God has assigned him.

In Judges, we see the cycles of spiritual success and spiritual defeat--and we see God's use of seven special people, the judges of Israel, to bring deliverance to Israel. In Ruth we have a wonderful story of faithfulness, set against the backdrop of the failures of Judges. Ruth, an alien woman in the land of Israel, hears the voice of God, obeys, and joins herself to the people of Israel. It is a beautiful story of romance--and of faith.

The books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles tell of the glory years of Israel as a mighty kingdom--and of the tragedies that result when human kings do not obey the King of kings and Lord of lords. These books tell us the stories of King Saul, King David, King Solomon, and on and on--kings who were strong, kings who were weak, wise kings and foolish, righteous kings and evil, great kings and small. Always, it seems, whenever a bad king has led Israel into destruction and disgrace, the Lord lifts up a man like Hezekiah or Josiah to cleanse the temple, rediscover the book of the Law, and turn Israel back to God.

The books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther deal with Israel's captivity and restoration. God is always at work in our lives--even in our bondage and pain. He lifts us out of defeat and discouragement and helps us to rebuild the walls of our lives, even as Nehemiah led the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. He enables us to shout in triumph, even amid seemingly hopeless circumstances, just as Queen Esther was able to triumph over her impossible odds. In these twelve books of history, we find yet another facet of God's preparation of our hearts for the long-awaited arrival of the Messiah.

Music to Live By--Job through Song of Songs. These are the poetical books that express both the praise and protest of the human heart. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs expose our hearts to God, honestly expressing our pain and our longing for God. There is not a single emotion we experience in life that is not explored and expressed in these books. If you want to understand your own experience in life and find a reflection of your own soul in the Scriptures, then turn to these beautiful, powerful Old Testament books.

The Promises of God--Isaiah through Malachi. These are the books where God says what He will do. There are seventeen of these books, commonly divided between the "major" prophets and "minor" prophets. They are not major or minor in importance--only in length, the "minor" prophets being much shorter books than the "majors." Whether long or short, all of these books contain powerful, major truths for our lives.

Isaiah is a book of incredible glory and majesty. It promises and predicts in startling detail the life, ministry, and sacrificial death of our Lord Jesus. Isaiah is a book of grace. It tells the story of how we have destroyed ourselves through sin--and how God has intervened and given us the promise of a new beginning. Jeremiah and Lamentations, by contrast, warn of the absence of God from our lives if we turn our backs on Him. Ezekiel begins with a cascading, transcendent vision of God and leads us on a tout of future history, revealing God's promise of intervention in worldwide human events. Daniel shows us God's protective power to give us boldness, even when we are in captivity in a hostile, rapidly changing world; Daniel goes on to reveal what God is planning to do through the nations of the world down through the course of history, even beyond our own day.

Hosea is one of the most beautiful books in the Bible, a picture of God's unconditional love toward erring, sinful human beings; it is the promise of God's persistence in pursuing us to bring us redemption. Joel is the promise that God can even weave national and individual tragedies and catastrophes into His eternal plan. Amos is the promise that God never relaxes His standards; He continually seeks to bring us to perfection in Him. Obadiah is a promise of spiritual victory, as seen in the contrast between Jacob and Esau, spirit and flesh. Jonah is the promise of God's patience, and His gracious second chance, as revealed in both the life of Jonah and the repentance of Nineveh.

Micah is the promise of God's pardon, echoing (in shorter form) the themes of Isaiah. Nahum promises the destruction of Nineveh; it comes after the story of Jonah and the repentance of Nineveh by a hundred years and demonstrates that God does not change. If we repent once, then lapse back into complacency or disobedience, we can expect to feel the disciplining judgment of God. Habakkuk promises that God will ultimately answer our questions and cries for justice in an unjust world. Zephaniah is a dark book that promises judgment in "the Day of the LORD."

Haggai promises material restoration if we turn our hearts to God. Zechariah is "the Apocalypse of the Old Testament," promising God's management of future events and His preservation of God's people through the time of judgment. Malachi promises that God will respond to our need and send us a Savior; it predicts the first coming of Jesus (preceded by John the Baptist), then skips over to the second coming of Jesus, the dawning of the Sun of righteousness.

In a few strokes of the pen, we have sketched the outlines of the Old Testament. In the pages that follow, we will look at some of the details and subtler shadings of God's grand Book of preparation for our lives.

Chapter Three: The New Testament

God Has Spoken in These Last Days

There are two ways of learning truth: reason and revelation. People are brevet asking which is more important. That is like asking which blade of a pair of scissors is more important or which leg of a pair of trousers is more important. It takes both. In the same way, it is impossible to gather the full, balanced body of biblical knowledge together without relying on both reason and revelation.

Some people throw out reason and attempt to rely on revelation alone. The result is fanaticism. If we decide that our God-given faculty of reason has no value at all, then we will find ourselves behaving irrationally.

I once read of a man who decided that the solution to every problem could be found in the Bible. When gophers began eating the vegetables in his garden, he took his Bible out in the yard and read the gospel of John in the four corners of his property. Somehow, he figured this would solve his gopher problem. It didn't. Reason would suggest that the best way to rid one's garden of gophers would be to set out gopher traps. By attempting to rely solely on revelation without the application of reason and common sense, this man ended up behaving irrationally.

If we throw out revelation and rely on reason alone, the result is equally disastrous. Reason has given us many scientific insights and technological advances, but reason alone has never shown us how to change the human heart; how to end war; or how to eliminate crime, poverty, drug abuse, or racism. In fact, our technological advances have actually rendered the future more dark and frightening. We can never even make a dent in our social and human problems as long as we set aside God’s revelation and focus exclusively on reason.

What is revelation?

Revelation is, simply, truth that we cannot know by reason. It is what Paul called "God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden" (1 Cor. 2:7). He continued, "None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (2:8). When he spoke of the rulers of this age, he was not talking about kings and princes, necessarily. He was talking about leaders of human thought in every realm. And he said there is a body of knowledge--a secret, hidden wisdom--that is imparted by God to human beings, but only on certain terms, which none of the rulers with all their cleverness and wisdom could understand. Had they known this, they never would have crucified the Lord of glory.

The religious rulers who demanded the crucifixion of our lord were a body of learned, clever people who boasted that they, more than anyone else, could recognize truth when they saw it. But when incarnate Truth stood before them, when the Son of God Himself spoke to them, they neither recognized Him nor received His word. They crucified Him because they had thrown out revelation and were clinging only to the power of their own reasoning.

Revelation, in the fullest sense, is really Scripture interpreted by the Holy Spirit. We have this Book, which was given to us by God, as Paul declared to Timothy: "All Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Tim. 3:16). Scripture did not originate with human beings. Rather, human beings were the channel through whom God delivered His Word. As Peter wrote, "Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Pet. 1:21). The writers of the New Testament sat down and wrote letters just as we would write them today, expressing their feelings, their attitudes, and their ideas in the most natural and uncomplicated manner. But in the process, a strange mystery took place: the Holy Spirit worked through the New Testament writers to guide, direct, and inspire. In fact, the Spirit chose the very words that would express God's thoughts to human beings.

The marvelous hidden wisdom of God cannot be discovered in a laboratory experiment, yet it is absolutely essential to the kind of life God has always intended us to have. This wisdom is revealed in the Bible--yet it is a wisdom that is inaccessible and worthless to us if we are not instructed by the Holy Spirit. It is possible to know the Bible from cover to cover and to get absolutely nothing from it. You can go to any bookstore and find dozens of books filled with extensive information about the historical, archaeological, and literary content of the Bible; yet the authors of these books are hardened atheists.

So revelation is not found merely by reading the Bible. The Bible must be illuminated, interpreted, and authenticated in our lives by the Holy Spirit. The Word and the Spirit must act together to bring us to a saving experiential knowledge of God.

Did you ever wonder why Jesus came to the Jews? Why didn't He come to the Aztecs? or the Chinese? or the Eskimos? There is a simple, common sense answer to this question: He came to the Jews because they were the nation that had the Old Testament. The Jews, for this reason, were uniquely prepared to receive what God was offering in Christ. Certainly, not all Jews received Him. But for the first few years of its existence, the early church was overwhelmingly a Jewish church. The Jewish nation was qualified to receive the Messiah because it was prepared by the Old Testament to lay hold of Jesus, who was the way to life, truth, and light.

I believe this is why many people today who read only the New Testament can go only so far in grasping the fullness of Jesus Christ. Their hearts are not adequately prepared. Our lives are always shallow and limited if we are trying to grasp something for which we are not quite ready. This is why we need so deeply and continuously the ministry of the Old Testament.

If the Old Testament prepares, then the New Testament fulfills. God designed the New Testament to meet the needs stirred up and expressed by the Old Testament. How does the New Testament meet these needs? By revealing to us the one who is the answer to all our needs. Jesus said, "If anyone is thirst; let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). "If anyone eats of this bread [referring to Himself], he will live forever" (John 6:5 1). "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). All the needs of the human heart are met in Him.

The New Testament is to be a channel by which the Holy Spirit makes the living Jesus Christ teal to our hearts. As we saw, in the previous chapter, the New testament letter to the Hebrews opens with the statement, "in the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways." In other words, the Old Testament has given us an incomplete message, not the final word. "But in these last days," the passage continues, "he [God] has spoken to us by his Son." The New Testament is the answer to all the yearning that the Old Testament stirs within us.

Another verse in Hebrews sums up the whole New Testament in one brief phrase. In Hebrews 2, the writer states that all the earth was to be subjected to humankind, and that God gave humankind dominion over it. We read in verse 8:

In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.

That is an accurate assessment of the present situation. As we look around, we do not yet see much of anything in subjection to humanity. This is the problem, isn't it? Why don't things work out the way we think they should? Why is there always a fly in the ointment? Why is it that even our fondest dreams, when they are realized, are never as glorious as we anticipated? Because "at present we do not see everything subject to him." The stamp of rebellion and futility is upon everything we touch. This is the present situation. But the writer goes on:

We see Jesus… (Heb. 2:9).

There is the answer! We see Jesus! That is the New Testament, the summary of its message to our hearts. We do not yet see everything in subjection. But the story is not ended. The whole tale has not been told. What we do see is the One who will make it possible. We see Jesus. And in the New Testament, He stands out on every page.

Every division of the New Testament is particularly designed to set forth the Lord Jesus Christ as the answer to the needs of our lives.

The Gospels are the biographical section of the New Testament. There we learn who Jesus is and what He did. Who is Jesus, as presented in the Gospels? He is the Son of God become human for us. What did He do for us? He submitted to being sacrificed upon the cross. He burst forth from the tomb in resurrection power. He saved us from the penalty for our sins. In the Gospels we discover the mighty secret that the Son of God manifested among human beings, a secret that is nothing less than the most radical principle ever disclosed. I don't hesitate to put it in such strong terms.

There was a time when, in the fullness of my ignorance upon graduating from seminary, I thought the Gospels were hardly worth reading! I had heard that the Gospels were merely the story of the life of Jesus. I knew there was some value in them, but I believed that the most important parts of the New Testament were Paul's epistles. In fact, some of my seminary instructors unwisely reinforced this notion, instructing me to give my attention almost exclusively to the Epistles. They promised that if I would grasp the Epistles, I would be complete and perfect, and I would astonish everyone, including myself.

In time, I found I couldn't grasp the Epistles without the Gospels. I desperately needed the Gospels, for as I turned to them and read the life of Jesus Christ and saw Him portrayed in the four magnificent dimensions I finally discovered the secret that has transformed my own life and ministry. The most radical, revolutionary statement ever presented to the human mind is revealed in the life of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Gospels. Jesus stated it Himself over and over again in variety of ways.

For example, Jesus said, "I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me" (John 6:57). This statement explains the life of Christ--the miracles He wrought, the words He spoke, the power He exercised among human beings. It is the explanation for everything He accomplished, up to and including the cross and the resurrection.

Acts gives us the account of the beginning of the church. And the church is nothing more nor less than the body of Jesus Christ today, through which He intends to keep on being who He is, doing what He did. He poured out His physical life in order that He might pour it into a body of people who would express that life throughout the entire planet Earth. The book of Acts is but the simple, straightforward account of how this body began, how it was filled with the Holy Spirit, and how it began to launch out from Jerusalem, out into Judea and Samaria, and far beyond, to the uttermost parts of the earth, setting forth the glory of the life of the Son of God.

The ministry that belonged to Jesus during His earthly life now belongs to His body, the body of believers. It is our task as His followers to open the eyes of the blind, to set at liberty those who are held captive, to comfort those who need comfort, to be conduits for God's transforming, life-changing power in the lives of men and women everywhere.

The Epistles are a series of letters written to individuals and churches in artless, uncomplicated language conveying profound practical truths for Christian living. These letters are amazingly revealing--because, as you know, nothing is as revealing as a personal letter. If I wanted to know what people were like without actually sitting down and talking with them face-to-face, I would try to get some of their letters. These are letters written by human beings--and, through direct inspiration, by God. In them, we find revealed both the personalities of their human writers and of their divine Author.

The Epistles represent a wonderfully varied array of viewpoints. We find God's truth emerging through the personalities of the human writers of these letters. There is Peter the fisherman, always casting his net for the human soul. There is Paul the tentmaker and church builder, always laying foundations and constructing. There is John the net mender; that is what he was doing when Christ first found him. And John's ministry is one of repairing, restoring, and bringing us back to God's original pattern.

In the letters of the New Testament, we discover the nuts and bolts of the Christian life, and we learn how to allow Jesus Christ to live His life through us. These letters are almost all composed in the same simple pattern. The first part is doctrinal, the second part is practical. The first part sets forth truth, the second part applies that truth to real life.

Truth must he applied. Revelation must he made relevant and real. As the Lord Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). Until we begin to learn who He is and what He does and then apply it in the specific activities of our own lives and hearts, we can read our Bibles for years and years, yet be totally unchanged and untouched by those magnificent truths.

This was vividly brought home to me some years ago at a pastors' conference. Many laypeople think that if anybody exemplifies what the Christian life should be, it is a pastor. It would seem to follow that if you could get a whole group of pastors together, it would practically be heaven on earth! Let me tell you, it isn't that way at all! At this pastors' conference, as at many I have attended, you will find people who are discouraged, confused, soul-sick. In many cases you will find people who are so hurt and defeated that their very faith is hanging by a thread.

One of the speakers at this conference gave an excellent message on Paul's declaration in 1 Corinthians 2:16: "We have the mind of Christ." Then we had a prayer meeting. To my utter amazement and astonishment, pastor after pastor prayed to this effect: "Oh, God, give us the mind of Christ! Oh, if we could just have the mind of Christ!"

Now, what do the Scriptures say? "We have the mind of Christ." What kind of faith is it that prays, "Give me the mind of Christ"? All the marvelous promises of the Scriptures are continually ignored and misapprehended by Christians because we do not believe what they say! We are always asking God for things He already has granted us! He is urging us on, saying, "Help yourself." But we stand there and say, "Oh if I only had it, what I could do!"

As we adventure through these epistles together, my prayer is that we will listen carefully to the clear, straightforward truths presented therein and that we will take these truths and make them relevant and real in our own lives.

Finally, the book of Revelation: This is the only book in the New Testament that deals completely with prophecy. Here, in the form of a vision, God reveals to us not only a slate of future events, but the reality of who He is now and throughout all ages to come. Here we read and comprehend the magnificent story of how the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, how He shall reign forever and ever, and how the secret revealed in the Gospels (that the human race is to be inhabited by an indwelling God) enables a great multitude from every tribe and nation on the earth to triumph over sin, death, and hell.

The message of the New Testament is fundamentally simple. It is the same message that Paul states so simply and eloquently in Colossians 1:27: "Christ in you, the hope of glory." We do not have any hope if we do not have that. If Christ is not active in you, and you have not already begun to experience the mystery of His life being lived in you, then, (1) you are not a Christian, and (2) you have no hope--no hope of glory, no hope of fulfillment, no hope of joy, no hope of eternal love--nothing ,zero, zilch! But, thanks to God and His Son Jesus Christ, we have the greatest hope imaginable!

Hymn writer Edward H. Bickersteth puts it beautifully: "Peace, perfect peace." But we cannot grasp the message of this hymn unless we notice its punctuation, because it has a rather peculiar structure. There are two lines in every verse. The first line ends with a question mark. The second line answers the question. The questions all concern life right now, and the answers are aspects of "Christ in you."

Question: "Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?" Answer: "The blood of Jesus whispers peace within."

Question: "Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed?" Answer: To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.

Question: "Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round?" Answer: "On Jesus' bosom naught but calm is found."

Question: "Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?" Answer: "Jesus we know, and He is on the throne."

Question: "Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours?" Answer: "Jesus has vanquished death and all its powers."

These are the questions desperately asked by the sin-sick, pain-wracked human race. And these are the answers found in the New Testament--and notice that each of these answers focuses on the name of Jesus! He is the focus of the New Testament. He is the answer to all our needs.

The Bible itself is a mere instrument, and its purpose is to point us to the living person of Christ. He is the One whose image is embedded in every page of the Bible. The New Testament was written in order that we may see Him--Christ in you, the hope of glory." We do not yet see everything in subjection to Him, but in the pages of the New Testament, we see Jesus.

Part Two: Five Steps to Maturity

Chapter Four: Genesis through Deuteronomy

Five Steps to Maturity

The Jews call the first five books of the Bible "the Law" or (in Hebrew) the "Torah." In Greek it is called the "Pentateuch," from penta (five) and teuchos (scrolls). Despite the theories of so-called higher critics that the Pentateuch is an unreliable patchwork composed by different writers-editors over hundreds of years, much evidence supports the traditional belief that the author of these books was Moses. These five books demonstrate a unity of theme, content, and style that suggests that they are the work of a single hand.

The opening chapters of Genesis may have been delivered to Moses in a vision or handed down to him in the form of oral traditions. And the closing chapter of Deuteronomy, which records the death and burial of Moses, may well be the work of Moses' successor, Joshua, for it flows seamlessly into the book of Joshua, establishing a stylistic and thematic continuity with the rest of the Old Testament. The grandeur and sweeping scope of the Pentateuch, coupled with its simple and dignified telling of the history of humankind and of the early Jewish people, make a compelling ease for belief in Moses' authorship of all five of these books.

The books of the Pentateuch and their principle themes are:

Genesis. The word genesis means "the beginning," and this book provides the foundation for all that is to follow, both the Old and New Testaments. Chapters 1 and 2 11, down the origins of the world. Chapters 3 through 5 lay down the origins of the human race and the human condition, the predicament of our race called sin. Here we see both our greatness as creatures made in the image and likeness of God and our tragedy and despair as fallen and sinful creatures who used the power of free will that God gave us to rebel against Him. The first six chapters of Genesis focus on three events that first shape, then shake, the very foundations of the world:

1. The Creation

2. The Fall of Man

3. The Flood

In chapter 6, the focus of Genesis shifts from three major events to five major people. They are presented to us not as vague historical figures of the past, but as living, breathing, flesh-and-blood personalities with whom we can all relate. This marvelous account preserves accurately for us not only the facts of their lives hut the color, depth, and tone of life in their days. They are:

1. Noah

2. Abraham

3. Isaac

4. Jacob

5. Joseph

Exodus. At the end of Genesis, the family of Jacob (Israel) has moved to Egypt, where Jacob's son, Joseph, has risen to a position of prominence and power. But as Exodus opens, four centuries have passed, and the children of Israel groan under bondage to a new and cruel Egyptian pharaoh. With this book, the focus shifts to Moses. Exodus recounts the story of Moses' contest of wills with the Egyptian pharaoh, the redemption of Israel in the Passover the escape of Israel through the parted waters of the Red Sea, and the journey to Mount Sinai, where God gives to the Jewish nation their covenant law. The story of Exodus is the story of Israel's deliverance.

Leviticus. Now that the people of Israel have been delivered, they must he taught how to live as God's chosen people. In Leviticus, God gives Israel a body of regulations, instructions, ritual cleansings, and sacrificial atonements to set His people apart to holy living. The focus of Leviticus is on worship, sanctification, and obedience.

Numbers. Having been sanctified, the people of Israel are ready to cross over into the Promised Land--or are they? Just as they are brought to the very brink of their inheritance, their faith falters, their obedience fails. Even God's servant Moses fails and sins. So God judges and disciplines His people, sentencing them to wander in the desert for forty years until the unbelieving, disobedient generation has passed away and a new generation arises--a generation of people who, it is hoped, have learned from the error of their parents. This generation reaches Moab, the gateway to the Promised Land, and there God gives His people instructions for the way they should live as inheritors of this new land.

Deuteronomy. Moses, at the end of his life, passes the baton to his disciples-successor Joshua, and he delivers a farewell message to the people. It is, in essence, a sermon in which he reminds the people of God's righteousness and faithfulness in the past and points them toward the challenges of the future. He has led and loved the children of Israel, yet they have also been a source of great disappointment, grief, and anger to him. But they are his people, and they are God's people, so he blesses them. Then, from the summit of Mount Nebo, he views the horizon of Canaan, the Promised Land. Finally, he dies and is buried in the land of Moab, and Joshua assumes command of the nation of Israel.

With that background of the first five books of the Bible in view, let's revisit our basic premise: The purpose of God's revelation in Scripture is to stimulate our growth, to make us more mature and complete in Christ. The Bible finds the fulfillment of its function in your life and mine. If it is not producing maturity in our lives, then the Word of God is being wasted, as far as we are concerned. Its whole purpose is to make us effective instruments of God's grace and God's will, so "we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching."

Clearly, if these books are to have a maturing, stabilizing effect on our lives, we must incorporate them into our lives, we must read them, we must immerse ourselves in them. But how many of us have actually sat down to read and study these books? How many of us have finished them? Oh, we frequently start off very well in Genesis, with its majestic creation story and its dramatic narratives of the fascinating lives of the patriarchs. And we move on into Exodus, and we get caught up in the tense drama that is played out between Moses and Pharaoh. But then we get to Leviticus, with its strange legal requirements, and we bog down. We never quite get through Leviticus and on into Numbers and Deuteronomy, much less into Joshua. I'm reminded of a cartoon I once saw in a magazine shortly after the release of the film The Ten Commandments, in which Charlton Heston portrays Moses. In the cartoon, two women are walking by a movie theater. The marquee reads, "Now Showing: The Ten Commandments." One Woman says to the other, "Oh, yes, I've seen the picture, but I haven't read the book." Most of us fall into that category. We have seen a great many of the Hollywood versions of Scripture, but we never seem to get around to reading the books.

Why do we bog down? It isn't because the Pentateuch isn't instructive or helpful. In many ways it is the most helpful part of the Bible. My own Christian life has been more greatly strengthened by reading the Pentateuch than perhaps any other portion of Scripture. I think the reason so many of us bog down in these books is because we read them without vision. We don't know why we are reading them. We don't know what to expect from them. We don't know what to look for. We read the text as a simple narrative that sometimes is interesting and sometimes gets complicated, and we fail to probe the text to find out what God is driving at and how He wants to apply its truths in our own daily lives.

Some staggering, marvelous secrets are embedded in these books. That's why, in this study, we are taking the mountaintop view, the orbital view, scanning the layout of the land of the Pentateuch. Though it is important and rewarding to also study these books in close detail, it is easy to miss the main thrust of this passage in a verse-by-verse approach. As we read these books with vision, gaining a panoramic perspective, we will be able to see the full sweep, scope, and stunning impact of God's message to us in the Pentateuch, so that His Word can produce its maturing work in our lives.

We begin with Genesis. Compare the word genesis with the word gene. A gene is a tiny yet complex chemical component within a chromosome; it initiates and determines the physical unfolding of an individual life. Genesis is much like that gene. It is only one-sixty-sixth of the entire Bible, it is simple, understated, even humble in its style, yet it is rich and complex in truth and insight into the human condition. It initiates and sets the tone for the entire Bible story. It explains why we human beings need a Savior, and as early as Genesis 3:15, it suggests that the line of Adam and Eve will one day produce a Savior who will crush the head of Satan. Genesis is our biblical foundation; without it we cannot fully understand the rest of the Bible.

Genesis is the story of the beginning of our universe, the beginning of the human race, the beginning of sin, the beginning of civilization, and it is a fascinating record of the origins of the physical world that surrounds us. The Bible opens with that majestic, awesome insight:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1).

Thus the Bible begins by confronting one of the greatest questions of our existence: the mystery of the universe. Not surprisingly, this is the very theme of science and philosophy today. Our greatest artists, writers, and filmmakers explore this theme. It is a theme frequently revisited in television series, from Carl Sagan's Cosmos to the various incarnations of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. It is here, at the very heart of one of the most fascinating questions of our human experience, that the Bible begins. And it begins with those grand, exalted words, "In the beginning.”

Genesis goes on to tell us about ourselves. We human beings, it says, are remarkable creatures who were made to be a reflection of God's mind, an expression of God's love, the instrument of God's plan. The human race is seen in the opening chapters of Genesis in a marvelous faith-love-fellowship relationship with God. Adam, the first man, walks in communion with God, as Genesis 3:8 tells us, in the garden, "in the cool of the day." Rightly translated, this verse should say that God walked in the garden "in the spirit of the day--that is, in a spirit of understanding and fellowship with Adam. Here we get just a brief glimpse of God's intention for humanity.

Immediately, this sweet communion is shattered by the story of the Fall. Beginning in the third chapter of Genesis, we get the record of the tragedy of disobedience and unbelief. God's Word confronts us immediately with the awful error of faith in the wrong idea--the terrible destruction that comes into our lives when, in blindness and self-willed ignorance, we place our faith in error. It shows us that we are made to be creatures of faith. So here is the story of human failure and fall. It is followed immediately by the story of the failure of the first creation and its eventual destruction in the flood. The rest of Genesis is God's drawing of people in need. It is the story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. These are men who experienced great failures, deep hurts, and great successes. Their lives are lessons, given to show us the desperate need in each one's life. We can think of them as four representative types of personality. One of them is like you.

Abraham's story is that of the need for a supplier. Here was a man who always needed somebody to come and deliver something to him that he lacked. He was always short. The modern saying is: "A day late and a dollar short." That is the story of Abraham's life. He was always in need. It is the story of a man whose need was continually being supplied.

Isaac was a man who had another kind of need. He never ran short. There is no record of a famine in Isaac's life. But he was in need of a stimulator. He loved to just sit. He needed somebody to motivate him. So God had to prod him repeatedly to get him moving into the place God wanted him to he. Most of us need this kind of stimulation from time to time or maybe all the time!

Jacob was a man who was in continual need of a bodyguard, a protector. He was always getting himself into trouble. Throughout his life he needed somebody to come and rescue him from his latest fix.

Then we have the marvelous story of Joseph. How different be was from Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob! So human, so real, yet so admirable! But the story of Joseph's life too is the story of need--the need of a deliverer--not because of his own failure, fault, or sin. In fact, many of his problems seemed to result from his integrity and his commitment to righteous living before God! His is the story of how God continually delivered him, and his story closes the book of Genesis with these words: " . . . in a coffin in Egypt."

Even after his death, Joseph is in need of one last deliverance. His bones lie in a coffin in Egypt, and his final need is to have his mortal remains delivered out of Egypt and taken up to the Promised Land. Here is a symbol of the need of God's people to be delivered from Egypt and taken up to the Promised Land. It is also a symbol of every one of us as believers in Christ whose final hope is to have our own mortality rescued from corruption and taken up to the eternal land God has promised us. Now it becomes clear, from this panoramic view of Genesis, that the whole story of Genesis is a message about the deep need of the human race--your need and mine.

Then we come to Exodus, the story of God's response to human need. It is the marvelous lesson of God's redemption. The whole book revolves around four major incidents: the Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, and the construction of the tabernacle. The first two--the Passover and the crossing of the sea--signify the forgiveness and the freedom that God gives. Here we learn that freedom and forgiveness are entirely a gift of God. We have no power to generate freedom or forgiveness by our own efforts.

The first part of the book is the story of how God acted to set His people free. He arranged the marvelous encounters of Moses with Pharaoh and also the great miracles that culminated in the passing over of the angel of death through the land while God protected His people from judgment, as celebrated in the Passover feast. Here is a picture of God at work, setting His people free. They did nothing. They were powerless to liberate themselves. They could only receive freedom.

The crossing of the Red Sea is the story of God's miraculous intervention in setting His people free from bondage. Like a believer passing through the waters of baptism, the people of Israel were brought into a new relationship as they passed through the waters of the Red Sea, walking in the very shadow of death, a valley between two walls of water poised to drown anything in their path the moment the restraining hand of God was removed. When the Israelites emerged on the far shore, they were no longer merely a mob of people; now, for the first time, they were a nation under God.

What did they encounter on the other side of the Red Sea? Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law. The point is clear: When we as human beings are delivered from bondage (whether bondage to an oppressive government or bondage to the oppression of sin), we come under the control of another. The giving of the Law is an expression of God's lordship. The message of Exodus is that a new relationship is begun, a new ownership is entered into. In the New Testament, Paul expresses the fundamental message of Exodus in brief form:

You are not your own; you were bought at a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

Just as Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea go together in the life of God's people, so too the giving of the Law and the construction of the tabernacle are inseparable. The pattern of the tabernacle was given to Moses at the same time the law was given on Mount Sinai.

God designed the tabernacle to be at the center of the camp of Israel. And over the whole camp was the great cloud by day and the fiery pillar by night. This cloud/fire gave evidence of God's presence dwelling among His people. But they could experience His presence only through an intricate system of sacrifices and rituals designed to focus their faith and cleanse their lives.

The construction of the tabernacle was accompanied by an elaborate set of symbols and a rigid set of rules for their use. The symbols teach us that God is absolutely holy and changeless. The tabernacle itself is a picture of God's abiding desire to dwell with His people.

Next we come to Leviticus--the book of the Pentateuch where we are likely to bog down. Leviticus is a book of instruction designed to make God's holiness available to people so that people can be available to God. The theme of Leviticus is access to God. Leviticus begins with the story of the tabernacle, that wonderful edifice where the presence of God dwelt among the people of Israel. If we could have climbed to a mountaintop and looked out over the wilderness area where the twelve tribes of Israel were encamped, it would have been a strange and wonderful sight to see this vast assemblage spread out on the plains in perfect order and symmetry, each of the twelve tribes in its own assigned place. Walking down the mountain, passing into the camp, we would come through thousands of Israelites until we came to the outer court of the tabernacle.

Entering the great open gate of the tabernacle, we would pass the altar of sacrifice and the brazen layer (bronze washing basin), and would come to the door of the tabernacle itself. Moving through the mysterious and marvelous outer veil, we would come into the Holy Place, where were the showbread, the altar of incense, and the great golden candelabra. Beyond stood the inner veil, and behind that--if we dared to enter--we would find the Holy of Holies. The only article in that room was the ark of the covenant.

It was the mysterious, ominous ark that was the dwelling place of God, with the mercy seat above it and the two cherubim with their wings covering it. There too, in a marvelous way, shone the Shekinah light of God's glory. It was a place of profound holiness--and thus, a place of profound terror for anyone whose heart was not 100 percent pure and righteous. The only one who dared to enter the Holy of Holies and approach the ark was the high priest--and then only once a year with the blood of the goat of atonement. It was the high priest’s task to make atonement for the sins of all the people. This is a picture of God's dwelling in the midst of His people, demonstrating how they could have fellowship with Him.

Embedded in the book of Leviticus are three major principles: (1) our need for representation before God, (2) God's adequacy to deliver us from our sins, and (3) our faith in God demonstrated by our obedience to Him. Let's examine each principle in turn.

1. Representation. The average Israelite had no right to enter the Holy of Holies. Only the priest could go in, and when he did, he represented the whole nation. By that representation, the nation began to learn the wonderful principle of appropriating the value of another's work. After all, this is exactly what we are asked to do today, isn't it? We are asked to believe that Christ--our representative--died for us and that we died with Him. Here we see the preparatory value of the Old Testament. Here, in the middle of the Pentateuch, God is instructing the people of Israel in their need to have a representative so they can be forgiven and be acceptable to God.

2. God’s adequacy. Leviticus opens with the institution of five offerings, each one speaking of Jesus Christ in His death for us, each one showing how a basic need of human life is fully met already in what Christ would later do in the New Testament. All of these five offerings, taken together, show us that we will never encounter anything that God hasn't already resolved. He is adequate for all our needs, including our need for deliverance from the bondage of sin and death.

3. Our obedience. Jesus' representation of us before God and God's adequacy for our every need become expressed in our lives through our obedience. Obedience is faith in action, faith in motion, faith acting upon the premise that God's promises are true and His commandments are good and just.

Leviticus is the Old Testament book of instruction, and in many ways it parallels the New Testament book of instruction, Hebrews. If you would like to engage in a fascinating, illuminating Scripture study, I suggest you read Leviticus and Hebrews side by side and compare the teachings of these two instructive books.

In Number s we arrive in the wilderness of failure. The tragic and circular story of Numbers begins at Kadesh-barnea, right at the edge of the Promised Land. When we get to the end of the book, we are back at Kadesh-barnea again. No progress takes place in this book.

Between the two scenes at Kadesh-barnea are forty years of wandering in a desert. God's original intention for the Hebrews was that they spend forty days between the edge of Egypt and the border of the land. But, because of the unbelief of the people, they were sentenced to forty years of trial, despair, murmuring, barrenness, loneliness, heat, blistering sand, and regret. Throughout those forty years, the people of Israel repeatedly thought back to their captivity in Egypt and talked of their bondage as if it were the good old days. If slavery looked good to them, you can only imagine how barren and defeated they felt in the desert.

We look at the story of the Israelites and we see God's amazing, miraculous deliverance of these people from their Egyptian taskmasters in Exodus; we see the wonderful, detailed instruction they received in Leviticus--and then we have to ask ourselves, "Why did they fail so miserably in Numbers?"

Personally, I cannot understand it, yet I continually encounter this phenomenon not only in others but in myself. How is it that people can read the Bible for years, go to a Bible school, attend a Bible church, listen to the best Bible expositors, attend a weekly Bible study, and then behave as if they hadn't learned anything at all? Yet, it happens. I particularly recall one woman who clearly had a great knowledge of biblical truth. She had studied the word for years and years and could answer questions that would stump many theologians and Bible scholars. But she lived in complete defeat. Her faith was absolutely gone. Her family was falling apart. Her behavior was inconsistent with all the biblical truth she had absorbed over the years.

So it was with the Israelites in the book of Numbers. This book is a record of failure, and it serves as a warning to you and me. Yet it is also a testament to God's love and patience. Yes, His people grieved Him, and yes, He disciplined them, but not because He hated them, not because He wanted to destroy them. He still wanted to bring this race of people into the beautiful land that He had promised them. So He disciplined the unfaithful generation, and even in their wanderings, even in their ingratitude, even in their complaining, He provided for them with fatherly love and care.

Those of us who find ourselves in a wilderness of defeat following a time of disobedience should take heart and pay attention to the lessons of the Pentateuch. God disciplines those He loves, but He also forgives, provides, and restores. Though Numbers is a book of failures, we know that the success of Israel lies ahead. The book ends with the Israelite nation once more at Kadesh-barnea, at the doorstep of Canaan; their wilderness is behind them now, and the Promised Land lies ahead.

Finally we come to Deuteronomy. The name of the book means "second law," from the Greek deuter (second) and comas (law). Deuteronomy begins with a farewell message by Moses. It is, first, a retrospective message, reviewing all of God's love and blessings to the people. It is, second, a recounting of the Law that Moses had already delivered to the people in Leviticus. It is, third, a revelation of the rich blessings that God has in store for those who keep the Law. Why is the Law given a second time in this book?

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul tells us that the Law serves a crucial purpose in our lives: it was, he says, "put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith" (Gal. 3:24). It is when the Law says "thou shalt not" (covet, steal, kill, commit adultery) that we realize our inner hunger to do these very things. We discover our rebelliousness toward any authority that says, "No, you can't." We discover the war that takes place within us: we want to do right, but we are powerless to keep from doing wrong. We are unholy, unrighteous in God's sight. We cannot save ourselves; we desperately need a Savior. If the law did not shine the light of truth on our sin, we would not recognize our sinful condition. The Law is our teacher: a strict, stern, uncompromising teacher, without compassion, without mercy. It drives us into the arms of our loving Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Law was given to Israel the first time to say, "You are sinful." It was given the second time, after the failure in the wilderness, to say, "You are helpless." God wanted the people of Israel to recognize their complete dependency and helplessness.

When the Law was given the first time on Mount Sinai, the people responded confidently, even smugly, "Everything the Lord has said we will do." But when it was given the second time in Kadesh-barnea, the response of the people was more humble, more subdued, even more fearful: "We don't have, of ourselves, what it takes to do this." That was what God wanted to hear: humility and a willingness to live in dependence upon a higher strength than their own. They were then ready to be led into the land.

And who was to lead them? It is profoundly significant that the one who would lead the people of Israel into the Land of Promise was a man named Joshua. "Joshua" is the Hebrew form of a name that you know quite well in its Greek form: "Jesus." That's tight! Joshua in the Old Testament had the same name as Jesus in the New Testament. The symbolism is too stark and plain to misunderstand.

When we come to the end of Deuteronomy, we find that at last God has prepared His people for the purpose that He had all along. The five books of Moses were written to bring the people to the very edge of the Land of Promise. Moses could not take them in. Moses represents the Law. As Paul says in Romans 8:3, "What the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son." It was Joshua who led his people into the physical Land of Promise, and it is Jesus [Joshua] who leads us into the eternal Land of Promise.

This, then, is the Pentateuch in panoramic perspective. These five books give us the pattern of God's program. You will find the pattern of the Pentateuch stamped upon almost every page of the Bible: five steps, five divisions, a fivefold order.

The book of Psalms contains five divisions, which coincide exactly with this pattern. So do the five offerings given in Leviticus, the five great feasts that Israel celebrates, and the five sections into which both the Old and the New Testaments are divided. Someone has even suggested that perhaps God, wanting us to remember this, gave us five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.

The number five is stamped throughout the Scriptures, and each time it is a repetition of this pattern that God will follow. This is the five-fold pattern that God follows in our lives:

1. an awareness of our need;

2. a picture of God's activity in moving to meet that need, His response in redemption;

3. instruction in how to live, how to worship, how to approach God;

4. the consequences of our failure and unbelief;

5. an arrival at a place where self-effort ends, where the Law again crushes our self-sufficiency, driving us in helplessness and humility back to the Lord.

It is at this fifth stage where God can truly work. It is there that we say, "Lord, on my own I can do nothing." And God says "Good, that is right where I want you. Now I can use you. Now I can work through you. Now I can accomplish my purpose through you."

This is the Pentateuch. Without it, the great themes of the rest of the Bible are incomprehensible and opaque to our understanding. With it, we have the key to unlock the deep secrets of the Scriptures. Now that we have gained our orbital view of the Pentateuch, let's move in a little closer and adventure through each of these five amazing books, one by one.

Chapter Five: Genesis

The Story of Faith Begins

Henry Ward Beecher was a prominent U.S. minister the in the 1800s. He was once visited by a friend, attorney Robert Ingersoll. The friendship between Beecher and Ingersoll was an odd one, since the attorney had a national reputation as an agnostic and a caustic critic of the Bible. But Beecher never gave up his efforts to convert his unbelieving friend.

During one visit, Ingersoll told Beecher all about a "wonderful" new book he had read by Charles Darwin, and how it explained that everything came into being without God.

"Well, where did human beings come from, according to your Mr. Darwin?" asked Beecher.

"From apes," Ingersoll announced smugly.

"Ah” said Beecher, "and the apes came from?"

"Lower animals," Ingersoll replied. "And the lower animals arose from still lower forms, and on and on, until you go all the way down the chain of life to the one-celled creatures that first formed in the seas."

"And where did the seas come from?" asked Beecher. "And the world itself? And the sun, the moon, and the stars?"

Ingersoll spread his hands. "They just happened. We don't need some mythical deity to explain such things."

Later that evening, Beecher took Ingersoll into his library to show him some new books he had just purchased. Ingersoll's attention was immediately captured by a unique globe on Beecher's desk that depicted the stars and constellations of the night sky. Ingersoll examined the globe closely, trying to find the manufacturer's name so he could buy one for himself "This is a wonderful globe," he said. "Who made it?"

"Why, nobody made it," said Beecher, grinning ever so slightly. "It just happened."

The book of Genesis, as we shall see, is not very much concerned with how things happened. But it is very concerned with who made them happen. The opening thrust of the book is bold and unmistakable: The first four words of Genesis make it clear that everything that exists had a divine Author:

"In the beginning God…"

In the previous chapter, we scanned the book of Genesis (along with the other four books of the Pentateuch) from an "orbital perspective," examining its outlines and contours. In this chapter, we attach a magnification lens to our camera and zoom in closer.

In our familiarity with the Bible, we sometimes fail to consider what an ancient book Genesis is. The Greek Philosopher historian Herodotus, who lived some 300 years before Christ, is called the father of history. He is the earliest historian whose writings have been preserved for us. Yet Moses, who wrote the first five books of our Bible, was in his grave over a thousand years before Herodotus ever saw the light of day. That's how ancient Genesis is.

This book--the book of beginnings--takes us back to the dawn of history, yet its insights are as fresh and timely as this morning's news. So much richness, drama, and understanding of human psychology are captured in Genesis that it is easy to forget how astoundingly ancient it is.

With what other writings of its time can you compare Genesis? If you are familiar with the findings of archaeology, then you know that the ancient columns, slabs, and shards of pottery that have been unearthed over the past couple centuries have given us some insight into the true nature of life in ancient civilizations. From these sources, we can find no ancient writings of other early cultures that come close to Genesis in the liveliness of its human drama, the reality of its human characters, or the richness of its language and description. It is a real book about real people who lived in a real place and time.

But Genesis is not only a book of history. It is a book with a profound message that can be summed up in a single statement: Human beings are inadequate without God. That is the whole theme of the book, and as such it strikes the keynote of all subsequent revelation of God. It is a personal message, for we see our own stories reflected in its storyline. You and I can never be complete without God, nor can we ever discover or fulfill the true meaning of life without a genuine personal relationship with an indwelling God. Our inadequacy apart from God is revealed to us by Genesis in three realms:

1. The realm of natural science: cosmology (the study of the universe, its origin and makeup), geology (the study of the earth's structure and features), and biology (the study of life in all its manifestations). These natural relationships circumscribe our contact with the physical world around us, yet within them, human beings are seen as inadequate without God.

2. The realm of human relationships: sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry. The beginnings of all these are traced in Genesis, and again humankind is set forth as inadequate to function without a relationship with God.

3. The realm of spiritual relationships: theology, soteriology, angelology, and philosophy. In all of these vital areas, the book of Genesis reveals that you and I are totally inadequate apart from God. Here is the outline of the book of Genesis:

The World of Nature (Genesis 1-2

1. The Creation 1:1-2:25

A. Creation of the world 1:1-2:3

B. Creation of the human race 2:4-2:25

Human Relationships (Genesis 3-5)

2. The Fall 3:1-5:32

A. Temptation 3:1-5

B. Sin 3:6-7

C. Judgment 3:8-24

3. After the Fall 4:1-5:32

A. The first murder 4:1-15

B. The line of Cain 4:16-24

C. The line of Seth 4:25-5:32

Spiritual Relationships (Genesis 6-50)

4. The Flood 6:1-9:29

A. The ungodly human race is judged 6:1-6:22

B. The ark and the flood 7:1-8:19

C. After the flood 8:20-10:32

Noah worships God; God makes a covenant

with Noah; the sins of Noah and his sons;

the family lines of Noah's sons

5. The Tower of Babel 11:1-11:9

A. Building the rower 11:1-4

B. Judgment against the builders 11:5-9

6. The life of Abraham 11:10-25:18

Abraham's history; God's covenant with

Abraham (Abram) circumcision instituted;

Sodom and Gomorrah; the faith of Abraham;

the life of Isaac; the death of Sarah; the death of

Abraham

7. The life of Isaac 21:1-26:3

A. Isaac is born 21:1-34

B. Offering of Isaac 22:1-24

C. The family of Isaac 23-25

D. The failure of Isaac 26:1-33

E. The failure of Esau 26:34-35

8. The life of Jacob 27:1-36

A. Jacob usurps Esau's blessing 27:1-28:9

B. Jacob's dream 28:10-22

C. Jacob works to obtain his wives 29:1-30:43

D. Jacob flees 31:1-55

E. Jacob returns 32:1-33:20

Jacob wrestles the angel of the Lord and

makes peace with his brother

F. Jacob in Canaan 34:1-35:29

Jacob's daughter, Dinah, is defiled and

avenged; Jacob's name is changed to Israel.

G. The history of Esau 36

9. The life of Joseph 37-50

A. Joseph's brothers mistreat him 37-38

B. Joseph is tested 39-40

C. Joseph interprets dreams 41:1-36

D. Joseph is exalted over Egypt 41:37-57

E. Joseph rests his brothers 42-45

F. Joseph blesses his family 46:1-49:32

G. The death and burial of Jacob 49:33-50:14

H. The death and burial of Joseph 50:15-26

Now let's examine each of the book's three divisions in turn.

The first two chapters are primarily concerned with the world of nature. Genesis opens with the greatest material fact in life today: We live in a universe. We exist on a specific set of coordinates in space and time. If we know anything at all about modern science, we are aware that our planet is part of a solar system, which is part of a hundred-billion star galaxy, which is one among billions of galaxies in a universe that is vast beyond our comprehension. Whenever we look up into the night and see the glory of the stars, a sense of awe settles over us and we become aware that we live in a universe.

The Bible opens in a majestic recognition of this fact: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). What a strange conjunction--to put all the vast heavens on one side and our tiny planet Earth on the other. But the book moves right on to tell us that humankind--what modern science pictures as "man the insignificant," a tiny speck of life clinging to a minor planet at the edge of an unthinkably vast universe--is in fact the major object of God's attention and concern!

Verse 2 tells us that the earth began as a planet covered by an uninterrupted ocean, which was itself wrapped in darkness. It was "formless and empty," that is, featureless and without life. There was no land, no mountain range, no coastline to catch the eye; simply a great world of ocean wrapped in water, without life. With this picture of the beginnings of the world, science fully agrees. But the revelation of God's Word adds a key factor that many scientists do not acknowledge: the fact that "the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. God was at work in His universe, interacting with it. Something comes out of nothing. God is moving. The Spirit of God brings light out of darkness, shape our of shapelessness, form out of formlessness, life our of lifelessness.

The first step that God took, according to the record, was to create light: " ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” Light is absolutely essential to life of any sort. With the advent of light, we are now ready for the light record of the six days of creation. Each day, except the seventh, includes an evening and a morning and each, except the seventh, records a progressive order of creation. Controversy has raged over whether these are literal twenty-four-hour days or geological ages. This controversy completely misses the point of the Genesis account. It should be clear to anyone upon reading the passage that Genesis does not focus upon the question of time. Important as this may seem to us, it is not God’s focus. His focus is to show that, in Creation, He was moving toward a goal through a progression of successive steps that logically succeed one another. Creation does not happen all at once with a snap of His fingers. God chose to accomplish the Creation in stages, and these stages are clearly evident throughout this passage.

Despite all the knowledge we continue to acquire through space probes, radio telescopes, and the Hubble space telescope, the universe is still a great mystery to us. We know very little about it, and in any direction we choose to go, we soon come to a place where we can go no further. A nuclear physicist once described to me the complexity of the nucleus of an atom, what was once thought to he the most simple and basic building block of matter. Discoveries of new "species" in the "particle zoo" had made the once-simple atom a thing of incomprehensible complexity, organization, and activity. Clearly, many forces and kinds of particles that we have not yet discovered exist within the atom.

Here, at the very outer limits of human knowledge, the very frontiers of human ignorance, the Bible begins to answer the perplexing questions of the scientists: Who or what set the universe in motion? What keeps the universe going? Where did we come from? What, if anything, is its purpose? What is the place of humanity in the cosmic scheme? Why are we here?

Genesis supplies the only answers that fit. It reveals to us that the key to human life and to the mysteries of human existence and the material universe are inextricably bound to the spiritual realm. Without an understanding of God, we cannot understand our universe, ourselves, or our relationship to the world around us. Microscopes and telescopes can give us only a partial view; the spiritual scope of the Bible enables us to complete the picture that science only begins to sketch in for us.

Albert Einstein put his finger squarely upon the inadequacies of science when he said, "Science is like reading a mystery novel." You go down to Barnes & Noble and buy what used to be called a "dime novel" (they cost $29.95 today!), and you take it home, wait until everyone else has gone to sleep, prop yourself up on your pillows, and you read it alone in a darkened room with only a reading lamp for company. In the first chapter are two or three murders, and the whole story soon focuses on one theme: whodunit? Clues appear as you read on. In about the third chapter you've decided that the butler did it. Continuing on, the finger of guilt points more and more to the butler. But then you reach the last chapter in which suddenly all the previous evidence is upset and it wasn't the butler after all. It was the little old lady in tennis shoes who lives on the third floor. Einstein says science is like that. It is always struggling from hypothesis to synthesis, from clue to clue, sometimes running up a blind alley or following a false trail, never seeming to get much closer to the ultimate answer.

But Genesis starts where science leaves off. This is not a criticism of science, because science was never designed to answer "Why does the universe exist?" The scope of science is intentionally, deliberately limited to certain avenues of inquiry. Genesis answers the "why" question--and, more importantly, the "who" question. Genesis gives answers addressed to faith, not an irrational "leap of faith" but a reasoned faith. The more science learns about the fundamental nature of the universe, the more science seems to agree with the Bible.

Thus the Bible consistently remains true to the most complex discoveries of science while at the same time retaining a simplicity of statement that the most uneducated can understand, even though it is not the intention of the Bible to be a textbook on science. God has deliberately made the physical universe to reveal and manifest an inner spiritual reality. Since the world is made for man, it constantly reflects God’s truth to him. This is why Jesus found the world of nature such an apt instrument with which to teach men spiritual realities, as His parables reveal.

Genesis 1:26 shows us that God holds a divine consultation about man, saying, "Let us make man in our image, in out likeness." This divine conversation clearly is the first hint given to us that God consists of more than one person. The key phrase about man in this verse is that he was created in the "image" and "likeness" of God. That image is found not in man's body or his soul, but in his spirit. As Jesus told the woman at the well in Samaria, "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24).

What is godlike about our spirit? If our spirit is made in the image of God, then it can do things that God can do but no animal can. Three things are suggested throughout Genesis that God alone does: first, God creates; second, God communicates; and third, God evaluates, pronouncing some things good and others not good. It is here that the image of God in man appears. Man can create. Man communicates as no animal can possibly do, sharing ideas that affect others. And man is the only creature who has a moral sense, recognizing some things as good and others as bad, feeling the impact of conscience upon his own actions. Thus, man shares the image of God.

Chapter 2 finds the man walking in the garden in communion with God, functioning as a spirit living within a physical body and manifesting the personality characteristics of the soul. At this point, God gives him a research project, to investigate the animal world in search of a possible counterpart to himself. God knew that the man would not find what he was looking for, but in the process, the man discovered at least three marvelous truths. First, he learned that woman was not to be a mere beast of burden as the animals are, because that would not fulfill his need for a helper and companion. Second, he realized that the woman was not to be merely a biological laboratory for producing children. This is what the animals use sex for, but that was not sufficient for Adam's needs. Sex in humankind, therefore, is different from that among the animals. Third, Adam learned that the woman was not a thing outside himself, to be used at the whim of the man and then disposed of. She was made to be his helper, fit for him, corresponding to him, complementing and completing him.

So, in a remarkable passage, we are told that Adam fell into a deep sleep and God took a rib and from it made a woman and brought her to him. This period of Adam's unconsciousness suggests what modern psychology confirms, that the relationship of marriage is far deeper than mere surface affection. It touches not only the conscious life, but the subconscious and the unconscious as well.

In chapters 3 through 5, Genesis next examines the realm of human relationships. The human race enters the picture. These chapters trace the story of humanity from Adam through Noah and reveal that the basic unit of society is the family. That pattern has remained absolutely unchanged for ten to twenty thousand years of human history. The family is still the basis of human society. When people ignore that fact and begin to destroy family life, the foundations of a society disintegrate. Why? Because a nation is an extension of the family. The nations of the world are simply large complex family groups!

When a president dies, when an earthquake devastates a city, when hundreds die in a collapsed building, when a space shuttle explodes, what happens? An entire nation mourns! Why? Because, as Americans we have a common identity, a common bond, a common connection. The more we lose sight of our connectedness as a family society; the more fragmented and agitated our nation becomes.

These chapters also reveal the failure of human beings in their most basic relationships. People tried to be human without God, and the result was the introduction of the sin principle. Sin is the monkey wrench that has been thrown into the human machinery. It is the reason why we behave in ways that are destructive to ourselves and others--even when we know better and want better for ourselves and others. Keith Miller has called sin "the ultimate addiction," because no matter how much we may want to be free of it, the destructive habit of sin is impossible for us to break in our own power.

As you read these chapters in Genesis, you'll see how Adam rejected God's plan and lost Paradise. You'll see how Cain rejected God and became a murderer; he then went out and founded a civilization that ended in apostasy and the flood. You'll see how, after Noah and his family were spared in the flood, this wise and godly man fell into the snare of sin and alcohol abuse, bringing shame on his family. Later in Genesis, you'll notice how men like Jacob and Lot bring enormous hurt upon themselves and their families. We hear a lot these days about "dysfunctional families," but it is clear, as we read the book of Genesis, that God already wrote the book on that subject.

Genesis 3 explains over one hundred centuries of human heartache, misery, torture, and bloodshed. Remove this chapter from the Bible, and the entire book becomes incomprehensible. But the most striking thing about it is that we find ourselves here. The temptation and the fall are reproduced in our lives many times a day. We all have heard the voice of the tempter and felt the attraction of sin arid we all know the pangs of guilt that follow.

Many biblical scholars feel that the tempter in the garden was not a snake but a "shining one," which is what the Hebrew word for snake means. Snakes were undoubtedly created to represent the punishment that fell upon this being when he brought about the fall of man by his cunning and deceit. It is clearly the devil, in his character as an angel of light, who confronts the woman in the Garden of Eden. His tactic with her is to arouse desire. First he implanted in her heart a distrust of God's love, "Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1). Next, he dares to deny openly the results that God had stated will occur, "You will not surely die” (3:4), he says. Then he clinches his attack with a distorted truth, "God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will he opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” All the devil wishes to do is to leave Eve standing before the fruit that is hanging there in all its luscious fascination, tantalizing her, offering her an experience that she never dreamed would be possible.

Now the mind comes into action. Without realizing it, Eve has already experienced an arousing of her emotions so that she longs for the tantalizing fruit before her. Thus, when her mind acts, it can no longer do so rationally. Already the will has secretly determined to act on the facts as the emotions present them and thus the mind can only rationalize. It must twist the facts so that they accord with desire, and the result was that Eve took the fruit and ate.

But there was still hope for the race. Adam had not yet fallen, only Eve. A battle has been lost, but not the war. In the innocent but ominous words, "She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it" (3:6), we face the beginning of the darkness of a fallen humanity--what the Bible calls "death" immediately follows.

This is followed by banishment from the garden, not, as we so often imagine, to keep them from coming back to the tree of life but, as the text specifically states, "to guard the way to the tree of life" (3:24). There is a way to the tree of life, but it is no longer a physical way. In the book of Revelation, we are told that the tree of life is for the healing of the way back to the nations (see Rev. 22:2). It is surely to this that Jesus refers when He says, "I am the way." Spiritually and psychologically (in the realm of emotions and mind) we are to live in the presence of God because a way has been opened back to the tree of life.

From the tragic sin of Adam proceeds the criminal sin of Adam's son Cain, who kills his brother Abel out of bitterness and jealousy when Abel's blood offering is accepted over Cain's grain offering to God. From Cain, we trace the beginnings of civilization and especially the part that urban life plays in shaping human society. To Cain is born Enoch, who builds his city on ground that is yet red with the blood of Abel. The city that Enoch builds contains all the ingredients of modern life: travel, music and the arts, the use of metals, organized political life, and the domestication of animals. It is impressive but built on shaky ground. Violence, murder, and immorality abound as the state rises to replace the family as the focus of human interest. The trend toward urban over rural life is evident and increasing toleration of sexual excess appears.

But in the midst of this deterioration, God has another plan ready. After Abel is slain and Cain is banished by God, Adam and Eve have another son, whose name--Seth--means "appointed,” Noah will eventually come out of Seth's line.

The rest of Genesis explores the realm of spiritual relationships. It is the largest part of this book because it is the most important to people. It is the story of the human spirit in relationship with God, told through the lives of five men. If you remember the lives of these five men and what they mean, you will have most of Genesis in the palm of your hand. They are Noah, Abraham Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Genesis reveals in the stories of these men what human beings are always seeking.

Most of us think we spend our lives seeking things. The popular T-shirt slogan puts it this way: "He who dies with the most toys, wins." But story after story of the final moments of people with the most toys, the rich and famous of this world, show that those who die with nothing to show for their lives but a huge collection of things and toys--castles, cars, fame, wealth, empires--tend to die miserably; clutching at a life that they can no longer grasp, regretting that they have invested their lives in things that don't last. Materialism is bound to disappoint us in the end.

All the restlessness of our age can be understood as an attempt to acquire the right things in the wrong way. What are the right things? I believe there are essentially three things people want: righteousness, peace, and joy. But because our understanding is warped by sin, our search for these things gets skewed.

Deep inside, we want righteousness a sense of being right and justified. But instead of seeking the righteousness of God and being by faith in the righteous sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we try to justify ourselves! When anyone accuses you of something wrong, what do you do? You start justifying yourself! That’s human nature. Even when we know we want to somehow make it right. But the only righteousness that is truly right is the righteousness of God. That is why we are inadequate apart from Him, and that is why we are complete with Him. His righteousness covers us and justifies us. Only the righteousness of God call truly satisfy our hunger and searching for righteousness.

The second thing we seek is peace. John F. Kennedy once said, "The absence of war is not the same thing as peace." How true! Even when our society has enjoyed so-called peacetime, we have known a sense of national tension, unease, and dissatisfaction. As a people, we are not at peace with each other nor with ourselves. Why? Because we seek it in the wrong places, in the wrong ways. We seek money and a higher standard of living as the key to peace of mind; yet the more we have the more we want. We never come to a place where we truly know peace. But God gives us, even in uncertain times, a very different and Spiritual transcendent peace, the peace that passes understanding.

The third thing we all seek is joy. We want a sense of gladness, of happiness, of adventure in life. Tragically, most of us seek our joy-substitute in the form of kicks, highs, and sinful pleasures. The purpose of the last part of Genesis is to introduce us to God, the one of whom the psalmist wrote, "You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand" (Ps. 16:11).

Where do we find the true satisfaction of all three of these unseen, almost unconscious, goals of life--righteousness, peace, and joy? Romans 14:17 tells us: "The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." Only God offers these things to human beings, and that is the story of this book.

If Genesis reveals the inadequacies of people without God, it also demonstrates the adequacy and completeness of people with God. That is the great positive message of Genesis. In the garden before Adam fell, you see Adam as the lord of creation. God has given him dominion. If only we could have known Adam back in the days before the Fall! What a rich personality he must have been. What tremendous power and knowledge he must have had. He knew the world mysteries and controlled its activities. Humanity can no longer do that. We have the urge to do so but cannot. When we look at the New Testament and read of the miracles of the Lord Jesus’ walking on the water, changing the water into wine, stilling the storm with a word, we say to ourselves, "That is God at work." But the Old Testament says, "No, that isn't God; that is unfallen humanity. That is what human beings were intended to be: rulers of the world.”

You find it reflected in Psalm 8:4 and 6. Gazing into the heavens, David says, "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man you care for him?" And then he answers his question, "You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet." Since the fall, the only human being in whom we have seen these words fulfilled is Jesus. That is why the writer of Hebrews says, "Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus…” (Heb. 2:8-9).

Genesis reveals that when human beings live with God, they are able to live at peace and in harmony with other human beings. One of the most beautiful stories in this book is that of Abraham’s dwelling under the oaks of Mamre with the Canaanites all around him, a race that for many years had been his enemy. But God so worked in the life of Abraham that even his enemies were made to be at peace with him. The story of Abraham closes with the Canaanite tribes coming to him and saying, "You are a mighty prince among us” (Gen. 23:6). So is fulfilled what God says elsewhere, that when a person’s ways please the Lord, He makes even that person's enemies to be at peace with him. This is the key. This is the secret of life in all our relationships.

Genesis declares that only human beings in fellowship with God can know supreme happiness--the righteousness, peace, and joy that people always hunger for. Realization comes only as people discover that the indwelling God is the answer to all their needs.

This is revealed in five ways, through the lives of five men:

Noah is a man who went through symbolic death. That is the meaning of the flood. Noah was surrounded by the flood, he rode upon it, he was preserved through it, he was saved from it. The waters of judgment, the waters of death could not overwhelm him. He was carried into a new world and a new life by His faith in a redeeming God.

Many books have been written depicting what the world might be like after an atomic holocaust. Yet this is virtually the same scenario produced in the days of the flood. Human civilization was destroyed, and Noah and his family were forced to begin afresh on a new earth. Here is a picture of regeneration, of new life. The beginning of life as a Christian is a transition from death into life in Christ, just as Noah passed from death to life in the flood.

Note the numbers associated with the flood. The flood began when the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens opened up, and the rain continued for 40 days and nights, then ceased. At the end of 150 days the waters began to abate and the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month.

The seventeenth day of the seventeenth day of the seventh month is exactly the same day of the year when, centuries later, Jesus rose from the dead. After the exodus from Egypt, God changed the beginning of the year from the seventh month (in the fall) to the first month (in the spring) when the Passover was eaten. Jesus rose on the seventeenth day of the first month, which would be the same as the seventeenth day of the seventh month in the old reckoning passages in Genesis. Thus, clearly, the emergence of Noah from the ark is intended to be a picture of the new beginning of life that every Christian experiences when he or she enters into the resurrection life of Jesus by the new birth!

Abraham teaches us that we are justified by faith. Here was a man who was far from perfect, yet who lived by faith. Everything Abraham achieved was a result of God's grace, not Abraham’s effort. As God led him along and Abraham stepped out in faithful dependence upon the promises of God, he found that God's promises were true. Eight times Abraham’s faith was dramatically tried, and eight times he passed the test. If you are ever in a trial of faith, read the life of Abraham. You will find in his life circumstances that are similar to the ones you are going through. Abraham teaches us what it means to be justified, to be the friend of God by faith.

One of the greatest demonstrations of Abraham's faith is his reliance upon God's promise of a coming son, despite Abraham's advanced age. It is at that point in Abraham's walk of faith where we read for the first time in Scripture that marvelous statement, "Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness" (see Gen. 15:6). It is because of his faith that Abraham was called "God's friend" (James 2:23).

Isaac is a beautiful picture of sonship, what it means to be a child of God. If ever a boy was spoiled and pampered by his father, it was Isaac. He is the darling of his father's heart. I doubt that any message could be more welcome today than the one that is so beautifully exemplified in Isaac: that God loves us, values us, and calls us the darlings of His heart. "Dear friends, now we are children of God," says l John 3:2, "what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him." We shall be like Christ.

Jacob was the rascal of Genesis. He was the schemer, the man who thought he could live by his own wits and his own efforts. He went out trying to deceive everybody and ended up being deceived. He troubled his own household by playing favorites, indulging one of his sons over the rest, creating bitterness and resentment among his sons. Yet, despite all his faults, Jacob is a beautiful picture of sanctification, that marvelous work of God in which we in our folly, attempting to live life in the energy of the flesh, are led into the very situations that drive us to God. Sometimes we give God no choice but to corner us and contend with us until we discover His speaking to us, and we surrender. With our surrender, God is able to take over, and we are able to truly live.

That is what Jacob did at the brook of Peniel. There, knowing Esau was waiting with a band of armed men ready to take his life, Jacob waited alone. There, an angel in the form of a man met him and began to wrestle with him through the long night. As the day broke the angel sought to disengage himself, but Jacob clung with stubborn persistence. The angel touched Jacob's thigh and threw it out of joint, but still Jacob clung in helplessness to the divine messenger, refusing to let go until he was blessed of God. Then the divine being changed the name of Jacob to Israel, which means "he who prevails with God." As the sun rose, Jacob limped off to meet Esau with a totally different attitude in his heart. He no longer feared people but was confident that God would fight his battles for him. Jacob learned the great principle of sanctification: that God was his strength and his refuge and is fully capable of working out all the problems with which he may be confronted.

Jacob's life can be seen in three distinct stages: (1) His early years at home when he was basically a deceiver of others, epitomized by his theft of Esau's birthright. (2) The middle period of his life, when Jacob learns what it is like to be deceived, as illustrated in the story where Jacob labors for seven years to win Rachel as his wife only to be tricked into marrying Rachel's sister Leah first. (3) Finally, Jacob learns to live as a man devoted to the word and will of God, when he wrestles with--and is blessed by--the angel of God.

Joseph is a picture of glorification. Joseph is the young man who was loved by his father, Jacob, and mistreated by his brothers. They pounce on him and sell him into slavery, yet even in the chains of a slave, Joseph is exalted by God. His life is a roller coaster of highs and lows: he is given a position of prestige by Potiphar, then cast down into prison by the lies of Potiphar's wife, then is again exalted, taken out of prison, and made an advisor to the pharaoh of Egypt himself! Ultimately, he becomes the second highest leader in the land.

Here, in the life of Joseph, is a symbolic picture of the hope of all believers. What do we look forward to after death? Deliverance from the darkness and pain of this earthly existence, and from the prison house in which we have lived our and exaltation to the very throne and presence of God Himself!

And how did Joseph appropriate God's deliverance and exaltation in his own life? Faith is the only method by which human beings can reach God and appropriate His delivering power. "Without faith it is impossible to please God,” says Hebrews 11:6. As you act in faith, it all becomes true. Note that in Joseph's life and in ours, faith does not mean giving intellectual credence to God's promises not stepping out and acting on His promises; when we act in faith, it all becomes true in our experience.

Joseph's character is presented to us with almost unblemished consistency. He is often considered symbolic of Christ, since he was beloved of his father but rejected by his brethren, sold into slavery for twenty pieces of silver, and seemingly died (or so his father thought) and was "brought to life" again as a triumphant king instead of a suffering servant. Like our Lord, he forgave his brothers for their treatment of him and was used to save them from death and preserve the family line.

The thread that runs throughout all fifty chapters of Genesis is that there is a secret to living and that we will never experience completeness of life until we have learned and experienced this secret. The secret is simple--yet so many people in this world tragically miss it. The secret to living is friendship with God. Without God you cannot understand the world around you. You can't understand yourself or your neighbor or God Himself. You will never have any answers without God. But with Him, everything comes into focus, everything makes sense.

The secret of life is a persona], daily relationship with the living God who was in the beginning, who made the heavens and the earth, who created the human race in His own image, and who wants to have fellowship and a living relationship with the people He has so lovingly created.

This is the first note sounded in the very first chapters of Genesis, and you will see that when we have concluded our adventure through the Bible, it is also the concluding note sounded in the book of Revelation. From beginning to end, the Bible is a love letter to the human race. And we have examined only the first chapter of that love letter.

Chapter Six: Exodus

The Design for Deliverance

When God wants to do something big, He starts with a baby. That's God's pattern, His modus operandi. He uses the weak things, the simple things, the small things, to confound the great and the wise.

What do we consider to be great historical events? Wars, battles, revolutions, upheavals. We would never think to include the birth of a baby as we consider great historical movements and social changes. We think babies are small and weak and essentially unimportant. God knows better. He knows that it is babies who become the great men and great women who shake the foundations of the world.

In 1809, the whole world anxiously focused on the military exploits of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was the "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf of his day--with a dash of Hitler-like megalomania thrown in! He wanted to conquer the world, and, thanks to his extraordinary military genius, he was well on his way to doing so! The whole world trembled before his towering ambitions and anxiously awaited news reports from the warfront.

Yet, in that same year, 1809, babies were being born all around the world. The world took little note of those babies during the time that Napoleon was making obsolete all the maps of Europe. Yet the seeds of revolutionary change were being planted in that year. The great English Poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born that year. So was Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution by natural selection would send a shudder through the scientific community. Gladstone, who would one day become prime minister of England, was born. And, in a log cabin in Kentucky, so was Abraham Lincoln.

When God wants to change history, He doesn't start with a battle. He starts with a baby. That is God's pattern throughout history, and that is why the book of Exodus opens with the birth of a baby.

God's finger is in evidence at the very beginning of this book, for this is the story of a baby born under the sentence of death, but one whose life was marvelously preserved by God's intervening hand. With a delicate twist of irony that is wonderful to observe, the Holy Spirit of God moves in a beautiful way: Despite the order of Pharaoh to kill all Hebrew male babies in Egypt, Moses is not only saved but is brought right into Pharaoh's household to be raised! Then, piling irony upon irony, God moves Pharaoh to unwittingly hire the baby Moses' own mother to take care of him!

Such a design is surely one of those delightful expressions of God’s humor. If you haven't yet discovered that God has a sense of humor, a great discovery is in store for you. Humorous glimpses appear through out the Old and New Testaments. I relish biblical accounts of the clever ways in which God adroitly turns the tables and brings a delightful twist out of an evil situation.

Moses grew up in the court of pharaoh, with access to all the learning opportunities of the Egyptians. He was trained in the best university of the ancient world's greatest empire. He was the foster son of the king himself and every privilege and advantage was his. But when he came of age, God spoke to him and placed upon him the mantle of Israel's deliverer. So Moses went out trying to do God's work in his own strength, and he ended up murdering a man and having to flee into the wilderness.

As you trace the story, you find that Moses left Egypt and herded sheep for forty years in the wilderness. Here, God found him and dealt with him in the remarkable confrontation of the burning bush. God called Moses back to his original task, for which Moses felt completely unprepared. Moses had to learn the same lesson that you and I must learn: To do anything in God's name, we need nothing more than God Himself.

First, let's place Exodus within its context in the Pentateuch. It immediately follows Genesis, the book that reveals the need of the human race. Genesis is about humanity--its creation, its sin, and its groping for God as personified in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Genesis ends with the words "a coffin in Egypt," a phrase that underscores the fact that all you can say about the human race at the end of it all is that we live in the realm of death.

If Genesis is all about humanity Exodus is all about God. Exodus is God's answer to human need. This book begins with God's activity, and throughout the rest of the book you see God mightily at work. The book is the picture of God's action to redeem us fallen human beings from our need, our sin, our misery, our death. It is a beautiful picture and contains instructive lessons to us of what redemption is, what God has done, what He continues to do, and what He intends to do with our lives.

But Exodus is an incomplete book. The redemption that is begun in Exodus is not completed in this book. To gain the full perspective on God's redemptive story, which is begun in Exodus, you must keep reading through Leviticus, through Numbers, through Deuteronomy, and into the book of Joshua, which tells the story of Israel's triumphant possession of the Promised Land.

You can understand the story of Exodus by remembering four great events that sum up its great themes:

1. The Passover (Exodus 12-13)

2. The crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14)

3. The giving of the law (Exodus 19-31)

4. The construction of the tabernacle (Exodus 35-40)

The Passover and Red Sea are but two aspects of one great truth: the deliverance of God's people from the bondage and death. They symbolize the act of a Christian's conversion and regeneration; that is, the deliverance of an individual from the bondage of sin and spiritual death. If you want to know what God did in your life when you became a Christian, study the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea.

The giving of the Law and the construction of the tabernacle are similarly inseparable. The pattern of the tabernacle was given to Moses when he was on the mountain with God, at the same time that the Law was given. The Law and the tabernacle are inextricably linked, as we shall soon discover.

Here is a structural outline of the book:

The Redemption out of Egypt (Exodus 1-18)

1. Israel multiplies; Moses is born 1-2:25

2. Moses is called by God 3-4

3. The redemption of Israel from Egypt 5:1-15:21

A. Moses opposes Pharaoh 5:1-7:13

B. The ten plagues upon Egypt 7:14-11:10

C. The Passover 12:1-13:16

D. Moses the redeemer leads

Israel across the Red Sea 13:17-15:21

4. Israel is preserved in the desert 15:22-18:27

The Law and the Tabernacle (Exodus 19-40)

5. The revelation of the Law 19:1-24:11

6. The revelation of the tabernacle 24:12-31:18

7. Israel breaks the covenant 32:1-6

8. Moses intercedes on Israel's behalf 32:7-34:35

9. The building of the tabernacle 35-40

Having briefly outlined the structure of Exodus, let's examine each of the four great thematic strands that form the strong cord of the book.

In Exodus 3 and 4, God comes to Moses, the shepherd and fugitive from justice (he has escaped to the wilderness after murdering an Egyptian), and He calls Moses to fill the role of redeemer of a nation. Speaking to Moses from a bush that burns but is not consumed, God challenges him, and instructs him to return to Egypt. At first Moses is reluctant to go. "O Lord," he says, "I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue" (Ex. 4:10). God didn't rebuke Moses for his reluctance or his human sense of inadequacy. Instead, He says to Moses, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say." Go down to Egypt and I will be your tongue and I will speak through you.

But then Moses says, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it." And that’s when, as Exodus 4:14 tells us, "The Lord's anger burned against Moses."

At first, Moses was expressing his humble sense of inadequacy. But when God promised to be with him and Moses still protested his inadequacy, Moses was really saying, "God, I can't do it--and I don't believe You can do it, either." When Moses challenged God's adequacy to be his strength, God's anger was kindled against him. That is a good point to remember whenever God challenges us to take on a task in His name.

Moses returned to Egypt and immediately came into conflict with Pharaoh. Nothing is more dramatic in all the Old Testament than this tremendous test of wills, between Pharaoh and Moses, the representative of Satan and the representative of God. Pharaoh forced God to unleash His mighty power against Egypt. Again and again in this account we read, "Pharaoh hardened his heart."

There were ten plagues in all: blood, frogs, lice, flies, disease on the animals, boils on people and animals, hail, locusts, darkness, and finally, death of the firstborn sons. It is interesting to note that each of the first nine plagues was directed at one of the gods of Egypt; the target of the tenth was Pharaoh himself, striking Pharaoh's son and all the firstborn sons of Egypt in an attempt to melt Pharaoh's heart of stone. By these plagues, God acted in judgment against the false gods of Egypt and Egypt’s evil, hard-hearted king.

Finally, with the tenth plague Pharaoh's been was overcome. God's power broke his will. In his grief Pharaoh relented and allowed Israel to go. During this tenth plague both God's power and love are dramatically revealed--power to punish those who willfully, stubbornly choose to oppose Him and loving provision and protection for those who place their trust in Him. It is during the tenth plague that the beautiful event called Passover, which the Jews still celebrate, takes place.

Through His servant Moses, God commanded the people of Israel to sprinkle blood on the doorposts of their houses and to share a special meal of lamb with unleavened bread the Passover supper. This event is a beautiful Old Testament foreshadowing of a New Testament truth. Before coming in faith to Jesus Christ, we are simply individuals struggling--without much success--to make our way through life. But after receiving the gift of eternal life through the shedding of His blood upon the "doorposts" of the cross, by partaking of the innocent Lamb and the unleavened bread of His broken and pierced body, we become a part of Him and of every other believer who so partakes.

The Passover is a beautiful picture of the cross of Christ. The angel of death passed over the land, darkening Egypt with the death of the firstborn who were slain. But the Israelites--those who, by a simple act of faith, took the blood of a lamb and sprinkled it on the doorposts and their houses--were perfectly safe. Then and now, salvation is accomplished by the simple act of faith, a trusting response to God's loving provision of a Savior who has settled our guilt before God. Then and now, the angel of death passes over those who are covered by the blood of the Lamb.

But the Passover is not the whole story. The Passover is never of value until it is linked with the Red Sea experience. The Red Sea experience immediately followed the Passover.

As soon as Pharaoh relented and released the people of Israel, they left the safety of their homes, went out into the wilderness, and walked right to the shore of the sea. They were still in Egypt when they arrived at the sea, and their situation seemed hopeless. Looking behind them, they saw that pharaoh had once again hardened his heart and was now coming after them with an army. The people began to cry out to Moses and ask him why he had brought them here to die at the water's edge.

Moses' answer is a statement of unswerving faith in God: "Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today" (Ex.14:13). The Israelites, however, assessed their situation with the gloomy, myopic eyes of sight rather than the far-seeing eyes of faith. But Moses was serene. The Lord had told him to stretch out his rod over the sea, and when he did, the waters rolled back and the people passed through safely between two walls of suspended water. As soon as they set foot on the other side, the waters rolled back into place and their Egyptian pursuers were caught in the deluge and drowned.

The Red Sea experience is not only a historical event; it is also a powerful symbol for your life and mine. It typifies our break with the world, once we have placed our trust in Jesus Christ. Egypt is behind us; the journey to the Promised Land is before us. True, Israel found itself in a wilderness beyond the Red Sea, but they were safely out of Egypt and out of bondage. They had passed through the river of death.

This same river of death rolls between us and the world once we claim Jesus Christ as our Lord. When we pass through a Red Sea experience, when we die to the old life and pass through Christian baptism, taking a stand for Jesus Christ, we divorce ourselves from the bondage and misery of the old life and our old ways. As the apostle Paul tells us, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cor. 5:17).

It is important to note that before the Red Sea experience, the people of Israel were not a nation. They became a nation when they passed through the Red Sea together. That is the meaning of those words from 1 Corinthians 10:2, "They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea." By this miraculous baptism, they were transformed from a disorganized mob into a mighty nation, a unit, a body, a fellowship, a society. This powerfully symbolizes the transformation that takes place when we, through faith in Christ, become part of the body of Christ, the church. Through water baptism, we signify that we have died with Christ and that, through Him, we have joined together in a living unit with all other Christians.

Notice the link between the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea. Both involve faith, but the Red Sea crossing takes faith one step further. The Israelites were essentially passive in their Passover deliverance: they painted the doorposts with blood, they ate their meal, and they waited for God to act. But the crossing of the Red Sea was active, it required obedience, it required a deliberate step of faith.

Today, as in the days of Exodus, true faith requires action and obedience. We cannot remain Passover-passive. We must move ahead as God commands, boldly stepping out, trusting Him to part the water and lead the way. As we move forward cutting the ties with the bondage of this world, allowing the river of God's judgment to flow between us and the ways of the world, our faith takes on substance and power. That is the moment when God truly dwells in us and moves through us. God cannot complete His work in us and bring us to maturity until we have passed through the Red Sea.

Notice, in Exodus 15, that the first thing they did as they reached the other shore was to break into song. They had not sung in Egypt--that place of bondage, misery, and of unremitting toil. But when they emerged from their "dry baptism" through the Red Sea, they couldn't keep from singing! Real deliverance brings a song.

Immediately after crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites came to the waters of Marah, the place of bitterness. In order to cure these waters, Moses cut down a tree that the Lord had shown him, and he threw it into the water. Thereupon, the water became sweet (Ex. 15:25). The tree symbolizes the cross, the great tree upon which the Lord Jesus was crucified: God's answer to the bitterness of sin and to the bitterness and unhappiness of our past hurts and frustrations.

Next, the Israelites moved on into the desert. There, manna, the food from heaven, fell to feed and sustain the people. They were instructed to gather this bread from heaven on a daily basis, six days a week (on the sixth day, they are to gather an extra day's supply to carry them through the Sabbath). The people had difficulty obeying God's clear instructions, much as people still do today. We often find it difficult to trust God for His provision and deliverance in the midst of "impossible" situations.

The people's faith was again tried when they come to a barren, waterless desert. Here again, God patiently met their murmuring and unbelief by providing water from a rock.

In Exodus 17, we come to a battle, symbolic of the Christian's battle with the flesh. The battle against the sin of the flesh is always startling to new Christians. They have experienced the emotional and spiritual high of discovering new life in Christ, and suddenly sin rears ugly head and they wonder, "What happened?" That's the situation the Israelites faced: They had gone through the glory of the Passover, the Red Sea crossing, the demonstration of God's fatherly love by the provision of the manna. But a shocking realization soon confronted them: Life also required believers to fight battles. Amalek fought with Israel, and God responded by declaring unending war with Amalek (Ex. 17:10).

The apostle Paul stated the nature of the battle that takes place in every Christian: "The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other" (Gal. 5:17). You can never make peace with Amalek, with the sinful desires of the flesh.

What is the Law? It is simply a picture of God's holiness, His unrelenting character, and His unchangeability. This is why the giving of the Law is a time of terror, because nothing is more frightening to human beings than the act of squarely facing God's true nature.

The unchangeable nature of God gives wonderful comfort to us, of course, when we think of His love, care, and grace. But it fills us with awe and fear when we think of His holiness, anger, and justice. The law means that God cannot be talked out of His righteous judgments. God can never be bought off. We cannot get Him to compromise His standards. The Law is the absolute, irrevocable standard of God's character.

Some people think that there are two Gods: an unrelenting Old Testament God and a warm-frizzy, indulgent New Testament God who winks at our sin. Nothing could be further from the truth! Jesus, in Matthew 5:48, said, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Jesus knows that we cannot achieve perfection, we will fail, we will sin; but He also wants us to know that God’s standard has not changed. The Law is the Law, and it remains in force in both Testaments, New and Old.

How does God expect us to be perfect? How does he expect us to keep every point of His law without error? Answer: He doesn’t. But He has made it possible for our sins to be covered by His perfection. His answer to our imperfections is the fourth theme of Exodus: the tabernacle.

On Mount Sinai, the very same mountain of which God gave Moses the Law as a revelation of His character, He also gave the tabernacle, His provision for His dwelling place with the human race and for the covering of human sin.

The camp of Israel was divided up in an orderly fashion, with some of the tribes on the east, some on the north, some on the west, and some on the south. Right in the center was the tabernacle. Over the whole camp was the great cloud by day and the fiery pillar by night. The cloud/fire gave evidence of God’s presence dwelling among His people. This was made possible only by an intricate system of sacrifices and rituals designed to focus the faith and cleanse the lives of His people, so that they could be brought into His presence.

If you could have gone into the camp of Israel, you would have passed through all the tribes on either side, and at the center of the camp, you would have found the tribe of Levi--the priestly tribe. Continuing to pass among the Levites, you would have come to the outer court where you would have found certain articles--the brass altar and the brass laver. Then you would have come to an inner building with a veil across the entrance, where only priests dared to enter: the Holy Place. Behind another veil inside the holy place was the Holy of Holies. The only piece of furniture in it was the ark of the covenant, which was adorned by the cherubim of mercy with their wings touching each other over the ark. Into that place only the high priest could go--once a year and under the most rigid and precise conditions.

Now what do the symbols of the tabernacle teach us? Again, the message is that God is absolutely changeless and holy.

He can dwell among people only under the most rigid conditions. The trouble with the tabernacle was that it permitted the people to come before God vicariously, only through the priests. Actually, the common people were excluded from God’s living presence.

The problem with the Old Testament is not that the law is inadequate. There is nothing wrong with the Law; it is absolutely good. It remains good and in full force today. The problem was with the tabernacle and the system of sacrifices. They weren't complete. They weren't final. They were a shadow, a symbol, not the reality. That is why, when we come to the book of Hebrews, the whole book is dedicated to teaching us that the Law of God is still unchanged, but our approach to God is different under the new covenant than it was under the old covenant.

In Exodus, only the high priest could enter the sanctuary. But in Hebrews we read, "we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place" (Heb. 10:19) without fear. Because the blood of Jesus, the perfect sacrifice of the God-Man upon the cross, completes what the blood sacrifices of the Old Testament only symbolized. Through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, we now have access to the presence of God, which was forbidden to the common people in the days of Moses.

The great message of the book of Exodus is that by means of the cross, God has made it possible for a holy, unchangeable God to dwell with us. The tabernacle is a picture of God's dwelling place with His people. The great truth for us here is that God has completely settled the problem of sin in Romans 8:1, "There is now no condemnation, none whatsoever! We have perfect access to the Father through the Son, and God's indwelling Spirit will never leave us or forsake us. He has taken up His tabernacle in our hearts and lives.

I think it is tragic that so many Sunday school teachers tell their pupils that a building is the house of God. This is simply not true. A building was the house of God in the Old Testament--the tabernacle--but it was a mere shadow. The house of God of the New Testament, of the age in which we now live, is people, those who have placed their trust in Jesus Christ. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16, "You yourselves are God's temple" (italics added). So once you are in Christ, you are never out of church! Each of us is a walking tabernacle.

The whole book of Exodus is written to impress upon us a great New Testament truth: the glory of God lives in us and with us. This truth exalts us, energizes us, and exhilarates us. This truth also places a great sense of responsibility on us. We need to continually remind ourselves that we should walk worthy of the eternal presence that dwells in us. All our actions should be examined in light of the question, "in doing this, will I bring honor or shame to God's walking tabernacle, my body?"

Sometimes we hear that the weakness of the Old Testament was that Israel was under the law and did not know the grace of God. This is a complete misconception! True, Israel was under the law--but the law was not given to the Jewish people to be their savior. It was given to reveal their sin and to make them aware of the hopelessness of their condition apart from God’s redemptive grace. Even in the Old Testament, salvation was a matter of God’s grace, appropriated by human faith.

The symbols of Exodus are meant to teach us that, by means of the cross, God now dwells with us. This is why Matthew 1:23 says of Jesus, "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel--which means ‘God with us.’ ” God is with us, here and now, in a dramatic and powerful way. He has taken up His abode in our hearts. That, brought down to its essence, is the message of Exodus.

Still, Exodus isn’t enough. We need to go on into Leviticus and see how this demanding law of God affects us in its effort to correct us and guide our lives. That is where we turn our attention.

Chapter Seven: Leviticus

The Way to Wholeness

When I first came to the Bay Area of California, I visited a large steel-products factory owned by a friend of mine. He was about to give me a tour when he was called away to deal with a business matter. As I waited for my friend to join me and show me around, I wandered out onto the factory floor and looked around.

My first impression as I stepped into the huge building was one of tremendous clamor. The noise was thunderous! Great machines were pounding away, big trip-hammers were smashing down, and other machines were grinding up metal and spitting out parts. I couldn't even hear myself think.

My next impression was one of mass confusion. People were running here and there paying no attention to one another and getting in each other's way. The machines were all working away with no apparent harmony or connection at all.

Then my friend joined me and we began our tour of the plant. He showed me one area of the factory and explained what they were doing there. He explained the workings of various machines, and he told me what the various workers were doing. We went from department to department, and in each place he explained how all the seeming chaos of the place was actually controlled chaos, all carefully planned and cured in order to produce a finished product. Finally, we arrived in the shipping department; there, packaged in glistening shrink-wrap and tucked neatly into cardboard boxes with Styrofoam packing material, was the finished product.

Suddenly, I understood the factory. It was not all "sound and fury, signifying nothing," as I had originally supposed. It all made perfect sense. The noise, the activity, the seeming confusion were all carefully orchestrated to produce the desired effect.

I was no longer confused. Instead, I was amazed and impressed!

Reading the book of Leviticus can be a lot like visiting a factory without a guide. Coming into this book, you find many strange ceremonies and sacrifices, many odd restrictions, and various other details that seem practically meaningless. But the more you understand of the book of Leviticus, the more there strange details seems to merge and become a complex, cohesive, intricately articulated relationship, moving toward a purposeful goal.

What is that goal? You find it stared clearly in a verse near the middle of the book. If you grasp this one verse, you understand the essence of the entire book: "You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own" (Lev. 20:26).

God is saying to the people of Israel, "I have separated you from all the nations around you in order that you might be Mine." When we Christians read this, we must understand that we are the people of God today. What God said to Israel He so says to us, for in the new relationship we have in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. We are one body in Christ. The promises that appear in picture form in the Old Testament belong also to us who live this side of the cross.

When the Lord says to the people, "You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy," many of us have to ask ourselves, What does that word holy really mean? Most of us associate it with some kind of grimness or solemnity. We think holy people are those who look as if they have been steeped in vinegar or soaked in embalming fluid. I used to think of the word that way. Viewed in that light, the concept of holiness was not at all attractive to me!

But then I came across Psalm 29:2, a verse that speaks of "the splendor of his holiness," I had to ask myself, What in the world is so splendid about holiness? When I found out, I had to agree that holiness is indeed a splendid thing.

If you want to get at the meaning of this word, you must go back to its original root. The word holiness is derived from the same root as another, much more familiar word: wholeness. Holiness actually means "wholeness," the state of being complete. And if you read wholeness in place of holiness everywhere you find it in the Bible, you will be very close to what the writers of Scripture meant. Holiness/wholeness means to have all the parts that were intended to be there and to have them functioning as they were intended to function.

So God is really saying to His people in the book of Leviticus, "You shall be whole, because I am whole." God is complete. He is perfect. There is no blemish in God. He lives in harmony with Himself and knows none of the inner conflict and turmoil that we humans often experience. God is a beautiful person. He is absolutely what a person ought to be. He is filled with joy and love and peace. He lives in wholeness. And He looks at us in our brokenness and says, "You, too, shall be whole."

We long to be whole people. In life, we are continually reminded of our own brokenness, of our lack of wholeness. We know how much we hurt ourselves and each other. We are aware of our inability to cope with life. We sometimes put up a big facade and try to bluff our way through as though we are able to handle anything, but inside, we are running scared. That is a mark of our lack of wholeness.

When man first came from the hand of God, he was whole. He was made in the image and likeness of God. Adam functioned as God intended man to function. But when sin entered the picture, the image and likeness of God was marred and broken. We still have the image, but the likeness is gone.

God has made a decision to heal our brokenness and to make us whole again. He knows how to do it, and He says so: "I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the nations" (Lev. 20:24). Our brokenness is rooted in our involvement with the brokenness of our race. Our attitudes are wrong. Our vision of life is distorted. We believe illusions, take them to be facts, and act upon them. So God must separate us. He must break us loose from the bondage of the thought patterns, attitudes, and reactions of those around us. God never forces us to become holy. We become holy only as we voluntarily trust God and respond to His love.

As a teenager, I once tried to coax a female deer out of a thicket so I could feed her an apple from my hand. She was wild and scared, but she saw the apple and obviously wanted it. She would venture a few steps toward me, then retreat into the woods, venture forward, then retreat. Then she would come out again, stand still and look around for a minute, then casually graze as if she were indifferent to that apple. I stood perfectly still, holding out the apple, waiting for her to come to me in trust.

Now, it was perfectly possible for that doe simply to walk right up and grab the apple and start eating it. I never would have hurt her or tried to capture her, but she didn't know, that. I was there a long time, at least half an hour, trying to get her to come out of the woods. Finally she came about halfway toward me and stood there with her neck stretched out, trying to muster the courage to reach for that apple. Just as I thought she was going to do it, a car passed nearby and she was gone I had to eat the apple myself!

That incident strikes me as an apt picture of what God contends with in reaching out toward human beings. It takes infinite patience and love on His part to overcome our fear and doubt, so that we will trust Him to give us what we need. That is why God gave us this book.

He starts us our in spiritual kindergarten. He starts with pictures and shadows, with visual aids, in order to show us what He is going to do someday. All the ceremonies and offerings of the Old Testament are shadows and pictures of Jesus Christ. Christ is as present in the book of Leviticus as He is in the Gospels, but because He is present in symbols and signs, you must look carefully to see His image. Jesus is the focus of Leviticus, and the theme of this book is that God has made His holiness/wholeness available to us through Jesus Himself.

"But," you might say, "the people of the Old Testament didn't know that the pictures and shadows of Leviticus pointed to Jesus!" True, the Israelites did not frilly understand that the Old Testament sacrifices and tabernacle pointed to Jesus, but that doesn't matter. People of the Old Testament needed Christ as much as we need Him today. They were hurting and broken and fragmented, just as we are. And Christ was available to them through the symbols and pictures of Leviticus. They met Him through the form of worship that God gave them in Leviticus, and as they placed their trust in God, they came into the same joy and peace that we now have as New Testament believers.

This is why Leviticus is such an important book for us today: Because the sacrifices, rituals, and ceremonies of Leviticus are a foreshadowing of Jesus and His saving work, this book can teach us a great deal about how Jesus Christ can answer our needs now. This is not just a historical book. It is a tremendously practical manual on how to live the Christian life.

The book of Leviticus falls into two main divisions. The first part (chapters 1 through 17) speaks to human need and tells us how we should approach a holy God. It reveals our inadequacy as a sinful people and sets forth God's answer to that inadequacy. The second part (chapters 18 through 27) reveals what God expects from us in response, instructing us in how to live holy, sanctified lives, distinct from the world around us. Here is an outline of the book of Leviticus:

How to Approach God (Leviticus 1-17)

1. Laws regarding offerings to God 1-7

A. Burnt offering 1

B. Grain offering 2

C. Fellowship offering 3

D. Sin offering 4: 1-5:13

E. Guilt offering 5:14-6:7

F. Summary of the offerings 6:8-7:38

2. Laws regarding the priesthood 8-10

3. Laws regarding purity 11-15

A. Laws concerning diet 11

B. Laws concerning childbirth 12

C. Laws concerning infectious

skin diseases 13-14

D. Laws concerning bodily

discharges 15

4. Laws regarding atonement

and sacrifices 16-17

How to Live: Sanctification and Holiness (Leviticus 18-27)

5. Laws regarding sexual behavior 18

6. Laws regarding society 19

7. Penalties for idolatry and immorality 20

8. Sanctification of the priesthood 21-22

9. The feasts and laws of worship 23-24

10. The coming sanctification of the

Promised Land 25-26

11. The law's of consecration of the

people and their possessions 27

The first seventeen chapters of Leviticus are all about how we, as sinful people, can approach God. They contain four elements that establish human need and reveal what we are like. The first is a series of five offerings that symbolize in different ways the offering of Jesus Christ upon the cross for our sins. Perhaps God gave us five fingers on each hand so that we can remember the five offerings:

1. the burnt offering

2. the meal offering

3. the peace offering

4. the sin offering

5. the trespass offering

These are all pictures of what Jesus Christ does for us, but they are also pictures of the fundamental needs of human life. They speak of the two essentials for human existence: love and responsibility.

We can never be complete if we are not loved or if we do not love. Love is an essential ingredient of life. Nothing harms, distorts, disfigures, or injures a person more than to deny love to that person.

But there is another essential: in order to be whole, in order to have self-respect and self-worth, we must have a sense of responsibility. We must be able to accomplish what is worthwhile. So we need both: love and responsibility.

The second element in the first seventeen chapters is the priesthood. In the Old Testament, the priesthood was comprised solely of the sons of Levi (which is where Leviticus gets its name). But the priesthood takes a new form in the New Testament.

First there is our Lord and High Priest, Jesus Christ, who has pierced the veil of the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, and given us free access to God the Father. Second is the priesthood of all believers, the body of Christ, where we are all made priests (see 1 Peter 2:5). We love one another, confess to one another, pray for one another, encourage one another, exhort one another, and perform for one another all the functions that, in the New Testament, were performed by the priestly class, the sons of Levi. That is why we need each other in the body of Christ.

The third element that we see in these first seventeen chapters is the revelation of a standard of truth. By this standard we are able to tell the difference between the true and the false, the phony and the real, helpful and the hurtful, the life-giving and the deadly. Isn't it strange that human beings in their natural condition cannot tell the difference? That is why there are millions of people who are doing things that they think are helpful but that end up to he destructive--and they don't understand why! Because God is loving, He points its to the truth and warns us to avoid the actions that would destroy us.

The fourth and final element that we see in these first seventeen chapters is an opportunity to respond to God. This opportunity is completely voluntary. God never imposes His will on any of us. This opportunity is provided by means of something called "the Day of Atonement.” If, when we thoroughly understand our need and God's provision to meet it, we say no to Him, He will let us. But we must recognize that we may never return to the moment of opportunity again. God always gives us a long period of preparation in which He leads us into a full understanding of the choice that He sets before us; but our rejection of Him tends to be progressive, resulting in a gradual hardening of our hearts. Finally, we reach a point where our rejection of Him becomes tragically final.

The second section of the book, chapters 18 through 27, describes the holy, sanctified lifestyle that God makes possible. This section of Leviticus is all about how we should live as obedient people who belong to a holy God. Notice that God does not tell us how we should live until He has first told us about the provision He has made to enable us to approach Him. First, He discusses the power by which we are to act, then He talks about out behavior.

We in the church often get this backward. A great deal of damage has been done to people by insisting that they behave in a certain way without giving them any understanding of the power by which to do. New Christians and non-Christians are sometimes taught that they must live up to a certain standard before God will accept them. That is totally wrong! That is the deadly, legalistic lie of Satan, designed to keep people away from God's truth and out of God's church. And that is what God endeavors to correct in the book of Leviticus. He wants us to understand that He has first made the provision, and His provision gives us the basis upon which to build a holy lifestyle.

The second part of Leviticus, like the first, is built upon four essential elements. First, there is a need to understand the basis for wholeness, which is blood. Anyone who has read the Old Testament knows that it is full of blood. In fact, a river of blood flows throughout the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. There are sacrifices upon sacrifices, including sacrifices of bulls, calves, goats, sheep, and birds of all kinds. Why all this bloodshed? Because God is trying to impress its with a fundamental fact: Our sin condition runs very deep and can be resolved only by a death. The death that is pictured in every one of these animal sacrifices is, of course, the death of God's only Son, Jesus Christ.

The second element that runs through the concluding part of Leviticus is the practice of love in all the relationships of life. The Bible is intensely practical. It is not nearly so concerned with what you do in the tabernacle as what you do in the home as a result of having been to the tabernacle. So this book deals with relationships in the family, among friends, and with society in general. It shows us exactly the kind of love relationship that God makes possible in all these areas of life.

The third element in this last section is the enjoyment of God--His presence and His power. This section tells us how to live in relationship to God, how to worship God, and how to experience the living presence of God! The most important thing in life is not rituals and laws but an experience of the living God who is behind all the rituals and laws!

The fourth and final element is the choice that God calls us to make. He makes us aware of the important issues at stake, of how our entire lives hang in the balance, and that a decision is required of us. God shows us that, in the final analysis, the choice is entirely ours. God never says, "I'm going to make you leave your misery." Rather, He says, "If you prefer being broken and don't want to be healed, you can stay right where you are. But if you want life, then this is what you must choose." God never forces His will on us, but He does expect a response. The choice is ours to make.

In closing, we return to the key verse and the key theme of Leviticus, found in Leviticus 20:26 "You are to be holy [whole] to me because I, the LORD, am holy [whole], and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." It is important to note the verb tense of that last phrase. In our English text, it is in the future tense: "You are to be . . . my own." But the Hebrew language incorporates into this one phrase all three tenses-past, present, and future. it is as if God is saying, "You were mine, you are mine, you shall be mine."

If you pursue this idea throughout the Bible, you can see how true it is. You may know from experience that after you became a Christian, you realized that there was a sense in which you had belonged to God all along. He was active and involved in your life long before you became aware of Him. The apostle Paul expressed this thought when he wrote, "[God] set me apart from birth" (Gal. 1:15). Yet prior to his conversion Paul was a fanatical enemy of Christianity! This is a verification of the amazing love and patience of God, who draws us to Himself even when we oppose Him. "You are Mine," God says to us. "Even though you are against Me, hostile to Me, and fighting Me, you are Mine!"

Then, in the present tense, God looks at us in our brokenness, pain, and imperfection, and He places His loving hand on us and says, "You are Mine, right now, just the way you are. You belong to Me."

Some years ago, a children's service was held at a rescue mission in a city in the Midwest. One of the children who was taking part in the program was a six-year-old boy with a pronounced humpback. As he walked across the stage to give his recitation, it was clear that he was very shy and afraid and very self-conscious about his physical deformity. As he crossed the stage, one of the cruel boys in the audience called out, "Hey, kid, where are you going with that pack on your back!" The little boy stood shaking and sobbing in front of the audience.

A man stood up from the audience, went to the platform, and lifted the sobbing boy in his arms. Then he looked our over the audience. "Who said that?" he asked. No one answered. "I thought so. It takes a real coward to make a remark like that. This boy is my son, and he suffers for something that is not his fault. Whoever you are, you've hurt this boy for no reason whatsoever. But I want everyone here to know that I love this boy just the way he is. He is mine. He belongs to me, and I'm very proud of him."

That's what God is saying to us. He sees our hurt and our brokenness and He says, "You're Mine!'

But that isn't all. Because of His power and wisdom, God also addresses the future, with all the hopefulness and optimism of a loving father. You, will be Mine," He says in the future tense. "You will be healed and made whole. All your blemishes and deformities will be corrected all your faults will be straightened out, all your sins will be erased, all your tangled relationships unsnarled. You will be whole, for I am whole." That is what this book is about, that is what the Bible is about, and that is what Jesus Christ is about.

Chapter Eight: Numbers

From Failure to Victory

A king once lay ill in his bedchamber. He had called for the royal physician to bring him medicine for his ailing stomach. But before the physician could arrive, a messenger arrived with a secret letter, accusing the physician of being involved in a plot to murder the king. "Receive no medicine from the doctor's hand," read the letter. "It will be poison."

The king hid the letter under his pillow just moments before the royal physician arrived with a goblet filled with a medicinal potion. "Trust me, Sire," said the doctor. "This medicine will cure your stomach."

"I do trust you," said the king. Reaching beneath his pillow, he took the accusing letter and handed it to the doctor at the same time he took the goblet of medicine.

"What is this?" asked the doctor, taking the letter from the king's hand.

"Read it," said the king. Then he lifted the goblet to his lips and drank the potion.

The doctor read the letter, then looked up at the king with eyes full of shock and pain. "Your Highness, you must believe me, this letter is nothing but lies! I would never do anything to harm you!'

"I do believe you," said the king, "and I trust you completely—see?” The king held out the goblet. He had drunk every drop. By the next morning, he was completely recovered. The king had demonstrated, in the most dramatic way imaginable, his complete trust in his physician.

Trust is the theme of the book of Numbers. In this book, God dramatically sets forth what is perhaps the hardest lesson any of us has to learn: our need to trust God rather than our own reason

The issue of trust is a major struggle for many Christians. The hardest struggle we have is the same struggle that the Israelites had--the struggle to believe and trust that God is in control, He knows what He’s doing and what He's talking about, and He doesn't make mistakes. We struggle to believe that everything that He tells us in His Word is true and that it is for our good.

Again and again, we Christians get into trouble because we believe we know better than God, we are closer to the situation than God, and we had better handle the situation ourselves because we can't trust God to come through for us when we need Him. Proverbs puts it very strongly but accurately: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" (Prov. 14:12). The book of Numbers is a picture of this experience in the life of a believer.

The New Testament counterpart of the book of Numbers is Romans chapter 7, which depicts the unhappy, defeated Christian who is his own worst enemy and who finds himself being disciplined by God because God, the loving Father, loves him and wants the best for him. The Christian in Romans 7 is experiencing what is often called "tough love--a painful form of love that is designed to produce character growth and maturity. That is also the kind of love portrayed in the book of Numbers.

Numbers is a picture of people who have come out of Egypt but who have not yet reached Canaan. They had the faith, to follow God out of bondage and slavery, but they have not yet come into liberty and rest. They have not yet reached the Land of Promise. God loves them, God preserves them in their wanderings, but they are in the desert of discipline, not the haven of peace and rest.

Numbers is a book of wanderings. Until the people of Israel learn to trust their God, they must endure the desert of discipline. This tragic book is laden with relevant instruction and warning for our own lives today.

This book falls into three divisions. In the first section, the people of Israel are prepared to inherit the Promised Land, the land of Canaan. In the middle section, the people fail, sin, and are judged; the judgment of God is that this generation must wander in the wilderness and cannot inherit the Promised Land. In the final section, a new generation is prepared to move into and possess the Promised Land. The book can be outlined as follows:

Preparing the People to Inherit the Promised Land (Numbers 1-10)

1. The census (numbering) of the people 1

2. The arrangement of the encampment 2

3 The ministry of the priests (the Levites) 3-4

4. The sanctification of Israel (through

separation, vows, worship, and divine

guidance) 5-10

The Failure of Israel to Inherit the Promised Land (Numbers 11-25)

5. The complaints of the people 11:1-9

6. The complaints of Moses 11:10-15

7. God provides for Moses and the people 11:16-32

8. God chastens the people (plagues) 11:33-35

9. The failure of Moses and Aaron 12

10. The failure and judgment of Israel at

Kadesh-barnea 13-14

11. Israel wanders in the wilderness 15-19

A. The offerings 15

B. The rebellion of Korah 16

C. The role of the Levites 17-19

12. The sin of Israel, the failure of Moses 20:1-13

13. Israel at war 20:14-22:35

14. The oracles of Balaam, the false prophet 23-24

15. Israel sins with the Moabites 25

A New Generation Prepares to Inherit the Promised Land (Numbers 26-36)

16. The reorganization and renumbering

of Israel 26

17. The appointment of a new leader', Joshua 27

18. The reinstitution of offerings and vows 28-30

19. Military and spiritual preparations for the

conquest of Canaan 31-36

The first section of Numbers, chapters 1 through 9, is a picture of I God's provision for guidance and warfare. These are the two critical needs of Israel in their march from Mount Sinai, where the Law was given to the northern wilderness of Paran, at the very edge of the Promised Land, the land of Canaan. On the way they would need guidance because this was a trackless wilderness. Moreover, they would need protection, for the wilderness was occupied by hostile tribes who opposed them every time they turned around.

Is this a familiar picture? We need guidance to wend our way among the subtle dangers, temptations, and evils of this world. We all need protection from the enemies who surround us, who would defeat us if they could.

This section describes the arrangement of the encampment, including the position of the tabernacle with the tribes on every side, and a numbering of the armed men of Israel. These are pictures for us of the need for defense against the enemies of God. God provides all the strategy and resources necessary to meet every enemy that comes our way. He had ordered the arrangement of the encampment (the tabernacle surrounded by the tribes), and He so provided the cloud over the camp by day and the pillar of fire by night.

These three elements--the tabernacle, the cloud, and the pillar of fire--picture for us the great truth of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We have God in our midst. He is able to direct and to lead us through the wilderness of the world by the guidance of the Word. We are led by the cloud and the fire, just as Israel was led, and we are to be obedient to that leading. This is all the potential we need to get us from the place of the law (the knowledge of the holiness of God) to a resting place in the Spirit, which the land of Canaan represents. We have everything we need, just as the people of Israel had all they needed.

But in chapters 11 through 21, something goes tragically wrong! This tragedy occupies the great central section of Numbers. Here is a description of rebellion and willful disobedience against God. Notice how this rebellion starts: with murmuring and complaining. Whenever you find yourself beginning to complain against your circumstances, consider this: You are on the threshold of rebellion, because rebellion always begins there.

Three levels of complaining mark this part of the wilderness journey:

First, the people complained against their circumstances. God had given them manna and quail meat to eat and water to drink, but they complained about the manna and the lack of water. They complained about the meat. They complained about the wilderness itself. Nothing was right, not even God's miraculous provision for their needs.

What do you think manna symbolizes for us today? It typifies the Holy Spirit! The manna tasted like a thin wafer of oil and honey mixture. Oil and honey are both symbols of the Holy Spirit. They were to eat this substance, and it would be enough to sustain the people. It was not enough to satisfy them, because God never intended for them to live so long the wilderness. He intended for them to move on into the land of Canaan and begin to eat the abundant food there.

But the people got tired of manna. After all, who wouldn't have gotten tired of forty years of oil-and-honey wafers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Every day, nothing but manna, manna, manna! First, the people complained; finally, the people rebelled.

Whose fault was it that they rebelled? Not God's! His plan was for the people to possess a land of abundance and endless variety. The people chose to turn their backs on satisfaction and to wander in a dry wilderness with nothing but manna to eat.

When the people complained about a lack of meat, God gave them meat for a month until they were tired of meat. So the people complained that there was too much meat! On and on it went. God provided, the people complained; God provided more, the people complained more. In their murmuring, the one subject the people kept coming back to Egypt--the land of bondage!

Here is a symbolic picture of a degenerating Christian experience. All the Israelites could think of was the meat, melons, cucumbers, leeks, onions, and garlic of Egypt. Talk about a selective memory! Didn't they remember the backbreaking toil, the slavemaster's lash, the chains of slavery? And what about the land to which God was calling them? They had no thought of Canaan because they had no knowledge of it. They had heard about Canaan, but they had no experience of it.

This murmuring against their circumstances brought about God's judgment. That judgment came in three forms: fire, plague, and poisonous serpents. This is a picture of the inevitable result of whining, complaining, and murmuring as a Christian. When we complain about where God has put us and the kind of people He has surrounded us with and the kind of food we have to eat and all of our other circumstances, we soon discover:

· the fire of gossip, scandal, and slander;

· the plague of anxiety and nervous tension; and

· the poison of envy and jealousy.

Not only did the Israelites murmur against their circumstances, but they continually murmured against the blessing of God. Imagine! They came at last to the edge of the land of Canaan, standing on the very borderline at Kadesh-barnea, and there God said to them, "Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites" (Num. 13:2).

The Israelites had sent out spies and had learned that it was a land flowing with milk and honey. The spies had brought back grapes so large that they had to carry them on a stick between the shoulders of two men!

But they also learned that it was a land full of giants, and because of the giants they were afraid to go forward. They thought the giants were greater than God, so they refused to go on into the blessing He wanted to pour out upon them. God’s loving will for their lives, God's inevitable judgment required.

So God judged them. They were sentenced to wander in the wilderness for forty years. Because they had refused to move forward and possess them to experience the full results of a failure. Only then could they progress in God's program.

Many Christians jive the same way, languishing in a miserable, howling wilderness, living on a minimum supply of the Holy Spirit--just enough to keep them going, and that's all. They spend their lives complaining about their circumstances yet still are unwilling to move into the land that God has fully provided for them. You can be sustained in the wilderness, but you will never be satisfied there. That is why the wilderness experience is always marked by a complaining heart and an unending criticism of something or someone.

For Israel, the wilderness experience would not end until a new generation was ready to enter the land. God said to them, "In this desert your bodies will fall--every one of you twenty years old more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. Not one of you will enter the land . . . except Caleb . . . and Joshua" (Num. 14:29-30). These two men were the only members of the older generation who had demonstrated the faith and trust to move forward and possess the Land of Promise.

There is a powerful lesson here for our own Christian lives. Often, we find that it is not until we come no the end of ourselves, until it becomes clear that we must make a new beginning in our lives, that we are able to allow the Spirit to take over and lead us into our own Land of Promise. This is why so many Christians never seem to find victory until they have a crisis experience followed by a new beginning. God says, "Trust Me," but we resist and resist, so God has to knock all the props our from under us until we have nothing left to cling to but Him. Finally we cry out, "God, I have nothing left but you! You're my only hope!" Then He can say, "Fine. Now you are ready to trust Me. Now I can lead you where I have always wanted to lead you. Now I can bless you as I have always longed to bless you."

One of the distinguishing features of Israel's wilderness experience is death. The people wandered in a land of death. Did you ever consider how many Israelites died in those forty years in the wilderness? This book begins with a census of Israel, and it totals 603,000 men--men who were able to go our to warfare, who were at least twenty years old.

Most of them were married, so there must have been a comparable number of women, plus many children, in the camp. Many scholars have estimated the total population at that time to have been well over a million people.

So in the wilderness, during those forty years, roughly 1.2 million people died. That's an average of eighty deaths per day! The journey in the wilderness was a long, sad funeral march--forty solid years of grief and loss. The wilderness was one huge graveyard. No wonder they had to move so often! This is an Old Testament picture of what Romans warns against: "The mind of sinful man is death" (Rom. 8:6).

The soundtrack of Numbers is the endless babble of murmuring and complaining. First was the murmuring against circumstances. Then the people murmured against God's provision for them. Finally, they murmured against the divinely appointed leadership of Israel, Moses, and Aaron. They complained, "You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD's assembly?" (Num. 16:3). They judged themselves by their own standards and rebelled against the properly constituted authority in their midst.

This is another characteristic of defeated Christians! They always think they are holy enough, that they are as holy as they need to be, else who seems to exercise spiritual or moral authority. They resist any suggestion that they ought to be more than they are. That is what these people did.

God met this attitude with the severest judgment of all. The situation climaxes with the open rebellion of two Israelite priests, Korah and Abiram. These men brought division to the nation of Israel (much as rebellious people continue to divide churches today). When they openly challenged the authority of Moses and Aaron, God said to Moses and Aaron, "Separate yourselves from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once." …”Say to the assembly, 'Move away from the tents of Korah, and Abiram' " (Num. 16:21, 24).

Then God led Moses to say to Israel, "If these men die a natural death and experience only what usually happens to men, then the LORD has not sent me. But if the LORD brings about something totally new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the grave, then you will know' that these men have treated the LORD with contempt" (Num. 16:29-30). And as he said the words, the ground opened up beneath Korah and Abiram and all their families, and they went down alive into the pit. Thus, God established His authority through Moses by this remarkable judgment. When we rebel against authority, God judges with the utmost severity.

After this judgment, we see an amazing demonstration of the mulish obstinacy of human nature. Murmuring and criticizing is so much a part of who we are as human beings that even after seeing the ground open up and swallow a group of rebels the people continued to complain! The complaining died down only when two things occurred.

First, following the death of Korah and Abiram, the leaders of the twelve tribes took rods and laid them down before the Lord. One of those rods belonged to Aaron. The next morning, they found that Aaron's rod had grown branches, the branches had blossomed, the blossoms had grown fruit, and almonds hung from the branches. All of this had taken place overnight! Of the twelve rods, only Aaron's blossomed. This is a picture of the resurrection life. God was saying to Israel that the only ones who have the right to bear authority are those who walk in the fullness and power of resurrection life.

Second, when the people murmured about the food, God sent poisonous serpents among them. The people would die without a savior. So Moses cured the effects of the poison by lifting up a brass serpent on a pole. As God directed, all who looked at the serpent were healed. By this symbol, God says to Israel and to us, "The only cure for sin, including the sin of believers, is to gaze again at the cross." In John 3, the Lord Jesus makes reference to this incident and pointed to its symbolic significance in our lives: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life" (John 3:14-15). The cross utterly repudiates all human endeavor and human worthiness, we are powerless to save ourselves, and we can be saved only on the basis of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 26 begins the third and last movement of the book. It records the second census taken of the men of war and their families. God gave specific instructions to Moses concerning the division of the land when they came into Canaan.

An interesting incident is related concerning the five daughters of Zelophehad. Left fatherless, they would not have been permitted to receive a share of the real estate when Israel moved into Canaan, according to Middle Eastern cultural norms. Yet these women petitioned and were granted an inheritance in the Land of Promise (27:1-11). In a symbolic way, this incident established the principle that in Christ there is neither male nor female, and it paves the way for the equal and fair treatment of women.

Next, God informed Moses that the time had come for him to die. At Moses' request, God appoints Joshua, the son of Nun, to be his successor (27:18-19). Joshua would not inherit the full authority that Moses exercised, but he would discover the divine will through a high priest.

Following this, God repeated the various offerings and sacrifices to be given at Israel's great feast days, already outlined in the book of Leviticus. Certain exceptions were then made to the general rule concerning vows.

The concluding chapters of the book, from chapter 31 through 36, describe an account of a holy war led by Phinehas the priest against the Midianites during which Balaam, the false prophet, is also slain. Here also the two tribes of Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh unwisely insist on settling on the east side of the Jordan rather than in the proper regions of the Land of Promise. They were permitted to do so only by agreeing to join their brethren in subduing their Canaanite enemies.

After reviewing the route taken by Israel from Egypt to the Jordan and giving directions for the division of the land when the tribes entered it. Moses then assigned certain cities as residences for the Levites, six of which are especially designated as cities of refuge (35:10-15). These cities were for people who had accidentally committed murder, and needed safe places to flee from avengers until their trials could be held. Historically, the book of Numbers closes where the last chapter of Deuteronomy begins, giving us the account of the death of Moses. Numbers is the record of the failure of the people in their perpetual stubbornness and foolishness, yet it is also the story of the unwearying patience and continual faithfulness of God. Thus it encourages those of us who have often failed in our own spiritual lives, and it shows us that victory is still ours if we hold fast to our trust in God. We have come to learn, as the New Testament declares, that "if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself" (2 Tim. 2:13).

Chapter Nine: Deuteronomy

The Law That Brings Deliverance

Deuteronomy is made up of three great sermons delivered by Moses shortly before his death. These were given to Israel while they waited on the east side of the Jordan in the Arabah and after they had been victorious over Sihon, the king of the Amorites, and Og, the king of Bashan. At this time the multitude of Israelites were made up of a new generation who were but children (or yet unborn) when their parents were given the Law from Mount Sinai. Here is an outline of the book of Deuteronomy:

Moses' First Sermon: A Review of What God Has Done for Israel (Deuteronomy 1-4)

1. From Mount Sinai to Kadesh-barnea 1

2. From Kadesh-barnea to Moab 2:1-23

3. The conquest of East Jordan 2:24-3:20

4. Summary: The covenant 3:21-4:43

Moses' Second Sermon: A Review of the Law of God (Deuteronomy 4-26)

5. Introduction to the Law 4:44-49

6. Exposition of the Ten Commandments 5-11

7. Exposition of the ceremonial, civil, social,

and criminal laws 12-26

Moses' Third Sermon: A Review of the Covenant of God (Deuteronomy 27-34)

8. The ratification of the covenant 27-30

9. Leadership transition 31-34

A. Moses charges Joshua and Israel 31

B. The song of Moses 32:1-47

C. The death of Moses 32:48-34:l2

As the people were about to enter the land of Canaan it was essential that they thoroughly understand their history. So chapters 1 through 4 give us the first message of Moses, in which he reviewed rile journey from the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai until the people reached Moab, at the edge of the Jordan River.

Moses' first task was to recite to the people the wonderful love and care of God, who led them with a pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day and guided them through the trackless desert. He reminded them of how God had brought water from the rock to quench their thirst in a vast and waterless area; how He had fed them with manna that did not fail; and how He had delivered them again and again from their enemies. In chapter 1, he traced the movement of the people from the giving of the Law at Sinai (also called Mount Horeb) to the refusal of the people to enter the land at Kadesh-barnea. In chapter 2, he reviewed the second movement from Kadesh-barnea to Heshbon, around the land of Edom, and through the wilderness of Moab to their encounter with Sihon, the king of Heshbon. Throughout this passage, Moses emphasized God's continual deliverance of the people from their enemies, despite their unbelief.

Continuing his discourse, Moses reviewed the conquest of the Jordan Valley as far north as Mount Hermon and the decision of Reuben and Gad to settle on the east side of the river. In a note of pathos, he recalled his own eager desire to enter into the land with his people, but he acknowledged God's denial of this privilege. Still, he was permitted to view the land from the top of Mount Pisgah.

Moses closed the historic review, in chapter 4, with an exhortation to the people to remember the greatness of their God and to be obedient from their hearts. He warned so against the danger of idolatry, especially the making of graven images. He concluded the message by setting aside three cities of refuge on the east side of the Jordan for the protection of those who committed involuntary manslaughter.

As we survey this record of God's provision for the people of Israel, we see that God led them out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and right to the brink of Canaan. In their journey, they experienced all the same obstacles, enemies, defeats, and victories that we encounter all through the Christian life. The bondage that the Israelites experienced as slaves of Egypt is the same as the bondage to the world that we experienced before we were Christians. And the land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey, pictures a life filled with continual victory, which can be ours in Christ.

All this is God's way of picturing for us what is happening in our lives.

If you read your Old Testament with this key in hand, it becomes a luminous and very practical book. Every story in it has a direct relationship to your daily life and teaches marvelous lessons. In my own experience I could not understand the mighty truths declared in the New Testament until I saw them demonstrated in the Old Testament. As these stories come to life for its and we see how they apply to our own experiences then the New Testament truths that are so familiar to our ears become vibrant, brand-new experiences. Suddenly the world of spiritual truth becomes a world of excitement and adventure!

The second message of Moses covers chapters 5 through 26. This begins with a fresh recital of the Ten Commandments as God gave them to Moses on Mount Sinai. Deuteronomy means "the second [giving of] law." This has more significance than merely being the historical account of the Law's recital for a second time, as we shall see before we finish the book. Deuteronomy is not simply a recital of the journeys of Israel but a divine commentary on the importance of those journeys.

Moses reminded the people that they had promised to hear and to do all that God said. To this God had responded, "Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!" (Deut. 5:29). Moses then proceeded to give them the famous Shema, or "Hear, O Israel," which devout Jews still recite to summarize the central feature of their faith--the uniqueness of their God. He admonished them to observe these words and to teach them diligently to their children at every opportunity. This is a great lesson on child rearing: to make the most of teachable moments, using at-hand situations to reinforce family values and beliefs.

Moses then began to review the conditions that they would find in the land and the blessings that would await them there. He especially warned them to beware of three perils: the peril of prosperity, the peril of adversity, and the peril of neglecting to teach their children.

In chapter 7, Moses dealt with the danger that Israel would face in confronting the corrupt nations already in the land. Moses commanded the Israelites to show no mercy to the inhabitants of Canaan but to thoroughly eliminate them so that no vestige of their idolatries and depraved worship should remain to turn the Israelites aside from their worship of Jehovah. Moses reminded the Israelites that they were chosen because the Lord had set His love upon them and that He would be their strength in subjugating nearby nations. Their own prosperity and good health would depend on the faithfulness by which they carried out these instructions.

Chapter 8 reminded the people of lessons that God had taught them in the wilderness; how they had been humbled and fed with the manna, so that they might know that "man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD" (8:3). These were familiar words to Jesus, who used them to good effect against the tempter in the Judean wilderness centuries later (see Matt. 4:4).

When the people had entered the land and were feasting upon its riches, they were to beware lest they begin to feel self-sufficient and to take credit for all that God had given them. They should not think that their own righteousness caused God to bring them in but remember their persistent stubbornness and their history of continually provoking the Lord to wrath.

Moses then recalled the awesome scene at Sinai, when, in the very face of the demonstration of God's power and might, the people sinned by making the golden calf--this, while Moses was interceding for them for forty days and nights. At that time Moses also received the second tablets of stone and later placed them in the ark of the covenant where they remained.

In a passage of great beauty and power, Moses reminded the people that God was not asking of them anything but to love Him and to serve Him wholeheartedly, keeping His commandments and statues for their own benefit. The central emphasis was that "the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome” (Deut. 10:17). Yet His actions toward them were of infinite tenderness and love. As they entered the land, therefore, they were promised rain from heaven to water the earth, grass in the fields for their cattle, and power in their warfare to drive out great nations because the whole land was to become their possession. To remind them of God’s love and God’s discipline, they were instructed to annually recite the blessings on Mount Getizim and the cursings on Mount Ebal, which faced the site of Jacob's well.

Chapters 12 through 21constitute a series of statutes and ordinances that were given to the people for their government within the land. They were charged with destroying all the places of worship of the nations then in the land, tearing down their altars and burning their Asherim (phallic symbols). These were clear indications of the foulness of the worship in the land at the time.

God would then indicate, in due season, one place within the land where they were to bring their burnt offerings and sacrifices and there they were to rejoice before the Lord. This was not fulfilled until the days of David and Solomon when the temple was built, though a temporary provision was made when the ark was located at Shiloh.

Further instructions were given regarding the foods they could eat, always avoiding the blood. They were then told how to tell false prophets from true. Even though the false prophet may be a wonder-worker, if he should suggest that they go after other gods, the people were to stone him. Even if close friends or relatives should seek to entice them to idolatry, they likewise were to he put to death. Even if a whole city should apostatize and begin to serve other gods, the inhabitants of that city were to be put to the sword, for "you are the children of the LORD your God" (Deut. 14:1).

The dietary laws were restated, as was the tithing that was required for the support of the Levites. The sabbatical years were reiterated as the solution to inequities in economic life and periodic readjustment of the means of wealth. The great feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Tabernacles were once again required.

Provision was then made for the functioning of judges to decide cases where the law had not specifically spoken, also for the choosing of a king, who could not be a foreigner nor multiply horses nor silver and gold but must carefully walk by the statutes of the Law and keep his heart humble before the Lord his God.

In chapter 18, the great promise was given that "the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him” (18:15). In some measure this great prophecy was fulfilled by all the true prophets who would rise later in Israel, but in its ultimate fulfillment the promise looks forward to the coming of Jesus and His Moses-like actions of beholding the face of God and uttering His word to all the people. Jesus perfectly fulfills the Old Testament ideal of priest, prophet, and king.

Again, three cities of refuge were chosen, this time on the west side of the Jordan. Those who were guilty of deliberate murder could find no sanctuary in these cities, but those who killed accidentally were to flee to them to escape the avenger of blood. Ancient landmarks could not be removed, and truth between one person and another had to be maintained at all costs.

We must remember that the Israelites were being sent into the land not only to gain it for their own possession, but also to act as the instrument of God in exterminating a foul and corrupt people. In view of the warfare this involved, they were charged to keep before them the vision of their God and His power and to eliminate from their armies any whose hearts were occupied with other matters or who were fainthearted and fearful. Terms of peace were to be offered to every city they attacked, and if they were accepted, the inhabitants were not killed but were put to forced labor. If the terms of peace were refused, the city was to be decimated.

In chapters 22 through 26, we find the various regulations for the life of the people within the land. These rules governed such matters as lost or stolen property, gender identity and transvestism, sexual purity and sanitation, usury, vows, and divorce. Provision was then made for the punishment of theft, but cruel and unusual punishment was strictly forbidden. It was likewise forbidden to muzzle an ox as it tread out the corn--a command that was given spiritual significance by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:8-10. The law of the kinsman-redeemer for those left without an heir was again enunciated, and all weights and measures were ordered to be honestly observed.

The second message concluded with Moses' instructions about the way the people were to worship in the new land. They were to bring the firstfruits and offer them to God, with acknowledgments of His provision and grace, and this was to he followed with gifts given to Levites, to strangers, to the fatherless, and to widows. At the conclusion of this second message, Moses gave detailed instructions regarding the impressive ceremony that was to be carried out upon the twin mountains of Gerizim and Ebal. The Ten Commandments were to be given permanent display by being written upon plaster-covered stone monuments, and each year the sons of Rachel and Leah were to recite the blessings upon Mount Gerizim, and the sons of Jacob's concubines were to recite the curses upon Mount Ebal. The curses are detailed in chapter 27 and the blessings summarized in the opening words of chapter 28.

The third message of Moses, chapters 27 through 31, is a great revelation of Israel future both in terms of potential blessing and potential cursing. Chapter 28 is one of the most amazing prophecies ever recorded. It is as complete and remarkable in its detail as any other prophecy in all of Scripture because it predicts the entire history of the Jewish people even to the time when they ceased to be a nation and were scattered over the face of the earth.

First was the prediction of the Babylonian dispersion, subsequent to the unbelief and disobedience of the people. This occurred eventually under Nebuchadnezzar. Then followed a prediction of their ultimate return to the land and that after several centuries they would again fall into the terrible sin of rejecting the great Prophet whom God would send. A strange nation would come in from the west (the Romans) who would be a hard and cruel people. They would burn the cities of Israel, destroy the inhabitants, and once again disperse them to the ends of the earth.

Israel would then wander for many centuries as a people without a land, but God would at last gather them again for a final restoration. Upon concluding his great prophecy, Moses reminded the people that they stood before the Lord their God, and though they did not completely understand divine government, the things that had been revealed to them about the past were given so that they could walk faithfully before their God in the future. In graphic and vivid terms, he described to them what would result if they turned from the living God to the gods of other nations.

In his closing word, Moses seemed to look into the future to see the people dispersed in lands of captivity. He reminded them that if they would wholeheartedly return to the Lord, God would forgive their sin, restore their fortunes, and gather them again into the land.

Then Moses uttered the great words that the apostle Paul quoted centuries later in his epistle to the Romans and that reveal the reason why Deuteronomy is called "the second law." Moses said to the people "What I am I commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach" (Deut. 30:11). This speaks of the divine provision by which the demands of the Law might be fully met. "It is not," Moses continued, "up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it'…beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, 'Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?' " (see Deut. 30:12-13); instead, as Moses put it very plainly, "The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it" (see Deut. 30:14).

In Romans 10:5 Paul wrote that "Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: 'The man who does these things will live by them.' " Here he quoted the words of Moses concerning the Law given at Sinai and taken from the book of Exodus. Then, in Romans 10:6-9, Paul quoted this very passage from Deuteronomy 30, indicating that it refers to Christ: "The righteousness that is by faith says: 'Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?" (that is, to bring Christ down) 'or "Who will descend into the deep?" '(that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? 'The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,' that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom. 10:6-9).

In this quotation from Deuteronomy 30, Paul declared that it is not necessary to bring Christ down from heaven (the Incarnation) or to bring Him up again from the dead (the Resurrection), for this has already been done. It is only necessary that the heart believe and the lips confess that Jesus is Lord and risen from the dead. Thus the second law, which Paul calls "the law of the Spirit of life [in Christ Jesus],” fulfills, by another principle, the righteousness that the Law demands. It is possible, because of this emphasis in Deuteronomy, that the book became Jesus' favorite.

Moses clearly taught these principles to the people of Israel. He constantly reiterated the just demands of God that are expressed in the Ten Commandments. That is the first Law. But, equally, he reminded them again and again of the gracious provision through the sacrifices and offerings by which the life of a living Lord could be their personal possession, enabling them to live at the level that God requires. By keeping God's Word in their mouths and in their hearts, they would be able to do all that God demanded.

As a consequence, Moses concluded his great address by saying, "See, I set before you today life and prosperity; death and destruction" (Deut. 30:15). And with earnest words he pleads with them to choose life "so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD Your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land" (Deut. 30:19-20).

Finally, Moses summoned Joshua, charging him to he strong and courageous. Then God told Moses that the time had come for him to sleep with his fathers and that, in spite of his faithful warnings, the people whom he had led would not fulfill all his solemn predictions, and God would have to discipline the people as He had promised.

Moses was then commanded to write a song that would remain in the memory of the people long after Moses himself had departed. The song deals with the great themes of God's everlasting covenant with Israel, His mercies to them, their failures, the penalties of their disobedience, and the promise of final deliverance. Then Moses offered the people his last benediction, reminding them that "the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deut. 33:27).

The final chapter is undoubtedly added by another hand, perhaps the hand of Joshua, for it recounts how Moses ascended Mount Nebo, and there, with his eyes not dim, with his natural force undiminished, Moses stretched out on the ground and died. The Lord Himself buried Moses in an unknown place in the valley of Moab, and we do not Moses again in Scripture until we find him on the Mount of Transfiguration along with Elijah the prophet and Jesus the Messiah, talking together about the crucifixion that awaited Jesus at Jerusalem (see Matt. 17:1-13; Mark 9:2-13).

Though the people immediately rallied around Joshua and gave to him the obedience they had shown to Moses, they knew that they would never see anyone like Moses again--man who spoke to God face-to-face, a man whose deeds were great, terrible, and often miraculous. It was not until the Messiah Himself appeared in the New Testament that Moses' achievements and wonders would be surpassed.

Part Three: The Message of History

Chapter Ten: Joshua through Esther

The Message of History

Our adventure through the Bible now brings us to the historical books of the Old Testament, Joshua through Esther. We have seen that the great purpose of God's Word and of the Holy Spirit in whose power we understand it is to bring us to maturity in Jesus Christ and to truly reflect His image and His character. God seeks to bring us to maturity in Jesus Christ so that we are no longer children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. He wants us to be able to walk straight and confidently down the path of truth with our heads held high as steadfast followers of God. Through His Word, we are able to discover where we have come from, where we are going, and why we are here.

Each division of the Old Testament makes a unique contribution to out maturity as believers. The Pentateuch lays the foundation for our faith and maturity, telling us who we are: God's image-bearers but fallen, broken by sin, and in need of a Savior. We have explored the foundational truths of the Pentateuch: human helplessness and need, God's answer to that need through His provision of a pattern of worship, the example of Israel's failure and wandering in the wilderness, the encouragement of God's gracious and undeserved provision for Israel, and the second giving of the Law in Deuteronomy that restores and prepares believers to enter the Land of Promise, the place of victory.

Now we are ready to dig into the rich history presented to us in the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, l and 2 Samuel 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. We will see how these books contribute to the preparatory work of the Old Testament. If the Pentateuch gives us the pattern of God's working, then the historical books give us the perils that confront us when we try to walk in the life of faith. After all, this is what history is for: to serve as a warning to subsequent generations, "Those who do not learn from history " the saying goes, "are doomed to repeat it." The history of Israel includes much that we would be wise not to repeat!

Some say that history is "His story," meaning Christ's story. But that is true only in a secondary sense. Christ is in history; however He is behind the scenes. That is why I love those words of James Russell Lowell:

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne,

But God is standing in the shadows,
Keeping watch above His own.

That is the relationship of God to history. He is behind the scenes.

History is primarily the story of humanity's cycle of failure, the rise and fall of one empire after another, one civilization after another. Great historians, such as Arnold Toynbee, remind as that human history is one cycle of failure after another.

In these historical books of the Bible, we find all of the same lessons that secular history teaches, but they are more condensed more personal and we have the added bonus of God's perspective to help us understand them. These books trace the history of one nation, a peculiar nation, a nation with a special ministry. In a symbolic way, these books picture for us the perils, pressures and problems that confront every Christian believer.

Every Christian is engaged in warfare. One of the first rules of warfare is: Know your enemies. Know who they are. Know where they are coming from. Know their style of attack. Know how they are armed. Know how they are defended. This is true in human warfare, and it is true in spiritual warfare.

No one would be foolish enough to send a submarine against an army entrenched in the mountains. Likewise, Christians cannot rely on randomly chosen spiritual weapons or tactics against the powers of darkness.

We must know out enemies. These historical books illuminate our enemies. They show us the perils that beset the life of faith, and they show us how to gain the victory over these perils!

The first of the historical books is Joshua. It begins with a story of victory--Israel’s entry into the Land of Promise, the place where God had wanted them to go when He brought them out of Egypt. The Christian life is not only a matter of being called out of a wilderness, it is also a matter of entering into an inheritance, the Land of Promise.

The problem is that many of us are quite content to be brought out of Egypt--the world and its ways of bondage--but we never quite get around to entering into the Promised Land. We have faith enough to leave Egypt, but somewhere during our journey through the wilderness, we falter. We fail to lay hold of the faith that takes over the Jordan and into the Land of Promise. But in the book of Joshua, we see God's pattern for victory. We see Israel entering into the land. We see Israel's errors and its triumphs. This book traces for us the experience of conquest.

What was the first enemy facing the Israelites as they came across the Jordan River? The imposing city of Jericho, with its tremendous walls--a super fortress of a city. It might have been the first city that this generation of desert nomads had ever encountered. As they looked at it, they saw their own feebleness and the uselessness of their weapons. How can we prevail over a walled city like this? they wondered.

Have you ever felt like that? Has anything in your life seemed to you to be an insuperable obstacle? An opponent who always mocked you and baffled you and defeated you? A fortress of arrogant invincibility you feel powerless to overcome? Well, that is your Jericho. The story of the siege of Jericho is symbolic of the world in its assault on the Christian and of Jesus Christ's enabling victory over the world.

The Jericho story is followed immediately by the story of Ai, an insignificant little town, a wide spot in the road that should have been an easy victory for Joshua and his army. Yet Ai handily defeated Israel, sending Joshua's army running. Why? Because sin was in the Israelite camp, and that sin was Israel's Achilles' heel. Until the sin was dealt with, Israel could not defeat Ai.

The story of Ai is symbolic of fleshly sin--its subtlety, its seeming insignificance. We think we can control our tempers and our lusts and our evil thoughts if we simply decide to. But we discover it isn't that easy--and failure to conquer the lusts of the flesh can produce tragic, disastrous defeat.

If you cannot find the perils of your life in the book of Joshua, something is seriously wrong. They are all there. But the theme of the book is set forth for us in chapter 13, verse 1: "When Joshua was old and well advanced in years, the LORD said to him, 'You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.' " The peril that Joshua faced is one we all face from time to time: the temptation to stop short of complete victory.

Christ's indwelling empowers any believer to experience victory over Satan, and when we experience that victory, it is a glorious and marvelous experience. But somewhere along the line, too many of us back off, settle down, and stop short. We say, "Why go on any further? I know that I have not yet conquered all aspects of sinfulness in the name of Christ, but I have conquered so much. Lord, let me just rest awhile. No more challenges, no more battles, just for a while." Have you experienced this? It is always the first attack of the enemy in times of victory and conquest.

But Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matt. 5:6). This hunger and thirst must mark our lives. We are never to get over it. Until the war is over and God calls us to a place of rest in the long-awaited Land of Promise, we are on the march, we are on a war footing. We must see the battle through to its conclusion or the battle will be lost.

At the close of the book, Joshua urged the people not to slack off for they still had a great deal of land yet to possess. He warned them of an attitude of compromise and exhorted them to "choose for yourself this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD" (Josh. 24:15). There was never a letdown in Joshua’s life, never a willingness to stop the march. He was on the march until the day he died.

In each of the historical books of the Old Testament, we find a unique peril such as the peril Joshua faced, the peril of stopping short before the mission was completed. But in each of these historical books we also find at least one person who gained the victory over that peril, one human being who serves as an example and an encouragement to us. In the book of Joshua, that example is Joshua himself.

Next we come to the books of Judges and Ruth. We will take them together, because the events of Ruth are contemporary with the last part of Judges. While the book of Joshua covers a period of only twenty-five years, Judges covers a period of about three hundred years. The book of Judges is the story of a continually repeated historical cycle: decline, discipline, and then deliverance. Over and over again, God sent judges to the people of Israel to deliver them from recurring bouts with persecution and bondage.

Judges begins with the story of Othniel, the first judge sent to Israel by God. It ends with the familiar story of Samson, the last judge. Altogether, God used seven judges to deliver the people. In each case, just as God's judge put His people back on their feet, they began to fall again!

Why did the people repeatedly fail? What is the spiritual peril warned about in the book of Judges? We find it stated in Judges 2:11-13:

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

Idolatry! Why? How did they get into this mess so quickly after the tremendous victories of Joshua? How do people suddenly fall from the height of a victorious experience into moral degradation? You find the key to the book in the very last verse, which is also the key to victory or failure in our own lives:

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit (Judges 21:25).

Judges warns us against what we might call the peril of well-intentioned blundering. It wasn't that these people did not want to do right. They were simply deluded. Judges doesn't say they did wrong; it says they did what was right in their own eyes. But their eyes didn't see clearly. They didn't truly know what was right. This is the terrible peril of dedicated ignorance.

This peril still cripples God's people. Many Christians are weak and defeated because they are suffering from dedicated ignorance. Their dedication is intact. They mean well. I have listened to people, young and old, who recount terrible stories of agony and despair. They say, I don't know what happened. I started out intending to do right. I thought I was. But something went terribly wrong." They didn't expose themselves to God's truth but went about doing what was right in their own eyes. Inevitably, the result of doing what is right in out own eyes, whether in Old Testament times or in our own day, is a repetitious cycle of failure.

The last chapters of Judges tell of one of the darkest, most terrible times of sexual depravity in Israel's history. Yet it is during this same time frame that the events of the book of Ruth take place--a shining and wonderful little story of faith and faithfulness in the midst of defeat. It is the story of heathen woman named Ruth who hears the voice of God and leaves friends, home, and family to be with her beloved, believing mother-in-law, Naomi.

This story also features the added attraction of a beautiful story in which this young widow, Ruth, meets a rich bachelor with whom she finds true, married love. It is important to note as well that by marrying this young man, Boaz, she joins herself to the line of Christ and becomes one of the historic links God uses to bring His Son, the Messiah, into the world. Ruth is listed in the genealogy of Christ in the book of Matthew:

Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,

Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth… (Matt. 1:5).

The story of Ruth not only tugs at the heartstrings, but is all integral component of the larger story of Jesus Christ and God's plan of human redemption. It is not only one of the Bible's most delightful stories, but it is also historically and spiritually profound.

First Samuel is largely the story of two men: Samuel and Saul. In the latter part of the book the early history of David is woven into the story of King Saul. Samuel was the greatest judge Israel ever had. His, ministry lasted some forty years. During this time the people were still hungering after something other than God. The great peril of faith set forth in this book is given to us in chapter 8, verse 5. One day the people of Israel came to Samuel and said:

"You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have."

Now, the problem is that God had called Israel to be unlike all other nations, yet the people of Israel were demanding to be just like all the nations--ruled by an authority other than God! Here we find the peril of legalistic conformity, the desire for outward rule over their lives. Instead of taking responsibility for their own lives and choices, legalists hand over their God-given freedom and liberty to external authorities and rules.

I am continually amazed at how many people don't really want the freedom that God gives us in Christ. They come to me and say, "Don't tell me I have to practice wisdom and discernment in the Christian life. It's too hard to evaluate circumstances and make choices. Just give me a rule. That's what I want. If I just had a rule, then I could satisfy God and I wouldn't have to worry about exercising judgment and making decisions." That is the story of Israel during Samuel's time.

So God allowed the people to make to choose a king who would make their decisions for them, and the people chose Saul. The story of Saul is one of the great tragedies of the Bible. He was a man of great promise, a handsome man with great abilities. But the lesson of this man's life is the peril of seeking human favor.

The defeat of Saul came about as a result of his expedition against the Amalekites. God told him to kill all the Amalekites, but he refused and saved King Agag. Why did he do it? Because he felt this would find him favor in the eyes of the people! So the awful tragedy of Saul's life was the peril of a divided allegiance. He was quite content to serve God as long as it pleased those around him. The secret failure in this man's life was his continual hungering for the affection and honor and favor of other people.

Have you ever discovered this in your life? It is a peril that will ultimately defeat you and bring the same tragic end that Saul finally came to: his kingdom was removed from him, his crown was snatched from his head, and he lost everything except his relationship with God. But in the midst of this grim story, the light of God broke through in the story of Saul's son Jonathan, and David--that marvelous story of the greatest friendship in history.

Then comes 2 Samuel, which links chronologically with the next book, 1 Chronicles, though they are written from quite different viewpoints. These two books center on the story of one man: David, the king after God's own heart.

Whatever David's flaws, we may correctly view him as a symbolic picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, for Jesus Himself used this analogy. David was not only the forerunner and ancestor of Jesus according to the flesh, but in his reign he is a picture of the reign of Christ during the millennium. David experienced a long period of rejection, persecution, and harassment, but during that time of exile he gathered men around him who later became his commanders and officers. Thus, David signifies Christ in His rejection--forsaken by the world but gathering in secret those who will be His commanders and leaders when He comes to reign in power and glory over the earth.

David is also a symbol of each believer. The story of David portrays what happens in a Christian's life as he or she follows God into the place of dominion. Every Christian is offered a kingdom, just as David was offered a kingdom. That kingdom is the believer's own life and it is exactly like the kingdom of Israel. Enemies threaten it from the outside and enemies threaten it from within, just as there were enemy nations beyond and within the boundaries of Israel. The enemies from without represent the direct attacks of the devil upon us. The enemies within represent those internal enemies of the flesh that threaten to overthrow God's influence in our lives. While David contended with the Ammonites, Jebusites, Perrizites, and other Old Testament enemies, we contend with jealousy, envy, lust, bitterness, resentment, worry, anxiety, and the like. In many ways, these two different forms of enemies operate and attack in the very same ways.

David's story is the most wonderful story in the entire Old Testament, yet there is also an ugly side to the story of David. He became an adulterer and a murderer. It is almost incomprehensible to think of David, God's own man, as having committed these terrible acts. How did his sin start? We find a clue in 2 Samuel 11:1, which tells us:

In the spring, at the time when kings go out to war, David sent Joab out with the king men and the whole Israelite army…But David remained in Jerusalem.

What was David's peril? I call it the peril of a forgotten calling. The result was that he indulged in the lusts of the flesh. David was the king of Israel and Judah. It was his business to be at the head of the army. That is where he belonged. But he forgot his calling. He was staying home and resting while others went into battle. While he was home enjoying himself, he went onto his rooftop and, looking over into his neighbor's yard, saw a beautiful woman taking a bath. The sight did to him what such a sight does to any normal male: He was filled with lust. He indulged his passion and took her, and then, to cover up his in, he murdered her husband.

The gleam of grace in this story is David's repentance. That is why, despite David's fall, he still can be called a man after God's own heart. The moment he was confronted with his sin, he admitted it and repented, and he accepted God's grace. David offers a wonderful picture of a contrite heart, down on his face before God, crying out his sorrow and repentance over his sin. Out of this experience came Psalm 52, the psalm of a truly repentant heart.

We may link 2 Chronicles with 1 and 2 Kings because they cover the same general historical period. These books focus on the stories of two men, Solomon and Jeroboam. Solomon, of course, was the king of Israel who was so renowned for his wisdom and who wrote some of the most beautiful wisdom books of the Old Testament Jeroboam was the rival to Solomon's son Rehoboam; Jeroboam became king of the northern kingdom, Israel. These books relate the division of the kingdom between Judah and Israel.

The story of Solomon is fascinating--he stepped into his inheritance being crowned king of Israel even before his father David's death! He came into the kingdom at the height of its glory, and God gave him riches and power. At the beginning of his reign, while still young man, Solomon chose a heart of wisdom rather than wealth. Along with his wisdom, God gave him power, magnificence, and riches in abundance. But Solomon's misappropriation of these was the seed of his downfall.

In 1 Kings 3:1-3, you find the beginning of the story of the peril that brought him to failure and defeat:

Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he finished building, his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. The people however, were still sacrificing at the high places [pagan religious sites], because a temple had not yet been built for the name of the Lord. Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the statutes of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense in the high places.

And as we trace the account, we find that Solomon was seven years in building the temple. But then in 1 Kings 7:1 we read, "It took Solomon thirteen years, however, to complete the construction of his palace." Doesn't that strike you as strange? Seven years building the temple, but thirteen years lavishing magnificence upon his own house! You can see the beginning of the self-centered life and the peril of a love of things. The downfall of Solomon was the peril of material magnificence, a heart wooed away from the Lord by a love of things.

The rest of the book is the story of Jeroboam, the rebellion he fomented, and the beginning of the kingdom of Israel. The peril set forth in Jeroboam's life is the peril of a substitute faith--religious deceit. In 1 Kings 12:26-28, we read:

Jeroboam thought to himself "The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam."

After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."

I once spoke on the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, and the glory of the babe in Bethlehem who was God Himself, manifest in the flesh. At the close of the meeting, a woman charged up to the podium and said to me, "Did I understand you to say that the baby of Bethlehem was God?”

"Exactly so," I replied,

"Oh," she said, "I can't believe anything like that! God is everywhere. God is vast and infinite He fills the universe. How could He be a baby in Bethlehem?"

"That's the glory of the mystery, that God was manifest in the flesh," I said. "You know, there was a time when one of His own disciples took the Lord Jesus by the feet and said to Him, 'My lord and God.' Now, do you know more about Him than His disciples did?"

She said, "I was raised in a faith which taught that God is in all the universe, and I simply can't accept this idea."

"What you were taught," I said, "is not what the Bible very clearly teaches. You have been taught a false faith."

Not wanting to hear any more, she turned on her heels and walked away.

This is the peril that deludes and destroys the faith of so many people today. There are many sects, cults, and "isms" that claim to be "Christian," but they teach a substitute faith, a "faith" that opposes the clear teaching of the Bible. That is the kind of deadly, deceitful faith that Jeroboam brought into the nation of Israel. Yet, even in the midst of the spiritual darkness of those days, God's grace came shining forth in the form of a holy and untainted man: Elijah the prophet.

In 2 Kings and the latter part of 2 Chronicles (which are also chronologically linked), we have one rapid-fire story after another chronicling the downfall of one king after another. Many of these kings are murdered by power-hungry rivals. The story of this period in Israel's history (that is, the ten tribes that constituted the northern kingdom) is a story of moral abandonment and abdication.

The irony and the peril of this period in Israel's history is the same dangerous irony and peril we face at the end of the twentieth century: In the mad pursuit of so-called freedom--that is, the total rejection of all standards and restraints--we are actually in danger of sinking into bondage! We often hear words such as, "Oh, I am tired of Christians with all their restrictions and moral rules! I just want to do what I want and go where I please and say what I like and enjoy myself. Then I will be happy." Well, we read the result of such "freedom" in 2 Kings 17:l6-17:

They forsook all the commands the LORD their God had made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves, and an Asherah [an idol] pole. They bowed down to all the starry hosts, and they worshipped Baal. They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sorcery and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger.

Paul addresses the same condition in Romans 1: People who knew God refused to acknowledge Him or to give thanks. So God gave them up to the most dissolute, depraved, immoral practices. Some in our own society would throw off every restraint of godliness and goodness, and the result in our society would be the same as what took place in ancient Israel: captivity, depravity, and bondage.

The books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther tell the story of the nation in captivity--morally deteriorated, socially disintegrated, economically bereft, completely carried away into bondage. But even in Israel's time of disgrace and captivity God began to work. After the seventy years of Israel's exile, the prophet Ezra was raised up to lead a group back into the desolate land of Palestine to begin rebuilding the temple.

The book of Ezra is the story of a discouraged people who were reluctant to leave captivity. Just as their ancestors looked back longingly to their Egyptian captivity, these Israelites were largely content to remain as captives in Babylon. Only a handful could be persuaded to go back to their homeland. The rest were so blinded that they chose to drift off and lose themselves among the nations of the world. We call them "the ten lost tribes of Israel." No one knows where they are or who they are. They are completely lost. But those who were willing to go back found all the promises of God waiting for them there.

The peril depicted in these three books is the peril of a discouraged heart. Sometimes we get into this frame of mind, don't we? We say, "What's the use? I might as well throw it all in and just stay where I am. I'm not victorious. I know I'm getting nowhere. I might just as well quit.” But every story of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther is the story of the triumph of faith in the midst of perils and discouraging circumstances.

In Ezra, a faithful remnant choose to return and build the second temple. In Nehemiah, the people persevere against and rebuild the shattered walls of the city. In Esther, we see that God brings about victory in the midst of impossible circumstances. All three books demonstrate that faith is triumphant, even when circumstances seem to predict disaster and defeat.

As you have been reading through this brief survey of the historical books of the Old Testament, you may have recognized in your own life some of the perils illustrated in them. Are you struggling against any of these forces? Then I suggest that you mark the peril you are particularly up against, open the book that deals with that peril, go to your knees, then read it and pray it through with God. Ask Him to speak to you and show you the way of deliverance in the midst of defeat.

That is the purpose of these historical books--to illuminate the pressures and perils that face us in the Christian life so that we can find God’s strength and see His leading as He guides us through the maze of darkness and danger, bringing us to a place of safety and rest. May the message of history, contained in these twelve precious books, be a message of help and blessing in your life as we explore them together.

Chapter Eleven: Joshua

Guidebook to Victory

Abe Lincoln was an unknown Illinois prairie lawyer when someone asked him if he had political ambitions. "I will prepare myself and be ready," the future president replied. "Perhaps my chance will come." The book of Joshua is the story of another leader who prepared himself and who was ready when his chance came: Joshua, the son of Nun, the disciple of Moses.

Joshua is one of the two books of the Old Testament that every Christian should master (the other is Daniel). The messages of both Joshua and Daniel are primarily designed to help Christians withstand the first full impact of the battle of the world, the flesh, and the devil. If you struggle with the deceptiveness and the opposing spiritual forces of this age, if you want to see a historical demonstration of the spiritual warfare we all face, then these books will be especially important to you.

Joshua is also an especially important book for those who would be leaders in the world or in the church. The world urgently needs righteous, courageous, Christian leaders who can stand up to the pressures and hostility of this world. The leadership model of Joshua is powerfully relevant and applicable to the world we live in now, at the threshold of the twenty-first century.

The book of Joshua is packed with practical lessons--challenging concepts to help us grasp the principles of a Spirit-led life. The key to the book is given to us in the New Testament: "These things…were written down as warnings for us, on whom, the fulfillment of the ages has come" (1 Cor. 10:11). The events of Joshua are patterns or metaphors that we can apply to the spiritual battles in our lives today.

The history recorded in the book of Joshua divides into three parts plus a conclusion:

The Entrance into Canaan (Joshua 1-4)

1. The commissioning of Joshua 1

2. The spying our of Jericho 2

3. The crossing of the Jordan 3

4. The erection of memorials 4

The Conquest of Canaan (Joshua 5-12)

5. The consecration of the people 5

6. The central campaign 6-8

7. The southern campaign 9-10

8. The northern campaign 11:1-15

9. The review of the victories 11:16-12:24

The Division of Canaan (Joshua 13-21)

10. The portion of the two–and-

a-half tribes 13

11. The portion of Caleb 14

12. The portion of the nine-and-

a-half tribes 15:1-19:48

13. The portion Of Joshua; cities

of refuge; the Levites 19:49-21:45

Conclusion (Joshua 22-24)

14. The border dispute 22

15. The final days of Joshua 23-24

Chapters 1 through 4 concern entering the Promised Land and all that involves. If you are struggling right now with how to enter into a life of victory with Christ, how to move out of the wilderness of doubt, how to settle your restless wanderings and move into the full blessing of the Spirit-led experience, then this section will be especially valuable to you.

Chapters 5 through 12 deal with Israel's conquest of the Promised Land through a series of battles and conflicts as they entered it. Chapters 13 through 21 deal with the division of the land. Chapters 22 through 24, which include many passages from Joshua's own lips, set before us the perils and dangers of the land that we must guard against in order to maintain our position of victory.

Beginning with chapter 1, we see a descriptive picture of the Spirit-filled life and a strong implication that this is a life God intends every Christian to live, not just a few "supersaints.” In Joshua 1:2, God says to Joshua, "Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them.”

This man Joshua has special significance His name means "God is salvation,” and it’s important to note that the name Joshua and Jesus are simply two forms of the original Hebrew name Yeshua. To their contemporaries, both Joshua and Jesus were known as Yeshua, "God is salvation.” This fact underscores a truth we shall later see, that Joshua is in many ways a symbolic forerunner of the victorious Messiah, Jesus the Lord.

The land is given to the people of Israel, just as the life in Christ is made available to us as Christians without any effort on our part. But though the land has been given, it still needs to be possessed. Title to the land is a gift from God; possession of the land is the result of an obedient walk:

"I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses” (1:3).

You can have all you that are willing to take. You can have every bit of spiritual life in Christ that you want. God will never give you more than you are ready to take. If you are not satisfied with the degree of your experience of victory, it is because you haven't really wanted any more.

The land is described as abundant and far-reaching a land in which you will find all you need in every area of life--"a land flowing with milk and honey" as it was described in Exodus 3:8. The extent of the land is as long and wide as the imagination: "Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates--all the Hittite country to the Great Sea on the west" (Josh. 1:4).

But possessing the land would not be easy. The way to victory was through the battlefield of spiritual warfare. But the end of that war was never in doubt: "No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you" (1:5).

One of the first things we learn in coming into this place of walking in the Spirit is that although it is a place of conflict, every conflict can end in victory. The Land of Promise is a frontier, and nothing is more exciting than life on a frontier. But it takes courage. There can be no drifting aimlessly with the crowd. You are going to have to walk against the current, as the Lord said to Joshua:

"Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you do not turn from it to the, right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then your will be prosperous and successful” (1:7-8).

Joshua is a book of great promises! The Word of God is our book of wisdom, guidance, and insight. The more we read it, meditate on it, speak it, and do it, the greater our prosperity and success will be in the way that God leads us.

"Have I not commanded you?" the Lord continues in verse 9. "Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go” (1:9). Coupled with God’s Word is the presence of God’s Spirit. An obedient heart always brings an empowering Spirit.

That is life in the Land of Promise.

In chapter 2 we have the remarkable and intriguing story of Rahab and the spies that Israel sent out. When these spies came into the house of Rahab, she hid them under some flax drying on the roof. While the men of the city were searching for them, the spies learned a most startling secret from Rahab:

I know that the LORD has, given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in the country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on earth below" (2:9-11).

How long before the spies entered this city had these events taken place? How long had the Canaanites been living in fear of the mysterious wandering nation whose God had led them through the Red Sea? Forty years! In other words, for forty years the inhabitants of Jericho had been a defeated foe. Their hearts were melted. They were defeated before the armies got anywhere close. Israel could have gone in at any time and taken the land! Instead, they had pulled back in fear, causing the Lord to sentence them to forty years of wandering in the desert. What a waste!

But before we condemn the Israelites too harshly for their lack of confidence, we should ask ourselves: What opportunity has God set before us that we shrink back in fear? How long have we been waiting and hesitating to take on that foe whom God has already delivered into our hands? Have we, in our timidity and lack of confidence, wasted five, ten, or forty years of our lives, when we could have trusted God and possessed the land He wanted to give us?

Next we read of the spies:

When they left, they went into the hills and stayed there three days, until the pursuers had searched all along the road and returned without finding them. Then the two men started back. They went down out of the hills, forded the river and came to Joshua son of Nun and told him everything that had happened to them. They said to Joshua, "The LORD has surely given the whole land into our hands; all the people are melting with fear because of us” (2:22-24).

After three days they came back and told this story. Notice the opening verse of chapter 3. On the third day, "early in the morning, they prepared to go into the land. Here is a reminder to us that on the third day, early in the morning, the resurrection took place. And it is in resurrection power that they entered in to take Canaan, symbolizing Christ in His risen life working in and through us to make us victors over all that threatens to hinder or defeat us.

Between the Israelites and the Promised Land, however, a barrier remained: the Jordan River. This account of the crossing of the Jordan is very similar to the story of the crossing of the Red Sea. In many ways the two crossings picture the same thing: death. Anyone venturing into the Red Sea without the waters having been parted would have faced certain death.

Now, the crossing of the Red Sea is a picture of Christ’s death for you and me--when He cuts us off from the world in all its attitudes and ways. In other words, when you became a Christian, you changed you ideas and sense of values. Your baptism was your expression that you were giving up one life for another and that your whole attitude was changed. That was the Red Sea: His death for you.

But the Jordan is a picture of your death with Christ, when all that you are as a fallen son or daughter of Adam comes to an end: your self-reliance, your desire to have your own way. If you cling to your own program you can have only your own, fallen Adamic life.

But if you want His life, you must also adopt His program, which is a program of victory. You cross either the Red Sea or the Jordan River when you accept this principle. Crossing the Jordan is what you do when you let go of your own agenda and say to God, "Alright, if this is what You want for me, Lord, this is what it will be. Not my will but Yours be done" That is what happened in the national life of Israel when the people crossed the Jordan and walked into the Land of Promise.

You cross the Jordan the same way you crossed the Red Sea: by obedience and faith. God is saying to Joshua, "In the same way I led Moses to bring Israel through the Red Sea, so I will lead you to bring Israel through the Jordan.” The same way! The faith that goes out of Egypt is the same faith that gets you into the Land of Promise. Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord," writes the apostle Paul, "continue to live in him" (Col. 2:6).

Was it any harder for Israel to cross the Jordan River than to cross the Red Sea? No, they just walked to the shore the waters rolled back, and they went right through. The same process. And it is no different to walk into the land. It is simply a matter of believing that God is in you and that what He said about you is true--He has cut off the old life (as you asked Him to) and He has given you a new basis that will work. You believe it and you act on that basis and say, "Thank You, Lord, for being in me and empowering me to do everything that needs to be done." And you enter the land.

In chapter 4, we see that Israel set up two memorials. One was a pile of twelve stones on the bank of the river, erected as a continual reminder to the people of the principle of faith to which they had now returned after years of wandering in the wilderness. This memorial is representative of the Lord's Supper which is a continual reminder to us of that principle of life by which we are to live.

The other memorial was a series of twelve stones in the middle of the river that were to be placed where the priests stood while Israel passed over to the other side. The stones were put in place before the waters returned to fill the riverbed. This symbolizes for us the way in which Jesus Christ stays in the place of death long enough for us to relinquish to Christ the control of every area of our lives.

In chapter 5 we come to the second section, the conquest of the land. What a mighty story it is! As the Israelites contemplated taking possession of the land, they saw the tremendous city of Jericho with its huge walls. While Jericho was the first visible obstacle in Israel’s pathway, their first actual obstacle was not external but internal. They first had to deal with something in their own lives. God never begins His conquest with the outward problem. You will discover the He always begins with you.

The people of Israel had to do three things before they could destroy the enemy. First, they had to be circumcised. The whole generation that had been circumcised in Egypt had died in the wilderness. A whole new generation had grown up uncircumcised, so when they came into the land, the first act was circumcision. As we know from the New Testament, circumcision is a picture of a surrendered heart--a heart in which the reliance on the flesh has been cut off and put aside--a circumcised heart (Rom. 2:29).

The second thing the people had to do was to celebrate the Passover--the first such celebration since their emergence from the wilderness. The Passover is a remembrance of the night when the Lord and the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites back in Egypt. It also symbolizes a thankful heart that looks back to that day of deliverance when Christ became our Passover sacrifice for us.

After their celebration of the Passover came a new food. The manna that had sustained them in the wilderness ceased on the day after they came into the land, and they began to eat its satisfying food. As far as I can discover, the nearest thing that we have to manna today is cornflakes. How would you like cornflakes for breakfast, lunch, and supper every day for forty years? They were certainly tired of "heavenly cornflakes" when they got into the land of Canaan! For forty years they had eaten food that sustained their strength but didn't satisfy. When they came into the land, however, they found satisfying food.

Finally, before their conquest began, Joshua had to plan the strategy for taking the city of Jericho. He must have been a perplexed and bewildered leader. How could he conquer this huge walled city with this inexperienced "army” of people?

He withdrew from the camp and looked out over the city in the moonlight. Suddenly, just a few paces away, he saw a man facing him, sword drawn. Joshua had no idea whether the man's sword was drawn as a threatening gesture or as an offer of assistance. Instinctively Joshua challenged the stranger: "Are you for us," he asked, "or for our enemies?"

"Neither," the man replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come (Josh. 5:14) In other words, "I haven’t come to take sides, I have come to take over. It isn’t your job to plan the strategy of battle. This is my job. I have given the city of Jericho into your hands.”

Instantly, Joshua knew that this was no mere mortal soldier. He knew that he was in the presence of God’s own messenger. In fact, this stranger may have been what theologians call a "theophany," a preincarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ in human form.

The man proceeded to lay out for Joshua the most remarkable battle plan that has ever been arranged. He was to have the people simply march around the city once a day for six days and on the seventh day, seven times; then they would blow a long blast on the trumpets and shout--and the walls would fall down!

Three preparations were necessary before engaging in battle, so in this section, we see three major obstacles to be overcome before the land is won. These obstacles picture for us the three types of problems that we confront as we walk the Christian life. The first one is Jericho, a city with walls about three hundred feet thick and sixty feet high, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

The city of Jericho symbolizes those problems most frequently occurring at the beginning of our experience of walking in the Spirit when we are confronted by something that has baffled and mocked us for years. Maybe it is a habit that we have had for a long time and have failed to overcome. It may be something that constantly threatens our spiritual lives.

An amazing spiritual principle is related to this type of problem. When we follow the strategy outlined here--walk around the problem in the presence of God (represented by the ark), and shout the shout of triumph--then the walls--will fall down. When there is a complete change of attitude toward an "insurmountable" problem, the problem dissolves into dust. The visible obstacle is not the problem; our attitude toward it is.

God had Israel march for seven days. Why that long? Because it took them that long to change their attitude toward Jericho. All that thinking, "What a huge place. How will we ever take this city?" Day after day, while walking around this city, they had time to think about God in their midst, the power that He had already displayed, and what He could do again. Gradually their attitude changed so that on the seventh day they shouted in triumph and the walls fell down. There was nothing to it when they obeyed.

The second obstacle in Israel's path is the little city of Ai. The story of the campaign against Ai begins with the revelation of the sin of Achan. He coveted a forbidden object taken from the defeated city of Jericho, so he took it and hid it among his personal belongings. Later, when the army of Israel went up against the city of Ai--a comparatively weak and unfortified city--Israel was utterly defeated.

Joshua fell upon his face before the Lord and said, "Why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us?" (Josh. 7:7). God said to him, "Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned. . . I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction." (Josh. 7:10, 12) Finally, after searching tough all the ranks of Israel, they filtered down to Achan and his family, and Achan confessed.

Ai, then is an instructive and sobering lesson: God expects us to deal completely with our lusts. He expects us to obey Him without rationalizing or compromising with sin. Even a seemingly small sin can have disastrous consequences, so we dare not allow sin to gain a foothold in us.

When the sin of Achan was hidden, Israel was defeated. But the minute this sin was confessed, the army was able to conquer Ai handily. By dealing firmly and decisively with sin in the camp, Israel was able to go into battle unhindered. The key to gaining victory on the battlefield was to gain victory over the inner enemy, the lurking, secret sin within. Once we gain victory over the problems of the flesh, spiritual warfare ceases to be a problem. God is able to act and win the battle for us.

The of battles of Gibeon and Beth-horon signify a third aspect of Satan's special attacks on the believer. The satanic attack pictured in the story of Gibeon is deception. The Gibeonites dressed themselves up in old clothes, took old moldy bread and tattered wineskins, and rode emaciated donkeys out to meet Joshua (see Josh. 9:3-27).

They came into the Israelite camp and said, "Your servants have come from a very distant country because of the fame of the LORD your God. For we have heard reports of him: all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites…Our elders and all those living in our country said to us, 'Take provisions for your journey; go and meet them and say to them, "We are your servants; make a treaty with us."'"

The Israelites were suspicious, but the Gibeonites continued, "This bread of ours was warm when we packed it at home on the day we left to come to you. But now see how dry and moldy it is. And these wineskins that we filled were new, but see how cracked they are. And our clothes and sandals are worn out by the very long journey.

Joshua believed them and made a pact with them. When they had signed the treaty, Israel walked over the hill and there was Gibeon! Now, God had previously instructed Joshua to remove the inhabitants of the land--and that included Gibeon. But Joshua had been taken in by a clever satanic ruse. Even though he had been tricked into signing the treaty, Joshua honored the agreement and spared the Gibeonites. As a result, the Gibeonites became thorns in Israel's side throughout the rest of her history.

Then comes the account of Beth-horon, where all the kings of the Canaanites banded together and came roaring down in a tremendous league of nations against Joshua--reminiscent of the various times in our own century, such as the 1967 Six-Day War, when various surrounding nations banded together to attack modern Israel. The battle of Beth-horon was a mighty battle, and although Israel was greatly out numbered, God gave them victory in a most remarkable way: He stopped the sun in the sky, causing the day of battle to last until victory came. This was the famous "long day" of Joshua.

Here is a picture of what happens when the devil comes as a roaring lion in some overwhelming catastrophe that seems to shatter us, to shake our faith, and make us cry out, "God, what is happening to me? Why should this happen to me?" We feel we are being swept off our feet by this terrible, staggering event. But Joshua stood fast in faith, depending on God to work a miracle--and God honored his faith. Proverbs 10:30 tells us, "The righteous will never be uprooted." This is why Paul says in Ephesians that when the enemy comes like this, we are to just stand still, planting our feet on God's promises, and the enemy will be defeated (see Eph. 6:13).

The rest of this section (chapters 11 through 21) deals with the mopping-up operation after the major battles, along with the division of Canaan among the tribes. After the battle of Beth-horon, the land was practically theirs, although individual victories remained to be won. The victories of Caleb, Othniel, and the Josephites and the setting aside of the cities of refuge all contain wonderful lessons on the authority of faith--boldly taking and using what God has promised.

In the last section we learn of three particular forms of peril that beset us in the Christian life. First of all comes the account of the misunderstood motives that were ascribed to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. They built an altar on the wrong side of the Jordan, causing indignation among the other tribes of Israel.

To the other tribes, this was idolatry and disobedience to God's command. So these tribes gathered themselves together and went to make war against their own brethren. When they arrived, all decked out for war, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh were understandably upset. "If we have built our own altar to turn away from the LORD…," they cried out, "may the LORD himself call us to account" (Josh. 22:23).

Then they explained that they were afraid that sometime in the future the Israelites in the land might say to the tribes outside the land, " 'You have no share in the LORD.' " In that case, a good response would be, "If they ever say this to us, or to our descendants, we will answer: Look at the replica of the LORD's altar, which our fathers built, not for burnt offerings and sacrifices, but as a witness between us and you' " (22:28).

Does this scene have a familiar ring to it? How many times have you jumped to the wrong conclusion, ascribing wrong motives to your spouse, to a family member, to your pastor, or to another Christian? How many times have other people misjudged, criticized, or wrongly attack you? It happens all too often in Christian families and in Christian churches. If anything can drive us out of the land of victory, it is controversy over misunderstood motives.

The second peril is incomplete obedience. Although the entire land had been given to the people of Israel, they did not possess all of it but left some of it one unconquered. Joshua warned the people as he neared the end of his life that the unconquered peoples whom they have permitted to live would always be snares and thorns to them (see Josh. 23:12-13).

The final peril that we see in this passage is the peril of false confidence and pride. Joshua made a final appearance before the people, challenging them to walk before the Lord their God, saying, "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" (24:15). He is saying: You think you can go on in a sort of neutral position between following the devil and following the Lord. You can't do it." This is exactly what Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters" (Matt. 6:24). You must serve either God or Satan. You cannot serve both. There is no intermediate ground. Hearing this challenge, the people replied:

"Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! It was the LORD our God h who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD because he is our God" (24:16-18).

Brave sounding words! But Joshua immediately confronted their bravado, much as Jesus confronted the bravado of Peter when he pledged never to forsake or deny his Lord. "You are not able to serve the LORD," says Joshua in verse 19. Why did Joshua seem to put down his own people just as they are pledging their allegiance to the Lord? Because Joshua understood that the greatest peril Christians face is false confidence.

You may say, "Well, certainly I can do what God wants. I've got what it takes. After all, I know the Scriptures. I have been raised in the right church. I can certainly walk faithfully and honestly before God. Don't talk to me about apostasy, defeat, backsliding, or sin. I will serve the Lord!" To this spiritual pride, Joshua responds, "You are not able to serve the Lord."

You can never have enough strength to stand by yourself. Your strength comes from an admission of your weakness and your sense of dependence. Only as you are willing to cling to God and His strength can you hope to experience victory. That is why, wise old Joshua says: "You are not able to serve the LORD. He is a holy God, he is a jealous God . . . If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you" (24:19-20).

It must have saddened Joshua deeply to hear the people's response for they said, in effect, "No, Joshua, you don't know what you're talking about. We are going to serve the Lord anyway." Words of spiritual arrogance! Because of the people's attitude, the story does not end with the victories of the book of Joshua. The story continues in the next book, the book of Judges--the book of defeat.

Chapter Twelve: Judges

A Panorama of Deception

Few books of the Bible can compare to Judges for color and intrigue. You wince as you read how Ehud the judge goes to visit the king in his summer palace and slides his dagger between the king's fifth and sixth ribs so that the flesh closes around it and the knife cannot be withdrawn. You cringe when Jael drives the tent stake through the skull of Sisera and pins him to the ground. You bite your fingernails alongside Gideon as God introduces deep military cutbacks, reducing Israel's army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred--then sends this vastly outnumbered miniature army into battle!

Perhaps your heart sinks with mine when Jephthah's daughter comes out to meet him on his return from battle, and he remembers his vow to sacrifice to God the first person he meets--and then fulfills that horrible vow. Perhaps you glory with Samson as he wreaks havoc among the Philistines, but wonder at his folly in allowing the Philistine temptress to worm from him the secret of his strength. Doubtless you turn with revulsion from the story of the Benjaminite perversion that marks perhaps the blackest chapter in Israel's history.

What kind of books do you like to read? What films and TV shows are your favorites? Fans of historical romance, military history, soap operas, conspiracy theories, spy novels, swashbuckling adventure, or political intrigue will find it all here in the book of Judges! This is a fascinating, spellbinding book to read. But from a broader and deeper perspective, Judges is essentially the story of a deteriorating nation--and it serves as a sober warning against deterioration and decline in our own Christian lives. The structure of Judges follows:

Israel Fails to Complete the Conquest of Canaan (Judges 1:1-3:4)

1. The failure of the tribes of Israel 1

2. The judgment of the tribes 2:1-3:4

The Seven Cycles of Deliverance (Judges 3:5-16:31)

3. The judge Othniel 3:5-11

4. The judge Ehud 3:12-30

5. The judge Shamgar 3:31

6. Deborah and Barak 4-5

7. Gideon defeats the Midianites 6:1-8:32

8. The judge Abimelech 8:33-9:57

9. The judge Tola 10:1-2

10. The judge Jair 10:3-5

11. The judge Jephtha 10:6-12:7

12. The judge Ibzan 12:8-10

13. The judge Elon 12:11-12

14. The judge Abdon 12:13-15

15. The judge Samson 13-16

The Depravity of Israel under the Judges (Judges 17-21)

13. Israel sinks into idolatry 17-18

14. Israel sinks into immorality 19

15. The war between the tribes 20-21

Whereas Joshua is a book of victory, Judges is a book of defeat and failure. It is the first in a series of books that sets before us the warnings and danger signals regarding the perils that lie in the path of a believer. The pattern of defeat described in the book of Judges is presented to us over and over again. The key principle that always spelled defeat in the lives of the people of Israel is given to us in the very last verse of the book:

In those days Israel had no king, everyone did as he saw fit (21:25).

These people were not trying to do wrong. They were not rebellious people, bent on frustrating God's will for their lives. At this stage of Israel's history these people were determined to do right--but they were trying to do what was right in their own eyes. They succumbed to the folly of consecrated blundering. They were well-intentioned blunders, intending to do right but ending up all wrong.

I have seen this pattern again and again in my counseling experience. Time after time I have heard people say, "I don't know what went wrong. I tried to do right. I did what I thought was best. But everything seemed to go wrong." This was the problem with Israel in the book of Judges. As the text says, there was no objective authority in their lives. The Lord Jehovah was supposedly their King, but they did not take Him seriously. And when they did not take Him seriously, they ended up taking themselves too seriously. So they did what they thought was right, guided by their own intellects and reasoning--ultimately proving that their ways were not God's ways.

In the first two chapters, we see the pattern of defeat that will repeat itself again and again. Each time God in His grace delivers the people, they slip into yet another cycle of defeat. The tone of defeat is set by these words in chapter 1:

Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth Shan and…their surrounding settlements (1:27).

The tribe of Manasseh failed to obey God's command to drive out all the tribes of the Canaanites. And there are other similar stories of failure:

Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, but the Canaanites continued to live there among them. Neither did Zebulun drive out the Canaanites living in Kitron or Nahalol, who remained among them…Nor did Asher drive out those living in Acco or Sidon…Neither did Naphtali drive out those living Beth Shemesh, or Beth Anath (1:29, 31, 33).

That was just the beginning of the story of Israel's defeat. They did not take God seriously about the threat that their enemies posed to them but, instead, moved in among them. God had said that they were to drive out every inhabitant of these Canaanite villages. They were not to mingle with them or have anything to do with them. They were not to marry them.

But when Israel came to some of these villages, instead of mounting armed warfare against them, they went in and investigated the towns. What they saw seemed quite innocuous. The villages did not seem particularly dangerous and the people seemed to be fine people.

So they let them stay in their villages and started another town right next door. They allowed these tribes to retain their villages among the cities and villages of Israel. They settled for less than complete victory.

We read this story, and we think, How foolish these Israelites were not to obey the commandment of God! But don't we do exactly the same? Don't we settle for less than complete victory over out sins and bad habits? Don't we say, "Well, yes, I do have a problem with anger (or gossip, or swearing, or impure thoughts, or alcohol, or tobacco), but it's just one little bad habit! I mean, we all need one small vice, don't we?" No! God says that it is these little things that we accommodate ourselves to and compromise with that eventually defeat us and destroy us! We cannot afford to settle for anything less than complete victory.

Now look at the next step in this process of decline and defeat. In chapter 2 we see God's grace as He warns them about results of their failure:

The angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land that I swore to give to your forefathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you” (2:1-2).

What did Israel do in response?

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and served Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out Egypt. They followed and worshipped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger (2:11-12).

The next step was open idolatry. The Baals and the Ashtoreths were the gods of the Canaanite tribes. Baal was a male fertility god, Ashtoreth a female fertility god. The Israelites didn't intend to do wrong--at first. They knew that God had commanded them not to bow down before any idols. They knew the Ten Commandments. But they began by compromising with evil, by allowing idolaters to coexist with them in the land God had given them. They didn't intend to get trapped like this, but soon they were doing the unthinkable: partaking in the pagan practices of the ungodly Canaanites.

How did this happen? The Israelites had been farmers in Egypt, and they irrigated their crops; so they weren't used to dry-land farming. After forty years of wandering, they didn't really know how to farm anymore, especially in an arid land without irrigation, and their crops came up poor and scraggly. The Israelites saw the lush grain fields of the Canaanites and asked for advice.

The Canaanites said their abundant crops were a blessing from the fertility gods that they worshiped and welcomed the Israelites to adapt to their ways. Have you ever experienced cultural pressures such as those faced by the Israelites? "If you want to get ahead in this company, you'll have to play the game our way. Come on! Everybody cheats a little everybody has a romantic interest on the side! Everyone goes to this kind of movie and that kind of bar! If you expect to be one of us, you'll adapt to our ways.”

So it was that the Israelites gave in and sank to the level of the people they were commanded to destroy. The Canaanites taught the Israelites how to plant their crops properly, how to fertilize the soil, as well as the proper way to sacrifice to their demonic gods, so the next spring--sure enough!--they found that the crops were wonderful.

The Israelites thought, Hey! There must be something to this fertility god business. We'd better worship these gods after all. They forsook the God of Israel and bowed down to the Baals and Ashtoreths.

Now what is not recorded here is that these were sex deities and the break down their worship of them involved not only bowing down before stone idols but also engaging in obscene sexual practices. So Israel soon sank into idolatry and gross immorality.

The next step in the cycle is the reinjection of God's grace. The whole pattern is of unutterable human folly in disobeying the simple Word of God. God in His arresting grace puts obstacle after obstacle in the path of these people, trying to warn them about what is happening to them. In chapter 2, we read how God dealt with their disobedience:

They forsook [the Lord] and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the LORD handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, who, they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the LORD was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress (2:13-15).

Have you ever had the Lord's hand against you? Have you ever sensed that He was against you in everything you did? What you thought you were doing in dedication and sincerity was so opposite to what He had said that you discovered His hand was against you. This is what Israel discovered: Nothing seemed to work out right. They found themselves in bondage. One after another of the tribes around them was allowed to rule over them. These tribes came in and made slaves out of them, year after year after painful year.

Finally, God’s grace comes in again for deliverance:

The LORD raised up judges who saved them out of the hands of the raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves, to other gods and worshipped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly turned from the way in which their father had walked, the way of obedience to the LORD’s commands. Whenever the LORD raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived (2:16-18).

That is why this book is called Judges. Over and over, this pattern is repeated. God raised up Othniel, and then Ehud, and then Shamgar--judge after judge until you come to the last judge, Samson.

There were twelve judges altogether, all representing God's in intervening grace in attempting to keep these people from the folly of their own senseless disobedience. The perpetual folly is demonstrated by these tragic words:

When the judge died, the people returned to ways evens more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and serving and worshipping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways (2:19).

Thus the book of Judges us nothing but a record of Israel’s continuous decline.

The great lesson of Judges is that we must take God seriously and we must take our enemy seriously. Jesus Christ has come to save its from our sins, not to help us to comfortably accommodate ourselves to them. He has come to drive those sins and habits out of us. If we do not take God seriously about these so-called little things, then step by step, gradually and imperceptibly, we will move away from God's grace, and we will sink into moral and spiritual collapse.

Occasionally, we hear the story of an outstanding man or woman of God who suddenly, unexpectedly is found to be caught up in dishonest or immoral behavior. A scandal erupts, then widespread disillusionment. People shake their heads in bewilderment and ask, "How could this happen so suddenly? What caused this abrupt change in this person? I'm convinced that in almost every case, there was nothing sudden about this behavior. Long before this seemingly sudden moral implosion took place, there was a long period of inner deterioration, gradual compromise, secret sins, little sins. They took their toll, day by day, until a major moral collapse became inevitable.

You may he asking yourself, "Is this happening to me? In some area of my life am I saying, 'Lord, this really isn't very important. Why bother me with this little matter? This isn't very important, is it Lord?' That is a dangerous attitude. If that is your attitude, you are exposing yourself to peril.

Listen to message of Judges. Read the book carefully. Listen to God’s warning-yet-loving voice. If you read it closely, with an open heart, you will make the same discovery I did: The book of Judges is a mirror in which we are able to see ourselves and our condition more clearly. May God give us the courage and the wisdom to take the insights of Judges and apply them personally, so that the image we see in that mirror will look less like that of failed, deteriorating Israel and more like Jesus Christ.

Chapter Thirteen: Ruth

The Romance of Redemption

When Benjamin Franklin was United States ambassador to France, he occasionally attended the Infidels Club, a group of intellectuals who spent most of their time together reading and discussing literary masterpieces. Like so many intellectual snobs, both then and now, the members of this group were largely atheists and agnostics who sneered at the Bible.

On one occasion, Franklin brought in a book and read it before the group. When he was finished, the other members were unanimous in their praise. They said it was one of the most beautiful stories they had ever heard and demanded that he tell them where he had run across such a remarkable literary masterpiece. It was his great delight to tell them that the story was from the Bible, a book they loudly regarded with scorn. Franklin had simply changed the names in the story so that it would not be recognized as a book in the Bible!

The book of Ruth is certainly a literary masterpiece. It is a beautiful story of a touching romance. I wonder how it would he featured in some of our romance magazines today. I can almost see the headline: "How One Woman Found Happiness in the Arms of a Second Husband.” It is a book that inflames the imagination because it is entwined with the captivating theme of love, devotion, and true romance.

Yet it must be remembered that the events in this beautiful book take place against the ugly backdrop of the era of judges. Although Ruth is a beautiful story in itself, it is the story behind the story--its meaning and significance--that makes this book so valuable for our lives. The book of Ruth is one of those beautiful Old Testament pictures that God has designed to illustrate the dramatic truths of the Christian faith, as expounded in the New Testament. It illustrates the romance of redemption.

The structure of the book is simple:

Ruth, a Woman of Deep Love and Devotion (Ruth 1-2)

1. Ruth's friendship with and devotion to Naomi 1

2. Ruth meets Boaz; Boar cares for Ruth 2

Ruth's Love Is Rewarded (Ruth 3-4)

3. Ruth request for redemption 3

4. Boaz marries Ruth; Ruth bears a son, Obed 4

The book of Ruth begins with an introduction of its key characters:

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephraimites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband (1:1-5).

Elimelech, whose name means "my God is king," leaves the town of Bethlehem with his wife, Naomi, whose name means "pleasant." Because of famine in the region, they take their two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, and move to the land of Moab. Note that in Bethlehem--the name of which means "the House of Bread"--there was no bread, only famine. The book of Leviticus has already told us that famine indicates a low level of spiritual vitality within a given nation.

In Moab, Elimelech died and his two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, married women of Moab, Orpah and Ruth. After ten years, the two sons also died and Naomi was left with her two daughters-in-law. After the famine was over, Naomi expressed her plans to return to Bethlehem, but she encouraged her two Moabite daughters-in-law to remain in Moab and remarry there. Orpah was unwilling to leave her home for an uncertain life in Palestine, and she decided to take Naomi's advice to stay in Moab. But Ruth refused to stay in Moab and, in a plea of enduring beauty, declared her determination to identify with Naomi’s land, people, and faith.

The source of Ruth's devotion and determination is seen in her statement in 1:16: "Your God [shall be] my God." This clearly represents her willingness to leave the idols of Moab for the worship of the living God of Israel.

So Naomi and Ruth arrive in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest with a very uncertain future before them. The invisible, providing protecting hand of the Lord is apparent in the statement that Ruth went into the fields to glean and "found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz” (Ruth 2:3). This man, a close relative of Elimelech, Naomi's husband, appears in the story as a man of unusual character and sensitivity.

This is a wonderful story of boy meets girl, the kind of romantic story that never goes out of style. Ruth was gleaning in the field and Boaz saw her. He said to his workmen, "Whose young woman is that?" They told him, and Boaz went down to meet Ruth. Now the text doesn't go into detail about their meeting, but if you use your sanctified imagination you can see that it must have been a bit awkward at first.

She is working away, picking up the grain here and there, and along comes this handsome fellow--evidently a wealthy man by his clothes. She drops her eyes shyly and he shifts nervously from one foot to the other, clearing his throat. Finally, he says, "Shalom." She looks up and says, "Shalom." He goes on to commend her for her kindness to her mother-in-law and especially for her faith in Jehovah, the God of Israel.

Obviously attracted to the beautiful Moabite woman, yet acting always with restraint and dignity Boaz instructs his workmen to deliberately leave grain in the field for Ruth to glean. To her amazement, Ruth discovers that these workmen are the sloppiest workmen in the whole kingdom of Israel. When she returns to Naomi in the evening with an unexpected abundance, she learns for the first time from her mother-in-law that Boaz is a potential kinsman-redeemer. Thus, at Naomi's instruction she continues gleaning in Boaz’s fields throughout the barley and wheat harvests, for approximately three months.

At the end of the harvest, after the winnowing of the grain took place, Naomi seized the initiative provided by her relationship with Boaz and advised Ruth of a plan for her redemption. This is what Ruth did: She came to the sleeping Boaz by night and lay at his feet. In doing so, Ruth was following an ancient custom in Israel by which she was symbolically asking Boaz to fulfill the responsibility of a kinsman to marry her and raise up heirs to the deceased Elimelech. She did this so modestly that Boaz commended her for her action. Having clearly fallen in love with her, Boaz eagerly consented to take on the requested responsibility. He had evidently hoped such a situation would occur, for he immediately informed Ruth that a closer kinsman was involved, and his claim had to be settled first.

In the morning he sent her back to Naomi with a generous gift of six measures of barley, and Naomi wisely told her that the matter would surely be settled that day. That same morning, Boaz took his seat at the city gate where the elders gathered for the settling of lawsuits and the judging of other matters brought before them. When the closer kinsman came by, Boaz requested an informal court. When all were seated, he presented his case to the other relative.

Boaz declared that Naomi wanted to sell a piece of land that belonged to Elimelech, but if she did so, the next of kin would be responsible to care for the family, since they now would have no property. Seeing the possibility of obtaining a choice piece of property, the first kinsman declared his willingness to assume this responsibility. That’s when Boaz played his trump card!

Boaz informed the other kinsman that the land had a marriage encumbrance. According to the custom of that culture, if he bought the property, he would also have to marry the woman who legally encumbered the property. This changed the picture for the first kinsman, since the land would then not belong to him but to any children resulting from his union with Ruth. He decided that he would he better off without the property, and he chose not to take it. To symbolize his decision, in the colorful custom of the East, the man removed his right shoe and handed it to Boaz in the presence of the witnesses. The shoe symbolized his right as owner to set foot upon the land. This right now became Boaz’s, and the coast was clear for him to take Ruth as his wife.

The account closes with the birth of a son to Boaz and Ruth, who brought great joy to the heart of his grandmother, Naomi, and grew up to be the grandfather of David, Israel's mightiest king.

The beautiful little story of Ruth not only provides a link between the days of the judges and the subsequent reign of David, but it symbolizes in the figure of Boaz how Christ, our great Kinsman-Redeemer, overcomes the obstacle of our birth in Adam and takes us to Himself in a union that will produce the fruit of the Spirit to the honor and glory of God. Significantly, the genealogy of Matthew includes Ruth as an ancestress of, Jesus the Messiah.

Chapter Fourteen: 1 Samuel

The Flesh and the Spirit

First Samuel is the story of two men, Saul and David. These two people symbolize two principles in the heart of every Christian believer seeking to walk before God: the principle of the flesh and the principle of faith. Saul is the man of the flesh, the carnal believer. David is the man of faith, the spiritual believer.

In 1 Samuel, we see how these two principles, the principle of flesh and the principle of faith, come into dramatic conflict in our lives. We see in Saul the ruin caused by the will that is set on the flesh. In David, we see the blessing that results from a mind that is set on the Spirit. As Romans 8:6 tells us, "The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

The fact that both of these men were kings beautifully illustrates the supremacy of the will in human life. When God created the human race, He gave us a completely supreme free will. Even the Spirit of God does not violate it. If we want to say "No” to God, we can. We rule over the kingdom of our lives, just as Saul and David ruled over their kingdoms.

The book actually begins with the story of the man who gives his name to the book. The prophet Samuel is the human expression of God's voice to both Saul and David. The stories of these three men--Samuel, Saul, and David--mark off the three divisions of the book. The first seven chapters give us the life of Samuel. Chapters 8 through 15 present King Saul, the man of the flesh. Then in chapters 16 through 31, David, the man of faith, symbolizes the mind that is set on the Spirit. Here is an outline of 1 Samuel:

The Story of Samuel (1 Samuel 1-7)

1. The birth and early years of Samuel 1-2

2. Samuel assumes leadership in Israel 3

3. Israel is conquered by the Philistines 4-5

4. Israel sins with the ark of the covenant 6

5. Israel's victory over the Philistines 7

Saul, Israel's First King-the Man of the Flesh (1 Samuel 8-15)

6. Israel rejects the kingship of God 8

7. God chooses Saul as Israel's king 9-12

8. The reign of King Saul, successes

and failures 13-14

9. God rejects Saul as king 15

David, Israel's Second King--the Man of Faith (1 Samuel 16-31)

10. God anoints David as king 16-17

11. Saul repeatedly attempts to kill David 18-20

12. David's rise in exile; protected by the priest;

pretending to be insane 21

13. David flees; Saul kills the priests 22

14. David defeats the Philistines; Saul

pursues David 23

15. David saves Saul's life 24

16. Samuel dies; David marries Abigail 25

17. David saves Saul's life again 26

17. David joins the Philistines 27

18. The disintegration of Saul's mind and spirit;

Saul visits a witch (a spiritual medium) 28

19. David avoids fighting Saul 29

20. David defeats the Amalekites 30

21. The death of Saul 31

Samuel was the last of the judges and the first of the prophets. The events of this book take place right after Israel has passed through some three hundred years of the rule of the judges. Samuel is God's chosen instrument to close out the realm of the judges and introduce the beginning of the prophetic ministry and the monarchy. The book opens with the story of a barren woman, Hannah one of two wives of a man named Elkanah. The other wife had borne Elkanah numerous children, and she taunted and mocked Hannah in her barrenness Hannah's barrenness is symbolic of the spiritual state of Israel at this time. The people to whom God personally manifested Himself had fallen into a state of spiritual infertility and barrenness. The priesthood, which God had established along with the tabernacle and the Levitical law, had begun to disintegrate and disappear. The cause for this failure is found in the song Hannah sings after her prayer is answered and she gives birth to a boy, Samuel. In this song, Hannah announces:

"Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the LORD is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed. The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength” (2:3-4).

The rest of the song sets forth God's ability to exalt the lowly and cast down the proud.

In this book we see the eternal conflict between the proud, self-confident heart and the humble spirit that looks to God in utter dependence. This was the problem with Israel. The priesthood was failing not because anything was wrong with the priesthood (which represents the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ) but because the people refused to bow before the Lord. They refused to come for cleansing. They refused to turn from idolatry. As a result, the priesthood was about to pass out of the picture as an effective means of mediation between the people and God.

At this point we have the account of Samuel's birth and childhood. When Samuel is just a boy, he is brought to the temple and dedicated to God. He becomes the voice of God to Eli the priest and is given a message of judgment. Later he becomes the voice of God to the nation--especially to the two kings, Saul and David.

The first seven chapters tell the story of Israel's fall into decay. The ark of the covenant, the place where God wrote His name and where His presence resided, is taken captive by the Philistines. Eli's priesthood is taken away from him because he did not discipline his sons. And when Eli's grandson is born, his mother names him Ichabod, which means "the glory has departed.” Here Israel reaches one of the lowest ebbs in its national history.

Next, we read about the entrance of King Saul. In 1 Samuel 8:4-5,Saul: The man the people demand to have a king like other nations:

All the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as the other nations have.”

The principle of the flesh is at work in the nation of Israel to destroy its fellowship with God and its enjoyment of His blessing. The people of Israel have rejected the authority of God in favor of having the same kind of authority as all the other nations. In other words, the desire of the flesh is to be religious in a manner accepted by the world, to conduct its business as the rest of the world does. You may have seen this principle at work in your church, where people may have wanted to interject worldly business principles into the conduct of the church, rather than the principles of Scripture. Instead of relying on the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we often prefer to appoint a committee to plan out a program; then we ask God to bless our program and make it work. The problem is that it is our program, not God's.

Someone has said, "Be careful what you ask for--you may get it.” Here is a case that proves the saying true: Israel prays for a human king and God gives them one. Samuel was displeased when the people asked for a king, because he knew that this was not God's program. When Samuel prayed to the Lord, the Lord replied:

"Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do” (8:7-9).

This is always God's way. lf we want something badly enough, He will usually give it to us--even if it is not His perfect will for our lives. The catch is that we must also be ready to feel the consequences.

A true story: An eight-year-old child once begged her father for new skates. "The skates I have are too slow!" she said. "All the other kids have fast new ball-bearing skates!" Her father resisted and resisted, but the little girl relentlessly begged her daddy for the faster skates. She even pinned notes to his pillow at night: "Daddy, pretty please with sugar on top, buy me some new ball-bearing skates? Please! Please! Please!"

Finally, this father relented and bought her the new skates. The child gleefully put on the skates, zoomed out onto the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner. The father heard a cry, followed by a sickening thud. He ran around the corner and found his daughter on the sidewalk, unconscious. She had slipped on the faster skates and hit her head. She was taken to the hospital in a coma, and she died before midnight.

Sometimes we beg God for "ball-bearing skates" in our own lives. We think that God is unkind to us when He says "No" to our prayers again and again. But sometimes a "No" answer is God's blessing to us--for if we continue to beg Him and He finally says "Yes," we may find ourselves enduring more tragedy and heartbreak than we ever imagined. That is the situation of the Israelites when God yielded