Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Recounting the History of God's Grace

Well, we have made it through the book of Joshua. This Sunday, the sermon posted will look at the final chapter and see how God and Joshua end this wonderful book that teaches us how to fight the good fight of the faith.

In the previous sermon, we saw Joshua's final words to the leaders of Israel that teach them about living by faith. In this final chapter of the book, Joshua leads the people in renewing the covenant with God, which is an act of rededicating themselves to His service before Joshua passes into glory and they are on their own. The way the covenant renewal ceremony is laid out in this passage is very similar to the covenants of the other peoples of the ancient near east surrounding Israel. God chose to make His covenants with them in a way that would be familiar to them (in and of itself and act of grace!).

The ceremonies generally opened with a preamble where the parties making the covenant introduce themselves, and then they go on to a "historical prologue" where the history of the relationship between the parties is recounted (i.e. everything that is leading up to the covenant ceremony). The covenant renewal ceremony in Jos. 24 follows that pattern, and it is the historical prologue that I want to focus on for this devotional. We will talk about it a little Sunday, but we will not be able to go into detail there. So, here are a few theological highlights from the recounting of the history of God and His people to this point (reading Jos. 24:1-13 first would be helpful):

• Unconditional Election: Joshua starts out by reminding them that God took Abraham from Ur while Abraham was still a pagan. And, Abraham was chosen; not his brother Nahor, yet Abraham deserved it no more than Nahor. Abraham was no saint when God found him. He was plunged into pagan worship probably just as much as the Canaanites. Abraham did not become a believer because he was somehow inherently better than his father or brother. Abraham did not deserve it any more than anyone else. No, it was because God "took" him and "led" him. God loved Abraham when he deserved only wrath. The fact that Israel exists at all is simply an act of God's free grace and unconditional election. And, this is consistent with the rest of Scripture. The Bible constantly reminds us of who we were, but it is not to bring us to despair but to show us the incredible grace of God. Francis Schaeffer once wrote:

Whether studying the Old Testament or the New, we are reminded that we are not where we are because of a long, wise, and godly heritage. We come from rebellion. Individually, we are children of wrath. After we are Christians, we must look at others who are still under God's wrath and always say, "I am essentially what you are. If I am in a different place, it is not because I am intrinsically better than you, but simply because God has done something in my life." There is no place for pride.

• Slow growth: Joshua tells us that God multiplied Abraham's seed, but it was really, really slow. He only gave him Isaac. Isaac only had two sons, one of which would not produce people of God (i.e. Esau). Finally, with Jacob's twelve sons, things start to speed up. So, we see from this that God does what He promises, but sometimes it is so gradual that we do not notice until it has been going on for a long time. We need to keep this in mind and walk by faith; not by sight. As one commentator says, "We easily lose sight of what Yahweh has done by demanding too much too soon."
• Rough spots: Joshua also points out that Esau and his people (not God's people) get their inheritance right away but Jacob and his sons (God's people!) go to Egypt and become slaves. What? Why do the covenant people get slavery while the others get their land? Sometimes history seems to conflict with God's design, which is, again, why we have to walk by faith and not by sight. God always accomplishes His design, but sometimes it is not at all when we would expect it (cf. e.g. He. 11:32-38). The Scriptures are realistic about this and do not hide the "rough spots" from us, and that shows God is honest, realistic, and always faithful. God showing us the "rough spots" and confusing parts of history is not to make us relish the difficult aspects of the life to which He has called His people but to show us that He is faithful to hold us in and bring us through the "rough spots."
• God's power: In vv. 5-12, Joshua recounts God's incredible power to deliver His people from Egypt (the greatest power in the world at the time), conquer the kings east of the Jordan, and conquer the Promised Land. Joshua sums it up with telling the people that it was not by their sword or bow that all this was accomplished but by God's mighty power. Time and time again God's people are outnumbered, outgunned, or even completely helpless, and God fights for them by His mighty power. This shows us what Jonah learned in Jon. 2:9: Salvation is of the LORD. Paul also tells us this in 2 Co. 4:7. This is not to say that we just "let go and let God," for God uses our struggles, as we fight by faith, but it does show us that our struggles would be nothing, useless, futile without God's mighty power. (We will talk more about this in the upcoming sermon.)
• God's provision: If we look at vv. 7, 13, Joshua shows us God's provision in necessity and abundance, but also note that His provision is the basic stuff: manna, grain, towns, houses. It, with the exception of the manna, is ordinary stuff that we take for granted every day, but it is all of God's grace. God always provides for His people, but we need to remember too that God isn't some kind of genie that just grants our wishes. He gives us our needs; not necessarily our desires. And, most often He does it through the normal, ordinary means of a job, a family, etc.

You see, Joshua does not recount their history just to show them their past but to show them the great God whom they serve. That is the basis for the rest of the covenant renewal ceremony, which we will talk more about on Sunday. Until then, think about your own history, and I bet if you think long and hard enough, you could find some very similar displays of God's grace, faithfulness, power, and provision even during the rought spots, and if you do that, it will refresh your soul.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Holy War and the Gospel

First, let me apologize for taking a couple of weeks to continue this series. I had meant to post these devotionals and sermons once a week, but the past couple of weeks have been really busy for my family and I. However, we are back in the swing of things now, and so here is the next devotional, with the next sermon coming on Sunday.

As I have alluded to a few times throughout this series so far, there are some difficult issues that come up in the book of Joshua that often get attention in from Christians and non-Christians alike. Well, the one that Joshua 6 brings up is probably the biggest: holy war. In the episode we will consider on Sunday, God commands that all living things be killed in Jericho, and v. 21 tells us, "Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword." This is simply a result of the commands God gave to them in the book of Deuteronomy, like 7:1-2:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

This should bother us or at the very least make us pause when we read that, and we need to know how to think about it within the whole context of Scripture and what it teaches us about God.

So, what about the "holy war"? How does "show no mercy to them" square with Jesus' teaching about loving our enemies? Well, I want to argue that most often our main hangup here is that we do not have a high enough view of God's holiness. As Christians, we have encountered the grace of God in Jesus, which allows us to enter into God’s holy presence with boldness (He. 10:19-25), because of the promise that we are being remade after the pattern of that same holiness. But, in that grace, we may sometimes forget what holiness looks like to someone who is not so covered by Christ. And, non-Christians, generally do not have a very high or realistic view of sin, thinking of God more as a "smiling grandfather" than a holy, upright, perfect, and just God. However, both those views of God are not true to His being.

God is supremely holy, which means He cannot abide sin without a response. God is a consuming fire (He. 12:29), a purifying power that cannot abide the unholy to remain in His presence without destroying it. God, however, is also a gracious God who does not desire the complete destruction of the works of His hands (cf. Eze. 18:32)--who holds back the consuming fire like a dam holds back a flood. (For more on this balance, see this excellent article by John Piper.) With that tension in mind, I think the conquest of Canaan is best understood as a profound and temporary in-breaking of God’s holiness into an unholy world for a specific redemptive purpose. Let me explain.

In creation, God created the world and humans holy--in perfect communion with Him. Yet, we fell from that holiness and therefore incurred the wrath of the holy God. God's holiness consumes unholiness just as light consumes darkness, and that is what we all deserve in our natural state. Only God can hold back the consumption for a time. And, at the fall of Adam and Eve, God, in His grace, temporarily suspended His full wrath until the day of Final Judgment (cf. Mt. 25:31ff), otherwise Adam and Eve would have been judged and sent to hell on the spot. So, common grace--God's forbearance of final judgment--became a part of the world in which we live.

This has bearing on the conquest of the Promised Land (henceforth referred to as "the Conquest"). The ethics of the Conquest are ultimately those of a completely holy and good God calling the rebellious people, the illegal aliens on His property into account for their sins. And, since the Fall affects all of us as equally as it affected the Canaanites, the implication is that we all deserve, always and everywhere, what they got then and there in Canaan from the Israelite armies. In light of this reality, we must admit that the sheer fact that the Conquest was confined to only one very geographically limited area at only one point in human history is a sign of God’s mercy.

What? A sign of mercy? Yes: one of the purposes of the Conquest is for us to see what must be the inevitable result of our natural standing with God as the sinful human race. Without Christ, we all deserve what they received. The ethics of the Conquest can be seen as a type of what is called "intrusion ethics" (a term coined by Meredith Kline)—a temporary intrusion into history of the ethics of the Final Judgment, i.e. that moment when God finally brings the created order to account so that He can judge all evil and create the new heavens and new earth. That is to say, the Conquest reveals in history, however briefly, what the end of history will look like when Jesus returns in glory to reclaim in total His land and create the true Promised Land.

As we talked about in the devotional a couple of weeks ago, this is an Old Testament type. A type is a real person, place, event, or object that God ordained to act as a visible pattern of Jesus' person (who He is) and/or work (what He does). Just as the OT Promised Land (a type) ultimately points to the true Promised Land--new heavens and the new earth; just as Joshua is a type of Jesus Himself, the Conquest (another type) points to the judgment where God ultimately judges and punishes evil through Jesus as the Judge (2 Pt. 3:10)--the punishment He stayed/delayed at the Fall--and creates the new heavens and the new earth (the true Promised Land). One purpose of seeing such a thing in history is, therefore, to bring mankind to repentance, so that we might be spared that fate when the Day arrives. Not only will God have given humanity the whole of their history of time to turn back to Him, He will have also made it abundantly clear by the Conquest what is to come. But, still many "stiffen their necks" against Him.

All of this has profound ramifications for how we square the goodness of God, as we have encountered it in Jesus, with the severity of God, as we see it in the Conquest. In many respects, they are two sides of the same coin. They both show the extreme lengths to which God must go in order to get humanity's attention. The sad history of Jesus' rejection by His own people only reinforces the point that humankind's fallen hearts are so hardened that we do not respond to God, even when He comes in meekness. Such a sorry state of affairs, such a clear example of our rebellion, makes the extreme ethics of the Conquest seem all the more justified. Further, it illustrates with vivid clarity how, in not getting always and everywhere what the Canaanites got then and there, humanity as a whole has seen merciful forbearance (common grace) on God’s part.

And, we also need to note that God's use of the Israelites of the instrument of His judgment was not because of their goodness. In fact, this is explicitly laid out in Dt. 9:4-5:

“Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

God chose the Israelites (and us) simply because of His unmerited, free grace. The Israelites were very wicked and just as deserving of judgment as the Canaanites, just like all mankind is without Jesus. One commentator explains:

Hence Israel must not assume a holier-than-you-all attitude, for Yahweh will not bring his people into the land because they are righteous and deserving; ‘it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is driving them out before you’ (Deut. 9:4–5). The conquest is not a bunch of land-hungry marauders wiping out, at the behest of their vicious God, hundreds of innocent, God-fearing folks. In the biblical view, the God of the Bible uses none-too-righteous Israel as the instrument of his just judgment on a people who had persistently reveled in their iniquity.

God, in His sovereignty, chose to satisfy His holy wrath against the Canaanites by judgment and against the Israelites by redemption (cf. Ro. 9:14-21).

Perhaps a typological chart would be helpful when thinking about OT types and the true, spiritual reality in Christ to which they point:

Old Testament Type	True, Spiritual Reality in Christ
The Exodus	Christ’s redemption
The wilderness wandering	This present life
The Promised Land	The new heavens and the new earth
The conquest of the Land	The Final Judgment
King David	King Jesus
Solomon’s kingdom	Jesus’ rule in the new heavens and the new earth

Before I end this discussion, though, there is one more intrusion ethic that we need to mention: the cross of Christ. Just as the Conquest was a temporary in-breaking of God's final-judgment, holy wrath into history, so was the cross, but in this case, God's final-judgment, holy wrath fell not on the culpable human race that deserves His wrath but on His perfect, innocent Son. Christ did not deserve anything but full reward from God, and yet, on the cross, Jesus took the full wrath of God that He would have poured out on His elect in the Final Judgment. That means that all God's holy wrath against His people has been satisfied. Even though He is completely holy and we do not really even understand the depth of that holiness or our sinfulness in comparison, He has satisfied His holiness by pouring out His wrath on Christ for all His elect. This is how the faithful Israelites and all true Christians avoid what the Canaanites got. We deserve the Final Judgment, but since Christ came into space and time and lived as one of us, since He fulfilled the law perfectly, and since He withstood the intrusion of final judgment on the cross, we can have eternal life in the true Promised Land forever.

So, the Conquest is a sad, hard part of Scripture to read, but it is a perfectly just action of the holy God. Yet, we should not look at it mechanically as that but in two ways: 1) as a warning that causes us to pray for and seek the conversion of the lost so they do not get what the Canaanites did and 2) to praise God for sending Jesus Christ to take the holy wrath that we deserve so that we can live with God forever in the true Promised Land. That should lead us to praise as Paul praised God in Ro. 11:33-36 after he finished detailing out these gospel truths about God:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Joshua and Jesus

This Sunday the sermon I post will look at Joshua 3-4, and since we do not have time to look at everything this passage could tell us, there are some things I will have to skip in the sermon. One of those is v. 3:7: "Today I [God] will begin to exalt you [Joshua] in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you."

We might look at that and wonder, "Why would God want to exalt Joshua in the eyes of the people? Shouldn't Joshua exalt God?" And, certainly, Joshua should and does exalt God and glorify Him before the people, but God still wants to exalt Joshua. Why? Well, there are actually two reasons: one from Joshua's life and one that points us to Jesus.

First, way back in the book of Numbers, shortly after the people had been redeemed from Egypt by God, Moses sent twelve men to spy out the land of Canaan. When those twelve men came back, ten of them said the land was great but the people too powerful, so there's no way they could conquer it. But, Joshua and Caleb (the other two spies) told the people that they could do it because God was on their side. The people, however, chose not to trust God and to listen to the ten (which is why they ended up wandering in the wilderness for forty years), and in Numbers 14, it tells us that they sought to humiliate and kill Joshua and Caleb. Well, there were some present on that fateful day (those under the age of twenty) who were standing at the Jordan in Joshua 3 and who would have remembered that how the nation did not believe Joshua and Caleb and tried to humiliate and kill them. They would see that God waited forty years, but He is reversing that here. God is vindicating Joshua and showing the people that he was right all along, so they would know that they can trust him as their leader.

Second, and this goes deeper, here we are pointed to Jesus. In fact, in Joshua, we can see Jesus. Joshua is a kind of "working model" of Jesus called an Old Testament (OT) "type." A "type" is another way to see Jesus in OT stories, but it is more than just a singular event or one-time object that points us to Jesus. A type is a real person, place, or object that God ordained to act as a visible pattern of Jesus' person (who He is) and/or work (what He does), and the type gives us that visible pattern not just for an episode of a story (e.g. the scarlet cord or Rahab) but for most, if not all the time the person, place, or object is talked about in the Bible. A type spans over many stories and perhaps even many books. And, Joshua is that for us. We do not see Jesus in just one or two episodes about Joshua but in Joshua himself throughout the whole time he is in the Bible.

We will talk more about this when we get to later episodes, like Joshua 6 where Joshua encounters the commander of the LORD's armies (i.e. the Son of God Himself), but Joshua is a type of Christ throughout this whole book and, indeed, really during all the time he is a character in the biblical story:

• Joshua is first mentioned in Numbers 13, but at first, his name is Hoshea, which means "salvation" in Hebrew. But, in Numbers 13:16, Moses changes his name to Yeshua in Hebrew (Joshua in English), which means "YHWH saves!" Did you know that is Jesus' name in Hebrew? "Jesus" is the English, but in Hebrew, His name is "Yeshua"--YHWH saves! Moses gave Hoshea the same name that the angel Gabriel would tell Joseph to name his and Mary's son, 1500 years later: Yeshua, Jesus. Moses probably did not know it, but changing Hoshea's name to Yeshua (Joshua) had far-greater significance than simply a change of calling on his life: In Joshua, God is going to demonstrate to His people a pattern of salvation that He would bring to its culmination in His one and only Son, Jesus.
• One of the patterns that Joshua shows us in this book is his place in the story itself. Remember, this book shows us God's redeemed people heading towards God's Promised Land, having to learn to live and fight their battles by faith. And, who leads them the whole way? Joshua. Well, we too are God's redeemed people heading towards the true Promised Land, and who leads us the whole way? Jesus, but Jesus goes beyond Joshua, for He not only leads us but has already secured the victory and the blessings of the Promised Land for us! Jesus is the greater Joshua, and as we see the Israelites following Joshua in these stories, we can read that as a mirror (spiritually, not physically) of us following Jesus through this life.
• Another pattern that we can see in Joshua 3 is Joshua's humiliation and then exaltation by God. Like Joshua was humiliated by his people and they sought to kill him back in Numbers 14, Jesus became one of us and was humiliated by His people as they killed Him. But, like Joshua's humiliation eventually led to God's exaltation of him as the leader the people should follow, Jesus' humiliation eventually led to God "highly exalting Him and bestowing on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Joshua's move from humiliated status to exalted status is the pattern that Jesus' life would follow, 1500 years later.

There are many more instances of this pattern to be seen in this book, and we will hopefully see most as we go through it. For now, remember, as you read this book, Joshua's life and call as the leader of God's people is a type, pattern of Jesus Himself. It is not just in one or two stories but in his whole life. Look for those patterns, and then look to Christ as your Yeshua--the true, ultimate Yeshua.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Rahab's Deception and God's Providence

The passage of the sermon that I will post this coming Sunday is one of the many difficult passages in the books of Joshua and Judges. If you have read the book of Joshua (and Judges), you know there are several difficult stories that present ethical behavior that is challenging (at best) or completely appalling (at worst). I am going to try to address these difficulties in Joshua as we move through this book, but even as I do, we need to remember that almost all of them are secondary issues at best, so I do not plan to bring them up in the sermons. But, I also cannot just leave them unaddressed, so I will try to address them in these posts.

This first thorny issue surrounds Rahab's method of protecting the spies in her house in Jos. 2. She deceives the king of Jericho, telling him that the spies had left, when she was really hiding them on her roof. So, the question that has been debated a lot throughout the history of the Church is: What do we do with that? The NT praises Rahab for her protection of the spies, so how do we reconcile that with her deception here?

First, let me say again, this is not the point of the story at all. This is actually quite a minor detail in the story as a whole, and even the structure of the passage shows us that. The author uses a common Hebrew literary technique called a "chiasm," which looks like this:

     A: Opening information to set up the story

          B: Secondary detail

               C: The point of the passage

          B': Matching secondary detail to parallel the first

     A': Closing information to parallel and close out the opening

There can be more layers in the middle of parallel information, but the point is that the center of a chiasm is the important part of the story--the point of the story, and this literary technique was a way Hebrew authors highlight the most important part of their story. This chapter follows that pattern like this:

     A: V. 1a -- Opening detail telling us Joshua's assignment to the spies
          B: Vv. 2-7 -- Secondary details of how they entered Jericho and were protected
               C: Vv. 8-14 -- Rahab's confession of faith: the point of the story
          B': Vv. 15-21 -- Secondary details of how they left Jericho and escaped
     A: Vv. 22-24 -- Closing detail telling us how the spies report back to Joshua

The beginning and ending hold the passage together, so they are pretty important, but the passage is primarily about Rahab's confession of faith; not her deception. The section that contains her deception is actually the most minor of the passage. So many people get hung up on Rahab's deception and miss her glorious truth that she confesses, and we do not need to get hung up on it.

In fact, I had thought about showing the ways Christians have tried to reconcile the ethics of this passage, but that still gets us distracted from the point even of her actions themselves. If we narrow in on her deception, there is still a bigger and more important theological point: God's providence.

Church family, for Rahab's confession of faith to be genuine and for her actions to be something God uses for good, it is not crucial that we justify her deception. She was a sinner like us. In fact, she was a new believer from a pagan, Canaanite city, so, of course, we should not expect that she have all her ethics straight in her first act of faith. When we do things for God out of faith, we have mixed motives or mixed actions that often, if not always, mix some sin in with the good works we try to do for God. Does that mean God cannot use them? Not at all. Sinful or not, God can use our actions anyway, and Rahab's protection of the spies shows us this. He uses the actions of sinful men and women to bring about His glorious plans (cf. e.g. Ge. 50:20 Ac. 2:23). In fact, since all He has to work with in humanity is sinful men and women, He must be able to use all our actions for His sovereign plan--sinful or not.

Certainly, we cannot use that as an excuse for sinning (cf. Ro. 6:1-2), and certainly we need to think through difficult ethical issues and try to do what is faithful to God's Word. But, the amazing grace and providence of God reminds us that even if we do that and fail, we cannot mess up God's plan; even if we do that and fail, the blood of Christ covers those sins too. So, while we should think through ethical issues and attempt to be faithful to God's Word in the decisions we make, we also can rest in the fact Christ catches us when we fall. This is basically what John says in 1 Jn. 2:1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

In the sermon from the church service that I will post on Sunday, my congregation confessed together what true faith is from the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a 450-year-old reformed set of questions and answers. Well, that catechism also has a very good question and answer about God's providence--Question 27:

Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which He upholds, as with His hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from His fatherly hand.

Friends, we can talk about Rahab's deception and debate whether it was sinful or not (and if you want to talk about it, feel free to ask), but ultimately, what we should see in it is God's providence. He is "God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath" as Rahab confessed, which means He so rules all things that He can use our and Rahab's actions whether sinful or not. He is also the God who grants mercy, as Rahab saw, and He covers all our sins by the blood of Christ when we put our faith in Him. We can rest in that. We can try to live a faithful life and fight the battles of this Christian life as best we can resting in that truth.

But, one might respond and ask as the Heidelberg asks in question 64:

Q. But doesn’t this teaching make people indifferent and wicked?
A. No. It is impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude.

As we will see in Rahab on Sunday, when God works true faith in our hearts, we will want to serve Him, we will want to live for Him out of gratitude. But, we will also fail in that. When we do, We have His promises in places like 1 Jn. 2:1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Joshua in History

Wow, it has been quite a long time since I have had a chance to write. I apologize for being MIA for so long. It has been quite a busy past few months while my senior pastor has been on sabbatical, and I have barely had enough time to get done what I have needed to get done for my family and church over the past few months, so I have just let writing fall to the wayside. I still do not have a lot of time to write presently, but I have also recently finished a sermon series at my church (GCPC), and it should give me enough for a couple of posts per week for a while.

The sermon series was called "Joshua: Fight the Good Fight of the Faith," and it is the story of the battles of the Christian life from the book of Joshua. Each week I wrote a short devotional that went out as an email to my church, which related to the passage on which the sermon was focused and, of course, preached a sermon from that passage. So, I will put all that up here as the weeks progress

The first weekly devotional for this series was a short summary of the historical debates and issues surrounding the book of Joshua. I argued that it is a reliable source of history that matches up well with what we know of Canaan and the ancient Near East in the second millennium BC. This historical basis is important because if it is just tales, then it does not actually teach us about the true God or tell us what He has done, so there is no reason for us to care about it. Legend does not help us in the Christian life. So, here it is. On Sunday I will post the first sermon entitled, "Be Strong and Courageous."
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This Sunday we start our summer sermon series, which will go through the book of Joshua. And, any time we take a look at Scripture, particular the books of the Old Testament, it is helpful and even necessary to address the question of the historicity of the book.

Joshua is the book that tells the story of God's people entering the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua, after the exodus from Egypt and forty years of wandering in the wilderness under Moses. Yet, the book of Joshua is much more than the story of God's people beginning the conquest of the land of Canaan: it is history and presents itself as history. In fact, as I will talk more about in the sermon posted Sunday, it is prophetic history--historical events recorded not merely to inform us of what happened but to proclaim a message from God Himself to us, a message that has much to teach us about our spiritual battles and the Christian life.

However, like many or even most Old Testament books, the historical truthfulness of the book of Joshua has come under fire in recent times, and since that is the case, it is necessary for us to talk briefly about its history and why we can trust it.

Much of the claim that the book of Joshua is "closer to fiction than it is history" comes from the fact that there is little archaeological evidence and historical documentation to corroborate what Scripture tells us. Now, hidden in this objection is the idea that Scripture itself is not history and therefore cannot be taken as historical evidence in its own right. That is a dubious assumption, to say the least, and it commits the logical fallacy of "begging the question" (i.e. failing to prove what it assumes). Many great books have been written on the historical veracity of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament (e.g. Kingdom of Priests is a good one), so I will not take that up here. It is too broad of a subject to address in this post, but keep in mind that since Scripture presents itself as history, when someone claims it is not, the burden of proof is on them to show that Scripture contradicts established, historical facts. It is not enough to say, "Well, there is no corroborating evidence," for that is an argument from silence or it assumes that historians are in possession of every bit of ancient historical evidence, which, of course, we know they are not. There is still much discovery to be done when it comes to archaeology and ancient history, and saying that there is no or little corroborating evidence to date is not a sufficient objection. The objector must prove that there is well-established, irrefutable evidence that contradicts the Bible before they can say, "Yes, the Bible presents itself as history, but we should not take it that way."

When I preached on Exodus last summer, I wrote about the historical evidence for the exodus from Egypt here, which might be a good place to start for extra reading. In that article, I argued for a date of 1446 BC for the exodus from Egypt, which has been questioned in recent times, and I address those objections to that date in the article, showing why it is biblical and fits the historical evidence from the time.

Given the date of 1446 BC for the exodus and the fact that the Scriptures tell us God's people wandered in the desert for forty years after that, that puts the date of the beginning of the conquest of the land of Canaan at 1406 BC. So, the main question then is: Is there verifiable archaeological and/or historical evidence that contradicts that date? If not, then there is no good reason to believe that what the Bible presents is not true history. A secondary question is: Is there corroborating evidence for this date? So, let's look at those two questions briefly:

In answer to the first (Is there verifiable archaeological and/or historical evidence that contradicts that date?): no, but that is not always the answer some scholars try to give. However, let me give a couple of reasons why the answer to that question is "No, there is no evidence that contradicts that Bible":

• Some scholars have argued that there is no archaeological evidence for a large-scale destruction of Canaanite cities until ca. 1250 BC. Given that, it is argued, the story of Joshua and Israel's conquest of Canaan in Scripture cannot be squared with archaeology, so the book his not historical. However, such an argument flat-out ignores the biblical account of Israel's conquest of Canaan. That argument assumes that the Israelites would have followed traditional conquest patterns of the time (i.e. complete destruction of cities) instead of taking seriously how Scripture describes the conquest:
• Joshua was specifically told by God only to destroy completely Jericho, Ai, and Hazor. The other cities were specifically not to be destroyed so that the Israelites would have places to live when "all was said and done" (cf. e.g. Dt. 6:10-11; 19:1). So, we should not expect there to be any evidence for a large-scale destruction of the cities in Canaan ca. 1406 BC. In fact, the archaeological evidence for a large-scale destruction ca. 1250 BC could easily be attributed to the severe oppression of Israel during the time of Deborah in the book of Judges.
• In addition, renown archaeologist John Garstangs's excavation of Jericho shows that the walls of the city fell outward and that it was probably destroyed ca. 1400 BC (though this date is still debated among archaeologists), both of which fit the biblical data quite well.
• Furthermore, Yigael Yadin's work in the excavation of Hazor (cf. Jos. 11) has shown that it was leveled in also around 1400 BC, which again comports well with the Bible's story and chronology.
• Dating the conquest to 1406 BC does fit what little archaeological and historical evidence in Canaan that we have.
• Furthermore, the biblical story of the conquest of Canaan also fits well with the surround events in the other nations of the ancient Near East (ANE). In fact, when the surrounding history is viewed with an eye that looks for God's providential hand, ca. 1400 BC was the perfect time for the conquest. All of the major powers surrounding Canaan that could have hindered Israel were all preoccupied somehow, which left Canaan ripe for conquest:
• The Hittites (a major power) and Mitannites were at war, and even if the Hittites could have fought on two fronts, they would not press into Canaan for fear of angering Egypt (who had claim to Canaan at the time through treaties with the peoples there).
• Syria was brought under Hittite control during this time, so it posed no threat to Israel in Canaan.
• Assyria and Egypt had entered into a treaty, so Assyria would not risk that treaty by interfering with Canaanites affairs.
• And, even though Egypt had claim to Canaan ca. 1400 BC, it was disinterested in Canaan because Amenhotep III (1417-1379 BC) had turned inward to focus on hunting and arts, and Amenhotep IV (1379-1362 BC) was engaged in religious pursuits and disinterested in Canaan as well. In fact, Burnaburias II of the Kassites wrote a letter to Amenhotep IV (1370 BC) complaining about the shoddy treatment of his messengers that traveled through Canaan (a letter which does not appear to have received a response), and the description in the letter fits the biblical account of the time of the Judges after the conquest.
• As the historian and biblical scholar Eugene H. Merrill says, "The other side of the coin of Egyptian indifference to Canaanite affairs surely has to be the hand of Yahweh, who provided exactly the right circumstances in which His people could possess the land He had promised them."

In answer to the second question: (Is there corroborating evidence for the conquest?): perhaps, though it is not so solid that we can say without a doubt that the documentation of the time refers directly to the Bible's account of the conquest:

• At this time, there was a group of people known as the 'Apiru or Habiru (in the Canaanite language). They do not appear to be an ethnic group (i.e. a race like Hebrews or Hittites) but probably a social class, specifically: mercenaries. There exists a series of letters coming from Canaan to Egypt pleading for help defending against the 'Apiru called the Amarna Letters, and these letters have been dated to ca. 1400-1350 BC. (Egypt did not respond to any of them, by the way, because the Pharaohs described above were disinterested in Canaan and ignored them.) Now, it is clear that these people are not to be fully identified with the Israelites, however, given that their name is remarkably linguistically similar to the word "Hebrew" in Canaanite, it is possible that the Canaanites may have confused the Hebrews with the 'Apiru and perhaps some of the Amarna Letters are really referring to the Hebrews. This would make sense for the Canaanites probably would not have been able to distinguish between peoples attacking them from the outside, especially when their names were so similar.
• There are several Amarna Letters that sound almost exactly like parts of the biblical account of the conquest. Merrill collects several of these together in his book Kingdom of Priests and shows how they fit quite well with the biblical account of the Israelite ownership of Shechem, the defeat of Megiddo, the account of the enslavement of the inhabitants of Gezer by Ephraim of Israel, and the taking of part of Jerusalem by Judah. So, some of the Amarna Letters could very well refer to the Hebrews and not the actual 'Apiru.
• In fact, this possible confusion of the 'Apiru with the Hebrews might explain why the OT very rarely shows the Israelites using "Hebrew" for self-reference--they almost never called themselves "Hebrews." They would not call themselves something that would confuse them with a social class of mercenaries. This confusion also could explain 1 Sa. 13:3, 6-7; 14:21, which distinguish the Hebrews from the Israelites (where these distinguished Hebrews really 'Apiru?).

So, while the 'Apiru cannot be completely identified with the Hebrews, some of the Amarna letters may, in fact, describe the Hebrews (being confused with the 'Apiru). And, even if they do not, they do not contradict the biblical account at all.

As stated above, when one wants to question this historical truthfulness of the book of Joshua, one has to show that it contradicts established, verified archaeological and historical evidence. Hopefully, the above overview shows that it does not, but, in fact, what little extra-biblical data there is for Canaan ca. 1400 BC fits quite well with Scripture and may even offer support for its account of the conquest in the book of Joshua.

On Sunday, we will begin looking at the narrative itself and see how it can fortify us for the Christian life.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Exodus: A Great Salvation -- The Egyptians Favorably Disposed

In the next and final post in this series, the sermon will discuss the tenth plague and the Passover. Part of the passage I did not have time to discuss is the part where the Hebrews "plunder the Egyptians" because God makes the Egyptians "favorably disposed" towards the people in order to give them their valuables. This is an interesting turn in the story. Ever since Ex. 5:2, Pharaoh's heart has gotten harder and harder towards God and the people, and God was sovereign over that, as we saw in the last sermon. Yet, we also see in our passage for Sunday that God will sovereignly make the Egyptians favorable to the Hebrews. Listen to how D.A. Carson talks about this part of the passage:

THE CRUSHING PLAGUES have followed their ordained sequence. Repeatedly, Pharaoh hardened his heart; yet, however culpable this man was, God sovereignly moved behind the scenes, actually warning Pharaoh, implicitly inviting repentance. For instance, through Moses God had already said to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go” (9:16-17). Yet now Pharaoh’s patience entirely collapses. He warns Moses that he is not to appear in the court again: “The day you see my face you will die” (10:28). 

So the stage is set for the last plague, the greatest and worst of all. After the previous nine disasters, one would think that Moses’ description of what would happen (Ex. 11) would prompt Pharaoh to hesitate. But he refuses to listen (11:9); and all this occurs, God says “so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt” (11:9). 

In Exodus 11 – 12 there is yet another almost incidental description of God’s sovereign provision. Exodus 11 tells us, almost parenthetically, that “the LORD made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people” (11:3). This is followed in Exodus 12 by the description of the Egyptians urging the Israelites to leave the country (12:33). One can understand the rationale: how many more plagues like this last one could they endure? At the same time, the Israelites ask for clothing and silver and gold. “The LORD had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians” (12:36). 

Psychologically, it is easy enough, after the event, to explain all this. In addition to the fear the Israelites now incited among the Egyptians, perhaps guilt was also operating: who knows? “We owe them something.” Psychologically, of course, one could have concocted a quite different scenario: in a fit of rage, the Egyptians massacre the people whose leader and whose God have brought such devastating slaughter among them.
In reality, however, the ultimate reason why things turn out this way is because of the powerful hand of God: the Lord himself made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people. 

This is the element that is often overlooked by sociologists and others who treat all of culture like a closed system. They forget that God may intervene, and turn the hearts and minds of the people. Massive revival that transforms the value systems of the West is now virtually inconceivable to those enamored with closed systems. But if God graciously intervenes and makes the people “favorably disposed” to the preaching of the Gospel….

Check out the original post over at the Gospel Coalition's website, and remember that God is sovereign over the human heart and will bring the fruit of the gospel wherever He chooses. This world is not a closed system. As Father Christmas said in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, "Aslan is on the move!" and all the snow and the ice is melting.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Exodus: A Great Salvation -- The Source of the Plagues

In the sermon of the next post, we will take a look at the first nine plagues that God unleashes on Egypt in order to drive Pharaoh to release His people. One thing that often comes up with the subject of the plagues of Ex. 7-12 is whether the plagues were divine intervention from God or just natural disasters that the Egyptians misinterpreted. Modern minds that want to deny any supernatural intervention in our universe have come up with all sorts of attempts to explain them naturally, but all of those attempts fail. I did not have time to go over that in the sermon that will be in the next post, so here we will look at why such attempts cannot explain the biblical data adequately.

First, we should note that in some of the miraculous events in Scripture God does use natural causes in supernatural ways. In some cases, God does appear to be using the laws of nature, but He uses them in a way that would be highly improbable or next to impossible without His divine intervention. Take, for example, the crossing of the Red Sea in Ex. 14. There the text tells us specifically how God divided the sea: "the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided." (v. 21) Do you see God's use of natural forces there? God used wind that blew all night long to divide the water and dry the ground. Now, technically that is possible given the right environmental factors, but the timing, magnitude, and duration of the wind makes it not logical to believe it happened merely by chance. To say it happened by chance, we would have to say that "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea" (v. 21) at just the right moment (and he knew to do that how?), we would have to say that the wind blew all night long at just the right magnitude and in just the right direction without varying at all (no lulls in the wind at all), and we would have to say that after all the Hebrews had made it through again "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea" (v. 27) at just the right moment when the wind stopped (again, he knew to do that how?) and the water came crashing down on the Egyptians. Such a sequence of perfectly timed events is really not possible with God's invention, even though He did use the forces of nature. Well, the same reasoning can apply to the plagues: even if there is a natural component to some or all of them, the timing, magnitude, and duration of events shows that the divine hand of God must be behind them.

Let's look at one of the most sophisticated attempts to explain the plagues naturally. Greta Hort published the best attempt to give natural explanations to all the plagues in "The Plagues of Egypt" in 1958 (in the German journal Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, pp. 48-59), and it is often still referenced by those who try to attribute the plagues to natural events. Her theory can be summarized as follows:

1. Massive flooding in the Abyssinian plateau upstream from Egypt washed red clay into the Nile, and that clay, combined with two particular types of algae, made the Nile appear "blood red." And, in the fish that died from the pollution of the Nile, anthrax bread, which comes into play in the successive plagues.
2. Frogs left the uninhabitable Nile, invading Egypt, but the frogs were infected with anthrax and so they soon died as well.
3. As floodwaters receded, the pools and dead frogs became a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes (more likely than gnats) and flies, both of which were infected by anthrax as well.
4. The mosquitoes bit humans and animals, and animals consume the flies, so both became infected with anthrax as well--it killed the animals that ingested them and infected the skin of the humans that were bitten.
5. In the seventh plague, the hail was just an extreme weather condition that destroyed crops.
6. In the eighth plague, the locusts bred as a result of the extremely wet ground from the hail and rain.
7. Finally, the darkness was a sandstorm (which, Hort claims, is why Bible says in 10:21 that it could be "felt").

I hope that while simply reading through those, you can already see how they are thoroughly unconvincing unless you are really looking for a reason to deny supernatural involvement by God. Here is an article that shows the many scientific inaccuracies in this theory (like the types of algae, what animals anthrax can infect, etc.). But, as mentioned above, such an attempt to create a purely natural chain of events (that breaks down after plague six, by the way) cannot at all account for the timing, magnitude, and duration of the plagues, so we do not even need to dig deep into the details to show that this does not work (though the article linked above is still worth a read):

1. The Nile turned to blood "in the sight of Pharaoh" (7:20), i.e. not gradually from an upstream flow, and it was not just the Nile but "all the water in Egypt" (7:20) and "even in the vessels of wood and in the vessels of stone" (7:19). Did Moses go upstream, see the red water flowing, run quickly (at 80 years old) down to Pharaoh, grab his attention, and then claim it was a plague from God? How did it get in all the surface water everywhere in Egypt?
2. The frogs came at least a week later (7:25), which is a long time to tolerate an uninhabitable river. Furthermore, the frogs did not come out gradually, but the Nile "swarmed with frogs" (8:3) and those frogs were so numerous "covered the land of Egypt" (8:6) so that they were everywhere, even in kneading bowls and ovens (8:3). So, that many millions of frogs were just sitting on the bottom of the (uninhabitable) Nile ready to march out at Moses' command?
3. The "biting insects" (mosquitoes probably more likely than gnats) of the third plague did not emerge gradually from cesspools but out of the dust of the ground when Aaron smacked it with his staff. And, it was not just a few insects but swarms that covered man and beast (8:17). Here also, even the magicians realized it was the "finger of God" (8:19). So, Moses saw the eggs were about to hatch and quickly commanded Aaron to smack the ground near some to claim a miracle?
4. The flies of the fourth plague were not breeding concurrently with the mosquitoes in the cesspools but a distinct plague that came out of the air. It was also not just a few flies but swarms to the point where "the houses of the Egyptians were filled with swarms of flies" (8:21). And, finally here, Goshen was protected from the flies. How exactly could that many flies in that timing come from cesspools? Furthermore, why would such flies avoid Goshen?
5. Here, it is claimed that anthrax killed the livestock. Perhaps that could be true, but it was all the livestock (9:6) and one would wonder if really every single one would have been infected. Furthermore, again, the Hebrews' livestock were fine (9:4). How could a disease like anthrax be so selective?
6. The boils did not arise slowly and gradually as the result of mosquitoes transferring anthrax but immediately after Moses tossed the soot in the air. (9:8-9). And, again, only the "all the Egyptians" were infected (9:11). How could it have been so abrupt? How could it have been so selective as to avoid the Hebrews?
7. Here, the causality link in Hort's theory breaks down. She just has to say that for some reason the first six things happened and then a storm "such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now" (9:18) just happened to arise. And, it came when Moses "stretched out his hand toward heaven" (9:22). Did Moses just happen to time it perfectly? Did he just somehow know the storm of the millennium was coming?
8. The locusts did not breed and arise gradually from more cesspools created by the storms, but when Moses stretched out his hand (10:13) they came in one an "east wind" (10:13) and they "covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened" (10:15). When God was done, He sent a strong "west wind" that "drove them into the Red Sea" (10:19). Again, here her theory fails to account for the timing, magnitude, and duration.
9. While a sandstorm that lasts for three days has happened, such a theory cannot account for "pitch darkness" (10:22) again when Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven (10:22). Did he just happen to see the sandstorm coming and run quickly to Pharaoh, throw his hand in the air, and claim it was a plague? How did it plunge the land into "pitch darkness"? And, again, why was Goshen not affected by this darkness/storm (10:23)?
10. And, the tenth plague is not really the subject this week, but Hort says the tenth plague was not the death of the firstborn but the destruction of the last remains of the "first-fruits" of the harvest. And "due to a corruption of the Bible text" the word "firstborn" was misinterpreted. Yet, that completely ignores the context of Ex. 11:1-13:6, which describes in great detail the death of the firstborn. So, was the whole text "corrupted" but somehow created a cogent story line? And, how does Hort know what the original said since she claims we do not have it?

I hope now you can see how this attempt and others that claim natural causes for all the plagues are woefully inadequate. One does not even need to dig into the scientific detail but merely read the text to see that is the case.

So, could God have used natural forces in a supernatural way to bring about these plagues? Sure, He could have at least at some points, but the point is that the timing, magnitude, and duration of the plagues make purely natural explanations require more faith on our part than simply taking Scripture at its word. No, the plagues were real, judgment events that came from the hand of God. And, in the sermon of the next post, we will talk about what that means for us.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Exodus: A Great Salvation -- Our Bridegroom of Blood

In the next sermon in this series, which will be posted later this week, we'll talk about the call of Moses, and since we have limited time in the story of the exodus, I cannot address everything in chapters 3-4. One of the things that I had to skip in the sermon is the rather difficult verses of Ex. 4:24-26. In the context of the story, Moses has argued with God about taking his call to bring the people out of Egypt, but by 4:17 Moses finally accepts his call. Then, in 4:18-20 Moses gets permission from his father-in-law to leave, and in 4:21-23, God tells Moses that Pharaoh will not agree to let the people go, indeed God Himself will harden his heart (cf. Ro. 9:14-18). So, things seems to be tracking along just fine. But, then, seemingly out of the blue, 4:24-26 comes into the story:

²⁴ At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. ²⁵ Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” ²⁶ So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.

When we come to that, reading through the story as normal, we are generally surprised by it, even after knowing the story, because we wonder, "What is God doing here? God has just called Moses to deliver the people, so why does He seek to kill him here?" It does not seem to fit at all, at least as first brush.

We must first ask, "Why is God angry at Moses?" Well, the text does not say directly, but it seems pretty clear that God is angry at Moses for not circumcising his son--Gershom. That's clear enough to Zipporah, for she immediately acts to correct the sin without any overt prompting from God Himself, and she saves Moses' life. (By the way, one thing I have not had time to bring out so far is that throughout these first four chapters, all the heroes in various situations of dire need have actually all been heroines, i.e. women. This is one thing that sets the Scriptures apart from almost all other ancient documents: it is not afraid to show God working through women, who were not at all seen as equal to men in these ancient cultures. To make a woman the heroine would have been embarrassing to almost all ancient cultures, certainly ancient near eastern cultures. Such a factor lends to the historical veracity of these stories because if an ancient person were making them up, they would not put these "embarrassing" details in the stories.)

But, that prompts the question: Why was that so important that God would seek to kill Moses for not doing circumcising Gershom? Moses argued with God, and He was patient with him. Yet, when he did not circumcise his son, He became angry to the point of death. Why is that? To answer that, we have to remember that circumcision was no minor thing with God but the distinguishing mark that set apart His people who were part of His covenant community. It was the visible proof of being one of God's people that went all the way back to Abraham in Ge. 17. Therefore, if Moses intended to serve the God who was about to deliver His people based on His covenant promise to Abraham, Moses needed to fulfill his covenant obligations and circumcise his son. In fact, later on, the Hebrews all have to do the same thing before they celebrate the Passover and are delivered from Egypt (Ex. 12:43-49). Not doing so is kind of like wanting "to have your cake and eat it too": i.e. I want the covenant benefits but without fulfilling the obligations. In fact, even here we can be pointed to the gospel obligations of obedience to Christ: if we want Him to be our Savior, He also must be our Lord (cf. Js. 2:14-17; 1 Jn. 3:10). This does not mean our salvation is at all dependent on our works, for it is most certainly by grace through faith alone, but faith that does not seek to obey Christ is "dead faith" as James says, and not true, saving faith. As the Westminster Confession of Faith says in 11.2: "Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love." Faith alone saves, but saving faith is never alone.

Now, getting back to Moses: not only did Moses need to be obedient to the covenant if he was to be the leader of God's people but circumcision also had a lesson in and of itself that Moses needed to learn. One of the reasons God instituted circumcision as His sign that set His people apart as His covenant community is that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (He. 9:22). In other words, God was teaching Moses through this encounter the basic element of salvation: the shedding of blood. Moses was placed under the shadow of death for his sin of neglecting God's covenant sign and then saved by the blood of that sign. Moses needed to learn that sin cannot be forgiven without the shedding of blood. In fact, this whole experience was a test (much like Abraham learned in Ge. 22 when he was called to sacrifice Isaac), showing Moses firsthand what ultimate salvation would require--the shedding of the blood of a Substitute. But, who is this Substitute?

As odd as it may sound, these verses point us to Jesus Himself. Every human is under God's wrath because we have failed to keep His laws in total. As Paul says in Ro. 3:23-25, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith." A "propitiation" is a sacrifice that satisfies God's wrath against sin. That was what was needed temporarily for Moses, and it is what is needed for all who would desire peace with God. Yet, in our case, we do not have to shed our own blood or the blood of an animal (for those can never take away sins altogether, He. 10:4), but the very blood of Christ Himself satisfies God's wrath for us. Jesus is, in a sense, our "bridegroom of blood," who satisfied God's wrath with His blood for us, so God relented just as He did with Moses. Jesus is the ultimate and final Substitute. It was the "circumcision of Christ" (Col. 2:11) that satisfied God's wrath against us. Let us praise Him for His sacrifice, and even in this strange text, be reminded of what He has done for us.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Exodus: A Great Salvation -- The Supreme Court, Exodus, and the Gospel

Note: This was written as a devotional for my congregation on June 26, the day the results of Obergefell v. Hodges were announced. So, it is a little behind; yet it still applies today.

So, anyone who has been on Facebook or kept an eye on the news for the past few hours probably knows by now that the Supreme Court ruled that States are required to license a marriage between two people of the same sex. And, of course, since then the Internet has exploded with articles and opinion pieces on this topic, which is not really surprising. So far, Russell Moore has a very good response "Why the church should neither cave nor panic about the decision on gay marriage." And, the Exodus story is relevant to the situation the Church is entering.

We do not need to cave or panic. Yes, this will likely mean more persecution for Christians in America as the ramifications of this decision play themselves out. But, let's sit back and take a historical perspective. Rarely has the true, invisible Church existed in an environment where the culture around them was not hostile to their beliefs (and Jesus warned us of this), and God has continued to sustain, love, and care for His Church in whatever environment they live. The Hebrew people had to learn this in Ex. 1-2, and the Church has learned it ever since. Persecution has never stopped God's people or the spread of the gospel. In fact, it has only served to fuel the spread. We have seen this in Ex. 1, the book of Acts, the Roman persecutions of the early Church, the Reformation, and even today in places like Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. And, this is because the life of the Church is not in our selves, our strength, or anything else from us at all. The life of the Church is the resurrection life of Christ, against which even the gates of hell cannot prevail. As Russell Moore said in the above article, "The Supreme Court can do many things, but the Supreme Court cannot get Jesus back in that tomb." Nothing can stop the Church, and Christ will continue to sustain and protect His Bride until He returns again to take her home.

And, speaking of home, that is another aspect of the Exodus story and our lives as the Church that we need to remember. Yes, this latest decision will likely mean greater persecution for us as a Church and as individuals, but that should remind us that the gospel shows us that this world is not our home. He. 11:26 tells us that Moses "considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." Even Moses knew that the promises of God and the coming Redeemer were greater than all the treasures of Egypt. Why? Because he knew that this world is not his home. The "reward" towards which he was looking is told to us by the author of Hebrews in v. 16: "a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." Moses and all of God's people have "a better country, that is, a heavenly one" coming--the new heavens and the new earth. Jesus, through His work of redemption, has secured for us a home that far surpasses this world in every category, and while we may suffer here for Christ because we stand with Him against our culture, as the gospel tells us, "The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." Yes, we may suffer in the future as the implications from today play themselves out, but that suffering should remind us that this world is not our home. We are strangers and foreigners here, exiles as Peter puts it, but that is only for a short time. America is not really our country but simply a place to sojourn for a while on this earth. We have "a better country, that is, a heavenly one" coming. Christ secured it; the gospel displays it.

Now, I know this might worry you, for even though we know that God will not let His Church die and that we have a better country coming, we still have to see our children grow up in a world hostile to the things we teach them. Yet, we must also remember here that to God our children are holy, and He loves them more than we do. Perhaps life will be hard for them--harder than it was for us--but instead of focusing on that hardship that will come, let's display before them confidence in God's sovereignty, and as we do, perhaps it will help us to live more free from worry. Let's show them that we know God has this country in His hands and the He turns the heart of the "king" however He chooses. Let's show them that He loves and cares for all His people, so much so that He knows how many hairs are on our heads and when one falls He knows (a reality for me that becomes more and more vivid with each passing year). Let's show them that Christ loves His Bride and sacrifices everything for her by living marriages that are sacrificial and serving before them. Or, if you are single, our children can still see quite clearly in your life that Jesus is more important and valuable than any relationship in this world, so please, show them that. Let's show them that we are looking forward to a better country and therefore God is not ashamed to be our God, even if our culture is ashamed to have us in it. Let's show them that the gospel is the true hope of every individual in this country and that they will never be satisfied until they drink of Christ, therefore we still need to be lights and salt for Him so that when the sexual revolution has left our culture bankrupt, the gospel is right there waiting for them. And, let's look forward explicitly to the new heavens and new earth, showing them that we long for that world which is our true and eternal home and that the sufferings of Christ are nothing in comparison. Perhaps as we display that in our homes and in our worship at church and fervently pray for the next generation of Christians, the stark contrast between a bankrupt culture and a full, life-giving gospel will sink down into their hearts, so much so that they will be the next generation that carries the spreading of God's kingdom forward, for His glory and our good.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Exodus: A Great Salvation -- History and the Exodus

This past summer I had the pleasure of preaching a series on the first twelve chapters of the book of Exodus--i.e. the story of the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt. I have not had a chance to post my devotions and sermons for this series yet, so since the series is now over, I am really behind, but better late than never. Now, since there is a lot of historical debate surrounding this event, I think it might be helpful to talk briefly about some of those issues and explain why the exodus is a historical event.

First, I must confess, I have not yet see the latest movie about the Exodus--Exodus: God and Kings--so I cannot necessarily speak to its accuracy one way or another. However, since the two main characters are Moses and Ramses, and the movie seems to claim that Moses and Ramses were raised as brothers, it is probably not much more accurate than The 10 Commandments. Such a character cast shows that they assume a very late date for the exodus event (in the 13th century BC), which does not fit with or take seriously the biblical evidence. But, hopefully you do not expect much from Hollywood when it comes to historical accuracy of movies made about biblical events. :) So, that being said, what I talk about here is not meant to correct anything in those movies, at least not intentionally. What we need to talk about is some prevailing opinions among scholars surrounding the historicity of this biblical event.

Exodus is much more than a story, for it presents itself as history, so we should interpret as history. Yet, there are many scholars who look at Scripture and Egyptian history and claim, as Baruch Halpern uncharitably stated, "the actual evidence concerning the Exodus resembles the evidence for the unicorn." Now, certainly not all scholars agree with that sentiment, but many do, so it would be helpful for us to overview why the exodus story should be viewed as history and how it fits with exra-biblical evidence.

Much of the claim that the exodus is closer to fiction and that it is history comes from the fact that there is little historical evidence to corroborate what Scripture tells us. Now, hidden in this objection is the idea that Scripture is not history and therefore cannot be taken as historical evidence in its own right. That is a dubious assumption, to say the least, and many great books have been written on the historical veracity of Scripture and particularly the Old Testament (e.g. Kingdom of Priests is a good one), so I will not take that up here. It is too broad of a subject to address in this email, but keep in mind that since Scripture presents itself as history, when someone makes such a claim, the burden of proof is on them to show that Scripture contradicts established, historical facts. It is not enough to say, "Well, there is no corroborating evidence," for that is an argument from silence or assumes that historians are in possession of every bit of ancient historical evidence, which, of course, we know they are not. There is still much discovery to be done when it comes to ancient history, so saying that there is no corroborating evidence to date is not a sufficient objection. The objector must prove that there is well-established, irrefutable evidence that contradicts the Bible before they can say, "Yes, the Bible presents itself as history, but we should not take it that way."

That being said, we do need to address the objection that there is no corroborating evidence. Even though the burden of proof is on the critic, we need to be able to give reasons for why this might appear to be case. So, is it true that there isno corroborating evidence for the Scripture's account of the exodus? It is true that there is little corroborating, extra-biblical evidence for the exodus, but that does not mean there is no evidence. That is overstating the matter. To explain this further, we will look at it in two ways: the Egyptian worldview and why they did not record the events of the exodus; and how the exodus fits the historical data that we do have from ancient Egypt.

First, the Egyptian worldview: Some have claimed that if the exodus was a real, historical event, we would see it in the annals of Egyptian history. That claim is not nearly as strong as it sounds initially for two reasons:

• First, the events of the exodus show the God of the Jews battling against the gods of the Egyptians, and, to put it bluntly, the gods of the Egyptians were decisively defeated. Furthermore, the events of the exodus show a shepherd--Moses--going up against the most powerful man in the world--Pharaoh--and, again to put it bluntly, Pharaoh was decisively defeated. Now, let me ask you: If you were an Egyptian Pharaoh, would you have your historians record that? Perhaps today we in our modern times attempt to be more "dispassionate" about events that occur, but ancient peoples generally did not do that, particularly the Egyptians (the Bible being one of the previous few exceptions). Embarrassing history was generally left out of the records. So, when the God of a rag-tag group of slaves successfully defeats the most powerful nation in the world of the time, common sense tells us that we should not expect that nation to keep that record for all posterity to see.
• Second, the Egyptian worldview in particular would have demanded they not record such a devastating defeat. G. Wheeler has argued quite convincingly that the ancient Egyptian worldview would have found it almost impossible to record for succeeding generations anything about the exodus, the plagues, or any other events that showed the weakness of Egypt and particularly its Pharaoh. The reason for this is that Egyptians believed that writing was an act of the actual creation of reality--that written words actually brought into being the things they recorded. So, from the Egyptian worldview, writing had the power to control the forces of the cosmos, making things become what they recorded. In their worldview, to put the absolutely domination of the God of the Jews over the gods of Egypt into writing, not to mention the killing of the firstborn as well as other plagues, would cement those events into reality and give them power to harm future Egypt. Therefore, we, again, should not expect an Egyptian Pharaoh or his historians to have recorded such devastating events.

Given the events of the Exodus and the Egyptian worldview, it is simply unreasonable to demand that there be large amounts of explicit corroborating evidence in the annals of Egyptian history and to make that the judge of veracity of Scripture's record. Instead, we need to look at how well the Bible's history fits with what is available from Egyptian history.

Second, how the exodus fits in history: While there is little, direct historical evidence outside of Scripture for the exodus, that does not mean there is no evidence or that Scripture is not valid historical evidence in itself. K. Kitchen, a renowned Egyptologist, makes a good historical argument in On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Kitchen argues at length for the historical reasonableness of the biblical stories of how the Israelites got into Egypt, how they lasted there for four centuries, and how they left. His argument is too extensive to reproduce here, so I will just show how the exodus fits what is known of ancient Egypt.

In the Bible's chronology, it is fairly easy to pinpoint the probable date of the exodus. A solid reference point in biblical history comes from 1 Kings 6:1, “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt…” This is how Solomon’s building of the Temple begins, and it is almost universally agreed that this occurred in the year 966 BC. Working backwards, that puts the date of the exodus at 1446 BC, which places it during the reign of Amenhotep II of the 18th dynasty of Egypt. Many things during this period fit quite well with the biblical account:

• If we take this 15th century date for the exodus, the Jews would have serving as slaves under Amenhotep I or Thutmose I (the former died and the latter arose in 1526 BC) when Moses was born (1526 BC), and Egyptian history shows both of them (and later pharaohs during Moses' life) engaging in major building projects in the Nile Delta, which would have required a massive slave-labor force and fits the work commanded by the Pharoah of Ex. 1.
• The daughter of Thutmose I was named Hatshepsut, and she may have been the princess who pulled Moses out of the water. History shows her to be the one princess on record bold enough to defy her father's edict, and it would have taken such a bold princess to adopt Moses.
• Later in Egyptian history, Hatshepsut married Thutmose II (her half brother) whose son was Thutmose III. Since Hatshepsut had no natural sons, if she was the princess who adopted Moses, he would have been a threat to Thutmose III and his right to the throne of Egypt. Furthermore, for some time, Thutmose III and Hatshepsut served as co-regents/co-Pharaohs over Egypt, which would have only heighten the tension between Thutmose III and the threat to his throne--Moses. Such tension fits well with Moses' need to flee Ex. 2:11-15. Since Moses was a member of the royal court, a murder of a random Egyptian would not have been an issue, unless Pharaoh (i.e. Thutmose III) was looking for an excuse to get rid of a threat like Moses. This also fits the timing in Egyptian history because Moses would have fled in 1486 BC, after Egyptian records show that Thutmose III had sole rule and while Hatshepsut was very old and close to death, i.e. without much influence anymore and not able to protect her adopted son.
• Moses was exiled for 40 years which was about the time Thutmose III ruled (dying in 1450 BC, just four years before Moses returned for God). Had Moses even wanted to return, he would not have been able to until after Thutmose III died. And, of all of the Pharaohs on record, his reign is the only one long enough for Moses to have had to stay away for 40 years. So, this also fits well with biblical history.
• Next, as stated above, Amenhotep II was probably the Pharaoh ruling when God freed His people from Egypt, and there is strong evidence Egyptian records for great military decline under Amenhotep II. He had been making aggressive military campaigns into Canaan for years, and then in 1446 BC he abruptly stopped before his conquering of Canaan was complete. The Egyptians records do not record the reason he stopped, but since 1446 BC is the date of the exodus, this fits quite well with the drowning of much of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea (Ex. 14). After such an event, Pharaoh would not have had the manpower to continue any forays into enemy territory.
• And, finally, Amenhotep II did not pass his reign to oldest son but to his second son. This would have only occurred in an Egyptian dynasty if the oldest son had suffered an untimely death. Could this have been the aftermath of the tenth plague? Amenhotep II was likely the Pharaoh ruling during the plagues, and therefore he would have lost his oldest son to the angel of death. So, this also fits quite well with biblical history.

Now, granted, all the the above is a series of circumstantial events, yet it does show that if we take the biblical evidence seriously and compare it to Egyptian history, they fit together quite well. And, given that, as I have argued above, we should not expect direct evidence in the Egyptian records, this is the kind of case that must be made.

So, while biblical historians cannot muster huge amounts of corroborating evidence for the exodus, the evidence that does exist does not contradict biblical history and, in fact, fits quite well with everything that is known about Egyptian history of the 15th century BC. Exodus is history, and as we study it we will see the amazing things that God has done in the history of the Israelites, which is also our history as Christians.

By His Grace,
Taylor