A Kingdom of Priests

The Story Thus Far

So we begin our story of the story of the Bible today in the middle of things. Last time we met we learned about Father Abraham. Abraham and his wife Sarah left their people, their country, their way of life, and all that they held dear to follow the promises of a then unknown god. On the face of it that sounds like a crazy story, doesn’t it? In response to some vision or auditory perception (remember we don’t know how God communicated to Abraham) he just left it all behind. That’s pretty incredible.

And for that response, what the Bible calls faith, God makes a solemn promise to Abraham and his family, what the Bible calls a covenant. Because Abraham and his wife Sarah agreed to function as a new Adam and a new Eve for God’s chosen people, they would be made into a great nation, their names would long be remembered, they would be the parents of a multitude of children—entire nations in fact—and they most importantly, would inherit the land on which they knew dwelt as sojourners—mere wanderers really.

It’s hard to underestimate how foundational the promises to Abraham and his family are to biblical faith and the story of God’s people, not just in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament as well. In order to understand Jesus’ ministry, you have to understand the backstory. And to make sense of nearly all of St. Paul’s arguments in his letters, you need to have this history. I would argue that most of the distorted interpretations of both Jesus’ teaching and that of Paul happen precisely because those making these claims don’t have a sufficient understanding of the foundational nature of the Old Testament.

And on the one hand, I can understand them. The Old Testament is a difficult story, right? It covers a huge sweep of human history all the way from the dawn of creation through the late Bronze Age to the Iron Age to the time of Greece and maybe even longer. And it is written in a cultural perspective and in a language long forgotten to most people. After all, according to most scholars, the date of Abraham’s wanderings in Canaan are something like 2000 years before Jesus and that’s about 4000 years before us, right?

But on the other hand, neglecting our family history is almost unforgivable really. I mean, if we take our faith seriously, the stories we find in the Old Testament aren’t just some tragic and sometimes triumphant tales from long, long ago but are really OUR family stories too. Far too often though many Christians think that because these tales belong to Israel that they aren’t really ours. That they are “Jewish” and therefore something different from “Christian” stories.

But that dichotomy and separation won’t do. We aren’t, as I’ve heard so many people say, just “New Testament Christians!” And I don’t mean to step on any toes if that phrase is meaningful to you. But hear me out. And I’ll put it starkly in the interest of time, it’s just that the New Testament without the Old is just plain nonsense. You need the Old Testament to make sense of the New. The New Testament is the direct outworking of the Old Testament and Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament writers directly quote, allude, or assume that story for nearly every single word they write in the pages of the New Testament. In short, there is no such thing as a New Testament Christian. We are either “Whole Bible Christians” or we are nothing.

Wrestling with God

Now that we’ve gotten that very important point out of the way, we need to return to our story. Remember that Abraham and Sarah had a son of their own—well they actually had two sons, right? First came along Ishmael, then later, the child of the promise Isaac was born. Abraham sent Ishmael and his mother Hagar away to avoid any more family drama, but the Bible doesn’t just write them off that easily. Ishmael, what the Bible calls “a wild ass of a man” becomes the father of a multitude of nations himself, some of which will come to bite Israel later on. But God appears to also bless Ishmael as he and his family are fruitful and multiply as well.

But after narrating Ishmael’s family line, the Bible returns to the line of the Covenant, the line of promise and follows the adventures of Isaac. Abraham finds a wife for Isaac named Rebekah. And they have two children too, just like Abraham and Sarah. Their names are Esau and Jacob.

Notice that I didn’t say Jacob and then Esau. Why? Because Esau was born first, and by that right would have stood to be in line for the promises of God’s covenant because he was the oldest child. But there was trouble in this family too. (The Bible, by the way, is full of family drama, better even than Days of our Lives or the Young and the Restless). There was rampant favoritism. And while Esau stood to inherit, through trickery, Jacob, whose own name means something like “usurper” steals Esau’s birth right and his father’s blessing.

This idea of the younger child serving the older is a repeating theme in the Bible and we will see it all the way through the Bible. You could even make a case that Israel herself is a younger child compared to the children of Adam and Eve with whom God originally made covenant, right?

Anyway, back to the story of Israel. Jacob grows up and like his forefathers returns to his native land to find a wife. Well, he actually finds wives (plural). Through trickery (how appropriate that the trickster gets tricked, right) Jacob ends up in a relationship with not one, not two, but four women! Rachel his favorite wife, Leah his reluctantly chosen wife, and their serving made concubines Bilhah and Zilpah. Through this mega-matrimonial family come at least thirteen children that the Bible mentions. Twelve of them are boys and one girl is mentioned as well. These twelve children become the twelve tribes of Israel as our story progresses.

But you’ll have to go to Genesis if you want to find out all the juicy details of that story. For now, I want to focus on only one strange story that we heard in our first Scripture of the morning.

And it came to pass that an opportunity to reconcile with his brother Esau appeared—either that or Esau was going to get revenge, Jacob wasn’t sure. And that put Jacob in a panic. So he schemed to bribe Esau with choice gifts to pay him off our buy safe passage. But God was having none of that. This guy needed to be shaped up, and quick. So God appears to Jacob in the form of a man and wrestles with him all night. But amazingly, Jacob holds his own against this heavenly man, so the man finally touches Jacob’s hip to wound him in some way and commands Jacob to let him go. But Jacob persists in the contest, finally realizing that it was not a mere man he was contending with, but God. And he named that place Penuel because he had seen the face of God and lived.

And what is more, the angel changed his name. No longer would he be called Jacob. But he would be called Israel. The name Israel means something like “he who wrestles with God.”

What an appropriate name for the people we find in the Old Testament, right? I mean even a cursory glance of the Old Testament reveals that Israel is a stubborn, stiff-necked, rebellious, sometimes even childish people. It’s a story that seems designed to make Israel look half the time like bumbling idiots, and the other half of the time like foolish whiny children.

But that’s the appeal of Scripture to me. The characters are human—sometimes too human. They are just like us. And that’s part of the reason I really think Scripture is true. It perfectly captures human nature. Not just Israel but WE are rebellious, stiff-necked, self-seeking, and sometimes even sinful. These stories are our stories simply because we’re human, not just because we’re part of the New Covenant which is the outworking of the Old Covenant.

Israel Grows

And the rest of the story of Genesis is the story of this one family. The Bible has begun with the broad swath of humanity being created in Genesis 1 as images of God placed in the Temple of the Universe. Then Genesis 2 recounts the special creation of Adam and Eve in that Temple’s Holy of Holies. Genesis 3 recalls Adam and Eve’s rebellion and expulsion from Paradise and Genesis 4-11 recount the descent into sin, the Flood, and culminates in God coming down (temporarily) to disperse the people and confuse their languages at the Tower of Babel.

Then immediately, without notice, the Bible suddenly drops down to focus on one couple again. Abraham and Sarah are going to be the New Adam and New Eve for a Renewed people of God. They are going to be given a new land, Canaan, which is going to function like a new Garden of Eden. They are told to be fruitful and multiply. But it takes a miracle for that child of promise to be born.

And from that child Isaac comes the child Jacob who has twelve sons to spread the family line. In Genesis 34, Jacob, now Israel is told specifically that he will inherit the land of Canaan and that he and his descendents are to be fruitful, multiply, and inherit the land.

And they do a good job of it. By the time the book of Genesis ends, Jacob and his family number not twelve but seventy. That’s a lot of grandchildren for Jacob.

But like his early life, Jacob’s family life isn’t exactly perfect. Jacob has a favorite son, Joseph. And Joseph is given a lovely token of that in a gorgeous coat of many colors. And what’s more, Joseph is a dreamer and has dreams of his brothers bowing down to him. And not only that, but his own parents bowing down to him.

But his brothers think (and even his parents too) think Joseph is getting too big for his britches. And the sons take it upon themselves to put this wayward youth in his place. So, they do what is expedient and plot to kill him. But thankfully, one of them sees reason, and simply has him sold into slavery.

And to whom is he sold? We are told Joseph is sold into slavery to Midianite traders—who are?—descendents of Ishmael—and thus our story has come full circle. It’s family drama all the way through.

But this unfortunate event is worked out in the strange providence of God. Joseph’s dreaming abilities eventually lead Joseph to become the second most powerful ruler in Egypt.

And then, in an even more improbable event, Joseph is eventually reconciled not only with his brothers, but with his father as well. And the story of Genesis ends on a happy note with Jacob blessing his sons in echoes of the promise to Abraham.

Egypt and Exodus

But then, in a few generations, a Pharaoh comes to the throne who doesn’t respect Joseph—what the Bible reads as “who didn’t know Joseph.” By this time Israel had grown and inhabited the land of Goshen for generations and had followed through on God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.

And Pharaoh now sees this great people as a threat and then does what people in power always seemingly do to folks they see as a threat, he oppresses them.

We all know the story of the Exodus, so I’m only going to give the highlights here. God hears the cries of the Israelites in their cruel bondage under Pharaoh. And God raises up for them a family that will be their deliverance. Not just one child, but three that will be instrumental in their departure from bondage. The first of course is Moses, but then Moses’s sister and brother also have a part to play. Aaron will be Moses’ mouthpiece and Miriam will help recount the tales of God’s great deliverance to future generations as a prophet.

And through a series of ten horrible plagues, the God of Israel goes to war against the petty gods of Egypt and serves judgment on them. Each plague has been shown to be an attack on one of the Egyptian gods responsible for an area of nature. The last plague, the plague of the firstborn? That was an attack on Pharaoh himself, thought to be the firstborn son of the Sun God Re. And all the gods were shown to be powerless as God delivered them, made them cross the Sea on dry land, and destroyed Pharaoh’s army in the process.

Sinai

And that brings us to where we will stop today. After the Exodus Israel is taken through a roundabout way to the place where Moses first meets God, Mt. Sinai. And it is at Mt. Sinai that God reveals his plans fully to the people of Israel.

The people of Israel are not saved because they are mighty, powerful, more noble or deserving than anyone else. In fact they were the opposite. They were weak, oppressed, judged pathetic in the eyes of the world. But, as we well know, God’s grace works precisely in the least of these. Israel was chosen simply because God willed it. God willed to fulfill the ancestral promises to Abraham in such a way that no one could claim they earned it—it was all pure gift.

But with the gift came some stipulations—a covenant charter if you will—a Constitution in modern terms. And that Constitution was going to be based on God’s Law that was revealed to Israel at Mt. Sinai. And at the center of that Law are the Ten Commandments.

God reveals to Israel that there are basically two main actions that God expects from his new people. God expects Israel to respect, worship, and be faithful to God alone. But God also expects Israel to love and respect their neighbor as well.

And as the next few chapters and indeed the rest of the Old Testament make clear, the neighbor was not just a fellow Israelite. But foreigners, slaves, and those who were refugees were also to be shown dignity and respect. And the vulnerable and marginalized folks especially, widows, orphans, foreigners, slaves? They were treated with special regulations that made sure they were protected. Why? Because Israel herself was a slave in Egypt.

But Israel? They’re stubborn and rebellious. Almost as soon as God is done on Mt. Sinai and Moses ascends the mountain again to learn from God, Israel gets restless. They ask Moses’ brother Aaron to conspire with them to make themselves an idol to represent the gods who brought them out of Egypt. And so the Golden Calf incident happens.

God is seriously not happy and threatens to wipe them all out. Moses is seriously not happy and destroys the Ten Commandments. But eventually, because Moses pleads with God, Israel is not destroyed.

And in the midst of that drama comes an amazing revelation. Moses asks to see God’s glory. God cannot be seen and live, so Scripture tells us, but Moses does get a glimpse of God and all his goodness in Exodus 34 as God reveals his character as a gracious God abounding in loyal love for generations.

And then, even though Israel is stubborn—even idolatrous—God does not give up on his promises. You see, at Sinai Israel and God basically got married. Israel and God are now wife and husband. And God will be faithful to his bride, even when they are not.

And so the rest of Exodus is the story of the building of a dwelling place for God, the Tabernacle. This is the place where the very presence and glory of God will dwell. This little portable building will be like a mobile Garden of Eden in the midst of Israel. God and Israel will meet in the cool of the day here just like Adam and Eve met God in the Garden.

Finally, we have Israel in the land of promise. It might be four hundred years after Abraham, but they’re finally here. And now it’s not just one family but an entire nation. We have the people of God in the place of God. And as Exodus ends God’s very glory fills the tabernacle. So we have the People of God in the Place of God surrounded by the Presence of God.

What could go wrong, right? Well, for that story, come back next week. Amen.