Jan 31 - God Tabernacled With Man - Exod 25-26; Matt 23

At Sinai, God gave Israel not only their law of His covenant, but also the tent of His dwelling. God would be their God by His presence as well as by His word. In the cloud on Mt Sinai, Moses received detailed instructions for the building of the tabernacle, the tent that would be the house of God in the midst of the tents of Israel.

For forty days, Moses remained on top of the mountain, screen from Israel by the cloud of God's presence. Two reflections:

Firstly, what was the twofold purpose of the tabernacle? "that I may dwell in their midst.", "22 There I will meet with you and…I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel" (25:8,22)

Through the tabernacle, God meets with man and reveals His commands for us. We cannot just yearn to see God and live on life with our own agendas. Knowing God entails obedience to His commands as the center of our lives.

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt (tabernacled) among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

Secondly, the mercy seat was a slab of pure gold with cherubim at either end. It acted as a lid on the ark covering the tables of testimony inside. On it, the high priest sprinkled blood to make atonement.

Only above the mercy seat is there atonement and where God and man can meet and commune together (8:20-22) because man's sin is propitiated for by the sprinkled blood. What ultimate blood was sprinkled for us? How should we live in response to this?

"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. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:1-2)

Jan 30 - On the Mountain - Exod 22-24; Matt 22

We cannot understand the ten commandments apart from Jesus Christ. They are not only a list of 'dos' and 'don'ts'. We must not forget the Lord who spoke the words from Sinai and the context in which He spoke them. God's commands call His people to acknowledge Him as their Savior and Lord.

The law at Sinai expresses God's demand for perfect obedience. God is perfectly holy and can require nothing less. But God did not bring His people out of Egypt to consume them in the flame of Sinai. His purpose was to save them. Thus, God gave the law to enter into a covenant with His redeemed people. They promised to keep all the words that God spoke (Ex 24:3). Sacrifices were offered, and both the altar and the people were sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice. From the very outset, it was clear that atonement must be made and that the atonement must come from God's altar.

Christ's coming is not a divine afterthought. The blood of the covenant sprinkled at Sinai witnesses to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God chosen from the foundation of the world. We may distinguish between the ten commandments and the ceremonial law. But we need to remember that they were given together. God did not speak words that could only condemn His people without providing the symbols of atonement.

When we hear God's law given from Sinai, therefore, we must not only tremble at its thunder and flee to Christ for His forgiveness and righteousness. We must also hear in it God's zeal for His own Son, and find in it witness to the redemptive purpose of the God who redeemed Israel from bondage.

Jesus kept the law for us. He learned obedience through the things He suffered. In His obedience, He was not only our representative, but our example. He transformed and deepened the law even as He fulfilled it. He enables us to understand the will of our heavenly Father as we understand the covenant made at Sinai. Above all, He renews us by His Spirit so that we may do what the law asks: love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and our neighbor as ourselves.

Refences:
Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery

Jan 29 - Loving God - Exod 19-21; Matt 21

God appeared in glory at Mount Sinai. The people were led by Moses to the very place where God had spoken from the flaming bush. But this time, not just a bush but the whole mountain was in flames! The earth shook; rocks broke open. But most dreadful of all was a sound more awesome than the crashing thunder: the sound of the voice of the living God.

The author of Hebrews describes the terror that scene: the mountain burning with fire, the darkness, gloom and storm (Heb 12:18-21). Then the heavenly trumpets sounded and God spoke. The people who heard those words begged that they might never again be exposed to such terror. They asked Moses to intervene for them. Let him ascend that fearful mountain and hear the voice of God!

In the great assembly at Sinai, God spoke to His people. He gave them His law in the context of His redemption. The Ten commandments begin with God's description of Himself as the Redeemer of Israel, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." (Ex 20:2)

The great mistake of legalism is to detach the law of God from the God who gave it. The ten commandments are not an abstract code of duty hung in the void. The first commandment governs the rest, "You shall have no other gods before me." Assembled before the very presence of God, we must acknowledge God as God alone. We are to love Him with all our hearts, soul, strength and mind.  We are to love Him with an exclusive love for our jealous God who seeks marital devotion. There are to be no rivals.

The demand of love has its source in God. the command for marital faithfulness, to not commit adultery points beyond itself to the faithful love of God for His people and His call for their jealous devotion in return. The love of God is where all true human love springs forth. Should this remind us that we can only truly love our neighbors when we first truly love God?

Refences:
Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery

Jan 27 - Redeemed By Him, For Him - Exod 13-15; Matt 19

In the last act of the drama, Pharaoh repeatedly went back on his promise to release the people. When they had actually begun their march, he changed his mind again and sent his chariots storming after them. The war chariots of ancient Egypt were the great mobile striking force of their day, feared by the armies of the ancient world. They saw the escaping slaves without arms and burdened with children, cattle and cartloads of household goods. Escape was impossible, for the Egyptians army hemmed them in against the shores of the Red Sea.

The people again attacked Moses bitterly, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (Ex 14:11-12)

And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (14:13-14)

God Himself drove by the Egyptians and held them at bay for the night in the pillar of fire. And we know the great redemption of the Red Sea, "I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
    "the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song,
    and he has become my salvation;" (15:1-2)

The theme of salvation is of the Lord is the great theme of the bible being repeated in the psalms and in Isaiah to describe the future salvation of the people of God (Isa 12:2). Nowhere is more portrayed graphically than in God's great act in rescuing Israel from Egypt.

We should bear in mind that God's purpose however was not simply to deliver Israel from Pharoah's yoke. It was to bring them under His yoke. God demanded that Pharaoh let the people go that they might serve Him. That they might be gathered at His feet, that He might claim them as His holy people, the treasure of His grace. The same for us.

Refences:
Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery

Jan 26 - The Passover - Exodus 11-12; Matt 19

The passover powerfully symbolized God's claim on Israel. Because Pharaoh would not free God's firstborn son, Israel, God in judgment claimed the firstborn son in the house of Pharaoh, and in evert other family of Egypt. We might think that Israel did not face such threat, but the angel of death was sent to bring judgment on every Israelite home as well. In the ceremonial law given to Israel later, the first fruit of the harvest and firstborn of the stock was viewed as representative of all the rest. God put His claim upon it to signify that all belonged to him. God could claim every creature as His own.

Secondly, we see that all sinful creatures stand under the judgment of God. The infliction of the judgment on the firstborn would present the penalty due to all. If God in His righteousness were to exact this penalty from the sinful Egyptians, Israel could not be spared as well for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Israel as well as Egypt.

God's justice upon the sin of man must be met. A lamb without blemish was to be killed and its blood put on the lintel and doorposts of a house; the angel of death seeing the blood would passover that household. The blood showed that death had taken place. The lamb had died in place of the oldest son and therefore also in the place of others represented by the oldest son. Israel was not freed just from the burden of bondage but also from the guilt of sin. Their eating of the lamb marked the restored fellowship with God that comes from the atonement God provides. They were to eat the passover in their traveling clothes because God's promise is sure.

Jesus Christ is the ultimate passover lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Through Him, God claimed us sinners as His precious possession. He is our passover, sacrificed for us. Our meal of fellowship with God is His communion feast. The whole story points to Christ.

Several thousand years later, on the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus about the 'exodus' He had to accomplish at Jerusalem. He who was offered as the sacrificial lamb was also the Savior and Liberator. He came to proclaim liberty to the captive, and He broke the ultimate yoke of bondage to liberate all the people of God.

Refences:
Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery

Jan 25 - In Absolute Control - Exodus 9-10; Matt 18:1-21

Yahweh deals a crushing defeat to the most powerful totalitarian government of the day. Not only does He defeat Pharaoh and his army, but He invokes all the forces of nature to bring plagues on the Egyptians and to deliver his own people. He defeats Egypt and its gods (Ex 12:12), thus showing himself to be Lord of heaven and earth.

We see the sovereignty of God in showing his purposeful discrimination in natural events. In Exodus 9:13-26, he brings a terrible hailstorm upon the Egyptians, but leaves one area untouched, the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived. God gives rain to one and withholds it to another (Amos 4:7). He sends prosperity and he sends famine.

Thus, the natural world is intensely personalistic. Natural events come from God, the personal Lord. The idea that there is some impersonal mechanism called 'nature' or 'natural law' that governs the universe is absent from the bible. So is the notion of ultimate 'randomness'. Behind gravity, electricity, rain, hail, even apparent randomness of events, stands the personal God, who controls all things by his powerful word.

Needless to say, the hearts of man, even if he is a king, is still under God's control (Prov 21:1) as it is with Pharaoh (Ex 9:16).

Praise our Lord who controls the entire course of nature and history for His own glory and to accomplish His own purposes.

He controls the entire course of nature and history for his own glory and to accomplish his own purposes.

Jan 24 - A Liberation not of Man - Exodus 7-8; Matt 17

God's great deliverance of Israel was first of all a work of judgment. Joseph as the servant of the Lord had brought blessing to Egypt but Moses was given a sterner task. The miracles that God worked through Moses were plagues. Through the plagues, God punished the Egyptians until they were glad to see Israel and thus declaring His power over all the idols of Egypt.

Drama of Israel's deliverance played out between Moses, speaking for the Lord and Pharaoh being the adversary of the Israelites. The people of Israel did not revolt. In fact, they complained about Moses who seemed to cause their heavier oppression. Which goes to show that their liberation was not won by themselves; it was given by God.

The Exodus from Egypt points to an even greater ultimate victory over sin and death, through Yahweh in the flesh.