Beginning With Moses: The Big Picture! Discovering Jesus in the Bible!

By Gary Schulte

The American culture is drowning in Bibles. We have them everywhere, even in our hotel rooms, but they mostly gather dust. But those who read the Bible don't always get its teachings, especially the readings of the Old Testament.

"Beginning With Moses: The Big Picture! Discovering Jesus in the Bible!" is a theological study of the Bible in easy-to-digest devotions, putting Jesus in the heart of every character, story, person, place, and thing!

During author Gary Schulte's last year at Concordia Seminary, he signed up for a class called "Biblical Theology," taught by Dr. Paul Raabe. The first day of class, he wrote on the board: Luke 24:27 – "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Dr. Raabe spent the next four months showing the class just how that statement was true.

This class changed Schulte's life. He had never been taught that way before—anywhere—ever—not even at seminary! Biblical theology is simply the story of salvation from Genesis to Revelation, centered in Jesus Christ. God's story is made to be our story. Unfortunately, for decades in the Church, people have been taught disconnected propositional truths over very brief periods. They have not been engaged as part of the story.

Dr. Raabe taught Schulte that Moses didn't teach the people that way at all. Moses was commanded to tell the story of God's saving work on behalf of his people to every succeeding generation. The story was called the "Haggadah." The whole Bible is Haggadah in the broader sense, with Jesus at the heart of it. After that one class, the focus of Schulte's ministry—and his whole life—completely changed.

Schulte's ministry adventure began when he sent out daily teaching devotions by email to more than 700 people over a seven-month period, eventually going way beyond his congregation. "Beginning with Moses" now gives you updated editions of the original 187 teaching devotions. Each includes a "Digging Deeper" section with extra Biblical wisdom added throughout Schulte's years of teaching.

Schulte and his wife have taken all their experiences in Sunday Schools, Bible classes, and as a parish pastor to create this one-of-a-kind narrative—because the Bible is a story after all! The Bible's story is your story! Come and see! That is what "Beginning with Moses" is all about!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098386054

Book preview

PART 1 – THE OLD TESTAMENT

Let the journey begin!

These are the Old Testament Books we will cover with these teaching devotions in the order presented:

W1D1 – Genesis 1 to 5

The Circle of Life

Reading the first three chapters of Genesis in light of what I know about the rest of the Scriptural witness to Christ I can't help but think of the British singer Elton John's Circle of Life song from the Lion King movie with the spine-tingling opening strains of the African crier and the soaring chorus. But what exactly are we celebrating? If you accept the world's idea of the origin of things, Circle of Death would be a better title for the song. In a never-ending spiral headed nowhere, one generation of living beings suffers through its miserable and meaningless existence and dies only to become fertilizer for the next. Some circle of life that is!!! And we celebrate this?

The circle of life Scripture talks about is a lot different. There are many ways to express it. I only wish I could draw circles in an email. Oh well, here are just a few of the ways...

Grace-Sin-Judgment-Grace

Creation-Fall-Redemption-Recreation

Life-Death-Resurrection-Life

Freedom-Slavery-Release-Freedom

Image-Brokenness-Restoration-Image

Fellowship-Betrayal-Banishment-Fellowship

You see this circle of life idea played out over and over throughout Scripture in ways that point to the huge cosmic circle of life scenario played out from Genesis to Revelation with Jesus Christ at its center. Check it out. Compare the first chapter of the Bible with the last - Revelation 22. When the angel gives John his vision of the new heaven, where does he take him? Back to the garden and the tree of life!!! The first thing God does when he creates is give us created light. The last thing he does when he recreates and restores through Jesus Christ is offer himself as the eternal and uncreated light. The circle is complete. I call this the Tank Tread of Time – a bunch of little circles of life (people, places, events) driving a much bigger one that surrounds all of them forward toward its goal. It begins and ends with God's goodness. Moses writes the prologue and some 1,600 years later the Apostle John writes the epilogue. How cool is that?!

Meanwhile, Adam clearly loses the image of God with which he was created with his fall into sin and rebellion. In fact, he falls into total depravity! Notice that the first gospel promise God gives in 3:15 speaks of the seed of the woman crushing Satan’s head. Original sin is not just a theological concept. It is an existential reality. The tainted to the point of total depravity seed in Adam’s loins can only, from generation to generation, produce totally depraved offspring. This is why theologians call it Original Sin. Genesis 5:3 takes pains to report that Adam and Eve’s first offspring, Seth, is born in Adam’s own likeness, which makes him the first of the next generation to need the salvation God offers. For the exact same reason, Jesus’ virgin birth isn’t just a gee whiz miracle designed to impress upon people that He was special. The virgin birth was a theological and existential necessity. Jesus could not be the offspring of the totally depraved semen of a son of the first Adam. Mary, the woman of 3:15, had to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit lest the sinless Savior of the World be corrupted by Adam’s sin from the get-go and be totally useless like us. Only the One sent to us in the very likeness of God, the new Adam, the firstborn of a new creation, could possibly restore the holy image lost in the Garden of Eden by Adam’s fall into sin. Death came into the world through the first Adam. Life is to be restored to it by the second Adam. The rest of Scripture is the working out of the promise of Genesis 3:15 in Jesus across the centuries. Right here we have bold evidence of the Christo-centricity of Scripture. From Genesis to Revelation, it’s all about Jesus!!!

Finally, accepting the world's idea that we evolved out of the primordial goo kind of wrecks the whole picture, doesn't it? And it calls God a liar on a whole lot more levels than just the writing of Genesis 1 to 3. To hell with such thinking, literally! That's where it belongs. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1 that God's circle of life is manifestly evident in everything we see around us, especially ourselves - lovingly made the best way God knew how - in His own image. That, my friends, we can celebrate! As I struggle through what is at times a miserable existence in this veil of tears we call home, it's really good to know the wheel isn't just spinning in place. It's definitely rolling on a pre-defined and meaningful course toward something. And someday we're gonna get off that wheel like a rocket ship whipping around the moon and wind up back in some place really good. The circle will indeed be complete. Hey...yaaaanh....hey...yaaaaanh....

To Dig Deeper into this text, visit: Digging Deeper – Week 1 : Day 1

Alternatively, navigate to the homepage (Digging Deeper Home Page) and bookmark the page. From then on, you can navigate to the appropriate day each time by clicking on the bookmark and using the navigation bar at the top right to go to the appropriate page for the day’s devotion.

W1D2 – Genesis 6 to 10

All Aboard!

Yesterday our focus was on what awaits us at the end of time when God's circle of life is completed by Jesus' ultimate redemption of the world. That future hope in our hearts certainly gives us a focus to get through the day-to-day struggles of life in this world. Because of this hope we know that there is meaning and purpose to everything that happens under the sun, even suffering. But there is much more to God's grace in our lives than just future hope. His active grace is also with us as we experience trials. We see that in the account of Noah and his family at the time of the great flood. 2 Peter 2:5 and 9 tells us that the Noah's experience demonstrates how God rescues his redeemed people from trials while, at the same time, punishing evildoers and holding them for the day of judgment.

That brings me to my next point. While God's grace in sparing Noah and his family speaks to us, the judgment part of the account doesn't sit very well. To that I would just say please note how much it breaks God's heart to destroy what He so lovingly created (6:5-6). He doesn't do it out of vindictiveness. That's why theologians call God's wrath and judgment his alien work. It's not what He wants to do. His proper work is to extend grace and to save. That's what He wants to do. You know it's gotten bad when every intention of the thoughts of people's hearts are only evil continually.

Are things so different today? That's another way the flood account speaks to us. Our world is still corrupt and the fact that even greater judgment looms, of which the flood is just a picture, lends urgency to our task as Christians. Christ said himself that when judgment day comes it will come unexpectantly just like in the days of Noah (Mt. 24:37-39). The frequent use of water imagery in the Old Testament foreshadows the sacrament of baptism. Turning to Peter again (1 Pe 3:20-21), he tells us baptism is the ark that carries us to safety and spares us from God's judgment. It does so by connecting us to Christ's death and resurrection when God, in His infinite grace, fast-forwarded judgment day and put it squarely on his own Son. Baptism is when the eternal benefit of that fast-forwarded judgment is applied to the individual. In baptism, we die to ourselves and to sin and we rise to new life in Christ. And that same baptism creates the faith to trust in these unseen things, just like Noah did when he obediently built the ark before there was even a drop of water (Heb. 11:7). So, trusting God in faith like Noah, let's actively work to get as many people as possible aboard before the judgment does come. Witness to Christ! Extend the waters of baptism to your friends, to your neighbors and family, most especially to your own kids! All aboard!!!!

Footnote 1: The flood was a real historical event. It is not a myth placed in the Bible to make a point, as even many Christians will say. Just because it's hard for us to figure out how God could have gotten two of each kind of species on a boat, doesn't mean He didn't do it. I long ago learned that it's not good when our finite little minds try to put God in a box. As it stands, fish fossils at the top rim of the Grand Canyon and flood accounts being a part of almost every culture in the world, among many other things, serve as powerful witnesses to the historicity of the account. But what need have we of such proof? You start treading on dangerous ground when you start relegating Bible stories to the realm of myth. What then are we to do with the account of Abraham that follows or the account of Jesus' resurrection? Isn't rising from the dead more difficult by far than filling a boat with animals?

Footnote 2: See in Digging Deeper the macro chiastic poetic structure of what is called the Noah Cycle.

To Dig Deeper into this text, visit: Digging Deeper – Week 1 : Day 2

W1D3 - Genesis 11 to 15

Who Me?

These five chapters in Genesis present a fascinating mix of grace and sin. After we see in chapter 10 how God comes through on his covenant blessing to Noah to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, the new inhabitants of the earth turn out not to be much different from the old. With the account of the tower of Babel, it would seem that every intention of the thoughts of their hearts is still only evil continually. It's a good thing God promised to their forefather Noah not to ever destroy the earth again in the same way (it'll be by fire, by the way, when He does it again on the last day [2 Peter 3:7]) because the people are still up to their old tricks. It's the exact same sin of pride that brought down Adam & Eve - wanting to be their own gods. And, boy, is it deadly! How much does that still resonate today in this land that has traditionally celebrated the rugged individual and now dabbles so dangerously in the self-deification of the New Age movement?

But it's once again the grace of God that overshadows the sin of the people in these chapters. Right away, in one of the key passages of the Bible, Genesis 12, we read the account of the call of Abram/Abraham, the father of faith. This is pure grace, people. I can’t help but think of a St. Louis Art Museum exhibit that was advertised very heavily a few years back. I think it was called The Tombs of Ur or something like that. That was Abraham's world! Pagan to the core! God choosing to bless the world through a man whose people routinely slaughtered 300 or more innocents so that they could accompany the queen to the underworld???!!!!! Who'd have thought? Certainly not Abraham. Although it's not recorded in Scripture, I can only imagine that, when God called him out of all that to fulfill a special mission for Him, Abraham must've pointed a finger at his own chest and, with a dumbfounded look on his face, said, Whoooo, me? Yeah, you, son. Remember Jesus' words? You did not choose me, but I chose you. (Jn 15:16) That's how it's always been with God and how it will always be - grace with a capital G.

Indeed, God chose Abraham. The well-known faith of the Father of Faith was manifestly not Abraham’s own doing. God has first to create faith in man and then sustain it through constant forgiveness and renewal through His Holy Spirit. In tomorrow’s edition, we will see bright lights put on Abraham’s monumental sin.

And you and I are no different than our father, Abraham. Who, us? Yeah, us, called out of the darkness of sin into the light of Christ! Praise God and then remember that, like Abraham, God called you for a specific mission - to be a blessing to the nations. Think about it. You, I repeat, YOU are part of the fulfillment of God's covenant promise to Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the sand on the seashore. Incidentally, that process kicked into high gear on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2 & 3) when, some 2,300 years after the sin of the tower builders, God graciously began the reversal of the curse of Babel, made the people understand each other once again, and started bringing the nations back together again under the headship of Christ, a process that will be completed only in Heaven. That's powerful stuff - grace in the near term extended to Abraham as a crucial step in the fulfillment of the promise made in the garden, grace in the long term extended to the nations at Pentecost, grace extended across the broad sweep of world history, grace extended to you and me. My friends, just like Abraham, by virtue of a miracle of grace, you are major players on the world stage. That's right! By faith, we are all sons and daughters of Abraham I can just hear you sayin', who, me? Yeah, you!!!!

Footnote: The three accounts of Genesis 1-11 (Creation/Fall, Flood, Babel) are the accounts of what is called pre-history because none of the events are dateable. With Genesis 12 and the call of Abraham, every event recorded in all the rest of Scripture can be dated with great precision. The God of the Bible is the God of History. This separates Him from every other false god ever proposed by man. They are mere concepts. No others actively come down and engage in real time with humankind and then report on it. I think God doesn’t date the beginning for us so that no one can date the end of all things. He certainly has a set number of days allotted for the earth, perhaps say 7,000 years or 10,000 years, but without knowing the beginning, we have nothing to say about predicting the date of the end as so many false prophets have tried to do.

To Dig Deeper into this text, visit: Digging Deeper – Week 1 : Day 3

W1D4 - Genesis 16 to 20

Oops!

Abraham was a great man and is the father of the faith, but we tend to look upon the heroes of the Bible with rose-colored glasses, glossing over their sin. God doesn't want us to do that. He wants us to know their flaws and their failings so that we know without doubt that their status as heroes is firmly grounded in His grace, not their strength. Abraham was a sinner, alright! We start to see it already in chapter 12 right after his call when he lies about the identity of Sarai, his wife, to save his own skin. But that pales in comparison to what Sarai talks him into in chapter 16. Doubting God's promise of a son because of their advanced age, Sarai convinces him to lie with her Egyptian maidservant Hagar so they can have a son that way. This is the father of the faith? Oops! You wanna talk about a bad decision! This is a turbo-charged, steroid-poppin', radioactive baaaaad decision whose consequences we still hear about every day in the news. You see, the Arabs are descended from Hagar's line and claim Ishmael as the child of the promise rather than Isaac, who would come along later. It would be another 2,700 years after Abraham made his big mistake before Muhammad would come along on the Saudi Peninsula and make that claim. Do you think Al Qaeda's hatred of us is something new? No, sir. It dates to the origins of Islam around 650 AD.

There are probably a hundred things we can learn from this account, but I'm only going to focus on a few. First, this is a good example of the very biblical idea of the two kingdoms, which I believe we Lutherans articulate better than anyone. God rules both the left and the right-hand kingdom. He rules the left, the earthly one, with his holy law. This law covers all our interactions with our neighbor (the horizontal plane, if you will). God rules the right-hand kingdom, the spiritual, with the gospel. The gospel predominates in our relationship with our Creator (the vertical plane). In Abraham's case, his bonehead decision did not nullify the promise (right-hand / gospel, where sin is not measured by degree), but it sure caused plenty of problems in the left-hand kingdom (where sin very definitely is measured by degree). He was pardoned on the right, but not excused on the left. In other words, sin still has great consequence, just not an eternal one. There are many biblical examples of this. David and his sin with Bathsheba and the thief on the cross are just a couple. In the latter case, Jesus promised the thief a place in paradise, but he did not permit him to get down from the cross. So, while the holy living that God calls us to does nothing to earn us a place in heaven, it's still really good for us in the here and now.

Another thing we can learn from Abraham and Hagar is that the really important things in life generally happen over large swaths of time - often swaths a lot longer than our brief sojourns on earth. This is actually something we can learn from Al Qaeda and our militant Muslim enemies too. Do you know why they chose 9/11 to do what they did? That's the day the Muslim Ottoman empire was defeated at the gates of Vienna in the heart of Christian Europe in 1529. History would've been a lot different had they won that battle. It stung them. They still plan to take Europe, all its colonies and the whole world. 1529! Muslims have very long memories. Meanwhile, we have trouble remembering who's turn it was to have 15 minutes of fame last week. What will we be doing when the militant Muslim hammer falls again? Or the Secular Progressive hammer? Or the hammer of a bloody dictator? Or simply the hammer of personal devastation? Watching Reality TV? God help us!

One last thing. People really thought the end of the world was at hand when Hitler rose to power and with good reason. Over 50 million perished around the world because of the war he started. I am not a prophet, but I actually think the current crisis with a group that encompasses 1.5 billion members of the world community is a lot more likely to be a harbinger of the end of things. Remember how we talked a few days ago about world history coming full circle? What greater spirit of anti-Christ could there be at the very end of things than a group the seed of which was spawned at the very same time the promise was first made to the Father of our faith? Why do I say this? To scare you? No, to show you that Jesus Christ spoke the truth. He ultimately is in control of world history. The Bible is not some old, tired book. It's life itself. Christianity is serious business. Let's ready ourselves and be watchful like our Lord said because I suspect things are going to get a lot tougher for God's people during our lifetime. Jesus walks with us. Let us walk with Him; let us do our best by His grace to avoid those big oops moments and let us be people with long memories too. Finally, let us love our enemies as Jesus did (right-hand kingdom) and bear witness to them of Jesus, while also fully supporting those who prosecute a justly fought War on Terror or any other just war (left-hand kingdom).

By the way, a little aside, Thomas Aquinas provided probably the first and certainly most famous summary of just war theory. A just war must: 1) be fought for a just cause; 2) only be fought when the injustice suffered by the one party significantly outweighs that suffered by the other; 3) be fought only by a legitimate authority under God; 4) involve right intention; 5) have a probability of success without disproportionate measures; 6) be a last resort; 7) be proportional – meaning the benefits of the war are proportionate to its expected evils or harms.

To Dig Deeper into this text, visit: Digging Deeper – Week 1 : Day 4

W1D5 - Genesis 21 to 25

Take your son, your only son, and offer him there...

Well, after the Father of our Faith, descends into the abyss of doubt and sin with the Hagar incident, he rebounds quite nicely, to say the least. Take your son, your only son.... Can you imagine? As I reflect on how much I love my own kids, I'm not sure I could have done it. But added to the agony of a Father being asked to sacrifice his own child is the fact that Isaac is the long-awaited promised one - the seed. Abraham had to be wondering what in the world God was thinking. You finally gave him to me and now you're going to take him away? Why? I am old. What about the promise? What about the promise? But we hear no such thoughts come out of his mouth. He simply does what he's told without a single question in a profound act of obedience anchored in faith. He simply trusted that God knew better somehow. What a beautiful story! But, wait! This is, oh, so much more than just a story about a Father's dilemma. Remember how Jesus told the disciples on the road to Emmaus how all the Scriptures spoke of him? In few places is that more abundantly clear than here. In this brief account we are given more than 1/2 a dozen 100-megapixel pictures of the saving act of God the Father through the Son. This is just so rich! To wit...

Snapshot 1 - The Father: Abraham mirrors the still greater love God the Father would show in the surrendering of His own Son.

Snapshot 2 - The Son: Isaac foreshadows the Savior described in Philippians 2:5-9 in his humble submission to his Father's will. The promised seed? The chosen one? Sacrificed? As Peter would one day say, Never, Lord!

Snapshot 3 - The Location: Mount Moriah is mentioned only one other time in the Old Testament, in 2 Chronicles 3:1. There we are told two things - that God appeared to David there and that Solomon decided to build the temple there. The temple was in the vicinity of Calvary. Jesus said the temple had to come down precisely because Calvary is the place of final sacrifice. Full circle again.

Snapshot 4 - The Resurrection: Stay here with the donkey, I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. Simple words. So simple you might just blow right by them without noticing how pregnant they are with faith in the hope of the resurrection. Abraham knew exactly what he had been told to do there and he already knew that he planned to go through with it. And yet he assures the young men they'll both return. Here's what the author of Hebrews had to say about it: By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your offspring be named. He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. (Heb. 11:17-19)

Snapshot 5 - The wood: And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. (v.6) John 19:17 - he went out, bearing his own cross.

Snapshot 6 - Father and son walking both of them together (v.6): This foreshadows the divine mystery of the partnership between God, the Father, and God, the Son, talked about so beautifully in Isaiah 53, especially verses 7 and 10.

Snapshot 7 - The ram: This is perhaps the most obvious of them all. Jesus, the lamb of God, takes our place.

Snapshot 8 - Jehovah-Jireh: This is what Abraham names the place in verse 14. The Hebrew verb used here stems from the verb to see. It can be translated in several different ways that point clearly to what God plans to do through the work of His Son - On the mountain, he will provide, he will see to it, it will come clear.

Snapshot 9 - The foolishness of God in Christ: Have you ever felt like God was asking you to do something that makes absolutely no worldly sense, but you knew it was the right thing to do? Our lives are hidden in Christ, hidden in the folly of the cross. Abraham knew that 2,100 years before Christ even came. My prayer is that you and I might be keenly aware of it too, 2,000 years past the coming, the dying, and the rising again of the promised seed.

To Dig Deeper into this text, visit: Digging Deeper – Week 1 : Day 5

W1D6 - Genesis 26 to 30

Our Dysfunctional Family

Well, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has now brought the last of the big three patriarchs of the faith into the world and this one's a real case. He carries the sins of his father and grandfather to a new level. Abraham and Isaac were basically good guys who were turned aside by brief bouts of temptation. Jacob's sins are mostly of the calculated and pre-meditated variety. Oh, he's a squirrelly one alright and he's aptly named. Jacob means supplanter, cheater, or deceiver. He doesn't even wait until he's out of the womb before he starts trying to jump the queue. Later, taking full advantage of moments of weakness, he talks his poor dumb twin brother Esau into selling him his birthright and then, for the pièce de résistance, with the instigation and complicity of their mom of all people, tricks his aged and nearly sightless father into giving him Esau's blessing too. Double whammy! No wonder Esau wanted to kill him! It reminds me of the stuff I used to pull on my older brothers. I was a punk. But the stakes are much higher for this biblical punk. Every stunt he pulls has ramifications of cosmic proportions. I just got grounded or sent to bed.

The stunts don't stop with his immediate family either. After he's compelled to flee his brother's wrath, he starts pulling things on his extended family too and makes himself filthy rich in the process. Poor Uncle Laban is the one who ends up with speckles and spots on his face after Jacob's greedy and gratuitous goat grab - a little payback perhaps for the little switcheroo Laban pulled with his daughters Rachel and Leah costing Jacob another seven years of his life. We talked yesterday about how rich the pictures of our Savior are in the Old Testament. These accounts are rich in the opposite sense. They read like a soap opera. What makes us squirm even more is how complicit God seems to be in all this. He tells Rachel before the two brothers are even born that there will be ongoing war between the two. And there is too! There's always something going on between the Israelites and Esau's descendants, the Edomites. They're like the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s.

Isn't it odd of God to be working out His plan for the world in this way? Perhaps. But we find great comfort in the fact that, as we live out our dysfunctional soap opera lives and carry dirty little secrets that we wouldn't want our best friends to know about much less untold billions of people reading and hearing the story, God remains steadfast in his covenant promises. In fact, He keeps repeating them over and over - first to Adam, then to Noah, then to Abraham, then to Isaac, and now to Jacob. And he's not afraid to get his hands very dirty in the process as He works to keep those promises. Remember, The Passion of the Christ carries an 'R' rating. These Old Testament accounts are recorded so that we might learn some important biblical truths:

1. Salvation is by grace 100%. It has nothing to do with the good things we do (the older will serve the younger, cf. Eph. 2:8-10)

2. God's thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways. They're much higher! (Is. 55:8-9)

3. God makes good out of even really bad things for those He loves! (Rom. 8:28)

4. We know this all to be ultimately true because of the life, death, and resurrection of the One whose picture is being taken yet again.

To Dig Deeper into this text, visit: Digging Deeper – Week 1 : Day 6

W2D1- Genesis 31 to 35

Wrestling with God

Jacob's great encounter with God, probably in the person of the pre-incarnate Christ, comes when Jacob is exposed to a situation that he knows to be completely beyond him. The report of their wrestling match is sandwiched nicely between the description of Jacob's dread of the impending reunion with his brother Esau and the actual reunion itself. God causes this most recent crisis in his complicated life in order to strengthen in him a hunger for Himself. Hence, the struggle, a struggle borne of this hunger. The conflict brings to a head the battling and groping of a lifetime. To this point Jacob has taken what could at best be described as an ambivalent approach to God. At times he shows himself to be a pillar of faith who openly acknowledges his dependence on the active grace of God (31:7; 31:42). But most of the time, as his dealings with his brother Esau and his uncle Laban clearly show, he takes matters into his own hands with his schemes.

The encounter at Peniel brings to light that it's against God, not Esau or Laban, that Jacob has been pitting his strength. Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel (He strives with God"). By coming to him at this point, God's goal is to chasten him and bring him to a point of radical dependence. The crippling and the re-naming show that God's plan for Jacob is to take his will to win, to attain and obtain, and redirect it toward the proper object of man's striving - Himself, purging him of his penchant for self-sufficiency in the process. But this is not a one-time only deal. We can see in the touching and heartfelt prayer for deliverance of 32:9-12, that God has already begun this good work in him.

Whether or not Jacob's opponent is truly Jesus in pre-incarnate form, echoes of the work of our incarnate Savior are all over this account. God comes to us in our time of need and shows us His face (that's what Peniel means) so that He can put an end to our worldly striving and focus it on Himself. And He continues to come to us today, daily wrestling and striving with us through His Word, that our will to win, to attain and to obtain, might be continually focused in that direction. Thank God for the gifts of His Word and His sacraments because they do continually point us to our Risen Savior. It must be a continual process because the old sinful nature dies hard. Just like Jacob's sons, we all inherit it. Their deplorable response to the violation of their sister Dinah shows that each generation of people must learn these things anew. At least, that is, until all things are made new and we no longer have to rely on fleeting glimpses of God in the darkness of our sin. Then we will see God face to face in the never-ending light of eternity. That light will come from the smile on Jesus' face as He receives us. It will fill the whole universe. As that dawn breaks, all wrestling matches will cease.

To Dig Deeper into this text, visit: Digging Deeper – Week 2 : Day 1

W2D2 - Genesis 36 to 40

Seed of the Seedy

Joseph is introduced in this section. So, it's tempting to talk about him, because his is one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible. But his account takes up most of the rest of Genesis, which means there will be time for that.

Meanwhile, we have one of the seediest accounts of Scripture inserted right in the middle of the Joseph story - the account of Judah, his sons Er and Onan, and his Canaanite daughter-in-law, Tamar (wife of Er). Moses dismisses Er's pointless existence with one line - he was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. This presents Judah with a problem - how to keep the family line going through the firstborn son. The ancient custom of levirate (from the Latin for husband's brother) marriage provides the way out for him. So, Judah asks Er's brother Onan to marry Tamar and take over his husbandly duty so the required offspring can be produced. But old Onan doesn't play along. He evidently doesn't mind the sex but, in order to preserve his own position in the family, he habitually practices what is perhaps the first recorded method of birth control. God puts Onan to death too.

Seedy enough so far? It gets worse. You can read the rest of the story. Judah wants to preserve his line. Tamar wants to still be part of that line. He wants his. She wants hers. And through a series of machinations and double dealings on both sides worthy of a modern-day soap opera, a son is born to Judah by a woman who poses as a temple prostitute!!! Why does Scripture even bother to record this sordid affair? Because its implications ring through the cosmos. We find out in the not-too-distant future that the Messiah is to come through Judah's line. God is channeling his river of living water to the world through the cesspool of human depravity. Jesus is the seed of the seedy. Scripture not only does not try to sweep the sordid history of God's people under the rug. It does its level best to draw our attention to it by making it stand out in bold relief. Tamar is one of only four women listed in Matthew's genealogy of Christ (Mt. 1:3). As for the other three, Bathsheba is complicit with David in adultery and murder, Rahab is a real prostitute, and Ruth is a foreigner. What distinguishes the latter two is not their glorious pedigree, but their remarkable faith.