Ink 10 (Winter 2021)

The tenth issue of ink is now available, this one including pieces on how Christmas traditions have distracted us from the story told in the Bible, on Jesus as storyteller, on cognitive linguistics and Mark’s gospel, and on reading Exodus in the light of what we know about ancient Egypt.

UK residents can sign up here to receive a bumper summer issue through the post or subscribe for the digital version of the magazine, but the publication is also available to read from here.

On Being in the Wilderness

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

Like me, you’re probably listening to updates from the government, wondering what we can do this week that we weren’t allowed to do last week. Indeed, there has been some lifting of restrictions in recent days, and we’ll continue to monitor their implications for us as a church, especially in terms of when and how we might be able to gather again. For the most part, though, a return to ‘normal’ (remember that?) still seems a fair way off. In our more honest moments most of us sense that to be the case.

As a result, it’s easy to feel betwixt and between at this time – neither one thing nor another, neither where we were when the year started or where we hope we might be when the year ends.

As unsettled as we might feel during this season, we are not the first to walk this path. And we might be encouraged to know that God has worked through such circumstances in the past.

In the book of Exodus, after their deliverance from Egypt and their escape through the sea, God’s people enter the wilderness. It’ll be another two months before they arrive at Mount Sinai where God will make a covenant with them. Meanwhile, the wilderness is an ‘in-between’ place, a transitional moment where the people stand on the boundary of something new, the next chapter in the story of God’s dealings with them and the world they will be called to serve.

But the wilderness is not a place to mark time or to circle the runway. Nor is it a moment for them to grit their teeth and get by. It’s a place of formation. It’s during this period that they are to trust that the God who rescued them is the God who will provide for their daily needs (literally their ‘daily bread’ in the form of manna). It’s in the wilderness that these former slaves learn the rhythm of work and rest, set in place at creation. Their service to Pharaoh has been replaced by their service to God, and growing into their identity as God’s people will require living a different way. In addition, while they were largely passive in the destruction of the Egyptian army, it’s in the wilderness that they have to fight new enemies, showing that they’ll need to take a more active role in events going forwards.

In short, it’s in the wilderness that the God who delivers his people also trains them, forming them into a ‘holy nation’ (Exodus 19:6) who will obey him and represent him to a watching world.

Perhaps for us, too, this is a time to grow our trust in the Lord’s care and provision, a time to reflect on how he is training us to live differently, a time to grow in loving our neighbour as ourself.

So keep listening to those updates from the government. It’s right for us to want to come through this period, to get to the next chapter! Nevertheless, it’s good to remember that God is still at work meanwhile – in us and through us – conforming us to the image of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord of the Exodus

I’ve recently completed a series of six posts on Exodus:

1. The Lord who Remembers (Exodus 2:23-25)

2. The Lord who Redeems (Exodus 6:6-8)

3. The Lord who Fights (Exodus 15:1-3)

4. The Lord who Tests (Exodus 15:25 and 16:4)

5. The Lord who Commands (Exodus 20:1-3)

6. The Lord who Loves (Exodus 34:5-7)

The pieces were written for ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and to coincide with the publication of a Bible study guide for small groups with questions on passages from Exodus, published in LICC’s ‘Gateway Seven’ series of Bible studies covering different biblical genres. The six Bible study sessions are as follows:

Session 1

Hearing God’s Call (Exodus 3:1-17)

Session 2

Experiencing God’s Deliverance (Exodus 12:1-13, 29-32)

Session 3

Trusting God’s Provision (Exodus 16:1-26)

Session 4

Becoming God’s People (Exodus 19:1-6 and 20:1-17)

Session 5

Building God’s Dwelling-Place (Exodus 25:1-9 and 31:1-11)

Session 6

Encountering God’s Presence (Exodus 32:7-14 and 34:4-7)

Further information about the book is available here.

The six posts above were designed to complement, without overlapping too much, the Bible study sessions.

Exodus #6: The Lord who Loves

Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’

Exodus 34:5-7

If we didn’t know the end of the story, it would be a cliffhanger as gripping as any edge-of-the-seat TV drama. From the top of Mount Sinai, over a period of forty days, God has given Moses a series of instructions for how his presence might remain with the people in an Eden-like sanctuary. Meanwhile, at the foot of the mountain, the people have jeopardised their relationship with God by building and worshipping a golden calf.

What will God do now?

Whether God will dwell with his people – or even let them survive – becomes a real question in the aftermath of their rebellion against him. We’re meant to hold our breath throughout chapters 32-34 as Moses speaks back and forth with God.

There are shades of their first dialogue at the burning bush, but Moses has clearly made progress by this point, willing even to lay down his life for the people (32:32). He also now understands God’s bigger purpose, appealing to God’s own promise to bless Abraham with numberless descendants (32:13) and God’s plan that his people are to be the means by which he is known amongst the nations (33:16).

What will happen to that now?

The cliffhanger as to how the holy God is able to live among his sinful people finds its resolution in God’s own self-revelation of his name and character, at the heart of which is love. But there is no cheap grace here. God’s love and judgment can’t be pulled apart. The demand for justice to be done and the desire for mercy to be demonstrated are held together in God’s own being. So significant is this self-confession on God’s part that Israel comes back to it again and again – in history, prophecy, and song – and we can add our voices to theirs.

Within the sweep of Scripture as a whole, it comes to its ultimate climax in the cross of Christ, the place where God’s mercy and justice supremely meet, his love revealed above all in the sending and giving of his Son. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).

God himself will have it no other way. To know the Lord at all is to know him as the Lord who loves.

Exodus #5: The Lord who Commands

And God spoke all these words:

‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

‘You shall have no other gods before me.’

Exodus 20:1-3

It is perhaps too easy to parachute into the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 without seeing how they fit into the bigger story. That story – and the sequence in which it is told – is crucial. Imagine for a moment that Moses went to Egypt with the stone tablets tucked under his arms and said to the people: ‘If you keep all these, God will rescue you from slavery.’ How might the story of Exodus have turned out had that been the case?

Even the commandments themselves don’t begin with a command, but with a claim. They don’t begin with a demand, they begin with a declaration. They don’t begin with law, they begin with love. They don’t begin with rules, they begin with relationship.

They begin with God speaking – ‘And God spoke all these words’ – showing that the commandments are not a set of abstract principles or a body of laws put together by a faceless committee. They are the words of God himself to his people.

They begin with God identifying himself as their covenant Lord – ‘I am the LORD your God’ – the name by which he would be known to them, showcasing his special relationship with them. Obedience is not to the law for its own sake, but is deeply relational – obedience to this God.

And they begin with this covenantal God describing how he had acted on behalf of his people – ‘who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery’ – a reminder from the start that the commandments are not the way of redemption but the walk of the redeemed.

To be sure, there are commands – and they are to be obeyed – but they are a gift to the people, an expression of God’s good will for them. They restore to them the dignity and freedom that slavery in Egypt had destroyed. They embrace every aspect of life. They nurture an alternative community and lifestyle which would enable them to be a light to the nations, a responsibility which falls on our grace-filled shoulders as the new covenant people of God.

The one God to be worshipped as the true God has met us in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he still calls us to obey him, as those who have been saved by him – not just for our sakes, but for the sakes of the people among whom he calls us to live.

Exodus #4: The Lord who Tests

There the LORD issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test... Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.’

Exodus 15:25 and 16:4

Given that ‘God tested Abraham’ (Genesis 22:1), it’s perhaps no surprise that Israel follows in the footsteps of their great ancestor in the faith.

In the exodus story, between the crossing of the sea and the arrival at Sinai is a period of about two months during which God provides for the needs of his people in the desert and protects them from threats. Importantly, this is not yet the forty years of wandering in the wilderness that would later come about because of their unwillingness to enter the promised land. In this case, the trek from the sea to Sinai is not a punishment but an opportunity for the people to learn that their ongoing welfare will depend on obedience to and trust in the Lord.

It’s in this sense that the Lord tests his people – not to catch them out or for them to prove they are somehow worthy of his love, but to teach them to ‘pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees’ (15:26). The wilderness becomes a place where God trains them in his ways, shaping them according to his expectations of those who are to be his ‘holy nation’ (19:6), who will represent him to a watching world.

On several occasions, the New Testament describes Israel’s experience in the desert as in some way analogous to the Christian life (1 Corinthians 10:1-11; Hebrews 3:7-4:11). We too find ourselves in a time and place between deliverance from our slavery and arrival at our final destination.

Some circumstances in life provide us with greater opportunities to trust God and his presence with us, his provision for us. Perhaps you’ve been through one or more of those situations already. Perhaps you’re in the middle of one right now. The exodus stories remind us not to judge God’s faithfulness by our circumstances. It’s all too easy for us, as for the exodus generation, to evaluate our situation by what we think is lacking, to forget all that God has already done for us and his promise to keep us.

But more than that: to train us through those moments, to move us to a yet deeper appreciation of his ways. And to do this for us not merely as individuals but as communities of faith, that we may be the people he has called us to be for the sake of the world in which we live.

Exodus #3: The Lord who Fights

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD:

‘I will sing to the LORD,

for he is highly exalted.

Both horse and driver

he has hurled into the sea.

‘The LORD is my strength and my defence;

he has become my salvation.

He is my God, and I will praise him,

my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

The LORD is a warrior;

the LORD is his name.’

Exodus 15:1-3

Should it come as a surprise that the most significant event in the history of Israel is celebrated in song? It somehow feels right that such a monumental moment is recounted twice – in poetry as well as in prose. So it is that Exodus 14 tells the story of the crossing of the sea and Exodus 15 sings about it, inviting us to join in with the celebration.

We witness here something of a forward movement in Israel’s faith. God revealed his name to Moses at the burning bush (‘The LORD, the God of your fathers’, Exodus 3:15), and later in describing the work of redemption he would do (‘I am the LORD’, 6:6, 8). Now, at the point of deliverance, God’s people sing ‘The LORD is his name’ (15:3).

It’s our song as much as theirs.

We might feel less comfortable with their description of the Lord as ‘a warrior’ (or ‘a man of war’), but it’s a recognition that the Lord had fought on behalf of his people. The Bible will not allow us to underestimate the tragic consequences of evil in the world, but also assures us that God will do something about it.

The song doesn’t stop with the defeat of evil. It also looks to the future, when God will guide the people to his ‘holy dwelling’ (15:13), and make them secure in the place he has established (15:17). It’s another reminder, if we need it, that the exodus story doesn’t end with slaves being set free, but with former slaves now serving the Lord for the sake of the nations.

It’s our story as much as theirs.

The song celebrates the Lord’s victory, but is written in a way which allows it to be extended beyond the exodus and applied in other situations where God overcomes obstacles, human or otherwise, for the sake of his people and his purposes.

God will never allow evil to have the last word. It’s in the light of Christ’s victory over the powers at the cross that we can pray with confidence that God will ‘deliver us from the evil one’ (Matthew 6:13), and trust that one day his rule over all things will be fully and finally established. God will put all things right before he makes all things new.

This God is our God, and ‘the LORD is his name’.

Exodus #2: The Lord who Redeems

‘Therefore, say to the Israelites: “I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.”’

Exodus 6:6-8

The word ‘redemption’ belongs, first of all, to the world of buying and selling. It has to do with gaining or regaining possession of an item through the payment of a price. That wider sense carries over when we use the word in other contexts, as when we might say: ‘She didn’t work hard in her first year at university, but she redeemed herself in her second year.’

One of the most enduring movies of all time – The Shawshank Redemption – includes the word in its title. Starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, it’s the story of a wrongly convicted man sent to prison, who refuses to abandon hope even in the face of adversity, bringing a liberation of sorts to his fellow inmates. Acknowledging its significance, Tim Robbins himself said that ‘many people feel enslaved by their environment, their jobs, their relationships – by whatever it is in the course of their lives that puts walls and bars around them. And Shawshank is a story about enduring and ultimately escaping from that imprisonment’.

Our cultural stories of redemption – and there are many – hold out the hope that all may not be lost. But they may also tempt us to think that it’s up to us to redeem ourselves from whatever hole we find ourselves in.

The exodus provides a different perspective.

The phrase ‘I am the LORD’ opens and closes these three verses in which God makes no less than seven declarations of who he is and what he will do for his people: I will bring you out, I will free you, I will redeem you, I will take you as my own people, I will be your God, I will bring you to the land, I will give it to you.

The passage embraces past, present, and future. It arguably captures not just the story of the exodus but the story of the whole Bible: God rescues us from slavery so that we might be his people, living well in the place he provides for us. The promise is ultimately made good in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it is that which enables us to keep going when we’re tempted to doubt his love for us, when the opposition feels like it’s becoming too much for us.

What we can’t do for ourselves, he does for us. He loves. He pays the price. He redeems.

Echoes of Exodus

You know how it is, you wait for ages for one book called Echoes of Exodus to come along, and then two arrive at the same time:

Bryan D. Estelle, Echoes of Exodus: Tracing a Biblical Motif (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018).

Alastair J. Roberts and Andrew Wilson, Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption through Scripture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018).

I wanted to do some study in Exodus during 2018, and will be starting with these, both of which I’m confident, based on previous work of all three writers, will be excellent showcases of evangelical biblical theology.

There is a pdf excerpt of the one by Alastair Roberts and Andrew Wilson here. They also talk about the book in an episode of the podcast ‘Mere Fidelity’ (here), to which they are both regular contributors.

Alastair links to a recent talk of his on Exodus on his blog (here), much of which is summarised in his ‘10 Things You Should Know about the Exodus’.

The Bible Project on Exodus 19-40

The Bible Project – which is putting together a series of short videos introducing the structure and themes of biblical books and tracing some major themes through the entire Bible – have made available the next video, this one on Exodus 19-40. Check them out from here (click on ‘Videos’ or scroll down to the ‘Videos & Study Guides’ section).

The Bible Project on Exodus 1-18

The Bible Project – aiming to put together a series of short videos introducing the structure and themes of biblical books and tracing some major themes through the entire Bible – recently made available the next video, this one on Exodus 1-18 (along with another fairly recent addition on ‘Messiah’). Check them out from here (click on ‘Videos’ or scroll down to the ‘Videos & Study Guides’ section).

Deovox on Exodus 1-14

The latest series of the Deovox podcast from Damaris is devoted to Exodus 1-14, with the first few episodes already up.

1. Introduction to Exodus

2. Forgotten and Enslaved (Exodus 1:1-14)

In the series description, Richard Collins says:

‘This event is the most important moment in Israelite history. It is the one that forever defines God in the eyes of his people. Throughout the Old Testament, he is referred to as “the God who led Israel out of bondage.” As Christians, we view him in a similar way that is highlighted repeatedly in the New Testament. We worship God, who has led us, not out of Egypt, but out of slavery to sin to a life of freedom. We too are set free to live our lives for his glory. Just like the Israelites.’

As usual, the episodes are supported by study guides.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (10/50) – Let My People Go

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the tenth of the fifty emails, written this week by Helen Parry.

I have… seen the misery of my people in Egypt… So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Exodus 3:7-8
 
Over 400 years passed after Jacob’s family took refuge in Egypt when famine struck the eastern Mediterranean. His descendants found themselves now effectively in slavery to the Egyptians. Did any of them hold on to the promise that God had given to Abraham, or have even the faintest vision of their destiny?

But God… All through the biblical story the theme recurs: But God… The account of the Exodus shows God as the Director, with a cast of hundreds who each have to play their part. First, the Hebrew midwives and Moses’ parents, then Pharaoh’s daughter, ensure Moses’ survival and his privileged position in Pharaoh’s court. Then Moses takes centre stage and is given the unwelcome role of hero and deliverer.

On the last evening, when the final plague – the death of the firstborn sons – was to bring Pharaoh to his knees, the Israelites were given particular instructions: to prepare a meal of lamb, bitter herbs and bread without yeast, and to paint the lintels of their doors with the lambs’ blood. And thus the feast of the Passover was instituted – when the destroyer ‘passed over’ the houses on which the blood was daubed – a feast that the Israelites were to celebrate as an annual remembrance, and which Jewish people have observed ever since.

The Passover calls to mind the sovereign call and redemptive action of God, and the identity and destiny of his people. As his chosen people, they were to receive an inheritance and be a blessing to the world. That blessing finally reached out to the world at large only when God wrought his second great deliverance. ‘Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed’, declared Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7), so that, as he reminded the Galatians, the blessing promised originally to Abraham might come to the Gentiles.

Thus, God’s purpose for us, as his people today, is not simply that we might receive a blessing, but that we might be a blessing. May we always, as individuals and church fellowships, seek to be agents of that blessing wherever he has placed us.

Helen Parry

For further reflection and action:

1. The Exodus is often seen as a foreshadowing of Christ’s work of redemption on the cross. Spend some time thanking God for ‘rescuing us from the dominion of darkness and bringing us into the kingdom of the Son he loves’ (Colossians 1:13).

2. Think about God’s sovereign timing in your own life. How does this make you feel about the future?

3. Let us make a prayerful resolve every day to bless others through our words and actions.

Stephen G. Dempster on Exodus and Biblical Theology 2

Stephen J. Dempster, ‘Exodus and Biblical Theology: On Moving into the Neighborhood with a New Name’, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 12, 3 (2008), 4-23.

Dempster divides the book of Exodus into three major sections:

• Deliverance (1:1-15:21)
• Covenant (15:22-24:18)
• Presence (25:1-40:38)

Deliverance (Exodus 1:1-15:21)
The first section comes to a climax in the deliverance of the people, with the Lord’s power celebrated in the Song of the Sea (15:1-21).

Covenant (Exodus 15:22-24:18)
The second section leads to the mountain where God makes a covenant with the people. The family of Abraham has now become a nation, and the covenant God makes with the people is a continuation of the covenant made with the patriarchs. Exodus 19:5-6 is programmatic, stressing ‘that obedience to the covenant will lead to a unique relation to Yahweh and a unique relation to the rest of the nations’ (13). Israel is to be a kingdom of priests ‘whose congregation is nothing less than the globe’ (14). Israel is a ‘holy nation’ – set apart for God and ‘visible as such to the rest of the world’ (14).

Presence (Exodus 25:1-40:38)
The final section establishes the theme of the Lord’s presence taking up residence with the people – one of the main goals of the covenant (25:8; 29:42-46). Garden of Eden imagery is used in paraphernalia of the tabernacle showing that what is at stake ‘is a model of a new world with God at the center, living with his people’ (18). When the tent is finished, the new year begins (40:17). Exactly a year before Israel was in bondage in Egypt; now they begin the new year ‘with the most important reality of all: the divine presence’ (19).

On Exploring Exodus

Brian S. Rosner and Paul R. Williamson (eds.), Exploring Exodus: Literary, Theological and Contemporary Approaches (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), 234pp., ISBN 9781844743131.

This collection of essays on Exodus arises out of papers given at the 2007 Moore College School of Theology. The contributions I’ve read so far (about half of them) deal more with the ‘literary’ and ‘theological’ rather than the ‘contemporary’ aspects mentioned in the subtitle, but there is lots of good material, ranging from close analysis of particular passages to exploration of larger themes in the book as well as its place in biblical theology more generally.

IVP (UK) provide the introduction online which nicely summarises the content of each of the essays.

Elmer A. Martens on (Exodus 5:22-6:8 and) Old Testament Theology

Elmer A. Martens, God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology, 2nd edn. (Leicester: Apollos/Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994).

Martens’ theology of the Old Testament takes its starting-point from Exodus 5:22-6:8 as a pivotal text concerning ‘God’s design’ in a fourfold sense:

• Deliverance
• Covenant community
• Knowledge of God
• Land/blessing

He writes:

‘My claim is that the overarching theme of the Old Testament is God’s design, a design that incorporates four components: deliverance, community, knowledge of God, and the abundant life. The design is articulated at the exodus, implemented and tested in the monarchy, reaffirmed in the post-monarchy period, and continued into the New Testament’ (3).

The first edition of the book was published in 1981. In this second edition, Martens responds to criticisms that his schema ignored creation (which he here links with the more dominant theme of salvation history). He also responds to criticisms of too narrow a focus on Israel as a people by showing how the ‘particular’ (God’s plan for Israel) is related to the ‘universal’ (God’s plan for all nations and for creation).

Insightful and useful though it is is, the schema still tends to marginalise the wisdom tradition…

Stephen G. Dempster on Exodus and Biblical Theology 1

Stephen J. Dempster, ‘Exodus and Biblical Theology: On Moving into the Neighborhood with a New Name’, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 12, 3 (2008), 4-23.

The exodus, ‘the central salvation event in the Old Testament’ (4), shaped the imagination of subsequent biblical writers for their thinking about faith, history, law, and ethics.

Exodus 20:1 – ‘I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage’ – could be a short-hand creed for Israel. The same language could be used to interpret Abraham’s earlier ‘departure’ from Ur (Genesis 15:6-7) as well as to express future salvation (e.g., Isaiah 11:15-16; chs. 40-55; Hosea 1:11; Micah 4:6-7). The exodus ‘changed how Israel even thought about time’ (4-5), it being the date from which major annual feasts would be marked, as well as being seen in the weekly rhythm of work and rest (Deut. 5:12-15). The exodus was also the great indicative which provided the basis for the great imperatives, rooting ethics and law in salvation from oppression, a salvation itself rooted in the the character of God.

According to Dempster:

‘Astonishingly, the goal of the Exodus was that the great Creator and Redeemer of his people would come and live with them, as it were, “move permanently into their neighborhood,” and bring a bit of heaven to earth’ (cf. Leviticus 26:9-13) (5).

Exodus language also pervades the New Testament (see 5-6), coming to a culmination in Revelation:

‘And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God”’ (Revelation 21:3).

Dempster deals with what he calls ‘interpretive impasses’ with Exodus. One approach sees it as the first in a series of mighty acts of God, which overlooks the fact that the exodus ‘is part of a larger biblical narrative’ – not its beginning, but the continuation of a narrative that precedes it (6).

The second interpretive dead-end isolates the book from its preceding and subsequent contexts and turns it into ‘a paradigm for how oppressed peoples can think about their plight’ or ‘a devotional aid that helps individuals trust in God when going through difficult times’; the larger context, however, shows that Israel ‘needs far more than just a political and economic salvation or spiritual guidance’ (6).

The third mistake is to suppose that the events narrated in the book are ‘simply literary creations’. Theology and history, however, do not have to be at odds with one another, says Dempster; everything looks different from a theological perspective, where the name of the Pharaoh is unimportant while the names of the two Hebrew midwives is important (7).

Before dealing with the larger structure of Exodus, Dempster looks at the first paragraph, ‘the story of Exodus in the context of the story of Scripture’ (7). The first paragraph begins with ‘and’, reminding us that the story is part of an ongoing larger story, and Exodus 1:1-7 brings to mind themes and vocabulary of the larger biblical story.

‘Thus, as Exodus opens, we are introduced to a story that is part of a larger story, which is indeed the story of the world. A family of seventy individuals that have gone down to Egypt and who have multiplied prolifically have a mission to the world. They are part of a new creation, a creation that is going to bring about universal blessing to a world in dire need’ (7).

Dempster divides the book as a whole into three major sections – Deliverance (1:1-15:21), Covenant (15:22-24:18), and Presence (25:1-40:38) – which will be summarised in a subsequent post.

Stephen J. Wellum on Reading and Applying Exodus

Stephen J. Wellum, ‘ Reading and Applying the Book of Exodus Today’, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 12, 3 (2008), 2-3.

Stephen J. Wellum introduces an issue of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology devoted to the book of Exodus by exploring briefly how to read and apply it to today.

Kicking off with the importance of reading texts in context, he says we need to read beyond the immediate context of a passage to the whole of Scripture. The discipline that helps us do this is biblical theology, ‘which seeks to understand the whole Bible by carefully interpreting biblical texts in light of the entire canon, taking into consideration the progressive nature of God’s redemptive plan and revelation of himself’ (2).

He distinguishes three horizons:

• Textual – the immediate context of a text.
• Epochal – where the text is place ‘in the unfolding plan of God’ (2).
• Canonical – texts read ‘in light of the fullness of revelation that has now come in Christ’ (2).

Exodus is an important book in the overall story of the Bible. Abraham emerges in Genesis as God’s solution to the plight of men and women, but God calls and establishes his covenant with the nation of Israel in fulfilment of promises made to Abraham (cf. Exod. 3:6).

‘Israel, then, which serves as a kind of new Adam, will be the means by which God will bring about a resolution of the sin and death caused by the first Adam. Israel, as a nation, is the agent and means God will use to achieve the wider purposes of the Abrahamic covenant that will ultimately lead us to Christ’ (3).

Exodus lays out many of the typological building blocks of God’s redemptive plan – priesthood, sacrifice, tabernacle, etc. – which point beyond themselves to their fulfilment in Christ.

Peter Enns on Reading Exodus (3): Contemporary Significance

Peter Enns, Exodus, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000).

In the Introduction (downloadable here) to his commentary on Exodus, Peter Enns reflects on the three interpretive steps utilised in the NIV Application Commentary series:

(1) Original meaning
(2) Bridging contexts
(3) Contemporary significance

When it comes to contemporary significance, Enns begins by saying that we typically approach the question of application by assuming (1) that the passage has to ‘speak to us where we are’, and (2) that it has to be ‘practical’ in terms of pushing us to do something. Both assumptions, he holds, are right and wrong.

The problem with the first assumption is that much of the Old Testament is narrative, recording ‘a story about something that happened, and therefore it is not… apparent how that story should be applied’ (31).

But he makes it clear that the problem is not so much with Exodus:

‘When we think of application, we tend to think of ourselves as the immovable point and the Old Testament as something that has to be brought into our lives. We think that it has to speak to our circumstances without always considering whether it is our particular circumstances that the Bible is designed to speak to’ (31).

He goes on:

‘There is another way of thinking about application. The book of Exodus is not waiting there for us to bring it into our world. Rather, it is standing there defining what our world should look like and then inviting us to enter that world’ (31).

Exodus tells us what ‘God is like, how he thinks of his people, the lengths to which he will go to deliver them, and the proper response of God’s people to this great deed’ (31). Moreover, as Christians, we understand the story in the light of the Christ who completes the story, ‘and then we begin to see more fully how this story affects how we look at ourselves and our God’ (31).

On the second assumption (that application has to be ‘practical’), Enns notes that application may also be to change how we think, how we grow in our understanding of God and his love, or even to lead us to worship.

He wonders whether contemporary society obliges us to ask ‘What’s the payoff?’, as if to suggest that if there is nothing demonstrable or practical as a result of interpretation, then it must inevitably lack worth. He is not advocating Bible study as a mere intellectual exercise, but wanting to say that ‘“practical” application need not always translate into something we do. Rather, what may be in order is to change how we define “practical”’ (32).

In short, summarising the three steps:

‘This commentary attempts to explain Exodus in light of Christ’s coming. In doing so, I have tried to listen as carefully as I can to what the story would have communicated to ancient Israelite readers of the book. The theology of the book pushes me outward to consider how that theology fits into the whole story, a story that culminates in the person and work of Christ. It is knowing how the story ends up that forms the proper context within which we are “in Christ” (to use Paul’s words) apply those words to ourselves’ (32).

Peter Enns on Reading Exodus (2): Bridging Contexts

Peter Enns, Exodus, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000).

The Introduction to this commentary is available online as a pdf download.

Peter Enns begins his commentary on Exodus by reflecting on the three interpretive steps utilised in the NIV Application Commentary series:

(1) Original meaning
(2) Bridging contexts
(3) Contemporary significance

On the bridging contexts step, Enns argues for a distinctively Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, one which knows the end of the story – Christ’s resurrection – and can read Israel’s story in that light. He says:

‘The Old Testament is not an ancient text with which we have to struggle somehow to find creative ways to bring its timeless principles into our world. God has already “interpreted” the Old Testament by raising Christ from the dead’ (27).

The New Testament writers interpret the entire Old Testament – not just isolated texts here and there – from this point of view (which, says Enns, needs to be taken into account when the writers quote an Old Testament passage in a way that doesn’t seem to fit). So, in 2 Corinthians 6:2, Paul can cite Isaiah 49:8 (‘… in the day of salvation I heard you…’) and understand that what originally applied to the Judean exiles in the sixth century BC ‘was merely a prelude to the fullness of God’s salvation as seen in the cross and the empty tomb’ (27). Christ can be seen in Isaiah 49:8 only by ‘standing at the end of the story’ (28).

Hence:

‘This, then, is how the contexts between the Old Testament and our contemporary setting will be bridged in this commentary – not by seeking timeless moral principles in the Old Testament and then seeking to apply them to our lives, but rather by asking ourselves what the Old Testament tells us about the nature of God (i.e., how he acts, what he expects of his people) and then seeing how these things can be understood in light of the gospel… What God has done in Christ, in other words, is the proper context within which we interpret the Old Testament’ (28).

This doesn’t make interpretation easy, or turn Jesus into a magic key to unlock passages. Nor, says Enns, is it necessary to find Jesus in every verse. There are explicit links between Christ and the tabernacle (and temple), as (for instance) John 1-2 makes clear, but this ‘does not mean that we have to find Christological significance in every detail in the tabernacle’ (29).

Enns notes that he sometimes does not supply a separate section on original meaning, bridging contexts, and contemporary significance for each passage in Exodus: each of the plagues, for instance, does not need to be individually bridged to our setting. The nature of the book of Exodus ‘lends itself to drawing theological implications from larger blocks of text’ (30).