"So Long Moses"

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to an album by Andrew Peterson entitled "Behold the Lamb". There is a song on the album called "So Long Moses". It is a beautiful and accurate telling of the prophecies God gave to his prophets regarding the impending Messiah. Since it is the season in which we celebrate the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ, I thought it fitting to do my own recap of the history of the Old Testament that lead up to Christ's birth--inspired by Andrew Peterson of course. There are truly countless examples in scripture throughout the Old Testament that were pertinent the coming redemption of God's chosen people, but in order to save space and time, I will hit the high spots :)

The very first indication we have in scripture of a triune God is in Genesis 1:26 when God says "let Us make man in our own image". One of the conclusions that we can draw from this and in tying it in to John 1:1 "The Word was with God and the Word was God" and John 1:14 "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" is that Jesus is God and he has been around since creation. After The Fall and Adam and Eve are cursed and their ancestors are cursed, God proclaims that there will be a redeeming circumstance to come in his timing. We see this in Genesis when God speaks directly to the serpent (Satan) that deceived Eve. (Genesis 3:15) This verse is also reconciled in Romans 16:20 "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." So you see, in creation Jesus was present and there was already a prophecy made by God that he would indeed crush Satan, which is exactly what he did by means of the cross.

Let's fast forward to the Moses part, shall we? After many, many years of God's people being in bondage to slavery at the hands of the Egyptians, God raises up a leader to bring God's people to their homeland and out of slavery. His name was Moses. Though we all have the Law of God written in our hearts, (Romans 1), God's laws became formalized through Moses and the 10 Commandments. So, even as people were "without excuse" to acknowledge God and his laws, they actually had it in writing when Moses came along. Even though the written law came through Moses and he was the initial one chosen to lead God's people out of bondage, he was not permitted to see the Promised Land. Joshua was to lead the Israelites into Canaan. Upon seeing the Promised Land and the Canaanites that inhabited the area, the Israelites protested and said they would not enter (even though God had promised defeat over the Canaanites). So, because of their fear and disobedience, God allowed them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. When they finally decided to go back, they defeated the Canaanites and the land God had promised them and their forefathers was theirs. They were home.

When the Israelites arrived in Israel there were 12 tribes. Within these tribes there were clans. (On a side note, all Jewish priests came from the tribe of Levi, except for two: Melchizedek and Jesus.) All of the other countries in that region had kings at that time and Israel began wondering why they were the only ones with no king. They went to Samuel, the prophet, and demanded that they be like the other countries and choose a king. When Samuel asked God what he should do, God told him to give the people what they wanted. In 1 Samuel 8:5, God tells Samuel that Israel has rejected Him [God] as their king. And in 1 Samuel 12:12, we see again that Israel didn't need a king because God was their king. But God allowed them to have what they wanted. Now, I'm no scholar, but it seems that God would be the greatest king of all, but so many times we find ourselves thinking that we can actually make better decisions than God--and so, the Israelites sealed their fate for the next 40 years. Saul would be king over Israel.

After many unsuccessful years of being king, Saul failed to listen to God and obey God, the future king was tending sheep. God told Samuel to go to Bethlehem and there would be a man, Jesse (who was from the tribe of Judah), whose son would be the anointed king of Israel. Samuel did as God asked and anointed, David, a shepherd and youngest of Jesse's sons as God's chosen king of Israel. The most important points of the story of David as king of Israel in terms of prophecy are that David was from the tribe of Judah and that he was born in Bethlehem. In Micah 5:2, we see the prophecy made that Bethlehem would provide a king for Israel. Then we see the prophecy fulfilled in the gospels Matthew and Luke where Jesus was born in Bethlehem, since that is where Mary and Joseph had to register for a census decreed by Caesar Augustus.

After the loved and cherished King David's reign came to an end, Israel suffered. There were periods of blessing, but there were many more that were not. God's people longed for a king like David. He was strong, wise and walked with God. Israel prospered with a king like David. The people of Israel asked the prophet Isaiah when they would have another king that they would love like David, and Isaiah asked "O Lord how long?" would it be until He would deliver a king once again that would save the the people of Israel. You see, when God's people were captive in Egypt, the chains that bound them were chains of slavery to the Egyptian Pharaoh. They worked and toiled at the hands of the Egyptians. But the chains that they now faced in their homeland were chains of sin and rebellion and the consequences of disobeying and forsaking the God who delivered them. God had a plan to bring his children back to him. He had a redemptive plan. A plan that would bring forth a king, from the tribe of Judah and from the hometown of David--a King named Jesus. Isaiah is often called the fifth gospel because of its distinct prophecy. Isaiah 53 is most commonly referred to in the case of OT prophecy regarding the life of the King to come.

Israel needed and desired a king, and God provided the ultimate and eternal king--Jesus Christ. Though the people of Israel, the Jewish nation were God's chosen people, the coming of the Messiah meant something else. In the gospel of Luke, the angel that appears to the shepherds says that there are "good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people". All people means Jews and Gentiles. Jesus would be king of the Jews and king of the Gentiles. Through Jesus, we believers, have "been adopted" into God's family.

Jesus was the chosen King of Israel from the beginning of time, but God had a specific plan for bringing it into fruition. All of these events, and many more in redemptive history were leading up to the consummation of God's promise to his people. So long Moses, Israel's first prophet, so long David, Israel's loved and cherished king...hello Jesus, the eternal King of all.

Please excuse the mess....

So, obviously I've not got the blogging thing down pat :) My posts are out of order and I am unsure how to change them. I apologize for the confusion :)

The Gospel--part 2

In the previous post, the attempt was made in explaining the goodness of the gospel. There are two more points that I would like to expound upon in regards to the gospel and why it is "good news".

Most Christians reduce Christianity and the gospel down to salvation--reconciliation to the Father and forgiveness of sin. Those are absolutely critical and are center stage in redemption, but there is more to the Cross. I think David F. Wells said it best: "Gospel truth, biblically speaking, is not a formula, not simply a relationship, not just about spirituality. It is about the triune God acting in this world redemptively, in the course of time, in the fabric of history, and bringing all of this to its climax in Christ. The message of the cross is the message that corresponds to what God actually did in space and time. And this is all part of a whole. The whole is all that God had unveiled of himself and of how he views the world." Did you catch that last sentence? God has unveiled himself [in Jesus Christ] of how he views the world. What Wells is saying is that there is a way that God intends for his people to view the world and do life in our place of inhabitance. This includes personal relationships, work relationships, child-rearing, finances, etc. Because of Jesus, we now can understand how God wants and intends for us to view Him (theology), how he wants us to do life with the people we encounter (ethics) and how he wants us to relate to things (cosmology). Since Jesus has made it possible for us to please God through his death (Hebrews 11:6), we gain from this that the cross also makes it possible to please God in all areas of our lives, not just in terms of reconciliation to the Father. It is because we are reconciled through Jesus that we can please God in every area of our lives. Without Jesus, you cannot have a worldview based on him or his word, and you cannot please him. So the conclusion that we can draw from all of this is that through Jesus we are able to do life and view the world in a way that is pleasing to God, in addition to the glorious gift of having our sins forgiven and having the assurance that we will one day be with our Saviour.

To put the icing on cake, metaphorically speaking, the gospel is good because it becomes our ultimate source of joy and satisfaction. Nothing will abate out longing for satisfaction on this earth except Jesus and his substitutiary death on the cross. It is because of the cross that we can have any joy whatsoever. Can you imagine the burden we would be bearing knowing that we have offended God and there was no help for us and that we would die in our condition? It is freeing to know that there is help for us--it is truly joyous! Because we don't have to bear that burden, we can enjoy the abundant blessings of God. His graciousness toward us cannot be measured. But his goodness and graciousness is not measured by the amount of blessings that we have--it is measured by his work on the cross. In understanding all of what the gospel entails, we are able to have infinite joy in Christ. John Piper took a small portion of the Shorter Catechism from the Westminster Confessions of Faith and changed one word that summarizes how we can have joy and be glorifying to God. He says "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Having joy in Christ glorifies God. One whose heart has truly been transformed by the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, knows that He is the fountain in which all joy comes.

"Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail you, but God is the strength of my heart and y portion forever." (Psalm 73:25-26)

Welcome!

Welcome to Going Godward! This blog is dedicated to God and Truth. I have had in my head, for quite sometime, roughly 30 ideas that I have wanted to write about...so I decided to start a blog to journal through these ideas. I'm not sure the direction this blog will take, but I am thankful and feel so blessed that God has given me an outlet to write!

The Gospel--part 1

I've been mulling over what I wanted my first post to look like and what I wanted the content to include. I felt like the gospel was a good place to start. All the joy that we have in our lives begins with the gospel.

Over the last few years, the "gospel" has been one of the most precious and sustaining words in my vocabulary. It is a word that is not uncommon to believers and is generally not uncommon to unbelievers. I heard the word growing up, but never really investigated its meaning until I was much older. The gospel means: "good news". I suppose some would ask 'what is so good about it'?, and that should be a question that we are all prepared to answer.

The first answer to that question should be because God is good. He can only do good. In Genesis, we see that God created everything and saw it was "good". In Luke 18:15, Jesus says "No one is good except God alone." In Deuteronomy 32:4 the author says "His works are perfect", the Psalmist said the "law of the Lord is perfect", and Jesus says in Matthew 5 that the heavenly father "is perfect." So, with only a few verses we see that God is good and perfect--flawless. He is the ultimate standard of what is good.

Now that we know that God would only do what is good, we can continue with our answer as to what makes the gospel "good". The next part of answering that is the realization of how sinful we all are. Our hearts are naturally inclined to oppose God--we are born enemies of God (Romans 5:10). David said "behold I was brought forth in iniquity". I have often heard it said that you never have to teach a child to be selfish, it comes naturally to them. They must be taught to share and be kind to those around them. We are all predisposed to sin and selfishness. Romans 5:12 states that "just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." The key words are "all sinned"--not a few sinned, not only the bad people sinned, not just the murderers and theives and adulterers sinned--ALL sinned. Paul writes and reminds the people in Rome, "There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God...there is none who does good, there is not even one."(Romans 3:10-11) Sin is so offensive to God, that only Jesus' death could bring justice for the offense that we all have found ourselves guilty.

These two points, God's goodness and our sinful state, come together to summarize why the gospel is indeed "good". John Piper says "God is the Gospel". God is the author of the plan of salvation. God in his goodness has brought the "good news" to life in Jesus Christ. Because of our fallen, sinful state and our inability to do anything good at all, God being loving, compassionate and merciful, sent Jesus to receive the full wrath of what we deserved. I always think it is intersting to note that Jesus did not come to earth to atone for our sins in a time like today when the death penalty is administered by means of lethal injection. No pain associated with lethal injection--you just go to sleep. Jesus came to die for our sins, to endure the punishment we all deserve, in a period of human history when the death penalty was by means of crucifixion. Crucifixion was a terrible and inhumane way of dying. It was truly agonizing and humiliating. This was the kind of death we all deserved. This is how offensive our state of sin is to God. Jesus is our redemption--he has redeemed us from death that separated us from God. This is all "good news". In fact is the best news we could ever get.

You will never know how much you need God and his grace through Jesus Christ until you understand how desperate your sinful state is. The Gospel is good because it comes from God and it is good because Jesus' death is enough to cover our sin.

"But God demonstrates his His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him [Jesus]." Romans 5:8-9