THE LORD SPOKE (January 24)

Daily Reflections from Scripture:

Old Testament: Exodus 6-7

If you had to summarize the whole of the Bible in one word or phrase, what would it be? Keep in mind, this “center” of Scripture must work for both Old and New Testaments. At least 23 different answers to that question have been proposed in the last 100 years of theological studies. The problem is that a single point probably has to be so broad (e.g. God, revelation, sovereignty, etc.) that it fails to really help define things, or a single point ends up being too exclusive of other significant points (e.g. love, salvation, etc.). Consequently, what is proposed here is not a single word but a collection of key words under the umbrella of the Sovereignty (power, rule, kingdom) of God.

Exodus 6 is one of the pivotal passages of the entire Bible and helps us to identify the major themes of Scripture. They are:

(1) PRINCE / Messiah (Ex. 6:2) - Moses is God’s anointed one to do the job here. He is the receptor and transmitter of revelation and a type of the Messiah.

(2) PROMISE / Covenant (Ex. 6:4-5) - God says, “I established my covenant” and “I have remembered my covenant”. In fact, this theme is repeated 264 times in Scripture, most notably in the Pentateuch, Psalms, Isaiah, and Malachi. It’s all founded on the fact that “I am the Lord”, used four times just in this chapter and 161 times elsewhere in Scripture (the holy name Yahweh appears a total of 5512 times!).

(3) PRESERVATION / Redemption, Salvation (Ex. 6:6-7) - Four verbs affirm what God will do to preserve His people: “I will bring you out”, “I will free you”, “I will redeem you”, and “I will take you”.

(4) PEOPLE / Election (Ex. 6:7) - That last phrase goes on to say “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.” Verse three makes mention of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and verse five speaks of the Israelites. These were the people of the covenant, the people God preserved through thick and thin, the people chosen by God for himself.

(5) POSSESSION / Land, Life (Ex. 6:8) - “I will bring you to the Land.” This was, after all, part of the promise “to give them the Land”.

Thus you have in five words, the basic content and themes of the entire Old Testament and they work well for the New Testament also. The experience of believers today as the chosen people of God fits into this picture like a hand in a glove. Without doing damage to God’s special relationship with Israel, we have been grafted in and made partakers of the Promise. Praise God!


New Testament: Matthew 24

“Blast the bones of those who calculate the end!” So said Moses Maimonides, a great rabbi and Torah scholar from the 12th century. Apparently the calculators never got blasted very far, for we frequently hear them rattling in our theological closets. Calculating the end times has been a favorite sport for a variety of individuals and many groups have taken a cultic twist in doing so.

That’s what scares us. We’ve seen it before. People get to spending so much time and effort on prophetic questions that it seems they don’t have their feet on the ground or their head screwed on right. Besides, doesn’t the Bible say, “no one can know the day or the hour”?

In Matthew 24, Jesus speaks in response to the disciples’ question, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” He answers those two aspects with lots of detail. But look again at the disciples’ question (vs. 3). They begin with “tell us when” and He doesn’t give them an answer to that. The first part of Jesus’ answer (vs. 4-8) describes the first half of the Tribulation with its “wars and rumors of wars”. At the beginning of vs. 9 He uses a chronological marker “then...” to signal a shift. What follows (vs. 9-14) describes the second half of the Tribulation with its “increase of wickedness”. Again, that is followed with a “then”. In this case He says, “then the end will come”. The more you look, the more you’ll see phrases like “at that time”, “then will be”, and other uses of “then”.

What Jesus never answers is, “when” will this start? At the time not even He knew the answer to that question, but the Father only (vs. 36). That has to do with His voluntary and temporary self-emptying (Phil. 2:6-8). For a time, He laid aside the independent use of some of His attributes. Today, exalted at the right hand of the Father, He does know when His return will be.

But He’s not telling us because His message to us is, “keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (vs. 42). We are encouraged (commanded!) to “be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when [we] do not expect him” (vs. 44). In His sovereign wisdom, He has chosen not to give us those specifics because it’s better that we don’t know. We are encouraged to walk closely with Him and to live expectantly. That’s what He wants of us more than anything.

There is nothing else on the prophetic calendar that must be fulfilled before His return. He is coming - that is certain. Are you ready? Are you watching?