40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Live From HWSS 2019

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

This episode was recorded live at the Here We Still Stand conference. Chad and Daniel are joined by Erick Sorensen to discuss Psalms 135 and 136 and then take a look at 1 Corinthians 10. Have a listen!

thanks for coming to the here we still stand third edition of 40 minutes live it's uh the Best show of the year, right? Because it is the best one that we do. So, yeah, we are going to take a look today at what, Chad? I thought that you were going to decide that. Oh, uh-oh. Yeah, we're going to be looking at a couple of different psalms, 135 and 136, because they're creedal by nature and even by structure.

So we're going to look at those, and then we're going to transition from that to the inspired commentary on the scriptures commonly called the New Testament. So we'll be looking at 1 Corinthians 10 after that. Awesome, let's do it. And before we do that, I want to point out just an important thing

just so you can have a little sympathy for Dan and I. Chad is reading directly out of the Hebrew. Dan and I are using the Jesus Storybook Bible. So we'll try to keep up. This literally happened right before that. He says, oh, I've got the book I made of the Psalter. So it's got the Hebrew and it's got the English. And he's like, yeah, so I made this book.

And I was like, yeah, that's funny. But then he's not joking like that. He made that book. He literally has it right here. I for real thought it was a joke. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He'll be autographing copies for you at the end. It was like an unintentional flex,

but like a well-earned one. Yeah, I love this. I love this copy of the Psalter. and I love the fact that I can actually look at the original right here in front of me because it's something we talk about on the show a lot. I like to recollect this saying by one of the early rabbis,

a guy named Ben Bogba, kind of a funny name, but one of his famous proverbs that he would pass on to his students was in reference to what you should do with the Torah. He said, turn it and turn it again for everything is in it. So you turn the Torah and then you turn it again, then you turn it again

and more and more comes falling out of it because it's bottomless. There's always more to learn. And every time that I read anything, whether it's the Psalms or something in the Torah, something from the prophets, in the original language, I discover something new every single time.

And you don't have to read it in the Hebrew or the Greek to get that because just by returning to the scriptures, you realize that there's always more connections to make. There's always deeper to dig And especially as you begin with Genesis and work your way forward, as we've seen going from Genesis now to Joshua,

there's this building up where Exodus is quoting Genesis and Leviticus is quoting Exodus and Deuteronomy is quoting all four preceding books. So there's this gradual process of layering within the scriptures. And you see that in the Psalms as well. We'll see that in these two

that we're looking at, 135 and 136, because they pull together material from Genesis one and two. with creation. They pull together material from the book of Exodus, and they fuse these together into this poetic whole that also becomes creedal by structure and by language. But I'm kind of getting ahead of myself because one of the things I wanted to say up front is some people would say that what we're doing today is completely foreign to the Old Testament because they would say that there's nothing creedal about the Old Testament. If you check

scholarly literature about something to do with the Old Testament and creed, you'll often hear the explanation, well, that's foreign to the Old Testament. The Old Testament is not about creeds at all. And I think part of the problem there is not with their understanding of the Old Testament, it's with the understanding of the creeds. See, the creeds aren't just simply kind of dry dogmatic statements of what the church believes. The creeds more or less tell a story. They're a narrative. Where does it begin? Where do the creeds begin?

They begin with creation. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. That's Torah language, right? That's Genesis one and two language. Where do they end? With the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

What's that? Well, that's revelation language, right? So the creeds themselves are taking everything from Genesis to revelation, and they're putting it together into this very small unit that is a summary of the entirety of the scriptures. And that was actually one of the reasons

that we had creeds to begin with. Before we had what we call the Apostles' Creed, it was built upon kind of an informal, not tightly, exactly worded kind of creed, but kind of a general creedal statement that was known as a rule of faith. And the purpose of the rule of faith, according to people like Irenaeus of Lyon,

who was a second century church father, one of the purposes of this was twofold. One was so that when you are preparing people for baptism, they know that of which the scriptures testify. So this was the baptismal creed. So when they were being instructed in what the Christian faith was all about, they were given the rule of faith,

which was more or less a summary of who the triune God is and what he's done for us, creation, redemption, sanctification. But another purpose of the creed, according to Irenaeus again, was in order to teach people how to understand the scriptures. And I think this is one of the aspects of the creed

that's often missing in our understanding of why we have a creed to begin with. So here's the image that Irenaeus gave because he was combating heretics known as the Gnostics and the Gnostics were just proliferating. There were all kinds of Gnostics. And if you read his book against the Gnostics or against the heretics, he talks about all of these.

But what they would do, a lot of these Gnostics groups, they would take the scriptures, but they would arrange the story in such a way that it fit their own particular narrative, their own particular theology. And so the image, the famous image that Irenaeus uses is that it's like, he's talking about the Gnostics, he said it's like an artist makes this beautiful mosaic of a king out of all kinds of precious jewels and stones. And then someone comes along and removes all the precious stones and jewels and rearranges them into the image of a dog or a fox.

And he adds, imperfectly at that. So that's what he sees the heretics doing. So they're taking the precious stones and jewels of the scriptures, which are intended by God to convey the image of the king, we might say of the face of Christ, and they're rearranging these. They're using the same scriptures,

but they're rearranging them into the mosaic of a dog. And we see this happening all the time, right? We see people abusing and misusing the Bible and putting it together so it resembles something that is completely foreign to what the scriptures are all about. But that just comes by like picking little bits here and there and rearranging it into the mosaic of a heretical dog.

That happened, this ongoing problem in the Christian church always has been from the second century onward. So Irenaeus says we have a creed in order that we might have a mosaic of Christ. This is all of the messages of the scripture combined into this one beautiful story, picture, narrative of who God is and what he's done for us in Christ.

And this is exactly how the Old Testament, this is my transition point to the Old Testament, this is how the Old Testament works. When the Old Testament is creedal in language, it tells a story, just like the creed does. We see this, for instance, in the book of Deuteronomy, where it starts out by saying that my father was a wandering Aramean, and he goes into the Holy Land, then he ends up in Egypt, and he's plagued by all these afflictions from Pharaoh. And so God plagues Pharaoh and brings us out and then plants us into the Holy Land.

It's about a 10-verse creed. That's the way the Old Testament does creeds. it tells a story. We said that also in the case of these Psalms. There's Psalm 78 and 105 and 106, and these two we're going to look at today, all of which are creedal in nature in that they tell the story of God's redemptive acts for Israel. The same thing that the Apostles Creed does for us. So when you recite the Creed, realize that you're reciting a story. It just so happens that it's God's story of who he is and what he's done for us and for our salvation. And when the Old Testament does this, it often talks about God's redemptive acts in the language

of the Exodus, because the Exodus, of course, is the primary redeeming act of God for Israel. It becomes the way by which they understand themselves. So who are you, Israel? We are the people that God redeemed out of Egypt. That is our identity. And that sums up everything about who God is and who Israel is based upon what God has done for them. Okay. Enough preliminaries. All I was going to say, knowledge dropped. You guys have a good afternoon. And I just learned, I learned some things. I hope you learned some things. yeah so uh let's look at the psalms uh if you'll all open up your hebrew bibles to 135 so the reason i chose 135 and 136 is because they're really the replicas of each other

they both in fact in some verses it's almost verbatim from one to the other exactly what's being talked about so let me begin and give you an overview of of the way they work and then we'll look at some specific verses. So the overview is this. They both start out with a call for the giving of thanks to God. It's kind of just a general psalm-like thing that you hear often where you praise the Lord and give thanks to the Lord because he's a really good God, right? That's who he is. So that kind of sets this tone of praise and thanksgiving. But then both of them transition into praising God for being the kind of creator that he is. So you have this language of him making the sun and bringing the clouds up and having lightning and all this creational

language. And then you have this immediate leap. There's no segue. This immediate leap from God as creator. He's also the God who smote the Egyptians. I know, I was just reading that. Smote the firstborn, hallelujah. Is there like a musical interlude between these two? No, praise God for bringing the rain and smiting the Egyptians. But this is the way that both of these work. You go from general praise of God to praise of God as creator, then to praise of him as the one who redeemed his people from slavery. And then at least to the end of Psalm 136, in one verse, it pulls these back together,

creation and redemption. And we'll get into the Psalm and then we can talk about some reasons why that is because creation and redemption aren't two separate theological categories. You can't talk about creation without talking about redemption. And you can't talk about redemption

without talking about creation because these are both just two sides of the same coin because they're both God's gift to you given out of grace and mercy. Okay, let's look at Psalm 135. Starts out, I'll read this, these first few verses. Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord.

Praise him, O servants of the Lord. You who stand in the house of the Lord and the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord for the Lord is good. sing praises to his name for his lovely for the lord has chosen jacob for himself israel for his own possession for i know that the lord is great and that our lord is above all gods whatever the lord pleases he does in heaven and in earth in the seas and in all deeps he causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth he makes lightnings for the rain or brings forth the

win from his treasuries, he smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. Let's stop there for a second. So after this general call to praise and thanksgiving for God, one of the ways in which we have inserted into the language of the psalm kind of a hint about what is coming up later is through the use of very specific Exodus language. If you look at verse four, it says, for the Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel for his own possession. My translation has possession. Does anyone have something different, like maybe treasured possession? Does anyone have something like that? What is it? Treasure. Okay. The reason you have that kind of trend, which is actually preferable, is because that is, that particular noun is what's used back

in Exodus chapter 19 when God describes Israel as his peculiar people and his treasured possession. Now notice by using that language from Exodus 19 in the beginning of this psalm, he's already setting the stage for what is going to come in the next few verses. He's already dropping Exodus hints as you're looking at this. If you were an Israelite reading or singing this in the Hebrew, you'd realize, oh, so this is already Exodus kind of language is coming up. And then he has this description of who he is as the Lord of heaven and earth. He does whatever he pleases. In heaven and earth and seas and in all deeps, he causes vapors or clouds to ascend, makes lightnings, he brings forth the wind from his treasuries. So a general description of

this is who God is as creator. But he's not just kind of this all-powerful, big, strong deity up in the skies who does all this creaturely creation sort of stuff. He is more specifically, verse 8, the God who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. And so here we transition from creation to the kind of very particular narrative of his grace toward his chosen people, toward Israel. Chad, just one thing that sticks out to me here is you mentioned this almost paradoxical fact of God being this Lord of heaven and earth, high above all things, but also intimately involved with his people.

I found just on a practical level, people often try to comfort themselves with or comfort others with phrases like God is on the throne. God knows everything. God, you know, there's nothing that gets out of, you know, his way and he's, he's, he's sovereign. But it seems to me that if we emphasize the sovereignty, say the first seven verses in this passage, without also acknowledging the intimacy, then eventually we're going to end up with a very frustrated and deeply disappointed human being. Yeah. Yeah.

Because God seems all powerful, but also a long way off. Yeah. He's not intimately involved in the despair and the suffering of his people. And if there's anything that the Old Testament teaches us through the Exodus, through stories like Ruth,

through stories in the book of Judges, is that God actually likes to get down into the nitty, gritty, bloody, tear-filled holes into which his people fall. He goes with them into exile. He's with them wherever they are because he's the kind of God who is not content to simply sit on his throne and flex his divine muscles.

He's a God who jumps down from his throne to be wherever his people are, which is, of course, exactly what the Exodus was all about. Yeah, in this part where it does transition to he smote the firstborn of Egypt and he talks about man and beast, it's like total annihilation that's going on. That could be like kind of uncomfortable in a worship song.

But the, but. It's the latest Chris Tomlinson. Yeah, you don't hear it. Like, yeah, he smote them all. Like, that's not this. Christ smote them all, that's a new one. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

But what it is really is that when you have this language of god like utterly destroying uh those who would are pursuing israel uh what what do you have is we it's it's a it's very reassuring to us because what is actually happening there is that they are confessing that god in his redemption or deliverance of you destroys all that would keep you in bondage all that would pursue to possess you to own you that he destroys all of that and so it is for us so that when we are redeemed we wouldn't have much of a problem saying uh sin death and the devil and hell itself is all utterly destroyed in the redemption of christ but this is what this prefigures and and points towards so that

destruction is also final like that that this is what is pursuing you i'm stomping all over my plenary right now the as you but that's what's pursuing you and it's that is going to be destroyed it this is part of the deliverance and so that's that's what it's painting so while like smoting things is frustrating unless it's sin death and hell and the devil then it's pretty great but that's what that's all pointing towards yeah yeah even specifically the the fact that the firstborn are mentioned is important as to as well because of course that that image of the firstborn becomes comes up over and over throughout the scriptures and it's all over the new testament as well right he's the firstborn of creation he's the firstborn from the dead he's the

we're part of the church of the firstborn so and all of this goes back to to exodus because christ comes actually to be the one in his own passover who is the firstborn who is smitten by god in order that we might be redeemed so that very specific reference to the firstborn when you read it in light of the entirety of the scriptures, you realize that actually in what seems to us what actually is an act of death and judgment is also the wink of gospel that Christ is giving to us because of who himself, who he is as the firstborn. Okay, let's keep going. This is the problem with being a like biblical interpreter. It's just, it's hard to keep going. It's hard being orthodox, guys.

It's rough. It's just not enough time. I used to... Heresy is so much quicker. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you just gotta blaze past those other verses.

You just allegorize that text and that's it. You go to lunch. When I taught Genesis at the seminary, we never got past chapter three. Well, it was really all... That was the most important.

I mean, everything past Genesis three is just. Well, just think if you'd had 187 classes per semester, you should have got to Joshua. Okay. Verse nine. I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and finish the Psalm. He sent signs and wonders into your midst to Egypt upon Pharaoh and all his servants. He smote many nations and slew mighty Kings, Sihon, King of the Amorites and all King of Bashan and all the kingdoms of Canaan. And he gave the land as a heritage, a heritage to Israel, his people. Thy name, O Lord, is everlasting blessing thy remembrance, O Lord, throughout all generations. For the Lord will judge his people and will have compassion on his servants. The idols of the nations are but silver and gold,

the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak. They have eyes, but they do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear, nor is there any breath at all in their mouths. Those who make them will be like them. Yes, everyone who trusts in them. O house of Israel, blessed the Lord. O house of Aaron, bless the Lord. O house of Levi, bless the Lord. You who revere the Lord, bless the Lord. Blessed be the Lord from Zion who dwells in Jerusalem. Praise the Lord. So beginning with verse eight and then going on through the next several verses, we have a recitation of what God does, did for his people in the Exodus. And then you get down to these verses that talk about how the idols of the nations are silver and gold, and they have mouths, but they

cannot speak, ears, but cannot hear. I think it's here where we get to one of the most important components of this particular psalm and its creedal nature. One of the purposes of this psalm is to declare that the mighty acts of God that he's done in creation and done for Israel is God's way of reminding you that he and he alone is the true God, because he is the God who acts and love for his people to redeem them. And the gods of, this is sort of an attack, again, like a verbal psalm attack, if you will, on Egypt again, because if you remember the 10 plagues, we talked about this in Exodus, the 10 plagues were all directed against the gods of Egypt, right? To prove their impotence. So he attacks the Nile and he attacks all of these icons that

they have of various divinities. This is God's way of demonstrating that they're just false, they're false gods. They may have eyes, but they can't see. They have ears, but they can't hear. So this psalm is God's way of affirming to Israel that he is their God, not just their God, but the only true God, because he's the one who acts on their behalf. And he's defeated these giants like Og and Sihon. He's defeated all the gods of Egypt. And those who make them will be like them. There's a great quote from G.K. Beale that I like to use in reference to to verses like this. He says that we resemble what we revere, either for ruin or for restoration. We resemble what we revere, whether for ruin or for restoration. So those who make them will be

like them. In other words, those who make, who worship, who trust in these idols, which are dead, they themselves will be dead. So there's this direct correspondence between what we believe, what we revere, what we worship, and who we are. And that's why those who don't put their trust in the one true God are dead because they put their trust in that which is death. And so they resemble what they revere. They themselves are dead.

Whereas those of us who have been gifted with faith and believe in the one true living God are alive. We're alive in Christ. So we resemble what we revere either for ruin or for restoration. Okay, anything else you guys wanna say about 135? five yeah you skipped my favorite part oh which one which is uh no i i i can't help chad every time i see this the the thine remembrance oh lord throughout all generations come on man

the uh talk about remembrance come on i sorry i forgot i just want to say the fact that like you have this this confession about god and it talks about his remembrance lasting for all generations is an incredible thing because as you read the old testament chat i've done tons of this And God remembering is really great. Every time that God remembers, he does something awesome. It means when God remembers, he acts. And so here in the psalm, you do have this declaration that God will continue to remember his people

throughout all generations, which means God will continue to act for his people in all generations. And I just can't believe you didn't emphasize that. I was testing you. I was leaving a gap for you to fill. You got an A. Yeah.

All right. Psalm 136. Let's look at it now. And then we'll leave some time for the New Testament as well. So we start out kind of the same sort of way. Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. And then we have this refrain. Ki la'olam chasto, for his loving kindness is everlasting.

Ki la'olam chasto. And that becomes the phrase that recurs throughout the rest of the psalm. For his chesed, his steadfast love, his covenant faithfulness, however you want to translate that, loving kindness is everlasting. And this is the refrain throughout all of the verses, throughout all 26 verses of this psalm. And what I love about this, this goes through the creation again and through the exodus.

and every time over and over you hear for his love and kindness is everlasting, for his love and kindness is everlasting. What I love about this is that when you read this Psalm, what this Psalm is making sure that you cannot, cannot miss is that the interpretation of the Torah is based upon the loving kindness of Yahweh. That's the way that this Psalm is teaching us

how to read the scriptures. Why did God make the heavens and the earth? Because his loving kindness is everlasting. Why did God do all those things for Israel and Egypt? Because his loving kindness is everlasting. Why did he bring him to the Holy Land? Because his loving kindness is everlasting. That's it.

God's love is the reason all of this happened, period. And by repeating this after every single verse, this is the way in which we are, we have impressed upon us in an unforgettable, and unmissable sort of way that that is the way we read the story of salvation in the Old Testament. This is the interpretive key to the Torah

because God's chesed, his loving kindness, is everlasting. I know this. If I had wrote this psalm, all the Lutherans in here would accuse me of having written a highly repetitive modern worship song. Like, can you believe this guy?

He repeats the same thing like 50 times in that song. Oh, how lazy. Just saying. It's true. It's biblical. Okay, so we start out here giving thanks to God, God of gods, Lord of lords, to him who alone does great wonders.

First four verses, kind of setting everything up. And we get to five and following, and we have same thing we saw in Psalm 135, talking about creation. He made the heavens with skill. He spread out the earth above the water. Verse seven, he makes the great lights. Verse eight, he makes the sun.

Verse nine, he makes the moon and stars. So the first nine verses are general thanksgiving to God and setting up creation again. And notice every time mention is made of what he did in creation, it's because his loving kindness is everlasting. Why does the sun shine? Because God's love is everlasting.

Why do the stars twinkle? Because his loving kindness is everlasting. Why did God do this and that and make all of creation? I think you know the answer. Say it in Hebrew, come on. He la'olam chasto, for his love and kindness is everlasting. That's why. And then we have the same kind of seemingly harsh transition.

He made the moon and stars to rule by night, for his love and kindness is everlasting. To him who smote the Egyptians in their firstborn, for his love and kindness is everlasting. Well, if you're an Israelite, That's a demonstration of the loving kindness of the Lord because he redeemed you from the enemy. And to kind of piggyback on what Dan said earlier,

anytime some kind of act of severe judgment bothers you when you're reading the Old Testament, just remember that it weren't for the severe act of judgment. None of us would have any hope whatsoever. I mean, God went all the way. He himself died. He took the judgment upon himself in totality in order that we might have total righteousness

and salvation in him. Am I stealing your thunder from your planary tonight yet? Yeah, I'll rewrite it. Okay, all right, make sure. I'll come up with something else. Make sure. Okay, so I wanna keep going here through the rest of the psalm.

It's kind of a, like I said earlier, a replica of what we saw in the earlier psalm. He brings Israel out with a strong hand, divides the Red Sea, so on and so forth. So he goes through the whole story of the Exodus and the journey from Sinai to eventually after 40 years to the Holy Land. There are battles along the way.

He gives her land as a heritage. Now look at verse 24 and 25. This is my favorite part of the psalmist because we see here how God brings, how the psalmist brings God's creation redemption together. He's rescued us from our adversaries. That's verse 24. Who gives food to all flesh.

Notice, he rescued us from adversaries, redemption. He gives food to all flesh, creation. So the structure of the psalm is magnificent. Begins with a call to praise to this great God of loving kindness. Talks about his creative acts. Talks about his redeeming acts. Pulls it all together at the end

by saying he's rescued us from our adversaries. because his loving kindness is everlasting. And he gives food to all flesh because his loving kindness is everlasting. So this is the God who doesn't sometimes create and sometimes redeem, but every time that he creates, he's also redeeming. And every time he redeems, he's also creating

because that ultimately is what redemption is all about. Redemption is recreation. It is re-genicing us. To quote Irenaeus again, that I referred to earlier with the whole mosaic of the king, Irenaeus talks a lot about recapitulation where Christ comes in order to do again,

to recapitulate in himself, everyone from Adam and Israel onward so that in him, we might be redone, recreated into who he is, into the image of Christ. So that's one of the great things about Psalms like this, which are creedal in nature is that they pull together first article and second article theology.

And the third article, the spirit is the one who's using these words in order to bring us to a greater awareness of who we are as the created people of God and as those who are redeemed, redeemed in Christ. Chad's testing me. He's testing me again because I gotta talk about verse 23, Chad.

Verse 23. Oh, yeah, there you go. I forgot again. Yes, who has remembered us in our lowest state for his loving kindness everlasting as a transition into the New Testament. This is great because this is exactly what Mary says as she goes and talks with Elizabeth

as she's pregnant with Christ. She says this, for he has regarded the humble estate of his servant. And this is directly connected with Psalm 136 when it confesses that God does indeed remember those in their humble estate. And how does he ultimately remember those? Of humble estate just means the lowly,

the poor, the downtrodden, not just humble people. But he ultimately remembers them again with action and this action out of the mouth of Mary who is bearing the incarnate son of God. This is God's ultimate remembering of those who are lowly and in need. So we're in the New Testament now. Yeah, we're in the New Testament.

And just to pick up on that, I think one of the things that stands out to me in obviously this very Israel-centric Psalm in Psalm 126 or 136 is at the very end, he does at least hint at universalizing God's love because he doesn't just say who gives food to Israel's flesh. He says he gives food to all flesh because of his loving kindness. And so even there, you begin to get hints of this God not just being Israel's God, but the whole world's God.

Yeah, yeah. And you see that over and over in the psalms where the psalmist will even call upon the nations to give thanks to the Lord, as if reaching out to them in this hymn to come and join us in the praise of the Lord, who yes, dwells in Zion, but who also rules to the ends of the earth.

So you have this very particularity also with the universality. All right, so let's talk about 1 Corinthians 10. It's in the New Testament. I don't really know much about it. You guys have to say. i don't know it might i have a header that says israel avoid israel's mistakes nice yeah it's almost like yeah it goes without saying you know it's like it's like proverbial

just avoid israel's mistakes everybody knows that he's read the old testament well i mean and not to i mean i know that you have some things in mind for this here chad jump right in but just it strikes me, and I've used this passage many times to show people how, one of the things that the apostles do for us in their letters is they show us really, they give us the key to how to interpret the Old Testament. And it's not the way that so often we were taught, you know, with Sunday school lessons on the flannel graph and that sort of thing that, you know, dare to be a Daniel and, you know eat vegetables and water and all that jazz you know um like it it's not that it's not but actually it's christocentric and there might be no better passage where that is shown

um than this passage right here first corinthians 10 as you yeah get into it here yeah i mean what i love about this is that paul doesn't just simply recount to the exodus right He adopts very, very explicit Christian language to describe what happens in the Exodus. So I'll just read these first few verses. This is 1 Corinthians 10, one and following. For I don't want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the same cloud

and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and drank, all drank the same spiritual drink for they were drinking from the spiritual rock which followed them and the rock was Christ. Obviously.

I was about to say. I was about to say. What? If Paul hadn't said that, like no theologian ever would have come up with that. Yeah, you know that rock that Moses struck? That was Jesus. Really?

It's where I get most of my license for some of my more liberal interpretations. and be like, well, Paul said the rock was Christ. So it's not that far. Jesus compared himself to a snake. John chapter three, right? Yeah. Not to mention a xenophobic prophet named Jonah.

Anytime someone says we're taking the Old Testament too far, you just point to these examples of the apostles and our Lord himself. Okay, so he, yeah, he says, I think what's important here, at least that I think is important, is he's writing to the Corinthians and when he wants to impress upon them a point,

he draws from the story that is for him, not only for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles. You know, he starts out, I don't want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers, he doesn't say the Israelites. He says, our fathers. And I think this is important. They are our fathers, the Israelites.

It doesn't matter if you have any Jewish descent or not. They are our fathers. So our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed to the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. And what does it mean to be baptized into Moses? How's that work? Well, you end up with,

baptized into into moses is to be baptized into the the property of the leader right so he is the he is the one who god uses to deliver them yeah um but it's also because they're just sort of baptized into this representative of the law too that that ends up falling short of the promised land and this is one of the reasons why um it's it says that they were all baptized in the most and all this stuff. But in the end, Jesus talks about this, like they all died, right? They all ate the food and died

because while it's great to be baptized into Moses, Moses can't ultimately get to the promised land, as we know. You're gonna need a Joshua for that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's, I agree fully. I mean, this is him working upon this typological parallel connection

between who Moses was and who Christ is as the one who's like Moses in many ways, but of course, who's greater than Moses. So yeah, they were baptized into this one that was divinely chosen by Yahweh to be the one who shepherds him out of slavery into freedom. And yet he can't deliver. He himself can't even make it into the promised land.

And that's why you need one who's greater than him, who baptizes us into himself in the Red Sea of baptism in order that we might be truly led from slavery into freedom. So we actually make it in him to the promised land. And along the way, they have their manna, they have their drink that they have, just like, I mean, we're all in the wilderness.

We're in San Diego, I know, so it's kind of hard to just- Not the wilderness. Use your imagination, but we're actually, we're in the wilderness. I mean, that is life, right? We're all on this pilgrimage, we're all on this journey, and we have spiritual food and we have spiritual drink. God hasn't left us high and dry.

He provides for us. And just like they had the rock which followed them, which provided this nourishment, well, we have the rock who is Christ. And he's this sacramental source for us who just pours out of himself the spiritual drink we need and the spiritual food that we need. when i mean i've obviously uh being a lutheran pastor uh one of the things that's often very

difficult for people who uh have come into the churches i've served from a background that's not very sacramental is baptism baptism is always a very difficult thing to kind of wrap people's minds around it's a whole different paradigm uh oftentimes i'll go to a passage like this and i'll say what what is it what happened to the people of israel as they were baptized into moses They went into where the water was, and they came out free. They came out alive. They were saved through that baptism. Paul uses this imagery for a reason because, as Peter does in 1 Peter 3.21,

baptism is not merely just a symbolic action that God is doing, but God is actually saving through it. He's actually providing redemption through it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, when you talk about things like that, I always think of God as sort of a, he's like a cowboy and verbs, verbs coming from Texas, it's kind of resonates.

So God is like a cowboy and verbs are like horses and he saddles them and he puts reins on them, bits in their mouth and he rides the verbs. He controls the verbs and he controls the verb of baptize and the verb of forgive and the verb of redeem and the verb of repent, he controls all of these. He rides them into our lives

so that he's the one who's doing what needs to be done in order to save us. And what do we do? We receive the gifts and we live and we rejoice in the freedom that God has given to us in creation and redemption and all wrapping it together in Christ who's the one who provides it all for us by grace.

J.P. Kaye, that's 40 minutes, guys. Thanks for coming out. Thank you.