Nielson / Carson Here Is Our God

God's Revelation of Himself in Scripture
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3970-1
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

'I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.' - Isaiah 6:1 Scripture records a number of instances in which God visibly revealed himself to his people, offering a glimpse of his stunning beauty and overwhelming glory. These awe-inspiring manifestations of God's presence-known as 'theophanies'-give us wonderful insights into his character, will, and salvation. In this collection of biblical expositions, eight prominent Bible teachers explore key passages in which God displayed himself in a spectacular revelation.  From the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai to Christ's glorious transfiguration, the passages examined in this book challenge us to look afresh at our God-that we might truly know, love, and serve him.

Kathleen Nielson (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is an author and speaker who loves working with women in studying the Scriptures. After directing the Gospel Coalition's women's initiatives from 2010-2017, she now serves as senior adviser and book editor for TGC. She and her husband, Niel, make their home partly in Wheaton, Illinois, and partly in Jakarta, Indonesia. They have three sons, two daughters-in-law, and five granddaughters.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nielson, Kathleen

Carson, D. A.

Leseproben

1

On the Mountain

THE TERRIFYING AND BECKONING GOD

Exodus 19

TIM KELLER

Since I was the first plenary speaker, I should say something about the gathering itself. We gathered to connect women who hear and do Bible exposition. TGC did not bring women together to talk and think about women but to talk and think about God. Every culture of the world by God’s common grace has its peculiar glories and tends to be attentive to and aware of things in Scripture that at least some of the other cultures don’t see. They bring their various exegetical riches and theological understanding of the infallible Word of God to the whole church, and that enriches the whole church. That must also be true of both genders. For women to come together to hear and do Bible exposition certainly enriches all of those gathered, and it will enrich the whole church.

We’re considering together the theme “Here Is Our God,” looking into passages where God reveals himself in spectacular ways to his people. Exodus 19 is a great place to start. It’s an important chapter, so important that several key New Testament texts refer directly to it (e.g., Hebrews 12 and 1 Peter 2). In Exodus 19, Moses and Israel come to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. Chapter 19 does not contain the Ten Commandments, but it sets them up. The passage divides into three basic sections:

1) The History and Order of Grace (19:1–8)

2) The Terrifying and Beckoning God (19:9–19)

3) The Going Down of Moses (19:20–25)

1) THE HISTORY AND ORDER OF GRACE (EX. 19:1–8)

The History of Grace

The first couple of verses tell us something about the history of grace. Alec Motyer makes a good observation concerning these first two verses.1 You wouldn’t think of this unless you were a biblical scholar who keeps a map in his head as he is reading. He says that God and Moses basically told the Israelites, “Trust us. We’re going to take you to the Promised Land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to Palestine.” And the children of Israel trusted them. But Sinai is farther away from the Promised Land than Egypt. Sinai is actually south. So God led them almost in the opposite direction from where he said he was going to lead them. They were supposed to go to a land flowing with milk and honey, yet God took them to a desert, a mountainous desert (v. 2). The land was far worse than Egypt. And that’s where God met them.

It is often so: you give your life to Jesus and say, “I’m putting everything into your hands. I’m trusting you with my whole life.” And then you watch things go downhill from there. Weeks later, months later, a couple of years later, you ask, “What happened? I gave myself to him. I trusted him. And everything is getting worse and worse.” If you admit it, you are farther away from the things you had hoped God would give you. You think, “I gave God everything. Surely he’d give me this and this and this. You know, if he wants to.” God seems to be taking you in an opposite direction. So often the history of grace in our lives follows this pattern: God seems to be taking us away from where he said he is going to take us. My two favorite penultimate examples of this pattern both happened at Dothan.

Example 1. The book of Genesis records that Jacob had twelve sons. Because he loved his wife Rachel more than his other wife, Leah, Jacob favored Rachel’s sons over all the others. That utterly poisoned everything and everybody in that family. This was a case of overt parental favoritism. It poisoned the life of Joseph, who was one of Rachel’s two sons. All the pieces were in place for Joseph to become spoiled and arrogant even though he was only a teenager. He could have been on his way to being an absolutely cruel, awful person. Their whole family system was broken, suffering the effects of selfishness and sin. The other brothers were bitter and cynical: they had a love-hate relationship with their father, and they were angry at Joseph and Benjamin. It was a mess. One day, in the area of Dothan, far away from home, the brothers who were out shepherding saw Joseph come to them. They threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery in Egypt. And there it was, you might say, that Joseph turned to the God of his father: in the pit, on the trip, and in the dungeon where he ended up in Egypt and pled, “Get me out of here!”

Silence. Many years of silence.

Example 2. Something happened in Dothan years later. The prophet Elisha and his servant were locked up in the besieged city of Dothan (2 Kings 6). Elisha’s servant panicked, thinking that they were going to lose their lives. Elisha prayed. Then the eyes of Elisha’s servant were opened, and they both could see chariots of fire all around the city. God delivered Elisha and his servant dramatically from this besieged city.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be!

One guy prayed and prayed and nothing happened for years and years. God never seemed to answer his prayers. Another guy prayed and saw chariots of fire.

Now, when we get to the end of the book of Genesis and the end of Joseph’s story, we see that God’s grace was as operative in Joseph’s life as it was in Elisha’s life. But here’s the difference: Elisha’s immediate need was a fairly simple kind of salvation. He needed help from an army. But Joseph and Jacob and all those guys needed something way deeper. They needed their souls saved.

What if God had just showed up to Joseph early on and said something like this: “You are a spoiled brat. Do you realize that if you keep going the way you are, as self-centered as you are, you’re going to destroy your life, and nobody’s going to like you? You’re going to make a mess of your marriage.” Have you ever tried to do that with a teenager? He won’t listen to you.

John Newton, the great hymn writer, wrote in a letter, “Nobody ever learned they were a sinner by being told. They have to be shown.” It took years for God to break open Joseph and his brothers and his father to grace. At the end of Genesis, Joseph says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (50:20).2

Joseph’s descendants, who grew into a great people, got to the Promised Land through the desert. They were looking for the Promised Land, but God took them to the desert. In the desert he would meet them. The desert was the way to the Promised Land.

The ultimate example of this pattern is Jesus. He shows up and preaches the kingdom of God. Think of his followers responding, “Yes! The kingdom of God! Lion lying down with the lamb! Every tear wiped away! Yeah!” The next thing you know, Jesus is on the cross, dying in agony. Imagine some of Jesus’s followers looking up at him and thinking, “I don’t know what good God could bring out of this.” We know, of course, that the way to get to the resurrection is through the cross. The way to get to the ultimate resurrection (the new heavens and the new earth) is through the cross, through Jesus’s going through that desert, loneliness, and suffering. If Jesus wants to come back and end evil and put everything right without ending us, then he had to go to the cross. Again, the way to the Promised Land is through the desert.

So often that is how grace works. Are you ready for that?

John Newton said, “Everything is needful that he sends. Nothing can be needful that he withholds.” Think about that for the rest of your life. It’ll do you good.

The Order of Grace

Alec Motyer sees three things in Exodus 19:4–6.3 The sequence of these central elements is extremely important for understanding the whole Bible:

1) The saving acts of the Lord (v. 4)

2) Our response of obedience (v. 5a)

3) The blessing that the obedience brings (vv. 5b–6)

Motyer says that nothing must ever be allowed to upset this order: (1) salvation by grace, (2) obedience, (3) blessing. Nothing in your mind must ever upset that sequence. That’s the order.

To put it another way, God did not appear and give the children of Israel the law and then have them promise, “We will do everything the Lord says,” and then reply, “Good. I’ll save you. I’ll take you out of Egypt on eagles’ wings.” No, God just saves them.

Do you know what it means to be carried on eagles’ wings (v. 4)? Israel didn’t fight their way out of Egypt. They didn’t even run out or walk out in this sense (of course, they literally did). What God is trying to get across is that when an eagle carries you, you don’t do anything. You are lifted up and moved from one place to another. It’s sheer grace. It has nothing at all to do with your performance.

So God saves you by sheer grace and then says, “Because I saved you by sheer grace, obey me.” He does not say, “Obey me, and I’ll save you.” No, it’s, “I’ve saved you; now obey me.”

Motyer adds that the whole narrative from the Passover to the exodus to Mount Sinai is “a huge visual aid before our eyes.”4 It’s a visual aid. Of what? Of the gospel!

An Israelite could have said this:

I was in bondage under penalty of...