U or √?

I was chatting to a Christian student earlier in the week at Lancaster University. She had been brought up with the idea that Jesus has made a 'return to Eden' possible. Many Christians hold to this point of view - it's a kind of U-shaped view of the Biblical narrative.

Her questions, then, followed like this: surely it would have been better for God to have ensured that Adam and Eve didn't fall in the first place if salvation is all about returning things to how they were before the Fall. This had become a major apologetic stumbling block for the student.

Instead, though, the shape of the Biblical narrative is not just a 'U'; in fact, it is more like a '√'. Our heavenly existence will see our adoption as sons, a status of being co-heirs with Christ and a deeper knowledge of God's grace and mercy than Adam and Eve could have ever known. God allowed the Fall to happen so that humans might experience a quality of relationship Adam and Eve never had in Eden.

God the Over-Ruler and Judge (Genesis 50:15-21)

Here's an evangelistic sermon I'm preaching at the weekend. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

We’re looking this morning at a part of Joseph’s story, which the young people have been looking at this week. One of the reasons why the Joseph narrative is so popular is because it’s a brilliant ‘good news, bad news’ story. The story opens with daddy’s favourite Joseph arrogantly telling his brothers that he dreamt they were bowing down to him – not exactly the sort of thing that anyone ever wants to hear their younger brother tell them! And so the brothers get jealous of Joseph, fake his death, sell him into slavery in Egypt and let their father hold a funeral – bad news. Joseph ends up chief slave in one of the most important houses in Egypt – good news. But his master’s wife frames Joseph because she wouldn’t sleep with him: he’s sent to rot in prison on a false charge of rape – bad news. There he meets Pharoah’s cupbearer, who mentions Joseph to Pharoah. He ends up Prime Minister of Egypt – good news. Meanwhile, there’s famine in Canaan, where Joseph’s family live – bad news. And so Joseph’s brothers go cap in hand down to Egypt – and who should they find there but Joseph! At first, we’re not sure whether this is good or bad news, given the way they’ve treated Joseph. Eventually, the brothers reappear, bringing Jacob, Joseph’s father, who he’s not seen for 22 years. And it’s good news. Joseph welcomes his father and brothers and provides for them in Egypt.

Our account opens today towards the end of the story, shortly after the death of Joseph’s dad, Jacob. Had this been an episode of EastEnders, the thuds at the end of the episode would have come as Jacob breathes his last. Joseph’s brothers are looking anxiously at each other knowing everything might have just changed. Yes – they had been welcomed by their brother into Egypt, but that had been whilst their father was alive. Siblings often treat each other in one way when they are being watched by mum or dad, but in a very different way once the parental gaze has averted. Now Jacob is dead. Verse 15 summarises the brothers’ predicament: ‘When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?"’

Perhaps we can empathise with Joseph’s brothers. We all know what it’s like to think we’ve been forgiven by someone for something we’ve done wrong, only for them to bring that issue up months or even years later. That’s the situation facing Joseph’s brothers. Sure, he seems to have forgiven them, but the brothers ask: is Joseph’s forgiveness genuine? Yes, Joseph calls himself a worshipper of the LORD, the one true God, but is his godliness real? And so the brothers hatch a plan.

Look down at verses 16-17: ‘[The brothers] sent word to Joseph, saying, "Your father left these instructions before he died: 'This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.' Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father."’

Here’s the brothers’ plan: "Let's tell Joseph that dad said he should treat us kindly and forgive us for all we did to him." Their aim is to emotionally manipulate Joseph into forgiving them through fabricating a death wish that their father apparently made. There’s something quite powerful about offending the dying wish of a loved one. And the brothers plan to use this to effect, attempting to manoeuvre forgiveness from Joseph. You can imagine them relating this to Joseph! “Did you hear dad say that he should forgive us?” “Oh yes, loud and clear, didn’t you?”

Joseph’s reaction comes at the end of verse 17: ‘When their message came to him, Joseph wept.’ But these aren’t tears at being forced into forgiving those you don’t really want to forgive. No. Joseph knew exactly what his father had said on his death bed. Chapter 49 tells us that Joseph was there. Having been unnecessarily separated from him for 22 years, you can imagine that he wasn’t about to give up any more time with the dad he loved. Instead, Joseph’s tears are because he knows that his brothers still don’t trust him. They snub his pardon and keep refusing to trust him, ‘just in case’.

Joseph sees right through his brothers’ plot. And their response is given in verse 18: ‘His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. "We are your slaves," they said.’ Joseph’s brothers know that he’s seen right through their plan, and so their only chance is to beg for mercy.

Picture the scene. Those who’ve caused Joseph such pain, so many wasted years; are now down on the floor, at his feet, begging for mercy. How would you respond if your enemy came and threw themselves at your feet like this? There are several possible alternatives. One is vengeance. Another might be to act upon your position of superiority: to them to get used to staying down there by your feet. The third option is to forgive.

It’s that third option that Joseph takes. And I want us to look in more detail at the words Joseph says to his brothers here, and in particular his convictions about God. These words help us to see why Joseph chose to treat his brothers as he did, but they’ll also show us what the God of the Bible, the one true God, is really like.

The first thing that Joseph says is in verse 19: “Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God?” Joseph picks up his brothers from the floor by the scruffs of their necks. Joseph’s line of thought is clear. It is not up to me, he says, to take into my own hands the issue of making things right. Evening the score doesn’t settle anything. Instead, what beautiful words Joseph has for his brothers when they come begging for their lives: "Am I in the place of God?"

But with these words, Joseph also reminding his brothers of something else: that his own judgement isn’t the most important thing. Joseph probably knows that he’s unfit to judge his brothers anyway. He’s only human. As humans, whenever we make a judgement, we’re liable to get it wrong. We can’t see things as they really are. We jump to hopelessly wrong conclusions: we see two plus two and make five. Or our judgement gets swayed and put out of perspective. We’re cut up on the motorway and we start thinking that only the death penalty would make things right! Or somebody treads on our toes by accident and we seethe with anger. But God is perfectly placed to judge. He knows everything. He won’t jump to the wrong conclusion. He judges with pinpoint accuracy. And he judges fairly. He won’t let evil have the last say in his Universe.

As a worshipper of the God of the Bible, Joseph knows all this. Joseph knows that, one day, God will judge. But the actions of his brothers show they’re far from understanding this: first of all they try to manipulate Joseph’s judgement, then they try to earn it. To the brothers, the most important forgiveness they can receive is that of Joseph; theit forgiveness and reputation from Joseph paramount. But Joseph’s question reminds his brothers that a far more important forgiveness to receive is that of their God and Judge. He knows that his brothers wouldn’t be acting the way they have if they’d factored in God.

Joseph’s words to his brothers speak to us too. Yes: being right with other humans is important. But being right with the God who will judge is of supreme importance. Jesus himself taught this truth to his disciples, in Luke 12: "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.”

“Am I in the place of God?”, then, is the question that Joseph asks. “God will judge you – worship him,” says Joseph. In doing so, Joseph compels his brothers to walk faithfully with God.

The second part of Joseph’s answer comes in verse 20: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

The Bible says much about suffering and pain than it does here, far more than I can possibly mention now. What Joseph says here isn’t the complete answer when it comes to suffering and pain. But notice Joseph’s headline: God transforms evil to good.

And it’s not as if, in saying this, Joseph didn’t know what it was like to suffer. He was betrayed by his brothers and left for dead, had his death faked, sold into slavery in Egypt, falsely convicted of rape, left in prison for many years, not able to attend his mother’s funeral or burial, and missed decades of a loving relationship with his father. Joseph suffered greatly. Perhaps there are people here that resonate with bits of Joseph’s experience; you’re in a painful season of your life. Each day you wake up and it feels like the water is already up to your chest. Well Joseph knew exactly how that feels.

Yet Joseph looks back over the horrors that he has experienced throughout his life and realises that, through these experiences, God has been working things out for good.

He tells it as it is, firstly saying to his brothers: “You intended to harm me.” Now Christianity is very realistic: you can call evil things ‘evil’. Most folk today say that people are good at heart and occasionally slip up. But that paralyses us when genuinely evil things happen. We haven’t got a category for those things. The Bible’s diagnosis is that we are, at heart, bad and diseased into a pattern of rebelling against God. And so, as Christians, we reserve the right to be angry at evil and to be horrified by it, because God is. And that’s what Joseph does. “You meant to destroy my life, you ruined much of it,” says Joseph. “What you did was bad.”

But he continues: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” Because people are essentially bad, to rely on people to improve things will never bring long term happiness. But the Christian’s hope is in God – and that’s to whom Joseph directs his brothers’ attention. God can work things out for good; even out of ugliness, even out of evil. It’s not that bad things come from God; rather, he’s big enough to use even evil for his purposes of good. And I guess there are plenty of Christians this morning who can point to exactly this experience in their lives.

On holiday in Turkey, Linda and I were taken to a Turkish carpet factory. There were amazingly ornate carpets. It took years or even decades to make them. Now from the bottom of a loom, all we could see was a mess, a load of knots. But from the top, the carpets were beautiful, real works of art. And what Joseph is saying is that life is a tapestry that God is weaving together. From the bottom of the loom, all we see is knots. But from the top, God is weaving together a wonderful tapestry. Life is not all knots, it is tapestry. Although things seem out of control, both in the history of nations and in the lives of individuals, the Bible teaches that God works out things, even evil things, for his good plan. All of history is in God’s hands.

That’s why Joseph can forgive his brothers. For Joseph, God is not only ruler, but he is over-ruler. Joseph’s brothers intended him harm but, later in his life, Joseph can look at the tapestry of his life and see that God has over-ruled their wicked intentions to bring about his good purposes: for Joseph to be Prime Minister of Egypt so that he can save many lives from famine. Things appear far from under the control of God, but he over-rules to the contrary.

So we’ve seen Joseph testifying to two truths about God: that God is the Judge, who judges with perfect knowledge and justice; and that God is the Over-Ruler, who is big enough to use even the worst of human evil to work out his good purposes.

These two truths about God take us right to the heart of the Christian message. God hasn’t changed since the time of Joseph. His goodness means that evil must be judged. Each of us rightly deserves God’s judgement for failing to live his way. Left just as we were, we’d ruin heaven. We need to be forgiven and we need to be transformed.

Amazingly, the way in which God achieves this is through the grossest act of human evil: through the condemnation of the perfect, innocent Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus never rebelled against God. He always put the will of his Heavenly Father and the needs of other humans before himself. One of the people knew Jesus best, Peter, wrote, "Jesus committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." Yet the litmus test of human evil was seen in the rejection of Jesus. Despite having lived a beautiful life that never looked to itself, Jesus was condemned to death – even death on a cross.

Yet the conviction of the earliest Christians was that, just like in the story of Joseph, God used this evil to work out his own good purpose. In the first ever church sermon, Peter said to the very ones that oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus: “Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” Do you see the pattern? God’s plan – “This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge” – in the midst of human sin – “You, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”

So what was God doing? In the most awful act of human violence and injustice, God’s design was that, in his love and in human form, he would take the punishment that we deserved. Jesus died our death. Jesus died in the place of all of those who would trust him. At the cross, he took the full force of the Father’s anger for our rebellion against him, so that we can approach God the Judge acquitted. He took our condemnation and God-forsakenness so that we might be forgiven. The most horrific act of violence is transformed by God for good. At first, at Jesus’ crucifixion, it looks like things are a bunch of knots. Yet Jesus himself claimed that this very act that is the centrepiece of the most beautiful tapestry we could imagine. And the tapestry points to the wonder and goodness of its designer, the God of the Universe.

There may be some here that had always thought that Jesus’ death was a horrific accident, one who died too young. Perhaps you’d never caught sight of God’s love in this way before. Well, keep coming. Here at Christ Church, there are Christians who would love you to help you to find answers for your questions and to help you to discover the relationship with God through Jesus that Joseph and others here this morning know. Even better, why not come back to God today, grasping for yourself what God has done through Jesus’ sacrifice to bring you into relationship with him. It would be an amazing thing to have come here today, out of a relationship with God, and go home reconciled to him.

Paul Williamson on Genesis 38

A few weeks ago, my friend Dave Kirkman posted regarding Genesis 38 which is, by all measures, an enigmatic chapter of the Bible.

He admitted that he finds Genesis 38 puzzling - and so found himself struggling as to why the writer to the book of Ruth draws parallels with it.

I've recently been reading Paul Williamson's excellent Sealed with an Oath: covenant in God's unfolding purpose. Here's a couple of quotes he makes regarding Genesis 38:

'... [T]he remainder of the patriarchal narrative focuses exclusively on the family history of Jacob's sons, four of whom are singled out for special attention (i.e. Joseph, Reuben, Judah and Benjamin). Of these four, Judah is possibly the most significant, in that the Joseph story is abruptly interrupted by an episode in which Judah's 'seed' occupies centre stage. While the full significance of the brief liaison between Judah and his daughter-in-law is only later disclosed (c.f. Ruth 4:18, Matthew 1:3), the striking similarities with the birth story of Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:24-26) together with the emphasis on Judah's 'seed', strongly suggests a special role in the promissory agenda for Judah. Genesis 38 thus provides yet another illustration of God's providence operating in the establishment of the special line of Abrahamic descent.' (page 93).

Later he returns to the royal consequences of this 'seed':

'In the Davidic-Solomonic kingdom the former covenant finds its most extensive fulfilment. With the promise of a 'great nation' now realised, attention now shifts from Abraham's national descendants to his royal descendants, the 'kings' to which attention was subtly drawn back in Genesis 17:6, 16. The importance of this royal line, which had already been traced explicitly through Jacob (Genesis 35:11) and Judah (Genesis 49:10), and implicitly through Perez (Genesis 38, c.f. Ruth 4:18-22), lay in the fact that its most illustrious descendant would be the individual, conquering 'seed' of Genesis 22:18. Thus the Davidic covenant identifies the royal dynasty from which the anticipated victorious 'seed' of Abraham would eventually come.' (page 145).

Seems to make a lot of sense when thinking about the place of both Genesis 38 - and the obvious link between God's sovereignty and the allusions to the Davidic covenant in Ruth.

I've also got to say that I've found Williamson's book massively helpful - not least on this little theological conundrum, as well as helping me to think more clearly about the place of the Law, the doctrine of adoption and the storyline of the Bible as a whole. Perhaps more thoughts in days to come...

April update

It's been a busy week since my last post.

Tuesday was, perhaps, one of my all-time favourite days as Staff Worker. We had a wonderful team day with fantastic and very stretching teaching on Genesis from Martin Downes, lots of sunshine and good food (amazingly our hosts for the day paid for us all to enjoy a swanky three course meal in Chester!). A time of feeding in many senses of the word, very good for the soul.

On Wednesday, I met up for my weekly meeting with Relay Workers, Sarah and Nick. Amongst other things, we've been listening together to Don Carson's series Reaching an Untouched Generation. We've all found it very stimulating in thinking about reaching Biblical illiterates for Christ (the mp3s are free online here). It's been great putting some of what we've learned into practice through outreach on Wednesday afternoons at Myerscough College, an FE college full of mainly 16-19 year olds who know little or nothing about Christ. I was also struck by some of what Dr Carson said as I prepared a talk for Cumbria CU on Thursday night.

Later in the week saw the start of interviews for our summer team to Moldova. I really can't wait for this trip. It was excellent interviewing a whole number of students who are willing to sacrifice their comfort, time and earning-potential over the summer through volunteering to help run the English and Bible camp in Moldova. I found it particularly heart-warming to hear of how many of the students in my patch came to Christ - a great reminder that we're all wired differently and that God is big enough to work through different circumstances and temperaments when he calls us!

Finally, yesterday was our patch training day for CU leaders in Lancashire and Cumbria (quite possibly the last one ever, as my friend Adam Beattie will be starting as Cumbria Staff Worker from August). Marcus Mosey, from Christians Alive church in Lancaster (and a great partner in the gospel here) spoke on being a grace-filled leader, and we also devoted time to thinking about Freshers' Week outreach, the FREE Gospel project and to praying for each other. It's encouraging to see, under God, many students taking up the challenge set in the Gospel project, and some exciting plans developing!

What is the place of the OT Law for Christians today? (1)

The Mosaic Law is a hugely important topic in the Bible. In the Old Testament, the Law was a key part of the life of the nation of Israel. In the New Testament, many of the books are concerned with how the Law relates to the gospel. Over the next few weeks, I plan to try and draw together a Biblical synthesis of the Law, and then to think about how this impacts the way in which a Christian reads the Law, and lives and has a relationship with God today. Some of these thoughts are rather undeveloped, and so I'd value any comments.


What is the Law?

The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, is what Chris Wright calls ‘the foundation block of the rest of the Bible.’ It sets the stage for the biblical worldview on which the rest of the unfolding drama of redemptive history takes place. Whilst the Pentateuch is sometimes referred to as simply ‘the Law’, this is somewhat misleading, as the Pentateuch contains nearly as much narrative action as laws. In fact, there are almost seventy chapters of activity before the Ten Commandments are issued by God to Israel. As we shall see, this historical element provided by the narrative is very important in giving the Bible reader proper perspective on the Mosaic Law (by which, I mean the body of commands given to Israel in the Pentateuch) itself. Above all, it is important to remember that the Law is not just an isolated, arbitrary statute book, but part of a much broader story of God and his dealings with his people in the midst of the nations of the earth.

Many contemporary studies of the Law do so from either a purely Old Testament or purely New Testament (primarily Pauline) perspective. This is an error. The Bible is a story with development and change, and is properly understood as being ‘salvation history’ or ‘progressive revelation’. Unfortunately, the importance of salvation history in seeing the nature of the Law can be sometimes missed. In this first post in the series, then, I will seek to form a biblical theology on the place of the Law, starting in the Pentateuch itself, in Genesis and Exodus.

Genesis: the context of Israel’s calling

The theological-history of Genesis 1-11 presents the story of creation, the fall, and the spread of sin, which climaxes in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. There we find the human race scattered and divided because of their arrogant attempt to together build themselves up to heaven and make themselves ‘god’. The effects of sin are global in proportion. It is, at this point, that God launches his project to save the world, answering the problems set by Genesis 1-11. God makes his covenant with Abraham, recorded in Genesis 12:1-3:

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

"I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Here, as Vaughan Roberts puts it, “God declares his intention to bring back the scattered people of the world and to bless them once more.” In other words, we see that God’s purpose is still to redeem all mankind, just as sin had brought disaster and division on all mankind. In the Old Testament, Israel – the people made up of Abraham’s descendents – was the chosen vehicle of that missionary purpose. They were a particular people with specific promises, but through them God had a universal missionary intention.

Exodus: the giving of the Law

One of the defining moments of Old Testament history is the exodus. Throughout the Old Testament, Israel is repeatedly reminded that ‘the LORD brought you out of Egypt’ (see, for instance, Deuteronomy 7:8). The LORD's initiative is highlighted by the narrative in Exodus: firstly, God ‘adopts’ Israel as his firstborn, who will be set free ‘so that he may worship me’ (Exodus 4:22-23, see also 3:12). His miraculous intervention on Israel’s behalf over Pharaoh and all of the false gods that he represents are also emphasised by the narrative.

By the time we reach Exodus 19, following the Passover and exodus, the people have at last reached Sinai to worship the LORD, just as he had promised they would (Exodus 3:12). Here the people of Israel see a spectacular visible and visible manifestation of the God who saved them (Exodus 19:2), presenting something of what was lost by humans in Genesis 3. Then, before he does anything else, in Exodus 19:3-6, the LORD gives his people a very clear statement of their identity and purpose:

Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, "This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."

Only then is Israel issued with the Law. The thrust of this passage is clear: obedience to the LORD and to his Law is essential – not in order for Israel to be redeemed, as this had already happened (verse 4), but in order for them to be who the LORD wanted them to be amongst the nations. The people of Israel are to act in the way described in the promises with Abraham. They are called to ‘live out’ their identity, the reason for which they were redeemed. They are called to be a ‘priesthood’ – a theme that will be developed later – in other words, the people of Israel are to ‘interface’ between the LORD and other peoples. They are also to be a ‘holy nation’ – to be a community that is set apart and recognisably distinctive from the other nations around them. The LORD's heart for the nations transfers itself to the envisaged distinction for the people of Israel. It is the latest step in the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham, the ‘father’ of Israel, whereby his descendents are ‘blessing the peoples.’

It is crucial that the Law is issued within this context. Israel has been set apart and blessed as ‘firstborn son’, ‘kingdom of priests’ and ‘holy nation’. The Law is given them to help them to fulfil this calling. And so the Ten Commandments are issued, in Exodus 20. This is followed by the Book of the Covenant (in chapters 21-24). Many commentators point out the order in which the instructions are issued: firstly, the people’s fundamental (‘vertical’) responsibilities to God are addressed (Exodus 20:3-11 and then 20:22-26); followed by the people’s ‘horizontal’ responsibilities to each other (20:12-17, and then chapters 21-24).

The Book of the Covenant (chapters 21-24) gives specific instructions, and is probably there to show what the Ten Commandments mean in practice. Each of the commandments is reflected in more detailed by the commands that follow. These instructions mainly cover various aspects of societal living – including the treatment of slaves (standing in stark contrast to how Israel was treated in Egypt), compensation and penalties for injuries, property, law, rape, fairness in dealings with others, and in worship. The Law reflects God’s priorities, which ran contrary to the values of the contemporary world around Israel at the time (illustrated by the narrative covering the period that Israel spent in Egypt).

The driving point of the book of Exodus is to narrate the matters that define Israel as a people in relationship to their God, the LORD. As well as God’s Presence continuing with the people (particularly highlighted by the long ‘tabernacle’ section in the second half of Exodus), Israel are defined by God as a redeemed people who live in the light of the revelation that they have received from him. The Law is prescribed as the way in which to do just this. Redemption (salvation) by works was never part of the Mosaic covenant. As Graeme Goldsworthy puts it, ‘When God gave his covenant stipulations at Sinai, he addressed Israel as his people. It is clear that this Law of Moses is not a program of works for salvation. Salvation is of grace, and the covenant of Sinai was given, not so that Israel might be saved, but because she was saved. The Law is thus a manifesto for the people of the kingdom.’

The later narrative in Exodus can also be placed within this framework. Within forty days, the people have already broken their covenant promise to God and made themselves a likeness of God – the golden calf (Exodus 32:8) – thus breaking the second commandment. Moses prays for the people and the LORD withholds his destruction (32:11–14). When Moses comes back down to the camp (32:19), he smashes the two tables of the covenant to show how the people have broken the covenant. The sons of Levi slaughter three thousand men (32:28) and the LORD sends a plague (32:35), but the nation as a whole is spared through Moses' prayer.

The covenant had been broken by Israel before it was even completed. If the covenant were based on works or on strict justice alone Israel would have already forfeited. But the covenant is based on grace. We see this as God renews his covenant to fallen Israel. So in Exodus 34:1, God tells Moses to make a new set of stone tables and to come up again. In 34:6–7, God reveals himself – and his character – as the basis of the renewed covenant with Israel:

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 fathers to the third and fourth generation."

And so, in Exodus 34:27–28 God concludes this last meeting on Mount Sinai like this:

Then the LORD said to Moses: "Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.” The covenant has been made again.’

After this, work is allowed to begin on the tabernacle, the symbolic dwelling place of God’s Presence amongst his people. And so we see that, even in the Mosaic covenant, a major emphasis is on God’s promise to be merciful and gracious and to forgive iniquity and transgression and sin so that he can have relationship with his people. God will treat Israel with mercy and grace and will forgive her sins. Israel’s required response is to keep the covenant. Israel will receive and experience blessing from God, including forgiveness of sin, as Exodus 19:5 says, "if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant."

The narrative in Exodus shows that the condition of blessing is not sinless perfection or legalistic law keeping. The Mosaic covenant does not teach that if you commit a sin, that covenant blessings are forfeited. When Exodus 19:5 says that Israel must "obey God's voice and keep God's covenant," it does not mean earning blessing by works. Rather, Israel is called to ‘obey God’s voice’ – to keep themselves in an attitude of obedience, where they seek to keep his covenant, aware of their need for the LORD's ongoing grace and mercy and forgiveness.

More to follow soon.