Rebuild by The Barking Fox

But First, Abiding

The Bible says the devil knows his time is short and therefore he's full of wrath. God, however, has no lack of time. That means God is never in a hurry - which might be one reason he wants his people to take a day off every week.
Exodus 35:1-40:38; Ezekiel 45:16-46:18; Mark 2:23-28; John 15:1-11
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: But First, Abiding
 
When a Christian leader as highly regarded as Charlie Kirk writes a book about Christians observing the Sabbath, it’s reasonable to ask why. As Charlie himself says, “I desire to bring all humanity back to God’s design to rest for an entire day. To cease working, to STOP, in the name of God.”[1]
It’s easy to go straight from here to the old argument that keeping the Sabbath, or Shabbat, is a Jewish thing that no longer applies to Christians. If we do that, though, we miss the deeper meaning behind this sacred place in time that God set apart for his creation. In fact, we miss something fundamental about our Messiah’s intent for our relationship with him and with one another. It’s the element of abiding.
Yeshua talked about that in his last conversation with the disciples before the cross. John reports that conversation like this:
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
John 15:4-11 ESV
Abiding is the opposite of doing. We are created to do works, of course, but if those works are to be of lasting value and glorifying to our Creator, we first have to understand what He wants us to do, and then learn how to do it. It also helps to be rested and ready to take on the challenges of the doing. And while we’re in the midst of the doing, we might need to know how to recognize God’s communication so we know when he tells us to make adjustments. We can’t do that unless we have become accustomed to hearing from the Lord, which is another benefit of abiding in him.
This is the consistent lesson of the scriptures. The first thing our original ancestors did was rest as the Creator rested. Having breathed them into existence, God walked with them in the cool of the day as they all rested from labor. That unhurried, undisturbed communion with him equipped Adam and Eve to embark on their task to subdue the earth as the first day of the week dawned. When we look at it this way, we begin to understand why Yeshua said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
We might get the impression from reading the Gospels that the Sabbath is all about rules and legalism, and it was for some people in Yeshua’s day. We point fingers at those Jewish leaders for their legalism, but then we establish a rule-based legalism of our own, only on Sunday instead of Saturday. The truth is, any religious observance more encumbered with human traditions than infused with God’s Spirit can be nothing more than a legalistic exercise. That’s why we have to learn the discipline of abiding.
Yeshua didn’t make this up on his own. He simply reminded the people of his day what Moses taught. When we study Exodus, we see the emphasis God continually placed on the Sabbath. Even before the Israelites reached Sinai, God was commanding Moses to teach them not to work on the seventh day. In other words, to abide in him. If the people had taken that lesson to heart, they might have been content to abide in him the whole time Moses was on the mountain receiving the Torah. Instead, they got anxious and decided they had to do something, so they created a golden calf to worship as their image of God. That’s why Moses had to go back up the mountain and receive the Torah a second time. When he returned, the first thing he did was to remind them about abiding:
Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them, “These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do. Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.”
Exodus 35:1-3 ESV
That part about being put to death is probably what we Christians get concerned about when discussion of the Sabbath comes up. It is a serious command, but what’s more likely to happen is that those who disregard this solemn rest end up putting themselves in an early grave through anxiety and exhaustion. That’s why our Creator is concerned about us taking time off for a whole day so we can recharge with him. As he said,
You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, “Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.”
Exodus 31:13 ESV
This is what Yeshua was explaining to his disciples. What better sign can there be of connection with our Creator than making it a priority to abide with him before we do anything else?
[1] Charlie Kirk, Stop, In the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life (Winning Team Publishing, 2025), xiv.
Cover photo by Jon Tyson, June 13, 2025, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Pressed into Light

Are we really the light of the world? What exactly does that mean - and how do we do it?
Exodus 27:20-30:10; Ezekiel 43:10-27; Isaiah 6:8-13; Matthew 5:14-16, 6:22-23, 13:10-17; 2 Timothy 3:1-17; Hebrews 12:25-29
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Pressed into Light
 
The world is such a dark place that it takes considerable effort to imagine the coming age when the light of the heavenly realm floods our reality. The first question might be whether we go to that heavenly realm, or heaven comes to earth. Perhaps the answer is both. What’s more important, though, is preparing ourselves to be part of that realm of light. And what better way to do that than here in this dark place, where the little light we have can shine all the more brightly?
Our Creator is the source of all light, of course. That should be easy to grasp – as long as we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand. Those who lack such ability to comprehend God are the people we might call heathen and sinners. They are the blind ones stumbling around in the dark, groping for answers, always learning, but never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth, or so we suppose. But are the heathen really the people God means when he talks of those who can’t or won’t perceive his light?
This can get uncomfortable very quickly. The truth is, it’s God’s people who are the blind, deaf, and uncomprehending ones. That’s the testimony of Moses, Isaiah, Paul, and Messiah Yeshua about the very ones the Creator called out from the nations to be his light in the world.
Let’s take at face value what scripture says about people called out of the world and into covenant with the Creator. They are called Israel, whether they are Jewish or not. The important thing is that these are people who wrestle with God and man and prevail, meaning they succeed in moving out of this world’s darkness and into the Creator’s light. It’s not helpful that both halves of God’s Covenant people keep trying to exclude one another from his Covenant, even though the evidence of the light is on and in both. Neither are the source of the light, but the way they conduct their lives indicates that the light of the Creator burns with the fuel they contribute.
That’s the pattern Moses described in the instructions for the Tabernacle and the Aaronic priesthood. God gave the people of Israel the responsibility to bring pure beaten olive oil for the light. The oil wasn’t the light; it was the fuel the priests used in the lamps of the menorah. Yet even that wasn’t the light; the menorah was simply the means by which the light was diffused throughout the sanctuary. The light itself was neither liquid like the olive oil, nor solid like the menorah, nor gas like the air filling the holy place. Light, along with heat, is the product of those elements coming together and being consumed in a self-sustaining chemical reaction.
That’s the simple explanation of fire. We might be satisfied with that explanation if we were simply material beings, but we’re not. Our existence extends beyond this physical plane, connecting at a profound spiritual level with our Maker. There’s a reason scripture describes him as a consuming fire. That makes him perilous and uncontainable, much though we like to think we can put him in a box – or in a house dedicated to his Name. We can’t fit him into our human institutions, such as denominations, yeshivas, and governments. We wouldn’t even be able to comprehend him if he hadn’t revealed himself to us through the ages. Yet he not only reveals himself, but he has also chosen to become one of us so that we humans can be the living expression of the Creator into his creation.
What that means is that we, the images of God, become the light of God through the intimate connection he established. We come closer to understanding that connection as we enter into relationship with our Messiah. After all, he is the one who said we are the light of the world – which means we are that pure olive oil put into the lamps to fuel the illumination of God’s creation.
That’s nice to think about until we realize that he is the fire that consumes us. It’s not just that he consumes all our impurities. That’s an essential part of the process. The trials and troubles we face in life are not simply the result of sin. Even if our first ancestors had never rebelled against the Creator, he still would have found a way to mature and purify us to be vessels worthy of his Presence. Our sin and rebellion simply complicate the process. That’s because our first inclination is still to preserve ourselves at all costs and cling to sovereignty over our own tiny portion of creation.
This is why our Creator indicts his people for claiming to be enlightened while actually being blind, deaf, and insensitive. That’s something our Messiah said: if our eye is bad, then the light we think we have is actually darkness. We’re not really illuminating the world with the Creator’s light, but with some kind of false light that leads us off his path of true light and life.
As usual with the Creator whose ways and thoughts are so far above our own, this is a paradox. We’re supposed to be consumed by his fire, and yet we remain in existence just like the burning bush Moses encountered. We’re supposed to be bruised and crushed to produce the pure oil for the Creator’s fire, yet that bruising is what makes us capable of replicating his light. We’re made in his image and have the freedom to act like little gods, but if we do we miss his light altogether and end up corrupting whatever we touch.
We’re always in peril from one side or another – either the consuming fire of our God, or the deceptive consumption of our sin. The remedy is to make him our highest priority. That’s why we pray, meditate on his word, and associate with others who love him. We don’t know exactly what this will mean in the age to come, but we do know that it pushes back the darkness of our present reality.
 
Cover photo by Tal Surasky, September 16, 2021, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Why Freedom?

We say that God is love, and He is. It would help, though, if we understood what that means - and what it costs.
Exodus 25:1-27:19; 1 Kings 5:12-6:13, 12:1-19; 2 Samuel 20:1-26; Matthew 26:47-54; Romans 11:29; Hebrews 8:8-12
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Why Freedom?
 
What are we to think about the fact that the man who drafted workers to build Solomon’s Temple was stoned to death when Solomon’s son took the throne?
The man’s name was Adoniram. We read of him in the account of Solomon’s public works projects, of which the Temple was the beginning:
King Solomon drafted forced labor out of all Israel, and the draft numbered 30,000 men. And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in shifts. They would be a month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the draft. Solomon also had 70,000 burden-bearers and 80,000 stonecutters in the hill country, besides Solomon's 3,300 chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work. At the king's command they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones.
1 Kings 5:13-17 ESV
We first read about Adoniram in 2 Samuel 20, which tells us he held that same position as the man in charge of forced labor under King David. If we wonder why such a position was necessary in the kingdom ruled by the man after God’s own heart, we need only read what happened in the previous chapters. All was not perfect in David’s kingdom. His son, Absalom, raised a rebellion that nearly toppled David from the throne, and no sooner had that been put down then a Benjaminite named Sheba renewed the rebellion. That’s the context in which we read of how David organized his kingdom in the latter part of his reign, with his cousin Joab as commander of the army, Benaiah as commander of the foreign mercenaries, and Adoram (which is Adoniram) in charge of the forced labor – along with Zadok and Abiathar as high priests, and Ira as David’s personal priest.
Even in David’s reign, Israel was organized and functioned just like the other kingdoms of the earth, although still retaining special status as God’s chosen nation. After all, the gifts and the callings of God cannot be revoked. That doesn’t mean those who walk in God’s gifts and callings are immune from human failings. Individuals and nations remain susceptible to temptation and diversion from God’s perfect way if they are not wary.
That’s how Israel’s Golden Age featured a man whose job was to compel God’s Chosen People to do the work not only of building his Holy Temple, but whatever other public works projects seemed wise to the monarch. For about fifty years, Adoniram was the face of the realm for the masses who had to send their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers to serve for a month at a time at labors dictated by far away bureaucrats in Jerusalem. Did those Israelites consider how closely their lives resembled the lives of their ancestors who were compelled to give their labor to projects dictated by officials in Pharoah’s service? No wonder they rebelled and split the kingdom when Solomon’s son Rehoboam chose to harden his heart just as Pharaoh had when Moses confronted him.
Lest we blame those ancient Israelites too quickly, we should recall our own history. There is no such thing as an everlasting utopia of human making. However splendid our creations, they are sown with the seeds of their own destruction. When those seeds sprout and mature, they bring the downfall of families, institutions, businesses, nations, and global orders. It’s the inevitable result when God is removed from the throne.
It’s ironic that the Creator of the universe steps aside when anyone, including his redeemed children, decide to do what only he can do. When the people of Israel rejected him and demanded a human king, he had Samuel the Judge warn them what would happen, and then let them proceed. Adoniram’s career was merely the fulfillment of that solemn warning. The people traded the God who asked them to choose him of their own free will and opted for a human government that ran roughshod over their free will. That’s the difference between the Tabernacle in the wilderness, where God specified that people be given the choice to contribute their material goods and labor to its construction, and the Temple, where the labor (and perhaps the materials as well) were levied as taxes.
Our Creator made his universe to function through relationships. People are supposed to align with him and with one another through love freely given and freely received. Alignment can be achieved temporarily through coercion, but such enforced alignment cannot endure. In time, those whose love is forced from them will find ways to change the equation, perhaps by seizing the reins of power themselves and starting the cycle all over again.
This is why God must be king over us, and why we must choose him of our own free will. That’s the outcome promised in the New Covenant, when we won’t have to tell people to get to know the Lord because we will all know him. He won’t force himself upon us. That much we know from Messiah’s example, when he chose not to call legions of angels to rescue him, but willingly laid down his life for our sakes. God can do this because he holds all the cards. He is the God who kills and makes alive, who wounds and heals – not because he is cruel and capricious, but because he is perfecting a creation populated by his image bearers.
If we have learned anything from these thousands of years of our collective story, it is that we humans fail. We can’t even pass our values from one generation to the next without corruption. If we want to survive, we really have no choice but to submit to the unchangeable, incorruptible Being who alone is capable of ruling over us. Eventually we’ll make that choice freely and willingly. How much more pain we must endure before then depends largely on us.[1]
 
[1] Dr. Douglas Hamp provided inspiration for this commentary from his forthcoming book, The Relational Universe: Why Relationship, Not Matter, Comes First (New York: Staten House, September 15, 2026).
 
Cover photo by Christopher Stites, December 28, 2024, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Looking Beyond Offense

Living for God isn't about keeping a list of rules. It's about abiding by the principles behind the rules - which is much more difficult.
Exodus 21:1-24:18; Jeremiah 33:25-26, 34:8-22; Matthew 6:21-26; John 13:34-35; 1 Corinthians 6:1-11; Galatians 3:19; 2 Peter 3:14-18
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Looking Beyond Offense
 
Let’s look into one of those difficult things Paul wrote. We have to be careful, though. If we’re not diligent in seeking the full counsel of the Pharisee Apostle, then we might end up twisting his words, which ignorant and unstable people do, as Peter the Fisherman Apostle warns us. It’s not that they have an evil agenda, but simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s the ignorant part; the unstable part is that they might not be inclined to accept correction. That’s when ignorance becomes obstinance, and innocent error becomes defiance.
In this case, the difficult thing Paul wrote is this:
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.
Galatians 3:19 ESV
This is one of those passages that occasionally gets presented as proof that Messiah Yeshua did away with the Torah, which is what Paul means by “law”. Actually, it’s more than that; the Torah is God’s instruction on how we humans should live. It’s his designer’s specification pointing us to his concept of how an ideal society filled with people made in his image is supposed to operate.
But then, we turn to the Torah and find things in there that just don’t seem right. Why, for instance, would God have told Moses to include this among his directives?
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
Exodus 21:7-11 ESV
We would be correct to say that regulation of child marriage or slavery isn’t right in God’s ideal society. There is the question of what this really meant nearly 4,000 years ago to cultures very different from our own, but we still can’t get around the point that fathers apparently had the right to commit their daughters to a status that might be demeaning, oppressive, or even life-threatening. Some cultures still do this sort of thing, but our Western culture with its Judeo-Christian foundation has laws that prevent it – at least in theory. Laws don’t prevent people from doing whatever they want to do if they are determined. That’s why we still have a grievous human trafficking problem.
And that’s precisely the point of Paul’s comment that the Torah was added because of offenses. That regulation about child marriage follows the Ten Commandments, when God spoke directly to his people to give them the principles by which he expected them to live. His intent was that they would each take these principles and apply them to their own lives, and come back to him for further instruction when they encountered difficult situations that didn’t easily resolve according to those principles. That was too much for most of the Israelites, though. In fact, it’s too much for just about all of us at any point in history.
Going to God for answers is difficult. It means we first have to acknowledge that he exists, and then have to acknowledge that he has standards by which he expects his human image bearers to live. Then we have to learn what those standards are by studying what he gave us in his word, and by consulting one another and sages and saints of the past to find out how those standards have been applied or disregarded through the ages. All of that requires a lifestyle change. Ideally, it’s a change born of inner transformation, which is what God intended when he said he would circumcise our hearts. That’s another way of saying he would put his Spirit in us so we would have the ability to live by his principles.
Living by the Spirit is better than living by a list of legal requirements. The legal requirements give the bare minimum of acceptable behavior, along with the maximum punishment for unacceptable behavior. Anyone can abide by strict rules, at least on the surface. It’s easy to maintain the appearance of righteousness, at least until we’re caught doing what we know is contrary to the rules. That’s why the rules must remain in place.
Even those who live by the Spirit instead of by the letter of the law still need the rules. Messiah Yeshua taught us that. In fact, the rules he gave us are even more strict – things like not hating someone because that’s the same as murder, and not looking with desire on a woman because lust is the same as adultery. Paul even said it would be better to suffer wrong than to accuse another brother in a court of law.
This sheds more light on what Paul said about the law being added because of offenses. Maybe it’s not so much the offenses we cause God, but the offenses we cultivate among ourselves. If all we’re trying to do is keep our own little fiefdoms intact, then we’ll do the minimum for others. Someone who takes that approach might arrange to give his daughter to a rich man in hope of keeping his family out of poverty. If, however, we take seriously what Messiah said about loving one another as he has loved us, then doing the minimum doesn’t matter. What matters is doing what we can to lift up our brothers and sisters. Someone who does that might see a family struggling to pay the bills and find a way to bless them. That’s how we build the ideal society our Creator has had in mind from the beginning.
 
Cover photo by OSPAN ALI, September 29, 2020, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Meeting the Real God of Abraham

No one wants to be called an idolator. But then, what exactly is an idolator? Maybe the answer isn't in what we worship, but the image of what we profess to worship.
Exodus 18:1-20:26; Isaiah 6:1-7:5, 9:6-7, 2 Kings 18:1-4; Job 23-1-17; Matthew 21:33-41
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Meeting the Real God of Abraham
 
My Mother told an amusing story about a friend of hers whose husband was a pastor. One Friday evening, when our high school football team was playing against one of our chief rivals, Mother saw her friend getting caught up in the action. Her husband, however, was engrossed in a deep theological conversation with one of the men from the church. At one very tense moment, Mother said her friend punched her husband in the shoulder and said, “Stop talking church! It’s time for football!”
This story illustrates why we all admired this woman of God. She was deeply devoted to the Lord and his people, and could relate to people where they were – both in the sanctified setting of church, and in the raw reality of daily life. However, there is another way to interpret this story. The truth is, we exist in a world, or worlds, of our own creation. In these little worlds, we seek to keep things organized according to our own preferences. This is true of both of the most reprobate, godless people, and the most devoted saints. The difference is merely a matter of degree: the reprobates make no pretense of having anything to do with God, while the saints put their godliness on display, and justify or hide those moments when the godly mask slips.
This applies not only to high school football games in Alabama, but to any sports. It’s not that sports are evil of themselves, but they do too easily become idols. In fact, anything can become an idol – even our devotion to our Creator. That happens when we shift our attention from the Creator himself to our image of him. That’s what happened to the bronze serpent Moses constructed at God’s direction to bring healing to the people of Israel in the wilderness. Centuries later, that bronze picture of God’s grace and mercy had become a substitute for the Almighty and an object of worship.
This is what we have always done. Our service is more to the image of God than to God himself. The images take many forms: icons, holy books, relics of saints, and even doctrines and creeds. Anything that places man’s filtered perception of God above the real thing can be an idol. It’s a chronic failure of the human condition. God’s thoughts and ways really are so far above our own that we can never figure him out. There’s something about the eternal, infinite Creator that will always be beyond the capacity of our finite, mortal selves to comprehend or even recognize. We learn that from Job:
Today also my complaint is bitter;
my hand is heavy on account of my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his seat! . . .
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,
and backward, but I do not perceive him;
on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;
he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
Job 23:2-3, 8-10 ESV
This is the man who was blameless in all his ways, yet when he encountered the Living God he was struck speechless at the indescribable glory of the Almighty. Even at this early stage of his ordeal, Job comprehended the vast chasm between his own mortality and God’s infinity. As he said:
My foot has held fast to his steps;
I have kept his way and have not turned aside.
I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;
I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food.
But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back?
What he desires, that he does.
For he will complete what he appoints for me,
and many such things are in his mind.
Therefore I am terrified at his presence;
when I consider, I am in dread of him.
God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me;
yet I am not silenced because of the darkness,
nor because thick darkness covers my face.
Job 23:11-17 ESV
There is hope in those last two lines. Our Creator is terrifying, yet he chooses to make himself known to us, and desires to dwell intimately within us. That’s a thing Moses understood at Mount Sinai, but the native and foreign-born Israelites with him did not. When God spoke the Ten Words directly to them, the experience was too frightening. Beyond the heavenly shofar that vibrated their bones and the cosmic voice that spoke visible words, their terror may have been linked to the realization that this God of the Universe didn’t want to be a component of their existence, but the core of it. That’s why they pleaded for Moses to be their mediator. As long as God’s commands and instructions came to them filtered through Moses, they could continue relegate to God the things he required while maintaining the fiction of being in control of the rest of their lives. In other words, even the direct revelation of God could become another idol.
This is why God became one of us, with the expectation that we would respect his Son more than we respected his messengers. Of course, we know how that has turned out so far: some rejected the Son, some ignored him, and some turned him into yet another idol. We have all done some or all of this. Even those who reverence the Son and, through him, the Father, still are susceptible to relegating him to a compartment of our lives so that we can maintain the fiction of being in control of the rest.
The good news is that our Creator expected this. That’s why this entire millennia-long human story is really the tale of us coming to the end of ourselves so the real story can begin. He’s not seeking devotees who can relegate him to categories of their lives, but intimate partners with and through whom he can govern the universe. That’s why he became one of us. It was the only way to cut through our idols and images and introduce himself as the real God of Abraham.
Cover photo by Jacob Diehl, April 13, 2023, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Learning to Gather

From the beginning, our Creator intended to gather all humanity into the same redemptive covenant. He's made a lot of progress over the ages, even though those who are gathered tend to put obstacles in the way - often because they think they are the only ones being gathered.
Exodus 13:17-17:16; Judges 4:4-5:31; Isaiah 49:5-6; Ezekiel 11:14-21; Matthew 12:22-32, 23:14-15; Acts 10:9-16; Revelation 7:9-10
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Learning to Gather
How grieved is God that the various parts of his redeemed people spend so much energy trying to exclude others among the redeemed? Our covenant-keeping God insists that he will receive the praise of multitudes from every nation, tribe, people, and language. Isaiah explains how that happens:
And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Isaiah 49:5-6 ESV
The Savior mentioned in this passage issued a scathing indictment about how the spiritual leaders of Israel in his day administered access to the Kingdom of God:
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:14-15 ESV)
Readers of this passage might assume that Messiah Yeshua was pronouncing the end of Jewish exclusivity, and perhaps even Jewish access to the Kingdom. That misunderstanding has contributed to the tragic history of Christians and Jews as each maintains the belief that the other is in grievous error and excluded from the counsels of the Almighty. Actually, Yeshua was indicting not only the Jewish spiritual authorities of his generation, but religious leaders of all ages who have maintained that they alone have the right formula for entering the Kingdom. We have seen that in the Christian wars of religion that pitted Protestants against Catholics, and in the doctrinal disputes that continue to divide us. We’re not as familiar with the history before the cross, when the various segments of God’s Covenant people of Israel fought against one another and against outsiders, all the while claiming exclusive access to the God of Israel. That’s why God had to explain through Ezekiel:
Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, “Go far from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession.” (Ezekiel 11:15 ESV)
Ezekiel recorded this message as Israel’s southern kingdom of Judah was about to be conquered by the Babylonians. The northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered over a century earlier. Even at that desperate hour, some among the leadership in the Jewish kingdom sought to exclude the remnant of the non-Jewish Israelites who had remained in the land because they were no longer pure according to their standards. Centuries later, the Jewish leadership continued to exclude the descendants of those people, whom we know as Samaritans. They also excluded God-fearing Gentiles from full participation in the community of faith. In contrast, Yeshua chose a Samaritan woman to be the first to hear him assert his identity as the Messiah of Israel. As for Gentiles coming into the faith, God explained to Peter, “What God has called clean, do not call common [unholy]” (Acts 10:15).
The problem is, we all tend to establish our own criteria of what is holy and unholy. That’s what it means for every man to do what is right in his own eyes. We may start with some knowledge of God’s ways, but unless we remain humble and teachable, we are in peril of claiming our imperfect understanding as the final revelation. That’s why Yeshua spoke so harshly to the Pharisees of his day, and why he would speak just as harshly to the Pharisees of our day – both Christian and Jewish.
When God made his covenant of redemption for the world, he specified the nation of Israel as the vehicle of that covenant. That’s why the mixed multitude of Egyptians and others who left Egypt with Moses after the Ten Plagues were no longer identified by the nations of their birth, but as Hebrews of the Israelite nation. However imperfect their understanding of the God of Israel and his ways, they knew enough to attach themselves to him when they saw his power to save his people.
Some Jewish sages have said that this foreign-born multitude could have comprised half or even more of the total number of Israelites in the Exodus. The native born probably felt threatened by the demographic changes such an influx of foreigners brought to the nation. Even so, the Bible doesn’t say anything about a pecking order at the Red Sea crossing, other than Jewish tradition that Nahshon, prince of the tribe of Judah, was the first to step into the parting waters. That is in keeping with the biblical principle that Judah must go up first, or, as Paul says, “to the Jew first.” At that moment of crisis, however, no one was checking ID cards or temple purity or even circumcisions to ensure that only properly vetted Hebrews could go through the sea and escape Pharaoh’s chariots. When they came out the other side and realized the great salvation God had wrought, all of them, foreigners and native born, praised the Lord together.
That is the great salvation we await in the final redemption of Israel and the nations. The divisions we suffer now will fade away at the full revelation of Messiah and the advent of the Messianic era of peace that we all desire. Until then, we would be wise to learn how our Messiah gathers the redeemed of Israel, and then do likewise.
Cover photo by Stephen Paterson, October 12, 2020, on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

The Right Time, or the Opportune Time?

God promises redemption, both to individuals and to nations, in the fullness of time. The problem is, while waiting on Him we tend to open the way for our Adversary when we forget to act like redeemed people.
Exodus 10:1-13:16; Jeremiah 46:13-28; Luke 4:1-13 
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: The Right Time, or The Opportune Time?
The Exodus story is much more than a Jewish cultural memory. Even those who don’t know the scriptures understand the basic outline of the story. When Egypt, the most powerful nation on earth, enslaved God’s Chosen People of Israel, God sent Moses to bring the Israelites out of captivity. Their freedom came after Egypt was destroyed by the Ten Plagues Moses administered at God’s direction. Thus God pronounced judgment on Egypt, which is summed up in this verse:
The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, said: “Behold, I am bringing punishment upon Amon of Thebes, and Pharaoh and Egypt and her gods and her kings, upon Pharaoh and those who trust in him.”
Jeremiah 46:25 (ESV)
Except that this verse isn’t about Israel’s Exodus from Egypt; it’s about the judgment God rendered on Egypt 850 years later, during the lifetime of the prophet Jeremiah. So much of Israel’s ancient history happened in those 8½ centuries: the 40 years of wandering the wilderness, the conquest of Canaan, the era of the Judges, the united Kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon, and the time of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. After all that, the world had come right back to the same place. By the time Jeremiah’s prophetic career ended, both halves of Israel’s Covenant People were scattered in exile, and God was ready to judge the nations that had enticed his people into rebellion and then dismembered them when that rebellion resulted in the removal of his protection.
We might think that the Egyptians would have learned the first time around that it’s not wise to challenge God. Actually, they did. By the time Egypt had recovered from the Ten Plagues, Israel was established in the Promised Land and was on the way toward becoming a regional power and rival to the kingdom of the Pharaohs. Egypt became an ally of Israel during the reign of Solomon, but afterward capitalized on Israel’s division to keep the rival kingdoms of Israel and Judah weak. After centuries of that, God finally pronounced judgment again, humiliating Egypt with the same Babylonian army that conquered Judah.
Egypt’s humiliation didn’t end there, and neither did it’s opposition to God’s plan to bring final redemption to Israel, and through Israel to the nations. The Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks all dominated Egypt. After the division of Alexander the Great’s empire, Egypt under the Ptolemies provided a haven for Jewish exiles, while using the Jews and the land of Israel as pawns in their ongoing struggle against the Seleucids of Syria. Then came the Romans, who occupied Egypt and Judea for seven centuries until the Muslim Arabs conquered both.
As part of various Islamic caliphates, Egypt continued to be both a refuge for and an oppressor to the Jews, even into the modern era. When God’s promised restoration of Israel happened in the 20th century, a newly-independent Egypt resumed its role as Israel’s adversary. Even the treaty between the two nations in 1979 hasn’t brought genuine peace. It’s a fragile, cold peace that could turn into active hostility on short notice.
So why haven’t the Egyptians learned that it’s better to cooperate with God than to oppose him? That’s a complicated question with multiple answers, any number of which could apply over the 3,500 years since the Exodus. One answer applies both on a national and an individual level. It concerns the activity of the Adversary we call Satan, who has always sought to derail the works of our Creator. The Gospels tell us he tempted Messiah Yeshua, who also had been a Jewish exile in Egypt. Yeshua withstood Satan’s temptations, but Luke’s account ends with this alarming note:
And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Luke 4:13 ESV
It would be nice if the devil would leave us alone once we defeat his schemes, but that’s not his way. He knows that individuals, communities, and nations eventually relax their vigilance, forget why it’s important to be righteous, lose their way, and open themselves to his beguiling deceptions. That’s why we are always in danger of repeating our history, even if we haven’t completely forgotten it.
There is hope. God has already opened the way to redemption through the atoning work of his Son, Messiah Yeshua. Even Egypt has a place in the redemption, as Jeremiah’s prophecy declares:
I will deliver them into the hand of those who seek their life, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and his officers. Afterward Egypt shall be inhabited as in the days of old, declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 46:26 (ESV)
Jeremiah goes on to explain that the context of Egypt’s restoration is Israel’s final redemption. He says:
But fear not, O Jacob my servant,
nor be dismayed, O Israel,
for behold, I will save you from far away,
and your offspring from the land of their captivity.
Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease,
and none shall make him afraid.
Fear not, O Jacob my servant,
declares the Lord,
for I am with you.
I will make a full end of all the nations
to which I have driven you,
but of you I will not make a full end.
I will discipline you in just measure,
and I will by no means leave you unpunished.
Jeremiah 46:27-28 ESV
By now we should understand that our eternal destiny as individuals is bound up in the destiny of Israel. Once we pledge allegiance to Israel’s Messiah, we become part of his eternal Kingdom. It’s the same with nations: those that align themselves with the Covenant Nation of Israel will survive and prosper, but those that do not will perish. All of us must undergo God’s judgment, but in the end it will be made right. So then, we have a choice: we can position ourselves for final redemption at the right time, or wait for the devil to come along and have his way at the opportune time.
Cover photo by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash.
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.

Meeting the God of Reality

It's easy to believe in God as long as we can keep him confined to the spiritual realm. The problem is, he doesn't stay there. That's why it's so uncomfortable to admit that the resurrection of Israel as a people and a nation is his handiwork.
Exodus 6:2-9:35; Ezekiel 28:25-29:21; Zechariah 8:20-23; Luke 1:30-33
Click here to download a transcript of this podcast: Meeting the God of Reality
It’s easy to maintain the fiction of devotion to God as long as we keep him confined to the spiritual realm. As long as faith is simply the hope of an ethereal heavenly reward, then we can do whatever we please in the here-and-now. The problem is, our Creator is the God of the here-and-now as well as the by-and-by, and from time to time he reminds us of that. He is very much part of our reality, and that’s what makes true devotion to him both uncomfortable and rare.
It's always been that way. We can see how God intersects with human reality through these instructions to Moses:
Say therefore to the people of Israel, “I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.” (Exodus 6:6-8 ESV)
Some would prefer to relegate the Exodus account to myth and legend. And yet, those ancient words of God are relevant to our reality because the descendants of those ancient Israelites are still here. They are the Jewish people, and they have returned to that very same geographical location God spoke about to Moses: the Promised Land he himself had guaranteed as the possession of Israel’s Patriarchs and their descendants. We can go to that place right now and walk on the same ground the Patriarchs walked. It is also the land where Yeshua walked, and that’s why this connection to Israel’s land and people is part of both the Christian and the Jewish reality. In the end, those realities are the same because the same God of Abraham established them.
It might be said that the Christian reality has focused more on the spiritual truth of God’s Kingdom. We are, after all, devoted to the King, Messiah Yeshua. We know he is the King because the angel Gabriel declared that when he told Mary about the child she would bear:
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1:32-33 ESV)
From this we learn that our Lord is the Son of God and Savior of the world. We follow Yeshua’s teachings because they are instructions about how to live at peace with God and men. That’s a good start, but unless we connect our Savior with the physical people and the geographical place called Israel, our understanding of Messiah’s Kingdom is at best theoretical.
Our Jewish brethren are good at emphasizing the historical and geographical reality of God’s Kingdom. That’s why they say every year at Passover, “Next year in Jerusalem.” It’s also why Jews have mourned and prayed and repented for millennia in expectation that God will end their exile and restore them to the very same land to which he led them in the days of the Exodus. Their prayers have not been in vain. The proof of that is the reality of the Jewish State of Israel. It’s the sign that there is a God, and that he is willing and able to come through on his promises. And yet, for the most part, Jewish people have missed the King. That means all their commendable devotion to the Torah, the land, and the God of Israel has missed the power of the direct connection to the King.
We will understand in time why this disconnect between the two halves of God’s Covenant People was necessary. The multitudes from the nations who have proclaimed their loyalty to Messiah Yeshua – the one we first met as Jesus Christ, Son of David – needed only that. The reality of the Kingdom has permeated hearts on every continent over the last two thousand years, creating a people from those who were not a people and transforming them from the inside out through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Over those same centuries, Jewish saints have carried the oracles of God in their hearts and in their Torah scrolls even as they were persecuted from one city to another, often by the very ones who should have been the first to defend them and seek to learn from them. They have, as a people, remained true to the Covenant calling of Israel, walking it out as faithfully as they could in expectation of the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel and the revelation of Israel’s Messiah.
Now we are here in the fullness of time, just as Moses appeared before Pharaoh in the fullness of time. Back then, God intervened in human history to establish his people Israel in the land where he had placed his name. Now he is intervening in human history to remind both Jews and Christians that his name remains on that particular land, and that both of them have a connection to it. As God said through Zechariah:
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Peoples shall yet come, even the inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, “Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord and to seek the Lord of hosts; I myself am going.” Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” (Zechariah 8:20-23 ESV)
This is why the Kingdom of Heaven is inseparable from the land of Israel and God’s capital city of Jerusalem. We know the King. Now let’s learn about his Kingdom. It’s not difficult to find; it’s the one place on earth to which all roads lead.
Cover photo by Tim Mossholder, Wagon Mound, New Mexico, December 11, 2023, on Unsplash..
Music: "Song of Glory,” The Exodus Road Band, Heart of the Matter, 2016.