Passover

So in Hebrew class the other day we had a fun little discussion about the word and idea of passover. Now this deals more with the actual event of Passover and not the celebration of Passover. Or in other terms, the verb “to passover” and not the noun Passover.

The verb form of passover shows up only a few times. In Exodus 12:13, 23

The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt.

For the Lord will pass through to strike Egypt, and when he sees the blood on the top of the doorframe and the two side posts, then the Lord will pass over the door, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

When I normally look at this story I think about Prince of Egypt with the cool smoke going through the land of Egypt and striking down all those heathen children, while passing over the houses of the Israelites, sort of excluding the Israelites from anything that is going on. But looking closer I found it interesting that the end of verse 23 has this little inclusion in it: “the LORD will pass over the door, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.” God passes over the door so that the destroyer will not enter. He is passovering, if you will, so that the destroyer doesn’t come in. That seems like an interesting little tidbit. So instead of excluding the doors of the Israelites, God is actively passovering the door.

So in class Dr. Kutz drew us to the other place where pass over is used as a verb in Isaiah 31:5

Like birds hovering overhead, the LORD Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will ‘pass over’ it and will rescue it.”

So passing over isn’t this thing where God just ignores the door, or Jerusalem, but is an active verb, not an excluding thing. It is something he is doing, like being a shield and a deliverer, a rescuer and a passoverer. So in our normal context we thing that during passover the LORD just ignores the doors of the Israelites, but instead with this active verb idea we see that the LORD is standing in the doorway, passovering the door so that the destroyer cannot enter the house of the Israelites. We are not excluded in passover but included and protected by God. And when we see Jesus as the passover lamb, the one who stands before the judge, it is not that Christ’s blood just merely makes God glaze over our sins and exclude us from punishment, but instead we are actively passovered by Christ and His sacrificial blood. Christ stands before the judge and does not permit the judgment we deserve to strike us down. Oh what joy! What amazing power this blood of our saviour!

And to make a little side tangent as well, with my little exegesis I did on Numbers 16, there is this cool little thing with plagues and priests standing in the way, making these plagues pass over the people. The priest stands in the way of the plague, much as the LORD stands in the way of the destroyer, and Christ stands in the way of our judgment. It’s everywhere!

Passover is active!

Fruit and Jesus

I was teaching on Galations 5 on Sunday and I had a cool thought about the fruit of the Spirit.

Galations 5:22-25

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Paul makes it clear that the fruit comes from God and not from anything we do. We produce list A (impurity, idolatry, etc..) and God produces the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, etc..) This reminded me of the Messiah being like a tree bearing fruit in Psalm 1.

Psalm 1:3

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

Jesus is like a tree bearing fruit in the Psalms, and He gives us the fruit of the Spirit in Galations.

Lots of fruit and lots of Jesus.

Shekinah

So the other day in class we were talking about the glory of God talked about in John 1 and how that is like the shekinah that had descended upon the temple. Or something of the sort. I can’t remember exactly what we were talking about because my mind was wondering and captured by bigger things. But also, I have a feeling what I’m about to share is going to be one of those, “duh, Cam.” moments, but for some reason it all finally came together in my head for me. Sort of like I put all the puzzle pieces in the right place, I just never actually connected them.

So we’re talking about God and how in the wilderness his glory would descend upon the tabernacle, and when Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem the cloud once again descends upon the temple. Then the temple is destroyed, Israelites go into captivity (suck!), and then they are released after 70 years and they start to rebuild the temple. Now this bit of the story is what started to capture me. They finish the temple and……..

And…….

Nothing happens. No cloud. No shekinah.

Okay, we get that. So fast forward a few hundred years. Jesus is walking around, as John tells us, gets baptized by John the Baptist who says,

1:32 Then John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven, and it remained on him [Jesus]. 1:33 And I did not recognize him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining – this is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 1:34 I have both seen and testified that this man is the Chosen One of God.”

So now, as it did not happen at the rebuilding of the second temple, the spirit of God descends upon a “temple.” But this temple is not of mortar and brick and metal, but instead a temple of flesh. And then you jump ahead a couple of chapters and John has this little story:

2:12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there a few days. 2:13 Now the Jewish feast of Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2:14 He found in the temple courts those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers sitting at tables. 2:15 So he made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the temple courts, with the sheep and the oxen. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.2:16 To those who sold the doves he said, “Take these things away from here! Do not make my Father’s house a marketplace!” 2:17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will devour me.” 2:18 So then the Jewish leaders responded, “What sign can you show us, since you are doing these things?” 2:19 Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” 2:20 Then the Jewish leaders said to him, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and are you going to raise it up in three days?” 2:21 But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. 2:22 So after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the saying that Jesus had spoken.

Some of that story didn’t need to be told, but I thought I’d just throw the whole thing up there so we get the context of it all. Unlike what I just said though, this story really isn’t a few chapters ahead, it is actually the chapter right after the baptism account. Now the Jewish leaders, not being aware of what is going on, scoff at Jesus when he talks about the temple, and John lets us know that Jesus meant his body. But why does John know it is his body? Is Jesus just talking in riddles? I always thought Jesus was just saying his body is a temple, or using allusion to temples and such. But then I got it; and had I been a good reader I would have gotten it a long time ago. Jesus refers to his body as the temple because it is the temple in which the shekinah had come to rest. And the Jews should have known that though they had a building that they called the temple, it was not the temple. It was not where the shekinah rested, but Jesus is saying that his body is where the shekinah now rests. He is the temple.

Once I realized that I felt like an idiot to some extent. There it was before me this whole time, and yet I never really caught why Jesus would refer to his body as the temple. Duh! Because that is where the spirit of God now rests: not in the temple that the Jews had built but now in the body of Christ. Ha! John was telling me all along and I was just blind to it. What a fool I am!

Cameron

The final one

It has been a while since I last wrote. I am sorry for that. But today I want to finish my thoughts on CHOICE. We looked the fact that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that is when our salvation HAPPENED. Then we looked at the miracle of the cross and ressurection, that is when our salvation was ACCOMPLISHED. Then we looked at the choice set before us, moved by the Holy Spirit, we make the choice to have our salvation become EFFECTIVE. Today I would like to end this thread of discussion and talk about two subjects, our growth in salvation (SANCTIFICATION) and the finalization of our salvation (GLORIFICATION).

I could spend pages and pages on our growth in salvation. Needless to say, it is a huge subject. Briefly, it is simply moving to be more like Jesus Christ, to become the person that He wants us to be, the person we were created to be. Thank God that this is not a cookie cutter shaping. Our God is incredibly creative. We see that all around us in creation and in the variety of people that He has created. Our job, so to speak, is to discover who we are created to be and to become more and more that person. And that is beause each one of us has a job to do that only we can accomplish. I love the way Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:7-10; Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. God created each one of us to do something and in discovering who we are and what we are to accomplish, we become more and more like Jesus. That sometimes takes a lifetime.

The last part of this is really short. It is the finalization of it all, when we shall stand before our God in all His glory and in all our glory. We wait for this in eager anticipation. Paul was so in touch with this that he was willing to say with conviction, (Philippians 1:21-24) For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.

My next post will be one that Joey challeneged me to do, the Top Ten Bible Verses Taken Out of Context. I will be researching that. Have a good day.