Shownotes
Welcome to Day 1546 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Rules of Engagement – Worldview Wednesday
Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! Wisdom is the final frontier in gaining true knowledge. Our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, seek out discernment and insights, and boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; this is Gramps; thanks for coming along on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Today is Day 1545 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, we will expand on the past course work as we continue reviewing the book from Dr. Michael S Heiser titled “Supernatural.” The book is an abbreviated version of his more comprehensive book, “The Unseen Realm.” I highly recommend both of these books. Creating a Biblical Worldview based on how the Old and New Testaments connect with God’s overall plan for humanity is essential. This book review will help us understand what the Bible teaches about the unseen world, and why it matters.
Rules of Engagement
So far, we have covered the first six chapters and Supernatural. Here is what we covered during the past six Worldview Wednesdays: God cast aside the nations and their peoples at Babel. The lesser gods assigned to them took dominion (Deuteronomy 32:8–9). When God started over with Abraham, it was clear that he planned to one day reclaim the nations through the influence of Israel (Genesis 12:3). But the gods of the nations would have to be forced to surrender their power and worship (Psalm 82:6–8). That meant conflict—in both the seen and unseen realms. As soon as there was an Israel, she was in the crosshairs of the lesser gods.
Who Is Yahweh?
It doesn’t take long in the biblical story for Israel to wind up in a precarious position. The story of Joseph (Genesis 37–50) explains why Israel went to Egypt. God’s providence turned the harm intended Joseph by his brothers to the salvation of Israel from famine (Genesis 46:3–4; 50:20). That God didn’t tell Israel to leave Egypt right away was also intentional. God knew the Pharaoh who honored Joseph would die and be replaced by an enemy (Exodus 1). He had foreseen that Egypt would put the Israelites into forced labor (Genesis 15:13–16). He also knew he would rescue Israel when the time was right (Genesis 46:4).
But why wait? God always has a good reason for suffering. We just can’t always see it. In this case, though, Scripture makes it clear. After Moses had fled Egypt and taken up residence in the wilderness, God called him at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–14) to send him back to Egypt. His orders were simple: tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go” (Exodus 5:1). Pharaoh had other ideas. He was god in the flesh in Egypt, the emblem of all its glory and power. He wasn’t going to let some invisible God of Hebrew shepherds tell him what to do. He didn’t even know whether the God of Moses was real. He mockingly replied, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?” (Exodus 5:2).
He was about to get an answer—one that would hurt. God had set him up. God had told Moses, “I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go” (Exodus 4:21). God had a fight to pick. After they had oppressed the Israelites for centuries, it was time for Egypt and its gods to be punished. Pharaoh’s hardening was part of that plot. The Bible tells us the plagues were aimed at Egypt’s gods—especially the last one, the death of the firstborn. (Exodus 12:12; Numbers 33:4), This final plague turned out to be a direct assault on Pharaoh’s house. Here is the description in Exodus 12:29, “At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.”
Pharaoh had mocked God, and the tables had been drastically turned. As Paul would later put it, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). The pounding Egypt took on the way to the Israelites’ release from Egypt had the desired effect. People as far away as Canaan heard about the thrashing Israel’s God had given Egypt and its gods (Joshua 2:8–10; compare to Exodus 15:16–18; Joshua. 9:9). Jethro, Moses’ Midianite father-in-law, summed up the lesson when Moses finally returned: “Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all the gods” (Exodus 18:11).
It’s no wonder then that Moses, on the other side of the Red Sea, asked his own rhetorical question, mocking Pharaoh and his lost army: Who is like the Lord among the gods? (Exodus, 15:11).
Once out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, the Israelites knew where they were headed. They were going to meet their God at his latest earthly home and headquarters, Mount Sinai.
In truth, the Israelites didn’t know much about God. There was no Bible at all in the days of the exodus. The only knowledge the Israelites had about God they had gained through stories they’d heard from their parents, passed down from generation to generation. Reading the story now in the Bible, we can clearly see what God was up to. The Israelites had a lot to learn. Sinai was the classroom.
Israel—God’s Family and Earthly Representatives
When Moses had stood before Pharaoh, before the exodus, he told him God had a message: “Israel is my son, my firstborn … release my son and let him serve me” (Exodus 4:22–23). That idea of God having a son—in this case, referring to all of Abraham’s descendants—is essential. It takes us back to God’s creation of Adam and Eve.
God wanted a human family. He wanted to live on his creation, earth, with the people he had made. God wanted his unseen family and his human family to live with him and serve him. He wanted people to multiply and for all the earth to become like Eden. But when God forsook humanity at the Tower of Babel, he had no children—until he called Abraham. Israel was God’s new family. It was time to get back to the original plan. As Adam and Eve had been God’s earthly imagers, Israel would now fill that role.
Going back to Sinai was a homecoming. Even the heavenly council was there, watching as God’s plan was put back into motion. They were witnesses to a new covenant between God and his people—the Law.
The Law of God—Delivered by God’s Council
Did it surprise you when I said the heavenly council was present at Sinai when God delivered the Ten Commandments? If you’ve ever seen a movie about the exodus and the trip to Sinai, you didn’t see angels. But the Bible says they were there. It even says they delivered God’s Law (Acts 7:52–53; Hebrews 2:1–2).
It also says the Law was written “with the finger of God” (Deuteronomy 9:9–10). That language should be familiar—God in human form. God was on Sinai, appearing as a man, just like the stories in Genesis about the Angel of the Lord. He and his heavenly host gave the Law to Moses and to Israel.
After the giving of the Law, Moses, Aaron, Aaron’s sons, and seventy of Israel’s elders got to see the God of Israel in human form again. This time they met for a meal (Exodus 24:9–11). Just as the Last Supper in Jesus’ time sealed the new covenant of his blood, this meal celebrated God’s new covenant with Israel on Sinai—the Law.
God gave Israel the Law so they would be holy (Leviticus 19:2). He wanted Israel to be set apart from other people, distinguishable to everyone as his own family. As God is entirely distinct from all other lesser gods and everything earthly, God’s people needed to be distinct.
What did holiness mean? What was the concept behind it? Holiness did not mean being odd. Holiness was to be identified with the Lord, dedicated to God, and enjoyed all the good things in life that come with being right with God. God wanted Israel to attract the other nations to come back to him (Deuteronomy 4:6–8; 28:9–10). This is why the Bible calls Israel a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus. 19:6) and “a light for the nations” (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; see also 51:4; 60:3). The entire nation inherited Abraham’s position to be a blessing to all the nations (Genesis 12:3).
Believing Loyalty
Being right with God is another way of talking about salvation. But despite what we’ve often been taught in Sunday school, salvation didn’t come to Israelites by obeying rules, by following the Law. Whether in the Old Testament or the New, salvation is never earned, or even deserved. It’s given by the grace of God in response to faith.
Israelites and those of us born after Christ’s death and resurrection, had to have faith. They had to believe their God was the God of all gods, trusting that he had made them his people. They alone had access to the God of gods. The Law was not how Israelites achieved salvation—it was how they showed loyalty to the God they believed in. Salvation for an Israelite was about faith in the promises and character of the God of gods and about refusing to worship another god. It was about belief and loyalty from the heart, not earning brownie points with God.
King David did awful things like commit adultery and arrange a murder (2 Samuel 11). According to the Law, he was a lawbreaker and deserved to die for his crimes. Even so, David never wavered in his belief in Yahweh as the Most High God. He never switched his loyalty to another god, and God was merciful to him.
The same is true in the New Testament. Believing the gospel means believing that the God of Israel came to earth as a man, voluntarily died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and rose again on the third day. We must embrace that by faith and then show our loyalty to Jesus by forsaking all other gods. Regardless of what those other gods may say about salvation, the Bible tells us there is no salvation in any other name than Jesus (Acts 4:12) and that faith must remain intact (Romans 11:17–24; Hebrews 3:19; 10:22, 38–39). Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god—and God can tell the difference.
Why This Matters
There’s a lot of fascinating symbolism in the exodus and what happened at Sinai. The scene where Moses and others have a meal with God in human form on Sinai catches our attention right away. There are seventy elders with Moses. If you count the nations in Genesis 10 that God cast aside after the Tower of Babel incident, you get seventy. Those nations were assigned to the sons of God—other lesser gods—when the God of Israel judged the nations (Deuteronomy 4:19–20; 32:8–9). Why seventy elders, seventy sons of God, and seventy disinherited nations?
The correspondences are deliberate. When Jesus started his earthly ministry, he sent out seventy disciples (Luke 10:1). This act was a precursor to the Great Commission. The number telegraphed the idea that the disciples of Jesus would reclaim the nations for God’s kingdom rule. That kingdom would reach its final form at the end of days in the new global Eden of Revelation 21–22. The repetition of the number seventy is a message: God’s new earthly family, Israel—the children of Abraham—would be the means to recover what was lost.
The story doesn’t stop there. The apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3 that believers have inherited the promises given to Abraham. Everyone who believes in Jesus is a child of Abraham through faith (Galatians 3:26–29). That means you and I are tasked with taking back the nations from the lesser gods. It is our task to turn people under the spiritual dominion of other gods to faith in Jesus. We are God’s new human council on earth. And when we are glorified, we will join his divine family in the new Eden.
The Bible conveys these ideas in many places. The book of Revelation describes believers inheriting the rule of the nations with Jesus at the end of days (Revelation 3:21). That means we will displace the sons of God who have dominated those nations since Babel. This is why John says believers have the authority to be the children of God (John 1:12; compare to 1 John 3:1–3); we will, in fact, displace the divine-but-hostile sons of God in the last days.
This is also why Paul, when writing to believers to stop letting the world’s courts resolve their disputes, says, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:3). When we are made divine (glorified) on the new earth, we will outrank angels. One day, we will be made like Jesus (1 John 3:1–3; 1 Corinthians 15:35–49) and rule with him over the nations (Revelation 2:26) now controlled by hostile gods. Believers, the spiritual offspring of Abraham, will ultimately reverse the disinheritance of the nations along with the curse of death that extended from Eden’s failure.
We ought to live as if we believe in this destiny. Everything in the Old Testament plan leads to us. Think back to Eden. God wanted his two families—one divine, the other human—to live and rule together in Eden. That plan was ruined by rebellion, but revived by the rescue of Israel from Egypt. Out of Abraham’s children would come the Messiah, who would undo the failure in Eden (Genesis 3:15). Without an Israel, we would have no destiny. And that’s precisely why the gods and their followers would try again to erase Israel.[1]
That will finish our study for this week’s worldview Wednesday. Join us again next week as we continue building our Biblical Worldview. Tomorrow we will ponder another bit of wisdom from Gramps. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along with us tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’
If you would like to listen to any of our past 1545 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.
Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most of all, your friend as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.
As we take this Trek together, let us always:
- Live Abundantly (Fully)
- Love Unconditionally
- Listen Intentionally
- Learn Continuously
- Lend to others Generously
- Lead with Integrity
- Leave a Living Legacy Each Day
I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you Tomorrow!
[1] Heiser, M. S. (2015). Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World—And Why It Matters. (D. Lambert, Ed.) (pp. 67–75). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.