8-26-13 The Journey Joshua 17:12 - 19:21 (Message) Take a read. Roots Evening People! Someone asked the question not long ago why I read or divide the sections of what I read the way I do. Fair enough, to me, it simply is where one story begins and ends before another one or idea or theme starts. Does that make sense? I was reading not long ago a book about the opening chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. It pointed out how the list of names occupying the bulk of the first chapter is a compressed narrative; it summarizes the entire Old Testament story from Abraham to David and from David to the exile and from the exile to Jesus’ birth, to convey how Israel’s story leads to Jesus’ story and how Jesus’ story issues from Israel’s story. You got all that, correct? There are other ways of reading Israel’s story; believing in Jesus is what makes you read it that way. But there are no other ways of understanding Jesus. You have to read the story that lies behind him. There are people, (I have met them) who came to “faith” in christ through reading these opening verses of Matthew. Most Christians would think this is perhaps a little weird; we skip over them, not realizing their key significance for understanding him. The person I met was herself, Jewish. I actually eventually married her and her current Christian husband. For “Gentiles” it was just a list of names, but these verses enabled her to see that Jesus could be her Messiah. Pretty cool huh? This is a distinctive feature of Joshua 13-19. It is dominated by lists of place names. Why would they be in the Bible? What would they do for people who read them? Think about it, one function is they put flesh on the bones of the statement that God FULFILLED the promise to give Israel the land. Remember, truth often lies in the details. God did not merely give Israel the land of Canaan. God gave Israel Ophrah and Ziklag and shunem and aphek and all the other scores of places listed in chapters 18 and 19 and elsewhere in this section of the book. God lies in the particulars. They make God’s fulfilling promises concrete, and they do so especially in contexts when they don’t look like the truth. The detail would also mean that individual clans, kin groups, and households could find themselves in these allocations. Like Christians, Jews don’t read from these sections of Joshua very much during services, but they use some of them, so one can imagine children nudging their parents when the lesson mentions Sukkoth or Kedemoth or Lake Galilee because it is where they live. They are part of the story of God’s giving the country to Israel. Each family lives where it lives because God’s PROMISES were fulfilled. And there is my lesson for today: When God promises something, He means it. Jesus, His Son IS coming back! Take to the bank. love you guys and gals, pb
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 23:04:50 +0000
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