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Israel continues to exist as God’s people only as a result of God’s gracious saving actions in the deliverance from Egypt. The story of God’s people is rooted in grace. Israel’s life before God is one of response to grace. This is the heart of covenant. God reaches out and offers Israel a special relationship. The Creator God who delivered Israel from Egypt now invites God’s people to discover the purpose of their deliverance. Israel’s response to God’s grace may be summarized by the phrase faithful obedience. Through faithful obedience, God’s people begin to embody an ethos that reflects God’s character before the watching world. The call of God on his redeemed people is a call to holiness, but it is a holiness in the service of mission. The Sinai Covenant serves as a testament to God’s people of the centrality of mission, holiness, and community. The Sinai Covenant instructs and shapes God’s people into a missional community that reflects God’s character to/for/in the world.

The Sinai is the third explicit covenant in the Pentateuch. Several scholars, Frank Moore Cross and his student S. Dean McBride, Jr., have observed that five explicit covenants (Noah, Abraham, Sinai, Phinehus, and Moab) are embedded within the Pentateuch, which give these books an even greater interconnectedness. These five covenants form a chiastic structure with the Sinai covenant at the center:

A Noahic Covenant (Gen 9:9-17)

B Covenant Grant to Abraham (Gen 17:1-14, cf. Gen 15:1-21)

C Sinai Covenant (Exod 19:1-Num 10:10, esp. Exod 19:1-34:28)

B’ Covenant Grant to Phinehas (Num 25:11-13) – Ps 106:30-31

A’ Covenant in Moab (Deuteronomy, esp. 29:1-32:47)

The outer bracket (A and A’) focuses on the issue of stability. The Noahic covenant is with all living things and guarantees the stability of the heavens and earth. The covenant in Moab is made between God and Israel and serves to sustain Israel’s life in the land without Moses through the presence of God in the Torah. The inner bracket (B and B’) focuses on issues of land and priesthood. God’s land grant to Abraham guarantees Israel land whereas God’s grant to Phinehas (the savior of Israel at Baal-Peor) provides for a perpetual priesthood for Israel’s life in the land. The Pentateuch then centers on the Sinai pericope which focuses on Covenant and the institution of the proper worship of God.

Covenant is the rubric used by God to communicate his vision for God’s people’s life and work in the world. The idea of covenant is not unique to Israel. It is drawn from the wider Near Eastern culture of the day. The use of covenant is another example of the way that God incarnates himself into the culture as a means of communicating to humanity and redeeming discrete human cultures. God borrows an element common to a culture and uses it as a platform for communicating the divine will for humanity. Covenant teaches God’s people the true nature of reality—in particular the transcendence of God and the high value and worth of all human beings including women and other persons whom cultures tend to marginalize. At the center of the covenant’s portrait of God stands God’s holiness. The covenants also reveal God’s desire for men and women to live in an exclusive relationship with God rooted in trust and faithful obedience. God is holy and desires his people to likewise reflect his character in their corporate life together and in their engagement with the nations.

In particular the Sinai covenant and its recapitulation on the Plains of Moab in Deuteronomy offer God’s people a polity for shaping life according to God’s will. In Genesis 12:3, God called Abram to lead a family that existed as agents of blessing for the nations. The Torah as a whole details what this looks life. It is crucial to read the various laws, lore, and instructions for worship within the missiological framework provided in Genesis. The goal of the Sinai Covenant is not obedience, but the creation of a missional community that would reflect God’s character in the world, to the world, and for the world.

© 2011 Brian D. Russell

God acts unilaterally. God actions in the Exodus do not depend on human power or prerogatives in any way. God does for God’s people what they are powerless to do for themselves. Salvation is dependent on the grace and actions of God. There are no competing gods and goddesses from whom God must seek permission. Humans play only minor roles in the drama of the Exodus. Moses and Aaron serve chiefly as God’s visible representatives and speak for God, but they like all other human characters are merely spectators to the power of the LORD. Likewise God’s people, the objects of God’s liberating work, play no direct role in their own liberation. Salvation belongs wholly to the Lord.

The God of Israel is beyond compare. Although our world is full of idols and competing claims to deity, Exodus demonstrates decisively that there is only one being worthy of the title of God – the LORD. Exodus 15:11 points to the LORD’s incomparability: “Who is like you, among the gods, O LORD? Who is like you, mighty among the holy ones? Awe-inspiring in praises, doing wonders.” The deliverance from Egypt is the Old Testament’s preeminent display and pronouncement of God’s saving power and character. No other deity in the ancient World or modern world alike can make the claims that the
God of the Exodus can.

God can even use human intransigence and rebellion to reveal his character and power. The core struggle in Exodus is the showdown between Pharaoh king of Egypt and the LORD, god of Israel. Pharaoh asserts his authority and steadfastly refuses to recognize the LORD’s. But God reduces the most powerful “king” in the world to the status of a puppet as a means of declaring God’s name in all of the earth (Exod 9:16). This is an important word because it reminds the people of God that God can achieve his purposes even in the darkest moments when God’s people are facing the most stalwart of opponents.

God’s deliverance is inclusive of outsiders. God acts for God’s people against Egypt, but this must not be interpreted as God against the world. Egypt and the Egyptian people experience divine wrath because they attempted to thwart God’s mission in the world by oppressing God’s people and acting murderously toward them. This does not mean that God is against Egypt simply because they are not Israelites. When Israel leaves Egypt, a mixture of people follows them out (Exod 12:38). The message is subtle but important. Membership in God’s people is rooted in grace and not in race. The text does not tell us anything more about the identity of these people, but the implication is clear: outsiders are welcome to become insiders. The inclusion of outsiders reminds God’s people of the mission given to Abram (Gen 12:3). God’s people exist to serve as blessings for all peoples.

The liberation of Israel is for the world. God’s actions in the Exodus have creation wide implications. God frees God’s people from bondage and oppression so that God’s mission in and for the world can advance. The emphasis in Exodus is not merely Israel’s liberation from Egypt but on Israel’s liberation for God’s purposes of blessing and redeeming the nations.

What do you think?

Copyright 2011 Brian D. Russell

This week I will be teaching a course in tandem with this year’s Kingdom Encounter at Asbury Theological Seminary. Alan and Deb Hirsch are the featured speakers.

COURSE DESCRIPTION/GOALS
This course is being offered in tandem with Kingdom Encounter 2011 featuring Alan and Debra Hirsch. This course will explore the role of biblical interpretation within the missional church movement. Using the writings and teaching of Alan Hirsch as a representative of the missional church, students will reflect critically and theologically on a missional approach to the Bible. Focus will be on empowering participants to contextualize the Scriptures for the proclamation of the Gospel to the world and the renewal of the Church with special attention to the student’s ministry context.

STUDENT COMPETENCIES
Having successfully completed this course, participants should be able to:
• Articulate the significance of context (social-location), and especially the missional, theological and ecclesial contexts, for engagement in biblical interpretation;
• Dialogue critically with the writings and ideas of Alan and Debra Hirsch as representative of the broader Missional Church movement;
• Assess critically the role that the Bible serves in the missional church;
• Reflect critically and practically on the promise and prospects of a missional hermeneutic
for proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st century; and
• Understand key issues in communicating the message of the Scripture in pre-Christian or
post-Christian contexts.

I am requiring the following texts:

Let me know if you have questions.

Exodus and Mission
In the book of Exodus, we encounter the narrative of God’s preeminent act of salvation in the Old Testament. God delivers his people from bondage in Egypt and unleashes them to live fully as a missional community that reflects God’s character to/for/in the world. Exodus is about deliverance but it is also about relationship. In Exodus, God forges a covenant with the people of God at Sinai. The Sinai material (Exod 19:1–Num 10:10 cf. book of Deuternomy ) describes for God’s people a sacral community that exists to reflect God’s character to and for the nations. In the climactic moment in the book of Exodus, the real presence of God descends to inhabit the tabernacle (Exod 40:34-38) and abide with his missional people who exist as a sacrament for the nations.
The book of Exodus opens by observing a key shift. God’s people have grown from being a single extended family of seventy at the time of Jacob to a vast multitude. The land of Egypt is now filled with them. The language Exod 1:7 is intentional. It is recording more than the numerical growth of God’s people. Instead, it is echoing God’s creational mandate for humanity from Genesis 1:26-31. In other words, the savvy reader understands that God’s people, the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are fulfilling God’s purposes and promises. For the first time in Scripture, we see humanity living as the people whom they were created to be. Moreover, it also marks the ongoing fulfillment of promises made to Abraham and his descendants. God had pledged to Abraham that he would become a “great nation” (Gen 12:2) and have offspring as numerous as the stars in the heaven (Gen 15:4-5). Thus, theologically the universal creational aims for humanity are embodied in the particulars of Israel. This point is important to appropriating the Exodus story. God delivers the people of God not merely because they are an oppressed people but because the mission of God is being thwarted by Pharaoh’s anti-creational actions. In other words, God liberates a particular people Israel for the sake of all creation. First, the links to creation point to God’s wider concerns for all persons. The sin of Pharaoh was a threat to God’s chosen people, the Israelites, but it was also a threat to creation itself as Pharaoh by attempting to stifle the growth of Israel was thwarting God’s stated intentions at creation for people to “be fruitful and multiply” (see Gen 1:26-31 cf. Exodus 1:7).

Oppression is thus wrong in all of its forms because it stands against God’s vision for His creation. Thus, there is warrant for viewing this story through a socio-economic or political lens as we see in certain theologies. The text, however, steadfastly refuses to be understood only in these terms. If the focus is only on socio-economic and/or political liberation, then our theology risks becoming mere human ideology. This is why our second point is needed.

Second, the issue of the particularity of Israel’s redemption points to a wider rationale for the liberation of Israel. We must read Exodus in light of God’s call of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3, etc). God called Israel for missional reasons: “Through your offspring all nations will be blessed” (Gen 12:3). In Exodus 2:23-25, God moves to act for Israel. The text is rich in its relational language. God hears. God remembers. God sees. God knows. None of these verbs suggests that God was oblivious to Israel’s suffering before this moment, but instead presents God poised and ready to end the oppression of God’s people by the Egyptians. God is keenly aware of the suffering, but notice also that God is motivated by memory. God had made a covenant with Israel’s ancestors: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By announcing that God remembers, Exodus proclaims that the God who demonstrated faithfulness to his promises in Genesis is going to preserve and unleash God’s people to live out fully their missional vocation.

In a real sense then, God delivers Israel because God is using Israel as a vehicle for working a wider redemption. Thus, liberation in Exodus is for a purpose greater than socio-economic and/or political freedom. Liberation in Exodus is about deliverance from the oppressive and illegitimate rule of Pharaoh so the Israel can serve the purposes for which God called Israel. Salvation/deliverance/liberation is never an end in itself but the beginning of the delivered person(s)’s participation in God mission in the world (missio dei).

The Ethics of God’s New Missional Community

In our understanding of God’s people we have continually used this definition: God’s people are a missional community that reflects God’s character to/for/in the nations. In the stories of Genesis 12–50, it is easy to see mission and community, but what about character and holiness? In the above section, we have recognized the importance of God’s faithfulness to his promises as a key theme. This included observing times when God is faithful despite the actions of God’s people.
Genesis 12–50 is fundamentally about God’s faithfulness in the progress of his mission to bring blessing to the world through Abraham, but there are clear hints of the expectation by God of a distinct conduct and lifestyle for the success of God’s mission.

In Genesis 17, God cuts a covenant with Abraham in which God gives the rite of circumcision. The chapter opens, “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him, saying, ‘I am God Almighty; walk continually before me and be blameless. I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly multiple your numbers” (Gen 17:1-2). Genesis 17 is a significant moment in Abram’s life because God gives him the new name Abraham to signify a new epoch in his life and by cutting an explicit covenant with Abraham. These opening verses raise an expectation of a lifestyle that is congruent with God’s character. The combination of “walk” (Heb: hlk) and “blameless” (Heb: tmym) occurs elsewhere in the Pentateuch to describe Noah, “This is the story of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the peoples of his day, and he walked continually with God” (Gen 6:9).

Genesis 17 does not give detailed information about what was expected of Abraham. The only regulation mentioned in Genesis 17 is the necessity for future generations to circumcise all males within their households. Otherwise, we must wait for the Sinai Covenant (Exodus 19:1–Num 10:10) to encounter specific ethical and cultic regulations. As we discovered in the previous section the emphasis in the book of Genesis is on God’s faithfulness. The next passage however serves to establish further the force of God’s exhortation:
“Then the LORD spoke, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him that he may guide his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him” (Gen 18:17-19).

God is poised to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of the wickedness found in those cities. Due to his relationship with Abraham, God reveals his intentions. In response, Abraham will intercede successfully on behalf of his nephew Lot (18:22-33). With the negative example of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah in the immediate context, verses 17-19 clearly present a contrast between God’s expectations for Abraham and the lifestyle/ethos of Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, this verse establishes an expectation that part of Abraham’s vocation was to “guide” his children in the way of the Lord. This clearly suggests that Abraham was to instill an ethic of faithful obedience into his household.

This text is critical for understanding the interconnectivity between mission, holiness, and community. In this context we clearly see all three elements. Abraham’s family (community) was to embody a distinct ethos (holiness) as part of embodying the promise of serving as a blessing for all nations.
Genesis 22:16-18 “[The angel of the LORD] said, ‘I swear by myself, utters the LORD, that because you have done this—you have not withheld your only son, indeed I will truly bless you and expand the number of your offspring so that they are as numerous as the stars in the heavens and the grains of sand on the seashore. Moreover your offspring will inherit the gate of their enemies and all nations of the earth will find blessing for themselves in your offspring because you heeded my voice.’”
Abraham’s willingness to follow God’s command to sacrifice Isaac epitomizes faithful obedience. This text embodies the tension between God’s promises as unconditional and the necessity of human response. In the context, we need to read God’s words to Abraham as an affirmation of his faithful obedience. God already promised Abraham all of the things included in the text. It is clear that Abraham’s obedience was not the cause of the God’s promises, but Abraham’s obedience points the way forward for God’s people. It is the desired response to God’s prior grace.

Genesis 26:2 The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land about which I am speaking to you. 3 Live in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your offspring I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to Abraham, your father. 4 I will multiply your descendants as though they are the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will find blessing, 5 because Abraham heeded my voice and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws.”

In Genesis 26:2-5, God directly extends to Isaac the promises initiated with Abraham. God’s appearance occurs during a time of famine and serves to assure Isaac of God’s presence with him lest Isaac flee to Egypt. Verse five is critical for our reflection on the ethics of Israel’s ancestors. God cites Abraham’s obedience as the basis for renewing the promises for Isaac. God promises Isaac land, many descendants, and the mission of serving as an instrument of blessing. Abraham’s willingness to heed or listen to God’s voice functions as the model for Isaac to follow. Obedience enhances the ability of God’s people to advance God’s mission in the world.

In Genesis 39, Joseph models faithful obedience despite his circumstances. By Genesis 39, Joseph is serving as a slave in Egypt in the household of Potiphar an officer under the Egyptian Pharaoh. The narrator describes Joseph as handsome. His good looks attract the sexual advances of Potiphar’s wife. Joseph resists her by asserting his faithfulness in serving as a steward for Potiphar. Moreover in verse 9 he adds, “How can I do this great evil and sin against God?” Joseph’s goal is witness. He will not act in ways that dishonor God. This is the essence of a holiness rooted in mission. Joseph understood that his actions directly impacted the way that others would perceive his god.

We don’t want to over-interpret these passages, but the implications are clear: holiness matters. Faithful obedience enhances the missional success of the people of God. Too much is at stake in God’s mission to disregard this aspect. Scholars often debate a key question about the Abrahamic covenant: Is it conditional or unconditional? Perhaps the best answer is, “Yes.” God’s call of Abraham and his descendants is certainly an unconditional offer of promise and blessing. God offers unmerited favor and promises to Abraham. Yet, this unconditional offer nonetheless requires a human response to enact it. Genesis 12–50 is more interested in demonstrating the grace and faithfulness of the LORD who called the families of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the necessity of a holy community is clearly implicit and adumbrates a more thorough treatment beginning in the book of Exodus.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

God’s Universal Intent and God’s Particular Election of Abram
The biblical story temporarily narrows with the call of Abram. Genesis 1–11 are the stories of all humanity. They have an international focus. God created the world earth and crafted humans to spread across the globe and serve as God’s visible representative. In God’s creational vision, all people were the people of God. In Genesis 1–11, there is no Israel, but only people and ultimately nations (Genesis 10). The Scriptural story moves from the narrative of all creation to a plot that follows the destiny of a newly called people. It begins with Abram whose family will be the wellspring of a new missional people.

Let’s reflect more on two key aspects of God’s call on Abram: God’s universal intent for creation and God’s particular election.

First, verse 3 “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” is the interpretive key. This clause brings mission to the forefront. God’s purposes are much wider than merely calling Abram and his family to a new life and offering promises to him and his descendants. Rather Genesis 12:1-3 offers a clue that the Bible is ultimately the story of God’s working to bring salvation and wholeness to all creation. God calls Abram for the sake of all people. Abram’s family will serve as God’s agency to bring blessing to all peoples on earth. Just as humanity was crafted for participation in God’s mission at the time of Creation (see Gen 1:26-31), God’s recreated people are born anew to work toward the fulfillment of God’s creational purposes. In other words, Gen 12:1-3 serves as reengagement of humanity’s original mission, but with a twist. If the original mission involved humanity’s care and faithful stewardship over the created work, God has now recalibrated the mission to deal decisively with humanity’s foibles and sins. In the beginning God desired to have women and men, persons created in the imago de, fill the earth and serve as his visible representatives. As we saw, in Gen 11:1-9, God achieved the goal of filling the earth with people, but there was a problem. The lostness of men and women prevented them from manifesting a witness for God. Even worse the lostness of men and women required their redemption. God moves to save a lost humanity by beginning with Abram and his family.

Second, God chose to work through a called people. This raises the issue of particularity. Why didn’t God call multiple persons from all over the planet? The answer is that God’s plan drives to a singular conclusion—the sending of Jesus. The call of Abraham established a beachhead into a lost world into which God would send his Son. The call to be the people of God is a privilege, but it is not a call to a privileged life. God’s people exist for God’s mission. They were called to be the conduits of God’s blessing to the nations. Their calling was to serve rather than to be served. Thus Genesis 12¬–Malachi 4 focus mainly on the potential and pitfalls of living as God’s people in the world. These texts record the forward advance of God people in preparation for the incarnation of the Son. But as we will see, the nations remain part of the story. Sometimes they will serve as adversaries who pose a threat to God’s promises and mission (e.g., Egypt and Philistia); other times we will witness persons born outside of God’s people become core characters in the narrative of redemption (e.g., Rahab and Ruth). So yes in his wisdom God did indeed call one family out of all the families on earth, but he did so for the sake of the many.

Third, the call of Abram involves the creation of a new community. God commands Abram to unplug from his ties to culture, family, and kinship networks of Mesopotamia to strike out anew on his own. As discussed earlier, this is a separation not for privilege but for service/mission. It is also a means of God creating a new community. In Genesis 1, God created humanity last in order of created things (living and non-living). Humanity was crafted to serve as a missional community to reflect God’s character to and for the Creation. In an analogous way, God calls Abram and his family to live and serve as a new humanity. This communal aspect is vital. It is easy for us to view Abram’s call as a solitary one. Our Western individualism makes it easy to think of Abram as a lone hero figure. But from the beginning, Abram is not alone. Abram’s wife Sarah, his nephew Lot, and his many servants accompany Abram on the journey. At the beginning God created humanity for authentic relationships. This continues in the new humanity that God creates. In the popular imagination, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob function as heroic individuals, but at their core, these are family stories. The mission of God always advances through community. It is decisive for us in our day to hear the Scriptural testimony regarding the crucial role that community plays for the advancement of the Gospel.

Any reflections, questions, or critiques?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell