01 Kingship in the Books of Moses

Krisan Marotta: Good morning. This is Krisan Marotta, welcoming you to Wednesday in the Word, my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we'll be listening to a talk given by Dr. Erica Moore titled Kingship in the Books of Moses. Dr. Moore is a professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Twinity School for Ministry, and this is the first in a series of three talks that she gave at the October 2013 Women in the Word workshop, which is a Ministry of World Reform Fellowship, and I'll link to their website in the lecture notes. I'm grateful to republish Dr. Moore's talk here. She is one of my favorite teachers on the Old Testament. I have a link to more of her work on my website, wednesdayintheword.com, and you can also find her on tsm.edu. Thanks for listening. Speaker 1: What we're going to do is on this first talk, we're going to spend a little time thinking about what the Pentateuch is and how the theme of kingship and kingdom runs through the first five books of the Old Testament. In our second talk, we'll come down from our bird's eye view and look particularly at the book of Exodus and see how God's kingship is expressed in the redemption from Egypt, the law of Sinai, and the building of the tabernacle. And then in our third talk, what we'll do is we'll run that theme quickly through the Old Testament and see how it's fulfilled in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And we'll end with thinking about what are some of the implications of that for us today. So let me start out by saying I love forces. And we said I live on a force, it's a far net. Where we live, what we have is a far net. It's not a farm compared to what our neighbors have. And I'm also the professor that lives the farthest away from Trinity Seminary in Ambridge. And it's about an hour and 10-minute drive. And twice in my career there, we have tried to move closer. And we've been intently searched for a new barn. And when the realtor would call and say, Hey, I have some properties to look at, my first question was never, does it have a dining room? What does the master bedroom look like? It was tell me about the barn. And because we haven't been able to find anything suitable for our six horses, I still live an hour and ten minutes away from Trinity Seminary. So I love horses. With my love for horses, I found an event that happened in the horse world rather perplexing. Way back in 2007, some of you may remember a horse named Barbaro. He won the Kentucky Derby and was expected to win the Triple Crown. And second race of the Triple Crown, the Preakness, right out of the starting block, he breaks three bones in his right hind leg and is taken to the New Bolton Center of University of Pennsylvania up in Kenneth Square. He's there from May 2007 until he's euthanized in February of 2008. Now, I I casually followed Barbaro's progress during those months and found it amazing that people were sending him cards and carrots and peppermints and apples. And one of my students who comes to Jan Term classes at Trinity is a vet at this New Bolton Center. And he said the media was not exaggerating. He's not a horse vet, but he was well aware of Barbaro's presence. He'd come to work and there'd be these humongous get well cards for Barbaro. And I'd scratch my head. With all my love for horses, it had never occurred to me to stop at the Hallmark store on the way home from Trinity to pick them up a little card. Okay. And I was thinking about that and listened to the radio one day and heard George Will talk about a similar phenomenon when Princess Diana died. Okay? Five million people in the streets of London. Personal friends? No. Okay. Why? Well, George Will concluded that people want to be part of the larger story. And I think he's onto something there. Okay, we all live our lives out of some story that provides the context for how we interpret and understand history and how we think about the direction of our current lives. We all need some sort of narrative that sustains us. And I have a quote there on your outline. Without a narrative that sustains us, the world and we ourselves are virtually phantom. But the issue is not just whether one has narrative or not, the issue is whether we have one that is true and genuine, one that can sustain us in reality, one that, having been given it and having committed it to memory, frees us from desperately having to continue to make one up. And this is where the study of the books of Moses or the Pentateuch comes in. I think that a proper understanding of the Pentateuch, the beginnings, can help us understand our Christian lives and the gospel. And help us to see that Christianity embraces all of life and all of God's creation. And we're part of that story. There's a singer that I love to listen to, Rich Mullins, and in his song Step by Step, I love the line, and when I think of Abraham, how one star he saw had been lit for me. Isn't that neat? We're part of what we're reading here when we read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, etc., etc. And it's this biblical narrative that begins in the books of Moses that we want to look at this weekend that provides the template to help each of us understand our individual and corporate lives today. Biblical narrative, the unfolding of the biblical story, God's plan to redeem a people for himself. And the reason I think this is important, I think there's a couple of reasons. First of all, there can be a Gnostic tendency in Christianity that says, I believe in Jesus, that he died for my sins, and what I get for that is I someday go to heaven to be with him. That's all very true and well, but that's not the end of the story. Okay? That by in and of itself doesn't really bear a lot of relationship to the world in which I live right now, and it can actually negate the world and separate Christians from it. But the gospel calls us to life in the world rather than away from it. Or sometimes the Bible can be treated as just all these hard to connect stories. For the last four years, I've been teaching the fourth through sixth Sunday school class, sixth grade Sunday school class in my church. And it's very frustrating to find Sunday school material for that age that connects the story. Now I I use Gray Commissions, and that that's been very helpful. But there's so much stuff out there that basically leaves the kids with a lot of knowledge, but absolutely no understanding of the redemptive significance of what they are studying. And so this biblical narrative that starts with the Pentateuch, the books of Moses, can help us develop a proper biblical worldview. When we read Genesis, when we read Leviticus, this is our history. Okay, so you know, think for a second, look, as I look out, I think I'm not the only one old enough to remember Alex Haley's mini-series Roots back in the 80s. Okay. Why was that so popular? I know some people are like, what's she talking about? Why was that miniseries so popular? Okay. Exactly. And it connected an individual with their history. Okay. Well, we don't need a mini-series. We have God's word that connects us with the beginning, our roots, where we come from. What's so disruptive about amnesia? What is it? You don't have a context in which to understand who you are and who and your and your surroundings. Okay? Sometimes we act as if we have biblical amnesia, but we don't need to. We have this story that's able to root us in God's great plan of redemption. What I'm talking about is something that Women in the Word takes great pains to emphasize: biblical theology. What you're doing in these conferences every year is you're studying the process of the self-revelation of God deposited in the Bible. Now think about that for a second. The self-revelation of God. You know, who's going to start for the Eagle Sunday, Michael Vick or someone else? I mean, we just pause over that. In Scripture, the self-revelation of God. That's what we're studying here. And unlike a lot of religions in the world, we have a God who has acted in history and time, and the acts of God are deposited in his word. Now, there's a lot of ways to get at God's revelation of himself. And what we want to do this weekend in our plenaries sessions is focus on the theme of kingship, as it's introduced right away in Genesis chapter 1, and trace that theme through the Pentateuch. I want to spend a few minutes though, the second point on the outline is what is the Pentateuch? So before we trace the theme of kingship in the Pentateuch, we want to ask ourselves, well, what is the Pentateuch? Well, that word is simply the English rendering of the Greek word Pentateuchos, which means five-fold book. And it refers to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Now, some of you may be used to calling the first five books of Scripture the Torah, okay? The Hebrew Bible is divided into three parts. And so when I teach Hebrew exegesis, our Bible, the Hebrew Bible, doesn't end with Malachi. The books are arranged very differently. And the first, and there's a three-part division to the Hebrew Bible. And the first part is the Torah. And that's the part that we're going to concern ourselves with today. The second part is the Neveim, which is the word for prophets in Hebrew. And the third part is the Kedavim, which is the word for writings in Hebrew. So the Hebrew Bible is broken into three parts: the Pentateuch, the books of Moses, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the prophets, the Neveims. That's where this word Tanakh comes from. Now the prophets is a little different than what you and I probably think about when we think about the prophets. It includes Joshua and Judges and the books of Samuel and the books of Kings. They're called former prophets. And it doesn't include Daniel. Daniel in the Hebrew Bible is part of this third section. And that third section is Psalms, Proverbs, Ruth, Esther, Chronicles. The Hebrew Bible ends with the book of Chronicles. Okay, so we're interested today in this first part, the Torah. Okay, thank you. Okay, so we have the Tanakh here. Torah, Neveim, and Ketuvim. And when we think about the Torah, the basic meaning is divine instruction or guidance. Please don't think that the first five books of the Bible are law. Okay? That's just not a big enough word to understand what the Hebrew word is all about. I love Bruce Watkie's catechetical instruction. That is what Torah is. And now it's given through the law, but it's catechetical instruction. Other names for these five books that we're going to be looking at, I've given you there on your outline. The book of the law of Moses, the law of the Lord, the book of the law of God, etc., etc. So that's what the Pentateuch is. That's what it consists of. But I want to talk for a few minutes. Well, what are these five books? And please turn with me to Numbers chapters one and two in your Bible. And just skim through those two chapters, please. I'm having us turn there because I want you to look at those chapters as I as I give you a first description of the Pentateuch. It's God's gracious gift to his children. Now you may look at Numbers one and two and say, I'll put that on my list of gifts I can do without with chia pets and salad shooters. Okay, but we need to remember the whole the book of Numbers, even the census that's here, the book of Leviticus with all those laws that make us scratch our heads. Don't boil a kid in its mother's milk. At the end of a long day with my son, water would do, but you know, you know, what do we do with these things? Okay, well, it's God's gracious gift to us. And 2 Timothy 3.16 reminds us that all scripture is the opnustos, the actual breath of God. And it's profitable for doctrine, correction, rebuking, and training in righteousness. And that includes Numbers 1 and 2. So the first thing we want to think about when we think about the Pentateuch is it's God's gracious gift to us. We can unpack what that gift means a little. The Pentateuch is prophetic. And what I mean by that is it points to something greater than itself. Think about how the book of Deuteronomy ends. Okay, Deuteronomy 34. Moses, the book of Deuteronomy is Moses' swan song. The Israelites are perched on the plains of Moab, about to enter the land of promise, and Moses gives three farewell speeches to them. And then in chapter 34, he is unable to enter the land because of his sin, and he dies. And there's this ending to the book of the to the Pentateuch. Since that time, no prophet has arisen like Moses, who did all these great deeds and who knew God as he did. So you see what I'm saying? The Pentateuch, when I say it's prophetic, it points to something greater than itself. It doesn't end with, and the Israelites conquered the land of Canaan and celebrated in Disneyland. It ends on this future-looking note. It anticipates something more. It's prophetic. The other thing that the Pentateuch is, is it's covenantal. It's about God's relationship to his people. So we're going to see themes such as promise and fulfillment, faithfulness, unfaithfulness, blessing, curses. And we're going to see that's one of the the covenant is one of the major criterion of selectivity as to what gets into the Pentateuch and what doesn't. And sometimes we're, with our modern understanding of history, we can get offended by what's in Scripture and not. Well, that's too bad. That's our problem. The Bible we have is the Bible God wants us to have. And things that might we might be curious about aren't in there. Well, because in the unfolding of God's plan to redeem a people for Himself, those things that we might be curious about just weren't important for us to know. So the Pentateuch is prophetic. It points to something greater than itself. It's covenantal. It's about God's relationship to his people. It's historical. It tells us what actually happened in the past. Okay? When you're reading through these first five books, it's interesting to note how the writer, Moses, and whoever edited it after him, cites sources. There's a tension to chronological order. There's commands to observe and remember these things. And that's important because that is that's a significant way in which we as believers and our faith differs from many of the world's religions, which are more philosophically and moralistically based. We serve a God who has acted in real history and real time. Now, I have a few things under what it means when I say the Pentateuch is historical. It's not simply a history of Israel. The writers of the Pentateu did not just write history for history's sake, okay? It's a history of the relationship of God and his people. And Yahweh, okay, the uh Hebrew word for uh God's covenant name is at the center of the history in the Pentateuch. But it's didactic history, it's meant to present models of behavior for us to emulate and avoid. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, please. 1 Corinthians chapter 10. And my NIV has this little subtitle at 1 Corinthians 10 is Warnings from Israel's History. So Paul here recounts some of the events that occurred that are that are written about in the Pentateuch. The Exodus, uh God providing special food and water for the people, okay, and then God's judgment when the people acted in faithlessness to his provisions. So Paul here recounts some of the things that are in the Pentateuch, and then notice what he says in verse 6. These things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. These things, the things written in Genesis through Deuteronomy, were written down as examples for us to keep our hearts from setting our hearts on the evil things they did. And then look at verse 11. Pay attention to what's repeated in Scripture. These things happened to them, the Israelites, as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So when we read the Pentateuch, it's not just to answer our curious questions about our own history. It's meant to teach us. It is didasc history. It's meant to warn us as to when not to be that the Israelites and to remind us that God is also a God who judges. And look at the practical outworking of the fact that the Pentateuch is didastic history. If you think you're standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. So you see how Paul ties in the history of the Pentateuch with this very practical application, okay? It's didactic history. It's doxological history. Now we're we're we won't turn to Psalm 105, you can do that on your own. When the psalmists in particular recount God's history with Israel, uh the in the early years of the nation, they recount what God has done and it leads them to praise God. Okay? So when we read this, when we read what God has done, it ought to lead us to praise our God. It's selected and emphasized history. And sometimes moderns get offended by what's in Scripture and what's not. And again, that just is our problem. Okay, the Bible we have is the Bible that God wants us to have. unknown: Okay. Speaker 1: Now, I don't want to give the impression that the Pentateuch is only history. Okay? And I have next on your outline the interpretive principle, the importance of genre identification. Okay? When we, you know, is this something just for filler because I had to speak an hour earlier? Well, no, any of my students can tell you one of my unfortunately, one of my problems is not that I run out of things to say. This is this is very important. Okay? And that's because when we talk about genre, we're talking about a group of texts that are similar. They're similar in content, structure, mood. Can say, oh yeah, those all share these characteristics. Now we encounter that all the time in our everyday life. When my son Philip was little, and I would pick up a book, and it started once upon a time, right? I knew I was reading him a fairy tale. So if we came across flying elephants and princesses sleeping in coffins, I expected that. That's part of the genre of a fairy tale. And the importance of identifying a genre is it gives us a reading strategy. When I read Once Upon a Time, I knew that I was to read this with an air of suspended belief. Now, if I was reading the Last Will and Testament of a beloved friend and it had flying elephants and princesses sleeping in glass coffins, I'd be a little perplexed at that. So, genre. There are different types of genre in the scripture, and it's important to identify genre because it helps us develop a reading strategy. And we do this subconsciously all day and every day, but when we come to scripture, we're going to bump up against genres that we're not familiar with. I love browsing Barnes and Nobles, and I don't believe they have an omen section. They don't have an Oracles Against the Foreign Nations section. But these are genres that we read in Scripture. So we need to understand, okay, how are these texts to be written? When I read scripture, I don't read romance novels, which I'm very thankful for. Okay. So the importance of genre is it helps us develop a reading strategy. Now, we're not going to deal with Genesis 1 to 3, but think about all the various back and forth among believers as to how to interpret Genesis 1 to 3. Are those six literal days? Okay? Is there room for theistic evolution? I don't have to answer any of these, so I can throw out all these questions. Okay, and a lot of times the issue, it doesn't come down to the authority of Scripture. This is an in-house discussion among people who love Jesus and love his word. It's how to interpret Genesis 1 to 3. Is it history? Is it myth? If it's myth, is it myth in the technical term or myth the way most people think of myth? Is it scientific? Okay, so you see what I'm saying? If we need to learn to understand the different genres in Scripture. And when we read a text the way God wants us to read it, that's what we want to do. Take the book of Jonah, for example. If Jonah is a parable, if that's the way God meant Jonah to be read as a parable and not history, then I want to read it as a parable. But if Jonah is historical, then I want to read it as history. And we concede nothing to people who love to disparage God's word. We concede nothing to them when we read a text the way it's meant to be read. Okay? So genre identification. When you're reading through the Pentateuch, be careful as to what are some of the clues as to what type of literature you're reading. The unity of the Pentateuch. It's best to think of the Pentateuch as a single book divided into five volumes rather than a collection of five books. All five portions of the Pentateuch wouldn't have been able to fit on one scroll. But notice the unity that I have down on your outline. Genesis 1 to 11 is primeval history. Those stories that took place before, in my opinion, we can date when they happened. Genesis 12, God calls Abraham to leave his country, leave his father, leave his family, and in faith go to a new country. And we're going to see this evening how Exodus and Genesis are tied together, where this group of 70 that were down in Egypt that become in 400 years, a vast majority of people are liberated from Egypt. And then the story stops for a while at Sinai, all the way from Exodus 19:1 to Numbers 10, 11. So that's Exodus 19:1, and Exodus has 40 chapters, all the through the book of Leviticus, and all the way through Numbers, first 10 chapters. That all takes place in about a year period at Sinai. And we'll try to understand in a little while how that helps us understand Leviticus. And then Numbers 10, 1, they're finally on the journey. Book of Numbers ends with the Israelites perched on the plains of Moab, about to enter the land of promise. And the book of Deuteronomy, we find the Israelites right there on the plains of Moab with Moses giving his farewell speeches. So think of the Pentateuch as a unity rather than five separate books. And then Numbers, Genesis 12, the epicenter of the Pentateuch. God calls Abraham and says, I'm going to make you a great family and a great nation, and from you all the nations of the world will be blessed. And basically the rest of the Pentateuch and the rest of all of Scripture is the outworking of God's blessing and promise and covenant to Abraham. Furthermore, each book of the Pentateuch, each of these five volumes, shows this scheme of movement, okay? And the ending of each book concludes with a note that sustains this impression of movement, anticipation, looking towards the future. How does the book of Genesis end? Joseph knows he's going to die, and what does he ask? That his bones be taken back to the land of promise to be buried. A note, a movement, a sense of anticipation. How does the book of Exodus end? Most of us think of the book of Exodus, the Exodus from Egypt, but that's only the first 18 chapters. The second half of Exodus, 25 to 30, chapters 25 to 31, and then chapters 35 to 40 are all about the tabernacle, right? God is going to live in a mobile home for a while, and the Israelites are going to build him that mobile home. And the book of Exodus, chapter 40, ends with the mobile home being built, the tabernacle, and the glory of God descending in the tabernacle. But it's a mobile home, it's not stationary. There's a cloud who's going to lead the Israelites. So there's this sense, again, of anticipation movement forward. Leviticus is all about, okay, God has decided, the king has decided to dwell in our midst. Well, how do a sinful people live with God in the center of them? So the book of Leviticus continues that movement as it reflects on how the Israelites are going to live with God in his mobile home. The book of Numbers, finally in chapter 10, the Israelites are on the march. They've been at Sinai about a year, and they march. It's only a short distance from Egypt to the land of promise, but it takes them 40 years. And the book of Numbers ends, perched on the plains of Moab, about to enter the land of promise. And then the book of Deuteronomy, Moses gives his three farewell talks. He gives some new laws because now he's talking to the second generation and preparing them to enter the land. And he repeats you know, when you get into the land, remember to do this, remember to do this. So the all of these books have this sustained sense of anticipation and movement forward. There's a note of openness to the future. Which leads us to the purpose of the Pentateuch and the theme of the Pentateuch. Well, the purpose or the function of the Pentateuch, the primary purpose, is to teach faith, a life of dependence on God. You see how much more fundamental that is than thinking, oh, that's law? Okay. That's part of it, but it's to teach us faith, how to depend on our God. Okay, remember, it's this is the second generation in the wilderness about to enter the land of promise. Okay, so in every book, and I've given you verses there, there's this emphasis on trusting God. The theme of the Pentateuch, there's several. I would uh I would suggest that the main theme is promise. If I had to distill down to one word, the overall theme, it would, I would think a good candidate is promise. Now, this promise is expressed in God's covenant with Abraham, but promise. And yet, with that promise, it's the sense of incompletion. God takes Abraham in Genesis 12 and says, I'm going to make you a great family, your family's going to be a great nation, and out of you all the nations of the world will be blessed. But by the end of Deuteronomy, that hasn't happened. Okay? It tastes like more. I like to use this example of, and you can use this for the whole Old Testament. I am of German extraction, and the way I learned to cook from my mom and grandmom was they didn't use recipe cards. I remember my second sophomore year at Wheaton. My grandmother was getting up in age, and I wanted, there were a couple of special German recipes that I wanted to learn to make from her before she passed on. So I remember one day going over to her house with a pen and paper, and she just said, Erica, put that down. Gave me an apron and said, take a handful of flour. Okay? What's a handful? Your hand's smaller than mine, you know. And that's how I learned to cook. We would put things together and then I would taste it, and she'd say, Oh, it tastes like it needs more, and we'd think, you know, whatever German spice or seasoning, Maggie or whatever. That's how I learned to cook. Well, when we get to the end of the Pentateuch, given all these promises that God has given, it tastes like more. Okay? And as we'll see either tonight or tomorrow, when we get to the end of the Old Testament, it tastes like more. So this air of incompleteness. There's this promise, but it hasn't been fully satisfied by the end of the Pentateuch. Now, again, as New Testament believers, we have the privilege, the privilege of knowing what that more is, that it's fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Okay? Now, so there's this sense of incompleteness, and all along the way, this promise is threatened. Okay, think about the promise to Abraham. Think about how many times the ancestress is put in danger. Abraham lies about his wife Sarah two times, and then his son does the same thing. And you know, people say, yeah, but it was a half-truth. Well, a half-truth is a whole lie. Abraham lied. Okay. Okay. So the promise is threatened. If Sarah gets absorbed into the harem of a foreign king, where's the promise? How is it going to be fulfilled? Or think of how the promise is threatened by the barrenness of the patriarch's wives, Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel. Or think about the fraternal rivalries that endanger one or more heirs of the promise: Ishmael, Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Joseph, and his eleven brothers. Or how about the famine in the land? No sooner does Abraham get to Canaan, and what happens? There's a famine in the land. So the promise is continually threatened, but it's never negated. So promise, I think, is a great way to latch on to the big theme in the Pentateuch. Now, there's also covenant, okay? The idea that God has entered into covenant with people. There's law, there's land. Now, what we're going to do is trace the theme of kingship, okay, through these five books. So let's do that in our remaining ten minutes. Turn to Genesis chapter 1. The Bible begins with kingship. We're all familiar with the first chapters of Genesis, the account of creation, the fact that God is creator and we are created, that establishes at the outset the basis for understanding God is king and he rules a kingdom. Now, in the ancient Near East, one idea about kingship was that a king was to be able to create social order out of chaos. We have the laws of Hammurabi, we have other laws, law codes from the ancient Near East. A king was to demonstrate that he could bring order out of chaos and lawlessness. And so what do we see here in the opening chapters of Genesis? Well, we see God bringing order out of the darkness and the void that is filling the surface of the surface of the deep. So we have right here God establishing himself as king, the great king over everything. He's sovereign. And he's superior to all the gods that the Israelites' neighbors worship because in their creation stories, when their gods create, they all have to fight. They have to be in conflict with lesser gods or aspects of creation. But the God of Israel simply opens his mouth and order ensues. So he's the king, he's the creator of all. Okay, so if creation declares God is king, Eden speaks about his kingdom. Graham Goldsworthy, in one of your books on your book list, he talks about the kingdom of God in a very helpful way. God's people, in God's place, under God's rule. And that's a lovely way to trace the theme of kingdom and kingship through Scripture. So here in Eden, we have God's people, Adam and Eve, in God's place, Garden of Eden, under God's rule. He's given them a pro a prohibition. Okay? And in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve live in willing obedience to God's rule in this specific place, okay? Until they decide to assert their own independence by their sin, and they show their desire to build their own autonomous kingdom, and then judgment ensues. That's why it's no surprise that the Bible, in one sense, ends where it begins. Think about Revelation 21 and 22. There's a lot of images of Eden there. But we're not simply returning to Eden. If you have time, look at, compare Genesis 1 to 3 with Revelation 21 to 22. And it's not simply a return to Eden, it's Eden supersized. So the rest of Scripture, again, is this the battleground has been set once Adam and Eve fall into sin. But God is determined to restore his kingdom on earth. And the pattern is set or the plan right here in Genesis 3:15, where the Lord declares, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. Now, the NIV here is very unf it's an unfortunate translation because I want you to listen carefully to this. When God declares that there'll be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, and he says, He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. It's the same Hebrew word for both of those. And I think that that's important because, and we'll look at this more tomorrow, what that does, it infers a destiny where the elect of God will also suffer. And I think that's important because I think there are strands of Christianity today that want to do away with that. But right here in the beginning, uh, in the plan to restore God's kingdom, he makes it clear that his people must suffer. It's part and parcel of God's plan to redeem the world. As we continue tracing the theme of kingship, like I said, the epicenter of the Pentateuch, Genesis chapter 12. Okay, where the Lord calls Abram, his name is Abram at this point, and tells him, Leave your people, your father's house, your country, and I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you, I will make your name great, you'll be a blessing, I'll bless those who bless you, whoever curses you I'll curse, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Here is the crux of the Pentateuch, the Abrahamic covenant. Israel, the nation that will flow from Abraham, was to be an overflowing reservoir and a channel of divine blessing to the nations. unknown: Okay? Speaker 1: This is one of the central themes of the Bible. Okay? God, there's going to be a king who rules, okay, and through the rule of Israel, the rest of the world will be blessed. Now, we don't have time, but I've given you some passages there in the rest of Genesis that talk about the promises of kings that are given to the patriarchs. And especially in Jacob's testament in Genesis 49, Judah is singled out that Judah will have the predominant position and will acquire the kingship. Exodus. We're going to focus on Exodus tonight, so we won't talk about that for now. All I want to say is that we'll see how Yahweh the king delivers his people, establishes them as a nation in covenant with him, and makes plans to dwell as their king, his king in their midst. Now, Leviticus, okay, remember I said in Leviticus, where are the Israelites? They're still on Mount Sinai, from Exodus 19 all the way to Numbers 10, 11. It's about a year period. The Israelites are on Mount Sinai. And the book of Leviticus, the Hebrew title is, and he called, okay, and he is God. unknown: Okay? Speaker 1: And it gives us a thematic clue that the book of Leviticus is primarily about divine speech. What we have in Leviticus are the words of the king. Exodus ends with the king dwelling amidst his people, and Leviticus answers the question: how can an unholy, sinful people dwell with a holy God in their midst? So all those laws that are peculiar to us serve a purpose as Israel is to reflect God's kingdom, and that reflection of God's holiness is to be what draws the nations to Yahweh. Now, as we know, that doesn't happen, but that was the plan at this point. That's why the emphasis in Leviticus on being holy. The book of Numbers, okay? Where do we see kingship in the book of Numbers? Well, turn back to Numbers chapters 1 and 2. And especially I want to look at a couple verses in Numbers chapter 2. At verse 1, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, the Israelites are to camp around the tent of meeting, some distance from it, and each man under his standard with the banners of his family. So what we have in Leviticus is the nation of Israel. They're getting prepared to leave Sinai, and they're put in this camp where the tabernacle, Yahweh, where Yahweh is dwelling with his people, is in the center. Well, in the ancient Near East, that was the Place for the king's tent. And what the whole purpose of this census here in the first few chapters of Numbers is to get an army ready as the Israelites march on to the land of promise. Okay, so the king is present among his people. Each tribe is assigned a place, the Levites get to surround the tabernacle. And we have this nation of God is now the army of God, and they're about to launch his kingdom on earth. And I know Numbers kind of is the underdog of the Pentateuch. It's the book that gets the least amount of study done. A lot of folks just ignore it. But it's great when you read these first ten chapters, how the Israelites come together, and yes, Lord, we're going to march on, and under your leadership, we're going to conquer Canaan. And it's it's an amazing picture to read chapter 10 with the trumpets blowing and the Israelites ready to go. And you'll go to chapter 11. Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord. And when he heard them, his anger was roused. It's just how can this mighty victorious army of God devolve into this sniveling group in such a short period? Well, if you don't know, we should probably go back and read 1 Corinthians 10, where these things are written down as examples and warnings to us, because we do the same thing. Okay? So the book of Numbers. They refused to follow their king. And so the punishment is that whole first generation needs to die in the wilderness except for Joshua and Caleb. The book of Numbers ends. It goes on with Balaam. I think I I don't know if I put Balaam on your outline. If not, we'll pass over that. Balaam was hired by the Moab king Balach to pronounce curse on the Israelites as they're as they're meandering towards the land of promise. And instead, all Balaam can do is speak what the Lord gives him. And he speaks four oracles of blessing. And the fourth one includes oracles about a future king. And then finally, the book of Deuteronomy. The whole book of Deuteronomy is structured as a what's called a suzerain vassal treaty. We've unearthed these second millennium treaties between a conquering king and the nation he conquered. And the whole book of Deuteronomy is structured like one of these treaties that a conquering king makes with his with the people that he has conquered. God is the conquering king, Israel is his subject. The reason why do we have the second, why do we have the Ten Commandments twice? Why do they reiterate in Deuteronomy? Because the new generation has to enter into covenant with Yahweh. So the Pentateuchens, the Israelites perched on the plains of Moab, about to enter the land of promise. Moses dies, Joshua will take over, and we'll continue the story this evening. Thank you. Krisan Marotta: Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. I hope this podcast has blessed you. If it's inspired you to learn more, I invite you to visit my website, wednesdayintheword.com, and explore the free, ad-free, spam-free Bible study resources I have there. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you so much for listening today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.