reflections on another journey through the Bible

It’s naptime on June 29, 2022—which means it’s the first afternoon in six months that I have not had a mental checklist running of everything I need to do for Bible180 today, and a mental timer going so I can prioritize each task within the amount of time I estimate Clara will sleep. Some days, something else came first and all this had to wait until bedtime, but even then, the mental checklist was always there.

I made a commitment this year not only to read through the Bible in 180 days—which is something I’ve done several times already and no longer daunts me as it once did—but also to create a brief overview of all 66 Biblical books, to post the reading schedule weekly, to post the day’s passages daily, and to share some of my thoughts and/or favorite resources every day, too. It was a ton of work (you can find it all over on the official Bible180 Instagram page), and I am really proud of myself for staying (mostly) on top of it, even through several sicknesses and travel and all the other random mishaps of life.

To mark the end of this first Bible180 Challenge of 2022 (yes, I’m going to be starting over again on July 1, and it’s not too late to join), I decided to spend this naptime reflecting on the things I’ve learned (or re-learned) over the last 6 months:

Reading through the Bible — especially reading through it quickly — is an enormously powerful way to appreciate God’s whole story.

This is one of those things I “re-learned” this year. I KNOW how amazing it is to read the whole Bible as a unified story, but every time I do it, that story comes alive for me in a new and unique way. This time, I kept seeing both the sweeping big-picture view in which God crowned His Son King over a Creation that had been chasing after the deceitful attractions of Babylon AND the incredibly personal approach God took to make it all happen—advancing the plan through one flawed human at at time, until the only Perfect Man came to set things right.

It was fascinating to notice how much of God’s plan centered around whole nations, not necessarily individuals; it made me rethink the emphasis we place on the idea of a “personal relationship with God,” as if each of our faith-walks exists as something separate and self-contained from the universal story. At the same time, to see how He chose and worked through individuals—Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, to name a few of the big ones—and furthermore, to see how He cared for those that history has left forgotten and nameless by inviting the “least” of every tribe and tongue and people and nation into His glorious kingdom, left me breathless that He could be both infinite and immanent at the same time.

Somehow, the Bible captures the truth of who God is at both a cosmic and a microcosmic level. He is the King of my heart and the King of the universe simultaneously. He demands the allegiance of nations as well as the allegiance of secret souls.

Without the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) are meaningless.

Once we got into the New Testament several weeks ago, it became clearer than ever to me that we do a HUGE disservice to the Bible when we do not prioritize the teachings of the Old Testament. As the apostles, and Jesus Himself, clearly understood, the Old Testament is the foundation the entire Christian faith stands on; without it, we have only the story of a prophet and the claim that he was raised from the dead. The Hebrew Scriptures are what give credence to every bit of Jesus’ history, teachings, and miracles; they are the corroboration of His identity as the Messiah and what that means for the Jewish people and the rest of the world.

And yet, very often, we spend a good 80% of our time (if not more) studying the books of the New Testament, without establishing the proper background knowledge offered by the Old Testament. No wonder so many people find the Bible incredibly confusing—they’re reading it backwards!

One of the verses that really struck me in this regard was Hebrews 1:3:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Purification from sins? What is that, without Genesis to tell us about sin, or Leviticus to tell us about purity? In fact, what meaning does the “radiance of God’s glory” shining through the Son really have, if we can’t call to mind the Bible’s stunning word-pictures of the original Garden Paradise, the descriptions of God’s glory filling Solomon’s temple, or the prophetic promises of a New Creation to come?

I’m not saying that people can’t be redeemed and transformed by the Gospel unless they understand these things first, but I am saying there are a lot of baby Christians who have been stunted in their growth for too long because they haven’t been eating enough meat.

The Christian life should be unmistakably marked by joy, peace, love, and worship.

One thing that really disturbs me after spending so much time in the Bible over the last 6 months is how attitudes of fear, despair, and avarice pervade the American Church. So many Christians seem to be lost in the wilderness, creating golden calves as God’s stand-in because they can’t see that He is enthroned on the mountain right in front of their faces. When they should be dancing in triumph because their God has won, when they should be showering His abundant love on everyone they encounter because they’ve been so richly blessed by it, they are instead wallowing in the loss of cultural favor and shutting out those who might have needs — or they’re still standing in the prison cell of sin because no one told them Christ’s salvation is for NOW as much as it is for eternity.

Perhaps these weak Christians (of which I have often been one) are the product of a weak Gospel—one that only has power over the life to come, leaving this life as something we just have to “get through.” That is not the Gospel of Scripture! Look what Yahweh said about the objective of the Messiah on earth, according to the prophet Isaiah:

“I am the Lord. I have called you
for a righteous purpose,
and I will hold you by your hand.
I will watch over you, and I will appoint you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light to the nations,
in order to open blind eyes,
to bring out prisoners from the dungeon,
and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.”

Isaiah 42:6-7

The four Gospels bring this vision to life through the activities of Jesus Christ during His ministry. The apostles’ letters preach that it can be the enduring reality of a Church that chooses to live according to the upside-down ideals of the kingdom of heaven. The Gospel is for NOW. The King has been crowned. Our God wins.

So why are we still looking for another savior—the next president, perhaps, or a better political party? Why are we still living as slaves to sin—excusing our lusts and addictions as something biological or innate, when the blood of Jesus Christ was shed to make us NEW? Why are we just enduring this life, as if the victory has not yet been won, when it has?

I wonder what might happen in this country, and indeed the world, if we really took up the charge of Paul and the vision of Jesus by living peaceably and submissively despite what’s happening in politics; by loving one another without reservation or fear of the cost; by truly worshiping our crowned, enthroned, living King—yes, the One who resembles a slaughtered lamb more than He does a Lion.

What about you?

If you’ve EVER read through the Bible, I would love to hear what you learned and how it impacted your walk with God. Leave me a comment below!

If you read with us during Bible180 (even if you didn’t finish), I would love to hear how this challenge specifically went for you. Fill out the anonymous survey here!

And if you want to read through the Bible with me over the next 6 months—let’s do it! You can sign up to get all the resources here, follow along on Instagram here, and find the master schedule here! Meanwhile, naptime is just about over, so I’m going to take a break for the next couple days and I’ll be back in Genesis 1 with you on Friday!

of kingdom and curse

One of the hardest parts of reading through the Bible for me and for many people, especially the first several books, is the question: Why didn’t God fix this?

There are laws permitting the ownership of slaves in Exodus. There are provisions given for jealous husbands to accuse their wives of adultery in Numbers, but no similar provisions for wives. Throughout the Pentateuch, we’re reminded many times over how helpless women were if they didn’t have a father or husband to provide for them—why? God could have made any laws He wanted for Israel; why didn’t He make laws that would set everyone free?

It’s a maddening reality to face: We have a God who is utterly omnipotent, and who yet rarely uses His omnipotence to snap His fingers and fix the things that need fixing, even if those things are perpetuating injustice and destroying lives.

What He does instead is far more subtle and, both fortunately and unfortunately, far less instantly effective.

There is no question that the patriarchal system in the Bible, and indeed in all of history, was oppressive to women (and anyone in a state of comparative powerlessness). From the moment Adam and Eve rebelled and God’s curse fell on them, this has been the woman’s lot:

I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.

Genesis 3:16b HCSB

While the man’s struggle will be against the same earth from which he came—a struggle against Creation for survival which he must ultimately lose (Genesis 3:17-19)—the woman’s struggle will be against the very survival of the human race, and interlaced with her most vital relationships. Woman, who was created to be Man’s co-equal image-bearing Garden-keeper in the presence of God Himself, will find herself exploited, tyrannized, and made into little more than property by the one who was supposed to be her partner and protector.

And when the Law of Israel, written by the very finger of God, doesn’t rebuke that behavior and demand better for His daughters, it’s a difficult reality to stomach.

But here’s the truth: God is not a tyrant. He doesn’t make it His business to overthrow every evil regime, to instantly execute every sinful leader (though that does happen a few times in the Bible), to fundamentally alter human culture when it doesn’t reflect His values. Whether it was ridiculously stupid or ridiculously gracious, He gave the first humans a choice, and they chose.

Now they (we) are living with it.

What God does, instead, is write a legal system for Israel that encapsulates His vision for how His people could reflect His wisdom, even within their sinful nature and wrongheaded culture. He shines the light of true justice and compassion into the pitch-black of the Curse, and though that light doesn’t chase the Curse away completely (yet), it does reveal the first stepping stones on a path called “This is the way.”

Let’s return to the example of the jealous husband from Numbers 5.

The LORD spoke to Moses: “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: If any man’s wife goes astray, is unfaithful to him, and sleeps with another, but it is concealed from her husband, and she is undetected, even though she has defiled herself, since there is no witness against her, and she wasn’t caught in the act*; and if a feeling of jealousy comes over the husband and he becomes jealous because of his wife who has defiled herself—or if a feeling of jealousy comes over the husband he becomes jealous of her though she has not defiled herself—then the man is to bring his wife to the priest. He is also to bring an offering for her of two quarts of barley flour. He is not to pour oil over it or put frankincense on it because it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering for remembrance to draw attention to guilt.”

The priest is to bring her forward and have her stand before the LORD.

Numbers 5:11-16 HCSB

*If she had been caught in the act by more than one credible witness, according to the Law of Israel both she and her fellow adulterer must be executed (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 17:7). Numbers 5 only applies if there is a possibility that the husband’s suspicion is unfounded.

This chapter goes on to outline the exact steps the couple must take, under the authority of the priest, to either convict or acquit this woman of her husband’s charge. She must let down her hair as a symbol of total openness to God’s searching eyes; she must hold in her hands the grain offering of remembrance; she must take an oath to drink the holy water, embittered by the dust of the tabernacle floor and the written curse-consequences of adultery, and let it act as the judge.

If guilty: “Her belly will swell, and her womb will shrivel. She will become a curse among her people” (Numbers 5:27b). In other words, she would be barren—which, for a woman in her time and place in history, may have been a more grievous punishment than death.

If innocent: “She will be unaffected [by the bitter water] and will be able to conceive children” (Numbers 5:28b). Her husband would not be penalized for putting his wife through this humiliating ritual (Numbers 5:31).

It’s difficult from our side of history to understand how this law could be pointing Israel in the direction of compassion and justice. It sounds like a law that props up the worst parts of the patriarchy—that hearkens back to the earliest days of the Curse, when Lamech can be found bragging about “taking” two wives for himself (Genesis 4:19) and “killing” a boy who struck him (Genesis 4:23).

But let’s imagine for a moment that Lamech came to believe one of his wives had been unfaithful to him with another man. How do you think he’d behave in that scenario, given the following speech?

Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah,
Listen to my voice.
You wives of Lamech,
Give heed to my speech.
For I have killed a man for wounding me;
And a boy for striking me;
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.

Genesis 4:23-24

Lamech is essentially the archetype for Man’s abusive rule after the Curse. He threatens and silences his two wives by bragging about his own power and cruelty. If he would kill a man for a nonlethal wound, or even murder a child in retribution for disrespect, to what lengths would he go to “avenge” a possible adultery in his marriage? If he became even slightly jealous that such a thing had occurred, wouldn’t you fear not only for the lives of his wives, but also for whomever he might suspect to be the other half of the crime?

Sadly, such behavior was pretty typical of the Near Eastern cultures contemporary with ancient Israel. In Mesopotamian law under King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE), the mere suspicion that a woman had committed adultery was enough to put her through an “Ordeal”—to throw her the river and let fate (or her swimming skills) decide whether she was innocent or guilty. If she survived, she was innocent; if she died, she deserved it. In short, the law treated her husband’s ego as more valuable than her life.

Can you see it now—the small, yet powerful, flicker of light in this darkness?

No, God didn’t carve into the Law, “Thou shalt not perpetuate the patriarchal Curse.” But He did say to His people, through rule after rule, “You do not have the right to take justice into your own hands. You do not have the right to oppress those who are socially ‘beneath’ you. You do not have the right to treat My people as less than people.”

In Numbers 5, what may look like an outrageously sexist law that leaves all the power in the husband’s hands is actually a stunningly gracious protection for women, particularly in its time. God knew that, right or wrong, husbands would struggle with jealousy over their wives, and so instead of allowing that tension to fester or leaving a void where the husband might feel free to arbitrate justice himself, God put in place a specific legal structure in which He could have the final word.

With God—who is not only compassionate and gracious, but also utterly pure and just—as the Judge, the woman had a certainty of being treated like her husband’s equal, a fellow image-bearer. She would be condemned or vindicated by the One who knew exactly what had transpired and whose perception was unclouded by jealousy, prejudice, or power dynamic. This law was more about creating a system where a wife could be declared innocent than it was about finding her guilty—as evidenced by the fact that the ritual only goes ahead with her cooperation (“And the woman shall say, ‘Amen, Amen,’” (Numbers 5:22b)).

And this system was not free of charge for the husband to use at will: he had to be able to pay the grain offering of remembrance along with his accusations; he had to be prepared to endure the publicity of the trial; and he had to be willing to accept that, if his wife was found guilty before God, he would lose the future of a family with her.

Like so many of Israel’s laws, this one did not cut the deep roots of the Curse that grip every one of us, but it did empower the men and women of Israel to exchange their divisive struggle against each other for a common struggle against the Curse. It opened the door for husbands to set aside their “rule” over their wives and let God be the deciding authority instead. Slowly, subtly, it began to teach God’s people how to envision a life defined by the vitality of God’s wisdom and the goodness of His ways, not dominated by sin and selfishness and shame.

The Bible and history and our day-to-day experiences tell us that God’s people have not learned this lesson well. When Christ came to be the perfect fulfillment of the Law, He found that good rules like this one had been twisted into hideous strongholds of merciless injustice by the power-hungry Jewish elite (Matthew 5:17-20), and sadly, the same can often be said of churches and other Christian institutions today. But the vision is still there, made clearer and better through Jesus—the vision of a Kingdom where the humblest is exalted highest, where weakness is strength, where the tiniest seed grows into the mightiest tree. This world’s poverty is that world’s riches. And God Himself is the Advocate of the powerless.

But God has never sought to pursue this vision by force. He will not tyrannize the Kingdom of Heaven into reality. Just as in the Garden of Eden He positioned humans as its “cultivators” and “keepers,” so He longs for us to invest with Him in this mission—to share with Him in the joy.

No, He doesn’t make a sweeping law that says, “Thou shalt not perpetuate the patriarchal Curse,” nor does He strike dead anyone who falls short. Rather, He invites us into the much slower, subtler, heart-level work of undoing, recreating, cultivating, and keeping. He shines the light and says “This is the way,” and then walks with us while we learn to follow the simple but narrow path that travels between the twin pillars of Law which bear up the foundations of the Kingdom:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

Matthew 22:37-40 HCSB

God is here

I’m not sure how noticeable it is in this journaling space of sorts, but I’ve been going through what feels like a massive shift in how I understand the Gospel and, really, the Bible in general over the last few years. For so long, I thought of it mostly as a guidebook through the wilderness wasteland of earthly life to the Promised Land of heaven beyond—a view that I think a lot of Christians have, and one that is easily reinforced in our churchly experiences. “Repent and be saved so that you can go to heaven when you die” has been the prevailing message of what has been called the Gospel for many recent decades.

The trouble with such a gospel is that it leaves us there in the wilderness wasteland, waiting around for death. What then is the point of life? Is it any wonder that we’re so often tempted toward either fearful legalism or lawless hedonism when we don’t know what else to do with the intervening years before our salvation is, in our mind, actually realized?

But if the whole story of the Bible informs how I understand the Gospel, then there must be so much more to it than repent, be good, and wait around to die.

In the beginning, God planted a garden paradise where His presence would dwell, and He placed His image bearers within it. They were to cultivate and keep it, and to fruitfully multiply into families of image bearers, working in partnership with a present God to push the borders of Eden wider and wider until His holy garden-temple-kingdom might envelop all Creation.

We know what happens next: Instead of working in cooperation with the plan, the bearers of God’s image rebelled against His wisdom, choosing their own instead, and were consequently banished from His presence.

All this takes place in the first three chapters of Genesis. What then is the rest of the Bible? It’s the story of God’s relentless efforts to remedy the breach and return to dwell among His people—from the wilderness tabernacle to Solomon’s temple to, finally, incarnation in Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God With Us.

He, crowned King over all Creation and then ascending to sit at God’s right hand, sent His Spirit to dwell not only with us but in us. And He has never left.

God is here.

And yet our version of the Gospel seems too often to tell us that we’re just like the intertestamental Israelites, living in a broken and oppressed society, our temple overrun by moneychangers, our God silent, and our only hope in some unknown day when the Messiah might appear or we might die, whichever comes first.

Does that sound like good news?

Contrast this dismal picture with the language of the New Covenant for Israel, described in Ezekiel 36:

Thus says the Lord GOD, “On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt. The desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passes by. They will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’ Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the LORD, have spoke and will do it.”

Ezekiel 36:33-36

This is, importantly, a text directed at God’s people Israel, describing the New Covenant that superseded the Mosaic Covenant through the Messiah. It wasn’t written to you and me. But as adoptees into God’s family, we have been grafted into this covenant (Romans 11), and so while the specific renewal of the Holy Land isn’t directed at us or our nation, the imagery remains applicable: desolation gives way to flourishing, desertion gives way to multitudes, waste gives way to fruitfulness. Ruin gives way to Eden. Death gives way to life.

Because for those whose iniquities have been cleansed, God is here, and He is hard at work, partnering with us once more to transform a desolate world into a heavenly kingdom.

Too many of us, including myself a lot of the time, are loitering around the construction site dressed in suit jackets and pearls or collecting signatures on a petition or just sitting on the ground with our head in our hands, waiting for a rescue that has already occurred while the job that still needs doing sits undone.

Yes, it’s slow, dirty, uphill work. It’s discouraging at times to know we will not see its completion during our earthly lives. It’s curiously the richest and poorest vocation simultaneously, the loveliest and the ugliest, the biggest and the smallest; it’s both completely invisible to the untrained eye and a shimmering beacon in the black of night, a city on a hill.

And it’s so much better than whiling our lives away walking circles in the wilderness, trying to attain Pharisaical perfection or giving ourselves up to selfish depravity.

God is here. Not only with us, but in us. I wonder what might happen if we started living like it—not in a guilty or shame-based way, but by breathing deeply of His Spirit and letting His life animate us to work in partnership with the heavenly vision. As Jesus said in John 15:4-5,

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

The focus is not on tirelessly pumping out fruit until we die so that God will be pleased with us, but on restfully drinking up the life offered by the Vine, with fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and their holy results as they feed the hungry souls of others—being the happy byproduct.

Advent is a beautiful season. I’m enjoying reading a Scripture and singing a hymn each day with Clara, in symbolic anticipation of the coming Christ. But I’m also firmly reminded that I’m not a B.C. Israelite waiting in a dark silence—I’m redeemed, made new, and indwelt by the Spirit of God. He is here. And because that is true, my role is to abide in Him, to bear His image, and to live as a citizen of His heavenly kingdom—both now and not yet.