The story continued this past thursday. Last time we met we left the story where God stepped back on the scene. We left off where God had just ransomed a group of slaves out of Egypt, being led by a man named Moses. God stepped in because once again He wanted to dwell among the people that He had picked to bless, and love the people in the world. God wanted these people to represent Him, and His characteristics of mercy, love, justice, generosity, health, teaching, and oh yeah loving.
On Mt Sinai this God who calls himself I AM, or I will be what I will be, gave these people the Law. It was a code of life that was supposed to bleed into every aspect of life, from the way they worshiped to the way they cooked, even to the way they washed their hands and stayed clean. It was a radical way of life. This God of their ancestors wanted them to live radically different from all the other nations of the earth. He was going to be there King, He was going to be their first love.
Not only was Mt Sinai the place where the Jews were given the law, a gift from God, but it was also in a sense a marriage, a deep convenient to God. Israel saying they would be faithful to God and God saying He would fulfill his covenant, as He had already been doing.
On Thursday we continued with this story. All through out the story shows the mercy and justice of God. Israel continued to neglect the widows, orphans, and aliens of their land. They oppressed people and when they were supposed to love and bless people. They sacrificed their children to foreign gods, and forgot the law, a good gift, that God had given them.
Through out this story God continued to send people to tell the people of Israel to repent and turn back to Him. All God wanted was for them to turn back to him and follow his law and they would then once again be restored to the place of blessing all nations. But they continued to not listen and did worse and worse things.
Eventually God got fed up with trying to give these people His good and perfect gifts of full life, so He send nation after nation to take them over. Eventually God was silent for 400 years. He didn't speak a word to anybody. For the Jews this must have seemed like the end of the world.
We stopped the story there, but what comes next is the most beautiful thing of the story. The story didn't end when Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Roman conquered these people time after time. But the story continued when the author of the story decides to write himself into it. The God man is born into the story. After 400 years of silence God begins to once again fulfill His covenant to Abraham.
I tried to recap Thursday as best I could, but it is pretty hard to tell a couple thousand years of history in one blogpost.
I'm really excited about the direction we are heading. The story we are continuing to write here in philadelphia, as we wrestle with what it means to look different in this land we live. What it means to be a people that live with a radical love and generosity for the poor, oppress, aliens, widows, and orphans. I think God is moving in pretty awesome in our community, and wants to move in this city pretty bad.
grace and peace
Chris
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