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What the Bible says about Israel's Failure in the Wilderness
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Leviticus 16:1-2

Even as the instructions in Leviticus 16 follow a significant failure on the part of the priesthood, we can also credibly link the Day of Atonement with an infamous failure of the whole nation, the Golden Calf incident. By piecing together the dates and spans of time from the scriptural record, a significant possibility arises. Notice these time markers:

» Israel left Egypt on the fifteenth day of the first month (Exodus 13:3-4).

» Sometime within the following week—between the sixteenth and the twenty-second day—the fifty-day count to Pentecost began.

» It is generally accepted that Pentecost occurred when God gave the law to Israel from Mount Sinai. No verse directly says this, but the text puts Israel at Sinai in the general timeframe of Pentecost. Exodus 16:1 shows that Israel was already near Sinai on the fifteenth day of the second month. Israel was still camped at Sinai “in the third month” (Exodus 19:1), when Pentecost occurs.

» After giving the law, Moses was on the Mount with God for forty days and nights to receive the tablets of stone (Exodus 24:18; Deuteronomy 9:9).

» When Moses came down and saw Israel worshipping the Golden Calf, he broke the stone tablets and spent a second period of forty days and nights beseeching God not to destroy Aaron and the rest of the nation (Deuteronomy 9:15-20).

» Moses returned to the mountain for a third forty-day period to receive a new copy of the stone tablets (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 10:10).

The three forty-day periods mean that there were 120 days between Pentecost and the new copy of the tablets. Adding the fifty-day count to Pentecost brings us to 170 days. The count to Pentecost began between the sixteenth and twenty-second days from the beginning of the year, so the time between Abib 1 and the new copy of the tablets was between 186 and 192 days. This span of days is significant because the Day of Atonement falls on the tenth day of the seventh month, 187 days into the Hebrew calendar.

The Day of Atonement, then, may have occurred when Moses returned with his face reflecting God's glory (Exodus 34:29-32). It may also have been the day when he gave the law to Israel a second time, after their blatant sin. Again, this timeline is not definitive, but we are in the ballpark.

If this timeline is valid, then the Day of Atonement contains a reminder of a colossal failure, such that the law had to be inscribed a second time by the finger of God. God does not waste effort, and He does not repeat Himself or duplicate things unnecessarily. Thus, the Day of Atonement could well provide a reminder that the whole nation was on the brink of destruction, and it was through God's mercy and Moses' intercession that the people and high priest were not all blotted out.

It is no wonder that the Day of Atonement is such a solemn day! It is tied to the failure of Aaron's sons, and perhaps to the more widespread failure of the nation, resulting in the addition of the sacrificial law. It may also have been when the Creator had to repeat His holy law. The law defines sin, and breaking it requires atonement. When the author of Hebrews 10:3 writes that the sacrifices were a reminder of sins each year, he may have had some highly significant national failures in mind.

David C. Grabbe
Who Fulfills the Azazel Goat— Satan or Christ? (Part Four)

Haggai 2:10-23

The Bible contains the record of one extended family of people and its checkered history with God. The book of Genesis reveals the beginning of Israel through the fathers, and Exodus shows their first faltering steps. Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy define what God required of them—namely, for them to be holy. Joshua through II Chronicles contain their many adventures and misadventures as they continually turned from God. God also inspired seventeen prophetic books in the Old Testament to instruct His people, to correct them, and to warn them. These books were penned mostly before their captivity, but several were written after the Babylonian captivity of the Kingdom of Judah.

The book of Haggai is one such post-exilic work. The immediate application of the prophecies it contains is the work on the Second Temple, but they incorporate definite dualities with end-time events. Of note in the last two prophecies of Haggai is God's desire to bless His covenant people, even when they do not deserve it. They stress that God blesses to improve the condition of His people, especially spiritually.

Haggai received the last two prophecies on the same day. Haggai 2:10 and 20 identify that day as the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, which is called Kislev (or Chislev). Kislev falls during November and December on the Gregorian calendar, near the beginning of winter. This date—Kislev 24—is easy to find on the calendar because it is always the day before the Jews celebrate Hanukkah on the twenty-fifth of Kislev. These prophecies in Haggai were given on, and refer to, the previous day.

Historically, this date has been highly significant on several occasions. It was on Kislev 24 that the Temple was freed from its desecration by Antiochus IV (“Epiphanes”). The cleansing of the Temple began that evening, which, since it was after sunset, was technically Kislev 25. That is the origin of Hanukkah.

A lesser-known fact is that it was also on Kislev 24 in 1917, during WWI, that British troops liberated Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire. We can see that this is a significant date in Jerusalem's history, and considering the dualities of these prophecies, it may be significant again.

David C. Grabbe
Cleansing God's People

Hebrews 3:12

We know the overall story of Israel's failure in the wilderness. Of all the people who began the journey, only a handful actually entered the Promised Land. This reality is intended to illustrate how much the personal relationship with God means to our salvation. By and large, the Israelites of old had no personal relationship with Him.

This is the broad answer as to why this great mass of people failed. They did not believe God. The author really drives this point home by emphasizing it as an "evil heart of unbelief." It was evil because it would not permit them to faithfully submit to Him; it caused a struggle within them and led them to disobey. Israel's failure, despite God's many works in their behalf, illustrates that just believing that God exists is not sufficient for salvation.

This weakness of faith is not unique to them. The extensive coverage given in the Bible to the Israelites' release from Egyptian slavery and their subsequent failure in the wilderness is fully intended for our learning. Their failure followed their symbolic calling from the world, baptism in the Red Sea, receipt of the law, and acceptance of the covenant at Mount Sinai.

Their failure occurred at a time equivalent to our doing so after conversion. They failed to grow, overcome, and remain faithful during their testing in the wilderness. Are we not now making our spiritual wilderness journey? Have we not had people who once fellowshipped with us stop walking with us spiritually?

I firmly believe that the current scattered condition of the church was deliberately caused and executed by God, not Satan. Why? To test and to build our faith. Being in a church with large congregations is deceivingly comfortable. Such a circumstance tends to produce complacency, as Christ's message to the Laodiceans shows. But over the past 15-20 years, the practical day-to-day faith of those in the church of God has been seriously challenged.

Many have departed from fellowshipping with their brethren. Consider the use of the term "departing" in Hebrews 3:12. As seen from God's point of view, this is a strong warning, since He considers their hearts to have been "evil." The translators smoothed over the Greek term, aphistemi, underlying "departing from." Strong's Concordance says that it means "remove," "instigate," "revolt," "desert." The historical context indicates a stronger wording, "rebelled against," more clearly seen when compared with the faithfulness of both Christ and Moses, as extolled in verses 1-3.

In The Daily Study Bible Series: The Letter to the Hebrews, commentator William Barclay translates this verse, "Have a care, brothers, lest an evil and disobedient heart be in any of you in a state of rebellion against the living God" (p. 32, emphasis ours). That is how God sees the destruction of their relationship with Him. When viewed within the context of the entire book of Hebrews, which extolls the greatness of Jesus Christ, our sovereign God, the rebellion that Paul is warning against is the turning away from a living, dynamic Person, not merely from some vague belief in a distant God.

It is very difficult to believe that the Israelites did not believe God exists after all the powerful witnesses they were given at the Red Sea and Mount Sinai. They had the same human nature that we do. Their problem was trusting Him, being faithful to Him in the daily activities of life, as one should be in a marriage. They had this problem because they really did not know Him, and they did not know Him because they did not seek Him.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Fully Accepting God's Sovereignty (Part Two)


 




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