Timothy Stewart

BHT 521/Being in the Story, Reflection #2, Week 4

6/18/21
Word count: 1264

Salvation: A Biblical Paradigm

Having proclaimed Jesus to the Jews and having seen five thousand of them become

believers, Peter and John faced the Sanhedrin in Acts 4. The council asked the men, “By what

power or by what name did you do this?” (Acts 4:7b NRSV). Peter responded, “. . . This Jesus is

‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is

salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which

we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12 NRSV). Acts 4 makes it clear that God intends for humans to

experience salvation and that Jesus Christ himself is the means of that salvation. And while Jesus

is certainly the focal point of Biblical soteriology, it does not begin with him. For that, we must

go back to the beginning of the Bible.

In the Genesis creation account, God created a wonderful world and created humanity to

be caretakers of his good creation. But then, the humans were deceived by the serpent and chose

to violate the one rule God had given them. In doing so, they sinned and were cast out of the

environment they were created to manage (Gen. 1-3). This sin put them at odds relationally with

the author of life and death was the inevitable result of their rejection of God’s mandate.

Humanity needed salvation.

After many generations, we pick the story up again with Abram (later Abraham), in

Genesis 12. Abraham is commanded to do two things: go and be. “Go from your country and

your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1b NRSV). The

second command is more subtle. Verse 2 says, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless

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you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2 NRSV). According to

Dr. Middleton, that last part, “so that you will be a blessing” is better translated “be blessed”, the

idea being that the world would look at Abraham, see the blessing in his life, and desire to be

like him. One of the things I like that comes out of this new translation is the emphasis it puts on

obeying God, following his lead, and allowing him to bless you. As God blesses you, the world

will take notice and out of their own desire to live a blessed life, will approach you to learn how

they can live a blessed life like you. Pursue God and allow his blessing to speak for itself. That is

a powerful message and I believe it needs to become an important part of the evangelistic

conversation within the evangelical circles I work. I sometimes feel like a lot of evangelism

comes across as answering questions that the unevangelized are not asking. But if we press into

God, follow his lead, and allow him to bless us to the point that people begin to ask us “what is

so different about you?” I think Christians will begin to see many more people come to Christ.

But like farmers, we need to play the long game and plant the seeds of faith, tend to that field as

appropriate, and allow it to bring a harvest in its time.

The Genesis narrative eventually leads us to the family of Joseph, who ultimately leads

his whole family to Egypt, where he serves Pharaoh as his second in command. After Joseph’s

generation passes away, his family, now called the Israelites, continues to grow and prosper.

Interestingly, in this case, instead of the Egyptians looking at the blessings of Israel and wanting

to learn from them how to have the same experience, they say, “Come, let us deal shrewdly with

them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and

escape from the land” (Exod. 1:10 NRSV). So, the Egyptians put the Israelites into forced labor

slavery, out of a desire to experience the material blessing of Israel, but on their own terms.

Toward the end of God’s blessing of Abram in Genesis 12, God said, “I will bless those who

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bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. . .” (Gen. 12:3a NRSV). Egypt had become a

curse to Israel and God had not forgotten the covenant he made with Abraham.

The descendants of Abraham, the Israelites, at least those who had not given up on God,

knew that some sort of salvation was required if they were to live in the blessing of the covenant

made by God with Abraham. Enter Moses. God called Moses to lead his chosen people out of

bondage in Egypt into, “a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites,

the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites” (Exod. 3:8b NRSV). At

this point, the Israelite people had been in Egypt roughly 400 years (Gen. 15:13). They had

become a great nation. “The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred

thousand men on foot, besides children” (Exod. 12:37 NRSV). Regardless of the actual number

of people that constituted Israel, we know that it was many thousands. If God was going to keep

his covenant with Abraham, he was going to have to work out a plan that would lead to the

salvation of many thousands of people. And that is precisely what he did. God worked out a way

for every single person of this community to walk out of bondage into freedom.

When the people had crossed the Red Sea and were free from their oppressors, they knew

that it was by the power of God that they had been saved, and yet, as sinful human beings, they

found a way to mess up their newfound freedom. Not long after being freed from Egypt, God

brought the Israelites to the border of Canaan and Moses sent spies into the land to survey the

land and its inhabitants (Num. 13:18-25). When the spies returned, they reported that while the

land was good, the inhabitants were huge and well-fortified. The people rebelled and wanted to

return to Egypt. God and Moses spoke, and Moses convinced God not to destroy this people.

God said, “But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall

be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the

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last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness” (Num. 14:32-33 NRSV). The children of those

who rebelled at the border of Canaan became the ones who walked into the promised land, 40

years later than God intended. While God’s plans are ultimately played out in the lives of

individuals, his covenant is with the people of Israel, not specific Israelites.

A lesson I believe I am taking away from this, is that while we cannot ultimately wreck

God’s plans through disobedience, we can wreck God’s plans for us in the here and now. God

desired to lead his people into the promised land with Moses 40 years sooner than he did. But in

the end, God’s people did make it to the promised land and his covenant with Abraham was kept.

This brings us to the topic of kings. When the prophet Samuel was old, the people came

to him and asked him to appoint a king over them. Samuel went to the Lord with their demand

who said, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected

you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from

the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also

they are doing to you” (1 Sam.8:7-8 NRSV).

In asking for a king, Israel was setting up an idol in the person of the king, and in doing

so rejecting God’s kingship over Israel. God created humanity in his image as his representative

to the world. This is why idolatry is evil. We humans are God’s image. Israel’s actions were

similar to valuing a copy of a painting more than the original. The artist pours all their creativity

into the original, whereas the copy is nothing more that a reproduction. Israel chose a king, a

reproduction lacking the power, wisdom, love, and grace of the original, and began a cycle of,

“distrusting God and not living generously toward God or toward others.”1

1
Gary G. Hoag, “What Does a Biblical Giver Look Like?” (lecture, Funding Your Ministry Symposium IV,
Colorado Springs, CO, April 21, 2015).

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 The people of Israel had forgotten their covenant with God, so God sent prophets to call

them back. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your

sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt,

I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this

command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and

walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you’” (Jer. 7:21-23

NRSV). This quote from Jeremiah shows that God wanted things to go well for the Israelites, but

their disobedience could not go unchecked. For this to happen, they needed a vision of what

could be.

Prophets often used imaginative descriptions to communicate God’s messages. “The

prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented,

for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The

imagination must come before the implementation” (Brueggemann, “The Prophetic

Imagination,” 40). An example comes from the prophet Micah, “’Will the Lord be pleased with

thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my

transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is

good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk

humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:7-8 NRSV).

Again and again, God used the imagery of the exodus to help his people see that they

needed to be saved – saved from themselves, and brought back into right relationship with God.

Dr. Middleton defined salvation as deliverance and restoration. That is the story of the Bible, a

story of God delivering people from the consequences of their personal sin as well as the

circumstances generated by corporate sin. In addition, it is the story of the restoration of

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relationship between humanity and God. It is in the Exodus narrative that we first see God’s

heart and his plan for all his people.