So this year, I am trying to read the Bible chronologically. Every day I read 3-5 chapters in the Bible and it is amazing the things it is revealing to me about God’s nature. I have never really committed myself to reading the Bible from front to back, and I hardly knew anything about the Old Testament before making the commitment to come on this trip. Reading the Old Testament is helping me feel more confident in my faith now that I know exactly what the Bible tells us about God and how wonderful of a guide it is for our faith walk.
I started this plan in January, and I am currently reading through Numbers, which is a book that I used to always write off. I thought it was meaningless to read since it talked about so many specifics of the Jewish people that don’t really apply to now, but I am learning just how wrong I was.
The thing that is so beautiful about the Bible is that it tells such a vast narrative of the history of the Jewish people and the world in biblical times. From creation to family lineage to the census of Israelites, it gives such a broad view of what it looked like to be obedient to God throughout the ages.
Another thing I am discovering is back in the days of Moses and Aaron, God was involved in so many aspects of their lives. He gave Moses the 10 commandments, but He also gave the most specific and minute directions to create the tabernacle, down to the exact colors and sizes of the objects. He also laid out how people could become pure in order to live in harmony with God’s incomparable holiness, but He did so in a loving way. He took into consideration that not every Israelite had a calf or a goat to spare as an offering, and gave specific alternatives just to make sure it was possible for people to be able to enter into His holiness.
Now it’s hard to imagine how this can still be perceived as the grace of God when we live in a time where Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilled all of the old Jewish laws, but you have to think in the perspective of these early civilizations.
While in Peru on one of our adventure days, we got to visit the ruins of some ancient pre-Incan societies and learn about their ways of life. The groups we were looking at were more modern than Jewish society, but they still did human sacrifice and had many harsher laws to follow than the laws God put forth for the Jewish people. Also, with these ancient Peruvian civilizations, they turned over quickly. Once a priest was unable to do what he promised, the people would find a new way to appease the gods, and they were constantly shifting in winds of doctrine.
Knowing just this little but about ancient societies makes what God did through the Jewish people so incredible. While cosmetic things may have changed throughout the ages as culture progressed, God’s promises never changed. The laws were always steadfast and God always showed grace to the people when they obeyed His laws, and even when people didn’t obey, when leaders prayed and interceded for the people, God heard their cries. For an all-powerful being with all authority on heaven and earth, isn’t it amazing that He was so gracious and so loving to do this?
For the longest time, there was a huge disconnect for me between the Old Testament and the New Testament. I couldn’t see the love of God in prophecies of entire nations being destroyed or in such strict rules for the Israelites to follow, or how much wrath He had when the Israelites first left Egypt. I didn’t understand how that God was the same God who sent His son to die for us with the message to love everyone. However, now I can see that even though Jesus brought a new covenant, God’s promise never changed. God has always been holy, sovereign, and gracious, and that will never change. God detests evil, but because of His grace, if we cry out to Him when we are trapped in sin, He will listen and pull us out. We may not have to splash the blood of sacrificial animals on the wall anymore, but we still know that God dwells with us and because He created us and because He is the most holy, we desire to give Him our hearts and our lives because of what He has blessed us with.
This year, I have already seen how immensely faithful God is to His children, and I hope that when I return home I don’t forget these promises He has showed me.
