In this section of Exodus, God warns the people of Israel of the consequences of not following His commands and sends an angel to guide them. As part of their covenant with God, the people are warned to not bow down to the gods of the other nations, and this foreshadows the struggle between God and the people that will dominate the rest of the Old Testament.
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Transcript
00:00:00:59 – 00:00:30:09
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Happy Monday. Thanks for joining us. As we continue through Exodus, we’re in the 23rd chapter late, and the 23rd chapter will move toward 24. I’m going to be honest, kind of an interesting section today. Probably won’t read it verse by verse, but we’ll go through it and and pull out some of the themes. You get this in the Old Testament fairly regularly, especially in this the the first five books.
00:00:30:09 – 00:00:54:39
Clint Loveall
You get some of it and Joshua, there’s some of it scattered even through the rest, kind of a warning section, both promise and warning. Interestingly enough, in the Old Testament, those things often go together when God is is promising the people that he will do something. It often contains a warning of what will happen if they don’t hold up their end of the expectation.
00:00:54:57 – 00:01:14:56
Clint Loveall
And that’s true here today will highlight a few things that are interesting about this text as we go through here. We’re start with verse 20, so we’ll just a couple verses here and then that’ll kind of set the tone. I’m going to send an angel in front of you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared.
00:01:15:18 – 00:01:36:24
Clint Loveall
Be attentive to him, listen to his voice. Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if you listen attentively to his voice and do all that, I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foe. So one of kind of work backwards here.
00:01:36:25 – 00:02:03:27
Clint Loveall
One of the characteristics of these kind of passages is an uncomfortable amount of if then language. We tend to think of the promise of God as kind of guaranteed. And and they are, but they always come with expectation. And so there is this throughout the Old Testament, there really is this. If then if you do this, then I will do this.
00:02:03:27 – 00:02:25:55
Clint Loveall
If I do this, then you better do this. And this is no exception. And pain tension to this language here because there’s a lot of sending that is happening today here. In this first instance, an angel in front of you to guard you and to guide you. Be attentive. Listen. So we’re comfortable with the idea of mediators. We’ve seen that in Moses.
00:02:25:55 – 00:02:41:24
Clint Loveall
This happens to be a divine and we’ve seen some of this language before. The Angel of Death in the in the Passover, this language here of sending a spiritual guide and a warning of what happens should the people not listen.
00:02:42:01 – 00:03:04:24
Michael Gewecke
This is interesting section that I think we need to put in context clean. It is in many ways bringing some conclusion to this section that we’ve had of laws and so of covenantal language. And as you’ve learned, as we’ve gone through this process together, that the covenant that God has made with the people has to do with their identity.
00:03:04:48 – 00:03:30:54
Michael Gewecke
And it comes with expectations and it comes with specific details. And yet at the same time, the thing that lives underneath the surface the whole time is that God is faithful and the text knows, and God knows that the people often struggle to be faithful. And here, as we come to this section talking about what it’s going to look like moving forward, they going into the land.
00:03:31:39 – 00:03:56:11
Michael Gewecke
It’s fascinating here that we have the arrival of this spiritual being, this angel like you said, Clint, the angelic force being represented we saw in the Passover in Exodus. It reminds me also of that image that we have from Genesis. Actually, when Adam and Eve are thrown from the garden, Angel is put there to block the way back into paradise.
00:03:56:11 – 00:04:25:15
Michael Gewecke
There’s a this is not Moses, There’s not a human aspect to this mediator. This is a divine force. And this idea here that we have in verse 21 that my name is in him, in the ancient culture, the idea of the God’s name is the idea of power. Remember how substantial it was when we talked about the burning bush and the idea of God giving Moses that name, how transformative that was, not only in Exodus, but for the entire Bible.
00:04:25:30 – 00:04:55:46
Michael Gewecke
So here, the idea that this angel has God’s name, has God’s authority, has God’s strength, this isn’t just some human sort of person that is an intermediary between the two, that this this being has force and the people are told that they are both called to follow and to trust this angel. But they’re also supposed to recognize that if they misstep, if they fail to do as they’ve been commanded, that there’s going to be real consequence.
00:04:56:00 – 00:05:29:54
Michael Gewecke
In some ways, Clint, this begins a transition into the story again, the narrative and also in an interesting way, this actually gives us a little bit of foreshadowing as to some of the trouble that’s going to lie ahead, because as the people are told that they should move forward, that they’re going to conquer these other nations. We’re going to see in just a moment there’s a sense in which we, as the reader, are already being primed to know, as we’ve come to know the people of Israel in Exodus, we already have a little bit of a wandering in the back of my mind.
00:05:30:10 – 00:05:35:38
Michael Gewecke
I wonder what’s being cooked up here. I wonder what’s actually going to come to fruition as the story unfolds.
00:05:36:19 – 00:05:58:04
Clint Loveall
In a lot of the front part of this story. Michael I think the idea was that the people of Israel struggled to be faithful in the face of fear. And now as we approach the kind of mid-part of this book and as we transition with an eye toward the promised land, and really Egypt at this point is pretty far in the background we see now.
00:05:58:04 – 00:06:30:59
Clint Loveall
Instead, the people struggle with not so much fear as with temptation. And that temptation specifically centers on the gods of the people who live in the land and the other religions that they will now be exposed to. So as we move from here, there’s a warning. When you go to the land of the Emirates, the Hittites, the parasites, the Canaanites, the headlights and the jersey sites blot them out, do not bow down to their gods or worship them, follow their practices.
00:06:30:59 – 00:07:06:21
Clint Loveall
You shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in pieces. You shall worship the Lord your God. And so there is here a preview of the struggle and the conflict that is going to dominate the rest of this book and to some extent, the rest of the Old Testament. The peoples struggle, all too to focus on God in the midst of all of these temptations of other faiths, other divine ideas or other gods, so to speak.
00:07:06:45 – 00:07:45:07
Clint Loveall
And I mean, I don’t I don’t want to overdo it, Michael, but this we will see this idea literally hundreds of times in the rest of this story and throughout the rest of the this in some way becomes the dominant conflict between God and the people, is that the people seem to have an inability to remain faithful to God and a deep temptation to chase other gods, to put their faith in other places.
00:07:45:23 – 00:07:48:32
Clint Loveall
And I mean, we’re going to see a ton of this.
00:07:49:22 – 00:08:13:49
Michael Gewecke
Do you think it’s fair to say, Clint, that this text is not unique? And in many ways, the people of Israel are not unique in that they have divisions between themselves and other nations, rivalries? I mean, the reality is we have here in the text the Emirates, Hittites parasites, Canaanites have rights W sites. Each and every one of them has the story of their enemies.
00:08:13:49 – 00:08:43:37
Michael Gewecke
And their story largely goes that when we make our gods happy, they give us success. And when we make our gods angry, then it doesn’t work. In some ways, that is a common mentality in the ancient world. What is unique about the people of Israel is they are instructed over and over again to not allow there to be some kind of false artificial representation of God, to try to create or manipulate that divine being to their own ends.
00:08:43:37 – 00:09:11:38
Michael Gewecke
When God gives orders and says, This is what you’re called to do, God says, then you will be blessed to turn back Clint to that. If then language you led into this conversation with. But then there’s another aspect to this where there’s really this tumultuous relationship where the people are strongly told that they are not to try to manipulate God, that God is not their lackey, they can’t make God do what they want him to do.
00:09:11:52 – 00:09:27:00
Michael Gewecke
They’re called to be faithful. They’re called to keep their end of the covenant. Whereas, you know, some of these other nations, the idea would be, Hey, can we convince the gods to be on our side? Then we can go get success with these people. That’s not how it works for the people of Israel. For them, it’s this is what God has said.
00:09:27:00 – 00:09:49:35
Michael Gewecke
This is the command, this is the promise. This is the covenant. Then the question that remains is will you be faithful to it? And if we, you know, look at this story from that perspective. I mean, here we have verse 24. They’re supposed to break down the pillars. They’re supposed to demolish them. Why? Because that’s the place where those people go to appease those gods.
00:09:49:35 – 00:10:16:51
Michael Gewecke
That’s where they go to worship. A false and artificial being the God of Israel has no time or place for that. It’s just to say either you’ll be faithful, Trust this angel, trust this being trust God’s plan, or you’re going to have a lot of trouble that things are not going to go well for you. And I think that that is in some ways similar, but in other key ways, I think very different than the cultures that surround them.
00:10:16:51 – 00:10:44:56
Clint Loveall
There may also be some discomfort that is introduced here, Michael, because in in the previous case, when we saw God work against Egypt, you kind of had this sense, at least the text clearly has the sense that Egypt deserves it. The pharaoh has oppressed the people there. Children have been killed. That seems punitive. In other words, it seems like punishment as we change.
00:10:44:56 – 00:11:16:03
Clint Loveall
Now, the story, it gets a little trickier. These these sites, all of these various sites, they are the enemies of Israel. But it’s not that they’ve done something yet at this point in the story. It’s that God has chosen sides and God has chosen the Israelites and that means God is for them and against these others. And so God says here things like, I will drive them out, I will blot them out.
00:11:16:03 – 00:11:39:05
Clint Loveall
I, I will get rid of them so that you can possess their land. And again, there’s a warning and not too there’s some stuff in the middle of this passage we need to cover. But this passage ends with They shall not live in your land or they will make you sin against me. For if you worship their gods, it will be a snare to you.
00:11:39:05 – 00:12:25:44
Clint Loveall
So there is a sense in which, through God’s eyes at least, these these foreign people groups, the non Israelites, represent a threat to Israel because God seems to know that if Israel interacts with them, that Israel is going to be led astray, that Israel is going to invite the wrath of God upon themselves. And so because God is Team Israel, God protects them by saying I’m going to move them out of the picture and I’m going to protect you against them, and I’m going to deal with them and deliver you from them so that we can maintain this covenant in the land that I’m going to give you.
00:12:25:44 – 00:12:43:17
Clint Loveall
It’s it’s a difficult theme of the story. It probably comes to a crescendo in a book like Joshua, where we hear God say, go in and conquer the people. But it’s foreshadowed here and it becomes an important theme that we just kind of have to come to terms with.
00:12:43:17 – 00:13:01:06
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, and it’s, by the way, a theme that we shouldn’t, you know, stick our head in the sand. I mean, it’s a theme that lives in the world today. I mean, there are real world implications for the way that this is defined. The people Israel and this idea that this is the land to inhabit, this is the place you’re going to go.
00:13:01:24 – 00:13:21:54
Michael Gewecke
You’re going to remove the people from that place. I mean, clearly this has a way of communicating what God’s plan is moving into the future. And if you are going to leave this kind of text by itself and we’re going to see it repeated themes like this over and over again, especially in the early part of the of what we would call the Old Testament.
00:13:21:54 – 00:13:37:57
Michael Gewecke
Then it would leave you with the impression that that’s sort of the divine right and the divine calling of the people. That’s going to get very, very nuanced as you move into the prophets. And things are not going well for the people and they wrestle with that. I mean, it’s going to be nuanced even further in the New Testament.
00:13:37:57 – 00:13:57:39
Michael Gewecke
As you look at the revelation of Jesus Christ, you see the writing that Paul makes in Romans, talking about both the Jew and the Gentile, God’s plan for salvation. So there’s a lot of things that would nuance this claim, but I think it’s just worth saying, look at this land named here, the borders from the Red Sea to the sea, the Philistines from the wilderness to the Euphrates.
00:13:57:57 – 00:14:18:16
Michael Gewecke
I’ll hand over to you, the inhabitants of the land. You shall drive them out before you. This is God’s commitment. This is pre Joshua, right? Joshua’s been introduced in the story by his pre his leadership pre the conquest that will come. And in many ways it’s already claimed already foreshadowing the kingdoms, the moment in which David and Solomon are going to rule.
00:14:18:27 – 00:14:39:32
Michael Gewecke
So the height of the Empire and the nation of Israel. So this is what’s so amazing I think about Israel. And you have to look here in the book of Exodus to see it is that a text like this is both telling the story of their development and their movement. It’s about telling us how they got to where they went.
00:14:40:28 – 00:15:10:39
Michael Gewecke
But simultaneously, it’s anticipating the kind of work that God is doing to spiritually prepare them for what is in the future. There’s this is not a prophetic text per se in terms of its genre, but it is very clearly looking ahead to things which will be fulfilled. You know, even this language that we have that it’s going to be little by little, right, is ultimately going to be fulfilled in the way that God leads the people forward.
00:15:11:20 – 00:15:38:11
Michael Gewecke
And I think if you come to Old Testament texts like this and you read them carefully, you see that there’s community identifying markers here. There’s covenant stuff here that matters for how the people are to live. But in many ways it is doing that while also telling the story of how the people make it from Egypt to people who will ultimately have their own place and God will have kept these promises.
00:15:38:11 – 00:15:51:09
Michael Gewecke
And many substantial ways and simultaneously not shying away from the fact that the people often fail to trust God and they break the covenant along the way. All of those themes kind of married in this section here.
00:15:51:25 – 00:16:13:42
Clint Loveall
There’s a temptation anytime people make a change of location to think that it’s about the place and so as the people move to this land that God has promised them, I’m sure they hope that it will be good. And you can read some of the wonders here. This is very flowery, poetic language. You shall worship the Lord your God.
00:16:14:04 – 00:16:37:17
Clint Loveall
I will bless your bread and your water. I will take sickness away from among you. No one shall miscarry or be buried in the land. I will fulfill the number of your days so it’s fascinate, you know. And then God says, I send my I. I send my terror and I send pestilence in front of you. I will protect you from your enemies.
00:16:37:48 – 00:17:04:33
Clint Loveall
But none of that has anything to do with the location. The location is good, but it is God that does the work of blessing the people. And that’s going to be a struggle for the people. I think it’s a struggle for all of us because we we’re territorially minded. We think in terms of where we are. So when someone moves into a new house, they hope that somehow life will be better in this house or this town or this job.
00:17:05:18 – 00:17:29:54
Clint Loveall
And and it is easy for us to forget that it is not the place. It is the one who guides us to the place ultimately that is responsible for the blessings. And so this is some of the most outspoken and I think maybe profound language of how God talks about the relationship. You know, no one will miscarry or be barren.
00:17:29:54 – 00:18:02:33
Clint Loveall
We’ve seen that theme throughout Genesis. And and we’ve we’ve seen what it is for people to struggle with that. And God says, Now I want to be in relationship with you in a place that will be so good that the ills and struggles of your life won’t exist because of what I do and the threat to it. The risk to it is unfaithfulness is chasing other gods and not looking to me for your life and your blessing, but trying to chase that in other directions.
00:18:02:33 – 00:18:14:07
Clint Loveall
And and again, we’re foreshadowing. That’s going to be the story. We’ll see a lot of it. But this is a this is an interesting moment. Nobody’s going to read this passage and think it’s great devotion, but there’s a lot here.
00:18:14:31 – 00:18:49:40
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. And I just want to make sure we conclude with that final word that you mentioned here in verse 33. They will make you sin against me for if you worship their gods, if you worship their gods, it will surely be a snare to you. There may be no more concise example of scriptural foreshadowing than that. If you turn to worship, if you are unfaithful to the God who is called you out of Egypt, if you put your trust in any force or being other than the one who has given you the covenant.
00:18:49:40 – 00:19:30:19
Michael Gewecke
And by the way, remember, this is on the tail end of the Ten Commandments giving you the way to live in the world. And you choose to worship their gods. It will surely be a snare to you. And you’re exactly right. This is it’s probably a little strong arming the text a little bit to say. But the truth is, even today, that in the moment when we give in to the artificial things and we give them place in our life as if they are the ultimate and true thing, when we allow those false substitute substitutions which are different for all of us, security, money, name, prestige, you know, whatever that is.
00:19:30:54 – 00:19:45:03
Michael Gewecke
When we give in and we worship the God of the world and not the true God, surely it will be a snare. And that’s a snare that both is foreshadowed but soon to see be seen in pretty clear colors in the story to come.
00:19:45:23 – 00:20:06:39
Clint Loveall
Well, what’s interesting is it’s easy to read that and think that the foreign gods are the danger, which they are, of course, because they’re a temptation. But it’s really the failure of the people. That is, we are the danger in that that we will do it. It’s not the thing itself. It’s our response and our forgetting, our chasing after the wrong the wrong God.
00:20:06:39 – 00:20:20:36
Clint Loveall
So it’s it’s really interesting. If you worship them, it will be a snare to you. They are not the dangerous thing. The dangerous thing is the people of God forgetting that they’re the people of God. So yeah, interesting stuff.
00:20:20:36 – 00:20:42:09
Michael Gewecke
Well, because the Creator, the universe isn’t cowed by false gods, right? This is not a God is not in war with these foreign gods. It is the people’s hearts at play. That’s really well said. Thanks for being with us. We will see you all tomorrow.