What You Need to Know About the Gospel of Luke

Transcript

00:00:00:37 – 00:00:25:25
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us today. Not a real nice day in our neck of the woods, but if you are with us, we are grateful wherever you are. We’re thankful that you would be with us as we kind of move to wrap up Exodus. And today will be kind of a day for some final thoughts, I think maybe some observations about Exodus.

00:00:25:26 – 00:00:58:35
Clint Loveall
And Michael and I both enjoyed this study. I’m going to be honest. We had this conversation. There was more of the vestments and temple and furnishings than I remembered from my last time through Exodus that I, I don’t know that I recalled that that was in there twice. And so there’s there are sex scenes that are slower than I think of the Book of Exodus, because I think when I think of it, I think of that core narrative that really has got a lot to it.

00:00:58:55 – 00:01:27:09
Clint Loveall
And I forget about the I don’t want to say filler the other parts. Having said that, though, this book has been kind of it has been a challenge. It’s been thought provoking. In fact, as we kick off our Lent series of preaching this Sunday, we’re going to be in the book of Exodus for Lent as we re encountered these themes.

00:01:28:01 – 00:01:50:36
Clint Loveall
So many of them just work perfectly for the season. That takes us up to Easter starts today, Ash Wednesday. And so you’ll have to suffer through a little more exodus if you’re local or if you if you catch us on Sundays, because we are going to continue to work through this book. You know, Michael, I don’t know if there’s a right order to go in in this.

00:01:50:36 – 00:02:15:23
Clint Loveall
I think some of the things that have stood out to me in the book, you know, Moses’s role as mediator are I think is really interesting to reflect on. And alongside of that, maybe the concept of holiness, the idea that God is righteous, Moses glowing face, the people having to stay away from the mountain because of their sinfulness.

00:02:15:37 – 00:02:29:56
Clint Loveall
There’s there’s as there are in many parts of the Old Testament, there is that very apparent reverence for what is holy. And I think that that jumps out at me again this time through.

00:02:31:13 – 00:03:02:09
Michael Gewecke
You know, I would add to that a theme that I don’t know that I would have been able to say before this study that ran through the whole of Exodus. But you have God, the righteous holy God set against really all of the different characters at different points in this book. You have God versus Pharaoh, of course, that promised that theme in the beginning, and I would have thought that’s kind of where it ended.

00:03:02:10 – 00:03:29:22
Michael Gewecke
But really, in this reading I’ve seen in the New Way, this theme of God, both for the people and God also against the people of Israel. I mean, you’ve got that very difficult section following the the idol in which God’s holiness and righteousness comes and really is given to the people in judgment. I mean, God’s encounter with the people is an encounter of judgment.

00:03:29:22 – 00:03:54:45
Michael Gewecke
And then you have both at the end of that, this idea once again, the people are making the tabernacle God with the people. And in that sense, as God is with these people, God is therefore against, you know, this idea of preparing to take this land. God is against the other people. There’s there’s very much this with and without type narrative and an exodus that I wouldn’t have really seen before this study.

00:03:54:45 – 00:04:20:00
Michael Gewecke
And maybe the only other thing to add as we continue on here is there’s also this constant theme of who the people of Israel are going to choose to be. And there is amidst all of this talk of God and God’s role in this Scripture is about God, right? And there are different people on the stage, a different time who we see God’s work through their encounters with God.

00:04:20:15 – 00:04:40:08
Michael Gewecke
But what’s striking to me is the people of Israel are rescued, and that doesn’t settle the score. When God brings them across the Red Sea, the question still remains who will they choose to be? Will they be God’s people or will they be other people? And, you know, that’s a beautiful, beautiful question to leave all of us with.

00:04:40:17 – 00:04:46:37
Michael Gewecke
You know, who are we going to be? Who are we going to choose? And that choice has ramifications for everything.

00:04:46:53 – 00:05:13:46
Clint Loveall
But I think in some ways, Michael, for me, that’s always the major takeaway I get from the Book of Exodus. The these people that are offered a new future, they’re rescued with really not any contribution on their part. And and yet they struggle. They they complain they want to go back. They idolize what they think they had and what they think they lost.

00:05:13:46 – 00:05:45:28
Clint Loveall
They glorify the past because they’re afraid of the future. They are afraid. They build an idol, they worship something else. And, you know, I think one of the major takeaways in the book of Exodus is it’s very easy to read. Those of us who live really through a faith perspective and those of us who struggle in our own life to just to press on.

00:05:45:28 – 00:06:11:09
Clint Loveall
At times when life is difficult, it’s easy to see the benefits given to the people of Israel, see the plagues, see the pillar cloud and fire, drink water from the rock, have your have your people walk through the parted, see and think how do they not get it? How can they possibly not see what God is doing and has done for them?

00:06:12:30 – 00:06:34:46
Clint Loveall
But I think the invitation in that is to be reminded that that’s really all of our story on the journey that we are all on. We’ve all seen miraculous things. We’ve all felt the presence of God, We’ve all seen God involved and invested in the lives of us and our loved ones and our church and our world. And yet it’s hard.

00:06:34:46 – 00:07:04:33
Clint Loveall
There are times we’re afraid. There are times we want to go back, There are times we’re unfaithful. There are times we put the wrong things first. And I just think there is this there is this conviction that comes underneath the Book of Exodus because at some point, if we’re honest, I think we realize Michael is not just telling us their story at some layer, it’s also telling us our own story.

00:07:04:43 – 00:07:26:22
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, And I think Moses is the right figure to return to to look at that frame because Moses stands in between the people and God. And that’s both for good and for ill. And I think that the question that would come to us as readers of this text is who stands in between us and God and the earliest Christians made it very clear that’s Jesus Christ.

00:07:26:22 – 00:07:54:27
Michael Gewecke
He stands in between. He is the parapet. Creation is the fancy theological word that gets used there. He’s the connector, the redeemer. And if we’re honest, you know, this is a hard turn, but we’re coming into the Lent season. Even here today, if we’re honest, we put a lot of things in between us and God. We put our own interests, we put our desires, we put our brokenness, we put our sinfulness.

00:07:54:27 – 00:08:32:02
Michael Gewecke
We we put acquisition of stuff. You know, it’s as unique as it as we are people. But the problem, I think, with our human encounter with God is that there are so many things, there are so many idols that jump out of the fire, and we are often unwilling to our discredit, to confess that we’re often unwilling to name the things that we want to be in between us and God, because it would be easier or would make faith more accessible, or it would make this season seem like it would make more sense.

00:08:32:02 – 00:08:53:56
Michael Gewecke
But I think the real struggle of faith, if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, is it requires us at some moments to simply realize the what is it? The manna is all we have for today. The fire and the pillar hasn’t moved. So here we are today, another day stuck, maybe in circumstances we would prefer not to be in.

00:08:54:23 – 00:09:15:54
Michael Gewecke
And by God’s grace that can be a place where we can, even in that moment, trust that God is at work. And I think the middle thing here does has some real spiritual significance. It has a lot to teach us because there are a lot of good and negative things in our life that we are going to want to put at the middle.

00:09:16:13 – 00:09:21:10
Michael Gewecke
And the Christian witness is going to be that there’s really only one person who deserves to be at the middle.

00:09:21:34 – 00:09:51:54
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And you know, Michael, that’s a really good insight. And I think that is borne out if you look at the New Testament, you know, we’ve not done a lot of the connection work. Some of it you’ll see if you stick with us through the Gospel of Luke beginning next week. But I think if a person brings a New Testament framework to Exodus, they may be amazed how much this story sets some of the parameters, right?

00:09:51:54 – 00:10:22:33
Clint Loveall
I mean, the idea of slavery, the idea of redemption, the idea of the Passover, which, by the way, is what Jesus is doing at the Last Supper. He’s celebrating the Passover feast. The the idea of law, the idea of grace, the idea of a mediator. I mean, there are there are multitudes of themes woven through the idea of journey.

00:10:22:33 – 00:11:03:59
Clint Loveall
The Golden Calf is mentioned. I mean, this really is in a way that I think you don’t often think about in in everyday life. This book is in many ways foundational to the gospel story. And those early Christians continued to mine this book for imagery and language that that they felt helped them understand the gospel. And I think not every book in the Old Testament, in fact, actually this might do that as much as any book I can think of in the Old Testament.

00:11:04:22 – 00:11:17:24
Clint Loveall
I mean, there are lots of quotations of the prophets, but from a from a story perspective, thematically, I think Exodus may find its way into the gospel as much as any other book.

00:11:18:01 – 00:11:48:05
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I was also thinking prophets, and I agree with you. I think there are a lot of the prophets being read as instruction or as a place of conversation prophecy, but wherever there’s illustration, Exodus is going to be plentiful in the New Testament, and it is important to realize that I think a good part of that relates to this book’s emphasis upon the importance of community.

00:11:48:52 – 00:12:20:29
Michael Gewecke
The earliest Christians were really day by day figuring out what Jesus’s revelation meant to be a Christian. What does it mean to be bound together with these other folks who believe this revelation, who are called out into the world to be witnesses to it? They they didn’t take it for granted, and maybe that’s to our detriment that we do we do take for granted what it means to be a Christian in the church, as if the church means a specific thing.

00:12:20:54 – 00:12:42:23
Michael Gewecke
When the earliest Christians looked to Exodus, they saw the people of God. They saw the choice that the Israelites had been given, and they understood at a fundamental level that they that the Israelites were choosing Will we be God’s people or will we choose our own way on the other side of deliverance? And the earliest Christians stood on the other side of Jesus, the ultimate deliverance.

00:12:42:23 – 00:13:23:18
Michael Gewecke
And they were asking themselves, What will we choose? Will we choose his way or will we choose other ways in the midst of persecution, social trouble, financial difficulty which came from their conversions? I mean, the earliest Christians, I think, could relate to this Exodus text in a way that I think as we study that here together, I hope we’ve seen maybe not directly, as you said, you know, we didn’t take a lot of times and and say this this is quoted here in this book, but maybe in our own time in moment, we might look to a book like Exodus as a source of hope and comfort that as Christians increasingly feel like the minority,

00:13:23:31 – 00:13:45:10
Michael Gewecke
as Christians can increasingly feel like the church means less of one specific thing than it ever has. Maybe we can relate to this journey metaphor. Maybe we can relate to the people of Israel, hoping that today God will once again be there in the Tabernacle and we can trust that that’s enough.

00:13:45:32 – 00:14:10:33
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Bear with me for a minute. But one of the places that is always difficult in my in my own pastoral work is pre-marital counseling. I’ve I’ve struggled for years to come up with a way to communicate something of what it means to be married to people who aren’t yet. And they love each other. They’re connected. They’re committed.

00:14:10:53 – 00:14:50:11
Clint Loveall
But how do you explain to a young couple what it will be like five years ago from now, the ebb and flow, the challenges that some of what you think matters most isn’t going to matter at all. And some of what you don’t even know you’re going to be dealing with is going to surface. And just that whole dynamic of people trying to be related to one another and connected to one another in a relationship every day and I think if we if we can jump from there to the Book of Exodus, what does it look like?

00:14:50:11 – 00:15:20:36
Clint Loveall
That God said, you’re going to be my people and and that they work out their relationship. Sometimes the people go away. Sometimes God is so angry, He wants to start over. Sometimes they do well together. There is this ebb and flow. And I think one of the things we maybe overemphasize in church sometimes, Michael, is that we spend a lot of time calling ourselves to faithfulness, you know, be faithful, be faithful.

00:15:20:49 – 00:15:45:59
Clint Loveall
That’s a group that’s a lot of emphasis in the church. I think sometimes maybe we underestimate this idea that God is also a part of that, that God is God is affected by the relationship as well. God is frustrated with us, but God is not letting go of us. God is hoping better for us. God is giving us daily bread.

00:15:45:59 – 00:16:05:15
Clint Loveall
You know, another kind of image. And I just I think it’s when you sort of step back and look at the dynamics between God and people and their struggle to just make it work. It’s really fascinating.

00:16:05:42 – 00:16:36:21
Michael Gewecke
You know, this was said during the Genesis study, so I’m not going to belabor this point, but when we look to that point that you’re making about God’s relationship with us, I think that we need to be careful and remind ourselves that it’s not just God’s relationship with Moses, the special person, and that does sometimes happen where we get into the mindset of like spiritual celebrities.

00:16:36:21 – 00:17:15:50
Michael Gewecke
And in Genesis you have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and this whole cohort of other characters. Here you have Moses, you do have Aaron. But but Moses is chiefly the the leadership voice here in this book. And what is striking is Moses, his connection to some of these other forefathers is very deeply rooted in his humanity. Once again, in Exodus, just like in Genesis, the authors have gone to great length to make it clear Moses is a person with doubts, with fears, with moments where he fights back, moments where he stands up to God in great courage.

00:17:16:04 – 00:17:37:17
Michael Gewecke
That’s the thing about these Old Testament narratives that I respect so deeply is that they are not vested in a one dimensional image of these characters. And so much of ancient literature, if you’ve read it, is exactly that. It’s, you know, just trying to gloss over a person and tell you how great they are and strong they are, and these are their mighty works.

00:17:37:30 – 00:18:18:55
Michael Gewecke
Now, when it comes to Moses, he’s a human who is affected by the complaining of the people. He’s affected by his doubt, by his lack of faith. He’s affected by God who’s angry. And at the same time, Moses has a real relationship with God and he is able to, as we’ve seen, affects God. And there’s a working back and forth between these two in whatever way we’re to understand that it’s mysterious, but it’s striking to me that as the biblical text goes out of its way to make sure that we know these people are fully human, it’s inviting us to realize we are also candidates to be in God’s story.

00:18:18:55 – 00:18:48:19
Michael Gewecke
Because if they are fully human with all of those downsides, then we who know that is true for ourselves can also be part of that relational story with God. It may not get recorded in the Book of Exodus, but that story that we live matters, and that story that we live does have its own relational effect with God, and it does require the same kind of struggling and yearning in and dealing with the darkness of past and all of that stuff.

00:18:48:19 – 00:19:14:43
Michael Gewecke
We’ve seen an exodus. All of that is able to be accessed in our own lives. And if we’re able to hear that this book is a it’s not a map, but it is a form of tapestry that shows us the kind of movement that happens in a life with God, the kind of journey to use that language that happens with God, and that is itself a call and an inspiration to start the journey to get on the road.

00:19:14:45 – 00:19:44:43
Clint Loveall
Yeah, that’s exactly the the language I was going to use. Michael We touched on it yesterday, but that is the takeaway metaphor of the book of Exodus. God is taking the people somewhere. And I think sometimes in the midst of us living one day at a time, we forget that narrative. We forget that big picture that God is taking us somewhere, God is taking you and me, and God is taking First Presbyterian Church somewhere.

00:19:44:43 – 00:20:24:10
Clint Loveall
And that journey is not promised to be easy. There are challenges, there are struggles. There are failures along the way. And yet God continues to call us, lead us, guide us, and correct us along the way. And that that phrase that we ran into a couple of times, that the people journeyed by stages, you know, that’s a that is a deep way to think about our own life and our own life of faith that that we move through cycles and we move through move movement and moments and through it all, God is leading that.

00:20:24:10 – 00:20:48:03
Clint Loveall
That’s not just happening to see where we end up. God has a point and a purpose in that journey for us. If we can if we can navigate by the right coordinates and the right instruction, I think, you know, it’s just a it’s a powerful message that I think maybe the Book of Exodus delivers as well as any other book.

00:20:48:19 – 00:21:28:19
Michael Gewecke
Which is one other thought here by way of my own conclusion. You know, one thing that I do walk away from this book seeing is the picture of the Israelites is not consistently flattering. There are some great moments, but there’s a constant sort of under swell of of the folks complaining and their lack of faith. And it is a very helpful reminder for people who call ourselves Christian, who try to live our lives faithfully, who most of us find some connection to or engagement with the church.

00:21:28:31 – 00:21:56:27
Michael Gewecke
It’s good to be reminded that the literal book that shows the claiming of God’s people, the naming of the nation, the taking out of Egypt and the leading into this new realm, It’s worth noting how filled with complaint and lack of faith and even in some cases just outright right rank sinfulness. This book really is it should move us to humility, I think is the point.

00:21:56:27 – 00:22:21:57
Michael Gewecke
I just think we as a people should at some point recognize that we we should walk into our Christian churches with the awareness that there are hospitals for sinners. And whenever we find ourselves on our high horses and we’re looking down smugly on the world or on other Christians, or we find ourselves with all of the answers and we like to think that our lives are neat and prim and proper and put together.

00:22:22:10 – 00:22:44:07
Michael Gewecke
If that’s our image of faith. I think Exodus works very effectively to disarm that, because there’s no sense here in which the people who receive the law and commandment of God we’re somehow a city on a hill, a shining light with zero doubt and zero broken. I mean, that is nonexistent in this book.

00:22:44:07 – 00:23:12:09
Clint Loveall
Yeah. You you can’t read the Book of Exodus and think that the people did that or deserved that, that it is a wonderful example that what we receive from God has far more to do with God’s faithfulness than our faithfulness. And our task is to then, out of gratitude, live into what God has done and is doing for us.

00:23:12:09 – 00:23:32:15
Clint Loveall
So yeah, 100%. Michael That’s a that’s a good place, I think, for us to kind of wrap up. If there are unanswered questions about the book shoot, shoot us an email, send us a message, we’ll do our best to circle back around. Otherwise, remember off tomorrow and hope you can join us Monday as we start the Gospel of Luke.

00:23:32:15 – 00:23:38:56
Clint Loveall
I think if you’ve been through Exodus with us, there will be some things that ring familiar as we move through the gospel story.

00:23:38:57 – 00:23:48:45
Michael Gewecke
Thanks so much for being with us, friends. Look forward to seeing you next week.