Free Daily Bible Study Podcast

Exodus 23 | John 2 | Job 41 | 2 Corinthians 11

At its core, the law functions on the principle “Do this and live.” So when God gives the law to Israel, he promises them that they will receive either blessings or curses—blessings if they obey all that God instructs them to do in his law and curses if they fail to obey what God has instructed them to do.

Along those lines, God promises that he will send to Israel an angel to go with them on their way and into the Promised Land. Then, he solemnly warns them to do all that the angel commands them to do: “Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him” (Ex. 23:21). And in Exodus 23:23–33, God promises Israel that if they obey, he will bless them by blotting out the wicked people groups who were living in the land.

An important question remains, however: How does the principle of “Do this and live” fit with God’s promise to Abraham of unconditional grace? To Abraham, God had sworn a covenant, promising that he would bless Abraham and make Abraham’s name great and that through Abraham God would bless all the families of the earth. God had even passed through the torn animal pieces twice in Genesis 15, swearing to take all the curses for Israel’s covenant-breaking—that is, for their disobedience against God’s law—upon himself.

The best answer is that God’s covenant with Abraham is unbreakable. This covenant of law that God is establishing with Israel at Mount Sinai doesn’t replace the covenant with Abraham, but it is rather built on top of the foundation of the Abrahamic covenant. In other words, it is the first step of working out what God promised to Abraham.

As we will discover as we keep reading, the offspring of Abraham will not be able to keep the terms of God’s law in the covenant that God is establishing with Israel at Mount Sinai through Moses. But when Israel proves that they are unable to keep the terms of the law, God doesn’t pour out the full fury of his curses and wrath on Israel directly. Rather, he sends his own Son to stand for all Israel, taking upon himself the full force of the curse for Israel’s sin and covenant-breaking.

Why? To keep his covenantal promises that he made through Abraham, both by taking upon himself the curse for Israel’s disobedience and by blessing all the families of the earth (not just Israel) through the redeeming work of the ultimate, promised offspring of Abraham.

The law, then, ultimately illustrates both the greatness of the need of God’s people as well as the greatness of the provision that God has made for his people through a Savior, his Son Jesus Christ.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 22 | John 1 | Job 40 | 2 Corinthians 10

Exodus 22:31 might be the most interesting verse in the whole chapter: “You shall be consecrated to me. Therefore you shall not eat any flesh that is torn by beasts in the field; you shall throw it to the dogs.” It is sometimes difficult to imagine why Yahweh places such an emphasis on the food that Israel ate—not to mention several other eyebrow-raising emphases in the law—but here we get an explanation: eating defiled food defiles the one eating it. And since Israel is consecrated (holy) to Yahweh, it is unacceptable for them to be defiled in this way.

The law was never intended to be about technicalities, trivialities, or micromanagement. Rather, the law reflects the weighty holiness of Yahweh himself, and it is given so that Israel can live out their status as the consecrated people of God.

Here in Exodus 22, then, God is seeking to dwell again with his people—the same mission he has pursued since expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden when they sinned. Yahweh has already visited them, leading them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and he is now coming nearer to his people on Mount Sinai in the full splendor of his holiness, with thunder cracking and lightning flashing and in a thick cloud of smoke resting on top of the mountain.

Even here, however, Yahweh is too holy for the people to approach him, and so Yahweh commands that Israel consecrate themselves, and he forbids the people from touching the mountain (Ex. 19:9–25). On one hand, Yahweh desperately wants to be with his people, but on the other hand, Yahweh’s holiness would consume sinful Israel in a moment if they came near to his presence.

So how will this possibly work? How will Israel survive if Yahweh comes nearer to dwell with them?

Israel will survive through obeying the law in its holiness. This law is given for their protection, to outline the holiness required of them so that God can dwell in their midst.

Of course, as Christians who have already heard the rest of the story, we know that Israel will not be able to keep this whole law, and this system will eventually fall apart completely. Yahweh extends ample grace to make up for Israel’s shortcomings along the way, but he ultimately cannot dwell with his people permanently according to the terms of this particular arrangement.

Instead, for Yahweh to dwell in the midst of his people, he must address their problem of sin through his own holiness, not theirs. Through his own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Yahweh will make his people holy, just as he is holy.

So, while this law is one step toward securing Yahweh’s holy, eternal dwelling place in the midst of his people, the law is not the final word—Jesus is.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 21 | Luke 24 | Job 39 | 2 Corinthians 9

Our society may not have a more intellectually lazy cliché than “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” The phrase itself is clever, vividly portraying one eye put out after another in an unending, bloodthirsty, universal quest. But is unrestrained vengeance really how the law teaches us to love our neighbor as ourself?

Not in the least. In fact, unlimited vengeance is exactly what the “eye for an eye” laws forbid.

Before these laws, people would retaliate for crimes committed against them however they saw fit, which typically caused a back-and-forth escalation as each party tried to do something worse than what was done to him.

Laws like the ones in Exodus 21:23–25 actually placed limitations on the kind of vengeance someone could inflict for a crime committed against him: “But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” The point was that if someone knocked out your tooth, you weren’t allowed to kill him, and if he burnt your hand, you weren’t allowed to cut off his foot. For punishments to be just, they had to be proportionate responses to the crime.

So, this law demands that we avoid plotting revenge against our neighbor who has wronged us in some way. Or, it means we need to think carefully before entering into a lawsuit and asking for a disproportionate amount of compensation for our “damages.” Ultimately, this law should lead us to recognize our own limitations in seeking justice for ourselves.

But didn’t Jesus challenge the “eye for an eye” law in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:38–42? Yes he did, but to understand what Jesus was saying, we need to keep two ideas in mind.

First, Jesus was talking about how we should not retaliate against those who harm us. He was not addressing how governments ought to govern their citizens. Paul clarifies this well, explaining in Romans 13:1–6 that God himself put the sword in the hands of civil governments to protect those who do good and to execute God’s own vengeance against wrongdoers.

Second, Jesus wasn’t abolishing the “eye for an eye” law; in fact, he was intensifying it. All of his “You have heard it said” statements in the Sermon on the Mount were strengthening statements, taking the laws against murder, lust, divorce, false oaths, or loving our neighbors and pushing them to a new degree. With “eye for an eye,” Jesus was acknowledging and increasing the limitation on retaliation by telling us to turn our other cheek rather than seeking vengeance.

Which neighbors do you need to love as yourself by abandoning your desires for taking revenge against them?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 20 | Luke 23 | Job 38 | 2 Corinthians 8

When a lawyer asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment, Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, explaining that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. He then said, “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:40).

What that means is that those two commandments—that we must love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves—summarize the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments teach us how to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, while the last six commandments teach us how to love our neighbor as ourselves. All the rest of the law in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, then, is essentially a commentary not only on the Ten Commandments but also on those two commandments to love God and to love our neighbor.

Now, it is not as though the Old Testament law completely spells out each of our obligations before God. In fact, many of the laws function not as precise, all-encompassing definitions of how we ought to love God and our neighbors but instead as paradigmatic case law, giving us concrete examples so that we can understand the principles behind how God wants us to live.1 While we do not have enough laws to expressly cover every possible situation that might arise in our lives, we can confidently trust that we have received all things necessary for life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3). In the law, God gives us a glimpse of his own holiness, as well as a description of the holiness that he calls us to pursue.

But as we talked about in yesterday’s meditation, it is very important to see that the law is not at the foundation of Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Before he describes a single law—even before he insists that Israel have no other god before him—Yahweh reminds Israel that they are his people: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2).

As Christians, we don’t seek to follow the law to earn God’s grace but rather as a response to God’s grace. For the Christian, the law is not the means by which we earn God’s favor—Christ, through his death and resurrection, is the reason we are acceptable to God. We are saved by grace through faith, not by works (Eph. 2:8).

The law, then, represents what we were saved for—the good works “which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). We were created—and we were saved—to love God and to love our neighbor, just as God has commanded.

1 Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, TNAC, vol. 2 (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), 442–45.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 19 | Luke 22 | Job 37 | 2 Corinthians 7

Exodus 19 is a pivotal chapter in the Bible. At this point, Yahweh tells his people to stop at Mount Sinai, where he will meet with them and take them to himself as his people through covenant and by giving them his law, beginning with the Ten Commandments in the next chapter.

To understand what is happening in this chapter, it’s important to keep in mind that grace came first. Yahweh is about to give his law to Israel, but it isn’t as though the law is the beginning of Yahweh’s relationship to Israel—in fact, Israel has belonged to Yahweh since the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when Yahweh swore his covenantal love to those patriarchs and to their offspring after them.

Then, when Yahweh brought Israel out of Egypt, he redeemed them—that is, he purchased them back to himself. So, the law is in no way the foundation of Yahweh’s relationship with Israel. On the contrary, law comes after grace.

Why the law, then? Yahweh gave the law to Israel to structure his (pre-existing) relationship with them. Through the law, they would understand the heart and the character of Yahweh, learning what he loves and what he hates. If Israel kept the law, Yahweh promised to bless them: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:5–6).

Yahweh set great blessings before Israel if they obeyed—they would be his treasured possession in all the earth, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation among all other nations. There would likewise be great curses for disobedience, but we will read about that later.

To inaugurate this relationship with his people, Yahweh came near to them at Mount Sinai in thunder, lightning, a thick cloud, a very loud trumpet blast, and smoke (Ex. 19:16–20). In the context of what we have read so far in the Bible, this is an incredible movement. Yahweh had become increasingly distant from his people since Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, but here Yahweh comes closer to his people than at any time since the fall.

Still, Yahweh cannot dwell perfectly with his people. Israel must take special care to consecrate themselves before Yahweh comes, and under no circumstances is any Israelite allowed to touch the mountain at all (Ex. 19:9–15). Yahweh’s goal in redemption is to dwell with his people in holiness again, but they are not yet ready for that level of consummation.

But in Exodus 19, Yahweh takes one giant step closer toward that goal. Tomorrow we will see more of what Yahweh desires from his relationship with his people as he begins to unfold his law.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 18 | Luke 21 | Job 36 | 2 Corinthians 6

We know almost nothing of Jethro’s faith until we come to Exodus 18, when Moses tells Jethro all that Yahweh had done to redeem Israel from Egypt (Ex. 18:8). We read that, in response to the news, Jethro rejoiced at what Yahweh had done for Israel (Ex. 18:9–10), and then he said this: “Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people” (Ex. 18:11). From there, Jethro brought sacrifices to God and ate with Moses, Aaron, and the elders of Israel (Ex. 18:12).

It seems that Jethro had been a skeptic up until this point. He must have respected Yahweh to some degree, but he probably imagined that Yahweh was simply one god among many gods. So, while he was willing to let Moses take his daughter to Egypt in obedience to Yahweh, Jethro probably didn’t have high hopes for Yahweh’s power in the face of the mighty Egyptian gods.

But now Jethro knows that Yahweh is greater than all gods. We had read that a “mixed multitude” (Ex. 12:38) went up with Israel out of Egypt, suggesting that several Egyptians had come to faith in the God of Israel, and in Jethro we see another convert who is delighted to learn about the power and strength of Yahweh in the face of all other gods. In response, he worships Yahweh along with Israel (Ex. 18:12).

Jethro also brings Moses an important piece of wisdom. As he sees his son-in-law spending all his time judging disputes between the people of Israel, he says, “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone” (Ex. 18:17–18).

Then, Jethro lays out a plan for organizing Israel’s judicial system. He proposes that Moses find competent, trustworthy, righteous men and place those men as leaders of thousands, over hundreds, over fifties, and over tens. The disputes would come to the chiefs over tens, and if the case was too difficult, to the chiefs over fifties and on up, so that Moses would only hear the most difficult cases. When Moses implements the plan, his workload is substantially reduced.

Just as we saw yesterday, God is beginning to transition the leadership over Israel from resting in the hands of Moses alone to resting in the hands of multiple godly men who can help Moses bear the load of shepherding God’s people. And even Jesus focused his earthly ministry on training and developing a plurality of apostles who would lead the church after his ascension into glory.

Ultimately, the principle of plural leadership teaches us that Jesus has given his church multiple leaders as gifts for building up the body of Christ (Eph. 4:7–16).

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 17 | Luke 20 | Job 35 | 2 Corinthians 5

A terrible pattern is emerging as Israel follows Yahweh through the wilderness toward Mount Sinai. It goes like this: Yahweh accomplishes some great act of redemption for his people, but whenever a crisis emerges, Israel acts as though Yahweh has never done anything other than abandon and neglect them. Rather than meeting every new problem with confidence that Yahweh will continue to act faithfully—just as he has always done—Israel reverts to distrust of Yahweh at every turn.

So, when Israel arrives at a new location after moving by stages through the wilderness (Ex. 17:1), the people again demand water of Moses. Then, when Moses asks them why they would test Yahweh, they respond by asking, “Is the LORD among us or not?” (Ex. 17:7). This is not the response of a people who ask on the basis of their faith, but a people who defy Yahweh time and time again through the wilderness by challenging him to prove his value to them.

Even worse, Israel consistently perverts the value of what Yahweh had done for them by bringing them out of slavery in Egypt. They accuse Moses of wrongdoing, asking, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” (Ex. 17:3). The situation gets so bad that Moses feels his life is in danger, with Israel ready to execute him by stoning him (Ex. 17:4).

So what can be done? Yahweh responds in two ways—in one way to provide for the immediate physical needs of Israel and in another to provide for their long-term spiritual needs.

First, Yahweh gives water to the people. He instructs Moses to take the same staff he had used to strike the water in the Nile to turn it to blood (that is, the staff that brought death to the primary source of Egypt’s life) and to strike the rock at Horeb, which would then flow with water (Ex. 17:5–6). Despite the unbelief of Israel, God never fails to provide them with what they need to survive.

But second, we see in this passage the first hint of an active spiritual leadership role for the elders of Israel. Notice that Moses was instructed to do all this while “taking with you some of the elders of Israel” (Ex. 17:5). Yahweh had instructed Moses to take the elders with him when he went before Pharaoh (Ex. 3:16, 18), and the elders had been the ones to sacrifice the Passover lambs (Ex. 12:21), but the time has come for Moses to have help in shepherding the people of Israel in the face of their repeated rebellion. This story makes it clear that Israel needs more spiritual oversight than Moses can provide for them alone.

We’ll pick up this theme of Israel’s need for plurality in their spiritual leadership tomorrow.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 16 | Luke 19 | Job 34 | 2 Corinthians 4

Obviously, providing for the basic needs of Israel in the wilderness would be no small task, yet the entire Exodus would be for nothing if God’s people did not survive long enough to enter into their inheritance. So, God provided water for his people to drink in Exodus 15, and in Exodus 16, God begins to provide food for his people to eat.

Out of sheer grace toward the Israelites, who had grumbled and complained and wished out loud that they had instead died in Egypt (Ex. 16:3), God generously provides bread and meat for Israel to eat every day, except on the Sabbath.

Nearly fifteen hundred years later during the ministry of Jesus, the Jews pointed back to this story from the Old Testament and demanded that Jesus perform a sign to demonstrate that he himself was on the same level as Moses, who had fed the people of Israel in the wilderness. They asked, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness” (John 6:30–31). Although it is valid to ask a prophet to prove that he is, in reality, sent by God, the demand that the people made of Jesus was wrong in two ways.

First, on the day that the Jews asked Jesus to replicate the miracle of feeding Israel in the wilderness, they ignored the fact that Jesus had literally fed Israelites in the wilderness by multiplying fish and bread to feed five thousand people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (John 6:1–15). Their question is not fueled by a genuine desire to protect the glory of God from false prophets—their question is fueled, rather, by a gluttonous desire for another free lunch.

Second, even though the Israelites did eat manna every day under Moses for forty years (Ex. 16:35), when the Jews ask Jesus to feed them again, they are failing to recognize that the food Moses had fed to Israel never satisfied them (John 6:27). Even more, they don’t think through the implications of the fact that Moses fed Israel bread for forty years and yet those Israelites still died (John 6:49).

Jesus, on the other hand, came to feed his people bread that would satisfy all their hunger and thirst (John 6:35), because Jesus came to give himself to his people. When Moses fed Israel bread in the wilderness, he did so to foreshadow the leader of God’s people who would not merely feed Israel more manna, but who would himself become the bread of life for his people by this promise: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).1

1 I rely heavily for this meditation on the sermons of John Piper from John 6: <http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/by-scripture/john/6>

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 15 | Luke 18 | Job 33 | 2 Corinthians 3

The song of Moses in Exodus 15 provides one of the richest overall descriptions of who Yahweh is for his people that we find in the entire Bible—and as such, Exodus 15 is an instructive chapter on what our own worship should sound like.

To begin, Moses sings that Yahweh is the strength, song, and salvation of his people (Ex. 15:2a)—and in fact, not only is Yahweh the God of his people today but he was also our father’s God (Ex. 15:2b). Therefore, Moses pledges to praise and exalt this covenant-keeping God. Verse 2, however, is the last time that Moses talks about what he will do to praise Yahweh. From verse 3 and on, the focus is entirely on what Yahweh has done.

So, as Moses recounts the works of Yahweh to cast Pharaoh and his chariots into the sea, he celebrates the victory of God over the oppressive kingdoms of this world by singing that Yahweh is a man of war (Ex. 15:3–10). It is not that Yahweh commits senseless violence. Rather, Yahweh has acted because he is the redeemer of his people, leading and guiding them out of his steadfast love and perfect strength (Ex. 15:13). All the nations of the earth have heard of the works of Yahweh, and they tremble with terror and dread (Ex. 15:14–15).

Therefore, Yahweh is a king over the people whom he has purchased (Ex. 15:16), so that “The LORD will reign forever and ever” (Ex. 15:18). As king, Yahweh will establish his people on the mountain of his choosing, where he will place his sanctuary (Ex. 15:17) to dwell in the midst of his people in his “holy abode” (Ex. 15:13).

What would it be like if the songs we sang today reflected this kind of rich, vivid imagery to depict the strength and glory of our mighty God? What might happen if we emphasized less the fact that we were pledging our worship to God and emphasized more the works God has done that are so completely worthy of our worship? There isn’t anything wrong with pledging our praise to God, but in modern evangelicalism, our songs sometimes place a disproportionate amount of emphasis on the worshiper and not on the one being worshiped.

When we gather to praise Yahweh, we gather to praise him in the totality of who he is, what he has done, and how he has redeemed and rescued his people. Our music should teach us and remind us not primarily of what we will do for God but rather of what God has done for us through creating the world and redeeming it back again through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and eventual return of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously!” (Ex. 15:21).

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 14 | Luke 17 | Job 32 | 2 Corinthians 2

Although we might have thought Israel was finished forever with Egypt, neither Yahweh nor the Egyptians are done fighting over the possession of Israel. Yahweh again hardens Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 14:4) so that Pharaoh and his servants wonder how they could have been so foolish as to let the Israelites go (Ex. 14:5). Accordingly, Pharaoh decides to send all his chariots and armies in pursuit of Israel to get their slaves back (Ex. 14:6–9).

Exodus 14 is a magnificent study in the foolishness of humanity. On the one side of the pillar of God’s cloud are the Egyptians, pridefully overconfident in the power of their war machinery to conquer Israel once again, but on the other side of the pillar of cloud are the Israelites, who aren’t much better. The people of Israel, certain they will be killed, are suddenly claiming that what they had really wanted all along was to remain in Egypt as slaves to avoid dying in the wilderness (Ex. 14:11–12).

So, pursued closely by the mightiest army on the planet and in the face of severe criticism from his own people, Moses must encourage the people by pointing them back to Yahweh and his power: “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Ex. 14:13–14). The right response to the situation was to fixate not on the power of Egypt nor on the powerlessness of Israel but on the promise of Yahweh to fight for his people.

Without fail, Yahweh acts mightily to deliver his people by nothing less than parting the Red Sea and allowing Israel to walk across the sea bed on dry land. Then, when Pharaoh’s armies attempt to pursue, Yahweh causes their wheels to stick in the mud, and after Israel has safely crossed through the sea, God brings the sea crashing down upon their heads, killing the entire army in a single blow.

Yahweh fought for his people, and Israel had only to be silent.

Today, the message of salvation remains the same: Yahweh has fought for you in Jesus Christ, and you have only to be silent. Your abilities, your accomplishments, and your resources count for nothing. You have only to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ—the one who battled for you to overcome sin, death, and the devil through his life, death, and resurrection—and you will be saved.

Fear not, stand firm, and look upon the salvation of Yahweh in Jesus Christ. Even when you find yourself pursued by all the powers of hell, remember that Jesus Christ—the Lion of the Tribe of Judah—has conquered. Fear him and believe upon him, and you will be saved.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.