Free Daily Bible Study Podcast

Exodus 25 | John 4 | Proverbs 1 | 2 Corinthians 13

For modern readers, the detailed instructions that Yahweh gives for the construction of the tabernacle can become a bit tedious—something like reading a complex instruction manual without any pictures. This is our problem, though, and not the text’s. If we pay careful attention to what is written here, there is a huge theological payoff.1

To understand the theology of the tabernacle, we must recognize that Yahweh is explicitly rebuilding the Garden of Eden here. Consider each element of the tabernacle that we read in Exodus 25:

Yahweh’s stated intention for building the tabernacle is “that I may dwell in their midst” (Ex. 25:8), just as he had dwelt in the midst of Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Just as the Garden contained a source of wisdom (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), now Yahweh instructs Israel to place a better source of wisdom (his law) within the ark of the covenant (Ex. 25:16).

Protecting the ark are two cherubim (Ex. 25:17–22), just like the cherubim that were placed as guards at the entrance of the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were expelled because of their sin (Gen. 3:24).

The table for the bread of the Presence is to be adorned with pure gold, just as there was gold in the land of Havilah, which was watered by the rivers that came out of Eden (Gen. 2:11–12).

The golden lampstand is described with tree language, such as “stem,” “calyx” (a part of the flower), “flower,” “branches,” and “almond blossoms” (Ex. 25:31–40). Therefore, in the golden lampstand we are clearly meant to see a new Tree of Life.

The tabernacle would be the place where God’s presence could dwell in his full holiness, a place untouched by sin and death. Where Yahweh had enjoyed perfect fellowship and communion with Adam and Eve in the Garden, so now he is commanding the construction of a place where he can enjoy partial fellowship and communion with his people.

The tabernacle is the entire reason that Yahweh had redeemed his people, bringing them up out of the land of Egypt. He promised to take his people to himself as a husband takes a bride, and now he is doing exactly that. He will dwell in the midst of his people, physically taking up residence in the very center of their camp. In this way, he would be their God and they would be his people.

All of this, of course, paved the way toward the ultimate Tabernacle, when the Word would become flesh, tabernacling among us (John 1:14). In Jesus, God dwelt physically among his people, and when Jesus returns, he will again dwell with his people for all eternity as their God (Rev. 21:3).

We will continue to consider the theology of the tabernacle in tomorrow’s meditation.

1 For this meditation, I am heavily indebted to the work of G. K. Beale in his masterpiece book The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), 66–80.

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 24 | John 3 | Job 42 | 2 Corinthians 12

Exodus 24 is a covenant renewal worship ceremony. Because we also meet weekly on the Lord’s Day to renew the one new covenant that Jesus himself inaugurated through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension—and not to inaugurate new covenants each week—Exodus 24 is uniquely valuable to serve as a pattern for us. Here, we see three principles that ought to shape our own weekly worship.

First, the word of Yahweh must be at the center of our corporate worship. Notice how Moses read and proclaimed all the words and rules of Yahweh from the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 24:3, 7). In response, the people vow to obey: “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (Ex. 24:3, 7). In the same way, we ought to hear God’s word read, read his word out loud, sing his words in our songs, and listen to his word preached. Christian worship is word-based.

Second, corporate worship requires sacrificial blood. After Moses reads all the words of Yahweh and after the people vow their obedience, Moses throws half of the sacrificial blood on the altar (Ex. 24:6) and half of it on the people (Ex. 24:8). Importantly, Moses offers two kinds of sacrifices: burnt offerings and peace offerings. Burnt offerings made atonement for the sins of the people (Lev. 1:4), and so this blood ritually cleanses them from sin.

Christian worship also requires sacrificial blood—not the blood of bulls, lambs, and goats, but the better sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ, shed once for all. Christian worship must exalt Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2) as we gather together.

Third, the goal of corporate worship is to enjoy communion with God by eating and drinking with him. Peace offerings, the other sacrifice that Moses makes, celebrated communion with Yahweh. The whole congregation would eat the peace offering as a great communal feast (Lev. 7:11–18). It is the peace offering that the elders of Israel eat with God without fear in Exodus 24:9–11.1

What a privilege for them to eat in the presence of God—and astonishingly, this is a privilege we share today. Just like for them, the height of Christian worship is to eat and drink with Jesus Christ at the Lord’s Table.

At the beginning of creation, God’s people ate and drank with him freely in the Garden of Eden, and our eternal rest in glory will be marked by a feast at the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6–9). Until then, we gather weekly to listen to the word of the Lord, to proclaim salvation through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and to eat and drink with Jesus at his table, just like we see in the pattern laid out for us in Exodus 24.

1 Allen P. Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2006), 180.

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 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.