God rescued Israel from the Egyptians, but He also made a way to rescue them from their own wickedness and rebellion. He allowed them to make sacrifices and draw near to His temple through ceremonial cleansing. God allowed these things to be mediated through people with a specific role, called priests. However, these priests also had their own sin and faced their own mortality as well. Jesus has now come as our better high priest, making full sacrifice once and for all and mediating eternally on our behalf so we can draw near to God.

When God rescued His people out of slavery to Egypt, He called them to follow Him through the wilderness into a land He promised them — a land of rest. Many did not believe God’s promise and because of that, they failed to enter into His rest. Yet, God is inviting us into a deeper and fuller rest now through His Son, Jesus. May we listen. May we not harden our hearts as the Israelites did in the wilderness, but follow God’s invitation into His good rest.

God was building a nation and a people through Israel, and he used His servant Moses to start the work. But the true Builder was not Moses. Jesus has come to finish the work of building a people and a kingdom. He is the better builder who is the foundation and completion of what God is establishing.

Jesus is not only the better message, but has come in the flesh as the better human. He fully inhabits humanity and lives out what we were meant for and created to be. But he not only shows us how to be human — he also made a way for us to become more fully human through the power of his Spirit.

In the past, God spoke to His creation through various methods and messengers. But now He has spoken fully through His own Son, Jesus. Jesus is not only the better messenger, but the message of God himself, come to us in the flesh fully revealing who God is and what He is up to in His world. Are you listening to His message?

The Lord is good and His faithful love endures forever!

A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath Day.

This is the only psalm of 150 that is directly meant to be sung on the sabbath day. And yet, nowhere in the psalm does it give a command to rest, nor is the word rest even mentioned. What we do see in this psalm is a reminder of the works God has already accomplished. It is out of God’s work that we find rest, not our own. This psalm is an invitation to look to the works of God and rest in Him.

God gives a promise through Haggai to Zerubbabel: the other nations’ kingdoms will be destroyed one day and God’s kingdom will reign, and Zerubbabel will be the sign of this coming kingdom shaking the heavens and earth.

But we know historically that Zerubbabel never sat on the throne crowned as king. He died. And Israel remained under the power of other nations long after he passed. What message was God giving to his people? What could this prophetic word be pointing us to? And what does it look like for us to live in that promised kingdom now?

God is very clear about how unclean hands defile and the Israelites were not consecrated to build the temple. And yet, He promises to bless their work and their land anyway. What must take place in order for them to be made clean and set apart for this work? How can what is defiled be made pure?

God’s people were disheartened by how the new temple was shaping up compared to the splendor of the former temple Solomon had built. God spoke through Haggai to encourage them and remind them that this temple did not require fine silver and gold to be glorious, and if it did, He could surely provide it! But God’s own glory would come and fill that place and His presence would make it more glorious than the first. The second temple would later be visited by Jesus himself. The second temple would also eventually crumble, but the temple of Jesus’ body, where the fullness of God’s glory was present, rose again and remains forever!