Week Three

And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:29)

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In the stories of the Old Testament, men were never meant to satisfy the wrath of God. And if they were never intended to satisfy, the only probable explanation is that they are pictures of the satisfaction to come. In the unfolding plan of God to satisfy His wrath and redeem humanity, the promises of God are shown by people of His choosing. Throughout the stories, we have seen up to this point, and through the ones we will see in the weeks ahead, it becomes clear that apart from faith, man is unable to do anything in and of themselves to please God. So, when it comes to men like Abraham and Moses, apart from faith, they did not please God, but by faith they provide glimmers of the satisfaction God has prepared for those who put their faith and trust in Him.

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God initiated the plan of salvation in Abraham, but He never relied on Abraham to satisfy His plan, but to walk by faith according to His word. We see this clearly in Genesis 22 when God called Abraham to sacrifice his long-awaited son, Isaac, and how God provided a substitute for the sacrifice of Isaac in the form of a lamb. This displayed a beautiful picture of how God would provide a substitute for sinful humanity in the form of His long-awaited son, Jesus Christ. This substitution in Genesis is a picture of the mercy and grace of God through Jesus. Jesus Himself announced that He is "the God of Abraham" in Matthew 22:32. What God had begun in Abram, He fulfilled in Jesus. Abraham was a picture, of a promise to come, and a call to obedience and faith in the Word of God.

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Fast forward a few generations from Abraham, and you find the nation of Israel living as slaves in Egypt. While God's people found themselves hopeless, God was not hopeless toward them.

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Egypt was a means for God to reveal His glory to the world. God initiated a rescue plan for His enslaved people in the most unlikely of ways. Moses was the man of God's choosing, but He never relied on Moses to satisfy His plan, but to walk by faith according to His word. See a pattern here? When we find Moses at the burning bush, he is an eighty-year-old shepherd living in a faraway country who had been on the run for murdering an Egyptian years ago. Not exactly the choice any of us would have picked, but this story isn't about Moses. It is about God.

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Through Moses, God accomplished His purposes and rescued His people from slavery. Moses did not satisfy our need for salvation but was a picture of God's sovereignty over salvation. In Moses, we see clearly that the purposes of God will not be thwarted. God would redeem a hopeless people from the bonds of slavery in the most unlikely of ways. If we believe the Word of God we, too, are a people rescued from our slavery to sin, in the most unlikely of ways.

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Abraham and Moses were never meant to satisfy us, but they point the way to our ultimate satisfaction in Jesus Christ.

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John Oliver

Student Pastor