INTRODUCTION

AN INVITATION

In the opening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis crafts an arresting scene: Edmund and Lucy Pevensie are upstairs in their cousin Eustace’s home, lamenting that they are stuck with him for their summer holidays rather than somewhere far more interesting, such as Narnia. Their grief is sharpened by a painting on the wall—a ship at sea that seems remarkably like a Narnian vessel. Eustace overhears the siblings talking and begins to mock them for their childish imagination. He thinks the painting is downright rotten.

As they stare at it, the children fall silent. Something peculiar happens. They can almost see the undulating waves, almost feel the wind blowing, almost hear the sound of the ship slicing through the waters, and almost smell the air of the sea. Suddenly, they are splashed with sea spray and water pours through the frame into the bedroom. In a matter of moments, there is no bedroom at all, and the children are gasping for air in a tumultuous Narnian sea.

Perhaps without meaning to, Lewis demonstrates the nature of Scripture. At first glance, the Bible is only a book, telling us of lands and peoples long ago and far away. But like the Narnian painting, as we look more closely, it comes to life and sweeps us into its story.

You’re holding in your hands a book about Sinai, the mountain where the ancient Israelites met their God, Yahweh. It revisits their story as they trudge through the wilderness from a grueling past to a promising future. Chances are slim that you’ve ever been to Sinai in person, and slimmer that you are there as you read this. The people in this story lived over 3,000 years ago, spoke a different language, and lived by a radically different rhythm, with different values, customs, and concerns. However, these differences cannot erase the fundamental connection between their ancient story and your own. My prayer is that as you read you will experience what the Pevensie children experienced on that hot summer day in England—that you’ll be drawn into the biblical story and find that it is very much alive and that you’re a part of it—that it’s your story.

A WORD TO THE SKEPTIC

You may already be skeptical about the value of time travel to Sinai. You may be reading this book only because someone shoved it in your hand and said, “You need to read this.” If so, I understand your hesitation.

The Old Testament has been given a bad rap for lots of reasons. Too violent. Too confusing. Too remote. Too legalistic. Too outdated. Oh, there are a few inspiring stories tucked in between the head-scratchers. These we like to pull out and hold up to the light briefly before high-tailing it back to the New Testament. But the rest? We might not be willing to say it out loud, but large portions of the Old Testament are not just boring, they’re downright embarrassing. It would be easier to defend our faith if most of the Old Testament would just disappear.

An example of this ambivalence comes from Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley. He enjoys wide popularity, and for good reason. He has a special gift for communicating spiritual truths in a way that attracts the unchurched. He gets people in the door, and he holds their attention. He recognizes that the Old Testament is a significant barrier for many who might otherwise want to follow Jesus. His solution to this problem is to set it aside. The word he used was “unhitch.” In a sermon on Acts 15, Stanley said, “[Early] church leaders unhitched the church from the worldview, value systems, and regulations of the Jewish Scriptures . . . and my friends, we must as well.” He claimed, “The Old Testament was not the go-to source regarding any behavior for the church.” In the same sermon he went so far as to say, “When you read the Old Testament, when you read the old covenant, when you read the story of Israel . . . you don’t see much [grace].”1

The book of Exodus overflows with grace.

But as I read it, the book of Exodus overflows with grace. It turns out that Stanley realizes this too. In an interview with Dr. Michael Brown a few months after Stanley’s controversial sermon, he explained that what he wants his listeners to “unhitch” from is not the Old Testament properly understood, but the Old Testament as people have come to imagine it.2 In other words, he’d like people to leave aside the Old Testament temporarily, just long enough to be captivated by the resurrected Lord. Once they’ve encountered Jesus, they’ll rediscover the value of the Scriptures Jesus loved.

With this book, I’m taking a different approach. I believe that we need the Old Testament as Christians, not later, but now. Rather than unhitching, I want to make the case that we should re-hitch to Israel’s Scriptures so that we can truly understand who Jesus is and what he came to do. Without some guidance, we might easily conclude that the Old Testament is a terrible burden to pull and wish to walk away from it. We need an experienced guide who can help us see the enduring value of the Old Testament for the life of faith. I’ve had many such guides who have helped bring the Old Testament to life, and this book is my means of passing along to you their most important insights along with my own. I hope it will change your mind about the relevance of the Old Testament for Christians.

We especially need help with Old Testament law. Most of us do not perk up when we hear the word “law.” Boring, irrelevant, primitive, harsh, patriarchal, ethnocentric, cruel—all these charges are leveled against it. Laws are dry and tedious, and they take away freedoms we’d rather have. Laws keep us from parking in the most convenient places and require us to take off our shoes at airport security checkpoints. Laws cramp our style—do not climb this or sit here or talk loud there. Silence your cell phone and no flash photography and don’t chew gum and don’t bring in outside food or drink and keep your hands and arms inside the car.

This is why Moses’ response to the law catches us off guard. Here he is, with tens of thousands of former slaves, exhausted after trekking through the wilderness with everything they own. They’ve been hungry, thirsty, and attacked along the way. They set up camp at the base of Mount Sinai, where the Lord first spoke to Moses in the flaming bush and promised to deliver his people from Egypt. Moses climbs up the mountain to talk with God again, now that he’s carried out God’s instructions to lead the people out of Egypt. The people have arrived. And God gives them rules?

I would expect Moses to push back a bit. Um . . . Lord? Isn’t this the part where you bless us? Or at least give us a break? These folks have had a long journey and, frankly, a hard life. What they need is a rest. Couldn’t you cut them some slack? Do you really think it’s fair to saddle them with a bunch of rules when they’ve only just tasted freedom? Couldn’t this wait until later?

But the way Moses sees it, other nations will actually be jealous of the law Israel gets at Sinai:

See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, emphasis added)

Wisdom? Jealous? If Moses’ words strike us as odd, then we need to take a second look at Sinai because we have failed to catch what’s actually happening there. That’s where we’ll begin in Part One. First, we’ll ask, “What’s the big deal about Sinai? Why should we care what happens there?” These questions are answered by the narrative frame within which the Sinai experience is set: the wilderness stories leading up to it mirror those that follow Sinai. This literary context makes Sinai the high point of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, also called the Pentateuch) and the event that sets the agenda for everything that follows.

Once the frame is in place, in the rest of Part One we’ll study the “painting” itself. The Sinai narratives span fifty-seven chapters from Exodus 19 to Numbers 10. Much happens here, and it’s crucial for the formation of Israel’s identity and vocation. Israel cannot be God’s people without Sinai. (Neither can we, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.) Most people have a general familiarity with the most famous declaration that takes place there: the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, misunderstandings abound about their purpose and meaning. We’ll tackle some of these misunderstandings along the way, zeroing in on a single command that has been largely misinterpreted—the command not to “take the name of the LORD thy God in vain” (Exodus 20:7 KJV). Then we’ll look at the other laws that lay out God’s covenantal expectations, including instructions for building the tent in which he is to dwell.

That brings us to Part Two. We’ll look at the story after Sinai—how Israel largely fails at living as the people of God, how the prophets hold out hope for future covenant renewal, how Jesus adopts the vocation of the people of God as bearers of Yahweh’s name, and how the story opens up to include those of us who are non-Jews, enabling us to become who we were meant to be. Rather than abandoning the Old Testament, the New Testament church turns to it again and again as their primary source for ethical reflection. They see themselves in continuity with the Old Testament people of God, carrying forward their mission to represent God to the nations. Their story becomes ours when we join the family of faith.

WHO IS “THE LORD”?

We’ll want to get one thing straight at the outset so there’s no misunderstanding. “God” (elohim in Hebrew) and “Lord” (adonai in Hebrew) are not names. Elohim is a category of beings who inhabit the spiritual realm; angels are elohim and so are the gods of other nations. Adonai is a title that means “master,” whether human or divine. Both words can describe Israel’s deity. However, the God of Israel also revealed his name, inviting the Israelites to address him personally as “Yahweh.”

Scholars today aren’t precisely sure how to pronounce God’s name because in Hebrew we’re given just four consonants, YHWH. Later in history Jews adopted the practice of replacing the divine name YHWH with other words out of reverence. When reading the biblical text, they might refer to YHWH as “Adonai,” which means “Lord,” or “Ha-Shem,” which means “the Name.” In order to remind people not to say God’s name, Jewish scribes attached the vowels of “Adonai” to the consonants of YHWH, resulting in a nonsense word, YaHoWaH, that was meant to remind people to say Adonai. Later still, Christian scholars trying to read ancient Hebrew sounded out this nonsense word, coming up with “Jehovah.” Our English Bible translations follow Jewish tradition of avoiding pronunciation of the name by representing the Hebrew YHWH with LORD in all capital letters.

Whenever you see LORD throughout this book (or in your Bibles!), remember that you’re looking at God’s personal name, Yahweh.

DIGGING DEEPER

If you’re relatively new to the Bible or if you’re rusty on the overall storyline, it would be a good idea to pause your reading and check out the appendix. There I’ve provided links for videos from The Bible Project that will help orient you to the message of Scripture. The first two video links will be especially helpful before you dive into the next chapter. If you already quite familiar with the Bible, then I’d recommend the third video for you. All three will help you get the big picture in mind before we dive into the particulars. If you can read QR codes with your smartphone or tablet, these will take you straight to the videos. Alternatively, you can type in the url or google the title of the video, joining the hundreds of thousands of people who have seen the Bible come to life with the help of The Bible Project. You’ll find other codes that correlate with each chapter in the book in the appendix. The videos nicely complement each chapter of the book, but should not be considered an endorsement from The Bible Project.