For this is the way God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16 (NET)
Jesus spoke these words to a man named Nicodemus, referring to him as a “teacher of Israel” (3:10). With such words, we are reminded that Israel had a story, and that its teachers communicated a vast, important, and powerful story to the people that thought of themselves as the chosen people of the one true God. That story took root in the tale of the exodus, as evidenced by the fact that, within his communications to Nicodemus, Jesus specifically mentions Moses, saying that “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (3:14).
The lifting up of the serpent took place while Israel made its way to its land of promise, after exodus-ing Egypt. This land had been promised to Israel in the promise that was made to Abraham. “The Lord said to him, ‘I am the Lord Who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess’.” (Genesis 15:7) Therefore, though the story of Israel was rooted in exodus, the exodus story would have no meaning apart from the story of Abraham, and of promises made to him by the covenant, creative, and providential God. Yes, the exodus gains its meaning from the story of Abraham, as Abraham received word from the Lord that the promise being made to him would ultimately be confirmed by another promise. Abraham (then still Abram), had said to the Lord, “O sovereign Lord, by what can I know that I am to possess it?” (15:8) The Lord’s response was the aforementioned promise, as He said, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions” (15:13b-14). This promise is dramatically fulfilled in the events of the exodus, as God’s powerful judgments rained down on those that oppressed His people; and as, following the tenth and final blow to fall upon Egypt (the death of the firstborn), Israel was quickly ushered out of Egypt. Before leaving, however, “they had requested from the Egyptians silver and gold items and clothing” (Exodus 12:35b). In response, “The Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and they gave them whatever they wants, and so they plundered Egypt” (12:36).
However, a “teacher of Israel” would not only teach a story of Israel that had the exodus as its foundation, and which also looked to the story of Abraham as the foundation of the exodus, but he would also look further back, to the story that provided context for God’s choosing of Abraham (and ultimately his descendant(s)) as His personal representative in this world. Yes, Abraham had been called out of Ur and promised a land, and given promises in association with that land, but why had this taken place? The brief answer is found in chapter twelve of Genesis, when God says to Abraham (Abram), “Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you. Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing. I will bless those who bless you, but the one who treats you lightly I must curse, and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name” (12:1-3). So yes, God chose Abraham so that through Abraham, the nations and families and the whole of the earth could be blessed. A teacher of Israel would have been quite familiar with this. This, however, is not a sufficient answer.
God’s words to Abraham merely beg the question as to “why.” Why did God need to choose Abraham? Why did God need to make Abraham into a great nation? Why did God want to bless him? Why make his name great? Why was there a need to exemplify divine blessing through Abraham? Why this talk of blessing and cursing in association with Abraham? Why indeed? The reason for this is to be found in what comes before our introduction to Abraham. What comes before, of course, is the presentation of God’s ordering of the creation, the pronouncement at every stage that this ordering was “very good,” and His placement of man, the divine-image bearer, into that creation so as to steward it, to be a reflection of His glory into it, and to remind the whole of the creation of its Ruler, that being God (Genesis 1 & 2).
The record of these events is quickly followed by the record of man’s first act of idolatry, rebellion, violation of God’s commandment, the exile of man from the role to which he had been assigned by his Creator, and the exile of the creation from the condition and state in which it had been created, as it shared in the cursing brought about by the one appointed to its rule (Genesis 3). Subsequently, we find the first murders (Genesis 4), the fathering of a son in man’s likeness rather than in the image of God (Genesis 5), the growing wickedness of mankind (Genesis 6), a worldwide flood of judgment (Genesis 7), the curse of Canaan (Genesis 9), and the culmination of man’s self-idolatry, rebellion, and defiance of God, which was the construction of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). It is at this point that God reaches down into history to choose Abraham, and to begin His project of the restoration of His fallen creation. Communicating this story would be part and parcel of being a “teacher of Israel,” and it is in such a context that Jesus delivers the words of what has come to be the most famous words in the whole of Scripture.
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