This study then
returns to what Jesus said in the thirteenth chapter of Mark (and elsewhere):
“You will be hated by everyone because of My name. But the one who endures
to the end will be saved” (13:13). It is appropriate to key in on the
second part of that statement, in which Jesus speaks of enduring to the end and
being saved. This use of “saved” links Jesus’ words to Israel’s Egyptian
exodus, as again, “salvation” expressions, for Israel, speak of their God’s
rescue from enemies or their deliverance from oppressors.
Though it can be
easily missed by the modern reader, such language would be easily picked up on
by His hearers. It would have been
readily discerned by the majority of first century readers of the Gospels, as
they would also have been steeped in Israel’s history. When that is
understood, and once one picks up on the exodus context for the hatred of which
Jesus speaks, while at the same time discarding the idea that Jesus is talking
about some ethereal, other-worldly notion of a paradise somewhere off in the
sky to be enjoyed after death (a thoroughly un-Jewish notion) when He speaks of
being saved, readers will find themselves better positioned to identify the
reason for the hate.
So why in the world
is this connected to Israel’s exodus? What is the reason that the Creator
God gives for rescuing Israel (His covenant people through Abraham) from their
Egyptian bondage? Essentially, it is the same reason He gives for
rescuing the church (His covenant people through Jesus) from their
bondage? The answer is to be found in Deuteronomy, where one finds Moses’
report that “It is not because you were more numerous than all the other
peoples that the Lord favored and chose you---for in fact you were the least
numerous of all peoples. Rather it is because of His love for you and His
faithfulness to the promises He solemnly vowed to your ancestors that the Lord
brought you out with great power, redeeming you from the place of slavery”
(7:7-8) Just before this, Moses reminds Israel that they “are a people
holy to the Lord” (7:6a), and says that “He has chosen you to be His people,
prized above all others on the face of the earth” (7:6b).
One of the Psalmists
picks up on this, making it possible to catch yet another glimpse of that
historical self-understanding out of and into which Jesus spoke, when the Psalmist
writes (in reference to Israel in Egypt): “The Lord made His people very
fruitful, and made them more numerous than their enemies. He caused them
to hate His people, and to mistreat His servants” (105:24-25). This should
provide pause to consider a question that is never asked, which is “what was
Israel doing for Egypt when their God made them fruitful in that land?”
Were they being a blessing as Abraham had understood to have been? What was
it that caused Egypt to turn against Israel and to hate the covenant people of
the Creator God? Were they serving those people well by sharing their God’s
blessings and revealing their God to them, or were they hoarding the
blessing?
That goes to the
question of why the Abrahamic covenant existed. Presumably, it existed so
that Abraham could exemplify divine blessing (as indicated in Genesis), so that
his God could be recognized and glorified as the Creator God of the cosmos.
This is the covenant under which Israel went into Egypt, and it is also the
covenant that comes to be fulfilled by Jesus through His church, with the
message of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) as the mark of that covenant.
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