The Foundation of the Nation of Israel.

Notes for Wednesday night Bible Study October 21, 2009

The Torah or Pentateuch as a whole is concerned with the establishment (or the foundation) of the Kingdom of God on earth.  To do this the Book of Genesis details the origin of the people who become the "people of the exodus."  Such people are in a sense the first citizens of the Kingdom of God on earth.  The Book of Exodus picks up where genesis leaves off and moves from "beginnings to foundation" showing the details of the origin of the people of Israel as a nation.

Some of the details in Exodus are:

1. Group consciousness is formed.  The Israelites were related by blood to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; they shared much of the same common historical and religious traditions; and their expereinces as a people progressively moved them to form a unified group.
2. Unifying experiences.  The oppression of forced labor and the execution of male children; the revolt against Pharaoh led by Moses and Aaron; the 10 plagues; the exodus; the miracilous passage through the Red Sea would be used by God (much like He did with Jacob's wrestling with the angel) to be unifying experiences that would stamp an indelible mark upon the Israelite soul.
3. System of Leadership.  Israel was ruled by God through His vicars, who would call His people to obedience and observance of worship and the Law.
4. The Promised Land.  The divinely appointed people would have a divinely appointed homeland that would be unique.

An important point that starts to develop from the Book of Exodus is that God's love for Israel is never a "political love" such has Pharaoh's and Kings would have; rather God's love is free and gracious.

The Structure of the Pentateuch

Notes for Wednesday night Bible Study October 21, 2009

The Book of Exodus and the meeting of God and Israel at Mount Sinai are significant events because they mark the beginning of the history of Israel as a people of faith. Before the call to journey into the wilderness was issued the focus of God’s relationship with persons centered on speaking to individual clans and persons.  At Mount Sinai this all changed. Now the reference is Israel as a nation that finds its unity in faith in Yahweh who forms them by a special call and a special way of life. The foundation is a single God and a single people. This unity made by God is indissoluble and forms the basis for a covenant of love.  This is all laid out by Yahweh to Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3). Yahweh reveals His Name and His plan to save His people. The revelation of the sacred Name was new to Moses. The revelation of the sacred Name displays how God seeks to reach out to people, that is in a personal way. This revelation makes a new moment of grace in time.

Background of the plagues
The narration of the ten plagues developed over a period of some time within the oral tradition of the Hebrews. This time frame can be seen using the source theory of J,E,P,D. The J and E authors are responsible for eight plagues and the P source added two additional one (plagues 3 and 6 which are the gnats and the boils). In the J and E account Moses petitions Pharaoh over and over to let the people go and Pharaoh continues to refuse to listen and instead hardens his heart to God’s request. The plagues are a response to Pharaoh hardening his heart to God's will.

Plagues 3 and 6 are unique and added by the P source (priestly source) to stress the role of Aaron as priest and the nature of each plague as a sign of God's amazing transcending power. The first nine plagues are natural phenomena and can still occur in the area today.

The sign that is discovered is not found in the plagues themselves but in the control that God exercised over the whole series to bring about His plan.  The tenth and final plague stands apart. Here we see how death will be used by God to bring about man’s liberation and a new life. This is a foreshadowing of our Lord's life, death and resurrection.

The first nine plagues are arranged in three cycles.

The First Cycle
1. First Plague: Blood. Ex. 7:14-24. The first two plagues were shrugged off by Pharaoh as nothing more than his own court magicians could do.  The Nile River turned to blood. But it wasn't just the river; it was all the water in Egypt. Egyptians would take a drink from what they thought was clean water, and it would be blood. However, when an Israelite took water from the same source, it would remain water. The plague of blood was particularly distressing to the Egyptians because they worshiped the Nile.
2. Second Plague: Frogs. Ex. 8:1-15. The land of Egypt was overrun by frogs. There were frogs in the beds, frogs in the cupboards, frogs in the pots, even frogs in the oven. And whenever the Egyptians would hit a frog in order to kill it, the Midrash explains that the frog would split into two, producing even more frogs.
3. Third Plague: Gnats or Lice. Ex. 8:16-19. This plague started to get the attention of the court magicians. They said that “this is caused by the finger of God.” To initiate the third plague Yahweh commanded Aaron through Moses to hit the ground with his staff. The dust on the ground turned to lice and spread throughout Egypt.

The Second Cycle
4. Fourth Plague: Flies. Ex. 8:20-32. The flies cover all of Egypt, including the ground, except Goshen, where the Hebrews lived. 
5. Fifth Plague: Cattle. Ex. 9:1-7. This would have been a real desecration in the eyes of the Egyptians because cattle were the very animals Egyptians worshiped as gods. The plague on the cattle also affects the livelihood of the people.

The first five plagues taught the Egyptians that their material wealth and possessions along with their Dynasty is all but lost and subject to Yahweh.

6. Sixth Plague: Boils. Ex. 9:8-12. Things continue to become worse. Both the people and the livestock are affected with painful boils. Even the magicians are affected and cannot get rid of them. The plagues now turn directly to the people and begins to show the foolishness and bitterness and stubbornness of Pharaoh.

The Third Cycle
7. Seventh Plague: Hailstorm. Ex. 9:13-35. This hailstorm knows no limits, but affects the entire land of Egypt: the plants, animals and people.
8. Eighth Plague: Locusts. Ex. 10:1-20. This is a plague of real lasting devastation.  Not much was left of Egypt by the time the plague of locust arrived. The cattle were dead, the buildings destroyed, and then the locusts arrived to complete devastation and destruction and break the morale of the Egyptian people. An enormous swarm darkened the sky and devoured anything that remained.
9. Ninth Plague: Darkness. Ex. 10:21-28. For three days, total darkness descended on Egypt. It was a darknness "to be felt."  This darkness was so intense that the Egyptians were unable to move, they could not "see one another." Jewish mystics sat that not even a fire was possible. The Jews, however, could see where they were going and were unaffected by the darkness.  The Book of Wisdom (11:15,16 and 17:1-18:4) interprets sin and darkness as a terrible abandonment of man by God. Dialogue with Pharaoh is broken down.

The Tenth Plague
10. The Tenth Plague: the death of Pharaoh’s first born son. Ex. 11:1-10. By the time Pharaoh was threatened with the final plague, his people were begging him to release the Israelites. But Pharaoh was obstinate, and would not let them go. The night that the first born Egyptians died is the first night of Passover. This was the only plague for which the Jews needed to prepare themselves so that they would not be harmed. In order to be "passed-over," Moses instructed the Israelites to mark their doorposts with lamb's blood. And in the darkness of the midnight hour all of the first born in the land of Egypt died.

Natural Law.

As Christians we have always insisted that there is a Natural Law.  The best and easiest definition of Natural Law is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It says that,

“present in the heart of each man and established by reason.” This law “is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties.”

Natural Law provides the ground and foundation to build moral truths that will inform our life together if we hope to be a truly just and free society. In Natural Law we find fundamental and foundational human rights which we insist must be recognized by all civil or positive law as rightfully belonging to all men and women.

The Message to Pharaoh: A Study of Exodus Ch. 5 and 6.

Wednesday Night Oct. 14th Bible Study Outline.  Our study covered Exodus Ch 5 & 6.  Two main points were made:

1. Israel is God's first born son, the covenant head of the family of nations.
2. Through the genealogy of Moses and Aaron (Ch. 6:14-27) with its main purpose to establish the link between the Levitical priesthood and Moses and Aaron, the people of God is called to be a "priestly nation" for all the nations of the world.

From these two points the following discussion took place:

God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh with both a message and a demand.  The message was this:  "Israel is My first born son."

• Israel is the "elder brother" of all the nations.
• Israel will be the "covenant head" for all the nations.
• All nations are children of God, so the Egyptians (and Pharaoh) are younger siblings.
• Israel shall be a model of righteousness and wisdom.
• All nations are to look to Israel to learn how to walk in the ways of God.  This modeling is Israel's "priestly role."

The demand from God was simple and reasonable:  Let Israel go on a three day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifice to the Lord God.

• At this point Moses was not demanding the freedom of Israel.  Rather the freedom was to be discovered in the act of worship.
• Moses did not ask Pharaoh to lessen the burdens on Israel.  Israel was to find in the worship of God strength to hold up under the burdens of life.
• The worship of God is to be a religious event.

Of course Pharaoh made Israel's life harder.  The Israelites blamed Moses and Aaron.  A spiritual truth is learned.

• When we seek to separate ourselves from the world and especially "cleanse our soul" from worldly "tug-and-pull" on us the world will confront us with a variety of burdens and difficulties to discourage us so we will give in and pull back from cleansing and worshipping God.
• We often blame the "religious system" for the struggle we have in seeking participation God's life instead of seeing much oif the struggle is in our own reluctance or laziness to bear up under the burden the world (the Devil) puts on us as we try to pursue a life in Christ.

God knew the status of Pharaoh's heart and mind.  Pharaoh represented all the qualities of fallen man who remains stubborn to God's call and plan.  God's judgment on this stubbornness was clear.  Man understands the power and finality of death.  God will use death as the means to liberate.  The first born of Egypt must die so that the first born of God may be led out of slavery toward the Promised Land and live.

Sermon for Oct 11, 2009, Fr. Klein. The Parable of the Rich Man and a stubborn heart.

Have you ever noticed how often Jesus ended His teachings with the somewhat mysterious statement, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Luke 14:35).

We hear something similar this morning in His statement, “Children, how hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God. (Mk 10:24c)… He is speaking to the difficulty we often have in actively listening to one another and to God. To take this a bit further Jesus is saying that the root of this struggle to actively listen lies in fallen man’s most common illness, and that would be a stubborn heart.

In the Gospel reading this morning Jesus encounters the rich man… and in doing so He encounters a stubborn heart.  Jesus saw much potential in this young man. It even says that He looked upon him and “He loved him.” (Can you imagine God doing that towards us? Yet, He does so all the time.)

Yet, this compassionate love of Christ can only teach or show the way. The young man himself, that is his free will must say “yes” to what Jesus was asking. So our Gospel lesson draws us into the question of actively listening to Jesus and exercising our free will properly in response to what we hear. A proper response is tied into the difficulty some will experience in entering the Kingdom of God. “Hearing” means being open to receiving spiritual truth and validating the existence of God verses those whose spiritual ears and heart are closed to God’s will and truth.

Take two different people. We can share some aspect of the faith with each person.

1. One will listen actively asking honest questions, and seeking real answers.
2. The other person simply writes off the conversation, maybe with a smile or the nod of the head, but in some way dismisses the “religious conversation” without any serious effort to learn.

Those who write Christian truth off do so with personal explanations padded with situation upon situation upon situation (situation ethics), and for me, I can always tell when the message of faith simply isn’t getting through.

Now, what prevents a person from hearing God’s call?  What prevents him or her from responding positively to God's call?  I believe the inhibiting factor is stubbornness. A stubborn heart rejects truth regardless of the logic presented. A stubborn heart was the cause of man’s fall from grace (Adam and Eve), this stubborn heart followed man out of Eden and down through the centuries from the journey in the wilderness (the Exodus) up to the present moment we live in.  Stubborness is an aspect of our fallen nature.

We also learn of an important spiritual truth. Our ears are connected to our heart.  Now this is both a blessing and a real challenge.

Holy Scripture helps us here. In Hebrews 3:7 we find, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, when you hear His Voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness,” (Ps 95:7). [Speak about the meaning of “today.”]  Although our intellect is important in the process of making a decision, when the information finally filters down to the level of deciding if something may be true or not the heart often is the final authority in how well we hear the truth and influences the decision we make.

The spiritual truth found here is that spiritually speaking, our ears are connected to our heart. It’s the main way our conscience is brought into play in the decision-making process. [Talk about this a little bit].

• Here’s how this works.

A person wants something very much. But the faith may challenge the person in how to obtain what he wants or it may even inform his conscience that he should back away or even walk away from what he “really wants.”  Following Jesus Christ often means that we find our self “backing away” or “letting go” of the very thing(s) we’ve set our heart on. This reality is hard to deal with at times. So, rather than face the hard learning curve, people will avoid the truth, they will avoid any decision in order to protect themselves and keep their world view and their personal hopes intact.

We see this (compromise) all the time.

In fact, if we work at it long enough we can come up with many “good reasons” why we needn’t or shouldn’t listen to the arguments presented by our faith or theology. And of course we would be very offended if anyone were to tell us that we may be rejecting the truth God has for us to learn in favor of self-will and self-preservation. I believe we can see this in the rich man. If we look hard enough we may be able to see our self here at times too. We all compete against “deafening desires and attachments.” The bottom line: Self-deception and compromise can be defeated only as we come to love truth more than our dreams. But if we stubbornly cling to our desires, self-will will always “tone-down” and even mute the voice of God.

Fallen man has a heart condition.

So, what fallen man has is a heart condition. This condition is caused by our desires being focused somewhere other than upon God’s will and His truth.

Let me offer three factors that cause our spiritual heart condition.

• The imagination of the heart.

If we let the world with all of its promises of capture the imagination of our heart we will gradually be turned away (by the world) from the Word of God. The more we attach our hopes for happiness to the things of this world, and let this world and its commodities “take care of us and heal us” the less we will be sincerely interested in God or His spiritual truth. We can’t love the world and be a child of the world and love God and be a child of God at the same time. [God and mammon]  We can turn to Holy Scripture to receive guidance in this. Saint James explains: "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God?" (Jas. 4:4).

Saint John explains: "Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15).  Saint Paul explains to Timothy: "Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge a person into ruin and destruction." (1 Tim. 6:9–10). Please notice how Saint Paul says that it is the desire to be rich (not wealth itself), [the desire is the human element that forms the attachment of the heart to the things of the world] that causes the real problems.

James, John and Peter each explain that following Jesus Christ means facing (even daily) the ongoing struggle to combat the weeds of the world to keep them from taking root and influencing our mind, body and soul.  The question is, are using our spiritual tools wisely, are we accessing the grace of God properly to uproot these nasty weeds or are we too guilty of fertilizing them?

• The sin of pride and prejudice.

We often see these two sins joined at the hip. Pride and prejudice are like a set of earplugs. They are often present in our conversation, when we say four words, "I already know better." Pride and prejudice keep us pinned to preconceived notions. We don’t want to take the time to investigate new positions, even if another way was presented with the accurate of evidence or the best of logic.  [History is one of our most faithful teachers and yet we often turn a deaf ear to the past, even wanting to disconnect from the past because we think we know better].

Our fallen nature makes our hearing “selective” in many ways. We wear the earplugs of pride and prejudice when certain topics or ideas are brought up or when certain people speak.

• Moral Relativism.

I think relativism is probably the most devious of all reasons why Christians are experiencing loss of spiritual hearing.  Relative truth allows a person to avoid both objective truth (God) and their conscience all at one time.

• Here’s how it works.

First, you need to dismiss objective truth all together. In place of this is put “subjective truth" and it becomes the method to believe whatever is appropriate for you. Make up a new God according to your personal design. Feel free to vary His laws to fit your situation or preferences. Sin? What is sin? Who defines sin? No “authority” knows my situation. My situation allows me to disregard the faith. Because of my unique situation I am permitted even to bend or break the commandments of God.

Relative truth is very attractive, very popular today, and it is very deceptive and evil.

It’s evil because it tells good people to believe that they really can change divine truth (any truth) simply by changing their minds.  It’s evil because when people accept anyone’s version of truth as "the truth for me," what they are doing is really denying the reality of their spiritual nature, the spiritual world and the full life that God has made us for.

We’re saying, in effect, that God doesn’t exist, or that if He does exist there is no way to really know Him. Those who live in this way exchange the reality of God for fantasy all the time.  But God has spoken. The gift of the Christian faith is to tell the world that our heavenly Father speaks to us. He sent us His beloved Son: "This is My beloved Son . . . listen to Him." (Matt. 17:5). The Son in turn said of Himself, "For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth." (John 21:37); and He also tells the Church: "If you continue in My word, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31–32).

Can we hear this truth and be liberated by this truth? Yes, absolutely.

The genius behind the ministry of Jesus Christ was that He went to great lengths to first give us Truth and then to make sure that His Truth would be handed on from generation to generation intact until His return. He accomplishes this through His Church that He said would always be guided by the Spirit of truth (John 14:16–17, 16:13). He put His anointed in charge of His Church, giving them the necessary spiritual gifts to govern with love and teach faithfully all that He taught ((Matt 28:20), and reminding them that "He who hears you hears Me" (Luke 10:16).He gave them the reassurance that "I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matt. 28:20).

To say we can’t know Jesus Christ, or that we can’t know truth is absolutely wrong. In fact, in the end on the day of our particular judgment before God we will be judged by whether or not we have sought to learned the truth of God and that we have lived by that truth to the best of our ability. (John 12:47–50)  So what are we to do about spiritual deafness? Or better yet, how could we have helped this rich young man had we been in the crowd on that day with Jesus?

We can help people like the rich man by focusing on what needs to change within us. It has been said that. Monica won the conversion of her son, Augustine, by becoming a saint herself. Suffering through necessary change and growth is not an option for Christians. It’s a guarantee. This involves the purification of our hearts.  So, our first step is making sure we believe in the existence of God and absolute truth, for that’s a basic requirement for finding Him (Heb. 11:6). Our second step would be to look at what we are really attached too. Are we choosing our own will over God’s in any area? And our third and final step would be to cultivate a real hunger for God, as opposed to being unconcerned with Him in the matters of life.

If we had been present that day with Jesus, and as the rich man left with his head down, walking in his own direction, we could have offered him this prayer that comes from Psalm 25: “Make me to know Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth, and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day long." (Ps. 25: 4–5).

Amen.