Getting beyond going backwards

 "For you have not come to that place, filled with blazing fire and darkness - where the sounds and words made the hearers beg for silence... you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, where innumerable angels and the gathering of the firstborn reside before the Lord, who judges all - where Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, has enrolled the spirits of all of the righteous made perfect". Hebrews 12:10-23.

Pastor and theologian, Chad Bird (I'm growing very fond of quoting him lately!), made a superb insight in one of his postings this week.

To quote: "When God sent the ten plagues in Exodus, he was not merely showcasing his power against Pharaoh. He was uncreating Egypt, rewinding this rebellious land to Genesis 1:2, where “formlessness and void” (tohu vavohu) characterized creation.

A major feature of the creation account is God making distinctions, dividing light from darkness, water from dry land. He is ordering and organizing the world. In the plagues, all this is reversed. Water becomes blood. Water animals (frogs) swarm the land. Dust becomes gnats. Light becomes darkness. Finally, life (the firstborn) becomes death. Pharaoh’s enslavement and mistreatment of the Israelites was a rebellion against life and creation as it was ordered by God. So, God harnesses creation to use against Pharaoh. 

Not just people but all creation—water, land, heavens, animals—are involved.The events in Egypt are thus a prophetic microcosm of worldwide proportions. 

That is why, in Revelation, John uses the plagues as a model for his vision of divine, worldwide events.

Exodus thus becomes a preview of world history—and the ultimate redemption we have in the resurrection of the Son of God, and our resurrection in him".

What's touched on here is, in effect, something we see continually emerging throughout the early history of the ancient world. The 'giving over' of our race and its responsibility to a usurper constantly breaks out into the manner of chaos evidenced in Genesis 1:2 - Murder, violence, corruption are all married to the malevolence and diabolical 'curving' of men we see in the events that lead up to flood, the tower of babel and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses sees the same as the journey unfolds towards Canaan, both amongst those beyond the camp and in the wickedness expressed among those within.

In ourselves, constantly, we evidence the undoing of Eden, which, no doubt, is why the tabernacle in the wilderness irrevocably married reminders of that paradise (the tree hangings, the fruit adornments, the presence of cleansing water, etc) to the essential necessity of redemption through sacrifice (cleansing from iniquity) as the single grounds on which to find peace with the most high. The weighty events so meticulously recorded in Genesis and Exodus teach us that the remedy to our exile - the means whereby creation returns again to the delight of the seventh day - is by what God carves into history by His hand and doing alone, inviting us to stand, to see and to trust in His great undertakings on our behalf.

Our fallen estate has put us into a full reversal from seeing what's brilliant and beautiful in it's proper and fullest expression, whether we look at this on the large (culture) or small (our lives) scale. Currently in vogue, "wokeness" is the fig-leaf culture of now. We cannot bear the significance our 'nakedness' genuinely conveys, especially concerning our common poverty or the shards we glimpse of our better, God-given nature, so we glance our beliefs and behaviours off from this, continually pointing fingers at each other to kill the nagging truth that we're all outside from where we should be.

The cycle will keep us spinning until we see what's really going on - the world keeps careering along backwards into chaos, until we ask for remedy, for rescue, for mercy, from the one true Peacemaker and Kinsman who shelters us beneath a entirely unmerited benevolence that restores all of creation to refreshment in His eternal purposes.

Life is essentially a journey, then, backwards to nowhere, unless we are apprehended by one so much more than ourselves, who takes the reins by clothing our woeful sinful existence with a mercy and a righteousness that is pure gift, allowing us to live beneath the shelter of a life beyond ourselves. The Jesus Christ of the gospels, the one who spoke the marvel of creation into being, is close to anyone who wants to escape the folly and find genuine peace and purpose - they simply need to call upon Him.