Famine, Sojourn, Return
Seeing Jesus in Egypt, the Wilderness and the
Return
Written by Dan McDonald
In the last blog I wrote I sought to
encourage Christians not to give up on seeing Christ in the Old Testament
Scriptures. The practice of seeing Christ in the Old Testament is often done
horribly, often forced like the driving of a square peg into a round hole, but
the first generation of Christians had to present Jesus as the fulfillment of
the Old Testament Scriptures while the New Testament Scriptures were taking
shape. The two discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus on the third day
following Jesus’ crucifixion found their hearts burned inside them as Jesus
explained why he had to suffer before entering his glory. He did the explaining
from Moses to the prophets. He presented himself to them in the Word of the Old
Testament Scriptures and they then recognized him as he presented himself to
them in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:13-35)
In this blog I want to show that
often we discover Jesus in the themes of the Old Testament. There are recurring
themes in the Old Testament Scriptures which are brought to life once more in
the life of Jesus. Are these narratives unrelated? Did Jesus simply try to live
his life a pattern after them? Or was the Spirit of God coordinating and
orchestrating the events of a freely acting mankind so that all things in the
Old might point to the new? One of the
greatest of Old Testament themes was Israel’s exile in Egypt. Most Bible
readers are familiar with how Joseph had been sold into slavery and ended up in
Egypt where through circumstances he became powerful, second in charge to
Pharaoh himself. Meanwhile in the
Promised Land a famine that God had predicted through Joseph so that Egypt
would be provided for as Pharaoh listened to Joseph led to all Israel coming to
Egypt to sojourn in the time of the famine and for several centuries. There was
famine followed by sojourn or exile. But in the fullness of time Egypt became
hostile to Israel and then comes the story of Moses and the Exodus. Then Israel
travels back towards the Promised Land, but must first go through the
wilderness. Like the Gilligan epic, a
three day journey becomes a forty year generation of wandering. But at last
Israel completes its Passover journey from the death of the firstborn
substituted by the sacrificed lamb’s blood to her arrival in the Promised Land
as she crossed over the Jordan.
Is this the first appearance of such
a story? Perhaps as Israel was taught
about the themes of the famine that led to Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, to her
deliverance, to her wilderness wanderings, to her return to the land by
crossing the Jordan was an event staged in God’s perfect plan to bring meaning
to another story described in the Old Testament.
The Old Testament described how God
had created man and planted him in paradise. God had given Adam and Eve the
Garden of Eden with all kinds of lush vegetation from which they could eat.
Then through sin they were forced out of the Garden. Is there famine implied in
this story? They are cast out of Paradise with its abundant food sources and
they are told they will face death. A powerful angel armed with a sword keeps
out all who would attempt to return to this Garden. There are some non-literal
descriptions in this account. We understand when we read the account that this
Paradise is no longer accessible to us apart from an act of divine grace and
mercy. Is the angel with the sword a literal reality at the entrance to
Paradise, or an image expressing the divine intervention which has made this
land of Eden now outside of our grasp? Truth is told whether literal or
figurative.
The whole story of Israel’s sojourn
into Egypt is a retelling of our human sojourn that began with Adam and
Eve. Conservatives and Progressives
might argue about which came first but for both camps it is important to
realize how Biblically the story of man’s fall into sin is ultimately the story
of our lives as well as the story or event which took place in the beginning of
our collective human existence. The progressive might see Adam and Eve as myth
told to sum up the human story, while the Conservative sees it as a historical
event to which our lives are tied. One
is likely nearer the truth of the matter than the other but for each of us
discovering the message of humanity’s struggle with sin, our need to sojourn in
a difficult world, our need for a Redeemer to bring the story to a good end;
for each of us discovering the story it is truth needed and necessary for our
journeys. We have been marred by sin. Our residency in Paradise or the Promised
Land has been marred. We have grown hungry and thirsty; while death hangs over
us. We have been driven out of Paradise, a thousand sins, plagues, injustices
confront us and we grow weary of the struggle from time to time. That is the
Exodus story and that is the story of Genesis 3. That is our story; the story of humanity
wandering in sorrows and suffering looking for a better city, a better country,
looking for home.
But that is also the story of Jesus
Christ. His story, the story of the New
Testament is that he chose to become part of our story. He chose to leave his Father’s glory, to leave
the comforts of glory and of heaven and to become man, emptying himself to the
point that he would become death for us that in him we might live. He would hunger in our wilderness, thirst in
our Samaria, and die on our Golgotha. He
would know exile from His Father’s presence for us. He would also however know return,
resurrection from the dead, ascension into heaven. His entering our story would
be the only way our stories could be brought to completeness. That is why the
Old Testament stories are always about Jesus and always about us. That is why
when the early Christians looked upon the pages of the Old Testament they saw
in Hebrew stories the story of Jesus Christ. Is that what two disciples on a
Roman road headed towards the village of Emmaus learned on the morning which
they first thought was like any other morning but discovered was so unlike any
other morning; for on this day one whose blood had been spilled on wood had
opened the doors of eternity for the people of God. He had risen from the dead
for he not only had laid his life down but now had also picked it back up and
it was an act of love for a world whose story of return could not take place
except he would bring us to home, to paradise, to the Promised Land, to a new
heavens and earth. He has brought fulfillment
to the stories of long ago.
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