Category: Bible

To Go Or Not to Go to Egypt: That is the Question

The difficulty interpreting Scripture the way we might want to read it

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How should people read the Bible? I suppose that’s an age old question. I am not here to claim that I know exactly the right way to read the Bible – a fool proof way of reading every passage of Scripture to understand exactly the right meaning of every verse (as if there is only one way), but I am certain of some wrong ways to read the Bible.

Anyone who has devoted substantial attention to the reading of Scripture and how to interpret it well has heard the terms “descriptive” and “prescriptive.” The difference between the two is deceptively simple: descriptive passages tell us what happened, and prescriptive passages tell us what ought to happen.

The Bible does not signal to us when a passage is descriptive or prescriptive. Some passages can both be descriptive and prescriptive at the same time. Some passages are prescriptive, but we need to have the wisdom to ask, “Prescriptive for who?” For the people in the narrative? For all people at all times? If we don’t ask these questions, we can make some bad assumptions and reach some bad conclusions.

My reading today gets me thinking about these things. Genesis 46:2-4 says that God spoke to Israel (a/k/a Jacob) in a vision one night, and this is how the dialogue went:

“Jacob! Jacob!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

“I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes.”

This passage is descriptive. It is telling us only what happened. At the same tine, God speaks to Jacob and clearly tells him what he ought to do. Thus, the passage is also prescriptive – at least for Jacob. What God said to Jacob is clearly not a statement of what 21st Century readers ought to do. It wasn’t even a statement that other Ancient Near Eastern people of God ought to do in their own times.

Interestingly, we can see a pattern in the Bible of people going to Egypt. Abraham went to Egypt almost immediately after he arrived in the Promised Land (the land God said He would show Abraham when he was still Abram). There was a famine in the land of Canaan (the promised land), just as there was a famine in the land when Jacob and his family made their way to Egypt.

Mary and Joseph also went to Egypt. They were warned by an angel of the Lord to flee and go to Egypt to escape the plans of Herod to kill the Christ child. Going to Egypt is embedded in the story of Jesus, the Messiah, who was God incarnate. It doesn’t get more holy or sanctified than that! Right?

Going to Egypt seems to be an established and accepted thing for God’s people to do. Both Jacob and Mary and Joseph were told in no uncertain terms by God or His angel to go to Egypt. Though Abraham wasn’t told to go to Egypt, God blessed him with sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels while he was there (Gen. 12:16), and he became very wealthy. (Gen. 13:2)

If we read these passages prescriptively, we might logically conclude that anytime a famine occurs, we ought go to Egypt. We might also think that going to Egypt is always the right thing for God’s people to do.

We intuitively know, though, that going to Egypt whenever a famine occurs is not likely the right way to read these passages together. That is because they are descriptive (describing only what happened) and not likely meant to be read prescriptively – at least for us. God was being prescriptive to Jacob and to Mary and Joseph, but he wasn’t laying down a rule for everyone in all times and places to follow.

God told Jacob and God told Mary and Joseph they ought to go to Egypt, but we know that the instructions were given to these particular people in their particular contexts that are not likely applicable to us in our times and circumstances. That doesn’t mean that these stories and God’s instructions might not have some application or particular relevance for particular people in their own particular circumstance in their own times, but there is no generally applicable, prescriptive value to be gleaned about going to Egypt.

In fact, we don’t have to look very far to find some very different instructions from God about going to Egypt. It wasn’t long after Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea to escape captivity in Egypt when they started complaining that they had it better in Egypt. (Exodus 16:2-3) As time went on, they complained often about the abundance they remembered in Egypt (Numbers, 11:5; 16:3), and they rebelled against Moses, asking for a leader to be appointed to lead them back to Egypt. (Numb. 14:2-4) Years later, as Moses was preparing the people to enter the Promised Land, God (speaking through Moses) warned the people about Egypt, saying, “You are not to go back that way again.” (Deut. 17:16)

The Prophet Isaiah warned people about going to Egypt and seeking Pharaoh’s protection. (Is. 30:1) The prophet Jeremiah said, “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you are determined to go to Egypt and you do go to settle there, then the sword you fear will overtake you there, and the famine you dread will follow you into Egypt, and there you will die.” (Jer. 42:15-16) The Prophet Ezekiel also told the people not to remember Egypt anymore. (Ez. 23:27)

Moses and the Prophets gave some clear and stern warnings about going to Egypt, yet Mary and Joseph were told years later to flee to Egypt with the baby Jesus. These things are confusing if we try to read every passage in the Bible prescriptively – even the ones with clear commands from God.

So how should modern Christians read scripture? Do we go or not go to Egypt?

Continue reading “To Go Or Not to Go to Egypt: That is the Question” →

Who Do We Obey? Augustine, Bonhoeffer, the Confessing Church, and the Guidance of Revelation

A choice between two cities

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The book of Revelation is often treated as a puzzle about the future to be solved. But for the early church—and for Christians living under pressure—it functioned as something far more prescient: a guide and encouragement to be faithful when political power demands allegiance that belongs to God alone.

That is why the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church matters so deeply for Christians today. Their struggle was not about partisan politics or policy disagreements. It was about lordship. Who has the right to command the Christian conscience? Who gets our obedience when the state demands what Christ forbids—or forbids what Christ commands?

When Obedience Becomes Worship

The crisis in Nazi Germany was not simply that the government was unjust. It was that the state demanded moral and spiritual loyalty. National identity became sacred. Political obedience became a virtue. Silence and complicity in the face of injustice was praised as faithfulness.

Scripture warns us that this is always how idolatry works.

“No one can serve two masters.” (Matthew 6:24)

In the City of God, St. Augustine contrasts the City of man and the City of God. We owe our allegiance to the City of God, though God calls us to live in harmony, as best as we can, with the City of man. Loving God is first, but loving man is like it. We cannot love God and fail to love people who God loves and created in His image.

Revelation is encouragement and exhortation to us when the City of man exhibits the characteristics of the beast. Revelation describes the beast as a power that compels allegiance to itself in everyday life through economic pressure, social belonging, and fear of exclusion:

“So that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.”

(Revelation 13:17)

The issue is not technology. The issue is worship – your heart, your devotion, your allegiance.

Bonhoeffer: Discipleship Is Visible

Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw clearly what many Christians hoped to avoid: there is no such thing as private faith when public injustice is at stake. Throughout the Prophets who repeatedly warned God’s people about coming judgment, the issues were twofold: idolatry and injustice.

Idolatry and injustice always go hand in hand. Augustine said that our true allegiance is revealed by what one loves, serves, and obeys.

“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God even to the contempt of self.”

(City of God XIV.28)

Injustice always flows from misdirected worship – misdirected loyalty, priority, and desire. Augustine called injustice robbery, because it robs people made in the image of God of what God intends for them.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer warned against what he famously called “cheap grace”—grace that forgives sin without transforming obedience. Transforming obedience is the kind of obedience that forsakes self-interest out of love for God and man.

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

That call is not only about personal holiness. It is about allegiance. Bonhoeffer understood that following Jesus means concrete obedience, even when that obedience is costly, unpopular, or dangerous.

Faith that quietly accommodates injustice, he argued, is not faithfulness at all. God “upholds the cause of the oppressed,” and “watches over the foreigner,” and “sustains the fatherless and widow….” (Psalm 144:6-9) That is God’s heart, and that character marks those who love and serve Him.

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

1 John 4:20

The Confessing Church: Saying “No” to False Authority

In 1934, pastors and theologians gathered to issue the Theological Declaration of Barmen. Their message was simple and bold:

“Jesus Christ… is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

This was not abstract theology. It was a refusal to allow the state to define truth, identity, or moral obligation. It was a rejection of the idea that national destiny or political leaders could speak with the authority of God the Father. The City of man is not the City of God.

In the language of Revelation, the Confessing Church refused to bear the name of the beast. They chose instead to bear the name of the Lamb:

“They follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” (Revelation 14:4)

The Danger of Complicity

Later in his life, Bonhoeffer pressed further. He argued that the church sins not only by acting wrongly, but by failing to act when injustice reigns.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.”

According to Bonhoeffer, Revelation 14 warns that worship of the beast is not limited to overt acts of loyalty. It includes participation in systems that oppose God’s justice—systems that reward conformity and punish faithfulness—systems that oppress the poor, needy, foreigner, widow, and orphan.

“If anyone worships the beast… he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath.” (Revelation 14:9–10)

This is not a threat meant to terrify believers. It is a mercy meant to awaken them. We must not give our allegiance and our heart to Empire – the beast in our age. We must give our hearts, desires, and allegiance to God alone.

Revelation as a Call to Endurance

Revelation does not tell Christians to seize power. Revelation gives us the hope that the Lamb who was Slain will prevail despite the chaos, injustice, and oppression that reigns in a world controlled the beast. The urgent message is to endure patiently and be faithful. (Rev, 13:10)

“Here is the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12)

Endurance means refusing to let fear, convenience, or comfort decide our allegiance or obedience. It means trusting that faithfulness matters, even when it costs us socially, economically, or personally.

Bonhoeffer lived—and died—by that conviction. We can too.

Why This Still Matters

The beast in Revelation does not always look monstrous. Sometimes it looks respectable. Sometimes it speaks the language of order, morality, and security. Sometimes it rewards the loyalty of silence.

The question for Christians has never changed: Who is Lord?

Revelation, Augustine, Bonhoeffer, and the witness of the Confessing Church remind us that allegiance is not just what we say—it is what we do, what we tolerate, and what we refuse.

“We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

Trusting God from Beginning to End in 2026

How do trust God in a world that is violent and corrupt?

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Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. (Revelation 1:8; 21:6; and 22:13) Jesus was in the beginning with God, the Father, and the universe and all that is in it was made through Jesus. (John 1:1-3)

At this time of year, we celebrate God descending to become man in Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem into a common family in a far flung place. Jesus was God in his very nature, but he deigned to shed himself of that glory and power to become man, to become a servant to his own creation, and to humble himself to the point of death at the hands of his own creation. (Philippians 2:5-8)

In the end, Jesus will be exalted to the “highest place” with a “name that is above every name.” (Phil. 2:9) Every knee in heaven and on earth will bow to him, and every tongue will acknowledge that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:10-11)

From the garden of Eden to the new heavens and earth and the New Jerusalem in which God will dwell with His people, God has had a plan from the beginning to the end. God set eternity in the hearts of people, but not so that we would know the beginning from the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) We don’t know, but God knows. Do we trust Him?

That is the question in my mind on this 1st day of the New Year in 2026. That is the question with which I challenge myself. Will I trust Him with my life? With the world? With the insanity that seems to characterize the year that just ended in United States of America where I live?

Since God created the universe and populated it with people and animals, God ordained and allowed people to populate the Earth. God didn’t dictate how the history of His creation would unfold. He created Adam and Eve with the capacity to live in sync with God and the universe, but He also gave them the capacity to go their own ways. God had a plan from the beginning, but He allowed the universe and mankind, His crowning creation, to unfold as it would.

I am beginning a new year of reading through the Bible as I have done many years in the past. I have read through the first handful of chapters in Genesis, and my thoughts gather around the question: will I trust God better in the New Year?

Continue reading “Trusting God from Beginning to End in 2026” →

What It Means to Know God

One sure way to know God

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The age old questions humans have asked since time immemorial are, “What is God, and how do I know God?” We have conceived of gods as animated trees, mountains, and the sun, the stars, and the moon. We have conceived of gods as a pantheon of god-men and god-women. We have conceived of God as a force that is in everything, and we have conceived of God as an aloof judge and guardian of the ever after.

The Hebrew Scripture provides a robust concept of God, the Creator of the universe, who reveals Himself to human beings, but who remains mysterious and even “hidden” to people who must seek Him. The Tanakh (the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings) that Christians call the Old Testament purports to be God’s revelation to human beings with a promise that those who seek may find Him, “though he is not far from any one of us.” (As the Apostle Paul said to the Greeks in Athens. (Acts 17:27))

Of course, the God of the universe must be greater than we could ever fully comprehend to have created such an intricately designed universe as the one in which we live. If the men who passed on the revelation of this God that has been recorded in the Bible are correct, we can know much about God even if much remains a mystery.

I am impressed today with the words of the Prophet, Jeremiah, who provides a glimpse of who God is in the words of warning he spoke to Jehoahaz, the King of Judah,

“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor. He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace with spacious upper rooms.’ So he makes large windows in it, panels it with cedar and decorates it in red. “Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father [King Josiah] have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord.”

Jeremiah 22:13-16

I have never noticed before that Jeremiah equates defending the cause of the poor and needy with knowing God. In defending the cause of the poor and the needy, we come to know God.

We can search for God here and there and, perhaps, never find Him. In defending the poor and needy, however, we can know the Lord. It’s that simple.

To know someone in a biblical sense is to know more than facts about someone. To know someone biblically is to know someone intimately. The ultimate example of knowing someone biblically is to know someone as a spouse.

Thus, when Jeremiah says that defending the cause of the poor and needy is to know the Lord, he is talking about an intimate, experiential knowledge of the character and nature of God. The cause of the poor and needy is close to God’s heart, and it is essential to who God is.

The Psalmist says, “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling….” (Psalm 68:5) A dwelling place is where a person is most able to be who they are. God’s holy dwelling is where God is “at home”, where God is most like Himself, and the cause of the fatherless and the widow is at the core of who God is in His most intimate place.

Thus, people can intimately know who God is by taking up the cause of the poor and the needy, the widow and the orphan, and similarly vulnerable people.

The opposite is also true. People do not know God to the extent that they do not defend the cause of the poor and needy. This was the point Jeremiah was making when he said of King Johoahaz:

The father of Jehoahaz was Josiah. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” (2 Kings 22:2) Josiah found the Book of the Law, reestablished Temple worship of God, and destroyed the idols in Judah. (2 Kings 22 & 23) Josiah also defended the cause of the poor and needy, according to the Prophet Jeremiah, and defending the cause of the poor and needy is what it means to know God.

Indeed, Josiah modeled the entire law that Jesus said can be summed up in these two statements: 1) love God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul; and 2) love your neighbor as yourself.

Throughout the Bible, then, we find that a sure way of knowing who God is and what it means to know God is to be concerned with the cause of the poor and needy. This is not liberal wokeness; it is the essence of who God is and what it means to know God.

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

1 John 4:20

Jesus even goes so far as to say that we should love our enemies and so be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48) Loving others – caring for the poor and needy – is not superfluous or secondary; it is central to who God is and a key in what it means to know God.

The Sin of Sodom & Gomorrah Summarized: A Warning to the United States of America (and a Reason for Hope)

It may be worse then you think and more relevant than you assume

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Since I noticed how Ezekiel summarized the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah earlier this year, I wanted to take a closer look. Ezekiel’s summary was surprising to me, and I wondered, “What did I miss in reading the story?”

I thought it was about sexual sin, and specifically homosexual sin, but Ezekiel doesn’t even mention sexual sin in his summary. This is what Ezekiel says, speaking to Israel:

“You not only followed [the ways of Sodom] and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved than they. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.

‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.'”

(Ezekiel 16:47-50) Obviously, the story of Sodom & Gomorrah isn’t what I thought it was.

Like most people, I was taught a simple version: God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. End of story.

But when I actually took the time read the text carefully, I realized the Bible tells a far more unsettling story, and a story that is far more relevant to our world today than I imagined. The Bible contrasts hospitality and hostility to strangers (angels) to highlight the root of Sodom & Gomorrah’s sin.

I did a careful exegesis of the Sodom & Gomorrah story previously that demonstrates what the primary the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah was, but today I am just going to summarize it. The summary needs to include the context in which the story of Sodom & Gomorrah is embedded in the Bible.

Before Genesis 19 where we find the story of Sodom & Gomorrah is the story in Genesis 18 of Abraham’s and Sarah’s magnanimous hospitality to three strangers who turn out to be “the Lord” and two angels on their way to Sodom. The one called “the Lord” remained behind talking to Abraham, while the two angels continued on to Sodom where Lot sees them sitting in the gateway of the City. Lot calls to them, invites them in, and shows them the same magnanimous hospitality Abraham showed. (Gen. 19:1-3)

The parallel stories of Abraham’s and Lot’s hospitality that mirror each other in the same pattern set the stage for God’s judgment on Sodom. That’s when things go sideways. The men of the town surround Lot’s house and demand that Lot send them out to be violated sexually.

Abraham welcomes strangers with generosity and honor. Lot does the same, but the men of Sodom do the opposite. They rage against the strangers. They threaten Lot because he is a “foreigner”, and they warn Lot they will treat him worse than what they plan to do to the strangers in Lot’s house if he doesn’t comply.

The town’s men resented Lot being there and resented him inviting other foreigners into his house. They formed an angry mob to humiliate and violate Lot’s guests as a warning: you are not welcome here!

As Ezekiel says, the reason for this conduct is because they were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned about others. They did not help the poor and the needy. Worse, they didn’t just turn the foreigners away; they didn’t just drive them out of town; they tried to punish, violate, humiliate, and shame them.

The Lord told Abraham that He was responding to the great outcry against Sodom & Gomorrah due to the grievousness of their sin. (Gen. 18:20) Such an outcry is the response of people when great injustice is done to them. The scene echoes the story of Cain and Abel when Abel’s blood was said to cry out from the ground in Genesis 4. The same word is used for Israel’s outcry under Egyptian oppression in Exodus 2.

God responds to injustice. God responds specifically to the outcries of people who bear the oppression of that injustice, and God judges those who are unrepentantly responsible for that injustice.

The story of Sodom & Gomorrah is a story of God’s judgment on sin, but it isn’t sexual sin that brings God’s judgment. The sin that prompted God to respond was the sin that caused people to cry out under the weight of injustice.

Jesus later confirms that the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah is inhospitality when he warns towns who do not welcome his followers, saying, “it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” Jesus says this in Mathew 10 when he sent his 12 disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God, and Jesus says it again in Luke 10, when he sent out 72 of his followers to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom.

The context of these statements was the hospitality (or lack of it) shown to his followers. There is no mention of sexual sin—only refusal to welcome, refusal to listen, refusal to be hospitable.

Ezekiel is very specific about the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah:

“This was the sin of your sister Sodom: pride, excess of food, prosperous ease—but she did not help the poor and needy.”

Pride. Comfort. Indifference. Not just lack of empathy, but downright cruelty to the poor and needy – the vulnerable. That is the Bible’s own summary of the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah.

The angels/foreigners in the story of Sodom & Gomorrah are just one category of vulnerable people. Elsewhere, Scripture often mentions widows, orphans, and foreigners together to describe the vulnerable people in the ancient near east who God desired His people to protect and watch over – because God’s heart is to protect and watch over the vulnerable and needy.

Yes, there is sexual sin in the story, but the root of that sin is hostility toward others. In the context of the story as it sits in the greater context of the previous story about Abraham’s radical hospitality, the sexual act is a weapon of the people of Sodom. They use it out of arrogance, out of desire to guard their own wealth and comfort from foreigners, to humiliate, shame, and drive out the foreigners who dared to encroach on on what they had. It is the final expression of a society that idolized comfort, wealth, and lifestyle. Because they didn’t love God, they didn’t love people.

Sodom wasn’t destroyed because it was too permissive. Sodom was destroyed because its people were too proud, too full, too comfortable, and too cruel in their efforts to protect what they had from outsiders.

God heard the cries of those crushed by that system—and He acted.

That’s what makes this story disturbingly relevant today. The sin of Sodom isn’t ancient or obscure. It shows up whenever a society values its own prosperity above allegiance to God and clings to its own comfort, despises the stranger, and silences the cries of the vulnerable to protect what it has.

And that should give Christians (and non-Christians alike) pause in 2025 in the United States of America. God is no respecter of persons. People reap what they sow. God did not spare the people of Israel from His judgment when they repeatedly gave in to idolatry (putting their own interests above God’s interest) and oppressed their neighbors. He will not spare a country or a even a group of believers who do that.

The good news is that God is always, always faithful. He is aways just to forgive those who ask to be forgiven and repent of their ways. I pray that we can be such people.