I love anything old. My daughter and I live in the mountains, in a house that was built in the 50's. As I walk past the original doors and intricate ceiling designs, I am filled with appreciation for bygone days. As we drive around our small town we notice old buildings with the year of construction imprinted on them and marvel how much history those buildings contain. I love antiques because they have belonged to people who have once lived and loved and suffered and rejoiced. Anything old to me is a mirror of someone's experience on this earth. I also love to know about people who have graced this earth and lived fighting for God's cause, labouring for the salvation of men, leaving an imprint on the sands of time with their worthwhile works. I love people who have been courageous enough to be leaders, who have inspired others and lifted them to higher ground, who have marched without fear at the front lines defending the truth, not fearing what man can do. Nowhere can we find such witnesses better than in the Old Testament.
I love the Old Testament with a passion. To me it is not just a compilation of feel good stories taught to children in Sunday School or a historical account with difficult language and complicated spiritual meanings. To me the Old Testament is where our roots are, where modern day Israel has its' beginning. It helps me understand who I am and what my earthly responsibility is. Most importantly it helps me see the Saviour as the Great Deliverer. I think this is the whole purpose of the Old Testament which is replete with examples of the Saviour's power to deliver, whether from intimate bondage of sorrow and suffering or a communal one such as the Israelites' exit from Egypt. When our lives are over, we will be able to look back and see proof of the Saviour's deliverance from ignorance, pain, loneliness, sickness, sin, trial and every adversity of this mortal life. I love the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Nowhere else in scriptures is he better depicted as majestic and powerful, merciful and loving. Through this set of scripture we see a God who forgives over and over again and when he does, he does it quickly. Often people view Him through the Old Testament as the God of vengeance and wrath, harsh and easily angered. If we however, examine the situations in which God has had to reprimand his people or punish them in some way and if we look at the whole story we will come to know a different God of our fathers and we will believe Him when he describes himself as: "The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth" (Exodus 34:6).
"I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD. (Exodus 6:6-8)
When the Lord made his intention of deliverance known to Moses, he simply said: "....for I know their sorrows" (Exodus 3:7). Here is a God of love and compassion. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious that He is not only delivering them from physical bondage but from a spiritual one too and offering them a covenant that will lead them to eternal life. He brings them to Mount Sinai with the intention to bind them in this covenant, to seal them His forever: "If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people....and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation". (Exodus 19:5,6) "The word 'treasure' in Hebrew is segullah, which refers to closely held personal wealth or property. According to Hugh Nibley, the word also means 'set apart, sealed, removed from the rest of the world" (Breck England, OT Lesson 14, "Ye Shall Be a Peculiar Treasure Unto Me", Meridian Magazine") By bringing Israelites out of Egypt, the Lord sought to take Egypt out of Israelites. Imagine being a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and being known as the Lord's treasure. In this Israelites failed miserably and proved that they didn't really know the God of Abraham and of Jacob and of Isaac but they sure knew the gods of Egypt. The knowledge of their God had somewhat dimmed over the 400 years of their sojourn in Egypt plunging them into spiritual bondage as well as the physical one. As soon as they took upon themselves the covenants of the priesthood, they abandoned them and fashioned for themselves a new god, a molten calf which represented the Apis Bull, a god particularly associated with Pharaoh. (Breck England, OT Lesson 14, Meridian Magazine)
If only Israel had trusted in the God of Israel who went to such great lengths to show them who He was and prove to them that there is no other above Him. For this reason God instructed Moses to send plagues and perform miracles in Egypt that could be replicated by the magicians and priests of Egypt for this is all that man can do. He then performed what no man or false god can do by smiting the firstborn of every household all at once, at the stroke of midnight. This spoke volumes that very clearly no wonder of Egypt could overshadow the one true and living God. I love symbolism in the Old Testament. To me the parting of the Red Sea is symbolic of a new life the Lord would lead the Israelites to by clearing the way before them and drowning the Egyptians who pursued them, symbolic of the destruction of Israelites' physical and spiritual bondage. And what greater proof could they have had that He was with them every step of the way than this:
"And the Lord went before them by day and in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:
"He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people".
(Exodus 13:21,22)
It seemed, however, that nothing was enough for the children of Israel. Not the manna from heaven, not the water from a rock, not the serpent on a stick, nor their victory over Amelekites. Because of this it took Israelites 40 years to be ready to enter the promised land. Because of their unwillingness to obey the higher law they were not allowed to 'enter into his rest while in the wilderness, which rest is the fullness of his glory'. The fullness of that glory is exaltation which would not be available to the house of Israel until a new dispensation of the gospel in the meridian of time - our time. We are the modern day Israel who can enjoy the fullness of the covenant and the blessings of exaltation. How well do we know and trust the God who offers us this privilege through his never-ending mercy and love? Are we like Israelites who kept promising "All the words which the Lord hath said will we do" (Exodus 19:8, 24:3,7) but then turned back to the gods of Egypt? Is there an acre or two of Egypt within us too? President Kimball puts it well:
"Few men have ever knowingly and deliberately chosen to reject God and his blessings. Rather, we learn from the scriptures that because the exercise of faith has always appeared to be more difficult than relying on things more immediately at hand, carnal man has tended to transfer his trust in God to material things....Whatever thing a man sets his heart and his trust in most is his god; and if his god doesn't also happen to be the true and living God of Israel, that man is laboring in idolatry".
Do we know the God who we profess to believe in and do we trust Him enough to place our lives in His hands and to obey his covenants? Do we trust Him enough to deliver us from our personal Egypt? Do we know Him as The Great Deliverer or do we trust someone else to bail us out of our darkness? Do we know in whom we should trust?
"There is a story told that a company of botanists seeking some special flowers up in the Canadian Rockies, came one day to a very rare flower down on the side of a cliff. To reach it they would have to retrace their steps and go back ten miles to come up from the valley below. Someone suggested that if they had a rope they could let a boy down to pick the specimens. That suggestion was prompted by the fact that a little boy had been following them for about an hour, watching them silently. They got the rope and said:
'Here lad, we'll give you $5 if you will put this rope around you and permit us to let you down to get those flowers'.
Without saying a word the lad scampered off. They thought they had frightened him. He went to a house nearby and soon came back with a man by his side. Then the little fellow answered:
'You may put that rope around me, and I'll get the flower, if you'll let my dad hold the rope'."
(President David O. McKay, CR. April 1944)
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