The Transfiguration (21/12/08)

Sorry for being a little bit late...





The Transfiguration is obviously important - it's in three of the gospels (Matthew 16/17, Mark 9, Luke 9). It's some form of future event, a future vision. From 30AD - day of coming.



Jesus, Peter, James and John his brother had been around Caesarea-Philippia (north of Galilee, by Dan) and six days later Jesus led them up a high mountain by themselves. There are a few possible locations of this mountain - Mt. Hermon (north of Caesarea-Philippi), Mt. Tabor (near Nazareth) or J.Jarmuk (halfway between the two mountains i just mentioned). These are the three that my bible map tells me, but we also thought about Mt. Nebo which is near the Dead Sea.

In Deuteronomy 34, Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mt. Nebo, to the top of Pisgah and the Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, Ephraim & Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea, the Negeb, and the Plain (the Valley of Jericho), as far as Zoar. Moses was being shown the land but was not allowed in. (v4 - And the Lord said to him "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac and to Jacob, 'I will give it to your offspring.' I have let you see it with your eyes but you shall not go over there." )

In 2 Kings 2 it's the last recorded public activity of Elijah. v8 of the chapter is crossing the Jordan, v11 shows they have gone on from there and Elijah is taken from Elisha. That's the region (the land just north of the Dead Sea) where Moses & Elijah were both around at the end of their ministry - and Jesus was there at a potential end of his ministry. Jesus was looking forward, seeing when he is King. This transfiguration was to galvanise (sp?) Jesus to keep going forward - he had his crucifixion coming - to give him courage and strength, and reassurance.

We looked at references for Matt 17:2 - about Jesus' face shining, white clothes, all links with the Kingdom. Rev 1:16 'In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength')
and also Rev 10:1 - 'Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire'.
Also for the white clothes - Dan 7:9 'As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire.'

2 Peter 1:16-18
'16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when we received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased," 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.'
This could be either Jesus' baptism or the transfiguration - however; at the time of his baptism Peter, Jame & John weren't disciples. Jesus was not in his Majesty during his life, as far as the people were concerned.

We should look at the two other gospel records of the transfiguration, there are some different details.

14th December - More on the Twelve Tribes

Yeah I'm really sorry - you'll know I'm pants at keeping things up-to-date by now!

So. Sunday.

We started off looking at the answers to some of the questions Jamie asked in his last post:

The first one was about when the Assyrians came down and took the Northern kingdom into exile, and what about the other tribes?

Well, looking at 2 Chron 11:16, "And after them out of all the tribes of Israel such as set their hearts to seek the LORD God of Israel came to Jerusalem, to sacrifice unto the LORD God of their fathers." , we find that the the tribes who were faithful to the real God, the LORD God of Israel, came down into Judah to worship at the proper place - Jerusalem, capital of Judah. We find out who those tribes were in 2 Chron 30, when Hezekiah (a good king) is calling for all the faithful tribes to come down and serve at the temple for the Passover. (v8,9 - "Now be ye not stiffnecked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the LORD, and enter into his sanctuary, which he hath sanctified for ever: and serve the LORD your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you. For if ye turn again unto the LORD, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again into this land: for the LORD your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him.") We see then that it really is a plea for the faithful to not just come down for the Passover, but to come down for good. In v11 we find out who responded to this call - "11 Nevertheless some from Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem" along with the tribes already in Judah.

Hope that helped!

Next question Jamie'd asked was whether there were 14 tribes - different lists missed out and included different tribes...! So we looked up all the lists of the tribes we could find, and put all alongside each other in a spreadsheet. I've copied it so you can see our big list. Hm ok I haven't - copying it didnt work. I have no idea how to attach it... aha hold on: I THINK it's worked... (thanks to Kirsty for filling it all in by the way!). Yeah I'm pretty sure there aren't 14 tribes, but guys I really need your help figuring out what we're supposed to get from this! Sorry Uncle Norman, I'm um floundering here..! My excuse? I was kind of coming down with the whole bug thing that morning... and was kind of sleepy, and hadn't been there last lesson. So come one guys, help!

Ok mum's helping me =P.

Right, so Kirsty - about the nine and half tribes when it lists 12, that was because 2 and half tribes (Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh) decided not to live actually in the Promised Land - they stayed on the east side of the Jordan.

Yeah I'm sorry but I'm not sure what I'm meant to be doing - I hand over to you guys - please please help!

The Twelve Tribes of Isreal - Genesis 49

So this week we looked at the twelve tribes of Israel.

These were: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Zebulan, Isaachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh.

Firstly we talked about Ephraim and Manasseh, and how Ephraim was given the firstborn even though he was the second son(Gen 48 v 8 - 20) The tribe of Ephraim became the largest of all the tribes.

It's interesting that there's slight differences in some places, concerning the tribes. The 12 sons of Israel were the original 12 tribes. Reuben lost his rights as firstborn by defiling Jacob's bed(Gen 49 v 3-4) In Reuben and Joseph's place, Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, became tribes of Israel(Gen 48 v 5-6) In some other lists of the twelve tribes of Israel, Levi is not mentioned, presumably because the Levites were told to serve at the temple and therefore were not given any land of their own in Israel.
At this point we looked at Exodus 32, where we see the Levites loyalty towards God, in which they were rewarded with the spiritual service lost at that time by the firstborn of the other tribes.

We also briefly looked at the lost tribes of Israel. After Solomon's death, the Hebrew nation split into two kingdoms. The tribe of Judah, Simeon, Levi and Benjamin formed the Southern Kingdom, and the other tribes made up the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom and sent the tribes into Exile, so what happened to these tribes? Anyone know?

At the end of class we looked at another list of the twelve tribes, in which Joseph is listed as a tribe, along with his son Manasseh. Ephraim and Dan are both missing from the list.
Every list in the Bible contains Simeon, Judah, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin. To add to those nine tribes, there were Ephraim, Reuben, Joseph, Dan, and Levi. So were there 14 tribes then?

It's an interesting topic, i would be interested to see what other people's opinions are on this.

Continue of Nehemiah and other discussion

well this week i found out i was doing the blog at the end of study group so i only got a few notes, but i rememebered most of it i think.





We started by taking a little about Nehemiah from last week, and how Nehemiah was so upset because Jerusalem' s wall was broken. Nehemiah 1 v 1-3 '1.The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev in the twentieth year as i was in Susa the capital, 2. that Hanani one of my brother, came with certain men from Judah. And i asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem 3. And they said to me, "the remnant there in the provence who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. the wall of Jeruaslem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire." ' Nehemiah had the opportunity to go back to Babylon, he had a great life there, yet he stayed in Jerusalem. He was motivated to pull everything back together.

We were talking about the water cycle and how the seas were the nations, the sun was the knowledge of God which was the son Jesus. The clouds (top left) were the clouds of witnesses, which were all the people from Hebrews 11 which is about faith, those people will be in the Kingdom. Hebrews 12 v 1 'Therefore since we are surounded by so great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.'

Then we went on to talk about Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel because it linked with the water cycle as we looked at the different nations and the timeline. We find out what Nebuchadnezzar is like as a person, in other books he is just known as King. In Daniel we get to see the personal side of him. Daniel chapter 4 was written by Nebuchadnezzar and we compared this to modern times, and it would just be like Saddam Hussein writing a book of the Bible (if he wasn't dead)

i couldn't really remember the rest of what we talked about, sorry.

Nehemiah

I didn't offer to do the blog but I took a few notes so I might as well!

Today we looked at Nehemiah. We didn't have time to look at the whole book, we just really looked at the first couple of chapters. To start with we came up with what we already knew about Nehemiah:

• He had a vineyard ( I have yet to check this... but perhaps this is getting mixed up with Naboth??)
  
• His name means 'Comfort of Yahweh'
  
• He was a servant to the King - cupbearer


• Rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem

We have to look out for Nehemiah praying - you see different forms of prayer within the look.
2:1-5 The king was asking Nehemiah "what are you requesting?" and Nehemiah prayed before answering - we discussed how this might've been an extremely short one such as "Lord give me strength" without needing to close his eyes either.

His prayer in chapter 1 starts off by recognising God for who he is. He prays for the people as PART of the people - not in between the people and God. v6 "...which we have sinned against you..." He's the same level of behaviour and responsibility as everyone else.
See Isaiah 55:8 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'
Everything might look good from the outside but when you look closer theres all these glitches.. take the Earth, for example. It looks perfectly round and flat from really far away but when you look really close you see quite a different picture. No-one standing in the Himilayas is going to say the earth is flat! That was difficult to explain... (anyone care to help me?)

We then looked briefly at the rebuilding of the walls around Jerusalem . It wasn't for a while after the temple got rebuilt that the walls around Jerusalem got repaired (see that diagram I drew, the gap between the 80years rebuilding the temple and when Nehemiah comes into the picture). Nehemiah 2:17 says
"17Then I said to them, "You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision."
Need to build up the walls to distract us from things of the outside world. Rebuilt - stop people breaking through. Try to do it induvidually - cannot do it. Work together, help each other, encourage each other.

chapter 5:19 reads "Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people." This sounds pretty boastful but it's Nehemiah needing God's salvation. He's been trying hard but needs God's salvation. It seems boastful but that is probably just the language used.

Our task: Look through Nehemiah and find bits where we think he is praying (If i remember correctly).

November 2nd - Gideon

This week we looked at Gideon and to start off, we looked at how he was also called Jerubbaal (Judges 7:1), which means ‘’Let Baal Plead’’. We then had a whip-round of what we could remember about Gideon and some of the things we could remember were:

He destroyed the alter of Baal
He fought the Midianites
He defeated Zeba and Zalmunna
The fleece and dew signs
He was sent to save Israel
He built an alter called Jehovah-Shalom (“The LORD is Peace”)

We also had a think back to when we discussed the cycle in Judges and how it goes:
Faithful => Wandering => Oppressed => Appealing to God => A judge is sent => God delivers
And with Gideon, we can see we are at the ‘’Judge Is Sent’’ stage as God sends Gideon to battle and this battle is successful and Israel are saved. This cycle could also be applicable to each of our lives – we are all faithful but we are also appealing to God to send Jesus back to the earth so that we may be saved and granted access to the Kingdom of God.
So after the quick recap of Gideon, we read through Judges 6 to refresh our minds of part of the story of Gideon. We were then able to see some points that we’d missed out – the trumpets in v34, ‘But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, and Abi-ezer was gathered after him.’, and that Gideon was from the tribe of Manasseh.
From reading this chapter, we were able to look at some learning points for us as individuals and a key point that we came across was that in Judges 6:6-8 we read, ‘And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel cried unto the LORD. And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD…the LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel.’ Here, we see that God was ready to answer the children of Israel’s cries and from this we are able to take comfort in knowing that when we are in trouble, when we pray to God, He will answer us, and even if God doesn’t answer us straight away, we always have the Word of God to give us an answer. Another lesson that we were able to make was by linking Judges 6:8-9 to Jeremiah 16:14-15 where it says, ‘Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it will no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them…’. From this, we were able to see that God will send the Prophet back to save us, the children of Israel, from all the lands that He has driven us and with our faith, we can keep this hope alive by reading the Bible and reading of His promises to us.
Another point that we were able to make from chapter 6 of Judges was about the cakes in v19. We looked back to Cain and Abel’s sacrifices and how God torched the one that He found acceptable and with Gideon, we see that God makes Gideon’s sacrifice acceptable as it gets torched, ‘…and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes.’.
We also looked at the humility of Gideon in v15; ‘My family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.’ Gideon’s family had an altar dedicated to them which showed they were highly respected. They also had 2 bullocks and these animals were special in those times as they were able to breed to provide food. Gideon himself had 10 servants upon which he could call. The humility that Gideon shows is a big example to us to help us remember that we are a lot lower than God and that we need to humble ourselves before God when we pray to Him.
So in summary, this week we were able to look at the faithfulness of Gideon and we were able to take away benefits from God’s Word in that He is always there for us when we call on Him.

Your job – look through chapters 7,8 and 9 and come up with any point that you want to make about Gideon and say how you feel that there is a lesson for us in it.
My comment:
Chapter 7:3-8. Here it talks about how Gideon’s army was reduced in number from 22,000 to 300. I think the process of elimination could compare to our lives and that it’s a bit like God saying that those who are afraid are those who don’t listen to the Word of God and they return to the world but those who lapped the water are those who lap up the water are those who lap up the water are those who lap up the Word of God as He saves those people from the Midianites and helps them to defeat the Midianites. Melanie x

The Golden Calf Exodus 32

So the Golden Calf... this is when Moses has been up the mountain and the people make a calf-idol of gold, which is obviously not a good thing to be doing..

We had a peek at the context of this incident, as it always helps to know what's been going on before the incident. We went back to Ex 19 and 20, where we find Israel at Mt Sinai. God is talking to his people, showing that He is prepared to communicate with them, so long as they approach Him in the right way:

19v10,11 - Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes.

And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people."

He promises the people that He'll make them a 'special treasure above all nations' IF they're good. (19v4-6)

However, the people don't want things this way. They cannot see the goodness of the promise, or that God brought them there to learn, they only see fear. In 20v18,19, they are so scared that they plead with Moses that God speaks to them no more and that Moses speaks to Him for them. It's interesting that the last commandment that God gives to them (through Moses now) before Moses speaks privately to God,is this:

20v23 You shall not make anything to be with Me - gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.

Fitting, eh?!

In ch 24, the people's plea is put into practice, and Moses repeats to them the words of the Law given to him in 23-24. In v9-11 Aaron goes part way up the mountain with Moses, other nobles and Josuhua, before Moses leaves them and later Joshua to go back again to God for forty days and nights. But the point is, it says Aaron 'saw God' - although God is angels here, its still a pretty amazingly mindblowing experience to go through!

And so we come past all the commandments God gives to Moses, to the people, less than five weeks after God thundered at Mount Sinai... The people are having a hard time remembering what God has done for them throughout their wilderness journey, so much that in v1 they say it was MOSES who was the 'man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.' They had forgotten all about God, had limited their horizons to man, and so Moses had become their highest authority, in place of the LORD their God! Moses had been gone weeks, so the people lose faith in even him, and start asking for a replacement 'god.' We might say but HOW could a people who'd been through all they had FORGET about God?! But it was incredibly easy, simply because they'd STOPPED REMEMBERING! This is really quite important for us too - if we stop remembering what God has done and is doing for us, then it's too easy to forget Him.

Aaron, too, who'd seen 'God' was soon swayed and overcome by the people - this is also something we must be careful, and once again it is a matter of remembering God and His doings so that people in the world can't change our mind about His sheer righteousness and lovingkindness - God is the best thing we have but even so people will try to take us away from Him! So keep remembering Him, it's important.

Moses' actions in this chapter are quite an interesting type of Jesus. When he sees the scale of the people's sin (the 'unrestrained'/'nakedness'/'broken loose' in v25 seems to have connotations of sexual sinning too, not just idolatry) he throws the tablets down in disgust (God's commandments are broken). Then comes the 'who is on the LORD's side' call, and the Levites join Moses. (It seems as if the Levites had been resisiting this new move of the people all the way through, if you look at v25 it says the people were sinning 'to their shame among their enemies', which would suggest there is some adversity to the events of the 5 and 1/2 weeks, most likely the Levites, who were on 'the Lord's side'). Anyway, Moses later, having ordered 3000 to be killed for the sin, later goes to 'make atonement for your sin' with God. We are reminded of Jesus, especially when he asks God to either forgive the people, or put their sins on him and 'blot me out of Your book.' He is offering up his life to allow the people to be forgiven. It was a huge sacrifice to make (even though God's justice meant he didn't have to actually make it in the end), especially since the Book is probably the Book of Life - the people who will be in Kingdom... Moses was offering to be disallowed into the Kingdom of God!! That's some sacrifice, just like Jesus gave His whole life to our forgiveness - He had to spend every minute of every day not sinning FOR US! It's just amazing!

Moses also gave God the glory - he wanted the sin/wrath lifted because God's reputation would be at stake! It wasn't about him, it wasn't about the people, it was about God that Moses was worried. We can learn from him!

So. Why was it a CALF the people decided to make? Well it's all to do with Egypt, really. They had a lot of cow gods or similar. Especially Ptah, a creator god, who had a 'living image' (sort of manifestation on earth) in the Apis Bull. This was a bull that was chosen from the flocks of Egypt and basically treated like a god and royal. It had everything your average cow could ask for, plus more..! This Bull (there were also statue idols of it around Egypt, not just the living thing) had a disc between its horns, which represented the Sun God. There was Hathor, a cowheaded goddess of the desert, too - so you can see that calves would be quite special in Egypt- revered really. Perhaps an Israelite had brought along a wee Apis Bull idol and they made a mold (mould?) from that? Whatever it was, they were certainly looking back to Egypt. But 'remember Lot's wife'!

Dont stop remembering, because then you'll forget!