Joseph Sold into Slavery

We covered this story on Sunday. I was struck by the parallels to Jesus' story and wanted to cover them briefly here:

• Joseph was sent by Jacob to his brothers; Jesus was sent by God to the Jewish nation.
• Joseph's brothers hated him; Jesus was rejected by his own people ("He came unto his own, and his own received him not").
• Joseph was cast into a cistern; Jesus was buried in a rich man's tomb.
• Joseph, though alive, was presented dead to his father; Jesus rose from the dead.
• Joseph was received by a foreign people and saved them from a famine—in so doing, he also delivered his family; Jesus was received by Gentiles and saved them and the Jews from their sins.

I suspect we can draw more parallels here if we want to. It strikes me how Genesis tells this same story over and over again in the lives of the patriarchs and even in the creation story.

For example, we see Abraham send Eliezer to get a bride for his son Isaac, a symbol of God the Father sending God the Holy Spirit to procure a bride (the Church) for God the Son. Again, we have the symbol of Adam naming the animals to show how Eve was made specially for him in the same way we are made specially for Christ. The Messianic prophecy is explicit in Genesis 3. We see the death of Christ figured in the sacrifice of Isaac and foreshadowings of Pentecost in the Tower of Babel.

There are all sorts of these things in the book of Genesis, and they're all worthy of some exposition. Hopefully I'll have some more time to look into them in the future.

God's Temple

A couple years ago I stopped doing verse-by-verse studies on my own time, preferring to get a broader scope of the Scripture through a more traditional Bible-in-a-year program.

I still do my can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees studies, but generally in line with what I'm doing in Bible study at church or other groups. I have found not surprisingly that they sometimes coincide, and so I've had some reinforcement over the past couple years that I've done this.

But this blog entry isn't about that.

It's about a somewhat different topic—God's temple. I don't have time to do much justice to the temple, but I noticed something when reading in 2d Chronicles a couple nights ago:

Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save.’ (2Ch 20.7–9)

Jehoshaphat's prayer comes when Judah is being attacked by a confederation of several nations with an army that they cannot withstand. What caught my eye in this prayer is that he specifically references the temple, "a sanctuary for your name." Jehoshaphat is really making covenant demands here; his prayer is humble, one of complete dependence upon God, but it is full of reminders of how God's people upheld their end of the bargain—they did not attack these nations because God told them not to; they lived in the land he gave them (I see in this a fulfillment of their responsibilities under the covenant); they built him a temple. In response, he should execute judgment on their enemies.

The narrative continues with a climactic defeat of Judah's enemies in fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham and to David.


As I read this, I was struck by the New Testament discussion of the temple: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1Co 3.16). Paul also writes, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price" (1Co 6.19,20) and "For we are the temple of the living God" (2Co 6.16).

There is an important subtext to these passages from the letters to the Corinthians: first, the edification of the body (1Co 3) and the war against the flesh (1Co 6, 2Co 6). The temple is spoken of in both a corporate sense (describing the church, it seems) as well as an individual one (we are each temples).

I mention this primarily because I think there is an important lesson to be learned here, and that is that the defense of the temple—this place that God has chosen to put his name and to dwell—is not up to human effort. There are enemies without and within, both doctrinal error and sinful desires that "war against the soul" (2Pe 2.11). Like the Israelites, we sometimes wage war in the strength that God provides, and we sometimes must admit our utter inadequacy in the face of those raging armies and throw ourselves on the covenant faithfulness of God.

In the end, whether we are strong against our sins (a rare occasion for me, personally) or weak, we always rely on God's promise that he will defend his temple against its enemies. I find some comfort in knowing that I can legitimately remind God of his promises to me. He is our shield and refuge, a very present help in time of trouble.

Karate and Canonicity

This past weekend was a karate test; I was testing for my 4th Dan in Tang Soo Do, and one of my friends was attending. He went through the same rite a couple years ago, but had joined an association that doesn't like my school all that much for a variety of mostly political reasons.

There was a bit of discussion about rank, and his perception of what Master really meant. My friend's perspective is that promotion to any rank, master included, is a recognition of what is already evident—one is not given the rank by the instructor as much as the instructor is agreeing that all of the necessary requirements are fulfilled. We see this in any degree program, of course—my degree from school says basically exactly that, just in somewhat more flowery language.

Now his current instructor is of a different mind. I'm not really at liberty to talk about how the conflict came to pass, but he is adamant that he and only he should be allowed to confer the title of master.

Given some recent arguments about the canon of Scripture, it is interesting to me that this would come up, as this is somewhat analogous. Is the canon recognized or determined by the church?


Naturally there is a bit of tension in the way we think about this. Anyone can call himself a master of a martial art, but naturally there is a question about whether he can withstand the test to pass. There is another question: if he is not put to the test, is he still a master?

The ways in which we answer this question may help us articulate our perception of the canon. I don't have much in the way of time to answer well. It seems to me that there are both objective and subjective approaches to answering the question of canonicity, and that these are naturally going to provide different responses.

I will say as a final note that one of the things I appreciate about the martial arts is that they provide me an occasional metaphor for theological matters. That I am a kinaesthetic and visual learner is probably undeniable; it surprises me sometimes how these sort of manual endeavours prompt such mental ones.