Tag Christianity

The Exodus of Jesus

Todd R Leave a comment

Bible translators have a tough job, otherwise one English translation would be all we have or need.  Translation isn’t a straight-forward process. There are many trade-offs, including between ease of reading in contemporary settings, and depth of meaning in the original context, but sometimes I wish different choices were made.

One example is Luke 9:30-31, which says: “And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (from ESV, emphasis mine). This happened during an event known as the Transfiguration, when Jesus took His disciples Peter, James, and John up a mountain for a vision of His future glory.  Matthew records in his gospel that Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.”[1]

While on that mountain, the 3 lucky disciples also witnessed a conversation about something: Jesus’ “departure.”  In a recent sermon I learned that the word translated “departure” is “exodos” in the original Greek.  For ease of reading purposes, “departure” is a more familiar word and makes a lot of sense to a modern reader, because Jesus was soon to depart the world temporarily through death, then more permanently after His resurrection.  On the other hand, “exodos” literally means an exit, or figuratively a death, but to the original audience and those familiar with Old Testament history, the word “exodos” carries other meanings as well.

So, why would Moses and Elijah be talking to Jesus about His “exodos”?  Because they both had history with such “departures.”

As told in the Old Testament book of Exodus, Moses was called by God while the descendants of Israel (Jacob) were slaves in Egypt.  After performing many miracles in God’s power, Moses led the new nation of Israel on an exodus out of literal slavery in Egypt.

Elijah performed many miracles, and prophesied that the nation of Israel, unless they repent of their disobedience, would be taken back into exile, but later be freed from Assyrian rule in that generation’s exodus.

Again, why would Moses and Elijah be talking to Jesus about His “exodos”?  Because Jesus was going to lead spiritual Israel out of slavery to sin around the entire world, from each nation, in every generation’s Exodus.  Moses, Elijah, and Jesus would have had a lot to talk about.

“And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodos, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

[1] Matthew 17:2

Faith in the Face of Objection

Todd R 1 Comment

Perhaps I’m odd in this way, but I find that one of the main things that bolsters my faith is the flimsiness of objections to Christian belief.  Sometimes these objections catch us off guard if we haven’t thought them through, but on more investigation, we find that they just seem ignorant.  I remember one of the very first Sunday school groups I was in after becoming a Christian, that a couple of the college students in the group, who had grown up in the church, said the Gospels aren’t reliable because John’s is so much different than the other 3.  In their view, the 4 writers couldn’t have been writing about the same person, and perhaps as a result Jesus was not real.  First, I had to deal with my shock that these people were in a Bible study even though they had serious doubts about Scripture’s reliability and authority, as well as about Jesus’ identity.  Second, I realized I didn’t have a good answer to this “problem.”  So, in this post I’m sharing what I discovered since this early experience.

Most Bible students and scholars agree that Jesus spent about 3 years of His life in public ministry., from His first miracle of turning water to wine in Cana, on through His resurrection and ascension to heaven.  Yet, we only have 4 short books, the Gospels, telling us what He did during his entire life of about 33 years, with a focus on the last 3.  To me, it’s surprising we have so little documentation of Jesus’ life especially since the Gospels make it clear that Jesus was a very busy person, often having to hide from the crowds that followed Him everywhere.  Why is this?  Why isn’t there more to read about Jesus’ life?

Somewhere I read that each Gospel is really a passion narrative (a story of His suffering, death and resurrection) preceded by a brief introduction.  Compare this with a modern biography of an important figure that might be hundreds of pages.  The 4 writers weren’t writing a biography of Jesus in the way we might expect them to but were trying to give us enough information about who He was and what He’s done for us so that we have a basis for believing in Him.  Writing for different audiences and at different times, the writers selected what they knew about Jesus to fit what they wanted to communicate.  They weren’t trying to answer every question we might have.  That would have taken much longer, and wasn’t really necessary.

In John’s Gospel, the very last verse (21:25) says:

“Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

As I noted, John’s gospel is sometimes criticized as inauthentic because it is so different than the other ones.  But how John closes his Gospel shows that there was so much from Jesus’ ministry that he could have chosen to write, and that he didn’t include everything.  John just made different choices than the others.  For example, John records only 7 miracles that Jesus performed, when in reality there must have been hundreds or thousands.  The Gospels say Jesus was sometimes up all night healing people.

John also wrote about 7 “I am” statements that aren’t in the other Gospels.  To John, the number 7 seemed to be important and maybe useful tool for organizing his thoughts among all he had to choose from.  Considering Jesus spent hundreds or thousands of hours teaching His disciples and others, it’s not naïve to think that John alone would find this group of similar statements and decide to structure His Gospel around them.  They likely were spoken months and even years apart from each other, so the pattern might not have been as obvious as it is to us, who are reading a brief, curated summary.

So, sometimes when objections to our faith catch us off guard, it sometimes means that the person making the objection (and us) haven’t thought it through.  We may not figure out the answers to everything, because God wants us to trust, not necessarily understand, but knowing that He is reliable doesn’t require our knowledge to be complete or perfect.

As one of my favorite Bible commentators, Warren Wiersbe, often wrote: “We do not live on explanations; we live on promises.”  We can’t know everything, but we can know as Psalm 40:5 proclaims, that:

“You have multiplied, O LORD my God,
            your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
            none can compare with you!
I will proclaim and tell of them,
            yet they are more than can be told.”

Amen.

Sodom and Gomorrah’s Selfishness

Todd R 1 Comment

Fellow travelers,

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah from the book of Genesis is well-known even to many who aren’t religious.  Genesis 18 and 19 describe the two cities as extremely wicked, specifically mentioning homosexuality and rape.  The English term “sodomy” even comes from the name of the city of Sodom.  In the Genesis story, Lot and some of his family escape based on Abraham pleading with God for them, “Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven.  And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.”  (Genesis 19:24-25).  This is the most well-known part of the story, and some explanations of why the cities were destroyed found on the internet and elsewhere say Genesis has the “full account” of the story.  Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for their excessive sexual sins.

However, there is more.

Ezekiel, a prophet to Jews captive in Babylon centuries after Sodom was destroyed, said: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.”  (Ezekiel 16:49-50). Ezekiel was describing the sins of Judah to explain why they had been sent into exile from their Promised Land and said they don’t compare favorably even to Sodom.  Surprisingly, Ezekiel doesn’t even mention any sexual sins in this description.  Not that these sins were irrelevant, but in Ezekiel’s view, Sodom would have been destroyed even without them.  Sodom’s other sins were also abominations.

What’s the point?  I can’t say it any better than the Life Application Study Bible, which notes on Ezekiel 16:49: “Sodom was destroyed because of its pride, laziness, gluttony, and unconcern for the poor and needy. It is easy to be selective in what we consider gross sin. If we do not commit such horrible sins as adultery, homosexuality, stealing, and murder, we may think we are living good enough lives.”

We can’t pick and choose which sins are more or less deserving of God’s judgement, because in His holiness and justice, He must and will judge all sin.  While “lifestyle” sins without repentance may be more dangerous to a church or congregation, even sins we may not consider extreme are dangerous as well.  Ezekiel’s point is that selfishness and a disregard for those in need should be repented of as much as any other sin.  Ezekiel wrote, “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it,” but he also wrote that Judah would be restored by a coming Messiah, the Christ.

That restoration comes through Christ’s sacrifice for all sins, and anyone can have salvation through faith, which drives us to confession and repentance.  As John wrote in 1 John 1:8-10, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

At the end of our journey, all of God’s people will be cleansed of all of their sins, not just the most noticeable ones, because “he is faithful.”  Not because any of us are less sinful than others.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The First Book I Remember

Todd R 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s the first book you ever finished and still remember to this day?
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While I don’t often respond to writing prompts, today’s WordPress prompt of “What’s the first book you ever finished and still remember to this day?” caught my attention.  I didn’t read a lot as a child except what I needed to do for school, and only really read as a hobby after school was behind me.  So, I think I remember a lot of what I read for fun.  I know I read quite a few of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, often re-reading them and making different choices until I got through all the different paths, but I have no idea which ones I read first and when.

Which leaves me with the first specific book I do remember reading, when I was probably about 10 years old: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis.  This fantasy tale can be approached and understood on many levels, but as a child it was just a great fantasy story.  It was easy as a child to identify with one or more of the 4 children who are the main characters: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.  On one hand, we can admire Peter for instance, but on the other hand it was easy to learn from the character arc of Edmund: to see that we can all fall to temptation and get our priorities wrong; to see that even the worst of us can be redeemed; to see that the noble Aslan, the lion king, is most noble when he sacrifices himself for Edmund.  These are all things our current culture can learn from.

The cover of the book I had as a child.

But it was only much later in life that I realized that Aslan was a representation of Jesus Christ, and that C.S. Lewis was a well-known writer of Christian apologetics (writings in the defense of Christianity).  Lewis had created, in his Chronicles of Narnia series, a set of books that operate well on multiple levels.  These weren’t just books for children with simple lessons, but books that can contribute to the faith of anyone at any age.  In fact, just last year I ordered the series of books because I couldn’t find them and started re-reading them, and I’m over 50 years old.  I’ve probably read a couple dozen books by C.S. Lewis, but these “children’s books” are still some of my favorites.

I even have a couple of Aslan’s quotes saved in my file of quotes:

“Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve. And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth”

Have you discovered Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia?  If not, check them out whether you want an easy, relaxing read, or whether you’re looking for surprising theological insight.  The books work for both.  If you have read them, read them again!  Maybe you’ll find, as I have, that there’s always something new in them, or something it’s helpful to be reminded of.

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out the rest of my blog where I post near-daily thoughts on Christianity and how it can affect our daily lives!

Daily Readings for June 1 – 6

Todd R Leave a comment

Fellow travelers:

For those looking for a Bible reading plan, each week I post 2 chapters to read per day as a main reading plan, and for anyone who wants to read the whole Bible in 2026, I’ll post the extra chapters to read that week.  The main readings will include nearly all of the New Testament, plus Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, and a few other Old Testament books.

Reading 3 chapters a day on weekdays and 4 on weekends almost exactly covers the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, so the “extra” readings will be about 9 chapters per week.  These readings will cover the Pentateuch, the OT histories, a few other OT books, plus Jude and Revelation from the NT.

Regardless, I hope this schedule encourages others to read and study their Bible more, whatever parts they decide to read.  Follow along (or not) any way you choose!

2 chapter a day plan:

Monday, June 1: Proverbs 2, Jonah 1
Tuesday, June 2: Proverbs 3, Jonah 2
Wednesday, June 3: Proverbs 4, Jonah 3
Thursday, June 4: Proverbs 5, Jonah 4
Friday, June 5: Proverbs 6, Acts 1
Saturday, June 6: Proverbs 7, Acts 2
Sunday, June 7: Proverbs 8, Acts 3

Extra chapters for those reading the whole Bible in 2026:
Joshua 9 – 17