This is Part 4 in our Understanding the Whole Bible series. (Formerly called Hope for Humanity.)
The Story so far...
Which brings us to Israel's heroes and leaders:
Have you ever been reading through a part of the Old Testament and wondered what in the world is going on? Maybe you're reading a story of one of the major Old Testament characters: Joseph, Moses, David, etc. How does there story relate to the Larger Story of what God is up to in the world?
As we saw in Part 1 of the series, the Larger Story of the bible is about God creating creatures that were "in his image." Humans were made to be God's ambassadors and representatives in creation, using whatever capabilities and resources we have to care for the world and all the other creatures in it:
As the biblical story moves on to the story of Israel and of specific Israelites, it is vital that we keep this Larger Story firmly in mind. Israel and Israel's heroes and leaders are pieces of this Larger Story:
After humanity as a whole failed to faithfully serve God as his representatives (the "Fall" in Genesis 3), God narrowed his focus in on one specific nation (Israel) to train them to be his representatives so that one day all humanity could be restored as representatives.
Israel's heroes and leaders (Moses, David, and so on) are specific examples of people God was training to be his representatives.
Generally speaking almost all of the main characters in Israel's story were either a prophet, priest, or king. Each of these roles clearly fit into this theme of representation.
Prophets speak God's words to the people, as well as bring the prayers and questions of the people to God.
Priests bring the sacrifices and sins of the people to God and bring the forgiveness of God to the people. (Note that even the priestly vestments were shiny and sparkly to symbolize visually the priests' role as images of the glorious God.)
And of course kings fulfilled humanity's commission to "rule" (Genesis 1:26-28) in a very literal sense: they brought God's order and justice to the people by governing them.
Take Moses as a specific example. Think of his story. (He lived before Israel had settled in Canaan and therefore roughly fulfills the role of a prophet, priest, and king all in one.) God calls him through the burning bush to go to Egypt to free the Israelites. With God's power and guidance Moses eventually convinces Pharaoh to release the Israelites, he leads them through their many years in the desert, communicating and embodying God's authority to the people.
His function as a representative is possibly most obvious when Israel is camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Here Moses literally is sent hiking up and down the mountain as a middle-man communicating to God on behalf of the people and then communicating to the people on behalf of God. At one point Moses' face even begins to glow from his time spent with God, physically embodying a level of God's glorious image in his face (Exodus 34:29).
But here's the important point: Moses is being what God created ALL humanity to be!
What makes Moses special in the bible is not that he is a representative of God (because all humans are representatives of God). What makes Moses special is that he does this role with a relative degree of success! More often than not biblical characters are shown failing at bearing the image of God.
And all this leads to the second important point: this is how the story of Israel and it's various leaders and heroes relate to the bible's opening chapters.
The bible - from Genesis to Revelation - is one long narrative about God creating people to represent him, people failing to represent him well, and then God rehabilitating people back into the full image-bearers they were made to be. The bible is such a long book - both in terms of the number of pages it has and the amount of history it covers - that it can be incredibly easy to "lose the forest for the trees". Keeping the theme of representation firmly in our minds whenever we read the bible can help us keep this big picture in view.
In the next blog post we'll turn to the New Testament to see how Jesus takes this theme to a whole new level!