The Bible in 2020

God remembers His people and He purposefully fulfills His covenant with them. Through Jesus Christ He has secured our inheritance.

Note: Last week’s reading was Exodus 1-20.

Do you know anything about your ancestors, say, from the seventeenth century?  Genealogy research has become popular today, but I dare say most of us know almost nothing about our forefathers.  I know only three or four things about my paternal grandfather.  My father told me his dad, John Michael Carroll, was born on a ship traveling on the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States in 1875.  When they docked in NY his birth was registered there.  So he was legally born in the USA.  Though a Roman Catholic, he married my grandmother who never professed any faith.  He learned the trade of bookbinding and had the honor of binding the books (official documents, I suppose) for the opening of the Empire State Building on May 1, 1931.  When my father (John Michael Carroll, Jr.) professed faith in Christ as an evangelical during his college years, my grandfather said to him, “Son, I want you to know that I love the Lord.”  My dad took that to be a genuine profession of faith on the part of his father. Grandpa Carroll died in 1940, five years before I was born.

That’s all I know about my father’s father.

The voice from the burning bush

But in the Old Testament times, family histories seem to have been kept better and for longer periods of time.  Over four hundred years had passed since Jacob died, but Moses knew his family history.  He belonged to the Hebrew people who migrated to Egypt during the world wide famine when his ancestor Joseph had managed the stockpiles that saved the Egyptians and the family of Jacob.  When God spoke to Moses in the burning bush, the Lord presented Himself as the “God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:4). Moses recognized who it was addressing him—the God of his fathers.

God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 2:24).  He then commissioned Moses to deliver His people from slavery in Egypt and made Himself known to Moses as “I AM WHO I AM” (3:14).  Moses went on to obey God and deliver the Israelites from slavery through many setbacks and discouragements. God made a way through the demonstration of His power to send plagues, open and close the Red Sea, lead them by fire and cloud, and miraculously provide them with food and water.

The inheritance in heaven for God's covenant people

I don’t remember my grandfather, but God remembers His people and He purposefully fulfills His covenant with them.  Maybe I will meet my grandpa in glory as one of those God chose as His own.  Meanwhile may we trust the God who remembers and who through Jesus Christ has secured for us an inheritance in heaven ready to be revealed at the last day (First Peter1:3-5).

This week I’ll be reading Exodus 21-40.

© John A Carroll 2018 Used by permission.

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