Deuteronomy 25-27: From There To Here, History - It's Who We Are

Image: From There To Here, 2009, Vicinity of Harper's Ferry, Va.

Deuteronomy 26:5–10 (NKJV) ⁵ And you shall answer and say before the Lord your God: ‘My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. ⁶ But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us. ⁷ Then we cried out to the Lord God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labor and our oppression. ⁸ So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. ⁹ He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, “a land flowing with milk and honey”; ¹⁰ and now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land which you, O Lord, have given me.’  “Then you shall set it before the Lord your God, and worship before the Lord your God.

The famous passage reprinted above should stop us in our tracks and require us to reassess a lot of things that previously we may have just taken for granted.

What God requires of His people in these verses is that the individual Israelite and the people as a whole should ground themselves in a definite history.  God wanted them, in each of their subsequent generations, to say with a sincere heart that the "Egyptians mistreated US, afflicted US, etc."  Certainly after decades and even centuries it would have been hard for young Israelites to self-identify with their forefathers in this: difficult yes - but not impossible.  Not only was it not impossible, it was highly to be desired.  God wanted His people to center their own self-awareness firmly in a historical context, to see themselves as individuals and a people, who have traveled or been brought, "from there to here."

The farther removed a person is from their historical context the more hazy it becomes.  The past can seem shrouded with fog, blurry, indistinct.  It is the duty of a family, a church, a culture to combat this.  History must be kept alive and nowhere is this more important than in our Christian faith. As with the ancient Israelites, modern Christians should view the events of the Old Testament and the New as "their" history.  The Acts of the Apostles does not have a conclusion.  The written text just ends with the cliff hanger image of Paul in a Roman prison.  This is intentional.  The history of the New Testament Church, which is the subject of the book of Acts, is still being written.

If we really take hold of this then we will understand more fully what Paul meant when he said: "know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham." (Gal. 1:7).  Through the wisdom of God which has opened up membership in God's covenant community by the instrument of "faith", all people today who have the "faith of Abraham" (Gal. 3:6) are thereby united into one world encompassing family.  We are the descendants of Abraham and the fulfillment of God's promise to him that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

God's Visible Church is like a powerful locomotive thundering across the tracks of time.  It is going "somewhere", a particular destination that is our certain hope, the "hope of Israel" (Acts 28:20), but it has also come from "somewhere", a particular history that encompasses the tracks that stretch out behind the train.

Now this becomes highly important to us because it is this historical perspective which must essentially define us as individual Christians and corporately in our Churches.  Certainly there will be, along our individual tracks, a certain history that is tied to our geographic and cultural heritage.  We all come from specific parents, grand-parents and historical context.  We cannot ignore how those things have influenced us.  But what we must recognize is that in the light of Christ and God's work in history, we must see all other influences on us as potential threats.  Paul, upon his conversion, had to go and rethink every thing he ever took for granted.  He had to sift through his previous thoughts and heritage and seek to preserve that which was 'true' but had to excise huge chunks of that heritage as having been false.

Paul became a new man with a new heritage in that experience.  Much of the doctrine of being "born again" consists in this same thing.  When Paul speaks of a "new creation" he is speaking of a "new" social grouping, the NT people of God, who now are to be viewed as a separate people, distinct from all other races, with their own cultural distinctives and most importantly, their own historical awareness.

The ancient Israelite was to affirm that "My father was a Syrian" along with all the rest and then he was to live in such a manner as to honor that heritage.  Certainly Christians are to affirm that "My Father is the Lord God Almighty, who has arranged all things in space and time, to bring me to this place where I can claim Him and all of the events of space and time, as my family heritage."  In doing so, like the ancient Israelite, this should move us to worship... to express gratitude for what our God has done... in all things but most especially in the salvation wrought by Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God.

How different it would be if the modern Christian church, in the United States of America, would embrace this self-consciousness.  We are the people of God who have not only a future with God but a history with Him.  Everything that has happened to us, is happening to us and will happen to us, must be understood through that lens.