A Journey Through the Bible, Part Nineteen

Old Testament

Genesis 37 and 38

Genesis 37:28—“Then Midianite traders passed by; so the brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.” This is the beginning of the marvelous story of Joseph, and how the children of Israel ended up in Egypt, prior to 400 years of slavery. If you have not done so, let me urge you to go to my Bible blog and read “Who Can Say to Him, What Are You Doing? Number 7" where I discuss this entire event in the context of God’s ways and doings. As I mentioned in an earlier post (chapter 34), Jacob’s sons—at least 10 of them—were extremely wicked in their youth; if I figure correctly, none of them could have been more than 25 years old. They will grow, but it will take awhile. They first intended to kill Joseph, but Reuben talked them out of that; so they sold him to some passing Midianites who took him to Egypt and sold him into slavery. He was 17 years old, according to verse 2 of this chapter. We’ll pick up Joseph’s story beginning in chapter 39. In the meantime, there is a Messianic interlude…

Chapter 38:29—“Then it happened, as he drew back his hand, that his brother came out unexpectedly; and she said, "How did you break through? This breach be upon you!" Therefore his name was called Perez.”  Perez was the son of Judah by his daughter-in-law Tamar—a sordid tale if there ever was one. But the whole chapter is basically aiming at this point—Perez will be in the line of David and thus in the line of Christ. Keep in mind the theme of the Old Testament—Christ is coming. Adam—Seth—Noah—Shem—Abraham—Isaac—Jacob—Judah—Perez….We won’t see all of the line born, but this does establish the foundation, which is the purpose of the book of Genesis. This is a fascinating chapter that shows the utter debauchery of Judah. But he was young, perhaps only a teenager when he first got married. Almost assuredly, the events of this chapter did not take place right after chapter 37, although it probably laps over; the chronology just wouldn’t fit, and obviously a number of years pass during this chapter. Ancient writers weren’t always as concerned with exact chronology as historians are today. As we will see later on, Judah grows up into a much better man than he shows in this chapter. Read it if you aren’t familiar with the details. You won’t be bored, I assure you.

Perez.  You didn't know Jesus had an Hispanic in his ancestry, did you?  Ha ha.  Just a little joke there.  I'm not sure how this "Perez" would have been pronounced, but probably fairly close to the modern Hispanic pronunciation.

New Testament

Matthew 21

Matthew 21:5—“Tell the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your King is coming to you, Lowly, and sitting on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.” There are a couple of verses I’d like to look at from this chapter. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem—the context of verse 5—was predicted over 500 years previously by the prophet Zechariah (Zech. 9:9). Here’s more evidence of the inspiration of the Bible. How did Zechariah know, 500 years in advance, that Jesus would come riding into Jerusalem on a donkey? The only way he could have known is if God, Who can see the future as well as the past, told him. See my article “A Prophetic Moment” on my Bible blog for other information about predictive prophecy and Biblical inspiration. I also have a couple of videos on the subject on that blog as well.

Matthew 21:24-25—“But Jesus answered and said to them, ‘I also will ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things: The baptism of John--where was it from? From heaven or from men?’" The religious leaders of the day were always trying to trap Jesus somehow, in order to destroy His influence with the multitudes. They never succeeded. In this instance, they asked Him where He acquired the authority for what He did. Jesus brilliantly turns the tables on them in the passage related above. “Where did John the Baptist get his authority?” They couldn’t answer Him because they would be ensnared either way—they didn’t honor John, so if they said he got his authority from heaven, Jesus would ask, “Then why didn’t you obey him?” But if the leaders said John obtained his authority from men, that would destroy their influence with the people, because the masses believed that John was a prophet. So they said, “We don’t know,” and that humiliated them and ended the debate.

A major key here, though, is that Jesus teaches there are only two sources of religious authority—God or man. If we aren’t getting our religious practices from God, then we are getting them from man, and it’s obvious from this context—and every other context in the Bible—that we should do only those things which are authorized by Jehovah. In Matthew 15:9, a verse we examined earlier, Jesus said “And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” Let us be very, very sure that what we are doing has God’s authority behind it.