Scripture Stories Ozunox

Scripture Stories
SCRIPTURE
STORIES
LIVES AND TIMES
D OU G L A S W I L S O N
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www.dougwils.com
Douglas Wilson, Scripture Stories: Lives and Times

Copyright ©2021 by Douglas Wilson.
Cover design and interior design: Valerie Anne Bost.
Cover illustration: “David with the head of Goliath,” line engraving by R. van Aud
Wellcome. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only
licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. Altered.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
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Version: 20210223print
Contents
Man and Ishshah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Our Father Noah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
From Abram to Abraham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Moses the Christian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The Poet Warrior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Solomon in All His Glory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Jeremiah Hurts the War Effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
The People Had a Mind to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
The Lord Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
The Whore Becomes a Virgin Bride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Simon Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
The Apostle Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
For Davis and Manisha
Man and Ishshah
O
nce upon a time, in the very beginning of our world,
the great Creator God made the heavens and the earth.
The earth was misshapen and unformed, and the Spirit
of the Lord hovered over the waters. The great Creator cre-
ated all things in just six days, beginning with light on the
first day. On the second day, the Creator separated the waters
above the heavens from the waters below the heavens. The
third day, He separated the waters again, this time dividing
the waters with dry land. Once the land was established, the
Creator God showed His kindness by covering the land with
grass, with herbs, and with fruit-bearing trees. On the fourth
day, the true God created rulers for the day and for the night,
these rulers being the sun and moon, respectively. The stars in
the sky—the heavenly host—were also created on the fourth
day. And on the day of their creation, this great angelic host
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shouted and sang for joy (Job 38:7). The morning stars sang
together, and all the sons of God shouted for their joy. On the
fifth day, the Creator fashioned creatures above for the sky,
and creatures below for the great deeps. In the sky, He created
birds to fly above the earth, and He also created all the fish of
the sea. In addition to the multitude of fish, He created great
sea serpents. On the sixth day, the last day of creation, the
Creator God made all the beasts of the earth. And then, as
the crowning work of all He had done, He created Man out of
the dust of the ground.
At the end of each day, the Creator pronounced in His wis-
dom that what He had done was good. Everything He made
was very good, but one of the best things He came to make
was an enclosed garden at the very top of a mountain. This
garden was east of a land called Eden and was situated as a
high mountain sanctuary. The Creator had already made Man
out of the dust of the ground that was east of this garden of
Eden, which in its turn was east of the land of Eden. After He
had created Man, the Lord God planted this garden and ap-
pointed Man to dress it and keep it. In the garden, the Lord
had caused every pleasant and good tree to grow. All the trees
that were pleasant to see were growing there and all the trees
that were good for food. When He placed Man in the garden,
the Creator generously told him that he could eat from any tree
there, with just one exception.
Four rivers originated in this garden—but they started as
one river. From this point of origin, that river soon divided
into four. Two of them were called the Pishon and the Gihon,
which no longer exist. The other two were the Tigris and the
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M an and I shshah
Euphrates, which are still flowing. The Pishon flowed down

through the land of Havilah, which we now know as Arabia.
Precious stones were found in Havilah—gold, onyx, and bdel-
lium. The bdellium was white, like the color of manna (Num.
11:7), and to this day God promises to give the white stone,
the hidden manna, to the one who overcomes through faith
in Him (Rev. 2:17). The Gihon flowed through Cush, better
known as Ethiopia. The Tigris flowed through Assyria, and the
Euphrates through Syria and Babylon. The shape of this entire
region was drastically altered by the Flood, but we can still see
remnants of what used to be there.
We know that the garden of Eden was on a mountain for
several reasons—first, we should remember that water flows
downhill. This is really the only satisfactory way to explain one
river turning into four. But the second reason is more direct.
Later in the great story of our salvation, when God is speak-
ing to the king of Tyre, and to the winged bull behind that
king’s throne and power, God declares that the king had been
in Eden, in the garden of God, on the holy mountain of God
(Ezek. 28:13–14).
And God called our father Man. We have already seen that
the Creator God declared that everything He had made was
very good—but even good things need to be tended. The gar-
den that the Lord was going to plant needed a lord, someone
who would serve as a steward of all the beautiful things God
would place there. And so on the last day of the creation, God
fashioned that someone in His own image out of the dust of
the ground. When He had done this, God named him Man. In
the Hebrew language, we would call him Adam. The Creator
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did this with the express intention of giving Man dominion

over everything on earth, everything in the seas, and every-
thing in the air. This meant that Man was to look at how the
Lord planted the garden for him, and then he was supposed to
tend and extend that garden throughout the whole earth. He
had to protect the garden first, and keep it, but then, having
protected it, he was responsible to exercise dominion through-
out the whole world. The Creator wanted the whole world to
become a garden like this first garden, and He wanted Man to
do this work. Despite the tragic turn that sin brought to our
story, the Creator has never abandoned this goal of turning the
whole world into a garden-city.
The beasts of the field and the great creatures of the sea were
all able to multiply. Man was responsible to exercise dominion
over them all, but he was just a solitary man. There was no way
for him to do this. How would he keep up with them all?
Now the Creator God was finished creating Man, and had
placed him in the garden, and had given him all the trees (ex-
cept for one) for food. That one tree was deadly, the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Creator told Man that
the day he ate from it would be the day that he died. Now the
Creator Himself knew good from evil, and it is likely that Man
would have been allowed to eat even from that tree when the
Lord finally granted him permission, but at the beginning, it
was important for Man to follow his instructions carefully and
to refuse even to consider eating from that tree.
Now the Creator saw that it was not good for Man to live
as a solitary being without the companionship of someone
like him. If Man was created in the image of God, and if God
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M an and I shshah
had an image, then Man needed an image as well. Moreover,

Man was not able to be fruitful and multiply without such a
companion. The Creator put Man to work in naming all the
animals of the garden. The Lord would form different ani-
mals from the ground, just has He had done with Man, and
He would bring those animals to Man. As the Lord did this,
Man would name them, and whatever name he gave, that
was the name that creature would bear. But Man was not just
naming. By doing this, it soon became apparent that among
the animals, there was no one that Man could marry, no one
for Man to give his name to. The other animals all had their
suitable companions, but Man did not. The Creator would
not make a companion for Man out of the dust of the ground.
This companion must be closer than that. The bond must be
the closest imaginable.
So the Creator caused Man to fall into a death-like coma.
While he was in this deep sleep, the Creator took a rib from
Man’s side, closed up the place again, and created a suit-
able companion for him from that rib. Man had been taken
from the earth, but woman was taken from the side of Man.
And ever since that time, every man and every woman have
been born from woman. Man was the mother of Woman so
that women might become the mothers of men. When Man
awoke from his coma, the Lord brought his bride to him, and
the Creator told him how she had been made. Overjoyed
with this gift, Man spoke the first poem, and in it he named
his wife Ishshah—because she had been taken out of his
side. From this place, she was bone of his bone, flesh of his
own flesh. And this is why, down to this day, a man leaves
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
his home, leaves his father and mother, joins himself to his
wife and they become one flesh. Because one man and one
woman were once one flesh, a man is to leave his father and
mother and seek out a woman to be his true companion that
he might become one flesh with her. Everything about this
beautiful story was now perfect.
But one of the great celestial creatures that the Creator had
made was the seraph. Of these great seraphim, one of them
had become filled with craft and guile and had fallen from his
heavenly estate. We have many names for these fallen sera-
phim, but they include dragon, serpent, and worm. Centuries
later, such flying serpents afflicted the children of Israel in the
wilderness until a servant of God named Moses made a bronze
figure of one impaled on a pole and lifted it up so that the chil-
dren of Israel could by faith see the ultimate destruction of
their enemy.
The first book of the Bible calls this creature a serpent. The
last book of the Bible calls him a great dragon (Rev. 12:9). That
great dragon, the ancient serpent, is called the Devil, or Satan.
He has been a murderer from the very beginning and has been
the enemy of our souls for all these long years. This dragon,
full of hatred and guile, came into the garden where Man and
Ishshah were living and decided to lure them into an ungrate-
ful disobedience of the Creator. In accordance with his lying
nature, he did this with craft and great subtlety.
There were two important trees in the garden. The Creator
did not expect Man to work as a slave but rather as a faithful
steward. Man had every right to receive his life from the gar-
den he was tending. In fact, the Creator God told him that
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M an and I shshah
he could eat from all the trees in the garden (and there must
have been very many) with only one exception. The Creator
had even said that Man was free to eat from the Tree of Life—
which was his life. The only tree that was prohibited was called
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
But the Creator had given Man his instructions about these
trees before Ishshah had been created. The Creator had said
that Man would die if he ate the fruit from the forbidden tree.
This is why the lying dragon decided to begin his wiles with
Ishshah. But Man had known the Creator’s will firsthand, yet
he just stood by while the dragon twisted the requirements of
the Creator ever so slightly. And while the difference in word-
ing was slight, the resultant slander against the Creator God’s
character was great. The dragon began by asking if it were true
that the Lord had prohibited them from eating from every tree
in the garden. Now between the sentences You may eat from
all the trees but one and You may not eat from any tree is a vast
difference. But this dragon is the father of all liars, and this is
how successful lies go. Words are twisted, and it appears that
the twisting is slight, but the meaning of the words is entirely
reversed. In this case, the twisting of the words conveyed the
meaning that the Creator was abundant in creating but stingy
in sharing what He had made.
Ishshah answered the serpent, and it is telling that although
she corrected him, the leaven of lies was already at work in
her. She did not represent the actual requirement either. She
said that the Creator had said, You shall not eat of it, neither
shall you touch it, lest you die. But the Creator had said nothing
about touching it. And this is where the serpent showed his
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true defiance of the Creator’s will by contradicting Him direct-

ly. You will not die, he said.
And when Ishshah saw that the tree was good for food, just
like the other trees in the garden, and when she saw that it
was pleasant to the eyes, like the other fruit trees, and that it
was desired to make one wise, which was not true of the oth-
er trees, she took, and she ate. She fell from gratitude for the
world into love for the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of
the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16–17).
While she stumbled into this great deception, Man just
stood there passively. This was a great evil, for Man had been
created to protect and tend the garden. His central priestly
duty to protect the sanctuary was where Man failed, and this is
where he fell. And when he fell, because his name was Man, all
men and all women and all children fell into sin when he did.
And this is why we live in a world that has so much darkness
in it still—even thousands of years after the second Man lived,
died, and rose again. So, Ishshah took the forbidden fruit, and
then, when she apparently did not die that very moment, she
gave it to Man, and he ate as well.
But the cool of the day was coming. After their sin, Man
and Ishshah knew that they were naked, so they made aprons
from fig leaves to cover themselves. The mystery of guilt was
already at work. Now in the cool of the day, it was the Lord’s
custom to come and walk in the garden with Man. But on
this day, when Man heard the voice of the Lord approaching,
he and his wife tried to hide because of their shame. Sin al-
ways pretends to be daring and bold, but sin is a coward and
sin always hides.
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M an and I shshah
But the Lord found them out, as He always does, and He

quickly pronounced sentence upon them all. He started with
the dragon, promising that the dragon would be slain, his head
crushed. This is why, throughout the story of our salvation,
the enemies of God so frequently die because their heads were
crushed. The dragon’s head would eventually be crushed by the
seed of the woman—Ishshah would come to have her revenge
upon him. This revenge would come in the person of a great
Dragonslayer born of a woman, born under the law (Gal. 4:4),
who would kill the dragon.
But still, Ishshah had sinned grievously, and the Creator
God determined that all her daughters would suffer greatly
in childbirth, and in their unfulfillable desires to rule in mar-
riage. And Man, the one responsible for his failure to protect
his wife, was cursed in his daily livelihood, and the whole cre-
ated order was bent to become a burden to Man and to all his
sons. But even though the process of exercising dominion now
lay under a curse, the assigned task of exercising dominion was
not removed or altered. The whole world must still become a
garden-city, but now the process would be attended by many
generations of blood, sweat, and tears.
The Creator God now determined that Man and Ishshah
must be kept from a second tree—the Tree of Life. If they were
to eat from this tree in their fallen condition, their situation
would be beyond remedy. But because the Creator had prom-
ised a remedy, He had to drive them from the garden, and so
He banished them from the east gate. When they were turned
out into the world, the Creator God placed some terrifying
winged bulls and a flaming sword to keep the children of Man
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far away from the Tree of Life. And from that time to this, no
man has ever found his own way back to that Tree.
But we do know, according to the promise, that the way is
West.
10
Our Father Noah
T
he story of the great Flood is a tremendous story of judg-
ment, victory, faith and grace. About 1,600 years after the
creation of the human race, God visited this great cata-
clysm upon us—but He nevertheless spared the human race
through a righteous man with the name of Noah. Our people
survived this great judgment, but barely. This event in our his-
tory was so striking and so traumatic that virtually every tribe
and nation of men afterward preserved the story of it down
to the present day, each generation telling their children after
them about the time the whole earth was destroyed by a deluge.
The Babylonians called their Noah Utanupishtim, the Chinese
called him Fu Hi, or tamer of the animals, and the Greeks
called him Deucalion. The North American Indians had him
surviving in a great canoe, and the Babylonians thought the
ark was shaped like a cube. Of course, it is only in Scripture
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that we find the infallible and completely accurate account of

these events. At the same time, if there is any event of ancient
history that is universally attested by all the nations of men, it
would be this one.
So there was a world that perished. What was that world
like? The garden of Eden was glorious, but it had the glory of
a tended garden. The rest of the world was wilderness in the
sense that it was untended—it was not a garden—but neither
was it what we would call a howling wilderness. All the geo-
logic indications we have show that the whole world once
had a subtropical climate and that giantism was common
(from ferns to dinosaurs to men). As we have drilled through
the ice in Antarctica, we have found tropical plants. As we
have discovered the remains of wooly mammoths to the
north, we have found that they lived in a climate quite unlike
what is there today. The fossil fuels that exist all around the
world in enormous amounts show us how much vegetation
had to been buried—many feet of accumulated vegetation is
necessary to form just one foot of coal. In short, the entire
world was lush and green—we might even say overgrown—
and greatly in need of the oversight of mankind. But when
that oversight came, because of the sin introduced by the
first man, we find that the oversight was not godly at all. This
meant that instead of being transformed into a tended gar-
den-city, the earth was eventually destroyed. All the jungles
and forests, all the lush undergrowth, was swept away by this
torrential deluge and by eruptions of subterranean water,
and then these vast piles of vegetation were deeply buried
under sediment.
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O ur F ather N oah
There were ten generations between Man (or, as we have

come to call him, Adam) and Noah. And in these generations,
there was a great deal of overlap. For example, Adam died only
about fifty years before the birth of Noah. This would be like
William the Conqueror dying the same year my grandfather
was born.
Now with the longevity enjoyed by the antediluvian peo-
ples, and with the lushness of that world, let us suppose a very
conservative birth rate for the women who lived for centuries.
We are most probably dealing with a world population great-
er than what we have today. When this is combined with the
overlap between generations and the fact all humanity spoke
only one language, we have every reason to suppose that the
entire earth was populated. We see this in the direct statement
of Genesis that the earth was filled with violence (Gen. 6:11,
13), and in the obvious fact that the entire globe was covered
with the flood waters. The judgment was not an example of
divine overkill—the earth was filled with violence because the
earth was filled with violent men. We have every reason to be-
lieve that the world that perished was a world, an inhabited
world, and a very wicked one.
But what was the great sin that brought this on? We think
that a life that goes to nine hundred years is an exceedingly
long life, but we have to remember that these were men who
had been recently banished from the Tree of Life. In their lust
and wickedness, they wanted access to everlasting life without
submitting to the conditions that God had established for it.
And this is what led to their great sin, the vile sin that brought
on the Flood.
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The problem was not sin at a petty level, like an outbreak

of shoplifting or excessive partying. Their great wickedness
was a combination of genetic engineering and sexual perver-
sion. When the bene Elohim, the sons of God (exalted celes-
tial beings), saw that the daughters of men were fair, they took
wives for themselves. The result of these perverse unions was
the birth of a race of giants called the Nephilim, who became
mighty men, men of renown. It appeared that rebellious man
was perhaps going to succeed in what he had set his hand to
do. Why return to the Tree of Life, guarded by a miserly God,
when an alliance with the many gods of heaven can be con-
tracted and can be sealed by marriage?
But when the true and living God saw how great the wick-
edness of man had become, He resolved that He would not
strive with men always—for man, after all, was flesh. All his
attempts at immortality apart from faith and obedience would
necessarily fail. His days, God said, shall be a hundred and
twenty years. He was probably speaking about how many years
it would be until the Flood, when God would destroy their
wicked aspirations forever. God was grieved at the heart, and
He repented that He had made man on the earth. He resolved
to destroy them all, along with all the animals of the earth,
because God repented of having made man. But Noah found
grace in the eyes of the Lord.
So God commanded Noah, a preacher of righteousness (2
Pet. 2:5), to build an ark out of gopher wood, and He gave
Noah the precise dimensions that he needed to use. The di-
mensions of this ark, measured in cubits, were enormous. The
Babylonians, Egyptians, and Hebrews had differing standards
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O ur F ather N oah
for their cubits, and it is also possible that the antediluvian cu-
bit was longer than all of them. Because the cubit was gener-
ally the distance from the elbow to the fingertips, if men were
larger then (which is likely), the cubits would have been lon-
ger in our terms. But if we take the shortest cubit we know,
which was the Hebrew common cubit of 17.5 inches, the ark
was gigantic, the biggest ship ever built from that time down
to the nineteenth century AD The length of the ark was three
hundred cubits, the breadth of fifty, and the height was thirty
cubits. By the common cubit, this translates to 437.5 feet long,
almost 73 feet wide, and almost 44 feet high. The ark had three
decks (Gen. 6:16), which means it had a deck area of 95,700
square feet, an area slightly bigger than twenty standard col-
lege basketball courts. For Noah to build an ark this size to
escape from a local river flood suggests either than Noah was
a manic overachiever or that the supposition is incorrect and
the Flood was a universal one.
God said that Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives,
eight souls in all, could all come into the ark that Noah had
built, and they could do so on the basis of a covenant that God
established with Noah. The Flood that came upon the earth
was a type of Christian baptism, which is the salvation of those
within the ark and the judgment upon all who are outside. The
whole world was to be baptized in judgment, and the elect
were to be saved through that judgment.
According to Jude, these angels who did not keep their first
estate were locked up in everlasting chains until the Day of
Judgment (Jude 6). And, he goes on to say, the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah had sinned in the same way that these angels
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
had in “going after strange flesh.” The Lord Jesus tells us that
the angels do not marry, not that they cannot. The Creator did
not intend this blessing for them, so this is what constituted
the nature of their rebellion. The left their first estate. The na-
ture of the sin was a kind of celestial perversion—intermar-
riage of distinct kinds—and the intent of the sin was to be as
God and to do so without His blessing.
The apostle Peter tells us that these rebellious angels were
locked up in a place called Tartarus, which is the deepest pit
of Hades, the place of the departed dead. And the Lord Jesus,
when He descended into this Hades, as Peter says, preached
specifically to the spirits who had been disobedient at the time
of Noah (1 Peter 3:18–20). The Lord Jesus Himself personal-
ly announced to the Nephilim that their scheme for attaining
eternal life had been finally defeated, and that He was, is, and
always will be, the only way to the Tree of Life.
When Noah was done with building the ark (which had per-
haps taken 120 years), God invited him to bring his house-
hold into the ark with him—because he was righteous. He was
told to take seven pairs of the clean animals with him, and one
pair each of the unclean animals. This reminds us that there
were details of revelation that God had given to these people
that were not explicitly recorded in Scripture until the time
of Moses, such as the distinction between clean and unclean
animals. Noah was six hundred years old when this happened,
and depending on how the account is read, he was told to enter
the ark one week before the deluge started. This they all did,
and God closed the door of the ark behind them. One week
passed. While it took great faith to build the ark in the first
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O ur F ather N oah
place (Heb. 11:7), quite possibly the greatest test of faith was
sitting in that ark with the door closed before the rain started.
In telling this story, it might be tempting to drift toward the
language of story in the fictional sense or myth in the fantastic
sense. But this is not how the story was told to us, so we must
be faithful in how we retell it. The Flood started on a particular
day of the week. In fact, on the seventeenth day of the second
month, this glorious salvation, disguised as a great cosmic di-
saster, started.
The fountains of the great deep—vast amounts of subter-
ranean water—were broken up, and the windows of heaven
were opened, and they crashed down. All the creatures that
breathed the air of that world then perished. The water cov-
ered the mountains, and the rain came down for forty days
and forty nights. The water prevailed on the face of the earth
for about five months. As the waters began to run off, the ark
finally came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Two and a
half months later, they could see the tops of the mountains.
Forty days later, Noah sent out a raven and a dove. Only the
dove returned. A week later, he sent the dove out again, which
returned with an olive leaf. He waited another week, sent the
dove out again, and this time it did not return. Noah removed
the covering from the ark, and he saw that the surface of the
ground was now dry. About two months later, the earth had
completely dried, and God told Noah to go out. This Noah did,
and built an altar on which he sacrificed from every clean an-
imal and every clean bird. God smelled the sweet savor of the
sacrifice and promised never again to strike every living thing,
as He had done. The covenant memorial of the rainbow was
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
established, and from that time to this, our covenant God has
kept His Word.
18
From Abram to Abraham
A
fter the Flood, the sons of men attempted to recreate the
civilizational glory that had existed before the Flood. We
have to remember that we should not look at ancient civi-
lization through the lens of evolution—men gradually striving
to progress. Rather, we have learned the story of a great Fall,
in which man was created “advanced,” rebelled against God,
and then began the long, slow downward spiral of devolution.
Outside His covenant of grace, God kept placing obstacles in
front of unregenerate man so that each attempt at civilization
had less glory than the previous one. This was done by means
of judgments like death, judgments like the Flood, shortening
of lifespans, and confusion of languages. The history of man
outside of Christ is a history of deterioration and corruption.
This continued until the great reversal at Pentecost, when the
confusion of the languages was finally reversed.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
But to understand Pentecost, we need to understand the

Tower of Babel. This attempt at autonomous re-creation on
the plains of Shinar ended with God confusing their language,
which ensured that they scattered in every direction. Once
the languages were confounded, people began marrying only
within their linguistic group, and this was no doubt the reason
distinct races of men began to develop. The sons of Noah be-
longed to one family, but these three sons are the fathers of our
different races. When this division had happened, the sons of
men fell rapidly back into an idolatry as diverse as they were.
One of the idolatrous cultures that developed was found in Ur
of the Chaldees. Ur was located in what is now southern Iraq,
and the people there worshipped the god Nannar.
There was one man there who was delivered from the idol-
atry. After the Flood, the lives of men got appreciably short-
er, but this did not happen instantaneously. Shem lived to be
six hundred years old. His son Arphaxad lived to be 438. A
few generations later Peleg lived to be 239. The line of deteri-
oration is clear, but still the antediluvian glory was not to be
easily erased. Abram’s father Terah lived to be 205, and even
Abraham died when he was 175.
Although Abram was descended from Shem (nine gener-
ations), by Abram’s time the family was caught up in the sur-
rounding idolatry. “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus
saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other
side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham,
and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods” (Josh.
24:2). At the same time, it is likely that a certain degree of
faithfulness remained, because the line of Shem was probably
20
F rom A bram to A braham
the way the written records which constitute the early part of
Genesis made their way down to Moses, who was their editor.
Now his decision is not explained to us, but whatever the
reason, the day finally came when Terah, Abram’s father, de-
cided to leave Ur of the Chaldees. The intent was to come to
Canaan, but they wound up settling in Haran, which was al-
most due north of Canaan. After the death of Terah (when he
was 205), the Lord told Abram to leave his country, his kin-
dred, and his father’s house, because He would take him to a
new land. God promised that He would make a great nation
of Abram, blessing him, making his name great, and making
him a blessing to others. From the very beginning of God’s
dealings with Abram, He always was promising him that his
descendants would be great. Those that blessed Abram would
be blessed, while those who cursed him would be cursed. And
in Abram all the families of the earth would be blessed.
Abram obeyed and came down from the north, moving
south into Canaan, living as a nomadic pilgrim. In faith, he
established two altars, one at Shechem and another at Bethel.
In doing this, he was doing more than simply offering his own
personal worship—he was claiming the land for the right wor-
ship of YHWH. These were not small alcoves where Abraham
could pray privately. But at the same time, he built these al-
tars in great patience, as we shall see. Based on the number of
warriors who lived in his “household,” the entire household
was probably somewhere between three and ten thousand
souls. By establishing these altars, Abram was functioning in
the land (that was promised to him) as an evangelist. He did
not have to seize what God had promised to give him. We are
21
SCRIPTURE STORIES
in much the same position today. The earth is ours because

God has given it to His Son, but we do not grasp it. Rather, we
establish the right worship of God and trust Him to do what
he has promised.
Because of famine that came upon the land, Abram and his
household had to move temporarily to Egypt. While there,
Abraham represented Sarai as his sister (she was his half-sis-
ter), and Pharaoh took Sarai into his house. Pharaoh bestowed
many gifts upon Abram, and the Lord in His turn bestowed
many plagues upon Pharaoh. Pharaoh figured the situation
out somehow and sent Abram away with a rebuke. As we read
this story, we must be careful not to be hasty in condemning
Abram (in this part of the story and in a few others) without
knowing all the details and facts that God has not seen fit to give
to us. Remember, the plagues from God came upon Pharaoh,
not upon Abram. It is quite possible that Abram was in a bet-
ter position to protect his wife as her brother than he would
have been as her husband. We should always be wary when we
are raining down plagues on different characters in the story
than the Author of the story is doing. Nevertheless, because
Pharaoh sent Abram away, Abram returned to Canaan, came
to Bethel, and worshipped the Lord there.
When he arrived there, tension developed with the house of
Lot. Abram was a very rich man, not only in gold and silver,
but also in cattle. Lot’s house had grown as well, and the situ-
ation got to the point where the herdsmen of the two houses
came to the point of strife. Abram acted the part of a peace-
maker and offered to let Lot make the choice of which way he
would go. As we imagine this entire story in our mind’s eye,
22
take care not to paint contemporary Palestine (brown, dry, and

desolate) as the backdrop of this story. At that time, the plain of
Jordan surrounding the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were
as lush as Egypt, and both places could even be compared to
the garden of Eden. Lot made a choice to his (apparent) advan-
tage, and God immediately promised Abram the entire land.
God then invited Abram to walk through the whole land; all of
it was to be his. His descendants would be like the dust of the
earth. So Abram came to a place called Mamre, and he built
another altar.
God repeatedly promises conquest and dominion to Abram,
and Abram’s consistent response of faith is to build an altar for
right worship first.
But there are some other characters in this story.
Chedorlaomer was the king of Elam, which at that time was a
regional power. Sodom and Gomorrah (and three other cities
nearby) had to pay tribute to him, and when they revolted,
there was a war in which Chedorlaomer and his allies soundly
defeated the five cities of the plain. In this defeat of Sodom,
Lot and his household were taken captive. When Abram heard
this news, he took 318 warriors and pursued Chedorlaomer,
attacked him at night, completely defeated him, and brought
back the captured people and goods. Although we have em-
phasized that Abram was a man of faith, one who began
by building altars, we also see throughout his life that faith
without works is dead. Abram was also a general, a compe-
tent military man, and the fact that many of us have never
imagined him in armor shows that we perhaps believe that
faith without works is somehow not dead. Establishing right
23
SCRIPTURE STORIES
worship comes first, but never forget that establishing right

worship also has consequences.
After the battle, Melchizedek, king of Salem, met Abram
with bread and wine, and blessed him. The name Melchizedek
means king of righteousness, and the name of the city he ruled
over (as a priest-king) means peace. This place, Salem, was al-
most certainly Jerusalem. We know nothing about the back-
ground of this great king, and the fact that we do not know
means we should understand Him as a type of the great
Melchizedek to come. Abram saw all of this by faith, and in
return for the blessing of bread, wine, and benediction, he pre-
sented a tithe of the spoil to Melchizedek. After this, Abram
refused to take any of the spoil for himself from the king of
Sodom. All of his blessings were from God.
After these things, a great promise was given. The word of
the Lord came to Abram in a dark and holy vision. In this vi-
sion, the Lord promised Abram that his seed would be in num-
ber like the stars of heaven. Abram believed in the Lord, and
the Lord counted it to him for righteousness. God then prom-
ised him the land again. Abram then asked how he could know
this for certain. In this request, he was not wavering in faith, he
was asking God for a sensible sign of His promises. And this is
what God gave to him.
He instructed Abram to take a three-year-old heifer, a three-
year-old she-goat, and a three-year-old ram along with a tur-
tledove and a pigeon. This done, the animals were cut in two,
and each part was laid opposite its corresponding part, but this
did not happen to the turtledove and pigeon. When scavenger
birds came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them off.
24
At that time, during the sunset, Abram had a deep sleep fall
upon him. At the same time, a “horror of great darkness” fell
upon Abram—a sense of the numinous, of holy dread, of ter-
ror and awe.
God promised Abram here that his seed would live as aliens
in a land not their own for four hundred years. That nation
would then be judged, and the sons of Abraham would come
up out of the land with great wealth. For his part, Abram
would live to a full old age, and four generations after Abram,
his seed would come back to this land. The reason for the de-
lay was that the wickedness of the Amorites, who were then in
the land, was not full enough to warrant their destruction yet.
At this, the sun went completely down, and a smoking fur-
nace and a burning lamp passed between the divided pieces
of the animals. This was a self-maledictory oath given by God.
He was the one who passed between the animals, not Abram.
“May all this happen to Me,” God said, “if I do not fulfill My
Word to you.”
But when Sarai saw that she was not able to give Abram a
son, she gave her handmaid Hagar to him so that she might
give him a son in that way and adopt him for her own. This
is another place in our story where it might be dangerous to
condemn Abram thoughtlessly. God had promised him many
descendants and had said they would not be reckoned through
an adoption of Eliezer of Damascus. Abram had not yet been
told that the son of promise would be born to Sarai, so Sarai
suggested this expedient. But when Hagar conceived, she
became proud and despised her mistress and as a result was
driven from the encampment. After an angel appeared to her,
25
SCRIPTURE STORIES
she returned submissively to her mistress and bore a son to

Abram, who named him Ishmael.
But a time soon came when God made a covenant with
new names involved. When Abram was 99 years old, the
Lord appeared to him and made the covenant of circumci-
sion with him. In this covenant, Abram’s name was changed
to Abraham, and Sarai was renamed Sarah. Every man-child
born in the house of Abraham was to be circumcised. God
promised that a son was to be born to Sarah, and Abraham
laughed. The name Isaac means laughter. Abraham was cir-
cumcised when he was 99 years old and Ishmael was thirteen.
In a certain sense, this means that Isaac was the first covenant
child, born in a covenanted household. Abraham prayed that
Ishmael might be “the one,” but God responded again that the
child of promise would be born from Sarah, and he would be
named Isaac. Nevertheless, Ishmael would be blessed. And
God gave Abraham real encouragement—Isaac would be born
within the year.
This covenant was to be an everlasting covenant. God would
be the God of Abraham and the God of his seed after him. The
terms of the covenant were that every male was to be circum-
cised on the eighth day after birth. And although the sign of
this covenant was applied to every male in Abraham’s house,
the covenant related to it was to be established with Isaac.
Abraham came to the point of silence and left off talking
with God. God then went up from Abraham.
Shortly after his, the Lord appeared to Abraham again, this
time on the way to the destruction of Sodom. Two angels were
with the Lord, and Abraham showed hospitality to them. As
26
they were eating, the Lord asked after Sarah, who was in the
tent. He promised her a son within the year. Sarah overheard
this and laughed in unbelief. “I am old,” she thought with-
in herself, “and my lord is old.” The Lord asked why she had
laughed, and she denied having laughed because she was now
afraid. Despite her fear, she had called Abraham lord, and
so Peter calls Christian women to surpass her holy example.
That was just a moment in this conversation, however, and the
Lord determined to show Abraham all that He was going to
do to Sodom.
After the destruction of the cities of the plain, Abraham
moved south (but not all the way to Egypt). He sojourned
in a place called Gerar, which had a king named Abimelech.
Abraham said (once again) that Sarah was his sister, and so
Abimelech sent for her. But God appeared to Abimelech in
a dream and said, “Behold, you are a dead man. The woman
you have taken is another man’s wife.” But Abimelech had not
touched her and said, “Lord, will you overthrow a righteous
nation?” His argument was that he was not wicked like Sodom
and Gomorrah were. Abimelech woke up in a fright and told
his household. They were all frightened, and Abimelech asked
Abraham why he had done this thing. Abraham explained
everything and received enormous gifts from the king. Then
Abraham prayed for Abimelech so that the women throughout
the household of Abimelech began conceiving again.
After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, a son was
finally born to Abraham by Sarah. Isaac was circumcised
according to the covenant, and when it came time for Isaac
to be weaned, a great festival was established. Ishmael took
27
SCRIPTURE STORIES
the occasion to mock his younger brother, and Sarah just-

ly demanded that Hagar and Ishmael be driven away. God
confirmed this, although it was a grief to Abraham. The two
women here are two covenants—one represents the covenant
apprehended by faith, while the other represents at bottom the
covenant to break covenant.
Some time later, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice
Isaac, the one through whom the covenant was promised to be
fulfilled. By this point, Abraham knew that the promise had to
be fulfilled through Isaac. His God was not fickle like the idols
of the surrounding peoples, and He had fulfilled His word in
every detail thus far. God had insisted on Isaac over Eliezer.
He had insisted on Isaac over Ishmael. And Abraham was con-
fident that God would therefore have to insist on Isaac living
over Isaac dead. Abraham believed that Isaac was going to be
raised from the dead after he had killed him, but God instead
stopped him from killing Isaac at the last moment and provid-
ed a ram for the sacrifice. Abraham knew this on the basis of
the confirmation God had given him in that earlier horror of
darkness. If Isaac died and stayed dead, then the Lord would
have to be cut in two. And in Abraham’s obedience here—the
obedience of faith—we see the glory of the gospel.
Sarah died when she was 127. Sometime after her death,
Abraham arranged for the marriage of his son Isaac with
Rebekah. After this, although he was over one hundred,
Abraham married again to a woman named Keturah. She bore
him six sons, but they did not receive the same kind of in-
heritance that Isaac received. Abraham also gave gifts to the
sons of his concubines and sent them to the east while he was
28
still alive. And when Abraham reached the age of 175, he was
finally gathered to his people. His two oldest sons, Isaac and
Ishmael, came together to honor and bury their father and
ours in the cave where Sarah had been buried.
29
Moses the Christian
G
od had told Abraham that his descendants would spend
four hundred years in another nation. This particular ex-
ile began in the days of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, and
his great-grandson, Joseph. The children of Israel went down
to Egypt seventy strong, and they emerged from that land four
centuries later an enormous multitude.
But the various biblical chronologies of this require some
work to decipher. God tells Abraham that his descendents
would be afflicted in another land for four hundred years,
and that they would come back in the fourth generation. Paul
tells us that the law came 430 years after the covenant with
Abraham. And we learn in Exodus that there were just three
men between Jacob and Moses (Levi, Kohath, Amram), which
is difficult to spread over four hundred years. It is thus possible
that the affliction in Egypt was as short as 215 years, with the
31
SCRIPTURE STORIES
four hundred being reckoned from the time of Abraham. If

Palestine became a tributary state to Egypt, this does not re-
quire a great stretch of the imagination.
We are told in 1 Kings 6:1 that the fourth year of Solomon’s
reign was 480 years after the Exodus, so this places our story in
the fifteenth century BC Those who want to place the Exodus
at some other time do so because they prefer the words of men
to the word of God, which is unambiguous on this point. For
far too long, historians have evaluated Hebrew chronologies in
the light of Egyptian chronologies instead of the reverse. As we
see how this story unfolds, this is clearly an unproductive way
of proceeding.
The man who brought them out of the land of Egypt was
named Moses, one of the truly great men in the household
of faith. He was a faithful servant in the house, preparing the
way for the son over the house. Looking forward in faith to
the coming of the Messiah, Moses was one of history’s truly
great Christians.
God blessed the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, and
they grew and multiplied in the land, so much so that they
became a threat to the native Egyptians. A Pharaoh came to
power who “knew not Joseph,” and he resolved to treat the
Israelites harshly. This he did, but it did not keep the oppressed
nation from continuing to multiply. The next step was taken,
which was to instruct the Hebrew midwives to kill any male
child that was born to Israel.
In order to understand this, we have to understand some-
thing of politics of Egypt. What was this nation like? We know
that it was an accomplished civilization, but even here our
32
M oses the C hristian
knowledge tends to be cursory. Their accomplishments were

most impressive. The great Cheops pyramid contains at least
2,300,000 stone blocks, each of them weighing on average
about two and a half tons. To get some idea of how much rock
this involved, if these stones were cut into cubes one foot on
each side, and they were laid end to end, the line would reach
three quarters of the way around the world at the equator. The
Egyptians had fallen into the sin that the Bible calls the “pride
of life,” but when such accomplishments are considered, the
temptation is at least comprehensible.
Another feature of Egyptian life was the massive bureaucra-
cy. No other bureaucracy rivaled it until the modern era. And
of course, the central claim of all such statist bureaucracies is
the claim of total sovereignty. Bureaucracy is man’s attempt to
counterfeit the predestination of God. And while we like to
mock the ineptness of bureaucratic bungling, the accomplish-
ments can nevertheless be impressive-and enticing. The faith
of Egypt necessarily involved a denial of the Creator/creature
distinction. Much preferred was the idea that all existence was
one continuous chain of being, and that Pharaoh was the earth-
ly embodiment of the gods, and his voice (mediated through
the bureaucracy) exercised total and complete control.
Thus it was that Pharaoh simply assumed that he had the
right to command the deaths of countless Israelite boys. His
voice was the final arbiter of all that could be permitted. He did
not recognize the God of Joseph, the God of Jacob, the God of
Isaac, the God of Abraham. We ought not challenge this, for
we see the same thing happening in our own day. If the court
decisions are procedurally correct, then it does not matter what
33
SCRIPTURE STORIES
the suction pump in the abortion clinic is actually doing. The

same thought process governed German bureaucrats who had
to do all the gas chamber paperwork. Massive bureaucracies
are an attempt to duplicate the omniscience of God, and once
this prerogative is foolishly claimed, other prerogatives of
Deity are soon to follow—like claims to authority over all of
life and all of death.
But others feared the true God anyway, and two of them
were Hebrew midwives named Shiprah and Puah. They were
almost certainly not the only two working midwives for all
Israel, but were probably the two heads of midwifery guilds,
expected to be on top of any new regulations issued, and
they were required to promulgate them to the rest of the
Hebrew midwives.
But these midwives feared God, so they disobeyed Pharaoh.
When Pharaoh called them to account, Shiprah and Puah de-
ceived him, and God blessed them for that godly lie with fam-
ilies of their own. The fact that their lie was transparent meant
that their answer to Pharaoh was verging on open defiance. If
the Hebrew women were so vigorous that their boys were born
before the midwives got there, then why did the Hebrews need
midwives at all? And further, their answer to Pharaoh included
an insult directed at the Egyptian women, who were not near-
ly as “lively” as the Hebrews. Nevertheless, God blessed them
greatly for their deception.
This reply of theirs made Pharaoh take an even more extreme
measure, commanding that every male child be thrown into
the river, but that the daughters be spared. The sparing of the
daughters was no doubt seen by some as an act of benevolence.
34
And here we first meet the future deliverer of Israel. A man

from the tribe of Levi named Amram had married a woman
named Jochebed, who happened to be his aunt. Amram was
the son of Kohath, who was the son of Levi. So Moses was of
the tribe of Levi, but Levi was his great-grandfather, and not a
distant ancestor. When Moses was born, his family disobeyed
the government’s decree by hiding Moses for three months, as
long as was possible. After this, they obeyed the Pharaoh’s de-
cree (technically), but they also provided the baby with a small
boat. Nevertheless, they did put the baby in the river.
Years later, when the Exodus happened, the Israelites
plundered the gold of the Egyptians. But the greatest treasure
they ever got from Egypt was this man Moses. And this is the
story of how Moses happened to become the treasure of Egypt.
Moses was found by a daughter of Pharaoh, who felt sorry
for the crying baby. His sister, Miriam, who had been closely
watching, arranged for her mother to become the baby’s wet
nurse, for which she received payment from Pharaoh’s daugh-
ter. The whole affair—the boat, the care of Miriam, indicates
that there was no intention of allowing Moses to die. One
suspects that Pharaoh’s daughter was set up. And when the
child had grown to an appropriate age, he was then brought
to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him and named him
Moses—because he had been drawn out of the water.
Moses received a royal education, one that was complete in
every way. Stephen tells us that he was learned in all the wis-
dom of the Egyptians and that he was mighty in words and
deeds (Acts 7:22). As a prince of Egypt, he was a great man in-
deed. One of his mighty deeds, according to Josephus, was the
35
SCRIPTURE STORIES
conquest of the Abyssinian region of Saba, which you might

know by its more familiar name of Sheba. He conquered that
city because the queen of the city fell in love with him from the
city wall and offered to turn over the city if he would marry
her. This he did—the one possible scriptural link to this story
is the mysterious appearance of an Abyssinian wife for Moses
in Numbers 12:1. Sheba was at the southern end of Arabia—
Jesus called the Queen of Sheba the Queen of the South—in
what is now known as Yemen. This was not far from Ethiopia,
just across the water, and all of it was considered Abyssinia.
Almost five hundred years later, an Abyssinian woman went
1,200 miles north to see the wisdom of Solomon. Throughout
the Old Testament, we see remarkable instances of the evange-
listic impact of faithful obedience to the Word of God on the
part of God’s people.
Now Moses the prince came to a point where he sought to
deliver his kinsmen from their bondage. He killed an Egyptian
who was beating a Hebrew. He was no murderer in this, but
rather a judge, a man of faith. But in attempting the next day
to break up a quarrel between Hebrews, he found out that they
were not ready to accept his leadership. Slavery has its entice-
ments, and though the Israelites were put to hard labor, there
were some who preferred slavery to the freedom offered by
Moses. After all, Pharaoh offered full employment and job se-
curity. “Who do you think you are?” one of the Hebrews said
to Moses.
When Pharaoh sought to kill Moses, he fled to Midian,
where he married Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, and had a son
named Gershom. Moses tended sheep there for forty years,
36
which might be considered intensive training for the shep-

herding he was to do for the forty years after that.
But as Moses flees Egypt because of the internalized slav-
ery that had taken root among the Israelites, it must be re-
membered that the next person to ask the question “Who
do you think you are?” was Pharaoh himself, not an envious
Hebrew slave.
But God heard the groaning of the Israelites. Moses left
Egypt when he was forty years old, and he spent the next forty
in Midian. But the oppression of the Israelites grew severe, and
God had respect concerning them. He heard their groaning,
and remembered the covenant He had made with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob (Exod. 2:24). It must never be forgotten that
the deliverance from Egypt was the result of God’s gracious
covenant with Abraham. The promise to Abraham was foun-
dational to all that follows, and we must never see the Mosaic
administration as anything other than God’s continued kind-
ness to the descendants of Abraham.
God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and commis-
sioned him to deliver the people from their slavery. God re-
vealed Himself to Moses as the God of his fathers, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and gave His covenant name YHWH to
Moses. He tells Moses to go to the elders of Israel and promise
them deliverance. Moses was to go to the king of Egypt and re-
quest that he allow all of Israel to leave Egypt for three days in
order to sacrifice to God in the wilderness. Pharaoh could not
do this without relinquishing total control, thereby acknowl-
edging that the true God was not under his control. He would
refuse, God promised Moses, and God said that He would
37
SCRIPTURE STORIES
smite Egypt and that the Egyptians would keep the Israelites
from departing empty.
Egypt was one of the world’s great superpowers, to use our
modern terminology. But after God was done with them, their
nation and economy were in shambles. The original fear had
been the military threat posed to them by Israel, and this fear
was eventually realized—although in an unexpected way.
The plagues sent by the true and living God were directly
aimed at the gods of Egypt. Although Pharaoh was initially
defiant, and the children of Israel were completely discouraged
by this resistance, Moses went back to the Lord and received
divine encouragement from him. God would visit plagues
upon Egypt, and He would also harden Pharaoh’s heart so that
Egypt would be completely ruined destroyed.
The first plague turned the Nile to blood. Of course, the
livelihood of Egypt was completely dependent upon the Nile.
Ha’pi, the god of Nile inundation, was completely helpless
before God’s use of the Nile as an instrument of devastation.
The fish died, rotted, and stank, and the Egyptians had to dig
around the Nile to get water to drink. But the magicians of
Egypt duplicated the plague, turning more water to blood,
which is not what Egypt needed. Oh, great, more blood. Their
work only reinforced the judgment of God.
The second plague was a swarm of frogs, a symbol of fertility
in Egypt. They swarmed everywhere, inside and out, and Egypt
was completely covered with frogs. The magicians of Egypt
were able to duplicate this also—just what we needed, more
frogs!—but Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and promised
to let the people go for their three day festival. Moses asked
38
Pharaoh to specify a time for the relief, which he did. Moses

cried out to the Lord, and the frogs all died on the appoint-
ed day. The Egyptians raked them all into huge piles and they
stank. And Pharaoh changed his mind, hardening his heart.
The third plague was “lice” emerging from the dust of the
ground. Whether it was lice, or mosquitoes, or some other
kind of insect, the effect was beyond endurance. The magi-
cians of Egypt couldn’t make things any worse, so they ac-
knowledged God. But Pharaoh hardened his heart—he could
handle the lice.
So Moses came and promised the fourth plague, which was
swarms of flies. And they came, but not upon the Israelites,
and Pharaoh called Moses and offered to negotiate. Sacrifice to
your God here, he said. No, Moses said. So Pharaoh relented,
and Moses prayed for the flies to leave. But when they were
gone, Pharaoh hardened his heart again.
The fifth plague came upon all the livestock of Egypt. All
their cattle died, but the cattle of Israel were spared. Pharaoh
sent in order to check, and he knew that God had spared Israel.
But he continued to harden his heart.
The sixth was a plague of boils upon man and beast through-
out the entire land of Egypt. The magicians of Egypt could not
even stand before Moses because of those boils. But the Lord
hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
The next plague was heavy hail coupled with thunder, light-
ning, and rain. Those Egyptians who had begun to fear God
brought their animals and servants inside and were spared.
But those who, like Pharaoh, were hardened fools suffered, and
the crops were devastated. Not only was there hail, but fire ran
39
SCRIPTURE STORIES
along the ground. Pharaoh called for Moses and did more than
relent. He confessed his own wickedness and the righteousness
of God. Moses prayed for him but knew that he was not truly
repentant. And that is what happened—Pharaoh hardened his
heart yet again.
The eighth plague was locusts, which carpeted the entire
face of the earth. They destroyed the next cycle of crops, and
the servants of Pharaoh rebuked him just on the threat of lo-
custs. Do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed? Pharaoh
tried to negotiate again—“Go out to sacrifice to God with just
your men.” But Moses refused, and the locusts came in a way
that the world has never seen before or since. Pharaoh repent-
ed again and promised to let the people go. So Moses prayed
for a reprieve, and it came, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s
heart again.
The ninth plague was one of great darkness for three days.
This time Pharaoh said he would let all the people go, but that
their livestock had to remain behind. Moses refused. Pharaoh
said that if Moses came to him again, he would be killed.
Moses said it was well spoken, he would come back no more.
He promised the last plague—the death of the firstborn—and
went out from Pharaoh in great anger.
The tenth plague came, but the angel of death passed over
all the houses that had the blood of a lamb on the doorposts.
There was a great cry throughout all Egypt, and Pharaoh finally
let the people go. But after they had left, it dawned on Pharaoh
that their slaves were their only remaining wealth—the depar-
ture of Israel was an eleventh plague, one that Pharaoh thought
he could reverse. So he pursued them with a contingent of
40
chariots, and God destroyed them in the sea. Egypt was com-
pletely undone; it was left as a smoldering ruin.
The people of Israel saw all this with their own eyes, and they
danced on the far shore of the Red Sea. But it takes more than a
few seen marvels to get the slavery out of the hearts of sinners.
When the people came out of Egypt, it was Christ who de-
livered them. When Moses rejected the treasures of Egypt, it
was to follow Christ. When the bread fell from Heaven, that
bread was Christ. When the Rock split and the people drank
the water, the Rock was Christ.
The people were graciously given the law early in their time
in the wilderness. But they still turned to grumbling and idol-
atry, and God sentenced them to forty years wandering in the
wilderness. This was time enough for the generation of slaves
to harden and bring up another generation of free men and
women, children of faith who would conquer the land. The
gospel and goodness of God surrounded them the entire time,
but there are two instances of this great kindness that are worth
telling you about.
The Rock was Christ that accompanied them. And when
the people complained about not having water, the Lord told
Moses and Aaron to speak to the Rock in the sight of the
complainers, and water would come forth for the people to
drink. But Moses, exasperated with the people, called them
rebels (in the midst of his own rebellion) and struck the Rock
with his staff. He said, must we fetch water out of this Rock?
We, not God. Striking, not speaking. God in His kindness
still gave water, but Moses was kept out of the Promised Land
because of this.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
Another time, the people were discouraged because the way

was hard, the manna was boring and light, and there was no
bread and water, so they spoke against Moses. God in response
sent fiery serpents into their midst to afflict them further. This
brought them around, and they confessed their sin to Moses
and asked for deliverance. He was told by the Lord to make
a bronze image of a seraph—the creatures that were afflicting
the people were apparently some form of seraphim—raise it
on a pole, and all who looked to it would be healed. Of course,
this shows yet another way that Moses, a great man of faith,
preached the gospel to a stubborn people.
How did Moses die? His eye was not dimmed, even at the
end, and God showed him all the land the people were to in-
herit, a great land promised to Abraham. And we, standing
with Moses on Mount Pisgah, can see as far as he did . . . and
farther. The entire earth is promised, and we, learning the les-
sons of Israel in the wilderness, need to learn the lessons of
Israel in the land, exercising dominion through faith in the
conquering gospel of Christ.
42
The Poet Warrior
T
he story of redemption is not just a story about forgive-
ness being bestowed upon us in some heavenly transac-
tion. It includes that, of course, but we must never forget
how this salvation unfolds in the greatest story that any man
ever told. And that story includes the slaying of dragons, the
fall of ancient civilizations, and the killing of giants. It also in-
cludes the last of the great giant killers, the man after God’s
own heart, David, king over Israel.
This man is one of the most complex figures presented to us
in Scripture. We see him presented to us as a shepherd, musi-
cian, maker of musical instruments, hero, warrior, lover, turn-
coat, poet, desperado, king, nation builder, adulterer, mur-
derer, penitent, father, liturgical reformer, and man of God. A
careful examination of the life of David shows us that piety is
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
perhaps not what we thought it was, and grievous sin is never

as far away as we think.
David was the great-grandson of Boaz and Ruth and was
the youngest of eight brothers (1 Sam. 17:12). He was trained
to work as a shepherd, and in his early years he learned the
necessity of courage and resourcefulness (1 Sam. 17:34–35),
taking on both a lion and bear himself. It is possible that his
gifts made him unfavored by his brothers (1 Sam. 17:28), but
apparently not to the same degree that Joseph had trouble with
his brothers. While David was modest about his lineage—he
was of the house of Jesse, an insignificant son in a significant
house in Israel (1 Sam. 18:18)—he became a most notable an-
cestor, with his ultimate descendent being known as the Son of
David (Rom. 1:3; Rev. 22:16)..
The prophet Samuel was used by God to reject Saul in the
kingship for his disobedience in the matter of the Amalekites.
Because God had not forgotten how Amalek treated Israel
when they came up out of the land of Egypt, He commanded
Saul through Samuel to go to war against them and to spare
nothing. All were to be killed—men and women, infant and
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. But Saul committed
the great sin of mostly obeying. He defeated Amalek in battle
but spared the king and spared much of the livestock. When
Samuel came and saw the disobedience, there was a great con-
frontation, and Samuel told Saul that God had rejected him
from being king.
When this happened, the Spirit (who had rested upon Saul
for governance) departed from Saul, leaving him to his own
resources. From this moment on, Saul, who believed Samuel’s
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words, knew that he would lose the kingdom. He was ruling

in Israel as a condemned man, and he knew it. Put another
way, his suspicions about David were wicked, but they were
not ungrounded.
God then told Samuel to come to the house of Jesse at
Bethlehem and anoint one of his sons to be the next king. This
was an act of overt treason, and Samuel asked the Lord how it
could be done. If Saul heard of it, then Samuel would certainly
be killed. God told Samuel to take a heifer with him and say
that he was coming to Bethlehem in order to conduct a sacri-
fice. The elders of Bethlehem met Samuel when he arrived and
asked if he came in peace. All this shows that the political ten-
sions in Israel were high. Samuel’s movements were watched,
and it was known that he had prophesied that the king would
lose his crown. It is also clear that the house of Jesse was es-
tranged from the king and were in a mind to revolt. They knew
what Samuel was there for.
The house of Jesse was a noble house, and his sons looked
like kings. Samuel first thought Eliab was the one. God told
Samuel that man looks on the outward appearance, but God
looks on the heart. But Abinadab was also passed by as God
said no. And Shammah was also passed by. All seven came be-
fore Samuel, and God said no to each. It was finally revealed to
Samuel that the youngest—who had been out tending sheep—
was to be the next king. So Samuel anointed David as king
there at Bethlehem (1 Sam. 16:1–13) in the midst of his broth-
ers. However chagrined his brothers were about being passed
over, it is still worth noting that the entire family of Jesse was
implicated in the treason.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
The word of the Lord was fulfilled concerning Saul, and the
Spirit of the Lord that was upon him (enabling him to serve as
king) departed from him. There is never any neutrality any-
where, and there is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum, so an
evil spirit from the Lord began to trouble Saul. At the same
time, the Spirit of Lord came upon David from that day for-
ward. The Spirit rested upon David and was absent from Saul.
Nevertheless, Saul was still the Lord’s anointed in an important
sense. After this point, the brothers of David and David him-
self were willing to go to battle for the house of Saul.
The evil spirit from God was a great affliction to Saul, and
his courtiers suggested finding a musician who was gifted on
the harp so that when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul,
the music would help. Saul approved the idea, and one of the
courtiers said that he had seen a son of Jesse who fit the de-
scription. He was cunning in his musical ability, a fine warrior,
a prudent counselor, an attractive person, and, most impor-
tantly, the Lord was with him. And so it came about that David
was chosen to serve in the court of Saul as both a court musi-
cian and an armor bearer (1 Sam. 16:14–23). The lives of Saul
and David were thus brought together—Saul, a formerly great
but now hollow king, and David, a rising warrior.
It is not surprising that David eventually came under the
hostility of Saul. But first, the famous incident with Goliath
changed the relationship between Saul and David entirely (1
Sam. 17). Israel had gone out to war against the Philistines, and
David left the court of Saul to return to his sheep at Bethlehem.
The armies of Israel and Philistia were in a standoff for for-
ty days. The Scriptures say there was fighting, but it seems to
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T he P oet Warrior
have been limited to skirmishes. Every day, a champion of the

Philistines, a man named Goliath from the city of Gath, would
come out and taunt the Israelites, challenging any one of them
to single combat. His challenges struck fear into the hearts of
all the Israelites, and no one would take him up on it. At this
point, Jesse sent David to the army with some provisions and
to see how his brothers were faring. As it happened, David
was there when Goliath came out again to issue his challenge.
“Give me a man, that we may fight together.”
David began to inquire, quite publicly, about what would be
done for the man who took up the challenge. He discovered
that the king would enrich such a man, give him his daugh-
ter in marriage, and free his father’s house from the burden
of taxation. We see here two things about David—he was am-
bitious, and he was zealous for the name of God. He was re-
buked for his talk by his older brother, but he kept it up. Word
came to Saul, as David intended, and he was summoned to
see the king. When Saul questioned him, David answered well,
showing that he had killed both lion and bear while serving
as a shepherd. And now he was offering to step into the place
of kingly shepherd to protect God’s flock from this beast of
Philistia. Saul was a head taller than all the other Israelites;
he was a “giant” in Israel, and he should have gone. But the
Spirit of the Lord had left him and was resting upon David.
And David had it in for Goliath, seeing that he had “defied the
armies of the living God.”
David rejected Saul’s armor because he had not tested it—
this was the decision of an experienced fighter, not of a gawky
youth rattling around in armor much too big for him. But the
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
offer of the armor was revealing—David was given the chance

to wear the armor of the king of Israel, which he rejected. David
took his staff and sling, selected five smooth stones from the
brook, and went out to meet the giant. The sling was not the
kind which small boys today use to shoot pebbles at sparrows.
It was a formidable weapon, one which entire units of ancient
armies would use. Two straps joined at a pouch in the middle,
which carried a stone about the size of a modern softball. The
stone would be spun around and then released at high velocity.
Goliath was six cubits and span tall, which using the Hebrew
cubit meant that he was a little over nine feet tall. Goliath saw
David coming out and despised him as a mere pretty boy. “Am
I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?”
But David answered the taunt perfectly: “Thou comest to
me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I
come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the
armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.”
The pleasantries over, David ran toward the giant, taking a
stone from his pouch as he did so, and threw the first stone
so hard that it sank into the giant’s forehead. The giant fell,
and David cut off his head. When the Philistines saw that their
champion was dead, they fled, and the armies of Israel and
Judah pursued them a won a great victory.
Officially, this was a tremendous blessing for David—he
had earned the hand of the king’s daughter in marriage and
secured a tax exempt status for his father’s house. But during
the triumphal return from the slaying of the giant and the
routing of Philistine army, the women of Israel created a cri-
sis through their singing, “Saul hath slain his thousands, and
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David his tens thousands. . . . And Saul eyed David from that
day and forward” (1 Sam. 18:7, 9). Although David was already
anointed, this was the day when he became greater than two
giants. The first, of course, was Goliath, but the second was
Saul. David was the greater, and Saul identified where his suc-
cessor would come from.
David had to endure many affronts and insults from the
king after this. He was cheated out of his promised bride, giv-
en Michal as a bride who had a dowry of death, was reduced
in military honor, and was attacked savagely by the king. There
was almost certainly a group at court that was hostile to David,
and who spread lies about him (1 Sam. 24:9). Another abor-
tive attempt was made on David’s life by Saul. He then escaped
formal arrest by following a stratagem suggested to him by
Michal and headed for the hills.
Saul is truly a tragic figure, and it is worth noting that two
of his children were plainly aligned with David. Although she
had her troubles, Michal was loyal to David and saved his life.
And Jonathan, son of Saul, is one of the noblest characters in
all of Scripture. In a deep irony, Samuel, a faithful prophet, had
sons who took bribes, and Saul the unfaithful king, had a son
beyond all praise.
At this point, David became an outlaw. A ragtag collection
of outcasts gathered to him at the Cave of Adullam, a group
which gradually grew into a volunteer frontier army, one
which protected the goods of outlying Israelite settlements and
resisted foreign intruders. They were an outlaw band that per-
formed some of the services that the true king ought to have
been performing. An example of this service was the protection
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
provided for the house of Nabal, the blockhead husband of the

beautiful and intelligent Abigail. When David requested that
Nabal pay a voluntary “tax” for services rendered, he refused
with a churlish answer. Abigail heard of it and intervened,
thus saving her household and protecting David from godless
bloodshed. When Nabal was sober again and heard what had
happened, his close call caused his heart to become like stone,
and ten days later he died. When David heard this, he sum-
moned Abigail to become his wife, which she gladly did.
During this time of his life, on two separate occasions David
spared the life of Saul, thus showing Saul that David was truly
innocent of the charges against him. Saul knew that David was
righteous, and that he himself was unrighteous. He knew that
God was with David and not with himself. He knew that he
was pursuing David on trumped up charges. At the same time,
he did not have the character to repent, and so was trapped by
the circumstances which he himself had created. He did not
grant David a free pardon, and he continued a formal policy
which he knew to be based upon a lie. This is what happens
to those who give themselves to such lies—the lies grow to be
greater and stronger than they are, and they come at the last to
a despairing end. Finally, because of Saul’s stubbornness and
pride, David went over to the Philistines and was given the
frontier town of Ziklag. But the warlords of Philistia were ner-
vous about taking David into battle with them against Israel,
so David was spared the disastrous battle of Gilboa, in which
both Saul and Jonathan died.
Now David was thirty years old when Saul died, and by his
fellow tribesmen he was made king of Judah in Hebron. The
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cultural and national distinctives between Israel to the north

and Judah to the south were already marked, and the tension
was already present. The final division would not occur until
the reign of David’s grandson, but temporary divisions were
already apparent.
David reigned in Hebron for seven and a half years, the first
two of which were taken up with civil war with the followers
of Saul, men who established Ishbosheth, a son of Saul, on
the throne of the northern tribes. After the deaths of Abner
and Ishbosheth, David was anointed king over all twelve
tribes and moved his capital to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 3–4). The
deaths of Abner and Ishbosheth were accomplished by vari-
ous forms of treachery, which David did not command, and
from which he decisively distanced himself. There were evil
men on David’s side, and there were noble men aligned with
the house of Saul. Nevertheless, the politics were such that
these acts of wickedness opened the way for David to become
king of all Israel.
David then reigned for another thirty-three years in
Jerusalem. On either side of Israel, the great powers of the
Nile and the Euphrates had both ebbed at the same time, and
Israel quickly filled the power vacuum. During this great time
of consolidation, David subjugated many of the surrounding
peoples. Political glory, musical and ecclesiastical reform, and
military glory all adorn the reign of David. But the same glo-
ry was defiled by the matter of Uriah the Hittite (2 Sam. 11).
We learn from Ecclesiastes that when a righteous man sins,
it is a highly visible defilement. A blot on a clean shirt is far
more readily seen than a clean spot on a filthy shirt. Because
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
of David’s sin in this affair, the kingdom never really recovered

even though the time of its greatest glory was still ahead.
At the height of his power, when he was under the great
blessing of God, David remained home from war on one occa-
sion when he ought to have been with the troops in the field.
One evening, he arose from his bed, went out on the roof of
the king’s house, and saw a woman bathing—and she was very
beautiful. He inquired after her and discovered that she was
the wife of one of David’s great warriors, a man named Uriah
the Hittite. We do not know if Bathsheba was seeking to be
provocative in her behavior or if her enticement of the king
was accidental on her part, but we do know that she came to
him when summoned and that she slept with him. The event
was not widely known, but messengers had been sent for her,
and there was full opportunity for court gossip and for the ene-
mies of God and David’s righteous reforms to blaspheme. This
blasphemy was noted by Nathan in his fierce rebuke of David
and was the reason why the child conceived in this wretched
union had to die.
Bathsheba returned to her home, and when she discovered
she was pregnant by David, she sent word to him. When David
found out about his child, he summoned Uriah from the field,
ostensibly to get a report from him. After he had done so, he
sent him home to his wife so that Uriah would come to be-
lieve that the child was his own. But Uriah, a convert to the
true faith from among the pagan Hittites, spent the night at the
door of the king’s house. When David, no doubt exasperated,
asked Uriah why he had not gone home, Uriah replied with
some of the noblest words in all Scripture. “Shall I go home
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to make love to my wife,” he asked, “when the ark of the cov-

enant is in the field?” Israel and Judah are living in tents, he
replied, as well as his commander Joab. How could he do this.
“As thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing.”
David was not put off by this, and, amazingly, did not repent.
He told Uriah to remain for one more day, and then he would
be sent back to the battle. He invited Uriah to a banquet and
made sure that Uriah got drunk in the hope that this would
break down his resolve. But Uriah went out after the festivities
and spent the night away from his wife as before. We see here
one of the great contrasts of Scripture—far better to be Uriah
drunk than David sober.
At this, David resolved to take the life of Uriah. Uriah had
earlier sworn by the life that was in David and did not know
that his oath would result in losing his own life. David wrote a
letter to Joab, to be delivered by Uriah himself, telling Joab to
put Uriah in the hottest part of battle and abandon him there
so that he would he would die. And so it happened. Uriah,
one of the great men of Scripture, was betrayed by his wife,
by his king, and by his commander, but not by his God. He
died faithfully, fighting for the advance of the kingdom of God,
even though that kingdom behind him contained a great evil.
When word came to David that Uriah was dead, he sent and
took Bathsheba for his wife.
The prophets of God are frequently angular and unreason-
able men. They do not accommodate themselves to the ra-
tionalizations offered by men in sin. You do not imagine that
they would be pleasant company for men in the midst of sin.
But however unreasonable they might appear, they command
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
respect. Nathan the prophet was one such man. Commanded

to rebuke David for this sin, Nathan unhesitatingly went. One
man had already died to keep this sin covered up, and Nathan
had no reason to believe that he would not shortly follow
Uriah. But he went. He told David a story about two men, one
wealthy and one poor. The poor man had one lamb which he
cherished, and the rich man had many flocks and herds. But a
traveler came to visit the rich man, and he stole the poor man’s
lamb in order to offer hospitality. David’s anger was kindled,
and he told Nathan that the man who did such a thing would
surely die. And Nathan said to David, “Thou art the man.”
Nathan spelled it out for David in excruciating detail. Saul
had sinned against God, so God had taken the kingdom away
from him and given it to David. God had taken Saul’s wives
and had delivered them into the bed of David. If that had been
too little, God would have given him even more than this.
Despite all of this kindness, David had killed Uriah through
the agency of the Ammonites, taking the one wife of a faithful
soldier. But David had despised the Lord and commandment
of the Lord, Nathan promised that the sword would not depart
from the house of David. God promised to raise up evil against
David out of his own house, which happened in the revolt of
Absalom, and to give David’s wives to him in broad daylight.
This happened when Absalom slept with David’s concubines
on the roof of the palace. The humiliation would be complete.
David was the model of a penitent sinner. He did not have
Nathan executed for rebuking him, and he confessed to him
that he had sinned against the Lord. Nathan told him that God
had put away his sin but that the child would surely die. David
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interceded for the child, but on the seventh day, the child died,
and David resumed the work of governance. In the psalms we
see that David understood that he had forfeited the empower-
ment of the Holy Spirit of God for government in just the same
way that Saul had done. In Saul’s case, the Spirit was taken away,
and an evil spirit from the Lord afflicted him. David had every
right to expect the same, and his prayer went up before the
Lord—“Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” God was gracious
in this, and although He brought great affliction to the house
of David, the dynasty did not pass away from David’s lineage.
And now, with the Lord Jesus Christ seated on the throne of
David, we see that it never will—that dynasty is everlasting,
despite the sin of man.
The latter days of David were characterized by civil turmoil
and great paternal grief. A man like David, with the sexual
privileges that come with many wives, begets far more children
than he can be a father to, and as king he paid a profound price
for it. His house was filled with the kind of intrigue, treach-
ery, sexual sin, and ambition that should be banished from any
godly home. That palace is unhappy when it is filled with hun-
gry princes. And any man who seeks to have a heart after God
like David did must remember not only to imitate his great-
ness, but also to shun his failure.
One word should be said about David as liturgical reform-
er. After the Philistines had captured the ark of the covenant
and Eli died, the center of worship at Shiloh was abandoned.
Samuel would offer sacrifice in different places. A center of
worship, one of the great high places, had been established on
Mount Gibeon. When the ark was restored to Israel and David
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
brought it back to his capital, Jerusalem, he did not send it to

the high place on Gibeon. Rather, he established a tabernacle
for musical sacrifice on Mount Zion. After the initial dedica-
tory sacrifices there, the ark of the covenant was the focus of
singing and instrumental worship, about which the law said
explicitly nothing. In the next generation, when Solomon built
the temple, the sacrifices were moved from Gibeon to Mount
Moriah, where the Temple was, and the sacrifices of musical
praise were also moved to the Temple from Mount Zion. And
yet, this great thing that David had established on Zion was so
important that the Temple was practically renamed in terms of
it. Many Christians even assume that the Temple was built on
Zion, when actually it should be viewed as Zion.
In the same way, the modern Church, with the inclusion
of the Gentiles, should be seen as an expansion of this taber-
nacle of David, this tent of everlasting musical praise. While
Solomon is important is how he incorporates David’s innova-
tion with the requirements of the law, David should be seen as
the first great apostle to the Gentiles.
The reason we worship Jesus Christ, the son of David, the
reason Jesus Christ reigns on the throne of David, is that God
promised David an everlasting kingdom. When David under-
took to build the Temple, when he was going to build God a
house and God prevented him, God did so by saying that He
was going to build David a house. This is one of the staggering
promises of Scripture, and it was given to David before he fell
into his grievous sin. Nevertheless, this gracious promise an-
ticipated the problem of such sin. God was going to build the
house of David regardless. God told David He would make
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him a house. And when David went to sleep with his fathers,
God would establish his kingdom, and would do so forever.
Of particular importance is that though this line of David was
a sinful line, like all the sons of men, God’s promise here was
unilateral. If these descendants commit iniquity, they will be
chastised and chastened. But, God said, “my mercy shall not
depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put
away before thee.” The true saints persevere because the true
God perseveres.
We know more about the psychology of David than we do
about any other Old Testament figure because of the texture
and richness of the psalms. We are enabled to look at a life
of faith from both the outside and the inside—an exercise
filled with profit. We see his life outlined in Samuel and we
see that the incident with Bathsheba and Uriah is the hinge
upon which a great tragedy turns. We can see his triumphs
and accomplishments front and center in Chronicles. We can
see his internal life in Psalms as he pours out his heart to God
when surrounded by his enemies. We can also see his great-
ness as a prophet in Psalms, as all his words take on a higher
significance when understood as the prayers of the great Son
of David, the Lord Jesus Christ. In this sense, all the psalms
are messianic.
We have a great deal to learn from David. Although we
might be tempted to see him as little better than a barbarian
king, we should study him with a far greater humility of mind.
From David we learn how to fight, how to trust, how to cry,
how to pray, how to repent, how to sing, how to write poetry,
how to marry, how to reform the church, how to curse, how to
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
submit to God’s rebukes and providences, and how to worship.

What a man! What a man of God!
58
Solomon in All His Glory
T
he name of Solomon is still evocative today. He is a strik-
ing picture of a man who possesses. In fact, his name is
most familiar to us as a possessive adjective—Solomon’s
wisdom, Solomon’s mines, Solomon’s wives, Solomon’s wealth,
Solomon’s temple. And this characteristic of possession is the
basis of the story we must tell about him.
He had all these possessions because of the goodness of God
poured out upon him. He truly was beloved of the Lord, and
in some measure, he kept all the gifts he was given to the very
end of his life. But in another sense, he was history’s greatest
example of the tragedy of lost opportunities. God gave him a
promise, and that promise was fulfilled—but not in the way
that it could have been. For all his possessions, Solomon fell
short of possessing what could have been his.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
Solomon was the son of David the king and Bathsheba, the
former wife of Uriah. The fact that God chose this union to
perpetuate the Davidic name and line down to the Lord Jesus
is a good example of how God’s ways of righteousness are not
the same as our ways of righteousness.
The name Solomon probably means peaceful, which is a
good description of his reign. Solomon undertook no signif-
icant military campaigns to speak of. The conquering was all
done by his father. Solomon was qualified to build the Temple
because he was not a man of blood as his father was.
Nathan the prophet had given him another name, Jedidiah
(2 Sam. 12:25), which means “beloved of the Lord.” Solomon
was born early in David’s reign in Jerusalem (2 Sam. 5:14), but
he does not enter the story of the Davidic dynasty as an ac-
tive participant until very late in David’s reign. This meant, of
course, that he did not assume the throne as a young man, but
rather as one approaching middle age, a man of some experi-
ence. He no doubt had had some practice in lying low while his
older brother Absalom was scheming for the throne.
What was the nature of Solomon’s rise to power? Absalom’s
revolt against his father had come to nothing, but then
Absalom’s opposition to his father was carried on by the next
oldest son, a man named Adonijah. One of the greatest bless-
ings a household can have—loyalty—was tragically missing
from the household of David. But this should not be a sur-
prise—David had not shown the loyalty he was capable of
(think of his loyalty to Saul!) to Uriah, for example.
Adonijah got the endorsements of Joab the general and
Abiathar, who was an influential priest. Adonijah went so
60
S olomon in A ll H is G lory
far as to hold a coronation feast at a place called Enrogel.

But by this time, Solomon was in a position to contest what
was happening, and Solomon had powerful allies at court—
Benaiah, son of Jehoida, wanted to be general of the armed
forces, and Zadok wanted to be priest. The most influential
individual in this group was Nathan the prophet, and of
course, we cannot leave out Bathsheba, the queen. David had
promised that Solomon would be king, and when reminded
of this by Bathsheba, he established Solomon on the throne
before his own death. It is highly significant that Bathsheba
still had influence at court when Solomon was a middle-aged
man, and it is still more significant that the stern prophet and
the wife who had been unfaithful appear to have had a close
working relationship.
Nathan and Bathsheba orchestrated this request at a time
when they had to act. Because of his old age, David was not
able to lead the nation, and Adonijah was trying to capture a
sense of momentum that would make his ascent to the throne
inevitable. But momentum is a tricky thing, and when David,
still alive, appointed Solomon to rule with him, the support
for Adonijah quickly collapsed. All Adonijah’s guests at his
coronation were afraid and left—not only because Solomon
was made king, but because of the acclaim and noise that
resulted from it. The report came to them that even David
bowed himself upon his bed, acknowledging the new king.
Adonijah was afraid for his life and went and took hold of
the horns upon the altar. Solomon promised him that his life
would be spared if he stayed away from wickedness but oth-
erwise, he would die.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
Now the pattern of Solomon’s story is that of a man who

starts out very well, is gradually corrupted by the fruit of his
faithfulness, and repents at the last. But the late repentance is a
repentance granted to Solomon himself—and tragically not to
those throughout all Israel who were stumbled by him. But he
nevertheless started well. Solomon came to the throne without
a prior physical anointing from God, unlike his father and Saul.
But he received a spiritual anointing at Gibeon (1 Kings 3:5),
when God gave him a choice of gifts. Knowing the immensi-
ty of his responsibilities, Solomon asked for an understanding
heart. Because he had not asked for all the things a man in his
position might have asked for, God was pleased with him. So
God gave him what he asked for, an understanding heart, and
added countless other blessings to him as well. And Solomon
became the patron of Israel’s golden age of wisdom literature
(Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon). Two psalms are
his as well (72 and 127). Israel never knew a time of greater
glory and never knew another time when all the kings of the
earth looked up to her in deference and respect.
The ability to rule is a mysterious thing indeed, and the Bible
teaches that it is a gift from God. The gift of such anointing for
government should be described as majesty. “And the Lord
magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel, and
bestowed upon him such royal majesty as had not been on any
king before him in Israel”(1 Chron. 29:25).
Before David died, he solemnly charged Solomon with
certain duties. So Solomon began his consolidation of pow-
er by settling some scores for his father—with Joab, and with
Shimei. This is not an instance of David being vindictive; the
62
charge began with David telling Solomon to keep the charge

of the Lord his God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes,
commandments, judgments and testimonies. This is not a pre-
amble to a godless and malicious assignment. David was hon-
oring God on his deathbed.
The first man Solomon had to contend with was David’s
erstwhile ally and adversary, Joab. Joab’s story was tangled
up with David’s in countless ways. Joab was David’s nephew
and had become his chief general. He was an extremely com-
petent man, and throughout his life, Joab showed himself as
possessing a strange mixture of military skill, ruthlessness,
opportunism, cunning, cruelty, and shrewdness. It was Joab
who killed Uriah, doing David’s dirty work for him, which
meant, incidentally, that David was in no position to tell Joab
to obey the law of God. It was Joab who killed Absalom, con-
trary to David’s orders. It was Joab who killed Abner when
Abner finally deserted the house of Saul. This was ostensibly
to avenge the death of Asahel, Joab’s brother, but it should also
be noted that Abner would have been a significant political
rival to Joab.
But it was also Joab who (rightly) opposed the taking of the
census. And it was Joab who saw how poorly David was treat-
ing his own troops after the victory over Absalom. But near the
end of his life, the shrewdness of Joab failed him, and he final-
ly bet on the wrong horse, throwing his support to Adonijah.
David ordered Joab’s life to be taken because of Joab’s mur-
der of Abner. It is clear from this that David would have dealt
with Joab if he had had the power, and he knew that Solomon
would have the power. Indeed, Solomon would have to have
63
SCRIPTURE STORIES
the power to deal with Joab if he hoped to rule at all. In any

case, Joab richly deserved to die, and David’s command was a
righteous one.
The second person David ordered Solomon to “take down
to the grave in blood” was Shimei, the Benjamite who had
cursed David during the revolt of Absalom. David could have
killed Shimei during his initial flight, but he had not because of
the circumstances. Upon the defeat of Absalom, David showed
clemency to Shimei and had taken a vow not to put him to
death. But in the interim, Shimei had apparently behaved in
such a way as to show he would present a real problem to
Solomon, so David told Solomon to arrange for something to
happen to Shimei. This Solomon did in wisdom and without
violating any principles of justice. He gave Shimei a very fair
probationary status in Israel, and when Shimei violated it, he
was executed. These actions of Solomon’s should not be seen
as settling personal scores. They were matters of fundamental
justice and were necessary for Solomon’s throne to be estab-
lished in justice.
Of course, the last person Solomon had to deal with was
Adonijah, his half-brother. Adonijah’s life was spared so long
as he behaved, but it soon became clear that he was not about
to do that. Near the end of David’s life, one of his courtiers
had suggested that they find a beautiful young woman to sleep
with David—not sexually, but to serve as sort of a human hot
water bottle. They found Abishag the Shunnamite, and after
David’s death, Adonijah asked Bathsheba if she could arrange
for Solomon to give him Abishag as a wife. Bathsheba did not
see through this, and she brought the request to Solomon. But
64
Solomon saw right away what Adonijah was doing and saw
that to do this would be to give the entire kingdom over to his
older brother. And so it was that Adonijah and Joab died, and
Abiathar the priest was deposed.
Solomon did some things administratively to consolidate
his reign as well. Solomon replaced tribal boundaries with ad-
ministrative districts (1 Kings 4:7). Each district had to pro-
vide the food for the palace for a month, which was no small
burden (vv. 22ff). This centralization and increased taxation
were “tolerable” because of the widespread prosperity (v. 25).
Two percent of not very much is a pressing burden, while forty
percent of staggering wealth is thought (for a time) to be only
reasonable. But the story of Solomon’s expansion of govern-
ment is a textbook case of how to set the stage for a tax revolt
in the next generation.
Early in his reign, Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh
and brought her to the city of David. There was no Temple in
Jerusalem, and the people sacrificed in the high places still.
We are told that in the beginning of his reign, even after mar-
rying the daughter of Pharaoh, Solomon loved the Lord and
walked in the statutes of his father David. The only complaint
the prophet writing the narrative had was that Solomon sac-
rificed and burnt incense in the high places too. This was not
quite right, but God was nevertheless kind to him. There was
no other place to honor the Lord, and doing it this way was
better than not at all.
When Solomon sacrificed a thousand burnt offerings on the
altar at Gibeon, the Lord appeared to him in a dream by night
and told him to ask for anything. Solomon asked for wisdom,
65
SCRIPTURE STORIES
which pleased the Lord greatly. And so God blessed him great-
ly, beyond all reckoning (1 Kings 3:11–12).
It was right after this that the famous incident with the two
harlots occurred, and this established Solomon’s reputation
for sagacity in the kingdom. Two prostitutes were quarreling
over two babies, one alive and one dead. They both claimed
the living child, and Solomon suggested the expedient of
chopping the living baby in two. At this, the true mother of-
fered to give up the child, while the deceitful woman thought
the suggestion was quite equitable. Who was the true moth-
er was evident to all Israel and to every generation since. It
was evident, in fact, to everyone except for the false mother,
which is what sin does to you. When the people heard this
judgment, they feared the king, and they saw that the wis-
dom of God was truly with him.
There may have been some scoffers who said that such a
story might be adequate to awe the peasants, but it hardly
qualified someone to be considered the wisest man who ever
lived. But Solomon’s wisdom was truly stupendous—in an age
when men knew a great deal. Solomon’s wisdom exceeded
that of the Egyptians.
And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the chil-

dren of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For
he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and
Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and
his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake three
thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five.
And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon
66
even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake
also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of
fishes. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of
Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his
wisdom (1 Kings 4:30–34)
Those who came to hear him included the famous visit

from the Queen of Sheba. And recall that Jesus Himself not-
ed that her visit was in search of a wisdom which she found
(Matt. 12:42).
And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solo-

mon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove
him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a
very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much
gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solo-
mon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.
And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any
thing hid from the king, which he told her not. And when
the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon’s wisdom, and the
house that he had built, And the meat of his table, and the
sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers,
and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by
which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no
more spirit in her (1 Kings 10:1–5).
She noted everything but particularly how he worshipped the

Lord. She had come in an adversarial frame of mind—“no one
can answer these questions”—and she left having come to faith.
67
SCRIPTURE STORIES
As Solomon consolidated his position on the land bridge

between Asia and Africa, he gained control of town called
Ezion-geber, located on the Gulf of Aqabah. This gave Israel
access to the Indian Ocean, away to the south and east.
Solomon was not slow to make a treaty with the Phoenecians,
a seagoing people but a people who had no real access to the
waterways of the east. But Solomon built a fleet of ships at
Ezion-geber in concert with the Phoenicians, and they be-
gan bringing gold back from a mysterious place called Ophir
(1 Kings. 9:26–28). The round trip there was three years in
length (1 Kings 10:22). The phrase ships of Tarshish is prob-
ably best translated as refinery ships, ships equipped to carry
smelted ore. In my view, the land of Ophir was most probably
Central America. And the annual weight of gold that would
come to Solomon was 666 talents (1 Kings 10:14), the num-
ber of a man.
One of modern man’s besetting sins is that of underesti-
mating the capacities of ancient men. We do this even in the
teeth of the evidence. The Phoenicians understood the arts of
navigation well and had sailed remarkable distances. They had
tin mines as far north as Norway, and we know that they cir-
cumnavigated Africa by 600 BC or so. Yes, the objector says,
but this is just coast hopping. Anyone can coast hop. We have
no evidence that ancient men knew how to navigate across
oceans, the objection continues, particularly an ocean like the
Pacific, which is enormous.
Consider this argument objectively for a moment. When
modern man finally figured out how to navigate across oceans
(hooray for us!), and when Captain Cook came to the Hawaiian
68
Islands, what did he find there? Well, he found people. It ap-

pears (to me, at any rate) that some ancient men knew how
to sail across the Pacific; otherwise, they wouldn’t have done
it. They didn’t float out there on a coconut. And when Cortez
began his march across Mexico, what was he encountering?
Massive civilizations, that’s what. Moreover, he was encounter-
ing cultures and civilizations that had quite a bit in common
with the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. This fits in
quite naturally with what Scripture tells us.
The Phoenicians had made it to New England across the
Atlantic, and they gave Solomon the expertise he needed to es-
tablish staging areas across Polynesia and then mining colonies
in Central America. This was the main source of Solomon’s
fabulous wealth. The lines of communication with these colo-
nies broke down later, with Jehoshaphat attempting to reestab-
lish them, but unsuccessfully, and the colonists had to fend for
themselves until the arrival of the Spanish.
So banish from your minds all the quaint superstitions that
Enlightenment scholars have told you about ancient man—
that they believed the earth was flat and other such nonsense.
Ancient men knew the earth was a globe, they had calculat-
ed (with a fair degree of accuracy) what the size of that globe
was, they knew that people lived on the other side of that globe
(calling that region the Antipodes, which means that their
feet were sticking the opposite way ours were), and they had
done a fair amount of exploring this globe. Never forget that
the evidence for this is that the entire world was inhabited by
people—long before Columbus, long before Leif Erickson, and
long before St. Brendan, God bless them all.
69
SCRIPTURE STORIES
It wasn’t that long ago that erudite scholars were suggest-

ing that Moses couldn’t have written the Pentateuch because
Moses was illiterate and couldn’t write anything. It would be
more to the point to say that modern erudite scholars don’t
know how to read in a more important sense.
But for all Solomon’s glory, there was a flaw near the center.
Solomon’s great problem was not sensual, despite the number
of his wives. His great problem was political—he did not limit
the power of the state in the way that the law of God required
a king of Israel to do. The law prohibited the multiplication of
wives and horses, silver and gold (Deut. 17:16–17). Solomon
failed at all three points. At certain times, disobedience seems
like it is a cultural or practical necessity. In fact, when disobe-
dience is not a real temptation, it can be dismissed as ludicrous.
But just at the point where obedience is most necessary, it of-
ten seems least realistic. And this is something that Solomon,
for all his wisdom, did not see. He did not see that wisdom
cannot be divorced from obedience and remain true to itself.
Suggested obedience at such times of crisis is dismissed as im-
practical or unrealistic. But the fulfillment of God’s promises
to Solomon were not contingent upon him departing from the
law of God. The promises were fulfilled—after a measure—
despite Solomon’s disobedience. God was willing to show us
through a type the glory of the coming kingdom of God. But
had Solomon obeyed completely, the glory of the fulfillment
would have been even greater.
At the same time, we cannot dismiss Solomon as a simple
apostate. Christ Himself speaks favorably of his wisdom (Luke
11:31–32). And the wisdom that he had really was a gift from
70
God (1 Kings 10:24). Even his disobedience was conducted

with wisdom, as he says in Ecclesiastes. This appears to have
been a way of saying that he sinned with his eyes open, re-
flecting on what he was doing. And having looked over the
precipice, he comes back to tell us that there is nothing better
than to fear God and to keep His commandments. “Do not do
what I did” is better than “go ahead and do it.” But there is a
better way than both.
71
Jeremiah Hurts
the War Effort
T
hroughout the stories told in the Old Testament, we find
three kinds of figures. All of them in various ways are
types of the Lord Jesus, but no one figure portrays Him
completely. We have kings like David or Hezekiah. We have
faithful priests like Aaron or Jehoida. And we have the proph-
ets, men like Malachi, Isaiah, or Jeremiah. Our story here con-
cerns Jeremiah, who in many ways typifies the role that proph-
ets had been given.
The kings were responsible before God to see to that the true
God was worshipped, and worshipped in truth. They were to
establish the throne in righteousness, and they were to admin-
ister justice in accordance with the law of God. The priests were
responsible to conduct the worship of God. But, human nature
73
SCRIPTURE STORIES
being what it is, kings and priests too frequently departed from
faithfulness to God and needed to be called back. This was the
task assigned to the prophets—establishment outsiders, men
who answered directly to God. Because they came to rebuke
those in power for their abuses of power, they were frequent-
ly handled with severity. Their power was rarely institutional;
their authority came from speaking the Word of the Lord.
In the centuries leading up to the ministry of Jeremiah, the
landscape of Israel had been completely altered. The ten tribes
had come out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, and they
invaded Canaan under the direction of the great Joshua. This
inaugurated the period of the judges, men who ruled a decen-
tralized but often disobedient and oppressed people. The last
of these judges was a prophet named Samuel, who was used by
God to anoint the first two kings over Israel—first Saul, and
then David.
David established Israel as a mighty nation, and Solomon
ruled over Israel in the days of her glory. But after Solomon
died, Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, refused to grant tax relief,
and the kingdom split in two as a result. Israel was made up
of the ten tribes to the north, and Judah was made up of Judah
and Benjamin to the south. The history of both kingdoms
was checkered, but Israel was worse. About a century before
Jeremiah’s life and ministry, Assyria had conquered the north-
ern kingdom. Contrary to popular assumption, this did not
cause what some refer to as the ten lost tribes. The ten tribes of
Israel were not lost at all—their nation was destroyed, and they
were taken into exile, but that did not cause those remaining in
Judah to lose track of tribal identity. Many faithful Jews from
74
J eremiah H urts the War E ffort
the northern tribes had emigrated south to live in Judah, so

when their former homeland was destroyed, their tribes were
still preserved. Judah contained Judah and Benjamin, and of
course the tribe of Levi was represented there as well. In the
time of Jesus, Anna the prophetess was from the tribe of Asher
(Luke 2:36), and the apostle Paul could refer naturally to the
twelve tribes (Acts 26:7). Tribal identity was finally lost in AD
70 when the Temple was destroyed along with all its genealog-
ical records.
Jeremiah’s role was to prophesy to the nation of Judah as
their idolatry caused them to careen toward their own defeat
by Babylon. Just as the northern kingdom had fallen because
of her idolatry, so the southern kingdom would follow suit.
Jeremiah saw the impending doom and had the thankless task
of warning a nation that was spiritually deaf and blind.
Jeremiah came from a priestly family (1:1), and it is plain
that they were also a devout family. He came from the line
of rejected Ithamar priests (1 Kings 2:26), who had lived in
Anathoth since the days of Solomon. Jeremiah was born there
in Anathoth, and his name means “Yahweh exalts” or “Yahweh
throws down,” so it is plain what his family desired for the na-
tion. Unfortunately, the nation Yahweh would throw down
was the nation of Judah. Jeremiah was called to the prophetic
ministry when he was only a youth (1:6), a word that can refer
either to an infant or an older adolescent. He was most likely
in his late teens or early twenties.
Jeremiah was called to the prophetic ministry in the thir-
teenth year of King Josiah (626 BC), and his ministry spanned
the next forty years. He was a faithful prophet and served
75
SCRIPTURE STORIES
the Lord until shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC.
During these four decades of mostly grief, he prophesied
under five kings, two of whom served only for three months
each. His ministry stretched over the reign of Josiah, Jehoahaz,
Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Far from being a perpet-
ual naysayer, Jeremiah supported the great reforms of Josiah
and was willing to encourage (unsuccessfully) the cowards
who succeeded Josiah on the throne.
Judah was surrounded by three great powers: Assyriawhich
was still a player but was in the process of collapsing; Egypt,
which had been on the scene for a long time; and the ris-
ing star of Babylon, a power that had been greatly underes-
timated in the days of Hezekiah. When Hezekiah had recov-
ered from an illness, the Babylonians sent a delegation, and
Hezekiah showed them all around, showing them everything.
This displeased Isaiah greatly, and he prophesied that the
Babylonians would capture everything and take Hezekiah’s
sons away into captivity (Isa. 39). Josiah was the great-grand-
son of Hezekiah.
But King Josiah died in a battle with Pharaoh Necho of
Egypt. His successor, Jehoahaz (or Shallum), reigned for three
months until Pharaoh Necho replaced him with his brother
Jehoiakim. Jeremiah lamented both the death of Josiah (22:10a,
15ff) and the deposing of Jehoahaz (22:10–12), indicating that
Jehoahaz was faithful like his father had been. Men with back-
bone are unlikely to be appointed to positions of responsibility
by men who want to manipulate a situation to their own ad-
vantage, so Jehoahaz did not have the opportunity to reign in
the fear of God.
76
His brother Jehoiakim reigned from 607 to 598 BC. But

just a few years into his reign, an event of enormous political
significance occurred—the forces of Egypt under Pharaoh
Necho were crushed by the Babylonians at the battle of
Carchemish (46:1–2). This is the time when the hegemony
of the Middle East was transferred to Babylon, although this
was not obvious for a few years. The decisive point (in ret-
rospect) was this battle, and from this battle on, the proph-
et Jeremiah insisted upon submission to the suzerainty of
Babylon. He did this not as compromiser with Babylon’s idol-
atry, but rather as a deadly foe of Judah’s idolatry. He would
be a foolish man who accused Jeremiah of collaborating with
idolaters, for his whole ministry was made up of rebuking
idolaters. But a significant part of this ministry consisted of
telling the Jewish idolaters that they had a moral responsibil-
ity to submit to the Babylonian idolaters. The faithfulness of
the prophet is not the faithfulness of an ideologue. Neither is
it the compromise of the time-server.
Jehoiakim died in 598 BC and was replaced by his eigh-
teen-year-old son, Jehoiachin, who reigned three months. He
surrendered to the Babylonians, and Nebuchadnezzar then
appointed Josiah’s youngest son, Zedekiah. He was a weak
and vacillating king who ruled for ten years until 587 BC.
Although under the authority of Babylon, Judah revolted
again, a policy which Jeremiah vigorously opposed. When
Jerusalem fell, Nebuchadnezzar treated Jeremiah in a very
kindly way. The emperor appointed Gedaliah to be the gov-
ernor of Judah, and Jeremiah joined him at Mizpah (40:1–6).
But Gedaliah was soon assassinated, and the people fled to
77
SCRIPTURE STORIES
Egypt, contrary to Jeremiah’s word, and they took Jeremiah

with them.
This period in Judah’s history cannot be understood very
well unless we understand that Judah was taken into ex-
ile in stages. In our story, we can see exiles being taken off
to Babylon at least three times. Daniel and his three friends
were taken off to Babylon after the first defeat, shortly after
the Babylonian triumph at the battle of Carchemish. Shortly
before this, during the reign of Josiah, the prophets Nahum,
Zephaniah and Habakkuk had been conducting their minis-
tries. When Jehoiachin was taken captive, he was taken off to
Babylon along with the prophet Ezekiel. But Ezekiel continued
his prophetic ministry for those back in Judah—they would be
there for another ten years. One of the first visions Ezekiel saw
was that of the abominations in the Jerusalem Temple and the
departure of God’s glory (8–11). His fellow Jews back in the
homeland refused, even now, to give up their abominations.
Jeremiah continued to minister in Jerusalem until it finally fell
for good.
This means that Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Nahum,
Zephaniah, and Habakkuk were all contemporaries. They all
spoke to the same stiff-necked people, some on this side of the
exile, some on that side of it. But the issues were the same fun-
damental issues, as they always are.
Jeremiah paid the price of faithfulness. During the course
of his ministry, Jeremiah often confronted the cowardice
of politicians and the duplicity of the kennel-fed prophets.
True prophets confront the court and the king, but that is not
their natural place. They prophesy from outside the beltway.
78
During the reign of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah assailed the king,

the prophets, and the priests, which earned him the full en-
mity of the establishment.
He was persecuted for it (12:6; 15:15–18), and he asked
God to avenge the wrongs done to him. He appealed to God
as the one who knew all circumstances. He called upon God
to remember him, and to visit him, and to deal with his per-
secutors. Since God knew everything, He knew that it was for
His sake that Jeremiah suffered rebuke. Jeremiah knew that
he was no hypocrite, because he rejoiced to eat the words
of God, and his name carried the name of Yahweh. He had
nothing to do with those who scoffed at the word of God or
at the faithful servants of God. While Jeremiah was persecut-
ed for standing for the righteousness of God, he sometimes
complained to God that divine vindication came too slowly.
(15:15–18)
Jeremiah was plotted against (11:18–23; 18:18). The men of
Anathoth, Jeremiah’s hometown, plotted against him, and the
Lord revealed their plotting to him. But Jeremiah, on his own,
tended toward naivete and did not know of all the devices they
had invented. These plots included killing Jeremiah, destroy-
ing his tree and fruit and thereby cutting him off from the
land of the living and erasing his name altogether. And here
we are today, over two and half millennia later, still speaking
the name of Jeremiah, and his adversaries are simply “the men
of Anathoth.”
Jeremiah knew that God tested the hearts and reins, the
inner man, and he asked to see God’s vengeance upon these
men. God promised that those men who had come against his
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
prophet would be punished severely, and there would be no

remnant of them (11:18–23)
There was also a conspiracy to ignore the word of the Lord
through the prophet. As it says in 18:18, “Then said they, Come,
and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall
not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the
word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the
tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words” (18:18).
Who does Jeremiah think he is? Let us ignore him now and
attack him with our tongues. Today, when a prophet speaks to
those people who will not hear the Lord, they smite with their
tongues as well. They say, “The age of prophets is past. You
are not inspired like Jeremiah was. He was a prophet.” And
thus they testify—the only prophet they will hear is a dead one.
And their fathers, who heard the living prophet, resolved to
make him a dead one.
Jeremiah was thrown into a public and humiliating im-
prisonment. “Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and
put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin,
which was by the house of the Lord” (20:2). In this we see
a clear type of the Lord Jesus—Jeremiah was despised and
rejected. Is he a true prophet? I don’t know, we might say,
but a place to start the inquiry is on the question whether or
not he makes the principalities and powers, sleek and full of
themselves, angry.
Jeremiah was declared worthy of death (26:10–24; 36:26),
and we should note that there were some faithful men who
stood up for Jeremiah. The princes of Judah met to consid-
er whether Jeremiah’s prophecies were treasonous. Those
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who accused Jeremiah were the priests and the house-broken

prophets. “This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied
against this city, as ye have heard with your ears.” In our lan-
guage, they said he was hurting the war effort. He was dam-
aging morale. He spoke against this city, and since the city in
which we live is the ultimate standard, he must surely die.
Jeremiah defended himself by appealing to the One who
sent him. “The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house
and against this city all the words that ye have heard.” In other
words, if you want me to take them back, you will have to wait
a long time. The prophet continued, bold as ever. “Therefore
now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of
the Lord your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil
that he hath pronounced against you.” They brought Jeremiah
to put him on trial, and he spoke in such a faithful way that
they were put on trial. Jeremiah said they could do to him what
they pleased, but they could not undo, by any means, the truth
of what he had said (v. 14).
Then the princes and all the people said to the wicked priests
and prophets that Jeremiah should not die, because he had
spoken in the name of the Lord their God. Other instances
of faithful prophets speaking doom were cited (26:10–24). On
another occasion, God protected Jeremiah and Baruch from
being arrested.
The king commanded Jerahmeel and Seraiah to take Baruch
the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet, but the Lord hid them
(36:26). Jeremiah’s written work was destroyed (36:27) and
treated with great contempt, so he faithfully made another
copy of the words that the king had rejected.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
During the reign of Zedekiah, he was arrested on a charge

of deserting to the enemy and thrown into a dungeon (37:11–
16). The Babylonians broke off their siege of Jerusalem be-
cause the Egyptians had showed up, leaving Jerusalem tem-
porarily free. So Jeremiah went out of Jerusalem to go to the
tribe of Benjamin, to separate himself. But he was seen by
a man named Irijah, who accused him of going over to the
Babylonians. Jeremiah denied it, but what is evidence for
those whose minds are made up? “But he hearkened not to
him: so Irijah took Jeremiah, and brought him to the princ-
es.” The princes were angry with Jeremiah and beat him
and threw him into prison, where he remained many days
(37:11–16).
After this, he was moved to a prison near the palace for a
time (37:17–21). Zedekiah sent for him secretly, brought him
to his own house, and there asked, “Is there any word from the
Lord?” Jeremiah said, “Yes, you will be delivered over to the
Babylonians.” Jeremiah then raised some pointed questions.
What had he done wrong? And no doubt looking around him,
he asked, “Where are all your sunshine prophets, the men who
said that Babylon would not come up against this land?”
Jeremiah asked the king for a change of quarters, which was
granted. He was committed to the court of the prison and was
given a ration of bread (37:17–21). Jeremiah would not stop
prophesying what God gave to him to say. He said, “Thus saith
the Lord, He that remaineth in this city shall die by the sword,
by the famine, and by the pestilence: but he that goeth forth to
the Chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and
shall live. Thus saith the Lord, This city shall surely be given
82
into the hand of the king of Babylon’s army, which shall take
it” (38:2–3).
God commanded the nation of Judah to surrender, to
throw down their arms. This was too much for Shephatiah,
Gedaliah, Jucal, and Pashur, who petitioned the king, “We
beseech thee, let this man be put to death: for thus he weak-
eneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city,
and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto
them: for this man seeketh not the welfare of this people, but
the hurt.” He does not seek the welfare of the people, they
said. He keeps talking about what God says. The king, a weak
leader at best, said that he could not protect Jeremiah, so the
prophet was thrown into an abandoned cistern, where he
sank down into the mud, and where he would have died but
for the kindness of Ebedmelech (38:1–13). This Ebedmelech
was an Ethiopian eunuch. The king could not save the proph-
et, but one of his eunuchs could. He sought the king’s favor,
received it, and went to rescue the prophet. He went with
thirty men and a bunch of old rags, had Jeremiah put the rags
under his arms, drew him up out of the mire, and returned
him to the court of the prison (38:1–13).
After this, the cowardly king conferred with him secret-
ly (14–28). He needed Jeremiah’s words, and he could not
obey Jeremiah’s words. He was impotent, paralyzed. He told
Jeremiah to hold nothing back. Jeremiah said, “If I do that,
will you not kill me? And refuse to listen?” The king swore
(secretly), “As the Lord lives, that made us this soul,” he said,
“I will not kill you, and I will not turn you over to those who
would kill you.”
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
So Jeremiah made one last attempt to get Zedekiah to obey

the voice of the Lord. Obedience meant surrender. If he sur-
rendered, his life would be spared. If he did not, the city would
be destroyed with fire, and Zedekiah would be put to death. By
this time, Zedekiah knew beyond any doubt that Jeremiah was
right. But he still did not have the moral courage to do what
was right.
The way of the Lord was set before the king, and the choice
was the same as it always is—will it be life or will it be death?
The king commanded Jeremiah not to tell this prophesy to
anyone, and if the princes came to him to find out what they
had talked about, to withhold it from them. The king told
Jeremiah to say that he had been presenting a petition to the
king, a petition that he not be made to return to his previous
quarters. The princes did come and ask, and Jeremiah did not
tell them what he had told the king. It was possible that the
king might obey, but these men had proven they had no inten-
tion whatever of obeying. The truth for them would have been
pearls before swine. So Jeremiah remained where he was until
the day that Jerusalem was taken (38:14–28), the day that all
his unheeded warnings were fulfilled.
It is worth noting that cowards are frequently brave about
distant dangers, like the Babylonians, precisely because they
are afraid of nearby pressures, such as those that might come
from courtiers and princes. Because Zedekiah was this kind of
coward, he lived to see his sons executed in front of him and all
the words of the courageous prophet fulfilled.
At the end of his life, a profound patriot, Jeremiah was car-
ried away from his homeland to die in Egypt. As a prophet
84
whose words had been confirmed many times over, his word
was sought after the assassination of the puppet governor
Gedaliah. The people promised that they would abide by what
he said, but when Jeremiah told them to stay, they refused and
fled to Egypt. They did so under the leadership, it says, of “all
the proud men.” Judah was a smoldering ruin, and the hearts
of men were still proud. And then, in Egypt, exiled there be-
cause Jeremiah had spoken the truth, the people who opposed
Jeremiah had the hardness of heart to maintain that they were
in exile because they had not worshipped the queen of heaven,
one of their idols, enough.
At the end of this story, we might be tempted to offer up a
great lamentation for the prophet Jeremiah. His words were
not believed by the hearers throughout the course of his en-
tire life. But some believed, and certainly Jeremiah himself
believed. And as we read through his prophecies, we come
upon some of the most glorious words of hope to be found
in all Scripture.
In Matthew 27:9, the thirty pieces of silver that were used to
secure the treachery of Judas were subsequently used to buy
a field called Akeldama. The price was given by Zechariah,
but the glorious faith of Jeremiah is what is referred to. In
the dark days of Judah’s trial, Jeremiah bought a field with
silver, a testimony that the Jews would return and would
again buy and sell. They would return to the land, Jeremiah
said, after seventy years. Business would return to normal,
and their hearts would again return to their normal hardened
state. One of the things they would buy and sell was their
own Messiah, and then they would buy and sell a field with
85
SCRIPTURE STORIES
the returned blood money. Nothing ever changes, one might

be tempted to think.
But Jeremiah knew better. Though thirty pieces of silver
would buy the blood of the Messiah, and a little later, those
same pieces of silver would buy a field for burying the home-
less, the blood of the Messiah would itself buy the salvation
of the world. The day would come, our faithful prophet said,
when it would no longer be necessary for us to exhort one an-
other, saying, “Know the Lord.” For the day is coming when
all flesh will know the Lord, and the law will be written on our
hearts and minds, and all our sins will be forgiven us. For all
his grief, Jeremiah was the great prophet of hope.
Are we exasperated with those who did not believe him
while he lived? But let us ask ourselves a more basic question:
Do we believe him? Do we embrace his great hope—that the
new covenant will deal with all the sinful wickedness of man?
Do we believe the power of the gospel? Let us hear the word of
the Lord, spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:“And they shall be
my people, and I will be their God: And I will give them one
heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good
of them, and of their children after them: And I will make an
everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from
them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts,
that they shall not depart from me” (32:38–40).
86
The People Had
a Mind to Work
I
n the latter part of the Old Testament, some of the charac-
ters and dates start to run together for us, and it is some-
times hard to keep the details straight. If you couple this
with the general ignorance about the secular history of this
time, the result—even for Bible readers—is a random collec-
tion of historical facts and details.
Here we will be telling the story of Nehemiah along with
some details about his contemporary Ezra. But before we can
really tell this story, we have to back up a few paces and briefly
tell the story of their surrounding times and context. As we do
this, please keep in mind that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah
were probably one book originally, and the two of them to-
gether may even have been part of Chronicles.
87
SCRIPTURE STORIES
The great prophet Jeremiah had predicted that the exile

in Babylon would end after seventy years. This prophecy be-
gan to come to fulfillment when the city of Babylon fell to
the Medes and the Persians in 539 BC. Inside the city was
the elderly Daniel, prophesying to the arrogant Belshazzar. A
hand had mysteriously appeared and written on the wall that
Belshazzar’s days were numbered. Actually, as it turned out, his
day was numbered.
The river that ran through Babylon was diverted by the be-
sieging armies, and they got into the city through the river-
bed. But the Babylonians were not so foolish as all that—there
were walls and gates along the riverbank. But in fulfillment of
the prophecy by Isaiah, some gates along the river had been
left open while the king inside was busy with his blasphemous
banquet. Isaiah had said this about the coming conqueror, a
man God would raise up named Cyrus:
That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth

the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou
shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built,
and I will raise up the decayed places thereof: That saith to
the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers: That saith of
Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure:
even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the tem-
ple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his
anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to sub-
due nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to
open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not
be shut. (Is. 44:26–45:1)
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T he P eople H ad a M ind to W ork
The Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century BC) confirms

this same account. The Persians diverted the Euphrates, entered
through the riverbed, and found the defenders in a drunken
revelry. So the city fell that night, and after the Persians were
in control, the new ruler, Cyrus, was stirred up by the Lord—
again, as Isaiah had prophesied this many years before—and
issued a proclamation that the Temple in Jerusalem was to be
rebuilt. In response to this declaration, the altar was set up
and the foundations were laid in 536 BC The governor over-
seeing this work was a man named Zerubbabel, and the high
priest was named Joshua. The work was begun, but the effort
soon fell apart. About sixteen years later, God raised up two
prophets—Haggai and Zechariah—to stir up the people, and
work on the Temple resumed. The Temple was finished about
four years later, around 516 BC, during the reign of Darius I.
The next ruler of Persia after him was Xerxes (486–464), the
husband of Esther. And it was during the reign of his succes-
sor, Artaxerxes I, that we should locate the ministries of Ezra
and Nehemiah.
Artaxerxes I sent Ezra to Jerusalem in 458 BC It is likely
that Ezra held some sort of office within the Persian empire, a
sort of minister of Jewish affairs. He brought valuable gifts for
the Temple from the king as well as from the Jews still living
in exile—along with any others who wanted to give. Ezra is
described as a “ready scribe in the law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6).
The hand of the Lord was with Ezra, and the king granted his
request (vv. 6, 9). As it says, “For Ezra had prepared his heart
to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel
statutes and judgments” (v. 10).
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
The Gentile king was lavish in his generosity. He wanted

Ezra to take what was given, go back to Jerusalem, and offer
sacrifices. Anything that was left over Ezra could dispose of as
he saw fit, and the king gave Ezra an expense account to refur-
bish the Temple. The king’s motive for all this was plain—as
he put it, “Why should there be wrath against the realm of the
king and his sons?” (v. 23).
But while Ezra was clear in his conscience about taking
all this financial aid from Artaxerxes, he still refused to ask
for a band of soldiers to protect them on their way back to
Jerusalem. He was ashamed to ask for that kind of help be-
cause he had told the king, “The hand of our God is upon all
them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath
is against all them that forsake him” (8:22). God protected
them in their travel, according to the faith of Ezra, and they
arrived safely in Jerusalem. And so it was that a man adept
in the law of God, whose heart was right with God, arrived
in the Promised Land from Babylon and found there that the
inhabitants of the land had again drifted away from their cov-
enant responsibilities.
When he arrived, he was asked to deal with the problem of
mixed marriages. He and a select committee dealt with the
problem by blacklisting the offenders and inducing many of
them to put away their pagan wives. When we read this ac-
count, we ought not to think of a marriage between two cov-
enant members, one of whom we suspect might be unregen-
erate. These pagan wives, it says, were guilty of “detestable
practices” or “abominations,” and part of a people who were
living openly in these abominations (9:1, 11, 14). The problem
90
was not that Israelite men had married outside Israel—this

was perfectly permissible. Think of Rahab and Salmon or Boaz
and Ruth. But for this to happen lawfully, the women involved
had to do what Ruth did—abandon her native gods and serve
the God of Israel only. Ezra found out that intermarriage on a
large scale had occurred, and that the foreign women who had
married into Israel had not in the slightest degree left behind
their previous customs. Consequently, Ezra required what the
law stipulated—mandatory divorce. It was a large project, for
many had sinned this way, but Ezra rounded everyone up to
address the sin. Every man who did not assemble within three
days would have his property confiscated, and he would be ex-
communicated from the congregation (10:8). That got their at-
tention, so they all showed up. But there were torrential rains,
the widespread sinning had tangled up many things, and so
it was proposed to go through the problem more methodi-
cally and slowly. Presumably, any woman who abandoned
her idolatries and attendant fornications would be allowed to
remain married within Israel. But for the others, divorce was
required—not just permitted. In our sentimentalist era, we
are sometimes tempted to absolutize marriage. But only God
is absolute, and in this situation, He required the break-up of
many households.
We do not hear from Ezra again until 444 BC when he reads
the law publicly in Nehemiah 8. He probably had returned to
the Persian king between these two incidents and had come
back again when the walls were completed. Nehemiah re-
counts (Neh. 12:36) how he had led one procession around
the walls during their dedication, while Ezra led the other.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
These two men were colaborers in the great work of reforma-

tion and rebuilding.
Now Nehemiah was a cupbearer to the king, and when he
heard of the sad state of affairs in Jerusalem, the king sent him
there to serve as governor in 445. He was probably called back
to Babylon from 433 to 420. But the text only says, “after cer-
tain days,” so his absence may have been significantly less than
this (Neh. 13:6). But supposing the longer absence, the bulk
of Malachi’s prophetic ministry occurred when Nehemiah was
gone. During his absence, some of the abuses of the law among
the Jews resurfaced, and Nehemiah had to institute fresh re-
forms when he came back. These reforms included cleansing
the Temple, reinstituting the tithe for the Levites, fighting
against the practice of merchandising on the Sabbath, and so
on. These latter reforms were important, but the great work of
Nehemiah was the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem.
Nehemiah was a reformer, one who labored at repairing the
ruins. He was of a repentant mind before he left Babylon (1:7).
He was serving Artaxerxes as cupbearer, and the king noticed
he was sorrowful and asked about it. Nehemiah was afraid, but
he prayed, and then answered the king. He was given permis-
sion to go serve his people, and when he arrived in Jerusalem,
it is important to note that one of the things he arranged for
was the reading of the law by Ezra (Neh. 8). There is no way to
rebuild the walls around the city unless the walls are rebuilt in
the minds and hearts of the people.
Among other things, the people were taught that reforma-
tion means eating the fat and drinking the sweet. When the
people heard the words of the law, they were sorely convicted,
92
and they wept. But Nehemiah, a great leader of men, encour-

aged them. “Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and
send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for
this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy
of the Lord is your strength” (8:10). The Levites followed up on
this, and the people had “great mirth” because, it says, “they
understood the words that were declared unto them” (v. 12).
We see this at the culmination of their work, but we learn from
them that reformations—confession of great sin included—are
times of great joy. The thing that motivates and drives them is
covenantal exuberance. The lesson to be drawn from previous
reformations is precisely this. The goal toward which we press
is the ability to rejoice in the land with our wives and sons and
daughters, with food on the table, and in the presence of our
God who delights to see us this way. By doing this, we do not
minimize our sin, but rather we show that we have understood
the words declared to us.
The task of Nehemiah was to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
which occurred under the blessing of God because the “peo-
ple had a mind to work” (4:6). And when the people have a
mind to work, all obstacles are overcome in the name of God.
Nehemiah was the leader of this great work of reformation,
and he was able to ask God in his memoirs to remember his
work. He did not have much use for the nobles, of whom it is
said at least once that they did not put their necks to the work
of their Lord (3:5).
Other obstacles came from outside the camp. When word
got out that Nehemiah was rebuilding the wall, another re-
gional governor, a man named Sanballat, came to oppose
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
the work. We know from outside sources that Sanballat was

the governor of Samaria in 407 BC He may well have been
governor at this earlier date, but in any case, he was one of
the leading opponents of Nehemiah. His name is Babylonian
and means “Sin (their moon god) has given life.” At the same
time, the names of his two sons (Delaiah and Shelemiah) show
that he may have been a syncretistic worshipper of Yahweh (2
Kings 17:33), which is what happened wholesale in Samaria af-
ter it fell to the Assyrians. Sanballat may have been descended
from this group. In his syncretistic way, he may even have put
Yahweh first on his list of gods, which may account for how his
daughter was able to marry into the high priest’s family (Neh.
13:28). But Nehemiah had no use for this kind of thing. “And
one of the sons of Jehoida, the son of Eliashib the high priest,
was son in law to Sanballat the Hononite: therefore I chased
him from me” (13:28).
This is the Sanballat who offered resistance to the work of
God in rebuilding the wall. Sanballat was angry and greatly
offended, so he came out to mock the Jews. He came with his
brethren and with an army from Samaria and said, “What do
these feeble Jews? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sac-
rifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive the
stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?” (4:2).
Of course, the content of the mockery and the fact of it were
two different stories. If the Jews had all been out in a field
throwing rocks at the moon, Sanballat would not have come
out to them in the same way. He mocked their work precisely
because he took it seriously and knew that it was a threat to his
influence and authority. Tobiah, an Ammonite who was with
94
Sanballat, mocked also. If even a fox hops on that wall, down

it will come! Nehemiah asked God to hear the taunts and to
turn them back on those who hurled them. But the walls were
already half done, because the people had a mind to work.
As the work progressed further, and the breaches in the
wall were filled up, all the surrounding peoples were very an-
gry. This included Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Arabians,
and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites. They made a con-
spiracy to come and fight against Jerusalem and interrupt the
work. Word got to Nehemiah, and the people prayed and pre-
pared themselves for the battle. Nehemiah spoke to the no-
bles, the rulers, and the people, and he said, “Be not ye afraid
of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and
fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your
wives, and your houses” (4:14). The task of biblical men is
just this—to pray to God, trus Him, work hard with their
hands in building the kingdom, and be prepared to fight in
order to defend that work.
And this is what happened. Because their plot was uncov-
ered, the conspirators were thwarted, and the Jews worked
on the wall in a very famous posture. From that time on, half
the work force stood guard, while the other half kept work-
ing while armed. The laborers carried both sword and trowel.
Nehemiah had a warning system of trumpeters established: in
case of an attack, the men were to rally to the sound of the
trumpet. In this time of crisis, they showed what men can do
when men are really working. “So we laboured in the work: and
half of them held the spears from the rising of the morning till
the stars appeared” (4:21).
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
The work was glorious, and God was in it. At the same time,
disputes arose among those doing the work. This is how it al-
ways is. In the book of Acts, just when God was establishing
His kingdom, a dispute arose concerning the distribution of
food. In this work, just as the wall is being completed, many
of the Jews cried out because they had been forced into a kind
of debt slavery by some of their brothers. Nehemiah was very
angry when he heard about this, and he confronted those who
were treating their brothers in such a mercenary way. His con-
frontation was received, and the people said amen, and they
praised the Lord. We are told that the people did what they said
they would do. Nehemiah’s anger was fully understandable.
How could he build a free city with slave labor? How could
the walls protect the citizenry from fellow citizens who were
willing to prey on their fellow Jews? The thing is not possible.
The next incident with Sanballat was when he heard that the
walls had been closed up, and the only thing left was the set-
ting of the gates. So Sanballat and Gershem and Tobiah pro-
posed to meet with Nehemiah in a particular village. They saw
that the key to the work was Nehemiah, and Nehemiah saw
that they meant to do him mischief. So Nehemiah sent mes-
sengers, who said, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot
come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and
come down to you?” (6:3) They were persistent, however, and
they asked this way four times. Nehemiah answered the same
way every time.
Then, because the work was proceeding so well, Sanballat
took the next step, that of slandering the motives of Nehemiah
in order to make the people fearful of working for him. He
96
sent out an open letter that accused Nehemiah of rebellion

(indirectly). “It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu
saith it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel: for which cause
thou buildest the wall, that thou mayest be their king, accord-
ing to these words. And thou hast also appointed prophets to
preach of thee at Jerusalem . . .” (6:6–7). Sanballat did not state
the slanders directly himself—perhaps the law of the Persians
would have held him more accountable than he wanted to be,
but he was willing to state what the word on the street was. This
is what I am hearing, he said. I am just passing it on. Whenever
we hear that kind of thing, we ought to apply a proverb taken
from this passage—Gashmu saith it.
Sanballat saw that it was the leadership ability of Nehemiah
that had caused this great work to go forward. At the begin-
ning, their response was one of mockery. At the end it is vi-
cious slander. They tried everything they could think of to get
Nehemiah to abandon his single vision. But the entire time,
Nehemiah ignored them and served as a faithful governor un-
der the Persian king. He is faithful to the earthly empire of
which he is a part, but his ultimate faithfulness is seen in how
he serves his God.
When we consider the labors of many faithful saints
throughout the history of God’s people in Scripture, we should
pay special mind to the life of Nehemiah, for his circumstances
approximate ours in many ways.
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The Lord Jesus
W
e come now to the main point of all the stories we have
been telling, that is to say, we have come to the story of
the Lord Jesus. This is a very difficult story to tell for at
least two reasons. First, no storyteller or preacher is really suf-
ficient for the task. The apostle John once said that the world
itself could not contain the books that could be written about
this Man, and for the last two thousand years men have been
writing books about Him, and all these books have only served
to reinforce John’s point.
In telling stories about Bible characters, it is important to
note that Jesus is not just another character in a line of oth-
er characters. And yet the limited capacity of the storyteller
can too readily create that impression. The apostle Paul once
lamented, “Who is sufficient for these things?” and it was just
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
this sort of thing that provoked the cry. And he was an apos-
tle. No one should think that because the story of Jesus is
being told by the same man who told the story of Moses, or
Noah, or Jeremiah, that it is the same kind of story. It cannot
be. The same finger can point at the sun, the moon, and the
stars, but we should never be distracted by the finger. In our
line of stories, we have now come to the time when we point
to the sun.
And there is a second consideration. Even though the Lord
Jesus is the ultimate point of all the stories, there are some oth-
er stories that follow this one. Every good story in the history
of the world that was ever told was somehow an intimation,
foreshadowing, prophecy, or echo of this story. And every evil
story has been a rebellious attempt to distract attention away
from this one or somehow to shout it down. So the fact that
other stories follow this central story should not be taken as
an indication that we can ever move on to other things. Stories
that follow after this story are also the work of God, but han-
dled wrongly, they too can create a false impression. We can
never really move past this. We may apply it, and we may apply
it in many different ways and in countless wonderful stories,
but if we are wise, they will all be applications. The testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, and it is our responsibility
here in telling this story, and in hearing it, to be faithful sons
and daughters of the prophets.
The Lord Jesus was born in the line of the tribe of Judah—
the royal tribe of all Israel. Jacob had prophesied many years
before that the scepter would not depart from Judah before
Shiloh came.
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Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand
shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children
shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion’s whelp: from
the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he
couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him
up? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiv-
er from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him
shall the gathering of the people be. Binding his foal unto
the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed
his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes:
His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk
(Gen. 49:8–12).
The line of David had descended from Judah in accordance

with this word, and even though the lineage of David was
not sitting on the throne of David in the time of the Romans,
the royal line was still identifiable, and Joseph, betrothed to
a young woman named Miriam (we call her Mary), was of
that line.
We must confront the identity of the Lord Jesus at the very
first, even to talk about His genealogy. He was the complete
man, but at the same time, He was and is fully and completely
God. In his human nature, he was descended from the house
of David (Rom. 1:3) His natural father was David, reckoned
through his mother Mary. His legal father was David also,
reckoned through Joseph. His Father was God the Father,
through the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 1:4). He was
called the son of God because Mary became pregnant with-
out ever knowing a man. The Holy Spirit came over her, and
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she conceived in her virginity and remained a virgin until

after the Lord was born.
Luke visited Jerusalem with the apostle Paul in AD 56 or 57,
and he probably obtained many of the details that he records
in his gospel from Mary herself. His narration of the early
events of Jesus’s life is certainly told from her perspective. We
know that Mary lived past the death of Jesus, and if she was the
average age of young women of that day who married (about
fourteen), Luke could easily have visited with her when she
was in her seventies.
Luke made a point of saying that he had gathered his details
of the life of Jesus from consulting with eyewitnesses. Who
was an eyewitness of what the shepherds did on the night of
the Lord’s birth if not Mary? Luke most likely knew that Mary
treasured all these things up in her heart (Luke 2:19) because
that is what Mary told him.
Now Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to fulfill the
prophecies made concerning Him (Micah 5:2). Not only was
the Messiah to have been born in Bethlehem, this prophetic
word made it clear that the one to be born was an eternal one—
his goings forth were from all eternity. This Bethlehem was the
city of David, and David’s descendants returned there in re-
sponse to an imperial order given by a pagan emperor, and he
did what he did in order to fulfill the words of the prophet. The
important men who believe they run the world never actually
do run the world. The mighty overlook many little things, and
in overlooking them, they overlook the obvious.
The shepherds came to adore Christ on the night of His
birth. Although our Christmas cards sometimes teach us that
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the magi came on the same night, this is not the case. The
magi from the east actually came sometime within two years
after His birth. By the time they had arrived, Joseph and Mary
had found a house in Bethlehem to live in and were not in the
unsettled circumstances they had been in the night Jesus was
born. We do not really know that there were three magi, but
this has often been guessed from the three kinds of gift—the
gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh.
The magi were pagan astrologers of some sort and were
probably informed not only by the star that had appeared to
them, but also by Balaam’s prophecy that a star would arise in
Jacob and that a scepter would come from Israel. Balaam was
not a Hebrew prophet, and it is quite possible that his words
were kept and recorded outside of Israel. In any case, the magi
were not led astray by what they saw, and they consulted with
King Herod upon their arrival in Judea. He was suspicious of
this auspicious birth, as evil kings always are. He lied to the
magi in order to find out more, but they were warned in a
dream to return home by another route.
In response to this, Herod ordered the execution of all boys
two years old and under who lived in the area of Bethlehem.
We too often forget that this great wickedness is just as much
a part of the Christmas story as the others parts of the story
we tell, and it underlines, in a gruesome way, our need for a
Savior and Messiah. In order to escape the evil and murderous
order of Herod the Great (who died in 4 BC), Joseph led his
small family to seek refuge in Egypt. Because Herod ordered
the death of boys two years old and under, it is likely that Jesus
was born somewhere between 6 and 4 BC
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After the death of Herod, when the Son of God, the new
Israel, was brought up out of Egypt, Joseph decided to settle in
Nazareth, a city of Galilee—instead of in Bethlehem, the city
of Christ’s birth in Judah. This was to fulfill the word of the
prophet Hosea—“When Israel was a child, then I loved him,
and called my Son out of Egypt” (Hosea 11:1). God had done
this in a type when Israel was delivered under the leadership
of Moses, but He was now doing it forever in the person of the
Lord Jesus. Jesus came up out of Egypt because Jesus was the
new Israel.
When Jesus was twelve years old, He was left behind in
Jerusalem once after His family had gone there to worship. He
was eventually found in His Father’s house discussing theol-
ogy with the scribes. Jesus grew up under the grace of God
in a normal way, but He clearly had some intimations of who
he was (Luke 2:40, 49). He grew up in the grace of God, not
because He had sinned and required forgiveness, but rather
because grace means favor. When favor is shown to a sinner,
this means forgiveness. But favor can be extended beyond the
boundaries of forgiveness. The grace of God rested upon Jesus
as He grew up in wisdom.
Now this raises a question about the consciousness of
the boy Jesus. He clearly knew He had a special relation-
ship to His Father, and He spoke of it to His parents, but
the Scriptures also tell us that Jesus learned things; He grew
in wisdom and in stature, it says. Later, we are told that He
learned obedience through the things that He suffered. We
should not think of the Incarnation as though Jesus had two
compartments in His mind, as though when lying in the
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manger as a baby, He was thinking in one compartment,

“Well, thirty years to go,” while in the other compartment He
was thinking that He wanted some milk. This kind of schizo-
phrenia is not what the Incarnation accomplished. Of course
Jesus remained fully God in the Incarnation, and, as such,
He possessed attributes of Deity, such as omniscience. But in
possessing these attributes, there is some sense in which He
did not avail Himself of them in order to be able to grow in
grace and wisdom. This is why it is likely that Jesus discov-
ered, fully, His own identity when His Father declared from
the heavens that He was His Son, and He was well-pleased
with His Son. This was declared by God from heaven, and
this was the point of the temptation that immediately fol-
lowed. “If you are the Son of God . . .”
But Jesus had to have known growing up that He was in a
special relation to God. He mentions this to His parents after
the incident when His parents misplaced Him, and His father
and mother of course knew of the virgin birth. And as they
watched Him grow up, His sinlessness would have been diffi-
cult to miss.
This incident when Jesus was left behind is the last we hear
of Joseph, so we do not know when Joseph died. Jesus had nu-
merous brothers and sisters, and Jesus was trained as a carpen-
ter (Mark 6:3), so we may assume that Joseph was around long
enough at least to see Jesus almost grown.
We are told that Jesus began His ministry when he was
about thirty years old (Luke 3:23). Given the time of His birth,
this meant His ministry most likely started around AD 27 We
also know that His ministry was roughly three years in length
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because it extended over three separate Passovers (not count-

ing the Passover that was being observed at the time of His
death). One reasonable reconstruction would mark the be-
ginning of His ministry around December of AD 26, ending
with His execution and resurrection around March/April AD
30. These dates are not, of course, absolutely certain, but if we
believe the details given in the Bible, we do know a good deal
about the life of Jesus Christ.
From the beginning, the ministry of Jesus consisted of iden-
tification with sinners. This is why the Incarnation occurred
in the first place, and His formal ministry began with Him re-
ceiving the baptism of John—which was, you recall, a baptism
of repentance. So Jesus began His public ministry by repenting,
a fact that brought John the Baptist into a state of no small
consternation. As the perfect one, Jesus was the only one who
could repent perfectly. Of course, this also meant that He did
not need to repent. But Jesus lived His life as a second Adam—
one whose obedience or disobedience was to be reckoned to
His people. And in this repentance, He was Israel, repenting
on our behalf.
So He began His public ministry by repenting in the Jordan
River. Have you ever felt that your repentance was completely
inadequate? That is why Jesus repented for you. He began His
ministry of representing you by coming to John and request-
ing baptism. He ended this ministry of identification with sin-
ners in His death and resurrection. The baptism of Jesus and
the death and resurrection of Jesus are the two bookends of
His ministry that contain the story of your salvation as well as
the reality of it.
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In Jesus’s baptism, the Father declared His identity. The Son

was baptized. The Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form,
like a dove. Right after His baptism, the Lord Jesus was driven
by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He
came up out of Egypt just as Israel had come up out of Egypt.
He spent forty days in the wilderness just as Israel spent forty
years in the wilderness. He confronted temptation in the wil-
derness just as Israel had, but there was a great difference in
that Israel fell and the Lord Jesus stood.
The first Adam fell in his temptation, although he lived in
idyllic conditions. The second Adam was fiercely tempted in a
wilderness yet stood. And this is why our first garden became
a wilderness, and then, in the grace of God, our wilderness
became a garden.
Israel spent forty years in the wilderness in preparation for
the invasion of Canaan. Jesus spent forty days in the wilder-
ness in preparation for His “invasion” of Canaan, an invasion
which we see in His public preaching, teaching, and casting
out of demons. Jesus (or, to use the Old Testament form of His
name, Joshua) came into the land to bring it into submission
to the Word of God.
Think of the ministry of Christ in broad terms. At the time
of Jesus, the Jews lived in two sections of Palestine. The first was
Judea to the south, where Jerusalem is. Just to the north of Judea
was Samaria, a region populated by half-breed (and thoroughly
despised) Jews. To the north of Samaria was Galilee. The whole
region, from north to south, is about eighty miles long.
In the year 27, we find the Lord’s early Judean ministry, His
ministry in the south. During this time, He was tempted (Matt.
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
4), changed water to wine (John 2:1–12), cleansed the Temple

(John 2:13–25), had His famous conversation with Nicodemus
(John 3), and so on.
He then moved north to Galilee for all of AD 28 and the
first part of 29. There was a brief visit down to Jerusalem for
Passover, which was one of the three festivals of obligation. But
during this time, He was rejected at Nazareth (His hometown),
and spent most of the time ministering out of Capernaum.
The third phase of His ministry was committed to a spe-
cial focus on training the disciples in isolated places, still in
the north. This time included the Transfiguration. Jesus was
spending a good deal of time with His disciples, instilling in
them the word fulfilled.
The fourth phase was His later Judean ministry, culminating
in His betrayal and death. When Jesus set Himself to go down
to Judea again, His disciples knew what was coming. Jesus had
told them over and again that He was going to be rejected by
the chief priests and the scribes, that He was going to be cru-
cified, and that He was going to return on the third day. His
disciples heard these words but must have thought they had
some deep spiritual meaning. They had a number of discon-
nected aspects of this in their minds, but they had not put it
all together. But Jesus meant just what He said: He was going
to be murdered, and He was going to conquer that death, that
murder, after the fact. And in conquering that particular sin,
He conquered all sin, giving His life as a ransom for many.
So the Lord Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem know-
ing what awaited Him there. He was betrayed by one of the
twelve—the treasurer, as it turns out. We know that Judas
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Iscariot was morally compromised before his great treachery,

but we do not know if his betrayal was fundamentally moti-
vated by money, although John tells us that he was a thief. He
certainly took money for the betrayal, but there may have been
other forces at work as well.
The disciples had the best of intentions. Jesus had predict-
ed that Peter would fall away, and Peter hotly denied it. He
said that if everyone fell away, he would not. The other disci-
ples, of course, said much the same thing. Jesus, knowing that
they would fail like this, loved them nonetheless. He longed
to observe the Passover meal with them, which He made sure
they arranged for. In the context of this meal, with Jesus ful-
ly aware of the doom hanging above Him, the disciples begin
to bicker (again) about their relative importance. And Jesus,
in that setting, got a bowl of water, and washed His disciples
feet. Apparently, no lesson is harder to learn than this one. The
first will be last, and the last will be first. It is the fundamen-
tal lesson, and here, on the eve of Christ’s death, they are still
struggling with it.
Afterward, they went out to the garden, where Jesus was
eventually going to be arrested. He went apart from His dis-
ciples to pray, and they, oblivious to their circumstance, could
not keep watch with Him in prayer. They kept falling asleep, but
Jesus could feel the weight of all the sin of all His people begin-
ning to settle upon Him. He begged the Father to have this cup
pass from Him. Put another way, at this particular moment,
He did not want to die for you, and He did not want to die
for me. His emotions were elsewhere, and He wanted to have
God figure out another way of accomplishing His purpose.
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He was in agony over this, in such agony that He sweat blood.

But showing that His love and obedience were just what they
ought to have been, His petitions were undergirded with this:
“Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done.”
The time ordained before all worlds arrived, and the inexo-
rable chain of events began to unfold. We know that God or-
dains all things, but in the events of these dreadful hours the
foreordination of all things is set in high relief; we cannot miss
them. All things unfold according to the will and word of God,
down to the behavior of crowing chickens, godless soldiers,
envious priests, cowardly disciples, a remorseful traitor, and a
boisterous crowd threatening to riot. All of it was in the palm
of the hand of God, and this is what Jesus submitted to in the
garden. It was the will of God over all, but underneath that will
was the pandemonium of the conflicting and tortured wills
of Pilate, and Judas, and Caiphas, and Peter, and all the oth-
ers. God’s will does not annihilate other wills, and God’s will
does not crush other wills. But God’s will most certainly rules
all things, and if we cannot see this in the event of our Lord’s
Passion, we will never see it anywhere.
The other disciples were scattered (with the apparent ex-
ception of John), and Christ died abandoned by His follow-
ers. But the worst of it was that He was deserted (in some
mysterious way) by His God. His cry of desperation from the
cross is still to “My God,” and He is quoting the Scriptures,
but He cries out forsaken.
He did this for the joy that was set before Him—He knew
that death would be unable to hold Him, and so He endured
the cross, despising the shame. He went to His death knowing
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that the God who had abandoned Him would vindicate Him
shortly, justifying Him before all the world. He would be de-
clared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection
from the dead. And on the third day after He died, just as He
had said, in accordance with the prophetic words of the proph-
et Jonah, He rose triumphant from the grave. His body had not
suffered corruption, and He was not abandoned to Hades.
There was a great earthquake, and the stone rolled away
from the tomb. The soldiers who had been placed there on
guard were the first to know what had happened, and the chief
priests who had killed Jesus were the second group of people to
find out. But instead of repenting, they hardened themselves.
Just like Herod at the beginning of the Lord’s life, instead of
submitting to the will and purpose of God, surrendering ev-
erything, they grasped instead at their own way. The mystery
of lawlessness is indeed great.
Yet the power of the resurrection is greater still. All our sins,
compared the power of the death and resurrection, are like a
small burning ember or coal thrown into the middle of an in-
finite ocean of grace. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we not
only know the story of Him, we have also become part of His
story. Our identity as the church has become those who gather
in His name, in His authority, in His power, in his goodness to
worship Him, to approach the Father while doing so, and to do
it all in the power of the Holy Spirit.
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The Whore Becomes
a Virgin Bride
T
he next person we are considering in this series of Bible
stories is unique. The others we have treated primarily as
individuals. We will do this with Mary Magdalene as well,
but we will also spend a good amount of time considering her
typological significance. So we will treat Mary, but we will also
be considering another very important person—the bride of
Jesus Christ, the Christian church.
We should say another very important person, because
Mary Magdalene appears to have been an important person in
her own right. She is mentioned in fourteen places, and in the
majority of those places she is given some sort of significant
prominence. We are never told the meaning of this outright,
but at the same time there are some clear textual indications.
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Mary Magdalene is popularly thought of as a fallen woman

who was restored by Christ. In fact, in English a magdalene is
a reformed prostitute, and homes for such women have fre-
quently been named after her. Now this background for Mary
is quite possible (in the sexual sense), but we are not told this
explicitly. The implication has been drawn from an identifica-
tion of Mary with the woman of Luke 7 who washed the feet
of the Lord with her tears and anointed his feet with ointment.
That woman was a sexual sinner, and Mary is mentioned for
the first time immediately after this.
But the fact that Mary was delivered from acute bondage to
sin is directly stated. Mary Magdalene was part of Christ’s trav-
eling entourage (Luke 8:1–3), and this is how she is introduced:
“And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every
city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the
kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, And certain
women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, And
Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and
many others, which ministered unto him of their substance”
(Luke 8:1–3). So Mary began to follow Christ after He cast sev-
en demons out of her (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2), and this import-
ant background fact is also mentioned in another place. “Now
when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared
first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils”
(Mark 16:9). This important detail may have relevance when we
consider Mary typological significance. Remember that Jesus
once taught us what would happen if one demon was cast out,
and nothing was done to replace it with anything wholesome.
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T he W hore B ecomes a V irgin B ride
He said that seven demons would come back with a vengeance,

and that the latter condition would be worse than the first. This
figure He gave against that generation. He cast demons out of
Israel, yet they did not receive their Messiah, so their condition
was made seven times worse, and their nation was destroyed.
But Mary was a woman out of whom seven demons were cast
at the first. But she came to Christ in truth, and she does not
have to worry about forty-nine demons coming back at her.
The Christian church will never undergo this kind of cataclys-
mic judgment—the covenant will not be like the covenant God
made with their fathers, as Jeremiah put it (Jer. 31:32).
Mary was from Galilee. Mark 15:41 puts it this way: “(Who
also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered
unto him;) and many other women which came up with him
unto Jerusalem” (Mark 15:41). Luke states it this way: “And
the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed
after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.
And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and
rested the sabbath day according to the commandment” (Luke
23:55). And of course, we also know this from her name—she
was Mary Magdalene because she was from Magdala, a town
in Galilee. She also apparently had some wealth, for she was
one of Christ’s financial supporters (Luke 8:3; Mark 15:41;
Matt. 27:55). Mary is included with other women in this re-
gard. “Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna,
and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance”
(Luke 8:3). This ministry also likely including various forms
of service, and there were quite a number of women involved
in giving it. “Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him,
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and ministered unto him;) and many other women which came
up with him unto Jerusalem” (Mark 15:41). The same thing is
noted by Matthew. “And many women were there beholding
afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto
him” (Matt. 27:55).
Now out of all these women, Mary’s devotion to Jesus was
particularly marked. First, we see that she attended His cru-
cifixion: “And when the centurion, which stood over against
him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said,
Truly this man was the Son of God. There were also women
looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and
Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome”
(Mark 15:39–40).
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his moth-
er’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene
(John 19:25).
“And after the death of Jesus, when Joseph of Arimathea
wrapped Christ’s body in fine linen, Mary Magdalene and an-
other Mary marked the place where He was buried. And Mary
Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was
laid” (Mark 15:47).
“And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in
a clean linen cloth, And laid it in his own new tomb, which
he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to
the door of the sepulchre, and departed. And there was Mary
Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepul-
cher” (Matt. 27:59–61).
As soon as it was possible, when their Sabbath rest was over,
Mary and two other women came to anoint the Lord’s body
116
with spices. “And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene,
and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet
spices, that they might come and anoint him” (Mark 16:1)
But when they arrived at the grave, they found they had
stumbled into a glorious pandemonium. It is hard to keep
track of all the coming and going, and still less is it possible to
keep close track of all the angels.
“In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the
first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great
earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven,
and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat
upon it” (Matt. 28:1–2). There had been a great earthquake,
and the angel of the Lord was sitting on the rolled away stone
(Matt. 28:2). Not surprisingly, the chronology of events after
this does require some untangling. The women saw angels
who told them to give a message to Peter that they were to
meet in Galilee.
“And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man
sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and
they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affright-
ed: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is ris-
en; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But
go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before
you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you”
(Mark 16:5–7).
So the first thing that happened was that angels gave mes-
sages to the women. Mary and the others did eventually give
the message to the other disciples, but they did not believe
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
it. But Peter was curious enough and went to the tomb and
found it empty (Luke 24:12). “Then arose Peter, and ran unto
the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes
laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that
which was come to pass” (Luke 24:12).
Mary had also told Peter and John about it separately (John
20:2). “Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to
the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them,
They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we
know not where they have laid him” (John 20:2).
Mary herself doesn’t know what to think—which can be
seen in the phrase “they have taken away the Lord out of the
sepulchre.” This despite the fact that she had been given mes-
sages from angels. This can only mean that the messengers
had appeared as men, and were thought to be such, and it was
not until after they knew Jesus had risen that they conclud-
ed the young men were actually angels. So in this wrought-up
condition, Mary came back to the tomb and wept. “But Mary
stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she
stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, And seeth two
angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the
feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her,
Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they
have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid
him” (John 20:11–13).
Looking into the tomb again, she sees two angels, one on
either side of the mercy seat, the place where Jesus had lain.
“And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and
the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain” (v. 12).
118
They ask why she is crying, and she says that it is because the
Lord’s body had been taken. She turns back from the tomb and
then mistakes Jesus Himself for the gardener—until He speaks
her name.
And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and
saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus
saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest
thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him,
Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast
laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary.
She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to
say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not
yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say
unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to
my God, and your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the
disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken
these things unto her. (John 20:14–18)
Now let us leave Mary Magdalene for a moment. We need to

take a few steps back from this picture and consider the larger
story. If we were to subtitle the story of redemption, we could
call it “How God the Father Arranged for His Divine Son to
Marry a Prostitute.” Another name for it could be “How the
Whore Became a Virgin Bride.” To get an idea of this Scripture-
wide context, let us consider just a few things.
Note the importance of the Messianic line. In the first chap-
ter of Matthew, the genealogy given for Christ contains four
women, all of whom had reputation issues. There was Tamar,
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
who dressed like a Canaanite prostitute to trick Judah into

sleeping with her after his wife had died.
And in process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah’s wife

died; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his
sheepshearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the
Adullamite. And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father
in law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep. And she put
her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her with a
vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is
by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown,
and she was not given unto him to wife. When Judah saw
her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered
her face. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go
to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not
that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt
thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me? And he
said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt
thou give me a pledge, till thou send it? And he said, What
pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy
bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it
her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. And
she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and
put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the
kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his
pledge from the woman’s hand: but he found her not. Then
he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot,
that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was
no harlot in this place. And he returned to Judah, and said, I
120
cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there
was no harlot in this place. And Judah said, Let her take it
to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou
hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months
after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in
law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child
by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her
be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father
in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child:
and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the sig-
net, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them,
and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that
I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no
more. (Gen. 38:12–26)
Now this was the woman who was named in the genealogy
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Note also that both of her sons are
named in that genealogy. “And Judas begat Phares and Zara
of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram”
(Matt. 1:3).
The second woman mentioned as an ancestress of Jesus
Christ was Rahab, who did not just look like a Canaanite pros-
titute, she was a Canaanite prostitute (Josh. 6:17; Matt. 1:5).
“And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are there-
in, to the Lord: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all
that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers
that we sent” (Josh. 6:17). The Bible goes on to tell us that this
Rahab married a man of Israel named Salmon. “And Salmon
begat Booz of Rachab . . . .” (Matt. 1:5)
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
Then there was Ruth, who was a Gentile woman from

Moab. This was a nation born of Lot’s incestuous union with
one of his daughters. Ruth was a virtuous woman, but could
have been slandered because of her Gentile background—
and after all, she did spend the night with Boaz. “And when
Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went
to lie down at the end of the heap of corn: and she came soft-
ly, and uncovered his feet, and laid her down. And it came to
pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned him-
self: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet” (Ruth 3:7–8). This
means, incidentally, that Ruth was Rahab’s daughter-in-law.
“And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of
Ruth . . .” (Matt. 1:5).
And last there was Bathsheba, the woman who betrayed
her husband Uriah when she agreed to sleep with David.
“And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in
unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her
uncleanness: and she returned unto her house. And the wom-
an conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with
child” (2 Sam. 11:4). Matthew makes no attempt to minimize
the scandal. “And Jesse begat David the king; and David the
king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias”
(Matt. 1:6).
Now Matthew has a clear purpose in naming these four
women, just as the Old Testament mentions them all with a
clear intent. And his purpose was obviously not to discredit
the Lord Jesus—quite the reverse. But it is to tell us something
of the nature of the Messiah’s mission. Let us go back to Tamar,
that great woman of faith.
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And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold,

twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she tra-
vailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took
and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came
out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that,
behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou
broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name
was called Pharez. And afterward came out his brother, that
had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was
called Zarah. (Gen. 38:27–30)
The scarlet thread was intended to mark the firstborn, and

this was important because the line of Judah was the royal line.
The scepter would not depart from Judah, Jacob had said, until
Shiloh comes. So Zarah was the firstborn but had been edged
out anyway at birth by Pharez. And this was prophetic. Years
later, the same thing happened again, and once again a scarlet
thread is involved. But this time, Pharez gets the scarlet cord.
In the siege of Jericho, one household in that city was spared.
But more than this, one household in Israel was destroyed, and
it was an important household. Achan was of the royal line,
and he became anathema, dedicated to destruction. The scarlet
was transferred from the one destroyed line in Israel to the one
spared line in Jericho.
“But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the ac-
cursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi,
the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed
thing: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the
children of Israel . . . So Joshua rose up early in the morning,
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
and brought Israel by their tribes; and the tribe of Judah

was taken: And he brought the family of Judah; and he took
the family of the Zarhites: and he brought the family of the
Zarhites man by man; and Zabdi was taken: And he brought
his household man by man; and Achan, the son of Carmi,
the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was
taken” (Josh. 7:1, 16–18).
Rahab was not of the royal line; she was a harlot. And yet,
when her household was spared, marked and indicated by a
scarlet cord, she came out into Israel, and married a man named
Salmon. The book of Ruth makes a special point of telling us
this relation, and the importance of where it began. Unlike the
rejected line of Zerah, God had a great intention for the line of
Phares. And incidentally, there is another lesson for us here—
there is great blessing and edification for us in the begats.
“Now these are the generations of Pharez: Pharez begat
Hezron, And Hezron begat Ram, and Ram begat Amminadab,
And Amminadab begat Nahshon, and Nahshon begat Salmon,
And Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, And Obed be-
gat Jesse, and Jesse begat David” (Ruth 4:18–22).
Rahab did not just marry into Israel; she married into the
line of Phares, which had become the royal line because of the
apostasy of Achan. Achan was not just a pillaging foot soldier
in the back ranks of Israel. He was a royal prince, and because
of his sin, that royal line came to an end. The scarlet cord of
election was transferred—from Zerah’s wrist to a prostitute’s
window. This is so that we might never forget that everything
God gives us is always all of grace, nothing but grace, grace to
the uttermost.
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Remember the story of Hosea—the prophet Hosea was

commanded by God to marry a woman who would be un-
faithful to him. “The beginning of the word of the Lord by
Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a
wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land
hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord”
(Hosea 1:2). In the first two chapters of this heart-wrenching
book, God through His prophet gives a wonderful statement
of how Israel will be cleansed of her idolatries, and how she
will become chaste. These two statements summarize the glory
of the gospel:
Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand

of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it
shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto
them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them,
Ye are the sons of the living God. Then shall the children of
Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and
appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of
the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel. (Hosea 1:10–11)
And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mer-
cy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to
them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and
they shall say, Thou art my God. (Hos. 2:23)
Now both of these passages are from Hosea, the proph-

et with a whorish wife, the man prophesying a glorious and
chaste future for the whorish Israel. Gomer, his wife, was a
type of Israel, and in the prophecy, we find that she is also a
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
type of the forgiven Christian church. These verses are quoted

by the apostle Paul in Romans 9:24–26 and applied to Jews and
Gentiles in the Christian church together.
Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also
of the Gentiles?
As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which
were not my people; and her beloved, which was not be-
loved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it
was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be
called the children of the living God. (Rom. 9:24–26)
This means, fundamentally, that the Christian church is the

whore who became a virginal bride.
Now consider the Samaritan woman at the well. A motif is a
literary device that sets the stage for understanding the context
of events. This can be done in just a moment, without a lot of
explanation. Just as we have motifs that make us understand a
situation instantly, so the ancient world had them. If you see
a desolate Western town around midday, with shopkeepers
peering out their windows, and tumbleweed blowing down
the street, you know there is going to be a gunfight. If you see
a man in an office with a ceiling fan, smoking, and a translu-
cent pane of glass in the door, and he has his feet on the desk,
you know instantly that he is a private detective, and that some
blonde trouble is going to come through the door. Given the
motif, you know the setting. You are oriented.
In the Bible, one such motif occurs whenever a man meets a
woman at a well—when this happens you know that a wedding
126
is in the offing. Isaac got a wife this way. Moses got a wife this
way. Jacob, whose well this was, met Rachel at a well. So imag-
ine the scandal that came from representing Jesus in just this
situation with a notoriously immoral woman (John 4:27). And
John goes out of his way to let us know that it was in fact Jacob’s
well (John 4:6). “And upon this came his disciples, and mar-
velled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What
seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?” (John 4:27).
What is the point here? The Father is seeking worshippers;
He is seeking a bride for His Son, and there is a fundamental
qualification, which prim and proper people constantly miss.
The woman who is to marry the Son of God must be unworthy,
and she must have a sordid past. Jesus did not come for the
healthy, but for the immoral. But He came, not just to save, but
to save through marriage. “But the hour cometh, and now is,
when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God
is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth” (John 4:23–24).
And so what is the conclusion? God loves disreputable wom-
en. He arranged for His Son to marry one. And this is the glory
of grace. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We are
called as parents to bring up virginal daughters, not so that we
may delude ourselves into thinking that this is what we are by
nature, but rather that we might understand through faith that
this is what we are all becoming. Virginity and chastity among
a Christian people are a glorious type, not of what we are, but
of what we will be. But we misunderstand the glory of this type
if we scorn the Rahabs and the Tamars and the Bathshebas
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
and the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus forgave. The

Pharisees prostituted themselves by despising the prostitutes
who were converted by Jesus. The woman who was a sin-
ner washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, and the dry-eyed
Pharisee thought he had been forgiven little—so he loved little.
There is another important application. In the Christian
church today, there are many Christian women who are tor-
mented by their sexual past. They know, academically, that
they are forgiven, but they have trouble rejoicing in that for-
giveness. This is not because of anything in the Scriptures,
but rather because of many false assumptions current in the
church. And these false assumptions betray our misunder-
standing of the nature of grace. We constantly want to earn,
to have pride of place. But always remember, when the Son of
God came to earth to find a bride for Himself, the woman that
His Father had chosen for Him, the choice—when it was re-
vealed—astounded the censorious and the prune-faced alike.
The Father and Son and the Spirit are altogether holy, and so
the woman who is chosen must become holy. But the Father,
and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are also full of grace, and the
woman who was chosen was called out from her idols, her
lovers, her past, her immoralities. And the Son loved her and
loves her still. Are you a Christian woman whose past declares
this? Then rejoice in the power of forgiveness, and in the glory
of our redemption.
Let us come back now to Mary Magdalene. In the story of
creation, Adam met Eve in a garden. In the story of redemp-
tion, Jesus met Mary in a garden. Adam met a woman with a
disreputable future. Christ met a woman with a disreputable
128
past. We must always remember this because we are so prone

to forget it. And when we forget it, when we forget our name
of Magdalene, we usually do so in one of two ways. We either
become self-righteous because we have forgotten our past, or
we are guilt-ridden because we have forgotten our future. But
through His holy Word, God wants us to dwell on these things.
One of the most important women in the Bible is this wom-
an—Mary Magdalene. The angels spoke to her first. After the
resurrection, the Lord Jesus appeared to her first. The messag-
es were sent to the other disciples through her. Her devotion
was extraordinary. Standing at the cross, sitting across from
the sepulcher, marking the spot, appearing at the tomb first
with spices for the body, speaking to the angels first, and seeing
the risen Lord. This woman was truly remarkable, and she has
given us her name. We are Magdalene.
Many thanks to Warren Gage for many of his great exegetical

insights on this crucial subject.
129
Simon Peter
I
n the Scriptures, Simon Peter is always first in any list of the
apostles that is given. He is certainly a striking figure, and
no attempt to tell the story of the new covenant community
would be complete without him. It is hard to imagine him as
anything but a large man, but whether he was physically big or
not, he is always big in the story.
We know that his father’s name was Jonah from the way
Christ addressed him in Matthew 16:17. “And Simon Peter
answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou,
Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto
thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 16:16–17).
Of course Barjona simply means “son of Jonah.” The origi-
nal Hebrew form of his name was apparently Symeon. This is
how James refers to him at the Jerusalem council. “And after
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and
brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon hath declared how God
at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people
for his name” (Acts 15:13–14). And it appears that he adopt-
ed the Greek name Simon because it had a similar sound to
his Hebrew name. We know his brother Andrew simply by his
Greek name.
Peter was from the town of Bethsaida. “Now Philip was of
Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter” (John 1:44), and
this was an overwhelmingly Greek city. But he also had a
home up in the north, in Capernaum on the sea of Galilee
(Mark 1:21ff). Like today, owning two homes indicates a
certain measure of wealth. “And they went into Capernaum;
and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the syn-
agogue, and taught. And they were astonished at his doc-
trine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not
as the scribes . . . . And immediately his fame spread abroad
throughout all the region round about Galilee. And forth-
with, when they were come out of the synagogue, they en-
tered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and
John. But Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick of a fever, and anon
they tell him of her” (Mark 1:21–30). Both Bethsaida and
Capernaum were lakeside, where Peter could work as a fish-
erman. In both regions there would have been abundant con-
tact with Gentiles.
At the same time, Simon apparently grew up in the north
because we he spoke with a thick Galilean accent, an accent
which betrayed him during his betrayal of Christ. “And he de-
nied it again. And a little after, they that stood by said again to
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S imon P eter
Peter, Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilaean, and
thy speech agreeth thereto” (Mark 14:70).
We also know that Simon had been brought up in a faithful
home. We can see this in his brief reference to his background
when he saw the vision in Joppa “But Peter said, Not so, Lord;
for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean”
(Acts 10:14). His brother Andrew had been a disciple of John
the Baptist. “One of the two which heard John speak, and fol-
lowed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother” (John 1:40).
From the criteria given for selecting a replacement for Judas,
it is very likely that Simon had been affected by the ministry
of John the Baptist as well (Acts 1:22). “Wherefore of these
men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord
Jesus went in and out among us, Beginning from the baptism
of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must
one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection”
(Acts 1:21–22).
What was his initial contact with Christ? The apostle John
tells us that Simon was first introduced to Christ by the agen-
cy of his brother Andrew. “He first findeth his own brother
Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which
is, being interpreted, the Christ” (John 1:41) This early contact
with Christ makes his response when Christ later called him
away from his vocation a bit more intelligible (Mark 1:16f).
“Now as he [Jesus] walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon
and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they
were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and
I will make you to become fishers of men. And straightway
they forsook their nets, and followed him” (Mark 1:16–18).
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
After Peter was called out of Israel, he was then called out
(again) from a larger number of disciples to be numbered
among the twelve. “And he [Jesus] goeth up into a mountain,
and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto
him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him,
and that he might send them forth to preach, And to have
power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils: And Simon
he surnamed Peter” (Mark 3:13–16). He had called Peter by
this name before this, but apparently he made it formal at
Peter’s ordination.
It appears from the New Testament that this name of Peter’s
was very important. We have seen it was after he became a disci-
ple that he received (from Christ) the Aramaic name of Cephas:
Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and
I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. (1 Cor. 1:12)
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day
according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas,
then of the twelve. (1 Cor. 15:4–5)
This name means rock or stone, and usually shows up in the

New Testament in its Greek equivalent, which would be Peter.
It appears from John 1:42 that Jesus started calling him this at
their first encounter. “And he brought him to Jesus. And when
Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou
shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone”
(John 1:42).
John usually calls him Simon Peter. And Mark calls him
Simon up to 3:16, and Peter almost entirely thereafter. This
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S imon P eter
is important because the Gospel of Mark should probably be

understood as Mark’s rendition of Peter’s account of the life of
Christ. The fact that Peter is a rock or a stone is highly signifi-
cant in the New Testament.
As mentioned earlier, Peter is always named first in any list
of disciples. He was chosen not only to be numbered among
the twelve, but also to be one of the three members of an
inner circle around the Master. “And he suffered no man to
follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of
James” (Mark 5:37). “And after six days Jesus taketh with him
Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high
mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before
them” (Mark 9:2). “And he taketh with him Peter and James
and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy”
(Mark 14:33).
Peter followed Christ faithfully throughout His three-year
ministry in Palestine. One event during that time which had
an enormous impact on Peter was the Transfiguration, an
event which happened when Peter was in the company of only
James and John—and of course, Christ. Many years later, Peter
refers to this event in both of his epistles.
The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an

elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a
partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of
God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not
by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready
mind. (1 Pet. 5:1–2)
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we

made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he re-
ceived from God the Father honour and glory, when there
came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice
which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him
in the holy mount. (2 Pet. 1:16–18)
It is significant that Peter goes on to say that Scripture is far

more certain than this glorious experience, an experience
which he clearly treasured.
In another famous incident, Peter made a great confession
which was marked out by the Lord as the “rock” upon which
the church would be built (Matt. 16:18ff).
When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he

asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the
Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John
the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the
prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto
him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and
upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys
of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind
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S imon P eter
on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou

shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then charged
he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus
the Christ. (Matt. 16:13–20)
Near the end of the Lord’s ministry, when Christ prophesied

that His disciples would all scatter, Peter rashly promised that
he would do no such thing. “But Peter said unto him, Although
all shall be offended, yet will not I. And Jesus saith unto him,
Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before
the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. But he spake
the more vehemently, If I should die with thee, I will not deny
thee in any wise. Likewise also said they all” (Mark 14:29–31).
And of course, when it came down to the point, Peter col-
lapsed and denied the Lord. When the rooster crowed, Peter
immediately recognized his sin and went out and wept bitterly.
After the resurrection, the Lord graciously restored Peter to
his position among the disciples—which of course had been
forfeited by him. The Lord not only restored Peter to ministry
in front of the others but had also visited him personally. “And
they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and
found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with
them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to
Simon” (Luke 24:33–34; cf. 1 Cor. 15:5).
After the Resurrection and Ascension, Peter took the lead
in the early days of the church (Acts 1:15ff). Greatly humbled
by his sin and restoration, Peter became the kind of apos-
tolic leader that the church needed in her first days. “And
in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples,
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
and said, (the number of names together were about an hun-

dred and twenty,) Men and brethren . . . .” (Acts 1:15–16a).
He was the principal preacher in those first days. “But Peter,
standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto
them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be
this known unto you, and hearken to my words” (2:14). “And
when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of
Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on
us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this
man to walk” (Acts 3:12)? He was also the spokesman who
answered the Jewish authorities (4:8ff). As we consider his
words, consider also that this is the same man who just a few
weeks before this had been cursing and swearing at a servant
girl, saying that he did not know Christ. But now he is facing
the same men that his Lord had faced at the time of his deni-
al. The Lord was silent in His own defense, as Isaiah proph-
esied He would be. Peter was not constrained by prophesy,
and was no longer constrained by fleshly pride. Listen to him
and marvel at the power of God.
And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, By
what power, or by what name, have ye done this? Then Peter,
filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the
people, and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of the
good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is
made whole; Be it known unto you all, and to all the people
of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom
ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him
doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone
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which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the

head of the corner. (Acts 4:7–11)
Peter also presided over the administration of discipline:

“But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to
lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the
land?” (Acts 5:3)
He also showed great leadership in the first mission work
at Samaria: “Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent
unto them Peter and John” (Acts 8:14).
All this is said and cheerfully acknowledged by Protestants.
However, he was also present at the Jerusalem council, but was
not the president of that council. Peter was a natural leader,
and he was given a place of honor among the apostles by the
Lord himself. But Peter, for all the grace that was with him,
was no pope. “And the apostles and elders came together for to
consider of this matter. And when there had been much dis-
puting, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren,
ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among
us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the
gospel, and believe” (Acts 15:6–7). In other words, Peter testi-
fies at this council. He is one of the witnesses. But the president
of that council was James.
And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying,
Men and brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon hath declared
how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of
them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of
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the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will

build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down;
and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:
That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the
Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who
doeth all these things. Known unto God are all his works
from the beginning of the world. Wherefore my sentence is,
that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles
are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they
abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and
from things strangled, and from blood. For Moses of old
time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in
the synagogues every sabbath day. (Acts 15:13–21)
Earlier in the book of Acts, after Peter broke out of pris-

on with angelic help, he disappeared (Acts 12:17). But first he
went to John Mark’s house, where he ran into a little trouble
with a servant named Rhoda. “But he, beckoning unto them
with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the
Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, Go shew
these things unto James, and to the brethren. And he departed,
and went into another place” (Acts 12:17).
Among those other places, we know that he made it to
Antioch. “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood
him to the face, because he was to be blamed” (Gal. 2:11).
And he may have made it to Corinth. It is unlikely that there
would have been a Cephas faction there had he not previous-
ly had some ministry among them. We also know that Peter
had a tight connection with the Christians in northern Asia
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Minor (1 Pet. 1:1), which makes it highly likely that he had

had some ministry there. He greets them this way. “Peter, an
apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered through-
out Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, Elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through
sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of
the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be mul-
tiplied” (1 Pet. 1:1).
And of course we know that he was back in Jerusalem for
the council at which he did not preside.
This man, who was nicknamed Rock by Christ Himself, was
noteworthy for his impulsive devotion to Christ. We see this in
multiple examples, including this one: “But straightway Jesus
[while walking on the water] spake unto them, saying, Be of
good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and
said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.
And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of
the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when
he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to
sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me” (Matt. 14:27–30). Many
believers have a tendency to look down on Peter in various
patronizing ways. He is made the butt of many negative ex-
amples, as in this case. He took his eyes off Jesus and started
to sink. But supposing he only walked ten feet on the water
before he began to sink, that is about nine feet farther than
any of us would have gotten.
We have already noted his impulsive declaration that he
would never deny Christ, and we also see this impulsiveness in
the incident over the miraculous catch of fish. “When Simon
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Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from
me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and
all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they
had taken” (Luke 5:8–9). And whatever else the resurrection
changed, it did not change this aspect of Peter’s character.
“Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It
is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord,
he girt his fisher’s coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did
cast himself into the sea” (John 21:7).
He was the kind of man who naturally speaks up whenever
a group is addressed. He acted as a spokesman for the Twelve
on numerous occasions. “Then answered Peter and said unto
him, Declare unto us this parable” (Matt. 15:15; cf. 18:21;
Mark1:36f; 8:29; 9:5; 10:28; 11:21; 14:29ff; Luke 5:5; 12:41).
His impulsive nature was seen in his failings as well. He was a
natural leader, both in faith and in sin. But the Lord Jesus had
greater plans for him, intending to mold him into the kind of
leader that God uses mightily in the kingdom of Heaven—the
kind of man who has died to himself and knows that he can no
longer trust that old carcass but must live in the resurrection.
Peter did not just become a leader; he became the kind of lead-
er that God uses.
Apart from the narratives in the Gospels, we know the
apostle Peter directly from three main sources. The first
would be the content of his preaching in the book of Acts.
In those messages, we see how he preached the kingdom of
God, the sovereign predestination of Christ’s murder, the res-
urrection of Jesus from the dead, and the fulfillment of Old
Testament prophecy. Reading through Peter’s sermons, it is
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easy to listen for echoes of Christ’s teaching given to Peter

over the previous three years—doctrine that now made com-
plete, living sense.
The other two sources would be the two epistles he wrote,
which came decades later. Like wine on the lees, Peter’s wis-
dom and grace and humility have aged into something glori-
ous—in both letters.
The stylistic differences between the two letters have been
noted from the time of the early church, but there is no real
trouble here, regardless of how much trouble modern critics
like to make for themselves. Silvanus (better known as Silas)
helped Peter in some fashion with 1 Peter. Silas was a longtime
colaborer with the apostle Paul.
Both letters were written in the 60s, right at the end of
Peter’s life. The first is encouraging the Christians in a time of
persecution. The second addresses the perennial problem of
false teaching. In these two letters we have the divine answer to
both kinds of satanic attacks on the church—one from outside,
the other from inside.
Although an account of it is not included in the New
Testament, we may reliably say that Peter died at Rome in the
first Roman persecution of the church under Nero. The tra-
dition that he was crucified upside down may be true, but we
cannot be dogmatic about such things. What we can say is that
the Peter who fled from death in his betrayal encountered it
wonderfully when the Lord Jesus restored him to ministry. It
is significant that at the point of restoration, at the end of John’s
gospel, the Lord told him that he would in fact be executed
(John 21:18–19). From that point on, until the time he was to
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
die, he was told to feed the sheep of God. And this, by the grace
of God, is exactly what he did.
144
The Apostle Paul
T
he apostle Paul has been slanderously reported as being
the second founder of the Christian faith. After two thou-
sand years, he is no doubt accustomed to the slanders by
now—he was the kind of man who attracted slanders—but
this particular slander has been more effective than some of
the others because of the grain of truth in it. Paul’s doctrine,
life, example, zeal and personality have been enormously in-
fluential. The passing of the years has not done anything to
make Paul less well-known. But this widespread knowledge of
Paul has also served, at least in the minds of some, to obscure
some of his contributions.
Saul of Tarsus came from what he described as “no mean
city,” born there as a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37; 21:39;
22:25ff). First, we should consider Saul’s statement about his
hometown. “But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I be-

seech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people” (Acts 21:39)
We know from multiple sources that Saul was a Roman. For
a couple of examples,
But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly un-
condemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison;
and now do they thrust us out privily? nay verily; but let
them come themselves and fetch us out. And the serjeants
told these words unto the magistrates: and they feared, when
they heard that they were Romans. (Acts 16:37–38)
And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the cen-
turion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man
that is a Roman, and uncondemned? When the centurion
heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take
heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman. Then the
chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a
Roman? He said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, With
a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was
free born. Then straightway they departed from him which
should have examined him: and the chief captain also was
afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he
had bound him. (Acts 22:25–29)
So Saul was a Jew of Tarsus, a great city of Cilicia, and he was

born as a Roman citizen. The city of Tarsus was third among
the centers of Greek learning—the first two being Athens and
Alexandria. It was no backwater town.
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Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin and was brought up as

a strict Pharisee—although he was educated in the school
of Hillel, which was the liberal wing of the Pharisees.
Nevertheless, Saul identified himself as a zealous member of
that party (Rom. 11:1; Phil. 3:5; Acts 23:6; 26:5). As we con-
sider his words, we are justified in concluding that Paul be-
lieved his background to be very important. In Romans 11,
he says “I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God for-
bid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the
tribe of Benjamin” (Rom. 11:1). Elsewhere he says, “Though
I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man
thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I
more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the
tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching
the law, a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:4–5). His background comes out
in two places in Acts: “But when Paul perceived that the one
part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in
the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a
Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called
in question” (Acts 23:6). “My manner of life from my youth,
which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem,
know all the Jews; Which knew me from the beginning, if they
would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I
lived a Pharisee” (Acts 26:4–5).
After Saul’s primary education, he came to Jerusalem to
study in the school of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), who was the
grandson of Hillel, the founder of that movement. Saul
put it this way. “I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in
Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of

the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye
all are this day” (Acts 22:3). The fact that Saul was born a
Roman citizen indicates a very well-connected family. Later
on in the story Luke tells, the fact that his nephew had access
to the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem indicates the same thing
“And when Paul’s sister’s son heard of their lying in wait, he
went and entered into the castle, and told Paul. . . . Then
the chief captain took him by the hand, and went with him
aside privately, and asked him, What is that thou hast to tell
me? And he said, The Jews have agreed to desire thee that
thou wouldest bring down Paul to morrow into the council,
as though they would enquire somewhat of him more per-
fectly” (Acts 23:16, 19–20).
We know that Saul had significant weight to obtain things
from the leadership of the Jews. Saul gained official author-
ity from them to persecute Christians, and he stated that in
his past he had “cast my vote against them” (Acts 26:10). This
indicates possible membership in the Sanhedrin. We should
think of a young, intelligent Jewish nobleman, well-educated
and very zealous for the traditions of his fathers.
Contrary to popular assumption, Saul was not his non-Chris-
tian name, with Paul becoming his Christian name. Rather,
Saul was his Hebrew name, which he continued to use for quite
a long time after his conversion. He was not called Paul until
the missionary outreach to the Gentiles got under way in ear-
nest (Acts 13:9), about fifteen years after his conversion. “Then
Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set
his eyes on him” (Acts 13:9).
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With this understanding of his background, we must now

come to consider how Saul was converted to Jesus Christ by
Jesus Christ. One of the deacons established in the early church
was a very wise and insightful man named Stephen. He stood
out in faith, grace, spiritual power, and wisdom:
And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they

chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,
and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and
Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: whom
they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed,
they laid their hands on them. And the word of God in-
creased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in
Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests
were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full of faith and
power, did great wonders and miracles among the peo-
ple. Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is
called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians,
and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, dis-
puting with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the
wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. (Acts 6:5–10).
In addition to the work assigned to him, Stephen also did

miracles and preached with great power. He was also one
of the first to grasp the implications of the new creation for
worship in the Temple at Jerusalem. Christians were not to
be thought of as a new sect, worshipping in the Old Temple.
The Christians were the new Temple. Now as he was preach-
ing the Word, Stephen encountered in debate certain men
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
from the synagogue of the Freedmen (Acts 6:9). This syn-

agogue, among others, included men from Cilicia—where
Tarsus is. And these men, who were mangled in debate by
Stephen, put together a collection of false witnesses against
him (Acts 6:13).
“And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the
scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought
him to the council, And set up false witnesses, which said, This
man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy
place, and the law: For we have heard him say, that this Jesus of
Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs
which Moses delivered us. And all that sat in the council, look-
ing stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of
an angel” (Acts 6:12–15). Now of course, Stephen is standing
in the place of Moses—he does miracles and he has a radiant
face—and this means he is charged by the so-called heirs of
Moses with subverted the customs of Moses.
According to Jewish law, the witnesses against him were
the ones who had to throw the actual stones, which they did.
And Saul shows up by name for the first time here, holding the
cloaks of the executioners (Acts 7:58).
“And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the ess-
es laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name
was Saul” (Acts 7:58). It seems clear from all this that Saul
was one of those bested in debate by Stephen, and one of
those who had suborned liars to testify against him. Now
imagine someone of Saul’s native genius in an unconverted
state. How would he take losing a debate? How would he
handle that? And how would he handle losing a debate to
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a Christian? But at the same time, someone of that caliber

would also know that a man is not answered by killing him.
Immediately after this, Saul lashes out against the church,
savaging it (Acts 8:3).
“As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into
every house, and haling men and women committed them to
prison” (Acts 8:3). The verb used here for “made havock” is the
verb that is used for a wild animal savaging its prey. Saul goes
out after the Christians, breathing, as it says, threats and mur-
der (Acts 9:1). In short, Saul was a volcano ready to blow. “And
Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired
of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found
any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might
bring them bound unto Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1–2).
While Saul was engaged in his murderous pursuit of
Christians, the Lord Jesus appeared to him in a vision on the
road to Damascus. The fact that the story of his conversion is
told three separate times in the book of Acts indicates its im-
portance, not only for Saul, but also for Luke (Acts 9, 22, 26).
After Ananias baptized him, Saul then spent the next three
years in Damascus/Arabia/Damascus (Gal. 1:17; Acts 9:19ff).
And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then

was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Da-
mascus. And straightway he preached Christ in the syna-
gogues, that he is the Son of God. But all that heard him
were amazed, and said; Is not this he that destroyed them
which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief
priests? But Saul increased the more in strength, and con-
founded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that
this is very Christ. And after that many days were fulfilled,
the Jews took counsel to kill him: But their laying await was
known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to
kill him. Then the disciples took him by night, and let him
down by the wall in a basket. (Acts 9:19–25)
Saul tells us about this later in several of his epistles. “Neither

went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me;
but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter,
and abode with him fifteen days” (Gal. 1:17–18). Finally, his
ministry there aroused such opposition that he had to run the
roadblocks in that city by escaping in a basket lowered from
the city wall (2 Cor. 11: 32–33). “In Damascus the governor
under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a
garrison, desirous to apprehend me: And through a window
in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands”
(2 Cor. 11:32–33). He made his way to Jerusalem, where he
scarcely made it two weeks before the Jews there tried to kill
him (Gal. 1:18; Acts 9:29).
And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join

himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and
believed not that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him,
and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them
how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spo-
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ken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus

in the name of Jesus. And he was with them coming in and
going out at Jerusalem. And he spake boldly in the name of
the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they
went about to slay him. Which when the brethren knew,
they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to
Tarsus. (Acts 9:26–30)
From there he returned to Tarsus for the next ten years. We

therefore have a ten-year period in scriptural history in which
no one is recorded as trying to kill Saul. This does not mean
they were not trying to—it just means we don’t know about it.
Barnabas finally brought him to Antioch to help in the minis-
try there, which he did for about a year (Gal. 2:1). And after a
year of ministry in Antioch, Saul returns to Jerusalem.
“Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with
Barnabas, and took Titus with me also” (Gal. 2:1). This four-
teen years mentioned in Galatians lets us calculate the ten-year
period in Tarsus. We know he spent three years in Damascus
and one year in Antioch, leaving us with ten for Tarsus. After
the year in Antioch, they went up to Jerusalem again on the
famine relief visit of Acts 11: 27–30. I say “up” to Jerusalem,
even though it was south, to conform to the scriptural usage.
Jerusalem was in the mountains. It was uphill.
The decision was made to go to Jerusalem in response to a
revelation about a coming famine. “And in these days came
prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch. And there stood up
one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that
there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. Then the disciples,

every man according to his ability, determined to send relief
unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea: Which also they did,
and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul”
(Acts 11:27–30).
Upon their return from the famine relief visit to Jerusalem
(around AD 46), the Holy Spirit determined it was time for the
gospel to move west. The next period involves what are popu-
larly known as the three missionary journeys of Paul. The first
was a round trip from Antioch through South Galatia (Acts
13–14) and eventually back to Antioch.
“Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain
prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called
Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been
brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they minis-
tered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me
Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on
them, they sent them away” (Acts 13:1–3).
John Mark deserted them at Perga, probably the result of
the gospel being preached directly to Sergius Paulus. It is not
likely that Mark left because of physical hardships, but rather
because this is the first time that the gospel is preached to a
Gentile “raw.” Sergius Paulus was not a God-fearer in a syn-
agogue like Cornelius. He is just a Gentile living a Gentile
life. This reason for leaving Paul also accounts for Paul’s re-
luctance to take him on the second missionary journey. In
addition to this, upon his return to Antioch, Paul collided
with Peter (Gal. 2:14).
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But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the

face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain
came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when
they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing
them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews
dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also
was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw
that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the
gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew,
livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews,
why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?
(Gal. 2:11–14)
Paul also discovered that false teachers were corrupting

the newly established Galatian churches. He wrote the book
of Galatians at this time, and the Jerusalem council had to
meet in order to settle the question (Acts 15). Galatians was
written just before the Jerusalem Council, when the contro-
versy was hot and the decision was still in doubt. I think it is
very likely that Galatians was written in the weeks just before
the council.
Once the controversy was settled, the second journey
was with Silas—because Paul and Barnabas had had a fall-
ing out over John Mark (Acts 15:40–18:22). Remember that
Barnabas—son of encouragement—was the one who intro-
duced Paul around Jerusalem when he first came there as a
Christian. He also accepts John Mark’s acceptance of the de-
cision of the council, but Paul is suspicious. Later events show
that Barnabas was right in the long run about John Mark’s
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SCRIPTURE STORIES
character, although Paul may have been right about not taking
him on that particular journey.
On this journey, Paul traveled back through the places
he had evangelized on the first journey, picked up Timothy,
ministered at Corinth for several years, and crossed over to
Europe for the first time. On the way back to Antioch (via
Ephesus and Jerusalem), Paul dropped off Priscilla and
Aquila as an advance team in Ephesus—for when he would
come back there.
The third journey could be considered the Aegean minis-
try (AD 53–58). The bulk of this time was spent in Ephesus,
where all of Asia Minor was evangelized. Although Ephesus
was a major city, the work Paul was doing there transformed
the city. The church grew significantly, and its presence had
a great impact on the sale of silver idols and spell books and
magic paraphernalia. One of the merchants saw the influence
that the Christian faith was having and organized a riot. The
end result of this affair was an amphitheater full of Ephesians
shouting, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” but having no real
idea why they were there. Paul saw this rioting crowd as a good
opportunity for doing some preaching, but his friends wisely
restrained him. One comment Luke makes in passing shows
that the pagan leaders of the city were friends with Paul. They
knew his character and that these charges were false.
After he left Ephesus, Paul visited a number of churches in
Macedonia and Achaia. He then went back to Jerusalem, where
he was arrested on a trumped-up charge. He was accused of
taking a Gentile into the forbidden area of the Temple, which
was false, but the charge was enough to set off another riot.
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The crowd was involved in beating Paul when a Roman offi-

cer showed up with a company of soldiers and rescued him.
As they were taking him away, Paul looked regretfully at the
crowd they were leaving—another preaching opportunity—
and asked for leave to speak to the crowd. This was granted,
and the crowd listened respectfully to Paul until he mentioned
that he had been commissioned to preach to Gentiles. This
set them off again, and the Roman officer took Paul away to
find out—by means of torture—what Paul was actually up to.
When he found out that Paul was a Roman citizen, his treat-
ment of him became much more respectful.
Paul was held in prison under the governor Festus, and
when a transition of power was made, Felix, the new governor,
began to show signs of wanting to appease the Jews by allow-
ing Paul to come to trial there in Jerusalem. Paul knew what
the outcome of that would be, so he appealed to Caesar, which
was his right to do as a Roman citizen. This got Felix off the
hook with the Jews, but he still did not know how to formulate
the charges against Paul in a way that would make any sense in
Rome. He enlisted the help of King Agrippa in this, and Paul
made an eloquent defense before the court.
Luke takes the opportunity to record the fact that Agrippa
acknowledged that the charges against Paul were bogus—in-
dicating that perhaps the book of Acts was written as an apo-
logia for the apostle, a brief to be used in Paul’s trial at Rome
if necessary. After Paul appealed to Caesar, he was eventually
brought to Rome. An eventful sea journey was part of this, but
Paul came at last to the city of Rome, and the book ends with
Paul under house arrest. He meets with the Jewish leaders in
157
SCRIPTURE STORIES
Rome, who had heard nothing from Judea and could not make
up their minds about him.
The pastoral epistles—the Timothys and Titus—were writ-
ten after this point, but we must reconstruct the remainder of
Paul’s life from the scarce extrabiblical material we have. It is
unlikely that the pastorals were written during the imprison-
ment that is recorded in the book of Acts. The tone of that
imprisonment is not at all like what we find the pastorals. At
the end of Acts, the tone is hopeful of release, while in the pas-
torals, Paul is resigned to his death.
Several early church documents tell us a little more. A friend
of Paul’s—a man named Clement—became a leading presbyter
at Rome. In a letter to the Corinthians in the 90s, Clement says
that Paul had been released and had gone on the missionary
journey to Spain that was mentioned in Romans. After that
trip, Paul was rearrested, imprisoned in Rome, and beheaded
under the persecution of Nero. As a Roman citizen, he would
not have been crucified.
This was the man who wrote the majority of the books in
the New Testament. He called himself the chief of sinners, and
yet God in His sovereign grace took this man, while he was in
the midst of a persecuting fury against the Church, and made
him an apostle. No one has ever been interrupted by grace in
quite so dramatic a fashion. And look at the nature of grace.
Paul was not preparing his heart to receive Jesus at all. Rather
Jesus was preparing to receive Paul into His service whatever
Paul thought about it.
Paul once told Agrippa that he had not been disobedient
to the heavenly vision that had come to him—and this was
158
T he A postle P aul
certainly the case. No one pursued an apostolic calling with

quite so much single-minded clarity of vision as the apostle
Paul. And that clarity was given to him in the vision. The Lord
Jesus told Saul that he was commissioned to open their eyes
and turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan
to God.
And Saul, delivered himself in just this way, was used by the
Holy Spirit of God to preach, and labor, and weep, and bleed,
and write in such a way that countless millions have had their
eyes opened. They have been turned from darkness to light.
They have been transferred from the power of Satan to God.
You all know this is true—it includes almost everyone reading
these words. Let us give thanks for the life of our brother, and
our father in the faith, the apostle Paul.
159

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Scripture Stories

Douglas Wilson, Scripture Stories: Lives and Times

Cover design and interior design: Valerie Anne Bost.

Man and Ishshah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Euphrates, which are still flowing. The Pishon flowed down

did this with the express intention of giving Man dominion

had an image, then Man needed an image as well. Moreover,

true defiance of the Creator’s will by contradicting Him direct-

But the Lord found them out, as He always does, and He

that we find the infallible and completely accurate account of

There were ten generations between Man (or, as we have

The problem was not sin at a petty level, like an outbreak

But to understand Pentecost, we need to understand the

in much the same position today. The earth is ours because

take care not to paint contemporary Palestine (brown, dry, and

worship comes first, but never forget that establishing right

she returned submissively to her mistress and bore a son to

the occasion to mock his younger brother, and Sarah just-

four hundred being reckoned from the time of Abraham. If

knowledge tends to be cursory. Their accomplishments were

the suction pump in the abortion clinic is actually doing. The

And here we first meet the future deliverer of Israel. A man

conquest of the Abyssinian region of Saba, which you might

which might be considered intensive training for the shep-

Pharaoh to specify a time for the relief, which he did. Moses

Another time, the people were discouraged because the way

perhaps not what we thought it was, and grievous sin is never

words, knew that he would lose the kingdom. He was ruling

have been limited to skirmishes. Every day, a champion of the

offer of the armor was revealing—David was given the chance

provided for the house of Nabal, the blockhead husband of the

cultural and national distinctives between Israel to the north

of David’s sin in this affair, the kingdom never really recovered

to make love to my wife,” he asked, “when the ark of the cov-

respect. Nathan the prophet was one such man. Commanded

brought it back to his capital, Jerusalem, he did not send it to

submit to God’s rebukes and providences, and how to worship.

far as to hold a coronation feast at a place called Enrogel.

Now the pattern of Solomon’s story is that of a man who

charge began with David telling Solomon to keep the charge

the power to deal with Joab if he hoped to rule at all. In any

And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the chil-

Those who came to hear him included the famous visit

And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solo-

She noted everything but particularly how he worshipped the

As Solomon consolidated his position on the land bridge

Islands, what did he find there? Well, he found people. It ap-

It wasn’t that long ago that erudite scholars were suggest-

God (1 Kings 10:24). Even his disobedience was conducted

the northern tribes had emigrated south to live in Judah, so

His brother Jehoiakim reigned from 607 to 598 BC. But

Egypt, contrary to Jeremiah’s word, and they took Jeremiah

During the reign of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah assailed the king,

prophet would be punished severely, and there would be no

who accused Jeremiah were the priests and the house-broken

During the reign of Zedekiah, he was arrested on a charge

So Jeremiah made one last attempt to get Zedekiah to obey

the returned blood money. Nothing ever changes, one might

The great prophet Jeremiah had predicted that the exile

That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth

The Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century BC) confirms

The Gentile king was lavish in his generosity. He wanted

was not that Israelite men had married outside Israel—this