Topical Studies
God's Relationship with Israel
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Exodus 12:48 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
God made His covenant with Old Testament Israel, a type of the church (Galatians 6:16). God's focus and concern were overwhelmingly on them, and He dealt with other nations only as they came in contact with Israel. Though God makes provision in His law to accept non-Israelites who wanted to join Israel and worship the true God, He nowhere commands the Israelites to go out and make disciples of other nations. Rather, His approach is to attract outsiders by the example of obedient Israel being blessed by Him.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Who Is Doing the Work of God?
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Jeremiah 3:1 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
God uses the example of a man who divorces his wife, and then she marries another man. At some point, she decides she does not like her second husband and returns to her first husband. The law of God in the Pentateuch forbids such a thing. However, God is saying that His approach is this: His mercy is so great that, even under such a circumstance, He will forgive His wife and accept her back. The subject is marriage and divorce, in this case between God and Israel.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Love and Works
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Amos 3:1-2 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
This encompasses God's relationship to Israel. It is the only nation in the history of mankind that God has had an intimate, close, personal relationship with. The relationship was so close that He portrays it as a marriage—one that was altered, broken by divorce, as Jeremiah 3 says. However, He has made it clear that, despite Israel's whoredoms, His faithfulness to His promises remains unbroken because of His grace, and He will move to rescue Israel from its stubborn blindness.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Where Is the Beast? (Part 2)
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Amos 3:1-3 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
Can two exist in a marriage relationship where one is constantly unfaithfully acting as a harlot? Yet, of all the nations that have existed on the earth, the only one that God made a covenant with did this to Him. God entered into no other relationship with any other nation in all of the history of mankind. A person may have many friends, many family members, many business friends, fraternal friends, professional relationships, but by biblical standards for marriage, it is one spouse until death. God and Israel's relationship involved an intimacy normally associated only within marriage. Yes, God had relationships with other nations, but none even close to what He had with Israel. It was favored with gifts greater than any nation because of that intimacy, but perhaps the greatest gift of all was the revelation of God Himself, the knowledge of His purpose, and how to live life at its fullest. But because of these gifts, Israel's responsibility and deviancy was also the greatest on earth: great Jerusalem, great deviancy. The gift had never been given to any other people on earth.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Where Is the Beast? (Part 5)
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1 Corinthians 10:11 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
Understanding I Corinthians 10:11 helps us realize the significant position we maintain because of God's calling. "All these things" refers to God's experiences with Old Testament Israel. These events took place over a span of more than a thousand years and involved millions of people being moved about as God worked out His purpose. As the context shows, His purpose included recording these things for our spiritual benefit. God made massive preparations far in advance of our arrival to provide us witnesses of how to do or not to do things to please Him and prepare us for His Kingdom. Paul's powerful admonition tells us how important we are and why we must flee idolatry (verse 14)!
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Elements of Motivation (Part Five): Who We Are
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