The Rest of the Story

I must be getting old; I've started telling my kids: "You're too young to remember this, but..."

So, you may be too young to remember this, but Paul Harvey was a staple in our household for years. He was a staple in most people's households back in the day. He was a staple in my dad's work van; I remember listening to the static over the radio as my dad turned the tuner to try to pick up Paul Harvey's distinctive voice, which would fade in and out behind loud waves of white noise.

In this day of streaming podcasts and Spotify... you have no idea what you've missed. ;)

But always, always, Paul's catchphrase was impossible to miss, static or no. At the end of the program, he'd finish whatever story he'd chosen to regale his audience with, and then say, "Tune in next time to hear..." (dramatic pause) "...the REST of the story."

A rather basic concept just hit me this morning: You can't have a rest of the story... without a beginning of the story. You can't have a The End without a Once Upon a Time, right? Then it wouldn't be the rest of the story; it would just be... words.

So let's flip back to the beginning of today's story, and then we'll put a Paul Harvey sheen on it by looking at the rest of it.

I remember the day I discovered that the Bible recorded the Ten Commandments twice: once in Exodus 20 and once in Deuteronomy 5. I'd known about the Exodus 20 account for as long as I can recall, but Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were hard pills to swallow. They were the calcium pills of the nutrition pack. Vitamin D was a tiny gel-cap, vitamin A not much larger. But calcium was apparently made for horses or dinosaurs or something with a throat the size of a tree trunk. It took me a long time to wade through the last three books of the Pentateuch.

I digress. We'll stick with Exodus 20, since I'm going through that book anyway.

This was interesting: According to my footnotes, in ancient times, often the ruling sovereign of a country, in setting forth his royal covenant with his people, had a specific formula he followed. He would begin with a preamble, where he identifies himself, a la I am the Lord your God. Then he would list his accomplishments in a brief résumé called the "historical prologue," a la Who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. And then he would dive into the covenant stipulations, where (here) is listed ten of them.

The point of this set-up was used to formally acknowledge (much like the writing of a constitution or a nation's laws) the king's sovereignty over a nation, and on the flip side, to acknowledge the nation's allegiance and complete submission to their king. 

So, the Lord has made a covenant with Abraham, ratified it with Isaac, continued on with Jacob, and on and on until the entire nation of millions of people (sand on a seashore, stars in the sky, sound familiar, Genesis readers?) stand at the base of a mountain trembling with gloom and smoke, and find themselves before the Lawmaker Himself.

Because it feels wrong to skip the main content of this chapter, here's a summary of those ten laws:

1.) You can't have any other gods except Me.
2.) Don't take earthly materials (things I made in the first place), and use them to make gods to worship, 'cause since I made you, I claim the right of original ownership.
3.) Don't use my Name lightly; it's not a toy.
4.) Don't work on the seventh day, any of you, because when I created the world, I rested on the seventh day, and so you should, too -- to remember and honor Me. And it's good for you not to be a workaholic.
5.) Respect your parents. 
6.) Don't plan to kill people, and especially, don't carry it out.
7.) Don't have sex with anyone you're not married to.
8.) Don't take anything that's not yours.
9.) Don't lie; it will always affect someone else.
10.) Don't want what's not yours.

Exodus 20:18-19 says: "When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die."

And here is demonstrated the great division between sinful creation and a holy God. I wrote in "Counselor, Approach the Bench" a couple of days ago about this rift that separates us from His Presence, and the rift is clear in this chapter as the people tremble before His holiness.

Moses says: "'Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.'"

God's not into scaring people. Here, He displays His majesty to take the people past fear and fill them with reverence for His holiness and His sovereignty (see the guidelines for setting forth an ancient royal covenant above). 

Yes, the people are fearful. But they're also in the process of accepting the Ancient of Days as their King of kings. They're entering this holy covenant. They're signing their names to the bottom of the constitution and shipping it off to the Sovereign. But they need someone to deliver the document, and that person -- here -- is Moses.

Moses steps into the role of priest here; in those days, only a priest could approach God. Only a high priest could come before the Holy of holies and make a sacrifice before the Lord to cover over the sins of the people. So Moses heads toward the mountain. "The people remained at a distance while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was" (Exodus 20:21).

The rest of Exodus 20 and into the next couple of chapters is an exegesis, an expansion, on what the Ten Commandments are actually commanding, and we'll get there. But for now, the rest of the story is untold.

Where is "The End?" 

Flip over to Hebrews 10. Between the writing of Exodus and the writing of Hebrews, a whole, whole lot of significant things happen. The single most important thing that happens is the coming of the Messiah, Who takes on (as Moses did) the mantle of High Priest for the world, Who -- in His perfect, sinless role -- dies on a cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and who exits the tomb three days later.

No one knows for sure who wrote Hebrews, but whoever it was does a bang-up job of Paul Harvey-ing it. "The law [the Ten Commandments and the expansion pack found in those calcium tablet books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy] is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves" (Hebrews 10:1).

The writer ingeniously weaves in the vital concept of the high priest in 10:11-14: "Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this Priest [Jesus, the sinless One] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time He waits for His enemies to be made His footstool, because by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy."

He, Jesus, fulfills the original covenant. He doesn't cancel the first one; rather, He comes and makes a new one: "'This is the covenant I will make with them after that time,' says the Lord. 'I will put My laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.' Then He adds: 'Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.' And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin" (Hebrews 10:16-18).

The Ten Commandments are important, because without the law, there is no grace. Romans 8:1-2 says: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."

Without the law in the first place, there is no release from that law and no fulfillment in the much greater, grace-filled law of the Spirit of life.

Right? 

"For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature (did the Israelites ever get it right? They had the Ten Commandments, and they walked out on God time after time after time after time after... you get the idea), God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:3-4). 

Romans is packed with language like this, and I'm not gonna lie (Commandment #9), it's hard to wrap my mind around it. But it's one of the coolest things about this great Story. It's approaching the Wrap-Up. 

On a traditional story arc, I would put this around the denouement. Creation was the inciting action, God's original covenant with His people was one of the pieces of rising action, their failure again and again, were other parts of that, the climax happened with Jesus' death on the cross and His resurrection three days later, the falling action is the playout, the consequences, of that: salvation for all who believe, and the denouement, the resolution, the final ending, the rest of the story...

Is this. This is glorious:

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever" (Revelation 22:1-5).

"He Who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen" (Revelation 22:20-21).

And that, my friends... is the rest of the story.