Seminary: Day 3

Day 3

In Exodus 17, the Israelites are camping out at Rephidim but had no water nearby, so they quarreled with Moses about this. The Lord told Moses to go out in front of the people with the elders of Israel with the staff he struck the Nile with. Then the Lord says something that is easily overlooked in the text: That He will stand upon (Hebrew “al” – aleph lamed) the rock and Moses is to st...rike the rock, and water will come from the rock for the people to drink. So Moses did and the people had water.
This moment is a foreshadowing of what God would later do on the cross with Christ. The people deserved judgment but God himself was symbolically struck in their place, and the result was that the life-giving water was given to the people. Many years later, Jesus would become our sin, our rebellion, and take our punishment from the Father on the cross so that we might be given the life-giving Spirit.
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Science, like everything else, is done by human beings and is therefore not impersonal and cannot rightfully claim an uncorrupted interpretation of data. There is a strain of conservative Christianity that exhibits a fear or shunning of science, but the creation itself is worthy of examination. There is also a strain of liberal Christianity that exhibits a fear of scientists, letting science be its own separate sphere within the world, but to disengage is to lack the “fear of the Lord” (or reverent respect). To be sure, men of faith have sometimes had too much confidence in their interpretations of the Bible that led to unnecessary stands on issues that were not really put forth by Scripture (i.e. that the earth was flat). None of us come to scripture without our own leanings, biases, and assumptions. But there is more to life than merely the physical, material world. Science has provided us with many great things – but it cannot give us ultimate things, a reason for existence, a goal for life.
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In 1518 Martin Luther lays out his developing theology in the Heidelberg Disputation. Thesis 28 says “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.” We love because we find something to be lovable, but God loves the unlovable and makes them lovable. Which is great news, for there is nothing in us to commend us to God.