The systematic typology of the Bible Matrix allows us to follow the structures of the Torah thoughout the rest of the Bible. Here’s something that links the Restoration era with the book of Deuteronomy.
1 Peter 2:4-10 | Sermon Notes
I think it’s worth looking at the literary structure of this passage. Here’s a revised version of the sheet I handed out after the sermon.
As I’ve written before, modern readers (and commentators) only look at the content of the text, but the authors of Scripture also communicate to us through where they place that content within that text, i.e. how it is arranged.
Preterists have a go at dispensationalists for interpreting the Bible through the lens of current headlines. We recognize that the Bible must be interpreted in its historical context, for its “first audience.” But there’s a brand of “newspaper exegesis” that plagues preterism as well.
We receive baptism, but is membership of the visible New Covenant body entirely objective? The Old Covenant church, “the Body of Moses,” was Adamic. The Tabernacle was a Babelic tower, a ladder to heaven, laid out prostrate on the ground. The New Covenant Body, the Body of Jesus, is Evian. As a Temple filled with the Spirit of God, it stands upright and walks on the Crystal Sea.
There is great advantage in tracking the shape of God’s work in history through the Old Testament. This is because God is consistent. Everything He does has the same shape, even though He does it in new and surprising (and sometimes devastating) ways.
One of the big handles in Scripture is the five-fold Covenant pattern, described by Ray Sutton in his book, “That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant.” Continue reading
“And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying,
Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount,
or touch the border of it:
whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death.”
Exodus 19:12
The Bible beats blood and water into us over and over again. Blood is death. Water is resurrection. Blood is the Bridegroom and water is the Bride.
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up…” John 3:14
Peter Leithart recently noticed a chiasm in John 3:
A. Lifted up
…B. Serpent
……C. Wilderness
…B’. Son of Man
A’. lifted up.
Bible Matrix readers should notice immediately the wilderness at the centre. This means there is a lot more to this single phrase of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. In fact, there is all of heaven and earth.
Well, besides disputing about how the Ten Words are to be divided up, Exodus 20 has its own literary structure, which is quite independent of the divisions.
My new friend Moshe Kline has put together these brilliant presentations on the literary structure of the Torah. He deals with the Creation week in a way I was familiar with: aligning Days 1, 2 and 3 with Days 4, 5 and 6, like the columns and rows in an Excel worksheet or on a train timetable.
But wait and see what he does with the 10 Plagues and the 10 Words.
