EU•AN•GE•LION (YOO-AN-GEL-EE-ON) · εὐαγγέλιον — Good News
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EU•AN•GE•LION (YOO-AN-GEL-EE-ON) · εὐαγγέλιον — Good News
Five days, two stories and one verb: a riverbed, a goat, a courtyard, a heap of stones and a question. Day 6 gathers them, hands back one word and one practice from each, and says plainly what the week did not claim.
Joshua 4:24; Leviticus 16:20-22; Isaiah 53:4-6; 1 Peter 2:4-5
Opening
He did this so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, and so that you may always fear the LORD your God.”
Joshua 4:24 (BSB)
The last line of Joshua’s answer at Gilgal. It gives the reason for the stones, and it gathers up the week.
The week needed five days to walk through its passages. Today it can be said in one verse. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, and so that you may always fear the LORD your God.
There are two halves. The first is for the world: others should be able to see what the Lord has done. The second is for us: we should keep our reverence. Between them stand two stories about carrying.
In one, the Lord carries away what we cannot carry. A goat takes the guilt into a land cut off, and a Servant bears the sin of many outside the gate. In the other, the Lord asks us to carry something out. Twelve stones come up out of a river so that a child can ask about them.
If you remember nothing else, remember both. Sin is carried away, and grace is carried out.
REFLECT
Do this today: write Joshua 4:24 on a card and put it where you will see it this week. Underneath, write two lists. On the left, one thing God has carried for you. On the right, one thing He has asked you to carry.
A Short Prayer
Lord, thank You for what You carried away, and for what You let me carry out. Keep the one in my sight and the other on my shoulder. Let the hand that is mighty be the one I look to. Amen.
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
The Five Days
Day one: The Riverbed. Forty years after the sea, a people who had never crossed anything stood at a river in flood. The priests carried the ark into the water first, and the water stood still when their feet touched it. They stood in the middle of the riverbed until everyone was over. The ground that held them was the ground the stones would come from. Joshua and Jesus are one name, and Jesus came to the same river. John Bunyan’s Mr. Standfast, half way into a river, said his foot was fixed on the ground where the priests stood.
Day two: The Goat That Walked Away. On the Day of Atonement the high priest cleansed himself and the holy place, laid both hands on a live goat, and named every iniquity, rebellious act and sin. The goat carried them into the wilderness. Psalm 103 puts the distance at as far as the east is from the west. We separated guilt from shame, from consequence and from grief, and Holman Hunt took a goat to the Dead Sea.
Day three: One Dies, One Goes Free. Two goats by lot, one for the LORD and one sent away. Pilate offered a crowd two prisoners, and Barabbas walked free while Jesus was handed over. No Gospel writer calls Barabbas the scapegoat. Hebrews reads the burned sin offering outside the camp as Jesus outside the gate, and Isaiah 53 says the Servant carried our sorrows and bore the sin of many. The week turns on that picture: one work, seen in two directions.
Day four: The Stones You Carry Out. Twelve men went back to the middle of the river and each took a stone on his shoulder. Micah says God casts our sins into the depths of the sea, and Jeremiah says He remembers them no more. The stones were set up to be remembered. The Lord’s Supper is a meal of remembrance that proclaims, and memorials can harden when the answer stops being told. Douglass described a night when a crowd waited.
Day five: When Your Children Ask. The question begins with a plain what, in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Joshua. The answer is a story, and it faces outward, to all the peoples of the earth. Peter tells the church it is made of living stones, built on the cornerstone, and Edward Kimball’s hand on a boy’s shoulder in a shoe store is the sort of stone he means.
Where the Week Sits in the Story
We spent the week at the end of the WILDERNESS and at the edge of the PROMISE. The Day of Atonement was given at Sinai, in the wilderness. The Jordan crossing opened the land.
The center of the week belongs to the PASSION, in a Roman courtyard and on a road out of the city. The last two days look ahead to the CHURCH, where Peter says the stones are people.
The same verb ran through all of it. The priests carried, the goat carried, the Servant carried, the twelve men carried, and in Isaiah 46 the Lord says He will carry us.
One Word for Each Day
The week used a lot of Hebrew and some Greek. You do not need to keep all of it. Keep one word for each day.
Day one is nasa, to lift and to carry. Day two is kipper, to make atonement. Day three is Barabbas, a name that can be heard as son of the father. Day four is zikkaron, a memorial. Day five is mah, the plain word for what. And today’s is yad, a hand.
The other words are in the notes on each day’s page.
What Each Day Left You
Each day also left you something to do. None of it expires when the week does.
On the first day it was a breath prayer: Go ahead of me, and I will follow. On the second you wrote what you keep carrying, sorted it into guilt, shame, consequence or grief, and sent it away. On the third you carried something heavy out of your door and set it down.
On the fourth you learned Micah 7:19 and pictured a stone sinking. On the fifth you found a small stone and said your answer aloud.
Keep whichever one you will still be doing in a month.
What This Week Did Not Claim
This week left several claims out on purpose.
Not every English carry in Joshua 3 and 4 is the Hebrew nasa. Other words stand for setting out, taking across and lifting up. The Greek New Testament also uses several verbs for carrying, not one.
The Bible does not say that Barabbas is the scapegoat. That is an echo some readers hear. Some early copies of Matthew call him Jesus Barabbas, and scholars still weigh whether that was original. Hebrews 13 matches the burned offerings, not the live goat. The early Fathers mostly saw Christ in the goat that died, and they differed about the goat sent away.
Scholars still debate what kipper meant at its root, and nobody knows for certain what Azazel means. Leviticus does not say what became of the goat. The cliff and the scarlet thread come from a later Jewish tradition.
God does not forget in the sense of losing a memory. When He says He will remember our sins no more, He means that He will not act on them. And the Greek for the Lord’s Supper memorial is not the same word as Joshua’s memorial, even if some scholars hear the same idea.
Watch Night is older than that night in Boston. Douglass’s own page puts the Tremont Temple gathering on New Year’s Day, and we cannot be sure which Gilgal Hosea and Amos had in mind.
Today’s Commitment
I will leave confessed guilt where God sent it, and I will talk to someone if it keeps coming back. I will tell one person, when I am ready, about one stone He gave me.
LEAVING AT THE CROSS
RECEIVING FROM THE CROSS
REFLECT
What is one thing God carried, and one thing He asked you to carry?
Sources & Further Study
RELATED SCRIPTURES
Joshua 4:24
So that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty.
Leviticus 16:21-22
The goat will carry on itself all their iniquities.
Psalm 103:12
As far as the east is from the west.
Isaiah 53:4
He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows.
Hebrews 13:12
Jesus also suffered outside the city gate.
Micah 7:19
You will cast out all our sins into the depths of the sea.
1 Peter 2:5
Like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.
FOR DEEPER STUDY
Further Your Learning. A passage trail to read in order: Joshua 3 and 4; Exodus 14:13 to 31; Exodus 12:21 to 28; Leviticus 16; Psalm 103; Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12; Matthew 27:11 to 26; Hebrews 13:10 to 14; Micah 7:18 to 20; Jeremiah 31:31 to 34; 1 Corinthians 11:23 to 26; Deuteronomy 6:20 to 25; Psalm 78:1 to 8; 1 Peter 2:1 to 10; Isaiah 46. A guided read: read Joshua 3 and 4 three times on three days. The first time, follow the priests only, and mark where they are and what they do with their feet. The second time, follow the stones: where each comes from, who carries it, where it ends up. The third time, follow the children: find every place the text expects a question. Videos, all from BibleProject: “Book of Joshua Summary: A Complete Animated Overview”; “Book of Leviticus Summary: A Complete Animated Overview”; “This Ancient Ritual Helps Explain Jesus’ Death”; “Why “Remember” Means So Much in the Bible”; “We Studied the Temple in the Bible (Here’s What We Found)”; “Book of 1 Peter Summary: A Complete Animated Overview.” Free books to read online. At Project Gutenberg: John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress; Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; Augustine, Confessions, translated by E. B. Pusey. At the Christian Classics Ethereal Library: Calvin’s Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, on the Psalms and on the Epistles of Peter; Spurgeon’s sermon “Barabbas Preferred to Jesus.” At spurgeon.org: “The Day of Atonement.” At sefaria.org: Mishnah Yoma, chapters 4 and 6, and Mishnah Pesachim, chapter 10. At the Internet Archive: W. Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; W. R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody. The words of the week, each with its plain meaning. From the Hebrew of the Old Testament: nasa, to lift, carry, bear. Kipper, to make atonement. Avon, pesha and chatta’ah, iniquity, rebellion and sin. Gezerah, cut off. Azazel, a word whose meaning is not known. Hirhiq, to put far away. Ned, a heap. Hakhen, standing firm. Zikkaron, a memorial. Zakar, to remember in order to act. Mah, what. Yad, a hand. From the Greek of the New Testament: Barabbas, probably son of Abba. Apoluo, to release. Airo, to lift up and to carry away. Bastazo, to carry. Anaphero, to carry up. Pheron, bearing. Anamnesis, remembrance. Lithos, a stone. More notes on care. The Joshua crossing is described by the writer as the work of the Lord, and landslide records are given only to show that the river can be stopped. The tradition that a crimson thread turned white is recorded in the Mishnah, and the Talmud says it stopped in the last forty years of the Temple; both were written long after the events. Exodus 28 and 29 name Aaron as the first high priest, and Leviticus 16 begins after the death of two of his sons. The full source notes for each quotation and story are at the foot of the day on which it appears.
Finished reading? Mark this day read.
BEFORE YOU GO
Anything you want to keep from today?
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