This Easter, we sang the words from the old negro spiritual Were You There? As a young child, I remember singing this song and wondering what it could possibly mean. After all, I wasn’t really there, was I?
Then, some years later I was doing my Bible studies and stumbled on something interesting about the Passover story: namely, that it happened to Abraham hundreds of years before it ever happened to the people of Israel: (1) just as Israel went down into Egypt because of a famine, so Abram and Sarai went down into Egypt because of a famine (cf. Gen. 12:10); (2) just as Pharaoh subjected the Israelites to slavery, so Pharaoh subjected Abram’s wife to slavery (cf. Gen. 14-16); (3) just as YHWH afflicted Israel’s oppressor with the ten plagues, so YHWH afflicted Sarai’s oppressor with plagues (Gen 12:17) . And in both cases, Pharaoh sent these former slaves away with great possessions (Gen. 12:20-13:2).
In the New Testament, Paul will speak of the people of Israel as the “seed of Abraham.” I like this expression because it draws attention to the fact that the people of were present in the bodies of Abram and Sarai long before they were ever born. Therefore, when God brought Abram and Sarai up our of Egypt, he in a sense brought the people of Israel with them. And when God brought the people of Israel up out of Egypt, he was really rescuing them for the second time. In other words, YHWH began saving Israel before she was ever born: he began saving her while she was still in the seed of Abram and still in the womb of Sarai.
This observation can be extended into the New Testament. Jesus was present in the seed of King David. When we read about the outer life of King David in Samuel, or when we read a out the inner life of King David in the Psalms, we are in a sense reading about Jesus Christ. He was in David when David fought with the lion to save the sheep; he was in David when David was pursued by Saul, betrayed by Absalom, and when he cried out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1). And for this reason, the scriptures use the book of Psalms as a prophetic witness to Jesus Christ.
I was saved when God rescued Sarai from Egypt
All of this invites us to take a bigger view of our own life. Our tendency is to think only of those events in our immediate past or future: these are the things we like to talk about because these are the things we think are “relevant”. But for those who belong to Jesus Christ, the really relevant events began long before we were ever born. When I stop to reflect that I am in Jesus and that Jesus is in David, and David is in Judah, and Judah is in Israel, and Israel is Isaac, and Isaac is in Abraham—I no longer cast a disinterested glace at those notorious “begats”—I say to myself “This is my story; this is my genealogy: I was saved when God rescued Sarai from Egypt; I was saved when God delivered David from Saul.”
So back to the old spiritual. Were you there? Raises a question it does not answer, since it is a question only we can answer and can only be answered by those who are in Christ. But for those of whom it is true, we not only read about his death and resurrection, we experience it by faith in our own souls. I died with him. I rose with him. I was there.
Were you there?
Comments