Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #18 in Genesis 37, and we will read Genesis 37:9-11:

And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.

We are going to pick up with our discussion of the moon.  I think it is a good thing for us to do because as far as I understand it, many of God’s people are very familiar with the “sun” as a type of God, and the “stars” as pictures of the believers, and they also probably understand that the “moon” represents the Word of God.  But many may be unclear as to exactly why that is, and where we can find support for that idea in the Bible.

So I am going to go to a verse in Psalm 104:19:

He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.

We saw last time in Psalm 87 that God said He has established the moon forever, and that identifies with the language the Lord uses concerning His Word, the Bible.  And now the Lord says He “appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.”  We talked about the fact that the sun points to Christ, or eternal God, and He knows when the workday ends, the 12-hour period of the workday, and then even (night) comes, the sun goes down, and it is Judgment Day.  So this is another Scripture that supports the fact that Christ does know the “time,” as there are some that say Christ does not know the time because of the verse in Mark 13:32: “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.”   But the Son does knows His going down, as it says in Psalm 104, and Jesus is also typified by the sun.

But we also read that God appointed the moon for seasons.  It is true that all the celestial bodies were appointed for seasons, if we go back to Genesis 1:14-16:

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

By the way, the “lesser light” is referring to the moon, and it is given to rule the night.  When we think about it as we look at God’s programs of salvation and judgment, He has given everything in its time, as we read in Ecclesiastes 3:1:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

There is a season for salvation, a time to be born, and then there is a season for judgment, a time to die.  The sun is the primary light, the great light for the “day of salvation,” but then comes the night.  Who then takes center stage?  Who is the One upon the (judgment) throne?  The Word, the Lord Jesus, is the One who executes judgment, and Jesus said, “The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”   The moon will rule the night, the Judgment Day period of time in which we currently live.  And we get a little hint of that idea as God speaks of the “moon” ruling the night.  But they are all celestial bodies in their operation.  When God created the world and the universe…and by the way, God created the universe as we read in the Genesis account.  This universe did not exist prior to God creating it in those six days.  I know one individual who thinks the universe is eternal, and that the heavens have been here forever and ever because no one has found the beginning of it.  Yes, it is a great and tremendous universe.  That is true, but that just speaks to the greatness and glory of God that He could speak in a moment and create such a vast expanse that no one can ever find a limit to it.  It is just foolish to think that the universe is the eternal kingdom of God, but it is all part of this creation, and it has all seen corruption.  The whole creation has become corrupt, and God placed a curse not only on this world, but on all the stars, planets, and moons of the whole universe, and the entire universe will be destroyed on the last day.  God will simply speak, and this incredibly enormous creation will be gone.  It will burn out of existence, and be no more. 

The kingdom of heaven is a spiritual kingdom, which means it is invisible to our eyes.  It is just like God is a Spirit, and He sits upon His throne ruling that creation.  If this creation is enormous, just imagine how enormous the actual kingdom of God is in its realm of existence.  You cannot get a “super telescope” and see any part of the kingdom of God because it is invisible.

But God appointed the moon for “seasons,” and we can understand the moon to represent the Word of God.  God appointed His Word for “seasons.”  The word “seasons” is Strong’s #4150, and it is used this way in Daniel 8:19:

And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation: for at the time appointed the end shall be.

The word translated as “seasons” in Psalm 104 is translated as “time appointed” here.  It has to do with the end.  It is used again in Daniel 11:27 in a similar verse.  It says in Daniel 11:27:

And both these kings' hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table; but it shall not prosper: for yet the end shall be at the time appointed.

So it will be at the “season” that is determined.  And what determines the season?  The moon is that which God appointed for seasons – the Word of God appoints the seasons in God’s program of “times and seasons” for this world.  The Word of God establishes it.  The Word of God sets it forth, so as we are reading that the moon is appointed for seasons, it is teaching us that the Word of God, the Bible, has been appointed by God for seasons.

It also says in Daniel 11:35:

And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed.

And this would fit in with the statement in Acts 17:31: “Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness…”   He has also appointed the Judge who is Christ.

We read in Habakkuk 2:3:

For the vision is yet for an appointed time…

And the “vision” is associated with the Word of God, as we read in Isaiah 1:1 of “the vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz,”  and the vision was a form of revelation as the Lord delivered His Word to His prophet, and then they wrote it down.  Again, it says in Habakkuk2:3:

For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it (He) shall speak, and not lie: though it (He) tarry, wait for it (him); because it (He) will surely come, it (He) will not tarry.

This is all referring to the coming of Christ in judgment at the end, in our time period.  God had sealed up the Word (vision) for that appointed time of the end, and then He began to “speak.”  So at the end, the Spirit of God would speak.  And how does the Spirit of God speak?  When we compare spiritual with spiritual, the Holy Ghost teaches.  Mark 13 puts it this way in Mark 13:11:

… but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost “speaks” when we follow the proper methodology, or biblical hermeneutic, of comparing spiritual with spiritual, harmonizing our conclusions, and looking for the deeper spiritual meaning.  When we do so very carefully and properly, the conclusion we come to is from God – God is speaking.  And this will happen at the “appointed time,” at the “season” that the moon determines, or the season that the Word of God determines.

And it just so happens that we have learned from the Word of God (the “moon”) of the biblical calendar of history.  We have learned all about God’s timetable for events dating back to the creation.  We have the year of the creation.  We have the year of the flood.  We have Abraham’s timeline, and the timelines of Isaac and Jacob.  And we have the timeline of Israel in Egypt, the coming out of Egypt, the period of the judges, and a timeline for the kings, and all the way to the birth of Christ and His going to the cross.  And now we are able to project this timeline into the future.  And we had the timeline for the church age, the timeline of the Great Tribulation of 23 years (or 8,400 days), and we had the timeline for Judgment Day, May 21, 2011.  And now the Lord has given us much biblical evidence for a timeline for the duration of the Day of Judgment all the way to the year 2033.

And all this information comes from the “moon,” the Word of God, which reveals the time and the seasons.  Actually, it also comes from the “sun,” the celestial clock that God established in the heavens above us, and the operation of the sun, moon, and stars that give us such precision to know what year it is, and so forth.  And it is all being revealed by God in the Bible.

Let us go back to Genesis 37.  Again, we read that Joseph dreamed that the sun, moon, and eleven stars made obeisance to him.  The word “obeisance” is the same word translated as “bow down” in the next verse.  It says in Genesis 37:10:

And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?

Again, there is no question that Jacob is likening himself to the sun.  We were already told of the eleven stars, which must be his eleven brothers, and that leaves the moon to identify as “thy mother.”  So we are understanding the meaning to represent the Law, or Word of God.  So we have to ask the question: “Is the Word of God, the Bible, like a mother?”  And the answer is, “Yes.”  In the New Testament, God tells us in 1Peter 2:2:

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:

And who gives milk?  A mother gives milk.  You see, God the Father has used the Word to bring life to it, as the Bible says, “For faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  So we received a new heart and new spirit, and we were delivered.  After coming forth and being born again in our souls, we turned to the Word for “milk,” and the Word provides us milk.  And this goes on for some time, just like the case of a natural-born child.  After childbirth, the mother gives milk to the baby, and the baby grows and gains strength.  So too, the Word of God provided us with the basic truths of the Bible, and we fed upon them, and we grew in them until the point where we come off the milk, and we progress to “strong meat.”  And where do we find that strong meat?  It is also in the Word of God, the Bible.  So it is just like a mother that gives milk to a child when the child is an infant and very young, but it is the same mother who will later give meat to the child. 

So that is the idea.  That is how God views the Bible as a “mother” to the people of God.  We can see this picture in the book of Judges regarding a prophetess whose name was Deborah.  Her name comes from the word “debar,” the Hebrew word for “word,” so she is a picture of the Word.  When we went through Judges 4, we saw this was the reason that she was giving instruction to Barak, a type of Christ, and Barak said he would not go into battle without her.  And Barak and his ten thousand men represent Christ who comes with ten thousands of his saints in Judgment Day, and Barak would not go into that battle unless Deborah was with him.  And that is because God uses the Word to judge in the Day of Judgment.  In Judges 5, we read this statement regarding Deborah in Judges 5:7:

The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel.

You see, she represented the Word, and she “arose a mother in Israel.”  The Word is our mother. 

Let us look at one more verse in Proverbs 6:20:

 My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother:

God is linking His Law with a mother.  And the moon is linked with the Law, and the moon is as a mother to Joseph, and it does provide confirmation that the moon is a figure of the Law of God, or the Word of God, the Bible.