JESUS and His mission: visible in all Creation, through all time, and in ways still being revealed
/God reveals His Son and the Truths of salvation in so many ways and means all throughout history and Creation, just one powerful example being what the prophet Isaiah recorded in Isaiah 9:6.
He also has an interesting way of hiding truths for us to discover, and here is one we recently came upon. The very names of Jacob’s sons, taken together, point to God’s plan for us. When we put the meanings of their names together, we can see the gospel ‘hidden’ there.
First, the names and their meanings:
Reuben: Behold, a son is born to us
Simeon: One who hears
Levi: Attached or joined
Judah: Praise
Dan: He judged
Naphtali: Struggling or wrestling
Gad: Good fortune, or a troop
Asher: Happiness
Issachar: Wages, reward
Zebulun: Honour
Joseph: Add or increase
Benjamin: ‘Son of my right hand’; considering Benjamin’s constant faithfulness to his father, we could interpret this ‘son of righteousness’.
Stitching the names together, we have this:
Behold, a son is born to us, one who hears us and became joined to us. Praise the Lord. He judged our struggles and brought us good fortune and fellowship, happiness, reward, honor. He added us to his family and called us sons of righteousness.
Clearly, Jesus is the scarlet thread joining all of the Bible, all of Creation, together in God’s grand redemptive story, HIStory.
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Our great thanks to Natan Lawrence, who as far as we know was the first to glean and write about this. You can read his post here: Hidden Message in the Names of the 12 Tribes.
