The Message of the Old Testament
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Have you ever had one of those moments when you meet a person and you think you know them and then you hear them say something that catches you off guard? Their comment seems so contrary to the knowledge of the person that you’ve come to know that it makes you think that you’ve either misunderstood them or you’ve been dooped all along.
I think for many people, when it comes to Christianity, we come to Jesus first. We get introduced to Him through Christmas. What a beautiful picture of pure innocence, beauty, love. His humble beginnings endear us to Him.
If the first encounter was Christmas, the second encounter for many folks is Easter. We hear about this guy who willingly gave his life on the Cross. It sounds cruel and mean. He willingly did all of that. What’s more, He came back to life!
His humble start and subsequent death, burial and resurrection cause us to want to know more - and so we read, study, attend church, and more. We learn how He was hard on religious people (we like that - stick it to the self righteous) and gracious to sinners - calling them to repent (whatever that is) and yet still gracious. He healed the sick and the lepers - giving them hope to be re-connected to society. We might hear quotes about prophecies from some earlier era, but we like what we hear.
We may go beyond the gospels and read Acts and the rough beginnings of the church - some conflict and persecution, some weird signs, but explosive growth - thousands of lives changed. We may even go on to read the letters from some super saints to various churches. The information seems practical and even helpful.
This Jesus, who is the Son of God and God is a cool guy. He’s worth looking into.
Then...
We open the pages of the “Old Testament.” It starts out fairly interesting - God spoke and formed the universe by His words - (I would love to have that ability to simply speak something into existence - there is so much house maintenance that would be improved if I could simply speak it fixed!). He created light, dark, land, water, sky, sun, moon, stars, fish, birds, land animals, and people. Could he really do it that fast - in 7 days? What would it have been like to watch that?
We read of rebellion and rejection - “you mean they got kicked out of the garden because they ate something that wasn’t on the menu?” We read about one brother murdering another and then God protecting the murderer! We read about other people being killed and get some glimpse of a wicked society, then a massive flood destroys nearly everyone. Is this the same God?
We continue reading and hear that God calls one group of people to wipe out another group of people, entirely. Is this the same God?
Then we read of adulterous affairs and parenting problems from someone who is a “man after God’s heart.” We read these difficult poetic passages where it sounds like God is angry all the time. There’s the practical proverbs and the sultry Song of Solomon.
Who is this God? What is this book? Is this the same being giving this information to us?
We fall in love with Jesus and then fall out of love with the God that we read about in the Old Testament. Is this really one grand story? Is this the same God?
And then we might read a verse like this:
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
How can this God be merciful and gracious and loving and forgiving, yet punishing the guilty for 3-4 generations? That doesn’t sound very forgiving.
My hope is that we will address some of these concerns today as we consider a high level view of the Old Testament and it’s overarching message.
Last week, we began this new series of message on God’s Story in Scripture with a high level overview of history as we considered the 7Cs (or 10 Cs if you add the few extras that we briefly included). Let’s review them briefly (use the 7Cs graphic from Answers in Genesis):
Creation
Corruption
Catastrophe
Confusion
Calling
Covenant
Consecration
Christ
Cross
Consummation
Today, we’re going to zoom in a bit and consider just the Old Testament.
In our English Bibles, the OT is divided into 4 divisions of 39 books. Dever points out that these consist of the Law (5), Histories (12), Writings (5), and the Prophecies (17). (Dever, The Message of the Old Testament, p. 51).
Some people refer to these as the Hebrew Scriptures or the TaNaK -
Torah (Pentateuch or first five books of Moses), - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
Nebi’im (Prophets) - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Book of 12 (Minor Prophets), and historical books (1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Joshua, and Judges)
Kethubim (Writings) - Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and 1 & 2 Chronicles.
(Craigie, The Old Testament: Its Background, Growth & Content, p. 23).
Hebrew Bibles are organized a bit differently than our Christian Bibles. If you didn’t get a chance to look at the video on the Bible Project website, overviewing the Old Testament, let me encourage you to check it out. It is quite informative and helpful.
As we walk though this overview of the message of the Old Testament, we’re going to consider the fact that God is communicating three significant things:
“A Particular History”
“A Passion for Holiness” and
“A Promise of Hope”
These three points, which come from Mark Dever’s book on the Message of the Old Testament, will make up the outline of the remainder of our conversation. If we were to summarize the entire message of the OT into two words, we could say that it consists of “Promises Made” pointing to the NT which Dever delineates as “Promises Kept.”
So the very brief summary of the Old Testament is God making promises that he fulfills in the New Testament. That doesn’t address all of the concerns that we raised a few minutes ago, but it does help us understand a bit more what God is doing.
So let’s dive in and look more specifically at the message of the OT.
Through the pages of scripture, God is communicating...
“A Particular History”
“A Particular History”
Over the last couple of years, I’ve enjoyed getting to listen to several different history books. This has included the history of the Byzantine empire, the history of the Vikings, The Normans, the life of Queen Elizabeth, and the history of the church. Each of these books have a very specific focus. Each of these books ignore people groups and events that extend beyond the particular history about which they are covering.
As God communicates through the pages of the Old Testament, He is communicating a history that has general elements - His work in creation and in the flood. He is also communicating a very specific history, following the activity and actions of the Hebrews or Israelites. What we have to realize is that every history book contains a particular history, it focuses on a certain group of people, or a certain region, or a certain time frame. A historical writing that included all significant events from every part of the globe would be massive and extremely difficult to understand.
We discussed this briefly last week, but the OT essentially covers somewhere between 2000 and 8000 years of history (maybe even more, depending on how you view the creation account). When you and I read the Bible, we can cover hundreds of years in a short amount of time - even just a couple of verses. Mark Dever thinks that most of the history of the world happened before the time of Noah - and that’s just six chapters.
So here is a brief summary of the particular history of the Old Testament:
Genesis - covers the creation of the world, the fall of humanity, the great flood, the calling of Abraham and God’s covenant with Him. It entails the establishment of the people of Israel through Jacob and concludes with God’s people in Egypt.
Exodus - introduces us to Moses as God’s chosen man to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt after a few hundred years of slavery. It includes God’s promise of land for his people and the initial giving of the law, God’s covenant with Israel and the establishment of the tabernacle - a tent used for worship.
Leviticus - contains the laws that regulate worship and life for the Israelites as they live as covenant people with God. It highlights how “sinful humans can approach a holy God.” (Dever, 51).
Numbers - gets its name from the vast number of lists that involve censuses and a numerical accounting of the people. It also includes several instances of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, including the twelve spies that are sent to survey the land of Canaan, the promised land, and the fearfulness that led the people to disobey God and not enter in - resulting in 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
Deuteronomy - means second law - after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, Moses gives the next generation the law again through a series of sermons. He also commissions Joshua to take his place.
Joshua - entails the conquest of the promised land and the division of the land among the tribes.
Judges - outlines several hundred years of decline as the people of Israel drift away from God, “doing what is right in their own eyes.”
Ruth - is the brief tail during the time of the judges of one family, their escape from famine, return to Israel and redemption by a relative. This highlights the lineage of future King David.
1 & 2 Samuel - recounts the transition from the final judge (Samuel) to Israel’s first King, Saul, who was rejected by God, and their second king David who was known as being a man after God’s heart.
1 & 2 Kings - begins with the promising reign of David’s son Solomon and then recounts the nation’s divide between the north and the south and their individual rebellion against God, moral decline, and ultimate banishment into exile.
1 & 2 Chronicles - is a glossy summary of life from Adam to the exile, focusing on David, Solomon, and the southern Kingdom, leaving out some of the negative aspects of their reigns.
Ezra - depicts the return of the Jews from exile, the spiritual reforms that begin, and the rebuilding of the temple.
Nehemiah - deals with the rebuilding of the walls around Jerusalem and some of the political reforms that take place after the exile.
Esther - concludes the historical books and describes a story of God’s protection of the Jews that were exiled in Persia.
Intermingled amidst all of this history are the poetic books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon which contain the reflections and meditations of the people of God.
The last section of books are the books of Prophecy. In many ways, these are the most difficult to read because of their poetic nature and their limited historical context. Some of the prophets address the Northern Kingdom, others address the southern Kingdom. There are even some prophecies about neighboring nations. Some of them are written specifically for the contemporary situation (like sermons), while others point toward God’s long-range plan and the Messiah who is to come.
From the time of the last prophet, Malachi, to the coming of Jesus was about 400 years.
This history covers a lot of what Mark Dever calls a “confessional” history - centering around the people of Israel and their relationship with God. He says, it’s a history
“written by people who know who God is and that they are his people.” (Dever, 51)
As we briefly discussed before, when you and I read through the pages of the Old Testament, we cover many years in a short amount of time. The unfolding of the history is not laid out in a symmetrical or even pattern, the pace of the history speeds up and slows down. It glosses over a thousand or so years in just a chapter or two in Genesis, and slows down to detailed events in the lives of Ruth, David, Solomon, etc.
When we get to the times when it feels like God is angry with His people, we turn back a page to understand why and find that decades of rebellion have passed.
We, as people who live in this current age, have a very succinct and quick view of time. A week can feel like an eternity or like a flash of time. We skew things by our perspective and experiences.
For example. Yesterday, we got to celebrate the 90 years that God has blessed Annabel. Think about the things that she has lived through - shortly after she was born, the great economic crash of 1929 hit, ushering in the great depression. The 1930s saw the rise of Hitler in Europe and the beginnings of WWII. She experienced all four elections of president Roosevelt, the initiation of the Social Security Act. She has lived through WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, the fall of Communism, and all of our Wars in the Middle East. She saw the advent of space travel, a man put on the moon, the invention of computers and so much more. That is just a limited history of the world during her lifetime.
As we read through scripture, we need to keep in mind that God is patient. The Bible says in...
But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
So, as you and I read through the Old Testament, we need to keep in mind that it spans a great deal of time and the God is communicating a particular history as His plan unfolds.
In addition to that, we must realize that God is also communicating the He has...
“A Passion for Holiness”
“A Passion for Holiness”
Just as we would in any history book, as we read through the Old Testament, we read about wars, conflict, destruction. It’s easy to walk away from an Old Testament reading and think that God is an angry God who is cruel and vindictive - but we have to recognize that He is not that way without cause.
Let me illustrate this in a bit of a crude way. Danielle and I got married nearly 25 years ago. A couple of weeks before our wedding day, we went to the courthouse to get the documents to make it official. Then on the day of our wedding, we entered into a covenant with each other. Sure, we signed some documents, but more than that, we covenanted to be united with one another, to be committed until death would separate us.
Let’s say, after our honeymoon, I met someone else and began having a relationship with that person. I’m still married to Danielle but breaking the covenant with this other relationship. Do you think Danielle would be happy about it? No way - she and I committed, we covenanted, to be set apart, holy to each other. What would happen if I broke off that bad relationship, repented and turned back to Danielle. Being an amazing would, she would likely forgive me, but being human, there would always be that sense of betrayal, that jealousy.
It’s the same way in the Old Testament. God, who is a holy God, entered into multiple covenants with humans, making promises, and setting expectations. When His people break that covenant, he is rightly angry, just as Danielle would be. Mark Dever writes,
“God’s covenants were used to draw his people into a committed relationship with himself. And it is in the context of God’s commited covenantal relationships that we find God’s passion for holiness expressed. In short, he was passionate for his covenanted people to be set apart unto Him and to have characters and lives that were like His own. This is why sin is such a problem in the Bible, because sin is not like God. There is not the least trace of sin in God, and so it causes big problems for humans in relating to Him. It separates us from God.” (Dever, 55)
In the Old Testament, we learn that all people are sinners. Because of that, God set up a sacrificial system to remind people of what their sinfulness costs. The sacrificial system provided a means of atonement or “at-one-ment” with God.
Imagine what it would be like if every time you sinned you had to go to the field and take an innocent animal and bring it to the priest. I’m sure there would be some sort of conversation. “What did you do this time?” “Didn’t we address this last sabbath?” “How many lambs will it take before you change?” Addressing sin with sacrifices would have been costly, time consuming and messy.
The Holy God of the universe desires that His covenant people live holy lives, set apart and distinct. He is jealous for His holiness. He is jealous for the holiness of His people.
The message of the Old Testament communicates a particular history and God’s passion for holiness. It also communicates...
“A Promise of Hope”
“A Promise of Hope”
As we’ve already discussed, it’s easy to get caught up in the the details of religious laws and the complexities of the Old Testament history. But there is another element that we need to think about - God’s Love and His call for his people to be a people of love.
When you read through the writings, there is a phrase that gets repeated time and again - “steadfast love” or “hesed” in Hebrew. Some English translators ended up making up the word “lovingkindness” to describe this element of God.
When you think about the fact that the Psalmists are meditating on God’s attributes and the way He works in their lives, that word hesed or love comes to mind. In light of all of the rebellion, punishment, the Psalmists can still reflect on the steadfast love. The steadfast love of God is found 194 times in the ESV. Nearly every book of the OT discusses God’s love. Even Jeremiah, the weeping prophet and his further Lamentation on the plight of the Hebrews acknowledges the hesed of God.
‘Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them, O great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of man, rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Even in the midst of Israel’s most difficult times of discipline, God’s steadfast love brought a promise of hope. His faithfulness in history brought hope for the future.
God’s steadfast love was not reserved for Him alone to express. He called his people to love God with their entire being (Dt. 6:5).
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
He called on His people to be loving toward others (Lev. 19:34).
You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
In fact Jesus said that all of the law and the prophets hang on these two commands - loving God fully and loving neighbors as ourselves.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Beyond this, God called his people to love foreigners and to be kind toward them, because He is a God who loves foreigners (Dt. 10:18-19).
He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
The Old Testament even calls God’s people to show some kindness toward enemies - not rejoicing when they fall (Pv. 24:17) and providing food and drink when they are in need (Pv. 25:21).
Do not rejoice when your enemy falls,
and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles,
If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat,
and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,
I think part of the promise of hope is not only wrapped up in the character of God and his steadfast love, but also in the way that God’s people would be different, loving, caring. Sure, they should have a passion for holiness, but imagine what would happen in society if God’s people truly exemplified God’s loving nature on earth. Society would be a different place - that is something to hope for!
And yet there is one greater promise of hope. From the very first time that sin entered into the world with the rebellion of Adam and Eve, God promised that a descendant of the woman would come to crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15).
Moses tells the people of Israel that God would raise up a prophet like him...
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—
There would be a great prophet who would speak the Words of God. In Jesus we find that he would also live the Words of God - defending God’s holiness and demonstrating his steadfast love.
Jesus would also come to fulfill the Word of God - permanently fulfilling the requirements of the law as the perfect sacrifice as the suffering servant...
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
The promise of hope in the Messiah brings complete understanding to the passage that we considered early on...
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
God shows his steadfast love and faithfulness to us in a multitude of ways, but God also pours out his justice on the guilty by providing His Son as the perfect substitutionary sacrifice for sin. His passion for holiness is defended as Jesus pays the ultimate price for our sins.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So, in the course of your regular Bible reading, keeping in mind that the Old Testament is making promises while conveying a particular history, a passion for holiness, and ulitately a promise of hope in Jesus Christ.