Patience, You Must Have: Jesus in the OT

There are multiple trucks literally filled with people who are laughably more qualified than myself to speak on the subject of Jesus in the OT . . . but I think that was understood long ago. Some I have been most helped by: The Ancient Love Song, The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, The Meaning of the Pentateuch.

Are we supposed to play hide and go seek with Jesus as we read the OT? Is He everywhere and we just have to find Him? After all it is HE who said the Law and prophets spoke of Himself. In thinking about this we will look at some other general OT issues in passing.

Is our sequence of OT books the best? Most have never thought about the question and with good reason, its order has been the way it currently is for quite some time. What if there was a way to read the OT that might benefit us a little more, might give just a smidge more clarity or aide to our understanding. Currently we break the OT into the Law, History, Poetry, Major then Minor Prophets and, for the most part, they are lumped together categorically. This is very minor but in one way the OT is organized (Tanakh) Chronicles does not come right after Samuel and Kings--as we noted last time it was written well after the two; the love story of Ruth, making a more logical and manifested form, follows the intimate love of Song of Songs; Ecclesiastes, the existential, candid look at the sadness and core of life precedes the book of Lamentations which woefully recalls terrifying historical events with little hope, save for chapter 3—what’s the purpose of life; and this way ends with Ezra, Nehemiah, and then Chronicles, the point at which Israel is gathered back together and growing again. The final books build anticipation, desire, longing for a good king who will finally right the Nation. What does this have to do with our topic: the OT, by presenting human failure and incompleteness time after time over hundreds of years builds a groaning for the Messiah, for Christ Jesus to tear on the scene and make all things right. *

A big question when looking at the OT and Jesus must boil down to, what were the intentions of the people writing the OT at the time they were writing it? Thousands of years ago the stories of God’s interaction with people were told orally, by mouth. These were written down at some point. This means that these things are very old and the audience, then, was just as old. When we tell a story to a child we should emphasize certain things because stories convey, stories teach. Just the same with stories way back in days prior to almost everything we would recognize as culture: they told stories to relay history and ideas in a certain way, with intention.
For one, they were not a scientific based society; what I mean by this is that precision was not such a big deal as it is nowadays. So when you read Numbers or stories about how one army came out to fight another and it was like 10,000 million on one side and 1,000,000 on another we should not go, ah, someone was there counting, rather we should think, man, one army had a huge personnel advantage over the other army. It is simply saying there was a definite underdog. So we cannot get hung up on the numbers, take yourself out of the Western Scientific precision mode and throw a bone; different cultures speak in differing ways, they convey ideas differently from how we do and that is okay. It is not dishonesty, just different. (though some numbers obviously have symbolic meaning, we’re not talking about those here)
Secondly, as was mentioned last time, they and we write with certain bents and emphases (remember how Samuel and Chronicles differed?). Galileo is quoted as saying, “The Bible shows the way to get to Heaven, not the way the heavens go.” What he is saying is precisely my point: we should not look at Genesis, the first book in the OT, as some kind of proof or in depth description of what all took place at creation, instead we should draw that God spoke it all into existence and made it good. So we have to be careful in how we read the Bible because it is easy to interject our ideas based on our conclusions and understandings literally thousands of years after things were written. It is arrogant to conclude so and so must have been saying this BECAUSE we now know x and y. We must be careful because we know the OT was inspired by God but it does not mean it has to be neat and nice and always conform nicely to our present way of understanding.
Third, for the most part, the audience of the OT writers were people living at the time it was spoken. Peter Enns makes an intriguing point that in Deuteronomy 5.7 it reads “You shall have no other god’s before me.” He compares this to later writings such as Isaiah 45.5 that says, “I am the LORD, and there are no other, besides me there is no God . . .” Did you catch that? In the first part God seems to be acknowledging there are other gods and in Isaiah He does not. Dr. Enns suggests that in a way of speaking to the people so they understand he changes over time, not the reality of what He is saying to Israel but in the way they’ll best understand. He argues that at the time of Deuteronomy the wandering Israelites were very much poly-theistic—they believed in many gods—so god spoke to them in that way: “there are others but I’m supreme.” But over time, through circumstance God showed them that there were no other gods besides Him and thus He spoke more candidly to Israel in Isaiah about His supremacy: “categorically I am alone, none even comes close!” We see then that we cannot wear, entirely, our same thinking caps when reading the OT, it is very different.
Fourth, the Bible is incarnational, just like Jesus. I often forget that God did not have to do all this. He could have made the world and observed like the Greek gods, interjecting into events on a whim. God did not have to speak to us. Get a good image of a snooty person in your mind, this individual is high-browed, wears only the finest of cloths, is a billionaire who speaks to no one but his butler. Sadly the limo had a flat tire and for some reason this person decided to get out of the car, a smelly, dingy, and maybe dying hobo comes up asking for money. Nothing. Our nose-upper does not even acknowledge our hobo’s existence. In a sense, God could do that and it would be okay. But thankfully He decided to interject and speak to His people and not in some heavenly language but our own, our own full of bad grammar like this blog bountifully contains, language that could and would be twisted, language that is ordinary, not pompous but understandable; God spoke so that we could begin to understand who He is and who we are. This is amazing! So in this way we can compare the OT to Jesus and find the similarities: God interjected into the mess to bring mercy and grace.

Okay, so what about Jesus? Jesus is not playing hide-and-go-seek in the OT. And we should not stretch ideas and similarities and think we have found Him. He is spoken of prophetically—in the Psalms and Isaiah most abundantly but in many other books—or, as many believe, in the form of the Angel of the Lord—Jacob wrestled with him, he stood with the 3 in the furnace, he stood in the way of Balaam’s donkey, etc. So in this way we should not look to find Jesus because He is not there, He will not be until hundreds of years later.
But did Jesus not say that the Law and Prophets spoke of Him? I can tell a story about the attribute of courage without mentioning the word courage; we do not need to see Jesus to long for him. We can think simply but never simplistically about the things Jesus says. What some think of when they say that Jesus is in the OT is that there are people and events push us towards the expected Jesus, the Messiah to come. As Jesus Himself does at numerous points, he takes something from the past and compares it to Himself: Like Jonah descending for three days then being raised up so I will be buried and rise. Also, Jesus is called the second Adam, this compares Jesus to Adam in Genesis and it conveys that humanity, in Jesus Christ, has a second chance for fellowship with God. But even with the comparisons or types—those who have some attribute or action which Jesus will perfect in His existence—we can get too wrapped up in the Jesus part and fast-forward too quickly so that we lose what the point of the passage in the OT is getting at. The OT is doing a lot of things but a big thing it is doing is making us itch more and more for Jesus, it is creating the desire for the perfect One. Charles Drew, author of the helpful book The Ancient Love Song: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament, says, “Jesus Christ has to have context if he is to mean anything . . . Our God has [convinced us that we need His love] for us in the Old Testament. To be ignorant of those Scriptures is to be like the complacent husband, bored with his wife because he has never realized what life would be like without her.”

We want to get what is to be gotten from the OT but nothing more. If we can learn to approach the OT in a humble way in which we want to be informed by God’s word, patiently seeing what it is trying to do we will gain much. Is it hard? Yes. Is it boring at times? Yes. But it is also a gracious gift granted to us and there is a wonderful, joy-filled purpose in it. We see more and more WHAT Jesus’ reign would mean and imply on a sick and decadently destructive people as all humans are. In many parts of the OT it is Jesus’ absence that is to be felt, not His presence.

The Apostle Paul wanting to encourage his fellow believers in the city of Rome told them the following of the OT: “whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” The Bible, the Christian life is an ongoing wrestling match, it is a struggle; but as the Christian struggles he hopes.





* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Bible

10-22-08

I.
You bright light
You bright light
Some suns sloth to be seen
But you burst forth like a beam
You joined and joyed
I knew your warmth
Were we not walking together
Did we not help one another?

II.
I cannot afford a smile
my soul is broke
I know what you forgot
You came and ate then left,
You were meant to stay
There was more, much more
But a heart-driven ignorance
. . . O your tears are life-less
Your teas are fools
Your tears are damned!
Come, come return!

III.
The end tells the truth
All was a flux,
The words were echoes,
The difference a temporal gale;
How could we have known
There is nothing to be done.

IV.
Like water in the heat
Like a flame in the wind
You bright light
You bright light have dimmed,
dimmed,
dark.

You're Lazy and a Mystic: Why You Stink at Studying the OT. Part 1

To begin, the first couple of posts will more than likely be more broad and less pointing to a specific book of the Old Testament (OT).

Most would agree that magic is left to J.K Rowling or the once famous game Dungeons and Dragons. When taking the Bible and magic and comparing the two most would prepare their mind for a study of contrast. I mean God doesn’t need magic, supernatural activity sure, but magic is weird and chaotic and learned, God and his ways just . . . are. Okay, fair enough, though not a satisfactory argument by any stretch of the imagination. But what about how you and I interact with the Bible? What about how we approach studying the Bible? A good descriptive for people who ‘study’ the Bible and most assuredly the OT is lazy. Exhale you gaspers. The average Christian in America studies the Bible in a laughable manor and I think the birth that this monstrosity occurs is a sense of magic. I know you are thinking, in the words of Lucille’s husband Ricky in the television show I Love Lucy, ‘You have some splaning to do!!’

Excuse number one: I have the Holy Spirit. The argument goes like this: since I have the Holy Spirit (HS) now I do not have to study the Bible so hard. The HS was given, among other things, to Christians to enlighten and illumine them as they ponder God’s Word. So since I am at a great advantage I do not need to study like those who did not have the HS studied prior. It is almost like a higher level of osmosis, I just have to read over the Bible and application and understanding will flood my inner self. This is ridiculous. Jesus was God and still went to temple, still prayed a lot for wisdom and discernment and pondered deeply and at a young age the Bible, as He had it then of course. While the HS is a great and wonderful gift it is not a crutch but a greater reason to study more in depth the things of God because we now know something that those who did not have the HS knew, namely, we will be guided by Him as we study. In his second letter to Timothy Paul said to his young pastor friend, ‘Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.’ You see it? Paul says as you use the gift of thinking and pondering, the gift God has given to you, He will give you understanding in everything, He will lead you to what is correct and true and right. In Acts the church would meet together to break bread and to devote themselves to the apostles teaching and pray together. Jesus--have fun arguing with Him--said if you love me you will skim around and kinda know, generally, what the Bible says? NO!! Jesus Christ said if you love me you will abide in my Word—and we know that essentially the whole OT was speaking of Him. Abiding is actively placing yourself in the midst of, not resisting but going towards. There is no flashy Greek to get you out of this one. You love Jesus? You’ll study and know Him and He is found only in the Bible, for our purposes here.

Excuse number two: The OT is confusing and does not make sense. Math does not make sense, until you familiarize yourself with its language, terms and purposes. A sheet of music is confusing until you devote yourself to learning what it is doing, what the symbols mean and the placements convey. When I first started running a specific trail in college I got lost a lot but after a few runs I began to recognize things and I was familiarized with where I was going. I could go on. My point is if you are not actively reading and familiarizing yourself with the books of the Bible how in the world do you expect them not to be confusing? Some people in the past would read the book they wanted to better understand and study 30 times before actually breaking it down. It is best to study as an Eagle—looking broadly and seeing the whole picture—and as a badger—in depth digging. Many people now purposely put themselves on reading plans to get through the OT once and the NT twice in a year. John Sailhamer, who wrote large, helpful volumes of thinking and commentary on the first five books of the OT, said of studying the first five books of the OT that the most essential key to study is reading the text over and over. This takes time but hey, if you want to understand it you need to take the time to do so.

Excuse number three: I’ve read some of the books front to back, mostly the minor prophets because they are short, and they are still confusing. The Bible is a story, all of it. It is a story, a story formed in the same way The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of story culminating into one big story. Books fill in the blanks and have differing viewpoints. Do you ever wonder why there is so much overlap between 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles but there are differing and almost contradictory words about the same events and lives? Two were written before both kingdoms were taken in captivity (Samuel and Kings) while one was written after the kingdoms were taken captive and some were brought back to the land of the Israel (Chronicles). Because of this there are different things that they authors of each want to emphasize. For example, David in Samuel—written before the kingdoms were taken from the Land—is seen in a very candid way; his sins are before the audience: coveting, adultery, murder, pride, etc. People were close enough to him to know the sins David committed, people were still alive possibly who could say, yup, he did that. But in the Chronicles version the sins of most of the leaders, including David, are omitted. Some have said that the nation of Israel was remembering their history in a positive and less candid fashion, their history and lineage of great men. Maybe they wanted their audiences to say, ‘Hey, look what God did among us, what leaders he gave, He can do it again!’ My point, each story and book is not to stand-alone, they build upon and fill in for one another.

So, have you been approaching the OT study in a magical or mystical way? Are you waiting for understanding just to come to you without study, contemplation, and prayer? Maybe you have not and you are simply lazy and you know it. You can change the times my friend.

I think that you are getting the picture that study is work. (Nooooooooooo!!) It is true. Paul says we can glorify God by working so working is not an evil thing, remember work was cursed; work was made toilsome as a punishment for sin but it was in existence prior to the sin of Adam and Eve. But think of this, as you study and meditate on the OT you will begin to understand it more, the fog will begin to lift a little more and the glory and character of God and Christ and the HS will be more fierce, more terrifying, more great and something you’ll crave. A great advantage of the OT over the New is that it is filled with exciting and interesting stories which are easier and at times more enjoyable to study. The OT is not something that you might break-down like one of Paul’s letters. It is a big chunk of reading but intriguing and helpful for your soul and others’ souls. Someone told me when I first became a Christian that if you rake you’ll get leaves but if you are patient and dig you’ll get diamonds and gold. ‘I want tha gold.’

Next time I hope to look at the problem OT studiers have of running too quickly to Jesus: is Jesus playing hide-and-go-seek in the OT; is he to be found everywhere?

Baby Boots

Unt Tree

Why I Love The Bible's Old Testament

Do you ever contemplate why the Old Testament exists? Do you find it not only boring at times, but also confusing? Where is the resolve; is what these people do right or wrong, are they models to follow or to steer clear of? Why are all the numbers rounded, can’t they count? Is this God the same one that seems so patient and kind in the New Testament? Do contradictions mean the Old Testament is not trust-worthy? Why is called so many different names? Can’t we just skip to Jesus and the Apostles? Is Ezekiel or Song of Solomon saying what I think it might be? Does God really call the murderer and adulterer and bad-parent and guy who ended is life as a cold, weak man one after His own heart?

I hope to start a small series of blogs on how to study and look at the Old Testament and hopefully it addresses the why as well. But here I want to give a few sweeping, general, and broad reasons why I love and am thankful for the Old Testament.

It is different. The Old Testament is crazy. The Old Testament is wonderful. The Old Testament is exciting. The Old Testament is not the scientific-based Western thought. The Old Testament (OT) is a gathering of books like no other. It’s aim and way of getting at its target is like no other book. It has reasons for all it does but does not always disclose them (‘the secret things belong to the LORD’ and ‘wisdom conceals knowledge’).

It’s genres. There is history: of the Earth’s formation, destruction, and renewal. Of man, his purpose, failures and struggles. Of nations—Israel, Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, and a lot of smaller Canaanite peoples. It can look at the life of one man or one nation. It is introspective and, at times, painfully ambiguous. There is poetry: The first being in Genesis from Adam’s lips, to the entire love-struck book of Song of Solomon, to the singing in the Psalms of people being murdered and lands being destroyed, and in myriads of other places. Much of what is written is done in the form of story, oral tradition written down. There are legal documents: of how to treat one another, how to tend flocks, take care of the land, how to treat outsiders, how to perform justice, how to clean, how to celebrate, how to worship, etc.

The way the OT is written is a way of theology—this word simply means the study of God, who, what, how He is. If it is kept in mind that the entire reason the book was written is to inform us about God, and to know God and to discover the human and his nature, then we can understand the Bible as a whole much better.

It’s way of making us think. There are ambiguities, there are unresolved matters, there are deep insights all to make us ponder God and ponder how the world works.

It’s breadth and depth. There are prophesies and prostitutes. There is Ruth the Moabite and Ruben the son of Israel. There are grotesque acts of rape, genocide, envy, pride, and injustice. There are spectacular manifestations of the power of sin and God.

It’s ability to create in us a substantial longing for a good ruler and a right world. In reading the OT we are to grow in our desire for something better, Someone better. We see hope that is often frail and then quickly broken only to be built back and crushed again. The OT is meant to bring us to the point almost of despair crying, ‘who will make things genuinely right?!’

It’s way of displaying God’s desire to have us love Him—He gave us language and His revelation. God decided to speak to us, the creatures who He knew would desert Him, forget Him, try to bring shame and dishonor on Him, continually disobey and rebel against Him. He knew all this yet He still decided to speak graciously to us.

These are only tips of the iceberg of why I love and am thankful for the OT but I hope it serves as a perking of your curiosity to join me in looking at some ways of how to rightly study the OT.

06-24-2010

Out of graves come diamonds
Out of dirt came man
Out of time comes wisdom
Out of grace, God’s hand.
Prudence passions forth
providence’s plan.