I love the old testament!
There’s so much of God’s glory in it. Agreed, some parts can be hard work. But once we realise how much is awaiting our discovery, we wonder why we didn’t start absorbing it before.
‘Your God is too small’ (J.B.Phillips). It’s often the case. We set out to share our faith, and realise we hardly know the God we’re talking about. We meet suffering or temptation, and discover God is not present to us as a vivid reality.
When Jesus selected his disciples, he chose them to ‘be with him‘ (first!), and only then ‘that he might send them out to preach’ (Mark 3:14). Before God sent Moses to Egypt, he first led him to the burning bush for a dramatic revelation of his nature, expressed in his Name I AM WHO I AM (Exodus 3). God’s way of making Isaiah into a prophet was likewise through an overwhelming vision of his divine majesty: only then was Isaiah ready to say, `Here am I, send me’ (Isaiah 6).
So: We desire to be God’s prophetic people in the coming century. Where, then, shall we go for such a vision? The answer’s obvious: to his self-revelation in the Bible – but the whole Bible. Of course the new testament is the place to start. But God has prepared for us a full diet, to give us a rounded picture of what he is like; and it’s not for us to tell him we don’t need what he wants to give us from Joshua, Exodus or Malachi! ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and useful … so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped!’ (2 Timothy 3:16, NIV as usual). If we want that empowering vision of God, we need to be feeding on the OT too.
So, big picture: the old testament helps us grow in this with four different kinds of books:
1 The Foundational books – Genesis (and Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges) to Ruth
2 The (further) `History` books – 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
3 The `Writings` – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
4 The Prophets – 4 `major` (Isaiah, Jeremiah/Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel) and 12 `minor`.
And then, running through all this there’s a story that helps us understand the world, built around four main events…
Act 1 gives us what we need to know about the great events of prehistory (Genesis 1-11); then, the crucial moment (Genesis 12 on) when God restarts revelation history 4000 years ago with Abraham, and then his successors Isaac, Jacob and Joseph; creating a people through whom the whole world would one day be blessed.
Act 2 sees this people go from slavery to Sinai: the Israelites have moved to Egypt because of a famine, but there they are trapped into slavery. So Exodus shows us how God sets people free. Then, we’re shown how they travel through the desert to Sinai, where they have an amazing meeting with God and make the religious covenant (`old covenant`) with him, based around their promise to keep the 10 commandments.
Act 3 shows us how Israel travel from Sinai to the promised land (Numbers to Joshua), and takes the story on through Judges, Ruth, the books of Samuel and the first parts of Kings and Chronicles, till at last the temple is built. This could be seen as the high point of the old testament: God loves human company! So he wants a permanent dwelling-place with Israel in the land of promise – hence the histories of Joshua, then David and Solomon, who he enables to bring this about.
Act 4 takes the story on from the building of the temple, until the equally important moment when Israel go into exile in imperialistic Babylon. (This is Kings, Chronicles, and most of the prophetic books.) The lesson here is crucial: Israel’s religious `old covenant` by which they tried to relate to God was based on their good deeds and religious rituals; and it was vital for them (and through them, all humanity) to learn that this doesn’t suffice. We can’t get God’s presence, heaven on earth, like that!
Act 5 Then from the exile (described in Esther and Daniel) to Jesus; the Jews come back from exile (Ezra and Nehemiah), but as much more ordinary people now. And after Malachi God’s Word the Bible actually falls silent till Jesus comes.
ANOTHER PIECE OF `BIG PICTURE`: THE `OLD COVENANT`
In all this we watch the revealing and carrying out of God’s purposes through the outworking of his promises, embodied in various `covenants` with people (`deals`, if you like!). Sometimes we overemphasise this covenant theme, and it’s can too easily become very abstract; but it’s helpful in grasping our relationship with God, and indeed what the whole old testament is `there for`! We read in Genesis 9 about God’s longterm covenant with Noah, and through him for the blessing of all humankind; then, equally longterm, with Abraham, and through him the blessing of his descendants, and ultimately all nations (Gen 17, and 12:3). But what’s central to the OT is what 2 Cor 3:14 and Heb 8:6 call the `old covenant` (or `first covenant`, Heb 8:7, 13, 9:1,15,18), established with Israel at Sinai on the basis of what is repeatedly called the `covenant law`. The basis of this covenant was that they would be in relationship with God because they kept his commandments (Ex 24:3, 19:5).
But as Deuteronomy predicted repeatedly, such an arrangement didn’t work (see also Heb 8:7). And through this, God’s loving revelatory purpose was that we (all humankind now) should learn something crucial: this way of trying to relate to God can’t ever suffice. This was the way of `religion` (and of more or less all human religions, except really biblical Christian faith): a way that hopes to base relationship with God on our own good works, and/or our religious rituals. This is why I often say to friends that I’m not `religious`: religion is a blind alley, because, however hard we try, even our best actions are flawed, and our tendency is always away from the holy righteousness that’s essential if we’re to survive and thrive in God’s gloriously holy presence. (The old testament’s histories record this tendency repeatedly; and Paul shows how it’s true even of the one nation who had God’s own revelation, Rom 3:10-23.)
One crucial thing we learn from the OT, then, is that the `covenant… from Mount Sinai`, and indeed any `religious` attempts of this kind, can only give us the `knowledge of sin` (see Rom 3:20); in fact it `bears children who are to be slaves`, says Paul (Gal 4:24), because the harder we try to do what will get us God’s approval, as most religions do, the more we experience our failure, and deep down our guilt. Which means that lasting relationship with God can only come from a very different kind of arrangement (read how Paul develops this in Rom 3:21-25), one of undeserved `grace` where our loving God `does it all`: dealing himself with the barrier and penalty of our sins, then putting his Spirit within us to change us into his likeness, into people who can thrive in his presence. And so the old testament also looks ahead (in Jeremiah 31 especially) to what it calls the coming `new covenant` that will be embodied in Jesus (Isa 42:6, 49:8); in the atoning cross (the `new covenant in my blood`, Luke 22:20, foreshadowed throughout the OT, eg in Passover and all the temple sacrifices); and in the gift of God’s Spirit coming to live within us, and so transform and empower us (eg Ezk 36:26-27 and Joel 2:28; see also 2 Cor 3:6 and Heb 8:8-12). And throughout it’s by faith (Rom 9:32) that OT people connect with and are blessed by what God is doing, as Hebrews 11 demonstrates in its extended survey of the book as a whole…
Big picture again! In the end we will grasp the richness of old testament books as we see both what they are saying in themselves, but also how it all links in with Jesus, the cross and the gospel. (Indeed, it’s worth asking what aspect of the gospel is expressed in any particular OT book.)
FIVE KEY THEMES
But we’ll find many vital and exciting themes feeding us in the old testament, as we’ll see in subsequent posts in this course. Here are just five!
The first crucial lesson we humans needed was evidently the awesome holiness of God – a particular theme of the early books. It’s as we give time to reading the old testament (more than the new, which complements this by showing us God in human flesh) that we’ll catch the essential vision of His glorious, incomparable greatness. But secondly we’re shown from history that, because God is awesomely holy, right and wrong must matter, and sin has really major consequences (see eg Leviticus 26). The OT records what tends to happen with us (the new testament in contrast centres more on God’s loving, redeeming grace), presenting history after history of human failure: Eden, the dysfunctional patriarchs, Israel falling into idolatry at the golden calf incident despite everything God had done, Israel falling away repeatedly in Judges despite God bringing them miraculously into the promised land, Solomon sinning and doing irreparable damage to his people despite having more of God’s wisdom than anyone who had ever lived, Israel sinning and sinning despite having God’s very presence in the temple and the continual warnings of the prophets; until finally they are carried off into exile…
Then there’s a third theme: because God is utterly just, human sin can’t just be ignored; there must be a sacrifice to put things right, by paying sin’s penalty and bringing forgiveness. This principle is embodied as the cross is foreshadowed throughout the OT: in Abel’s sacrifice, in the lamb substituting for Isaac, in passover where people were only safe from God’s judgment on sin if they sheltered in a house with a lamb’s blood on its entry doorposts; and of course in the entire system of tabernacle and temple sacrifices, and its centre the Great Day of Atonement when blood was sprinkled on the `atonement cover` to `make atonement… because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been` (Lev 16).
Fourthly, however, this theme is not just something abstract. From Eden onwards we’re shown that Someone is coming who will deal with the consequences of human sin, ultimately by being that sacrifice (focused most clearly in Isaiah 53’s amazing account of the cross; and see Acts 3:18). And this Someone would fulfil gloriously everything the OT had demonstrated we need, being the guiding and protecting Messiah (explicitly foreshadowed by David for example), the Servant of the Lord who would restore everything (eg Isaiah 42 and 49), and the ultimate Prophet (Deut 18, Acts 3:22). As Jesus says in Luke 24:27,44-47: if our minds are truly `opened to understand the Scriptures`, then we’ll find that `the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms` are all pointing to him. And more: `He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.` This is the old testament’s promise: Messiah (`Christ` is Greek for Messiah of course) is coming, who in colossal loving grace will suffer, and die, and yet triumph!
And so lastly this Someone is the coming King, able like no one else to establish peace and justice, and inspiring a hope that will not disappoint. The old testament looks ahead to the climax of history: through his Messiah (and, through the final fulfilment of God’s old testament covenant-relationship with Israel (see Rom 11)), God will one day bring enormous blessing to all nations. Indeed there will be a whole wonderful transformed heaven and earth (see especially Isaiah 11 and 65).
TO FINISH, A TASTER…
The old testament is so worth reading; there’s so much `encouragement of the Scriptures` there to give us hope, as Paul says of the OT in Rom 15:4 – and to give us masses of fuel to turn into worship! But if you’re exploring this with a group – or even alone with God – you might want to do a closing exercise from the book’s very first verses. For if we want to learn what God is like, Genesis 1 is a great place to start. Let’s suppose Genesis 1:1-4 was all the Bible we had; what could we learn here about God?
There can be no more profound sentence than Genesis’ opening declaration, `In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…’ It helps us grasp that God is before and beyond everything else. (Good news!- the universe isn’t ultimately an empty or hostile place where random or horrible things may prevail; ultimately, our Father made it, ultimately we are always at home in his creation!) He isn’t the same as the universe, with all its good and evil (in contrast to the beliefs of much eastern religion); He is separate and far greater than the universe. He alone was there when nothing else existed, and as its Creator reigns eternally over it all – so there is no danger of any alternative power emerging; `From everlasting to everlasting, You are God!’ (Psalm 90:2). Satan isn’t even remotely a credible rival; light and darkness are not equals; over light and darkness God reigns supreme as Creator and Lord. And if such a God is our Father, we can know we are truly safe in his hands. It is a good thing to be the beloved children of the Father of eternity!
And there’s more. This God who is ultimate reality is personal; he speaks (v3), and amazingly, we can know what he speaks. He loves to communicate, He is not unknowable; `In the beginning was the Word’! This God is plural (v2, also v26) – here are the first hints that he is a Trinity who has been engaged in enormous, mutual love for all eternity. He’s a God of order (v4), and a God of enjoyment, who make things that are `good` (v4). (More about Genesis 1 over in https://petelowmanresources.com/genesis-1-part-1-what-is-our-god-like/ .) We can – and must!- turn each of these wonders now into worship!
And that’s just this amazing volume’s first four verses! More next week…
