[What follows is a handout you may find useful if you’re teaching something based on this Old Testament introductory course. And printed in Calibri 14pt (for example) it fits into an easily photocopiable 24 A4 pages.]
I LOVE THE OLD TESTAMENT!
SESSION ONE: FOUNDATIONS – PREHISTORY TO ABRAHAM
`… So that we may know Him…` (1 John 5:20) `I want to know Christ!` (Phil 3:10)
‘All Scripture is God-breathed and useful … so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped!’ (2 Timothy 3:16).
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 `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 there is a story that helps us understand the world…
Act 1 What we need to know about prehistory; and then how God restarts 4000 years ago with Abraham
Act 2 Slavery to Sinai: how Israel fall into slavery, and how God sets people free. Then on to Sinai, and the religious covenant with God based around the 10 commandments.
Act 3 From Sinai to the promised land, and on till the temple is built. God loves human company, so he wants a permanent dwelling-place with Israel in the land of promise – Joshua; David, Solomon
Act 4 From the temple to exile. Israel’s religious old covenant based on salvation by works & religious ceremonies doesn’t work; we can’t get heaven on earth like that!
Act 5 From the exile to Jesus; the Jews return from exile, but as much more ordinary people now. After Malachi the Bible falls silent till Jesus comes.
FOUNDATIONS: If we want to learn what God is like, GENESIS 1 is a great place to start…
If the only Bible we had was Genesis 1:1-3, what would we know about God?
FOUNDATIONS: What does Genesis 2 tell us about what it means to be human?
FOUNDATIONS: What does Genesis 3 tell us about just how Satan tempts and deceives us, and why and how God’s world has gone so wrong?
FOUNDATIONS: The new testament tells us that Abraham’s story is the classic example of a life of faith. How does Abraham slowly learn about the life of faith?
FOUNDATIONS: The heart of the gospel is God saving us, God rescuing us. What do we learn about how God rescues us from Jacob’s history?
What do we learn about how God rescues us from Joseph’s history?
What do we learn about how God rescues us from the biggest rescue of all – Exodus?
Exodus is the story of the way God sets his people free. There’s the stunningly prophetic picture of Israel divinely delivered above all because, when God’s judgment comes, they are sheltered under the blood of the lamb (ch 12); just as Christ is our passover (1 Cor 5:7), the `lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world` (John 1:29). Then comes the Red Sea, God’s public deliverance (think about baptism like this: 1 Cor 10:2). It doesn’t end there; God wants our company (Exodus 29:45-46)! Look how Exodus finishes (40:33-38): God wants `a people for myself` (Isa 43:21). So there are two issues in Exodus: how to get the people out of slavery in Egypt, and how to get Egypt’s ways out of the people so that God can live among them. We’ll watch how God prepares a people for himself, revealing his ways (especially through the 10 commandments) — principles but not merely principles, because Exodus doesn’t end with that: in the book’s closing verses, God comes to live among them and the overpowering divine glory fills the human tabernacle…
So: Two foundational books to ENRICH us! Turn what you read into prayer!
SESSION TWO: LEVITICUS TO RUTH
Yesterday we looked at two foundational books; today first, two more `advanced` books that fill that out: what makes it possible for the Lord to live among us? What do we learn from LEVITICUS (which is a book to read at speed, 3-4 chapters a day – so, one week)? Many key principles for wholesome life, but two things especially:
- God’s passion to burn into our imaginations the vital distinction (expressed in different ways for us today, of course) between two types of things, what’s holy and what’s unclean
- Second, the cruciality of blood sacrifice for sin; to get the point unmistakeably across to Israel (which Cain and Abel, Passover, the vast numbers of Temple animal sacrifices, and Isaiah 53 are also about): `Without the shedding of blood` – what eventually happened at the cross – `there is no forgiveness!` (Heb 9:22).
If Leviticus was all we had (Joshua 1:8!) and we grasped these, we’d have grasped life!
NUMBERS: Sometimes we’re called to live in the wilderness. Sometimes it’s because God has chosen to put us there for the time, because there are lessons we learn in the wilderness we can’t learn anywhere else. Or sometimes it’s because of the sin, stupidity or lack of faith of ourselves or others.
Israel’s key choice whether to `live by faith`, comes in the key chapters 13 and 14 – crucial and highly challenging!
That generation lost their whole destiny because of their unbelief and disobedience (Heb 3:12-19). So look out in Numbers again for lessons we can turn into prayer about the seriousness of holiness and of sin, and of blood sacrifice for sin. And, how to lead in the wilderness when people are rebellious…..
DEUTERONOMY is another `advanced` book, and a complex one. It too emphasizes again and again that obedience and holiness are imperative, foundational, if Israel want God’s blessing and the promised land. And to drive that home, so that we learn the life-saving `fear [awe] of the Lord`, the picture God chooses to reveal himself with in this book (uniquely) – the picture we should feed on in worship as we read it – is God as the `great fire`. (Eg chs4,5; see Heb 12:28-29.)
But now God starts to deal with the religious mentality, the biggest mistake in human/God relations: trying to be saved by bargaining with God and by what we DO (which leads to spiritual slavery) – rather than by what God has DONE, receiving God’s free grace and once-for-all forgiveness (which leads to joy!).
Every other world religion gets this wrong: Deuteronomy tackles it. It’s full of hints that a deal (`covenant`) with God involving salvation by keeping his law can’t be the end of the story. In fact God has revealed this covenant to show humanity, by Israel’s history and experience, how this whole `religious` way of approaching God will never work. Even the best-ever religion and the best-ever rules will never be enough! So before the book ends there are continual pointers to something beyond, and God’s forgiving grace becomes the theme.
(The oddest, `secret` bit (see 29:29) is 30:11-14. Read that and then look at Romans 10:6-11, and how the Spirit quotes Deut 30 there but steps in to footnote it, revealing the `secret` of the gospel: that the full story is about `righteousness that is by faith` (Rom 10:6), about Christ as the end of the law (Rom 10:3-4), and about how we are saved by responding to him in confession and faith (Rom 10:10).)
These books are our `schoolmaster to bring us to Christ` (Gal 3:24AV): to show us how much sin matters, how much we need a Saviour, and how that problem is dealt with!
Give yourself some variety! Don’t forget to vary your reading styles – (a) half or a whole chapter a day (in depth), or at other times (b) 3-4 chapters a day (overview)
And vary your diet: DON’T read Genesis to Malachi in that order! Maybe try this …
1. Gen 1 Sam Matt Prov 1-9 Psas 1-20 Isa Rom
THEN!
2. Ex 2 Sam Mark Job Psas 21-41 Jer/Lam 1 & 2 Cor
THEN
3. Lev 1 Kings Acts 1-12 Provs 10-17 Psas 42-72 Ezk Gal-Phil
THEN
4. Num 2 Kings John Eccles Psas 73-89 Dan Col-2 Thes
THEN
5. Deut 1 Chron Acts 13-28 Prov 18-24 Psa 90-106 Hos-Obad 1Tim-Philemon
THEN
6. Jos 2 Chron Luke Song of Sol Psas 107-119 Jonah-Hab Heb/James
THEN
7. Juds/Ruth Ezra-Esther Rev Provs 25-31 Psas 120-150 Zeph-Mal 1 Pet-Jude
(Better still, use that plan, but do one old testament segment for every two new
testament ones!)
So next: What characterises God’s people when they’re really going forward? Do we want to know for our own situation? Read JOSHUA. What’s going wrong when they’re stagnating, disintegrating? Read JUDGES.
As Christians we go through two types of experiences. Sometimes we are in the wilderness; that’s Numbers. In other seasons we find ourselves in the place where God’s promises are coming true all around us: prayers are answered, God’s kingdom is moving forward; the place or land where the promises come true. In Joshua there are mistakes, but on the whole the people of God move forward in victory. I want to move forward with God; what do I find here will mark the obedience of my own life if I’m to do so? Joshua will tell us.
Practical exercise: What particularly marks God’s people as they start moving out into victory? How many answers can you find in the book’s keynote passage, Joshua 1:1-8?
But Joshua is one of a pair of books, along with Judges. Judges is a book of occasional recoveries, but overall of decline and defeats, and it ends in complete disaster: Samson’s story, which isn’t great, but then idolatry, horrendous sexism, gang rape, civil war, genocide, and further mass rape. So again, in each chapter of Judges: What marks God’s people when things are disintegrating? And what’s to be done about that? (For us, the enemies that count are spiritual enemies, so translate the lessons into spiritual terms. Try Gideon: read 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 about God’s strength being perfect in our weakness, his power hidden in us in `jars of clay`; and then read Judges 6 and 7 prayerfully with those principles in mind.)
Yet throughout Judges Israel are falling apart inside, & it ends in complete disaster. And then God starts it all again: the love affair of RUTH, an immigrant girl who has moved into a very rough area (Bethlehem, where some of Judges’ final disaster happens), and Boaz (whose mother had been a hooker). And how, through what God does with one lonely girl seeking a partner, the whole huge process starts again of restoring Israel, getting them on track to host the world’s one and only temple of the Lord… Watch out for how God’s ways are revealed in thoroughly mundane things, and how in these God saves and rescues us. We’ll learn about the interplay of grace and faith – Ruth’s a Moabitess who doesn’t deserve blessing at all, it’s all grace — yet there is such a thing as getting into a place where grace is flowing (cf 1 Peter 5:5); or of faith and works, even risk – Ruth’s a woman of faith, what does that lead her to do? All this is in Ruth – besides which it’s a good story!
SESSION THREE: 1 SAMUEL TO ESTHER
These are books about `kings`, prophets, leaders. God will call each of us to lead sometime, particularly as we grow in him. But how can I do this well? How can I be the kind of person God can really use in making things happen?
These books have lots of potential to help us. They give us a ‘leadership manual’, from the lives of Eli, Samuel, Jonathan, Saul, David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Jeroboam, and many more. (And how they handle love affairs, commando raids, incest, the occult…!) They give us a series of worked examples for anyone serious about being used by God: What do these leaders do right? What do they do wrong?
What can we learn from Eli (1 Sam 2:12-4:17)? What did he do right? What did he do wrong?
What can we learn from Samuel (1 Sam 3, 7-8)?
What did Saul do right? What did he do wrong? (1 Sam 9-11, 13, 15, 18-19)
What can we learn from Jonathan (1 Sam 14, 20)?
But the key figure for us today is David (we’ll look at Solomon next time). What do we know about his background, how his family treated him, his upbringing (1 Sam 16,17)? What do we know about how the ugly ways of how his family treated each other got handed down through the clan (along with the huge results of David’s own sexual sin) to the destruction of David’s own kids (2 Sam 13-18)?
The wonder of the gospel here in Samuel is God quietly doing something glorious out of all this: God CHOSE David! God deliberately chooses the weak things of the world (1 Cor 1:27-28, 2 Cor 12:7-10); God takes this damaged, gifted but deeply mixed up kid and turns him into the greatest King Israel ever had, the one who also wrote half the book of Psalms; things that would last. God uses people like this, `real` people, damaged, even dysfunctional people, and sorts us out bit by bit and brings us into purposes glorious beyond our imagination. Never underestimate what God can do with you; this is the great news of the gospel!
(And even more astonishingly, Jesus takes a name for himself from this period, what is it? Jesus chooses to identify himself, to name himself, after this deeply damaged guy, and to call himself by this name throughout history!)
But still: as you read David’s story in these books, keep asking yourself: What can I learn from David? What does he do right, and why? What does he do wrong, and why?
We’ll save Solomon for next time. But what about Rehoboam (1 Kings 12); What did he do wrong as a leader that had such disastrous consequences?
And Jeroboam, whose sin is referred to repeatedly throughout the following chapters: What was it he did that was so wrong?
Then as just two more generations bring the northern kingdom Israel to ruin (1 Kings 16:26 to the end of 2 Kings 11), God raises up Elijah, then Elisha. What do we learn from them? How do you live and minister in such a time, in a culture going away from God as fast as possible?
(One very practical section is 1 Kings 18:38-19:18. Elijah hits burnout after his great triumph over the prophets of Baal. What does he need? What does God give him?)
Three other great revivals come through godly kings who found themselves in leadership in this collapsing culture.
Joash (2 Kings 12, 2 Chron 24): What did he do right? What did he do wrong?
Hezekiah (2 Kings 18-20, 2 Chron 29-32): What did he do right? What did he do wrong?
Josiah (2 Kings 22-23, 2 Chron 34-35): What did he do right? What did he do wrong?
(By the way: notice how God blesses us by showing us these things from more than one angle, as with the four gospels. Chronicles – which was apparently compiled to help those returning from exile understand their situation (see how 2 Chronicles ends) – seems more selective, focused (unlike Kings) less on the prophets’ perspective than on the priests’ perspective, and also focused much more on the southern kingdom Judah and its temple.)
It doesn’t end there. There are these times of revival, and they are utterly worthwhile. But in the end both Israel and Judah are destroyed and taken into captivity far away. Yet with God we can always start afresh. Sin has consequences, and the Jews never got back the divine kingdom; but God moves in secular politics, and the Jews are allowed back home. And watch how God uses two friends, EZRA and NEHEMIAH, to rebuild his city and temple after a time of utter defeat. What do they do right, and emphasize, so that the people’s hands are `strengthened` and the rebuilding happens? (Try reading Nehemiah alongside John White’s Excellence in Leadership, and ch20 of Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership.)
And yet the rebuilding of the Jewish nation would have come to a very bitter end, humanly speaking, were it not for the courage and faith of one woman leader, ESTHER, living by faith in an unbelievably dehumanizing and perilous situation. What is it that she does right?
The lessons we learn from these various leaders are also compellingly practical for discipleship and spiritual leadership today. Read them!
SESSION FOUR: `WRITINGS` – JOB THROUGH SONG OF SOLOMON
What about the Psalms?
Everyone should know Psalm 23!
Some more greatest hits: Psalms 103, 104, 24, 139, 8, 1, 42, 32, 121, 61:1-4, 90, 84, 91,97,98, 150…
The Psalm writers are often led to grasp, then visualize and be encouraged by God’s deliverance that will come, and going through that process with them can help us do the same: eg 59:14-17, 54, 56:5-13. (In eg Psalm 139 it may be helpful to read vv19-22 as about the demons that are our truest enemies.)
The Psalms are about real life. Some reflect the deep complexities and hurts of David’s personality – symbolically foreshadowing Jesus on the cross (amazingly), either fully or partially (22:1-18, 69, 40); yet all too truly he’s still the damaged and hurt son of Jesse (140); and God is saying: You know, I do understand how you feel.
And so the Psalms give us words of prayer for every mood in our relations with him – joy (96), fear (13), repentance (51), despair (44), deep depression(88), feeling attacked although visualizing how deliverance might come (56), horror (79), outrage at injustice (58 – imagine his era with no police or legal system), unbearable pain in slaughter and bereavement (137) , doubt (73), hope (146), thanksgiving (148), celebration (150). `If you bury yourself in the Psalms, you emerge knowing God and understanding life` (Dallas Willard). It’s the old testament book most quoted in the new, and with good reason!
And then there’s Solomon…
First a historical reminder: from the Exodus onwards our God who loves human company is leading his people to the point where they can build him a permanent dwelling-place in the land of promise; and it’s Solomon who finally achieves that. Solomon is the fascinating character at the centre, that highest point, of old testament history. It’s Solomon who writes most of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes apparently, and the Song of Solomon. God gave Solomon a wisdom that was supernatural and absolutely unique (1 Kings 3:11-12, 4:29-31, 10:4-7). Wisdom is to be valued more than gold or silver (Prov 8:19), and we learn from 1 Kings 4 that Solomon came to have more of it than any other man. And we’ve got that wisdom preserved to bless us in Proverbs!
So Proverbs is full of shrewd, practical wisdom; it’s even been recommended as a management textbook! It doesn’t take us to the spiritual heights like, say, Ephesians. Yet read slowly, it challenges my daily lifestyle in ways that really matter; e.g. on hastiness or on failing to drop an argument…
But Solomon wasn’t just a brain; sexuality was a huge issue for him. That’s obvious in anyone who (when things were going badly wrong) could accumulate 700 wives and another 300 sleeping-partners. Proverbs’ first 9 chapters give lots of space to repeated warnings against adultery, using prostitutes, and promiscuity, and the book ends by describing the kind of woman a king should look for. Sexuality in itself, in the right place, is a gift of God – ok and far more than ok! Ephesians 5 shows us how the whole human experience of love, marriage and sex are a vital picture from God of his relationship with us his Bride; and once we’ve grasped that we’ll find reading SONG OF SOLOMON deeply enriching (and – again – in a unique direction where no other part of Scripture leads us); as a path for meditation harnessing unashamedly the deepest places of desire in our hearts, in passionate relationship with God. It’s both a joyous celebration of human love and sexuality, and of full-blooded relationship with God.
But both intelligence and sexuality can go wrong; and with Solomon they did. For it was he whose later years squandered all the gains made through the years of Samuel and David. Solomon built a house for God that could be a wonder to all the nations. But what 1 Kings 10 tells us is tragic and helpful: prosperity and accumulating wealth led him to a slow neglect of God, forgetting God’s commands and the fear (awe) of the Lord that he knew was the root of all wisdom (Prov 9:10). In 1 Kings 10 we sense a dangerous situation developing; it isn’t surprising when we learn how all of that had, towards the end, been accompanied by a heavy-handed attitude towards his workforce (12:1-4, 10-11). Nor when we recall that in his accumulation of wealth, wives, and (10:26) the means of military security, he was going against the direct commands of God (Deut 17:16-20). But most immediately destructive was the `culture’ he had built up in the minds of his heir, Rehoboam, and the friends and advisers who grew up with him: a proud self-centredness that (the teaching of Proverbs should have warned them) would destroy the kingdom and lose ten of the twelve tribes (to their lasting ruin) to the house of David.
And underneath the decay were two other problems, both of which appeared very clearly in the teaching in Proverbs. Solomon is led catastrophically astray by his sex-drive; he collects unbelieving wives (700 of them!?), and they ruin him: Solomon `loved many foreign women… from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.”‘ And this, says Kings, is why judgment came: `So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you”‘(v11). But when Solomon was busy building `a high place for … Molech the detestable god of the Amorites` (1 Kings 11:5 – amazing once we recall the horrific child sacrifice by fire that Molech-worship could involve), the deepest problem was something else he had forgotten that was even more crucial: the `fear of the Lord’ he had so often stressed throughout Proverbs. We can think back to Paul again: `I beat my body and make it my slave; so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize’ (1 Cor 9:27). Solomon became a disaster; and Israel never recovered. Within a generation the nation split permanently in two and turned to appalling sin.
But something else had happened besides; Solomon’s vast intelligence had gone sour. Read ECCLESIASTES. It’s a difficult and often negative book (“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless”` (1:2)). But it’s also a fascinating, even tragic, God-given embodiment of supernatural wisdom gone wrong. Everything is viewed from `under the sun`, and we read a grim series of `postcards from the edge` (in a drama like Job?) as Solomon seeks to find satisfaction in one area of life after another: all without success because he’s thinking only `under the sun`. Just the book’s closing verse offers more by raising the issue of God’s judgment. For if our deepest intuition tells us there’s a God, then surely that God is interested in what we do; in other words, there’s a judgment. But if there is a judgment, then that itself provides real meaning to our activities now: a judgment implies some process of reward, or its alternative. Death cannot be the final curtain – and then meaningfulness floods back from the prospect of an afterlife, like sunlight flooding in when the corner of a curtain is lifted in a darkened room…..
So let’s tread softly: underlying these books is the story of a man given the keys to the universe, and who then failed hugely because, without the power of the Spirit in the way we have him today, he couldn’t handle them. Is this another of the ways in which the old testament shows us we can’t make it on our own: our `schoolmaster to bring us to Christ’?
We’ve omitted one other book from the Writings: the book of JOB. Is it in some form prehistoric? (It’s set near Jordan but Israel doesn’t feature; Job lives 140 years after the book’s over (42:16), like the patriarchs before the flood; and could that even be dinosaurs in 40:15-41:34!?) If so, it’s remarkable that the desperate problem of suffering is the topic that comes down to us here from the depths of prehistory: `My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?`
There’s so much in Job that we need for a rounded spirituality. Someone exposed to this mighty book and to the titanic, conflicted questionings and anguish of Job (and the unwise comments of his friends), is ready to be biblical, loving, and when necessary silent, rather than superficial, when faced with others’ suffering; even as we seek to grasp what specifically is God’s revelation for Job’s need and growth, at that moment finally when it’s right for it to come. Equally remarkable is the way that in Job’s agony prophetic insights suddenly gleam, in ways astonishing to find so early in the Bible – Job’s awareness of the `ransom` we need and the `advocate on high` that we need (9:33, 17:3, 16:19-21, 19:25-27, 33:23-28)…. glimpses of Jesus and the cross that fade in and out as his agony zigzags towards its healing, like the sun coming out from behind tempestuous clouds and then immediately obscured as the thunderclouds of despair roll back in… And it’s also about true worship, about our need for humility when we question God’s indescribable greatness, something our scientific mindset perishes if it forgets; humility about how little we really know. Drink in 38:1-18: `Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?`
There’s so much uniquely worth reading in these books!
We’ll close by jumping ahead to the highlight of our final session: ISAIAH and his glorious prophecy. Glorious and indispensable – where else in the old testament can we see the majesty of the living God as we do in Isaiah 6 or 40:6-18,22-31? How better to understand our rescue through the cross than via the astonishing prophecy of Isaiah 53? What more striking picture could there be of what the Spirit does than Isaiah 61:1-4? What more joyous celebration of God’s gracious restoration than 11:6-12:6? What stronger challenge to social righteousness than ch58? More next time…..
SESSION FIVE: THE PROPHETS
ISAIAH – some of the greatest words in human literature…
Really with a book like Isaiah we shouldn’t go for the `greatest hits`, we should try to get the overall flow of where the book’s going, but… Anyway here are some `greatest hits` – `It’s all good, but read this and you’ll see what Isaiah has to offer`…
Isaiah 40
Isaiah 53
Isaiah 61:1-4
Isaiah 6:1-8
Isaiah 58
Isaiah 35
Isaiah 55:6-13
Isaiah 2:1-5
Isaiah 9:1-7
Isaiah 11:1-9 and chapter 12
Isaiah 43:1-3
Isaiah 52:7-10
What will you get out of Isaiah? A real vision of God’s greatness, `the holy one of Israel`; our Maker and Creator, God who is unique, God who foretells and overrules history… But Isaiah has two halves with an interval made up of four chapters of history (chs 36-39). Why just these? Why do they matter, what do they teach us?
However the more Isaiah preached the less people were going to listen (6:7-11). God showed him that they were headed for captivity in Babylon (ch39). And then God does something amazing, maybe while the coming of a really evil king had prevented Isaiah having a public ministry: God apparently inspires Isaiah to equip Israel in chs40-66 with what they need for the experience of deep failure, captivity, exile, repentance. Above all he reveals Christ his perfect Servant who succeeds where we humans failed, carries our sins – and as a result there is total restoration: 42:1-7, 52:13-53:6, 65:17-25…
The Babylon books
From Genesis to Revelation there is a long alternative between the power of Babel/Babylon (the city built on human egoism, `reaching to the heavens’ by brute human strength, Gen 11:4), and God’s people on their faith-full way to his promised heavenly `city that is to come’ (Gen 12:1-2, Heb 11:8-10,13-16, Heb 13:14, Gal 4:26, Col 3:1-3). `Come’, says Revelation 17:1, and see the godless system, the `great city’ with its sins `piled up to heaven’ (18:4-5,9-18), Babylon, the Great Prostitute; and then `Come’ (21:9-11) and see the `holy city’ `coming down out of heaven’, New Jerusalem, God’s glorious Bride. (Into which of these systems am I pouring my life?)
But then: what on earth is going on when God’s holy city of Jerusalem is apparently abandoned by God and overthrown by Babylon? At least five books – 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations and Ezekiel – help us grasp why this catastrophe…
JEREMIAH: four chapters a day will burn into our souls the vital lessons: sin matters; sin has results; judgment is a reality; God is a holy God we do not trifle with. But also: at its end a tiny, broken-hearted book called LAMENTATIONS gives us a vital reminder of how broken-hearted a genuine prophet must be able to feel when judgment comes…
So Babylon captures Jerusalem, destroys its temple, takes its people into captivity. What do you do when it all goes wrong? Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther teach us how to live when we have to live in exile, or even in Babylon, and to experience that God is reigning even there…
EZEKIEL means `God strengthens`; by telling us what? Then ESTHER and DANIEL 1-6 are both about people surviving and obeying God after catastrophe has come, and finding in very practical, secular reality that `the Lord rules`, despite all that has happened to Jerusalem… ESTHER lives by faith in an unbelievably degrading, sexist situation where nothing obviously supernatural happens, indeed God might seem to have vanished (he isn’t even named in the book). And yet he sorts everything out through one woman’s prayer and bravery, and through one `coincidence`. In DANIEL, God’s way of training proves to be better than the king’s (ch1); God’s interpreter is better than the king’s (ch2); God, not the king, has the final authority (chs3,6); God set up the king and can replace him (ch4); and when Belshazzar dishonours God’s house, judgment finally comes (ch5). God protects those who stand firm in faith. He is still the permanent Lord over all lords, including those far in the future, all the way to the end of history (chs 7-12). Feeding on these books will get it into our heads: He is Lord for us too!
Lastly twelve `minor prophets`: whatever do we do with these?
Ignore them? Hardly! Amos was central to the rediscovery of social concern in the UK church: realizing that God hates injustice, and is at work dealing with it, and we should be too… A massive challenge to God’s people when we’re affluent, complacent, religious and desperately uncaring about poverty and exploitation… Maybe 25 years before their country collapsed, God gives Israel a stark revelation of his greatness (4:12-13, 5:7-9, 5:18-19, 9:5-6), saying, Take me seriously before it’s too late….
Hosea is a prophet `conformed to Christ` in an amazing way, told to marry a prostitute because that’s what God has done… It shows us how much God loves us, how much he’s hurt by us, how in time he adopts the orphans that have come out of sin…
`The just shall live by faith’: words at the heart of our gospel, but read Habakkuk to see the surprising situation in which God first spoke them, and learn how to go on living by faith in a bleak time – to keep going when God’s plans seem all too different to ours…
Jonah and Nahum are two short books about God’s action in history. Nahum celebrates how God rescues his people, judges evil, destroys the strongholds of Satan. Yes, but God’s ways are complex: read Nahum alongside Habakkuk, and also alongside Jonah – the reluctant missionary horrified when judgment should come and instead God is outrageously gracious if repentance occurs even in a vicious, demonic culture…
But in time God’s judgment does come: Assyria falls; Babylon too falls; the Persians take over and send the Jews back home. How do you rebuild after complete disaster? Two prophets (Haggai and Zechariah) transformed Israel in their discouragement (Ezra 4:24/5:1). Living in the 21st century British church you don’t want to miss God’s challenge to his materialistic people’s priorities through Haggai…
There are too many other great things to fit here… But our old testament finishes with Malachi. Jerusalem has been rebuilt but is now just a minor part of the Persian empire (1:8); the divine kingdom of David is a distant memory; prophecy is closing up (for 400 years till the new testament begins). It may seem God is completely inactive (1:2, 2:17, 3:14-15); and we can easily forget God’s goodness in the past (3:6) when we are struggling with him not doing what we want in the present… Do we recognize the questions of our own hearts here? Then practically: what are the issues God flags up if we desire renewal? Going through Malachi with that question will help us see how to take God seriously, and renew our (1:6) fatherly relationship with him…
So how do we feed on an unfamiliar Bible book?
- Decide that you want to know God, that you want to know his Word as a whole. And that you’ll set aside some time to feed on it in depth.
- Read it, turning what you read into prayer, and into worship. And reread it. In quantity, at least to begin with – three or four chapters a day. (At that rate we get through, say, 1 Kings in a week.) After getting a feel for the overall flow of the book, go back and study it in smaller sections and more detail.
- Write a one-page summary of the book; its general direction of thought, its main divisions and sections, the themes and issues that are highlighted or repeated in each. (And maybe: How does the new testament quote and use it?)
- As you read, ask yourself, and ask God: Why is this passage in the Bible? What does it emphasize? (What did it mean most for its original readers? What permanent principles does it present to me now?)
- And: What does this teach me about you, Lord? about your salvation? about how I grow in you? So, about repentance and deepening discipleship, and about faith? About people? Is there a sin for me to avoid, a promise to claim, a command to obey, an example to follow?
- Some books are tougher than others. But reading them is investing in God’s food for when you do `get it` – at worst, the fifth time you read it through it will make sense!! But discuss the difficult passages with friends. Read books like IVP’s excellent The Bible Speaks Today series.
- Take notes of your discoveries; use them as fuel for worship, and file them for reuse. Keep adding the insights you get from sermons, books or Bible studies on the same passages. Keep exploring! And share (or preach!) what you’ve learned, with friends, and learn from them too; set an example – make our church a channel of life through which `The Word of God increased and spread’ (Acts 12:24)…
Feeding on God’s Word like this will give us strength to live faithfully, radically for him in the challenging decades to come. It will make us people who genuinely `know their God’. And as we speak of God to others, they will sense he is not a stranger to us; that we’ve glimpsed his glory as we’ve studied his Word. So life flows out into the world!
PS: In our first, FOUNDATIONS, session, these notes only gave questions. Now maybe compare your answers with these…
FOUNDATIONS: If we want to learn what God is like, GENESIS 1 is a great place to start… If the only Bible we had was Genesis 1:1-4, what would we know about God?
There can be no more profound sentence than the opening declaration of Genesis, `In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…’ It helps us grasp that……
God is before and beyond everything else! This is good news. It means the universe we live in isn’t ultimately an empty or hostile place, where random or horrible things may prevail. Ultimately, our Father made it; and so in a very real sense we are always at home here. He alone was there when nothing else existed, and as its Creator he reigns eternally over it all. So unlike in Greek religion, there is no danger of any alternative power emerging; `From everlasting to everlasting, you are God!’ (Psalm 90:2). As the eternal and infinite Creator, he can have no rivals. 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.
So 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!
These facts alone are sufficient to fuel our heartfelt WORSHIP! But also…
The God who is ultimate reality is personal; he speaks (v3), and his Word shapes reality (v3). (And amazingly, we can know what he speaks!) God is not impersonal and unknowable; he shows himself from the very beginning as a God who loves to communicate, to reveal himself, express himself verbally. (And he names things (v5), and blesses them (v28).) `In the beginning was the Word’!
God is plural (v2, also `let us’ in v26) – the first hints that the God who is out there is a trinity who have been engaged in enormous, mutual love for all eternity.
God is a God of goodness and enjoyment, who make things that are good (vv4,9-10).
(We can turn each of these now into fuel for worship!)
FOUNDATIONS: What does Genesis 2 tell us about what it means to be human?
Genesis 2 shows us a confident, attractive vision of what it means to be truly human, our identity and concerns `as we were meant to be’, before the Fall, before everything went wrong. We see Adam as God`s creature enjoying beauty, as explorer, worker, scientist, lover, poet… Human beings, we read, are:
created `in the image of God‘ (1:26‑27) – an astounding phrase! Again, God is not completely alien and unknown; he is like us in lots of ways and has made us to be visible expressions of what he is like! If we dare to believe this, it helps a lot with our identity and self-worth; and it means that every human being, fallen as we are, still has absolute, intrinsic worth and dignity, and deserves respect, care and love accordingly. On the other hand, the more we grow like God and like Jesus, the more we become truly human…
Human beings are responsible before God to work in stewarding, caring for, and developing the world and its resources (2:15, 1:26-28). We are designed for and fulfilled in purposeful, constructive activity…
Alongside that, we’re called to `be fruitful and increase in number’ (1:28); family life and growth are likewise very basic to being human.
We are marked by an aesthetic sense ‑ enjoying what is ‘pleasing to the eye’ or `good for food’ (2:9). So the love of artistic beauty (or good Chinese food!) isn’t just an accidental by-product of evolution; it’s something deeply human (and related also to something in the nature of God, who is an artist too who creates, sees and enjoys what is `good’ (1:4)).
The human being is something of an explorer, and an adventurer. (Look at the interests expressed in 2:10‑14)
… and, a being capable of making use of the earth’s wealth for beautiful and practical purposes (2:12)…
…in real relationship with God; God is not hidden from them (2:16)…
…marked by genuine and responsible freedom; they know the commands of God and have an ability to obey or ignore them (2:16‑17)…
…a scientist! (2:19) ‑ called to discern and define the nature of each member of the animal creation…
…an artist with words (2:19‑20 again) ‑ capable of taking language and using it to create something new, that will give expression to what is present in God’s created reality…
…a poet, who bursts out with an exuberant song as he encounters his lover (2:23)!…
…built for friendship and companionship ‑ a lover, a sexual being (2:18, 22‑24).
Here are things worth living for – things we were made for. And when our hearts respond to the skilled craftsman, the Arctic explorer, the brilliant guitarist, the creative developer of natural resources, the campaigner for the environment, the loving parent, the innovative microbiologist, the imaginative novelist, the good cook or the exuberant lover ‑ when we sense joy at seeing the glory of the human being expressed in these ways, we aren’t just being sentimental; we’re relating to what it is to be authentically human as God created us. Indeed, doing these various things before God and for his glory (giving thanks for our work, for good food, for a good TV comedy, for travel, for friendship), is an aspect of 24/7 worship; it is being what God has put us on this earth to be. The biblical vision isn’t shrunken and shrivelled, rather it takes in every part of life; `everything God created is good’ (1 Tim 4:4), a gift we receive thankfully as from his hand. And the more we grasp this deep down, the more our entire life becomes a unified act of lived-out worship before him. It is good to be human!
However, the story goes on. Something went horribly wrong…
FOUNDATIONS: What does Genesis 3 tell us about just how Satan tempts and deceives us, and why and how God’s world has gone so wrong?
We watch temptation come to Eve in just the same vital ways it will come to us: `Did God really say…?’ (`Will you trust and obey his Word?) (v1); `You won’t really die…’ (‘God wouldn’t judge you, and especially not for so trivial a thing as a fruit’) (v4). And, underneath these, we see emerging the huge, fundamental question that faces us all: will we worship God as God, submitting our lives to his commands about good and evil; or will we seek to ‘be like God’ ourselves, deciding for ourselves what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (v5)? Who rules – God or my ego?
And we watch those first human beings snatch at an independence that shatters their relationship with the God who comes seeking them (v9); and how then their other relationships disintegrate in turn – with each other (v 12), with nature (v17); a breakdown spreading out into the general relational collapse (familial, sexual, racial) that ravages our world today.
By chapter 4 the process gets as far as the first murder. Cain is left separated from God’s presence, radically alienated and lonely (4:14). We watch him seeking to hide from his loneliness, starting a family, building a city. But human relationships don’t ultimately work when that central relationship with God is gone. As the chapter moves on, human creativity – agriculture, music, use of metals – produces a more advanced culture (vv20-22); but it’s all built on the wrong foundations, and slowly the earth becomes ‘full of violence’ (6:11), fit only for judgment and ecological catastrophe. A radical Christian analysis of our twenty-first century predicament could hardly do better than start from these profoundly realistic chapters.
FOUNDATIONS: The new testament tells us that Abraham’s story is the classic example of a life of faith. How does Abraham slowly learn about the life of faith?
It always helps to see what the new testament chooses to emphasise about an OT narrative; and in the NT we see Abraham presented as the prototype of faith (Romans 4:, Hebrews 11). Genesis depicts him venturing out from all his security, trusting God for his safety and his ‘name’ (12:1-2); unlike the egoists of Babel, anxious to build their own reputations and seeking security in their own tower (11:4), rather than obeying God’s command to trust him and spread out across the earth (9:1-7). (It makes so much sense when we put it all together!) We watch as Abraham slowly learns the life of faith: grappling with the relative importance of possessions and relationships (12:14-16, 13:2,6, 14:22-23); struggling with uncertainty and the frustration of his deepest longings (15:2-3, 6-8); foolishly trying to bring about God’s purpose by his own efforts (ch 16); learning to wrestle with God in prayer (ch 18); and, in a final lesson in faith, being challenged to sacrifice the very son on whom his dreams were centred (ch 22). (Reminding us, perhaps, of another Father who, centuries later, went further, indeed went through to the very end with the sacrifice of his Son.)
FOUNDATIONS: The heart of the gospel is God saving us, God rescuing us. What do we learn about how God rescues us from the biggest rescue of all – Exodus?
That’s just the ‘first course’! Exodus follows: the story of the way God sets his people free. There’s the stunningly prophetic picture of Israel divinely delivered above all because, when God’s judgment comes, they are sheltered under the blood of the lamb (ch 12); just as Christ is our passover (1 Cor 5:7), the `lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world` (John 1:29). Then comes the Red Sea, God’s public deliverance (think about baptism like this: 1 Cor 10:2). It doesn’t end there; having got the people out of the slavery of Egypt God now needs to get the slavery of Egypt out of the people, and we watch how he prepares a people for himself, revealing his ways till, in the book’s closing verses, he comes to live among them and the overpowering divine glory fills the tabernacle…
