The Gospel according to John is one of the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life. We learn at the end of the Book that it comes from one of Jesus’ closest followers called “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Now he appears many times in the story itself. There is some debated about whether it’s John the Son of Zebedee, one of the twelve, or a different John who lived in Jerusalem & was known in the later Church as John the Elder. Whichever John it was, the Book embodies his eyewitness testimony. It’s been brilliantly designed with a clear purpose that he states near the end. John says, “The story’s written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, & that by believing you may have life in His Name.” John believes that the Jesus you read about in this Book is alive & real, & that He can change your life forever.
The book’s design is really cool. Its first half opens with an introductory poem & a short story (John 1), that is followed then by a big block of stories about Jesus performing miraculous signs that generate increasing controversy (John 3-10). It all culminates in His greatest sign, the raising of Lazarus (John 11-12), which creates the greatest controversy as Israel’s leaders decide to kill Jesus. That launches into the Book’s second half. These Chapters focus on Jesus’ final night & last Words to His disciples (John 13-17), which are followed by His arrest, trial, death & resurrection (18-20). The book concludes with an epilogue (John 21). In this post we’re just going to focus on the first half. John 1:1-18: The book opens with a two part introduction. First a poem that begins, “In the beginning was the Word” an obvious allusion to Genesis 1, when God created everything with His word. A person’s words, they’re distinct from that person, but they’re also the embodiment of that person’s mind & will. So John says that God’s Word was with God (that is distinct), & yet the Word was God (that is Divine). As we ponder this claim we hear later in the poem that this Divine Word became human in Jesus. Then John goes on to draw from the stories of Exodus, saying that Jesus was God’s Tabernacle in our midst. The glorious Divine presence that hovered over the Ark of the Covenant became a human in Jesus. Which leads to His last claim, that the one true God if Israel consists of God the Father & the Son who has become human to reveal the Father to us. John 1:19-51: Now as we consider these mind-bending claims we then start to hear a story about how John the Baptist first met Jesus, & then led other people to meet Him & become his disciples. One by one as people encounter Jesus they say out loud who they think He is. In this one chapter Jesus is given seven titles (the Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi, the Son of Man, Messiah, King of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth). These titles prepare us for John’s love of sevens in designing the Book. But altogether they also make a claim, that this fully human Jesus from Nazareth is the Messianic King, He’s the Teacher of Israel, & He’s the Son of God who will die for the sins of the world. Now that’s a big claim to make about someone, & John will now go on to support it through the stories in chapters 2-12. They all have the same basic pattern. Jesus will perform a sign or make a claim about Himself & that will result in misunderstanding or controversy. So in the end of each story people are forced to make a choice about who they think Jesus is. The first section shows Jesus encountering four classic Jewish institutions. In each case Jesus shows that He is the reality to which that institution pointed. So Jesus at a wedding party & the wine runs out. Jesus then turns these huge jugs of water, like a hundred & twenty gallons total, into the best wine ever. The head waiter says to the groom “You’ve saved the best wine for last.” Which is of course true, but John also calls this miracle Jesus’ first sign. In other words it’s a symbol that reveals something about Jesus. So just as Isaiah said that the Messianic Kingdom would be like this huge party with lots of good wine, so this first miraculous sign reveals the generosity of Jesus’ Kingdom. (Isaiah 25:6.) Next Jesus goes to the Jerusalem Temple (the place where Heaven & earth where supposed to come together & God would meet with His people). Jesus asserts His authority over it: running out all the money exchangers, stopping the sacrificial offerings. When the temple leaders threaten Him, He says, “Destroy this temple & I will raise it again in three days.” Jesus is claiming that His coming sacrificial death is where Heaven & earth will truly meet together. His body, that will be killed, is the reality to which the temple building points. The Jesus has this all night conversation with a Rabbi named Nicodemus, who thinks that Jesus is just like him, another Rabbi & teacher for Israel. But Jesus says that Israel needs much more than just another teacher with new information. Israel needs a new heart & a new life. Or in His words, “No one can experience God’s Kingdom without being born again.” Jesus believes that humans are caught in a web of selfishness & sin that leads to death. But He also knows that God loves this world, & so He’s here to offer people a new birth, a new chance at life. From here Jesus travels north, & He ends up at a sacred well in a conversation with the Samaritan (that is a non-Jewish woman). They start talking about water, which Jesus turns into a metaphor for Himself. He says, He’s here to bring living water that can become a source of Eternal Life. Now in John this term refers to a new quality of life, one that’s infused with God’s eternal love & it’s a life that can begin now & last on into the future. After this, John has designed another collection of stories that took place during four Jewish sacred days or feasts. Again Jesus uses the images related to the feast to make claims about Himself. So Jesus first heals a paralyzed man on the Sabbath, which starts a controversy with the Jewish leaders about working on the day of rest. Jesus says. It’s His Father who’s working on the Sabbath, & so is He. They caught His meaning, that He was calling God His Father, making Himself equal with God. So they want to kill Him. The next story takes place during Passover (the feast that retold the Exodus story with the symbolic meal of the Lamb & the bread & wine). Jesus miraculously provides food for a crowd of thousands, which results in asking Him for more bread. Then Jesus goes on to claim that He is the True Bread & if they eat Him they will discover Eternal Life This offends many people who stop following Him. After this is a block of stories set in Jerusalem during the Feast of the Tabernacles (which retold the story of Israel’s wilderness wanderings as God guided them with the pillar of cloud & fire & provided them water in the desert). Jesus gets up in the temple courts & He shouts, “If anyone is thirsty let them come to Me & drink.” Then later He says, “I am the Light of the world.” He’s claiming to be the illuminating presence of God & the life-saving gift of God to His people. Some people believe & follow Him, but others are offended, & still others try to kill Him for these exalted claims. The final feast story is during Hanukkah (which means re-dedication). It’s about how Judah Maccabee cleared the temple of idols & set it apart as holy once more. Jesus goes into the temple area & says that He is the One whom God has set apart as the Holy One & that He is the True Temple where God’s presence dwells. He also says, “I & the Father are one.” This makes the Jerusalem leaders so angry they set in motion a plan to kill Jesus. So He retreats from the city. Now all these conflicts, they culminate in one last miraculous sign. Jesus hears that His dear friend Lazarus is sick. But his family lives near Jerusalem, which is now a death trap for Jesus. Now Jesus could stay away & He would save His Own life, but He loves Lazarus. So once He hears that Lazarus has died, He goes to raise him from the dead. He calls him to life out of his tomb, knowing that it will cost Him His own life. The news of this amazing sign, it spreads quickly of course. Just as Jesus knew would happen, the Jerusalem leaders hear about it & begin conspiring to murder Him. So He rides into Jerusalem as Israel’s King who is reject by its leaders. So the first half of John draws to a close with this story about Jesus laying down His life as an act of love for His friend. This of course is also a sign pointing forward to the cross, which we’ll explore more in the next post but for now, that’s the first half of the Gospel of John
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The Gospel according to Luke: In the first video, we explored Luke’s portrayal of John the Baptist & Jesus as the fulfillment of the story of Israel & of God’s Promises told in the Old Testament scriptures. We then watched Jesus launch His mission & bring the Good News of God’s Kingdom to the poor among Israel, people of low social status, & also people who are outsiders. Jesus taught that His Kingdom is upside down, it’s a reversal of all of our common social values. This section culminated with Luke showing us how Jesus was a new Moses, about to bring a new exodus by His death in Jerusalem.
So we come to the large center section of the book, where Jesus leads His newly formed Israel on a journey to Jerusalem. This part of the book consists mainly of Jesus’ teachings & Parables given on the road to the various people He encounters, mainly His growing group of disciples. In this way, Luke portrays following Jesus as a journey. It’s something you do where you learn as you go along life’s path. So first Jesus invites His disciples into His mission, as He sends a wave of them to go ahead of Him announcing God’s Kingdom. Being a disciple, right from the start it means participating in Jesus’ Kingdom mission, making it your own. As Jesus’ disciples come back He then starts to give various teachings about prayer, about trusting in God’s provision. It’s actually in these Chapters of Luke that Jesus talks more about money, possessions & generosity than anywhere else in His teachings. If following Him is truly like being on the road, it should produce this minimalist mentality, creating a freedom from possessions that allows for radical generosity. Another key theme in these Chapters is Jesus’ continued mission to the poor. As He travels He keeps forming His new Israel. He encounters all these people who are sick or blind, he meets Samaritans who are ancient enemies of the Jewish people, & famously Zaccheus, a Jewish man, but who heads up tax collection for the Romans. All of these social outsiders meet Jesus & they are transformed by the encounter, so they join His Kingdom community, which Jesus describes as a great banquet party. He is here to seek & save the lost, so He’s celebrating when people discover the mercy of God. But not everybody at the party is happy. Luke includes multiple stories of Jesus at banquets with Israel’s leaders, & these all become heated debates where Jesus confronts their pride & hypocrisy. These contrasting banquet parties, they are captured most memorably in Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son. A father had two sons & one foolishly ran away & squandered his inheritance. But he comes back eventually repentant. His father forgives him & he throws this huge party to celebrate—my son who was lost but now is found. But the older brother, who never left his father, he’s angry & he resents his father’s generosity to this undeserving son. In this famous Parable, Jesus is explaining His whole Kingdom mission to these leaders, His parties represent God’s joyous welcome of every kind of person into His family. The only entry requirement is humility & repentance. So, it highlights the tragedy of Israel’s leaders who reject Jesus & His upside down Kingdom community. This resistance to Jesus, it ramps up. He finally arrives in Jerusalem for Passover. As He nears the city, He’s weeping. His disciples are hailing Him as the Messianic King, but Israel’s leaders are denouncing Him. He knows that their rejection of His Kingdom of peace is going to set Israel on a road of resistance & rebellion against the Roman Empire. It will bring the city’s downfall. With that destruction of Jerusalem that Jesus symbolically enacts as He storms into the temple & He runs out the animals, He brings the sacrificial system to a halt. He says that this place of worship has become a den of rebels & will be destroyed. This act, of course, generates a whole series of debates between Jesus & Israel’s leaders. All leading up to Jesus’ prediction that the Roman armies will one day surround the city, it will desolate it & the temple, all within a generation. With that Jesus retreats with his disciples, to celebrate the Passover meal. It’s the annual symbolic meal about Israel’s liberation from slavery through the death of the lamb. So, Jesus turns the meal’s bread & wine into new symbols about this new exodus. His broken body, His shed blood will bring liberation for Jesus’ renewed Israel. After the meal Jesus is arrested & He’s examined before the Jewish leaders & then put on trial as one claiming to be King. Luke emphasizes Jesus’ innocence. Pilate, the Roman governor, he claims that Jesus is innocent three times before giving in. Even Herod, the ruler of Galilee, finds nothing to accuse Jesus of. But the leaders finally compel Pilate to have Him crucified, & so He is. But even in His painful death, Jesus embodies the love & the mercy of God He taught so much about. He offers God’s forgiveness to the soldiers as they crucify Him. Then when one of the criminals executed alongside Jesus realizes who He actually is, he says, ”Remember me when You come into Your Kingdom”. Jesus’ final words are an offer of hope to a humiliated criminal, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise”. So with this last act of generosity & kindness, Jesus dies. His body is placed in a tomb. On the first day of the week some of Jesus’ disciples come to the tomb, only to find it empty. There are two angelic figures there, telling them that Jesus is alive, that He’s risen from the dead. So they leave with their mind’s blown. It’s right here that Luke tells one of his most beautiful stories. Two of Jesus’ disciples, they are leaving Jerusalem for a town called Emmaus. They are heartbroken over Jesus’ death. Then suddenly Jesus is there, just walking alongside them. But they don’t recognize Him. He asks why they are so sad, they go on to talk about all of their hopes, that Jesus would have been the One to redeem Israel, but now He’s dead, it was all for nothing. But then, later, as Jesus has a meal with these two, He breaks bread for them, just as He did at the Passover meal. It’s in that moment that they recognize Him. Then He disappears. Luke is telling this story to make a powerful point about following Jesus. When Jesus’ disciples impose their agenda & their view of reality on Jesus, He remains invisible & unknown to them. It’s only when we submit ourselves to the upside down Kingdom of Jesus that epitomized by His broken body on the Cross offered in self-giving love, it’s only then that we see & know the real Jesus. The book’s concluding scene is yet another meal, as Jesus appears to His disciples & He explains to them from the Old Testament scriptures how this was all a part of God’s plan--that the Messiah would become Israel’s King by suffering & dying for their sins, & conquering their evil with His resurrection life. So now, as Simeon the Prophet promised back in chapter 2, Jesus’ Kingdom will move outward from Israel so God’s forgiveness can be announced to the nations & everyone invited to follow Jesus. But, Jesus tells His disciples, wait in Jerusalem for the coming of the Spirit to empower them for this new mission. This of course keeps you reading right into Luke’s second volume, the Book of Acts (which is found after the Book of John) but for now, that’s the Gospel according to Luke. It’s one of the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life. It’s actually Part 1 of a unified 2 volume work: Luke-Acts. If you compare the opening lines of both of these Books, its clear that they come from the same author. There are internal clues in the Book of Acts as well as an early tradition that identifies the author as Luke, the traveling companion & co-worker of Paul the Apostle, who we know was also a doctor.
Luke opens his work with a preface, telling us how & why he wrote this book. He acknowledges that there are many other fine accounts of Jesus’ life out there, but he wanted to go back to the eye-witness traditions of as many early disciples as he could. In order to produce what he calls, “an orderly account about the things that have been fulfilled among us”. That word “fulfilled” shows us why Luke wrote this account. For him the story of Jesus isn’t just ancient history. He wants to show how its the fulfillment of the long covenant story of God & Israel, & bigger than that, of the story of God & the whole world. The book’s design is fairly clear, there’s a long introduction that sets up the stories of John the Baptist & Jesus. Then in Chapters 3-9 Luke presents a robust portrait of Jesus & His mission in His home region of Galilee. After that, the large mid-section of the Book is Jesus’ long journey to Jerusalem, which leads to the story’s climax, Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem, leading up to His death & Resurrection which then leads on into the Book of Acts. In this post we are just going to focus on the first half of Luke’s Gospel. The extended introduction tells in parallel the birth stories of John the Baptist & Jesus. So, you have this elderly priestly couple, Zaccharias & Elizabeth, & then this young unmarried woman, Mary & Joseph. They both receive an unlikely divine promise that they are going to have a son. Both promises are fulfilled then as John & then Jesus are born. Both parents sing poems of celebration. These poetic songs, they are filled with echoes from the Old Testament, Psalms, & Prophets, showing how these children will fulfill God’s ancient promises. But these poems also preview each child’s role in the story to follow. So John is the prophetic messenger promised in the Torah & Prophets, who is going to prepare Israel to meet their God. Jesus, He’s the Messianic King promised to David, Who is going to bring God’s reign over Israel, & God’s blessing to the nations, just like He promised to Abraham. After this Mary brings Jesus to the Jerusalem temple for His dedication. Two elderly prophets, Anna & Simeon, they see Jesus & they recognize Who He is. Simeon sings his own song, a poem inspired by the Prophet Isaiah. He says, “This Child is God’s salvation for Israel & You will become a light to the nations”. So with all this anticipation, the story moves forward into the next main section, where Luke presents Jesus & His mission. He sets the stage with John’s renewal movement at the Jordan river, where he’s calling a new repentant, recommitted Israel into existence through baptism. He’s preparing for the arrival of God’s Kingdom. Then Jesus appears as the leader of this new Israel, & He’s marked out by the Spirit & the voice of God from Heaven. He is the beloved Son of God. After this, Luke follows with the genealogy & then traces Jesus’ origins back to David, then back to Abraham, & then all the way back to Adam from the book of Genesis. Luke’s claiming here that Jesus is the Messianic King of Israel Who will bring God’s blessing, but not only to Israel, the family of Abraham. He is here for all the sons of Adam, for all humanity. After this Luke has strategically placed the story of Jesus going to His hometown, Nazareth, where He launches His public mission. At a synagogue gathering, Jesus stands up & He reads from the scroll of Isaiah, saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, to preach Good News to the poor, & freedom for the prisoners, new sight for the blind & freedom for the oppressed”. Now, along with the other Gospels, Jesus is presented here, He is the Messianic King, bringing the Good News of God’s Kingdom. But what Luke uniquely highlights are the social implications of Jesus’ mission. So He brings freedom. The Greek word is “aphesis”. It literally means “release”, & refers to the ancient Jewish practice of the year of Jubilee, described in Leviticus 25. It’s when all Israelite slaves were released, when people’s debts were canceled, when land that was sold is returned back to families. It’s all a symbolic reenactment of God’s liberating justice & mercy. Then Jesus says that this Good News of release is specifically for the poor. Now in the OT the poor, or in Hebrew “Ani”, it’s a much broader category than just people who don’t have very much money. It refers also to people of low social status in their culture, like people with disabilities, & women & children & the elderly. It also can include social outsiders, like people of other ethnic groups, or people whose poor life choices have placed them outside acceptable religious circles. Jesus says that God’s Kingdom is especially Good News for these people. So after this, Luke immediately puts in front of us a large block of stories, showing us what Jesus’ Good News for the poor looks like. It involves the healing of a bedridden sick woman, or a man who has a skin disease, or someone who's paralyzed. There are stories here also about Jesus welcoming into His community a tax-collector like Levi, who’s not financially poor, but he is a social-outsider. There’s a story about Jesus forgiving a prostitute. Luke is showing us how Jesus’ Kingdom brought restoration & reversal of people’s whole life circumstances. He’s expanding the circle of people who get invited in to discover the healing power of God’s Kingdom. As Jesus’ mission attracts a large following He does something even more provocative. He forms these people into a new Israel, by appointing over them the 12 disciples as leaders corresponding to the 12 tribes of Israel. Then Jesus teaches His manifesto of an upside down Kingdom, or as Luke calls it, the sermon given on the plain. He says God’s love for the outsider & the poor means that His Kingdom brings a reversal of all of our value systems. He is here to form a new alternative people of God who are going to respond to Jesus’ invitation by practicing radical generosity, by serving the poor, people who are going to lead by serving & live by peace-making & forgiveness--people who are deeply pious but who reject religious hypocrisy. Now Jesus’ radical Kingdom vision that has claim to divine authority starts to generate resistance & controversy, especially from Israel’s religious leaders. His outreach to questionable people is a threat to their religious traditions & their sense of social stability. So they start accusing Jesus of blaspheming God, of being a drunk & mixing with sinners. This section culminates in the new revelation of Jesus’ mission to His disciples. He says that, yes, He is the Messianic King, & that He’s going to assert His reign over Israel, by dying in Jerusalem, by becoming the suffering servant King of Isaiah 53, Who dies for the sins of Israel. Then the shocking idea, it gets explored in the next story as Jesus goes up a mountain with three of his disciples, & He is suddenly transformed in front of them. They are enveloped in this cloud of God’s presence, Who announces, “This is My chosen Son”. Then Moses & Elijah are there, the two other prophets who encountered God’s presence & voice on a mountain. Then Luke tells us they are talking together about Jesus’ exodus, that He was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. Now that Greek word, Exodus, it’s a clear reference to the Exodus story. Luke is portraying Jesus here as a new Moses, Who will lead His newly formed Israel into freedom & release from the tyranny of sin & evil & all of its forms, personal, spiritual & social. And that’s going to lead us into the second half of the Book. But for now, that’s the first half of the Gospel according to Luke. It’s one of the first accounts of the life of Jesus. Our earliest historical traditions links this book to a Christian scribe named Mark, or John Mark. He was a co-worker with Paul & close partner with Peter. In fact, an ancient Church historian named Papias recalls that Mark had collected all of the eyewitness accounts & memories of Peter & then shaped them into this account. But Mark didn’t just randomly throw the pieces together, he carefully designed this story of Jesus.
In the first line of the book, Mark makes this claim about Jesus, “It’s the beginning of the Good News about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.” What’s interesting is that this is the only time Mark is going to tell you what he thinks. For the rest of the book he’s going to influence you by simply putting Jesus’ actions & words in front of you & showing you how other people react to Him. Now Mark’s designed the story of Jesus as a drama with three acts: The first one is set in Galilee; the third one is set in Jerusalem; & the second act shows Jesus on the way from one place to the other. Each of the acts focuses on repeated themes. So in act one, everybody’s blown away by Jesus & they’re wondering, who is this Jesus? In act two it’s the disciples who are struggling to understand what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah. In act three we watch the surprising paradox of how Jesus becomes the Messianic King. Let’s just dive in & you’ll see how it unfolds. (Chapters 1-8a) After the opening line Mark begins with a quotation from the ancient prophets Isaiah & Malachi. They said that God would send a messenger to Israel to prepare them for when God would show up Himself to rescue His people & become their King. Mark introduces John the Baptist as the messenger. Then right when you expect God to show up personally, Mark introduces Jesus. As He comes on to the scene the heavens open, God’s Spirit descends on Jesus, & God says, “You are My beloved Son.” After this Mark places in front of us a summary of Jesus’ core message: He went about Galilee announcing the Good News that God’s Kingdom has come near. Jesus is carrying forward the story from the Old Testament scriptures about God’s rescue operation for His world. Through Jesus, God is restoring His reign over the world by confronting & defeating evil & its hold on people’s lives. And then by inviting them to live under His reign by following Jesus From here Mark’s given us a big block of stories, showing us Jesus’ power as He brings God’s Kingdom. He goes about healing people whose bodies are sick or broken or under the oppression of dark spiritual powers. Jesus even does something that for Jewish people only God has the right to do, He forgives people’s sins. Jesus actions here produce lots of different responses: Some people follow Him & become His disciples. Other people don’t know what to think. Still others reject Him completely, especially Israel’s leaders, who accuse Him of blaspheming God & being powered by evil. But Jesus isn’t surprised by these responses, in fact He draws attention to it. In Chapter 4 Mark has collected many of Jesus’ parables about the hidden, mysterious nature of God’s Kingdom. Jesus says that His message is like seed falling on different types of soil. Some are receptive, some are not. Old Testament it’s like a mustard seed. It’s very tiny, it seems insignificant, but then it grows huge & surprises everyone. Jesus’ point is that He really is the Messiah bringing God’s Kingdom, but it doesn’t look like what anybody expected. This growing confusion about Jesus among the crowds, is connected to a key idea Mark emphasizes at the end of act 1: That even among Jesus’ disciples there’s confusion. Even they are struggling to grasp who Jesus really is. And that brings us to act 2. (Chapters 8b-10) It begins with a crucial conversation. Jesus takes the disciples aside, & He asks “Who do you all say that I am?” Peter speaks up saying, “You’re the Messiah.” But it becomes clear that for Peter this means that Jesus is a victorious military King from the line of David who will rescue Israel from the Romans. But for Jesus to be the Messiah means that He is the Suffering Servant King of Isaiah 53, who will bring God’s rule by giving up His life, in Jerusalem. The disciples, they don’t get it. They think following King Jesus is going to mean fame & status & importance. Jesus makes it clear that following Him is actually like dying, like carrying your own cross. It means rejecting violence, & pride, & selfishness, & giving one’s life out for others in acts of service & love. He has the same conversation with them two more times. And it all culminates in Jesus’ important statement that the Son of Man did not come to be served but to become a servant, & give His life as a ransom for many. The disciples still don’t get it. They respond in confusion & fear. So here in act 2 Mark has placed another key story that echoes the book’s introduction. Jesus takes three of His disciples up to a mountain & He suddenly transforms. He’s radiating with light & glory, & a cloud envelops them. Now, this is just like the glory of the God of Israel that showed up long ago on Mount Sinai. Then the two prophets who stood in God’s presence on Mount Sinai, Moses & Elijah, they appear next to Jesus as God announces again, “This is My beloved Son.” Now by placing this story in the middle of all these conversations in act 2, Mark is making an astounding claim, that Jesus, God’s Son, is the physical embodiment of God’s own glory. And in Jesus the glorious God of Israel is going to become King, by suffering & dying for the sins of His own people. It’s a puzzling claim, that confuses & scares the disciples as they leave the mountain which brings us to act 3. (Chapters 11-16) Jesus makes a very public royal entry into Jerusalem for Passover. People are hailing Him as the Messiah. Then He enters into the temple courtyard & He asserts His royal authority by running out the thieves & crooks & stopping the sacrificial system. Then this kicks off a whole week of Jesus debating & confronting the leaders of Israel, condemning their hypocrisy & so they set in motion a plan to have Him killed. Jesus warns His disciples, predicting that Jerusalem & its temple will be destroyed within a generation. And His disciples will be persecuted just like Him until He returns one day to bring God’s Kingdom fully over the world. It all leads up to the final night. Jesus has His last Passover meal with the disciples, a symbolic meal that told the story of Israel’s liberation from slavery through the death of the Passover lamb. Jesus takes these symbols & He gives them new meaning. They point to the liberation from sin & death that will happen through the death of the Suffering Servant Messiah. From here the story rushes forward to Jesus’ arrest, His trial before Israel’s priests, & the Roman Governor Pilate, all resulting in Jesus’ crucifixion. It culminates in a key scene that matches the important scenes from act 1 & 2. Except this time it’s darkness that descends, not a cloud. Instead of the Divine Voice from Heaven, it’s Jesus’ voice crying out before He dies. Then most surprising, is that it’s a Roman soldier who sees Jesus die who grasps & then announces who Jesus is, “This Man was the Son of God.” He’s the first person in this story to recognize the story’s shocking claim about Jesus’ identity, that it’s the crucified Son of God who’s the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who died for His friends & for His enemies. After this Jesus’ body is placed in a tomb. On the first day of the new week two women from His disciples come to the tomb. They discover that the tomb is empty, the stone’s rolled away. Then an angelic man informs them that Jesus isn’t here, that He’s risen from the dead. He orders them to go & tell this Good News to the other disciples, that Jesus is alive, & that He’ll meet them back in Galilee. The women, they’re freaked out. Mark says that they fled from the tomb in terror, telling no one for they were afraid. And that’s how the Book ends, with Jesus’ disciples showing the same kind of fear & confusion that concluded acts 1 & 2. Now, if you look in your Bible you’ll see that the Gospel of Mark has more to its ending where Jesus appears, He speaks to His disciples. But there’s also a note there telling you that that ending is not part of the original book. That it’s only found in later less reliable manuscripts. (Chapter 10:9-20) Now it’s possible that the original ending got lost or that Mark actually never finished writing his account. But it’s more likely that this abrupt ending is intentional, to make a point. The entire story has focused on the shocking claim that puzzled Jesus’ disciples from beginning to end: That it is the suffering, crucified, & risen Jesus who’s the Messiah, the Son of God. That God’s love & upside-down Kingdom were revealed as Jesus died for the sins of the world. So this story ends without closure, & it forces you, the reader, to grapple with this very strange & scandalous claim about Jesus. Are you going to run away, like the disciples? Or are you going to recognize Jesus as your King & go & tell the Good News? Only you can answer that question. That’s what the Gospel of Mark is all about. In the first post we saw how Matthew introduced Jesus as the Messiah from the line of David, & as a new authoritative teacher like Moses, also as Immanuel, which in Hebrew means “God with us.” After Jesus announced & taught about the arrival of God’s Kingdom, & after He brought the Kingdom into day-to-day life among the people of Israel, we saw that Jesus was accepted by many but rejected by others, especially Israel’s religious leaders, the Pharisees. So the big question is how is this conflict between Jesus & Israel’s leaders going to play itself out.
The next large section, Chapters 14-20, explore all the different expectations people have about the Messiah. Jesus keeps healing sick people, & twice He even miraculously provides food for these huge crowds in the desert. One’s made up of Jewish people & the other is a non-Jewish crowd. This sign is very similar to what Moses did for Israel in the wilderness. All these people are excited about Jesus, they think He’s the great Prophet & the Messiah, but not the religious leaders. Their view of the Messiah is built on passages like Psalm 2, or Daniel Chapter 2, about a victorious Messiah Who is going to deliver Israel & defeat the pagan oppressors. From their point of view, Jesus, He’s a false teacher, He’s making blasphemous claims about Himself. So there are stories here about them increasing their opposition, hatching a plan to kill Him. In response, Jesus, He withdraws. He begins teaching His closest disciples what it means for Him to be Israel’s Messiah, because it is not what anybody expects. Jesus asks His disciples, Chapter, 16, He says, “Who do you all say that I am?” Peter comes up with the right answer it seems. He says, “Well, You’re the Messiah. You’re the Son of the Living God!” But then it becomes clear that Peter’s thinking about a king who’s going to reign victoriously through military power. Jesus challenges Peter saying, “Yes, I am going to become King, but through a different way”. So Jesus starts to teach on themes from the Prophet Isaiah, who said that the Messianic King would suffer & die for the sins of His Own people. Jesus, He was positioning Himself as a Messianic King Who reigns by becoming a servant, & Who would lay down His life for Israel & the nations. Peter & the disciples, they mostly just don’t get it. So Jesus enters into the fourth block of teaching followed by a series of teachings after that. These are all about the upside down nature of Jesus’ Messianic Kingdom, which turns upside down all of our value systems. In the community of the servant King, you gain honor by serving others. Instead of getting revenge, you forgive & do good to your enemies. In Jesus’ Kingdom you gain true wealth by giving your wealth away to the poor. To follow the servant Messiah, you must become a servant yourself. In the next section, we watch the two kingdoms clash—Jesus’ Kingdom & that of Israel’s leader. Jesus comes to Jerusalem for Passover riding in on a donkey. The crowds are hailing Him as the Messiah. Jesus immediately marches into the courtyard of the temple & He creates this huge disruption that brings the daily sacrifices to a halt. His actions speak louder than words here. As Israel’s King, Jesus was asserting His royal authority over the temple, the place where God & Israel met together. In Jesus’ view, the temple was compromised by the hypocrisy of Israel’s leaders. So here He’s challenging their authority & naturally they are deeply offended. They try to trap Jesus & shame Him in public debate, & they fail. They end up just determining to have Him killed. In response, Jesus delivers His final block of teaching. He first offers the passionate critique of the Pharisees & their hypocrisy. Then He weeps over Jerusalem & His rejection of God & His Kingdom. Then Jesus withdraws with the disciples & He starts telling them what’s going to happen. He’s going to be executed by these leaders. But in doing so they are going to create their own demise because instead of accepting Jesus’ way of the peaceful Kingdom, they are going to take the road of revolt against Rome. So Jerusalem & it’s temple are going to be destroyed. But, Jesus says, that is not the end of the story. He’s going to be vindicated after His death by His resurrection & one day He’ll return & set up His Kingdom over all nations. So in the meanwhile, the disciples need to stay alert & stay committed to just announcing Jesus & His Kingdom & spreading the Good News. With all of that ringing in the disciples’ ears, the story comes to its climax. That night Jesus takes the disciples aside & He celebrates the Passover meal with them. The Passover retells the story of Israel’s rescue from slavery through the death of the Passover lamb. Then Jesus takes the bread & the wine from this meal as new symbols, showing that His coming death would be a sacrifice that would redeem His people from slavery to sin & evil. After the meal, Jesus is arrested, He’s put on trial before the Sanhedrin, the council of Jewish leaders. They reject His claim to be the Messiah. They charge Him with blasphemy against God. Then Jesus is brought before the Roman governor, Pilate. He thinks Jesus is innocent, but he gives in to the pressure from the Jewish leaders, & he sentences Jesus to death by crucifixion. So Jesus is led away by Roman soldiers & crucified. You’ll notice right here in this section, just like Matthew did in the opening Chapters, he increases the number of references to the Old Testament. He’s trying to show that Jesus’ death was not a tragedy or a failure. Rather it was the surprising fulfillment of all of the old, prophetic promises. Jesus came as the servant Messiah, spoken of by Isaiah. He was rejected by His own people, but instead of judging them He is judged on their behalf, bearing the consequences of their sin. So the crucifixion scene, it comes to a close, & Jesus’ body is placed in a tomb. But the book ends with a surprising twist, the last Chapter. The disciples, they discover on Sunday morning that Jesus’ tomb is empty. Then all of a sudden people start seeing Jesus alive from the dead. The Book concludes with the risen Jesus giving a final teaching called “The Great Commission”. Jesus says that He is now the true King of the world. So He sends His disciples to all nations with the Good News that Jesus is Lord, & that anyone can join His Kingdom by being baptized & by following His teaching. Echoing all the way back to His name Immanuel, “God with us”, from Chapter 1, Jesus’ last Words in the Book to His disciples are “I will be with you.” It’s a promise of Jesus’ presence until the day He finally returns. That’s the Gospel according to Matthew. It’s one of the earliest official accounts about Jesus of Nazareth, His life, His death & His resurrection. The Book itself is anonymous, but the earliest reliable tradition links it to Matthew, the tax collector, who was one of the 12 apostles that Jesus appointed. He actually appears within the Book itself. For about 30-40 years, the apostles orally taught & passed on their eyewitness account about Jesus, along with His teachings they had all memorized. Matthew has then collected & arranged all these into this amazing tapestry & designed the Book to highlight certain themes about Jesus. In this video we are going to cover the first half of the Book.
Specifically, Matthew wants to show how Jesus is the continuation & fulfillment of the whole Biblical story about God in Israel, that Jesus is the Messiah from the line of David, that He is a new authoritative teacher like Moses. And not only that, Jesus is “God with us”, or in Hebrew, “Immanuel”. Matthew’s designed this Book with an introduction & then a conclusion, & these act like a frame around five clear sections right here in the center, each of which concludes with a long block of Jesus’ teaching. This design is very intentional & it’s amazing. Just watch how this works. Chapters 1-3, they set the stage by attaching Jesus’ story right on to the story line of the Old Testament Scriptures. So Matthew opens with the genealogy about Jesus that highlights how He is from the Messianic line of the son of David, & He is a son of Abraham. That means He’s going to bring God’s blessing to all of the nations. After that we get the famous story about Jesus’ birth & how all of the events fulfilled the Old Testament prophetic promises that the nations would come & honor the Messiah, that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. But even more than that, Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit, His Name Immanuel, all these work together to show that Jesus is no mere human, He is God with us. God become human. So you can see two of Matthew’s key themes right here in the introduction: He’s from the line of David, He’s Immanuel. But Matthew also wants to show how Jesus is a new Moses. So, like Moses, Jesus came up out of Egypt, He passed through the waters of baptism & He entered into the wilderness for 40 days. Then Jesus goes up onto a mountain to deliver His new teaching. Through all of this Matthew is claiming that Jesus is the promised “greater than Moses” figure, Whose going to deliver Israel from slavery. He’s going to give them new divine teaching, He’s going to save them from their sins, & bring about a new covenant relationship between God & His people. This Moses & Jesus parallel also explains why Matthew has structured the center of the Book the way that he did. These 5 main parts highlight Jesus as a Teacher. He’s created a parallel. Jesus as Teacher parallels the five Books of Moses. Jesus is the new authoritative covenant Teacher, Who’s going to fulfill the story line of the Torah. In the first section, Chapters 4-7, Jesus steps onto the scene announcing the arrival of God’s Kingdom. This is really key. The Kingdom is in essence about God’s rescue operation for His whole world & it’s taking place through King Jesus. Jesus has come to confront evil, especially spiritual evil & it’s whole legacy of demon oppression & disease & death. Jesus has come to restore God’s rule & reign over the whole world, by creating a new family of people who will follow Him, obey His teachings, & live under His rule. So after Jesus begins healing people & forming a movement, a community, He takes His followers out to a mountain, or a hillside, & He delivers His first big block of teaching, traditionally called the Sermon on the Mount. Here Jesus explores what it looks like to follow Him & live in God’s Kingdom. It’s an upside down Kingdom, where there are no privileged members. The poor, the nobodies, the wealthy, the religious—everybody is invited is & called to turn, to repent, & to follow Jesus & join His family. Jesus says that He’s not here to set aside the commands of the Torah or the Old Testament, but rather He’s here to fulfill all of that through His life, through His teachings. He’s here to transform the hearts of His people so that they can truly love God & love their neighbor, including their enemy. After concluding His great teaching on the Kingdom, the next section shows Jesus bringing the Kingdom into reality in the day-to-day lives of people. Matthew’s arranged here nine stories about Jesus bringing the power of God’s Kingdom into the lives of hurting, broken people. There are three groups of three stories. They are all about people who are sick, or have broken bodies, or they are in danger. Jesus heals or saves them by these acts of grace & power. Then right in between these triads, we find two parallel stories about Jesus’ call that people should follow Him. Matthew’s making a point here: one can only experience the power of Jesus’ grace by following Him & becoming His disciple. After Mathew has shown the power of the Kingdom through Jesus, Jesus then extends His reach by sending out the 12 disciples who are going to go do what He’s been doing. This leads to the second large block of teaching Chapter 10. Here Jesus teaches His disciples how to announce the Kingdom & what to expect once they do. Many among Israel are accepting Jesus & His offer of the Kingdom, but Israel’s leaders, they aren’t. They stand to lose a lot if they repent & become disciples of Jesus. So Jesus knows they are going to reject Him & persecute His followers, which is exactly what happens. In the next section, Chapter 11-13, Mathew has collected a group of stories about how people are responding to Jesus & His message & it’s a mixed bag. Some stories are positive, people love Jesus & they think He’s the Messiah. Others are more neutral, like John the Baptist, or even the members of Jesus’ own family. They make it clear that Jesus is not what they expected. Then you have Israel’s leaders, they are entirely negative. You have the Pharisees & the Bible scholars. They all reject Jesus together. They think He’s a false teachers, He’s leading the people astray. They think He’s blasphemous in these exalted claims He’s making about Himself. Jesus isn’t surprised or thrown by all of these diverse responses. In fact, He focuses on it in the third block of teaching, Chapter 13. Here, Matthew’s collected a bunch of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom: like about a farmer throwing seed on four types of soil, or about a mustard seed, or a pearl, or buried treasure. These parables are like a commentary on the stories that you’ve just read in Chapters 11 & 12. Some people are accepting Jesus with enthusiasm, others are rejecting Him. But God’s Kingdom is of ultimate value & it will not stop spreading despite all of these obstacles. So that’s the first half of the Gospel according to Matthew. Here’s a few more things to look for as you read through these Chapters. Matthew’s presenting Jesus, remember, as the continuation & fulfillment of the Old Testament story line. Look for how he weaves in quotations from the OT Scriptures. What you’ll find is that they’re placed at strategic points in the story explaining more about Jesus & His identity. So stop, take time go look up these references & read them in their Old Testament context. Most often you’ll discover really cool, interesting connections. Lastly, pay attention to the types of people who accept Jesus & follow Him. You’ll see that it’s most often people who are unimportant, they are nobodies, or they are irreligious. These are the people who are transformed by their trust or faith in Jesus & follow Him. It’s the religious & the prideful who are offended by Him. How is this tension between Jesus & Israel’s leaders going to play itself out? That’s what the second half of Matthew is all about. If you open up a Bible to its Table of Contents you’ll see it’s made up of two large collections: the Old & New Testaments. The word “testament” refers to a covenant partnership, which is what both of these collections are all about. They tell one epic & complicated story of God’s covenant partnership with Israel & all humanity.
The Old Testament is called “TaNak” in Jewish tradition. It’s a unified scroll collection of 39 Israelite texts that were over 1,000 years in the making. In contrast, the 27 books of the New Testament all came into existence with 30 to 40 years of each other. They were all written by first-generation followers of Jesus. From an early period, Christian communities began collecting these texts & reading them alongside the Old Testament as one unified story that leads to Jesus. The New Testament begins with 4 narrative books that together are called “The Gospels”. They tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, death & resurrection, as an announcement of Good News. They are followed by a fifth narrative work called, “Acts of the Apostles”. Here, the risen Jesus commissions the apostles, a word that means “the sent ones”. They are appointed as Jesus’ representatives to spread the Good News about Him throughout the ancient world. After Acts comes a collection of Letters from the apostles. These were written to provide teaching & guidance for local communities of Jesus’ followers called “Churches”. There are 13 Letters connected to the apostle Paul & they are not arranged in the order of when they were written, but rather from the longest to the shortest. Then there’s the Letter to the Hebrews written by a close, but unnamed associate of the apostles. After this are the Letters of James, Jude, Peter & John. Two were brothers of Jesus, & two were among His first followers. The last New Testament book is the Revelation: a Letter to seven Churches that reveals a prophetic word of challenging comfort to all of Jesus’ followers. So those are the books of the New Testament but what are they about, & how do they connect with the Old Testament to make up one unified story? Think of it this way, the Bible is one long epic narrative, with multiple movements or acts. The Old Testament recounts the first series of acts that give you everything you need to make sense of the story to follow. The core themes, & the plot conflict are arranged in design patterns. And then in the New Testament these are all picked up & carried forward to the story’s culmination in Jesus. Let me show you what I mean. The first act is about God & all of humanity. God provides a sweet garden temple for humans who are made to be God’s partners in ruling the world. But the humans are foolish, & they give in to a dark temptation & rebel against God’s wisdom, so they are exiled into a wilderness where they start killing each other. They build cities that spread their selfishness & oppression, leading up the big, bad city of Babylon. But, God loves the world & its foolish humans, so He sets in motion a rescue plan, by promising the arrival of a New Human who will destroy the evil that has lured us into self-destruction. The next act of the Biblical story is about God & Israel. It develops the themes & patterns of the first act. God calls a new humanity out of Babylon into a sweet garden land, Abraham, Sarah & his descendants, the Israelites. God promises that through them divine blessing will be restored to all of the nations. Surely, these are the new humans that we are waiting for, but the Israelites repeat humanity’s rebellion against God, building their own violent cities that lead to self-destruction & another exile in Babylon. But God sustains His promise that the New Human will come from Abraham’s lineage. It will be a Priest King who will now have to rescue both Israel & humanity from Babylon to restore God’s blessing to the world. Notice how these two acts are designed according to the same pattern. The second act is a longer & more violent version of the first. Together they explore the tragic human condition. But they also highlight God’s promise, which is developed more in the next act: the Old Testament prophets & poets. The prophets accused Israel & all nations of their evil & they announced that one day God Himself would arise to bring the Day of the Lord, & deliver His world from Babylon. He would do it through a promised Royal Priest who is going to suffer like a slave & die for the sins of Israel & all humanity. But, then He will be exalted as King over the nations. He will call others to leave Babylon & join the new covenant people who will partner with God to rule over a New Jerusalem, that is over a New Creation. So the Old Testament concludes by anticipating a new act in the story. When you turn to the New testament, it’s the same story, now being carried forward in Jesus. Let’s see how. The four Gospel accounts introduce Jesus of Nazareth, both as the promised Son of Abraham who will restore God’s blessing to the nations, & also as that New Human who will defeat evil & restore humanity to partnership with God. Jesus is portrayed as a human & more. He went about announcing the arrival of God’s Promised Kingdom. He spoke & acted as if He was Israel’s divine King, but instead of calling Himself King, Jesus referred to Himself as The Son of Man, that is, the human one who would act as a servant. The Gospels are making the claim that in Jesus Israel’s God has become the faithful Israelite & the True Human that we are all made to be but have failed to be. Jesus’ mission was to confront that dark evil that lurks underneath humanity’s evil, luring us into selfishness, violence & death. But, how do you defeat that kind of evil. The surprising answer in the Gospels is that Jesus overcame our evil by allowing it to kill Him on His paradoxical throne, the cross, where Jesus died for humanity’s evil & sin. It’s where He lived out what He taught, that non-violence, forgiveness & self-giving love are the most powerful things in the universe. Because God’s love for His world is stronger than evil or death, Jesus was raised to new life as the prototype of a new humanity, & this brings us to the story of Acts. Through the Spirit, God empowers Jesus’ followers to spread the life & love of Jesus out into the world, as they invite people to leave their old humanity & join Jesus’ multi-ethnic family, the new humanity. This is where the Letters from the apostles fit into the story. Here the apostles address early Christian communities & they show how the Good News about the risen King Jesus change history & should reshape every part of our lives. They also explained the Good News by constantly appealing to stories from the Old Testament & the stories of Jesus, showing us how to see our own life stories as part of the epic Biblical story. So all humanity is trapped in a Babylonian exile, but Jesus came to create a new home. We are all living in different kinds of Egyptian slavery to selfishness & sin, but Jesus died as the Passover Lamb to liberate us into the Promised Land. Our old humanity is bound for the dust of death, but Jesus’ resurrection opened up a new future for a new humanity. We live here in the current evil age, but through Jesus & the Spirit a new creation has burst open here & now. This leads us to the book of Revelation, where the whole Biblical story comes together in powerful symbolism & imagery. Jesus is portrayed as a slaughtered, bloody lamb, who is exalted as the divine King of the world. He is leading His people out of slavery & exile in Babylon, & as they resist Babylon’s influence they may have to suffer alongside their slain leader. But when you follow the risen King, not even death can prevent the dawn of the New Creation, which is here depicted as a New Jerusalem garden temple, the true home of humanity after its long exile. So on the Bible’s last page, Heaven & Earth are reunited & the new humans take up their appointed task from the Bible’s first page, to rule the world together in the love & power of God. The New Testament is a remarkable collection of documents, they represent the testimony of the apostles that points us to the risen Jesus Himself. Through God’s Spirit, these human words have been speaking a divine word of hope from the 1st century to the 21st. Each book shows how God through Jesus & the Spirit is leading our world to its ultimate goal in a renewed creation. And so the story then is really the beginning of a new story that is yet to be told & that’s what the New Testament is all about. By Tom
Tom, told me his story of the miracle of a life changed. He was in Germany eating at a restaurant. He struck up a conversation with a man in his late 60’s who was sitting next to him. Tom could tell this man was very wealthy from the two Rottweiler dogs that were by his side and the latest Mercedes that he had parked outside in the parking lot—both cost a lot. Sometimes people will confide secrets to strangers things that they would not tell anyone else, as did this man to Tom. “I am on my way to do something crazy.” “What’s that?” Tom asked. Pointing to his car, the man said, “I am going to drive my car over the cliff and end it all.’” Explaining more, he said that he had always believed in living fast and hard and dying young. Now, his business had failed and he was out of money. His children were not willing to take care of him. Tom shared with him that God had a purpose in his life and if he gave his heart to Him, that miracles could happen if he would believe and things could turn around for the better. This man prayed with Tom that day asking God for a new life. When he left, the former rich man said through his tears, that he had decided not to kill himself but rather to try again and give God a chance to work.
P.S. Starting July 25th the FREE New Testament Overview Bible Studies BRGIN going right through to August 25. Don’t miss them! Just yesterday another miracle happened to me. I was fatigued from a strenuous full day of our volunteer activities. Getting out of the taxi at our destination, I was so tired that I forgot an expensive tape recorder in the trunk of the taxi we had taken. Fortunately, I had struck up a very deep conversation with this taxi driver on the way.
We discussed the similarities of our faiths and how God’s love could bring peace to this volatile region of the world. I sympathized with him as he had six children to provide for and he had to work hard to meet their many needs. We left as very good friends and calling each other ‘brother’. Somehow I knew that this driver would not forget us. After I had discovered the loss of our tape recorder, all of my friends and I got together to pray that the taxi driver would return the tape recorder. Then we had to do the hard part of waiting and trusting that the answer would come. At midnight the doorbell rang and there was the taxi driver with our tape recorder in his hand! We were so happy that our prayers were answered. We stayed in touch with this man for some time and we tried to help him and his family any way that we could. All of these stories remind us that our needs are an opportunity for God to work in our lives. They demonstrate that if we expect miracles we will get them. But you know, if these stories had not been written down, they could easily have been lost in the daily blur of busyness. Special stories like these are our treasures that never grow old—truly good news to see God working in our lives when we need Him most. Let’s tell them so they can give their light to this ol’ dark and dreary world! If you have a miracle story or an angel encounter please send it to me at [email protected] and I’ll see if I can include it on the blog. P.S. Starting July 25th the FREE New Testament Overview Bible Studies BRGIN going right through to August 25. Don’t miss them! The Old Testament begins with God creating & blessing a great piece of real estate: our very good world. God entrusts it to a creature that reflects the divine image, human, or in Hebrew, “Adam”. God appoints humanity to rule the world as kings & queens of creation. The question is whether they will trust God’s wisdom to discern good & evil, or seize autonomy & define good & evil for themselves. But there’s another creation with the humans, a mysterious snake. It’s in rebellion against the Creator, & it dupes the humans to foolishly rebel against God’s generosity. As a result, humanity is separated from its divine source of life & exiled from a garden of blessing to die in a dangerous wilderness.
From there, humanity keeps spreading & redefining good & evil, & things go downhill fast. They build cities plagued by violence & oppression, all leading to the foundation of the city called “Babylon”, where people exalt themselves to the place of God. Now the basic plot conflict of the whole Bible is set. God wants to bless His world & rule it through humans. But now, humans are the problem. They are under the influence of evil. They are stupid & short sighted & headed for self-destruction. This is all a set up for God’s solution: we need a new kind of human. So God promises that a New Human will come, who won’t give in to the snake. In fact, He’ll crush it & be crushed by it. From here the story traces the promised lineage to a man & a woman: Abraham & Sarah. God entrusts them with the same divine blessing given to humanity on page one. So they leave Babylon to a new garden-like land that God promises to give his family. What follows is the story of Abraham’s family, 3 generations: Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, followed by 12 sons. Our hopes are high, until we read their very dysfunctional & destructive family story. They lie, cheat, nearly kill each other, not to mention the sex scandals. But what did you expect after the garden story, they are humans. Eventually Abraham’s family ends up exiled down in Egypt. All these failures of Abraham’s family form a dark background for the handful of bright moments in the story. God stays committed to these people, He even makes them an eternal promise, called a “covenant” that He will rescue & bless all humanity through them. How exactly, isn’t clear, but Abraham’s family is at its best when they stop their selfish scheming & trust God’s promise with radical faith. From here the family grows. They end up enslaved in Egypt. And we are introduced to the Torah’s other main character, Moses. God raises him up to rescue the Israelites & bring them to a mountain where they are all invited into a covenant relationship with God. They are given 613 terms of the relationship, guidelines for becoming new kinds of humans who will faithfully represent God to the world. Moses brokers this whole deal, because he’s awesome. He’s the ultimate prophet, who speaks God’s Word to Israel, he is a priest who represents them before God, & he is even called a king & Israel’s leader & deliverer in time of need. But as the story progresses, the Israelites failed big time they violate the covenant & even Moses rebels against God. In fact, the Torah ends with Moses predicting that Israel’s failure will continue as they go back into the Promised Land, & they are going to end up in exile once again. But he has hope that God will fulfill His promise to rescue Israel. One day He will cover for their failures, He’ll heal their selfish hearts so they can truly love God & live & then, Moses dies. With that we move into narrative works about Israel’s story in the Promised Land, told from the later perspective of the prophets. Things start great with Joshua’s leadership. We are told he’s successful because he is just like Moses & he meditates on Scripture day & night. But eventually, even Joshua fails, beginning Israel’s long & violent descent into self-destruction. Just like Moses & the garden story anticipated. These stories mostly focus on the failure of Israel’s kings, prophets, & priests. How they lie, cheat, kill each other, & worship idols. It’s basically a longer, bloodier replay of the ancestor’s failures. But there are some bright spots. God reaffirms His covenant promise to bless humanity through a New Human. It will be a King from the line of David. And you get some stories about people like David or Solomon, who have moments like Abraham, when they trust God, but it never lasts. And wouldn’t you know it, the family of Abraham ends up right where they began, conquered & exiled in Babylon. But, remember, this whole story is being told from the later perspective of the prophets. They know exile isn’t the end. So they design these stories of Israel’s past as pointers to their future hope. When God does rescue His people out of Babylon, He’ll send that new King, who will be like Moses & David & Solomon were on their good days. Then there are the wisdom scrolls that address some of the most difficult questions raised by the story of the Torah & the Prophets. So Proverbs sounds like Moses in the Torah, trusting God, be faithful & obedient & you’ll have peace & success. But then Ecclesiastes & Job reflect back on Israel’s complicated history & say, “Yeah, we tried that, & it is not that simple.” These 3 Books carry on a profound conversation about what it means to live wisely in God’s good & often confusing world. The Psalms scroll is introduced by 2 poems that are coordinated to the beginning of the Torah & the Prophets. In the first Psalm we meet the Righteous One, who is described as a new Joshua, a successful leader who meditates on the Scriptures. He is like the King promised by Moses, & He’s like the eternal tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Psalm 2 then identifies this figure, it’s the promised King, the Son of God from the line of David, who is going to defeat evil among the nations & restore God’s blessing to the world. The rest of the Psalms scroll teaches God’s people how to pray as they wait for this future hope. Then we move into the Prophets. The job of Israel’s prophets was to be like Moses, to accuse the old Israel of failure & corruption, & to warn them about the looming result, the great Day of the Lord, which ended with defeat & exile in Babylon. But the prophets also promised that God had a purpose, to purify His people & recreate a new Israel who would be faithful like Abraham was. They will live in a new covenant relationship with God under the reign of that promised ruler, who’s described as a new Moses, but called by the name, David. He will be the one to restore God’s blessing to the entire world. These diverse texts from all periods of Israel’s history have been woven together as a unified story about God’s covenant promise to Israel & to all humanity. They were made for a life-time’s worth of reading & reflection, as these remarkable human words offer a divine word of wisdom & future hope that still speaks today. All the books in the Old Testament have the same theme running through them. God loves mankind and is so sad that we have made such a mess of things. But because He loves us so much He keeps trying to teach us and help us to return to our former glory and relationship with Him, not only to His promise people but for all humanity. But God seems to know none of you will make it and need a new heart which He has promised to give us all if we will receive it. The failures are mostly for our benefit to show us that we cannot make it back to Him without that promised change, the promise of the Seed, the Messiah, Emanuel, the Servant King, which we find out in the New Testament that Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. Yahoo! P.S. The next two days I have miracle stories. Starting July 25th the FREE New Testament Overview Bible Studies begin going right through to August 25. Don’t miss them! |
AuthorThe goal of the blog is to provide interesting, motivational, soul feeding material. All to help remind us that God loves us all and wants a personal relationship with each of us and will take care of us in times of trouble. I aspire to be a force for good by providing you with positive input. I encourage you to share the blog with others. Archives
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