understanding the old testament – Jesus @ 2 am blogs and podcast

Understanding the Bible 14: Messianic Expectations Begin

January 13, 2014March 26, 2014Kirk WinslowLeave a comment

The period after the return from exile was one of deep confusion for Israel. For while she had indeed been set free from captivity, the deliverance was partial at best. The Persians remained the sovereign political and military power in the region (later replaced by a series of empires beginning with Alexander the Great and continuing on to the Romans who ruled well past the end of the New Testament era). And – perhaps even more distressing – the restoration of the Temple did not result in the return of God’s “glory” to Mt. Zion. How were the covenant people to interpret these events? And more importantly, how was salvation to be accomplished in light of them?

It is out of this period that expectations of messiah(s) emerge – the hope for an anointed leader(s) who will be God’s agent of restoration. Such an expectation was well rooted in the biblical worldview. And we can understand entirely why Israel’s vision of a messiah was royal or priestly or both. She was looking back toward her Golden Age – the days of David and Solomon; the time when salvation seemed so close at hand. And she was waiting for God to bring his deliverance by those means again – that is, by king and Temple.

But in the midst of Israel’s search to find this “Messiah!” – she failed to notice a deeply profound statement made by the prophet of the exile: Isaiah. It was – after all – Isaiah’s messege of hope that brought Israel thru th restoration to Canaan in hope and trust. Isaiah assured Israel that God was and is very much “on her side – a partisan who will accomplish his will. But perhaps not by means of king and priest – or at least not in the way Israel imagined king and priest would function.

In this installment of our introduction to the bible, we look at the somewhat cryptic foretelling of a sufferer – a suffering king – who will be instrumental in the completion of the salvation project. By means of his hardships, sin will be overcome. It is a passage to which the New Testament will turn in centuries to come and one central to the larger story of salvation as revealed in Jesus.

Understanding the Bible 12: God’s Promise of Restoration

December 24, 2013March 7, 2014Kirk WinslowLeave a comment

Waiting is profoundly difficult; all the more so when you know the one you are waiting one is capable of acting immediately. Yet this is God’s call to exiled Israel – to wait upon the Lord for the day of salvation (in this case release from captivity).

But this waiting is not to be passive – to wait around, biding time… Rather, the people of God are called to make a home, indeed to work for the welfare of their captors (a profound foreshadowing of Jesus’ call to “love your enemies”). Israel is to be about her vocation of restoration, even while she herself suffers and in that suffering doubts the promises of God.

In this episode, guest preacher extraordinaire, Rev. Ian Farrell, gives simultaneously funny and poignant look at Israel’s captivity in a foreign land. And with it, he offers tremendous wisdom for waiting on God today.

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Understanding the Bible 10: The Prophets and Their Warnings

December 10, 2013March 26, 2014Kirk WinslowLeave a comment

What is prophecy in the Bible? And what is a prophet? And why do I feel I want little to do with either?

My personal allergy to the word “prophecy” stems from the fact that most contemporary discussion thereof involve a vast departure from the biblical understanding. From Harold Camping’s dating of the end of the world to the Left Behind’s depictions of the apocalypse, there exists an element of the church (popular at times) that focuses almost exclusively on the “the last days.” It is only at the end of the world, they believe, that one’s eternal destiny is sealed, thus placing incredible importance on the state of one’s soul at the time of these culminating events.

Crucial to this worldview are “prophets” – those to whom special, spiritual vision is granted. Prophets possess decoder ring to the divine plan – they have seen the roadmap of future history and can decipher it for the rest of us. This unique insight may be a result of individual, divine revelation, or the prophet’s personal cleverness in solving riddles; but the result is the same: the prophet knows the future and can save humanity the dire consequences of our present course if only we will heed their warnings.

Such perspectives on prophecy are hardly new! And though Jesus himself described such efforts as futile (Matt. 24:36), people have been predicting the day and hour of his return since the words left his lips. But this is not what the Bible means by prophecy, nor is it the role of a biblical prophet.

Rather, a prophet is simply a spokesperson – one called by God to speak God’s word of direct address to a particular audience (why many declarations of the prophets begin with the phrase, “Thus says the Lord…”). Moses, for example, is described as a prophet (the greatest, in fact – Deut. 34:10), not because of any predictions of the future, but because he was the conduit of God’s word to Israel.

Prophets exist throughout the entire biblical narrative (e.g., Aaron, Samuel…), but it was in the period of the monarchy after the reign of Solomon that prophets come to the fore (and we have numerous books of the Bible devoted to recording their pronouncements). And the reason God calls people to prophetic office is that this is the period when Israel begins to turn sharply away from her role as God’s partners in the project of salvation. Just as Israel reachers her greatest earthly security, she turns not to the work of reaching out to “all the families of the earth” (Gen. 12:3), but towards increasing her wealth and political standing.

And it is this inward turn that God must correct! If – as we have already demonstrated – salvation is a necessarily collaborative process between God and humanity, what is God to do if his elect partners reject their role? If Israel becomes an agent not of reconciliation, but of sin, she must be stopped. And that “stopping,” says God, will come by means of Israel’s earthly enemies, if she does not change her ways. And thus the prophets of the monarchic period become voices of warning to the people of God – declaring that judgment awaits if the relationship with God is not restored. Such warnings are not warnings of eternal torment, but they are intended as fearsome visions of what will befall God’s beloved if they persist in sinful rejection of the covenant. As any loving parent must – when their children are harming themselves and others – God will punish in order to bring his people back to the good.

In this episode, we look deeper in the sinfulness of Israel and the work of the prophets in calling for repentance. The words are poetic and sometimes prophetic language is deeply symbolic, but the words are always to the here and now (with lessons to be learned in future generation.)