As we move into this pivotal section of Nehemiah, I thought that maybe 20,000 feet was too low a perspective. Let’s try 30,000 feet. Last week, there was a comment about the Old Testament being boring and not particularly useful. As Protestants, we have received poor instruction from the liberal establishment on the Gospel. Therefore, the instruction of the Old Testament can only be worse.
Here is a radical statement that I heard last year that changed my view of the Old Testament. The whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation is about Jesus. Perhaps, more accurately, the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation is about God’s redemption of His creation through the work of Jesus on the Cross. While on the one hand, being told that the Bible is about Jesus seems redundant, on the other hand, I am also saying that every verse in the whole Bible is within the context of the redemptive plan of God through Jesus. This becomes very important in how we interpret passages.
First, I’ve made a claim that bears some scrutiny. In the realm of modern evangelicalism and protestant liberalism, the predominant view of the Old Testament is within the context of a dispensational system of eschatology. Eschatology is the study of the redemptive history of God through mankind. It is not just an end times discussion. What point is there to discussing end times without some idea of how we got to that chapter of redemptive history? In the dispensational systems, redemptive history is sort of divided into periods defined by key Biblical events. In the most common dispensational framework, there are seven dispensations, and we are living in the sixth currently, but the number ranges from about 4 to 8. The point is that salvation has different rules in each dispensation.
How can this be? I do not intend to defend a position that is contrary to my own, but by way of explanation, consider this. Between Moses and Jesus, the Jews had the Law, the full Levitical Law. Therefore, for a Jew living in that age or dispensation, their salvation was based upon adherence to that law. I can start in Matthew and destroy this manner of thinking by the time we get to Galatians, but what is amazing is that the Old Testament has already done this.
On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus instructs a couple of his disciples on scripture. Later, in Jerusalem, he does more of the same. The evidence that we have of the teaching that was given is seen in the sermons recorded by Luke in the Book of Acts. All of the Apostles ground the historical events of the resurrection in the Old Testament scripture. In addition, we see these sermons using all sections of the Old Testament as pointing to Jesus. Therefore, we can infer with a high level of confidence that Jesus thought that the whole Old Testament was about Him.
When reading a particular passage in the Old Testament, the questions are these. What is the context of that passage within the whole redemptive historical context? What is the specific office of Jesus’ ministry that bears on that passage: prophet, priest or king? Is the passage in question focused more upon Law or Gospel? The corollaries of this type of thinking are boundless.
Second, one of the more difficult aspects of reading the Old Testament is its organization. The Old Testament is more or less organized into the groupings of historical narratives, poetry and prophecy. The original organization of the Hebrew books was somewhat different, and the idea of historical narrative was somewhat redundant with prophecy. The Hebrew notion is that the role of the historian is to point out the failings of Israel in respect to their covenantal relationship with God, which is in no small part a prophetic office. The result of all of this grouping and regrouping is that the chronological thread of the narrative can get very twisted.
Adding to this problem is that some of this internal chronological meandering can occur within a single book. Jeremiah is a great example in which he witnesses the fall of the Temple in chapter 40, but continues on with pre-destruction narrative in later chapters. We have encountered this in Ezra and Nehemiah to some degree as there is some overlap of the chapters between the books and even between chapters in Nehemiah.
Therefore, flying at altitude has many advantages in reading the Old Testament. The primary advantage is that Jesus seems to have suggested this strategy to the Apostles, and then the Apostles delivered Old Testament scripture in their sermons in the book of Acts in this fashion. It assists us in making sense of the jumbled timeline that results from the structural organization of the Old Testament. It keeps us focused on why we are Christians. Redemption is the solution to the problem of the fall. Jesus provides all of the parts of our redemption to his remnant elect. In the Old Testament, we learn why he did it, and why it had to happen in the way that it did. Knowing about the resurrection without understanding the reasons behind it is knowing only half the story. That manner of scholarship leaves the believer vulnerable to bad teachers, the wolves that mislead His sheep.
In the next post, following up on this model, I hope to compare the prophecy of Jeremiah with the actual recorded work of Ezra and Nehemiah.
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