Essentials of Old Testament Theology - Lesson 3

Let’s open our Bibles. This won’t sound like the right place to start, but it actually will be the first text in Joshua 24:2–3. Last week we talked about God, the Creator. This week I want to talk about God and his people. We’re doing a series on putting the pieces together. We’re trying to see how Old Testament themes go throughout the Old Testament and then enter into the New. By putting the pieces together, we can see the wholeness of Scripture as it relates to the wholeness of God’s character. Last week we talked about God the Creator, and I hope that we take these themes and apply them in ways that are relevant to our lives. We want to do the same this week.

I. God Redeems & Calls His People to Himself: The Abrahamic Covenant

I am struck as I go through the Scriptures to see how God relates to people in understandable ways and forms, reaching out to have relationship with us. One of the ways he reaches out in forms that were understandable to the people of the Old Testament era was to make covenants with people. These are binding agreements in which he calls people to themselves, holds them responsible for their actions, gives them high standards, and obligates himself to them with promise. As far as we know, there is no other Ancient Near Eastern country that believed their God made a covenant with them. It was just that personal. The thing that they would have found extraordinary in the ancient world is that God would obligate himself to people. That’s just not the way it went.

We have this incredibly personal God who relates to his people. Now we know that between Genesis 1 and 2, where we started the theme of creation and the Abraham stories, there’s a great deal of sin and spread of sin. I suppose I’m leaving sin out of this discussion only in the sense that I think we know about that and assume it and hear about it through the themes we’re talking about. But there is a terrific sin problem by the end of Genesis 11, therefore God reaches out to create a new people. In the Abrahamic Covenant, starting in Genesis 12, God redeems and calls his people. He redeems and calls them to himself. When God redeems and calls his people, he redeems and calls them from idolatry and sin. 

That’s why I want to start with Joshua 24, where Joshua, in talking about Israel’s past, tells us something we didn’t know from reading Genesis 11 and 12. He makes a statement about Abraham’s past. Starting in verse one, 

Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel. And they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac’” (Joshua 24:1-3). 

It continues on and culminates in Joshua’s famous statement, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15b). We [inaudible] of Israelite history, we’re going to serve the Lord.

I find it interesting that even Abraham had to be redeemed and called from idolatry and sin. That’s what God does when he redeems us. We come out of something. Some of you have a pretty good idea what some of that something was, because you remember very clearly what sort of things you were involved in when you were converted. Some of those things stopped and you began to serve the Lord. 

I once felt pretty bad because I didn’t have a great testimony, like I used to hear at some of these Baptist revival meetings I grew up with. They were wonderful testimonies. I had a Pentecostal brother, a friend of mine, a great influence on my life. The pastor used to tell his testimony about how he used to run around to all this wild stuff and get pretty excited talking about it. By today’s standard, it’s pretty tame stuff. My friend almost sounded disappointed when he came to the point where he became a believer. You think to calm down. I feel bad and have these good testimonies like folks. It was a startling thing. God gave me a glimpse into what I would have been without him. I don’t want to go through that again. Some of you, if you begin to wonder, well, you know, I wasn’t that bad. I’m not that much. You really have to work up something. I want you to know, just as Abraham was redeemed from idolatry and sin, so are we as God’s people, every one of us, and therefore as a group. We need to understand that we were redeemed from idolatry and sin for relationship with God. 

Genesis 12 is where we normally start with the Abrahamic Covenant. God is calling Abram. So many times, we see these personal references. The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). It’s like God said you’re going to go and I’m going to lead you and I’m going to show you, and I’ll make of you a great nation. I’m going to bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing; I will bless those who bless you. God’s saying, look, our relationship means that as you serve me, I will do these things for you. It’s what friends do, isn’t it? Indeed, in the book of Isaiah, the Bible calls Abraham God’s ‘friend’ (Isaiah 41:8). There is this sense that Abraham was redeemed from idolatry and sin for relationship with God. 

But a bigger purpose that I think we all share is—particularly as we talk about a missions conference—so that all nations would be blessed through him. Genesis 12:3 says, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” or “shall bless themselves.” It wasn’t just an individualistic purpose, but that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him and through his family. 

Though we can’t claim that sort of promise, we do recall that we are redeemed so that the world might know the glory of Christ. We believe by the Great Commission that we’ve been sent—Christians have been sent to the ends of the earth to make disciples, baptize, and to teach them to observe everything God commanded. It’s not just an individualistic thing, though that’s important. Also, it’s not just a family thing. It’s very important to us. It’s not even just a church thing, which is very important to me. Rather, it is an international global situation for Abraham. Then we see, by extension, the promise is for all God’s people. Then we see in Exodus 1–15 that God redeems these people, the Israelites, from slavery. We see that God has a concern for the physical, emotional, etc. well-being of his people. That’s one of the things we pray for. We pray for all sorts of things, and not always for physical healing. We pray for financial blessings for people. We pray for all sorts of things. If nothing else, the first several chapters of Exodus indicate that God is concerned about those saying he redeems us from sin and idolatry for relationship with himself, for blessing the nation, and from all sorts of other difficulties. 

II. God Instructs His People for Relationship & Witness: The Mosaic Covenant

So, God redeems and calls this people to himself, God and his people. We go on past Exodus 15 to Exodus 19, and we see that God instructs his people for relationship and for witness. We come to the Mosaic Covenant. God instructs his people for relationship and witness through the Mosaic Covenant. 

Now, the purpose of the Law is often misunderstood but stated very clearly for us. Take a look at chapter 19 and let’s start with verse 4, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” Exodus 19:4 is a pretty personal statement. God is saying I delivered you, I carried you, I brought you to myself. This is the relationship that’s been established and certainly their relationship with individuals like Moses and others. But there is a national relationship as well. Starting in verse 5, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of praise and a holy nation.”

You see, the purpose God had for them was that they might reflect the relationship they had with God in a way that would show them to be a holy nation amongst all the other nations. God wanted the world to see God and come to him. This is the purpose of the Law. In the Law we see God instructing his people to reflect the relationship. We know the phrase ‘be holy, for I am holy.’ We cite that in a variety of ways, don’t we? We cite it to, frankly, kick ourselves into gear every now and then. We’re not living up to the standards that we ought to. We use it for encouragement and other things. But we ought to remember that this is a relational statement. This means, be like I am. God says, show your relationship with me by being like I am. 

We see this in other relationships all the time. There is a sense in which some, but not all brothers and sisters operate like that—that you want to be like your older sibling. Some of you know I have some to choose from. There is still a sense in which, if I could have the physical courage of my oldest brother—I’ve been inspired by how he’s faced cancer and other things for a few years. Also, if I could have the financial courage of my brother, the farmer—I don’t have it to just risk everything on the weather every year. Without joking at all, I’ve said to people I don’t have the courage to farm. I used to have the expertise, but I don’t have the courage. Or the sheer courage and guts and brains and perseverance of my older sister or even the good nature of my youngest sister. We’re not sure how my youngest sister got into the family. 

I saw on the news that they’ve attempted to clone cats. Now, I’m not sure why anybody would want to do that. We don’t have enough of them. But you know what? Apparently, they tried to clone a calico and it’s kind of like they had done a negative, a photo negative. Instead of being like calico and dark. It ended up being kind of like gray with a different pattern. Again, it’s like a— And they found out this cat wasn’t like the original at all. And this is going to mess up this guy. He’s got a cloning business. He’s promising to clone Kitty. Well, he can’t get it done. That’s a problem.

So, I’m not sure how my sister got so good natured, but I guess it was just having five or six siblings rolling around all the time. But we know what that’s like. Relationships. I’d like to be like my dad, or I’d like to be like my mom. Or you look at another person you really look up to, “I’d like to be like them.” We would all wish that we could reflect the love that we have for our spouse and for our family. We ought to think about ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’ God instructs us in his ways so that we might reflect that relationship. Make no mistake about it, there are only a few things that Law can do as a literary type. Think about it. There are only so many things the Law can do. It’s not as flexible, say, as a narrative or that sort of thing. But, you know, laws can condemn. Shows when you broke the law, a law can inhibit. In other words, in fact, if the only thing that moves you is the fear of punishment, then the law can do that for you. It can inhibit your actions, if that’s what it takes. It is also true that laws have a couple of positive things. It can reflect the lawgiver, the goodness (or lack thereof) of the lawgiver. It can guide to holiness and forgiveness in our case, but it can guide those who love the lawgiver. The Law is only good and joyous to those in relationship with God. 

If you go through the Bible, read Psalm 119. This person in relationship with God is excited about the Law because the good God who loves him has given him this guide to walk every day. I know it was pre-Law and all, but Kent was preaching on Esau [inaudible]. You know, I doubt Esau was anxious to hear more about Law early in his life. He just really hoped somebody would guide his acts. He wanted to do pretty much what he wanted to do. Of course, the Bible is filled with people like that, but the purpose of the Law is to create a holy nation to minister to the world. Peter says in 1 Peter 2 that’s the same purpose of the church: to be a kingdom of priests. [Inaudible] quotes the same passage. And then he begins to talk to people in 1 Peter about submitting to authority under all sorts of tough situations: marriage and community and government. He said, you’re a kingdom of priests, holy people. Let that relationship to God be reflected in all your actions. If you try to use the Law to create a relationship, you misuse the Law. And Paul criticizes several people in the book of Galatians and other places who try to use the Law to create a relationship rather than to reflect one.

Every single one of us will mess up if we try to use the Law to create a relationship with God rather than to have it reflect that relationship. But that’s what he’s doing in and through his people. He instructs his people for relationship and witness. The best days I spend on this earth are the days in which I accept God’s guidance and walk by it. To serve him is perfect freedom and there is no other. 

I don’t begin to know how to do that without his help. I don’t just mean his help in some kind of nebulous way. I mean specifics. Some of you find that oppressive, and most of us do, until we hit a situation where we’re glad the Scripture was very helpful. God’s people. He doesn’t redeem and call them and leave them to themselves to see how best they can sort out life. He instructs his people for relationship, for witness, for holiness. That’s the Mosaic covenant.

III. God Forgives His People: The Mosaic Covenant

The Mosaic Covenant raises a third point: God forgives his people. Exodus 34:6–7 is a fundamental passage to understanding God’s nature in the whole of the Old Testament and into the New. The men’s Bible study on Friday morning has been looking at some of these concepts for the last couple of weeks and will again this week. After the golden calf incident in Exodus 32, Moses prays to the Lord and eventually the people are forgiven by the Lord, “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression in sin, but who by no means will clear the guilty’” (Exodus 34:6–7b). It goes on to expand. 

Here’s the nature of God: his primary impulse is to be slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. In fact, in the book of Lamentations, which I think page-for-page, has more about suffering for your sins than any other book of the Bible. In the passage in chapter 3 following the text where it says “great is your faithfulness,” one of the things that the writer says in chapter 3 verse 33— I was a lead reviewer on this book and should have done better. Lamentations 3:33. We have an English Standard Version, “for he does not willingly afflict.” Literally the text says, “he does not afflict from his heart.” We should’ve left it in there and taken the metaphor and laid it straight out. “He does not afflict from his heart.” It is not God’s first impulse to judge and to afflict. Isaiah calls his judging act in Isaiah 28:21 his ‘alien’ act. His strange act. God is willing to judge. He will not clear the guilty. But God’s first impulse is to be merciful. And he is just. We cannot presume on his mercy, nor can we ignore his justice, but it’s in his nature. 

So, it’s less than surprising when you come to Leviticus 1–7, having explained to people the standards and instruction for life—Leviticus 1–7 is all about sacrifice and forgiveness. Right in the Law, right after the first long installments of standards, God explains to people he knows will sin. Without excusing that [inaudible], he explains how they can be forgiven. 

So, it’s so important for us to see the God who instructs his people knows he is instructing a fallible people, and he has a means of forgiveness. What if it’s long term? What if it entails the worst sort of sin? In Deuteronomy 30, after a couple of chapters it states how the Lord will, if forced to, drive the people from the land even in the punishment of their sin. That’s as bad as it can get. They’ve been exiled. They’re gone. Moses says, however, in Deuteronomy 30:1–2, “And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you,”—you wake up in exile in a foreign land and you “return to the Lord.” Return in repentance. Same word in the Old Testament. “…return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice and in all that I command you today, with all your heart, with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from” where he scattered you (Deuteronomy 30:2-3). 

It doesn’t matter where you are. The text goes on to say he will bring you back. You see the Lord, who is abounding in mercy and yet who will not clear the guilty, is ready to receive those people who return to him. And it remains so throughout Scripture, again, without presuming on that mercy, because he will by no means clear the guilty. We need to remember that the God who redeems and calls his people, instructs his people, forgives his people—if it is true in the Old Testament, how much more so when Jesus Christ offers himself as a sacrifice for sin? So that the author of Hebrews says, “If this is true, how shall we neglect so great a salvation?” The mercy of God and the kindness and the forgiveness of God is writ large in Christ. And it was already relevant from the start.

IV. God Prepares a Future for His People: The Davidic & New Covenant

Finally, tonight, as I just think of some putting the pieces together for his people, God prepares a future for his people. We see this in the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant. In 2 Samuel 7, God promises David that he will have an eternal kingdom. It’s not going to end. In the first 17 verses of that chapter 7, David expresses a desire to build a temple for God. God says thank you for wanting to build a house for me, but I will build a house for you. Your son will be on the throne, and he will have an eternal kingdom. It won’t ever end. Now then, as the Old Testament unfolds, we see in the Prophets and in the Writings and in the Psalms and in other places, that God fills out that portrait to say that this king will be a Savior. This king will be a servant. This king will be God’s chosen one. 

And then on into the New Testament. But I take heart not only in knowing who the eternal king is, but David did as well. From where I stand tonight, even in such good company, an eternal kingdom sounds good to me. According to Jesus, here’s the interesting news: this kingdom has begun, and we get a taste of it when we pray together, and we have fellowship together and we worship together. We realize that we are closer to being what we ought to be and what we’re going to be in settings like this, then we can imagine. The kingdom has begun, and it shall not end. 

In Jeremiah 31, in the midst of the destruction of Jerusalem, God speaks to Jeremiah 580 years before Christ and says there’s going to be a new covenant. It’ll be unlike the first one and he announces the problem with it, which you broke. The problem wasn’t with God. But he says then that this new covenant will mean there won’t be any need to teach members of the covenant to know God. He says, “They’ll all know me. They’ll all know me!” This covenant has been enacted through Jesus Christ. As he says the night before he’s betrayed as he takes the Lord’s Supper. This “…is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). It’s been enacted.

It’s a wonderful thing to me to be around other believers. Because it reminds me that the new covenant is in force, that my family is enlarging, and that’s a good thing. God prepares a future for his people. And finally, this future is not only of an eternal king of the new covenant, but we bring all this together in Isaiah 65, a passage I’ve come to love more and more. God has promised us an eternal home, Isaiah 65:17. This passage is cited and quoted from extensively in Revelation 21, 

Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people: no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives only a few days… (Isaiah 65:17–20a). 

Go to verse 23: 

“They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants with them. Before they call, I will answer; while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” says the Lord (Isaiah 65:23-25). 

Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). Revelation cites this passage and says: new heavens, new earth, new Jerusalem, no suffering, no death, no separation. God has a future for his people in the Old Testament that is cited and connected and amplified in the New. That tells me that from the beginning to the end, God has always prepared a future and a home for his people. So, when I think to myself that God has redeemed and called us to himself, he’s instructed as he forgives us, he prepares a future for us. Is there really anything we need that God has not prepared for his people. That we really need. As I look to these themes about God and his people—I left out the book of Judges; that’s also part of God and his people. But God is indeed the one who has created us and will sustain us and who has given us each other in our homes, in our churches, in our communities. We need to give thanks to our God for all he has done along these lines.