Posts Tagged ‘Old Testament’

2
Apr

The Old Testament “Gospel”

   Posted by: Doug    in Bible, Theology, Theology - Evangelism

Christ the Conqueror - Christ the Savior

As a follow up to my post on The Gospel In All Its Forms, I wanted to make all seven of my blog followers aware of a great post by Peter Leithart Good news in which he show how the Greek word for “gospel” is use in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament). The Gospel takes on new dimensions when the word is studied in its wider Jewish context, dimensions that are helpful to us as we consider what good news we are to announce in our modern world.  I quote it in full:

” The Septuagint uses the word-group euaggel- primarily in military and political contexts to describe the proclamation of victory.    This is not invariable (cf. Jeremiah 20:15).

The Philistines cut off Saul’s head and strip his gear so that they can carry the “good news” to idols and people (1 Samuel 31:9).  In his lament over Saul and Jonathan, David warns Israel not to evangelize Philistia with the news of the fall of Israel’s heroes (2 Samuel 1:20).  When David later describes what he did to the Amalekite who thought that the death of Saul would be “good news” to David, he uses the same term (2 Samuel 4:10).  2 Samuel 18, where David awaits news of the battle with Absalom, is studded with the word (vv. 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 31).

Adonijah expects Jonathan the son of Abiathar to bring him good news (1 Kings 1:42), but he doesn’t.  The lepers who find the Aramean camp abandoned realize after eating their fill that they shouldn’t keep the “good news” from the rest of the people in the city (2 Kings 7:9).

This meaning is in the background of the more “theological” uses elsewhere in the LXX.  The “new song” of Psalm 96 is the “good news” (v. 2) of Yahweh’s s salvation, which comes when He judges the world in righteousness (v. 13).  Good news comes because Yahweh the Divine Warrior gains His victory.  The same goes for the good news of Yahweh’s reign announced in Isaiah 40:9, 52:7.  The good news that the Spirit-anointed servant brings to the afflicted is good news of rescue and deliverance, liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners (Isaiah 61:1).  The good news is good news of peace (cf. Nahum 1:15; 2:1 in LXX), a peace gained by righteous victory.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 4:21 am  http://www.leithart.com/2011/03/29/good-news-2/

What most people conceive of as “the gospel” seldom contains an image of the Lord as Divine Warrior. And yet, the New Testament does (Rev. 19). To truncate the good news to ‘Jesus died to save sinners’ is to so compartmentalize and minimize what God has and will do in the world to make it almost no news at all to the hearts and minds of moderns.

How small has become our view of what Jesus came to do, what He accomplished, and what He has promised to do in our world. Do we have the faith to believe, let alone to announce, that our God, Jesus, is progressively judging the world in righteousness? Is our confidence in God’s word sufficient that we can take for granted as true, and declare openly, that the reign of King Jesus does in fact bring “rescue and deliverance, liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners?” Do we true believe that the only hope and good news for a world in turmoil (you name the turmoil: international finacial meltdown, terrorism, the impact of the collapse of middle-eastern governments, etc) is Jesus?  Or is that just a little too simplistic to say outloud? Isn’t it possible that all of these culamities are in fact part of the work of God to gain the victory on behalf of His people? Is that too much to believe? Is it a bit too religiously edgy to actually tell someone that the good news is that God is using all of these things to bring salvation to the world?

Anything short of this kind of conception of the gospel does an injustice to what God has done through our Lord Jesus.

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30
Mar

The Work of the Spirit in the Old and New Covenants

   Posted by: Doug    in Theology - Pneumatology

 

Discussions about the amount of continuity between the old and new covenants continue unabated.  The old adage “The Old Testament is the New concealed. The New Testament is the Old revealed” is good so far as it goes.  It does presuppose a connection between the two in Christ, and that there are differences. But it’s not sufficient to explain everything that needs to be said about the subject.  The problem in my mind is that too often our theology drives what we think about continuity questions, causing us to ignore some biblical text in favor of others.

Dispensationalists tend to primarily see a radical discontinuity between the covenants in order to secure their presupposition of the fundamental difference between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church.

The Reformed school of thought tends to primarily see a general continuity between the covenants so as to secure their presupposition that the New Testament Church is a continuation and culmination of God’s work through out history.

Often such assumptions tend to ignore the truly biblical continuities and discontinuities that exist on the other side of our theological presuppositions.  It is important to allow the Bible to speak on its own terms without imposing our theological assumptions about the degree of continuity.

An example of this can be found in discussions of the role of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Covenants. Is His role virtually the same in both, or are their significant differences that the Bible talks about?  This became a matter of discussion at church following a sermon entitled, “Spirit-Empowered Deliverers.”

I see a number of texts that demonstrate considerable difference in the Old and New Covenant treatment of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Primarily, in my view, the Holy Spirit in the Old Covenant is seen as coming upon people for a specific purpose to empower them for a particular function.

  • In Exodus we see that certain men (artisans) are filled with the Holy Spirit to have wisdom, understanding, knowledge and workmanship to make and teach others to make various items of for the construction of the tabernacle (28:3, 31:3; 35:31).
  • Repeatedly in the book of Judges we see that the Spirit comes upon the judges to become Spirit-empowered deliverers of God’s people (3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 14:6, 19; 15:14, 16:20).
  • The Holy Spirit comes upon the kings of Israel to empower them to fight the battles for God’s people. The Spirit came upon Saul for the first time to empower him to prophesy (1 Sam. 10:6, 10; 19:20-23), and then to become aroused to anger and led Israel to defeat the Ammonites (1 Sam. 11:6). 1 Samuel 16:14 says that the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul (the kingdom being torn from him because of his disobedience and unfaithfulness as Israel’s king), and an evil spirit comes and regularly distressed him (vv. 15-23). David becomes the archetypical Spirit-Empowered deliverer for Israel (1 Sam. 16:13; 2 Sam. 23:2).
  • The Spirit of Yahweh comes upon the prophets to declare that on the other side of the death of exile the Lord will resurrect Israel from the dead by pouring out his Spirit. In fact, the prophets say that the even the Gentiles will have the Spirit poured out upon them as well.

Thus, in the Old Testament the Spirit primarily “comes upon” people to empower them to do a particular task in service to God and His people. He is not generally described as working in, or filling all believers in the same way that we see in the New Testament.

We are united to Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit, who guarantees that we will receive all the benefits of Christ.  By the Spirit we have all (believers) been baptized into the body of Christ. By the Spirit, we who believe are given understanding of what we could not otherwise understand about God. We are all given power to do great things for God by His Spirit.

Jesus is the great Spirit-empower deliverer, and as those who have received the Holy Spirit, we are made Spirit-empowered workers in His Kingdom.

One element of the significance of the work of Christ is that He has now poured out His Spirit, and is transforming the world in a new and powerful ways – Ways unseen and unprecedented in history. In Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, the whole of humanity is being renewed and transformed so as to be brought into conformity to Christ.

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