It looked as if the students were nodding off with bobbing heads and heavy eyelids as I finished speaking my third segment at the retreat. Gathering up my teaching notes and Bible, concern overwhelmed my thinking; did I miss the mark of what I wanted to communicate? I studied and researched for hours and went over each presentation several times. Surely I didn’t flop, did I?
Twenty-four hours later I was still fretting over the possibility I didn’t hit the mark of what God called me to do. So at the gym, all alone in the sauna, I cried out to God, “Did I flop? Did I botch up what You were leading me to do? I tried hard, Lord, I tried hard! I so desired to connect with the students, where did I fail?”
Heartfelt prayer indeed, revealing a pious and selfless heart. Or so I thought; instead God gently stated that I was concerned about how I did, meaning I was emphasizing me in this pious cry. A question then came to my mind: Who’s the sovereign One in this dyad of me and God? Obviously, God is the sovereign One, I’m just thankful to be bumbling along in this thing called Life. Next I was reminded that God states in the book of Isaiah that His Word does not return void. Thus, I began to consider that answering the call of God to the best of my ability then allows the Holy Spirit to do the work He does best, working in people’s hearts. I did the best I knew to plant the seeds God inspired me to plant but it is God, through the working of the Holy Spirit that will cultivate the soil of the souls the seeds were planted in.
As I’m brooding over my perceived failure, God is celebrating that His saving grace was proclaimed to thirsting souls. What’s more, I was given the privilege to proclaim this grace, and now I get to watch how the Holy Spirit will run freely through the flowers growing in the fertile soil of their souls.
It’s definitely a great lesson to learn that the Sovereign God will accomplish His purposes, the real question is will I accept His invitation to participate. If I do, He enables me to meet that call, and even if I don’t actually do as well as I wanted, it may actually be how God wanted it done anyway; for who am I to think I know what’s best anyway.
Thinking this I recall how I changed gears several times in the retreat from what I had originally planned on doing to what I actually did. Further I realize the second day of the retreat was filled with very tired students since they had spent the night at the church playing fun games and feeding growing relationships deep into the morning hours; the average night’s rest per student was possibly four hours at the most. Another thing I learned is if I’m ever given the privilege to speak at another two-day retreat, I should think of what kind of sizzle to add to the second day to help the exhausted students maintain attention. There are all kinds of possibilities from skits, or DVDs, or music, or a number of other options I’m sure.
Something else worth mentioning is God is bigger than my strengths and bigger than my weaknesses. As I put forth the effort required to answer God’s call and do the research and study, do the presentation preparation and practice, then actually go and do what I’ve prepared with the best of my ability to do, then the God Zone is entered in which He is free to do His work. More simply stated, God is really free to go to work if I perform due diligence in preparation and execute with all the precision I can muster.
So the next time we ever find ourselves caught up in the “I” of our own storm of doubt, just remember God is bigger than all the “I’s” that have ever been or ever will be. Sovereignty is after all, Sovereign; and we, after all, are mere mortals, wisps of breath that have the continual invitation to know the Sovereign.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Is Grace in the Old Testament?
This is a paper I wrote for one of my Seminary classes. Many people view God as hostile and hateful in the Old Testament; I, however, do not agree with that profile. I think God has been loving all along. Read on and see if you agree.
End Notes:
[1] The Tender Commandments; Mehl, R., Multnomah Publishers, Sisters, OR, 1998; p. 15.
[2] Quoted from the lecture given the evening of November 7, 2008 at Grace Seminary of the Northwest.
[3] The Message, Peterson, E., NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO., 2002.
[4] Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary, Thomas Nelson Publishers; Nashville, TN, 1996.
[5] Nelson’s NKJV Study Bible, Tommy Nelson, Inc., Nashville, TN; 1997; p. 158.
[6] Sermons of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, Volume VI; Funk & Wagnells Company, London, p. 78. (Note, there is no date in Vol. VI, however, Vol. V has the date April 1859.)
[7] Nelson’s NKJV Study Bible, Tommy Nelson, Inc., Nashville, TN; 1997; p. 158.
[8] Ibid.; p. 161.
[9] Ibid.; p. 1779.
This is a paper I wrote for one of my Seminary classes. Many people view God as hostile and hateful in the Old Testament; I, however, do not agree with that profile. I think God has been loving all along. Read on and see if you agree.
“All I need to know is what God is plainly saying to me on the pages of my Bible.”[1]
God was mean in the Old Testament but in the New Testament He’s different, He’s mellowed out. We’ve all heard this or something like it said more times than we can count. In fact, in my “Gaining Love for the Hebrew Scripture” class, our professor, Dr. Ron Allen, even stated that our current Christian culture still associates Moses with the Law and thus, they consider Moses “bad.”[2] Granted, Dr. Allen was trying to impress a question upon the student’s thinking, is this true? Asked another way, was grace introduced for the first time in the New Testament? Was there no evidence of grace in the Old Testament?
We’ll begin our brief exploration of this with the following lengthy quote:
Now the Lord descended in a cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. Then he said, “If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”
And He said: “Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.” (Exodus 34:5-10, NKJV.)
A lengthy but revealing quote, not only is God “conversing” with Moses, a mere man, the Lord (Yahweh) is also establishing a covenant with him and the people of Israel. Eugene Peterson renders verse six thusly: “God, God, a God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient—so much love, so deeply true—loyal in love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.”[3] These quotes hardly describe a God Who is always angry or full of wrath; rather, they describe a Father Who is deeply in love with His children and Who wants the very best for them.
Two words from verse six are especially insightful. The first word is “gracious” which comes from the Hebrew word hanan which means “to pardon or show mercy,” or even express “generosity, a gift from the heart; God especially is the source of undeserved favor.”[4] So while the people did not earn favor or any special gift from God, He was willing to grant them favor anyway. In fact, consider the events described in verses eight and nine. Moses says, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord…go among us.” And how does God respond to this stiff-necked people? He remains among them, He doesn’t snuff them out, turn His back on them or even simply ignore them; He makes a covenant with them and promises to do marvels such as had not been seen before.
An interesting phrase is “stiff-necked people” in verse nine. It first occurs in Exodus 32:9 and refers to “the stubbornness of the people who refused to follow the ways of God.”[5] Stubbornness connotes the thought that the people felt their ways were better than God’s ways; hence, they were prideful. “Pride is the inherent sin of man, and yet it is of all sins the most foolish,” stated Charles Spurgeon.[6] But interestingly in verse 11 we see Moses intervening for the people of Israel via intercessory prayer. Then in verse 14 we read the stunning account that “the Lord relented.” God intended this all along but needed to draw Moses through this process.[7] This process leads to the passage quoted above from Exodus 34 where God reveals His gracious nature, or perhaps better stated His merciful nature.
The second interesting word from verse six is “goodness” from the Hebrew word chesed. This word has the basic meaning of “loyal love” or “steadfast love; it refers to God’s loyalty and faithfulness to His covenant.”[8]
Combining the meaning of these two words we come to the encouraging conclusion that God is granting undeserved favor to His people in such a way that He intends to be loyal to that covenant of favor; and since God cannot lie (see Titus 1:2) this is a covenant, or promise, He is not going to break. In fact, this is a promise that has been fulfilled and is continually being fulfilled in and through Jesus Christ (see John 1:16-17 and Col. 2:9-10).
While there are other occurrences exhibiting grace in the Old Testament, particularly in God’s dealings with Abraham and King David, we will now depart to the New Testament and the first chapter of the Gospel of John. There are two verses of interest for this particular study:
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace (John 1:14 and 16, NKJV).
Consider that verse 14 boldly proclaims that Jesus is “full of grace and truth;” then also consider that God says the same thing of Himself back in Exodus 34:6. Further consider that Jesus says of Himself that “I and the Father are one” in John 10:30 and in John 14:9 Jesus declares that “he who has seen Me has seen the Father.” There is definitely a theme developing, however, here are more examples to consider.
Recall Exodus 3:14 where God proclaims to Moses that He, God, is I AM. Fast-forward again to the Gospel of John where Jesus refers to Himself as I AM on seven occasions (see John 6:35, 41, 48, and 51; 8:12; 10:7, 9 and 11 and 14; 11:25; 14:6; and 15:1 and 5). So Jesus, by boldly stating that He is I AM is claiming external existence, thus, He was proclaiming to be God Himself.[9] In fact, in the I AM statement found in John 8:58, Jesus is saying that “before Abraham was, I AM.” This statement so infuriated the Jewish crowd they “took up stones to throw at Him (v. 59)” because they knew very well He had just proclaimed to be God and such proclamation was heresy and punishable by death. Even so, He continued with the proclamations but backed the proclamations up through many miracles never seen before, such as taming the weather, rebuking a fig tree, and rising from the dead.
What is developing is Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, God incarnate. So we see God declaring His graciousness and goodness to Moses in Exodus 34, then we see John chapter one declaring Jesus as God in the flesh while attributing the same characteristics of Exodus 34 to Jesus, and finally we see Jesus Himself exhibiting these characteristics throughout His earthly ministry. On many occasions we see Jesus healing the deaf, the blind, and the lame; we see Him raising the dead and casting out demons; we even see Him forgiving the sins of many, including tax collectors and prostitutes. What’s more, we see Jesus proclaim that He came to give us eternal life and a life that is more than abundant (see John 3:16 and 10:10b). So Jesus is exampling the very character of God, the very same character of God we see in the Old Testament as expressed in Exodus 34.
So as we return to the title of this paper, “Is Grace in the Old Testament,” we can emphatically proclaim yes, grace is in the Old Testament in very clear form in the text itself but further verified through the life and example of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God.
God was mean in the Old Testament but in the New Testament He’s different, He’s mellowed out. We’ve all heard this or something like it said more times than we can count. In fact, in my “Gaining Love for the Hebrew Scripture” class, our professor, Dr. Ron Allen, even stated that our current Christian culture still associates Moses with the Law and thus, they consider Moses “bad.”[2] Granted, Dr. Allen was trying to impress a question upon the student’s thinking, is this true? Asked another way, was grace introduced for the first time in the New Testament? Was there no evidence of grace in the Old Testament?
We’ll begin our brief exploration of this with the following lengthy quote:
Now the Lord descended in a cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. Then he said, “If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”
And He said: “Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.” (Exodus 34:5-10, NKJV.)
A lengthy but revealing quote, not only is God “conversing” with Moses, a mere man, the Lord (Yahweh) is also establishing a covenant with him and the people of Israel. Eugene Peterson renders verse six thusly: “God, God, a God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient—so much love, so deeply true—loyal in love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.”[3] These quotes hardly describe a God Who is always angry or full of wrath; rather, they describe a Father Who is deeply in love with His children and Who wants the very best for them.
Two words from verse six are especially insightful. The first word is “gracious” which comes from the Hebrew word hanan which means “to pardon or show mercy,” or even express “generosity, a gift from the heart; God especially is the source of undeserved favor.”[4] So while the people did not earn favor or any special gift from God, He was willing to grant them favor anyway. In fact, consider the events described in verses eight and nine. Moses says, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord…go among us.” And how does God respond to this stiff-necked people? He remains among them, He doesn’t snuff them out, turn His back on them or even simply ignore them; He makes a covenant with them and promises to do marvels such as had not been seen before.
An interesting phrase is “stiff-necked people” in verse nine. It first occurs in Exodus 32:9 and refers to “the stubbornness of the people who refused to follow the ways of God.”[5] Stubbornness connotes the thought that the people felt their ways were better than God’s ways; hence, they were prideful. “Pride is the inherent sin of man, and yet it is of all sins the most foolish,” stated Charles Spurgeon.[6] But interestingly in verse 11 we see Moses intervening for the people of Israel via intercessory prayer. Then in verse 14 we read the stunning account that “the Lord relented.” God intended this all along but needed to draw Moses through this process.[7] This process leads to the passage quoted above from Exodus 34 where God reveals His gracious nature, or perhaps better stated His merciful nature.
The second interesting word from verse six is “goodness” from the Hebrew word chesed. This word has the basic meaning of “loyal love” or “steadfast love; it refers to God’s loyalty and faithfulness to His covenant.”[8]
Combining the meaning of these two words we come to the encouraging conclusion that God is granting undeserved favor to His people in such a way that He intends to be loyal to that covenant of favor; and since God cannot lie (see Titus 1:2) this is a covenant, or promise, He is not going to break. In fact, this is a promise that has been fulfilled and is continually being fulfilled in and through Jesus Christ (see John 1:16-17 and Col. 2:9-10).
While there are other occurrences exhibiting grace in the Old Testament, particularly in God’s dealings with Abraham and King David, we will now depart to the New Testament and the first chapter of the Gospel of John. There are two verses of interest for this particular study:
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace (John 1:14 and 16, NKJV).
Consider that verse 14 boldly proclaims that Jesus is “full of grace and truth;” then also consider that God says the same thing of Himself back in Exodus 34:6. Further consider that Jesus says of Himself that “I and the Father are one” in John 10:30 and in John 14:9 Jesus declares that “he who has seen Me has seen the Father.” There is definitely a theme developing, however, here are more examples to consider.
Recall Exodus 3:14 where God proclaims to Moses that He, God, is I AM. Fast-forward again to the Gospel of John where Jesus refers to Himself as I AM on seven occasions (see John 6:35, 41, 48, and 51; 8:12; 10:7, 9 and 11 and 14; 11:25; 14:6; and 15:1 and 5). So Jesus, by boldly stating that He is I AM is claiming external existence, thus, He was proclaiming to be God Himself.[9] In fact, in the I AM statement found in John 8:58, Jesus is saying that “before Abraham was, I AM.” This statement so infuriated the Jewish crowd they “took up stones to throw at Him (v. 59)” because they knew very well He had just proclaimed to be God and such proclamation was heresy and punishable by death. Even so, He continued with the proclamations but backed the proclamations up through many miracles never seen before, such as taming the weather, rebuking a fig tree, and rising from the dead.
What is developing is Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, God incarnate. So we see God declaring His graciousness and goodness to Moses in Exodus 34, then we see John chapter one declaring Jesus as God in the flesh while attributing the same characteristics of Exodus 34 to Jesus, and finally we see Jesus Himself exhibiting these characteristics throughout His earthly ministry. On many occasions we see Jesus healing the deaf, the blind, and the lame; we see Him raising the dead and casting out demons; we even see Him forgiving the sins of many, including tax collectors and prostitutes. What’s more, we see Jesus proclaim that He came to give us eternal life and a life that is more than abundant (see John 3:16 and 10:10b). So Jesus is exampling the very character of God, the very same character of God we see in the Old Testament as expressed in Exodus 34.
So as we return to the title of this paper, “Is Grace in the Old Testament,” we can emphatically proclaim yes, grace is in the Old Testament in very clear form in the text itself but further verified through the life and example of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God.
End Notes:
[1] The Tender Commandments; Mehl, R., Multnomah Publishers, Sisters, OR, 1998; p. 15.
[2] Quoted from the lecture given the evening of November 7, 2008 at Grace Seminary of the Northwest.
[3] The Message, Peterson, E., NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO., 2002.
[4] Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary, Thomas Nelson Publishers; Nashville, TN, 1996.
[5] Nelson’s NKJV Study Bible, Tommy Nelson, Inc., Nashville, TN; 1997; p. 158.
[6] Sermons of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, Volume VI; Funk & Wagnells Company, London, p. 78. (Note, there is no date in Vol. VI, however, Vol. V has the date April 1859.)
[7] Nelson’s NKJV Study Bible, Tommy Nelson, Inc., Nashville, TN; 1997; p. 158.
[8] Ibid.; p. 161.
[9] Ibid.; p. 1779.
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