Reading

Getting Into 1 Chronicles without Getting Stuck: Or, How to Read a Genealogy

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“Just skip the first 9 chapters in 1 Chronicles and start in chapter 10.”

This is something I’ve both said and done. And yet in this post, I want to return to 1 Chronicles 1–9 to show you how important these chapters are for understanding Chronicles and the theme of royal priesthood in the Bible.

For those reading the Bible for the first time or the fiftieth time, the likelihood of reading 1 Chronicles 1–9 with profit is challenging, to say the least. Yes, these chapters do include the cottage industry known as Jabez’s Prayer (1 Chr. 4:9–10). But appeals to that blessed man, whose name means pain—probably a prophecy for the way his life would be misused by 20th C. Christians—only confirms how hard it is to read these chapters with anything but the most general profit—i.e., God is Lord of history. (For a proper interpretation of Jabez’s prayer, read this).

Our approach to 1 Chronicles 1–9 changes, however, when we discover (1) the structure of this passage and (2) its purpose in the book of 1–2 Chronicles. Assisting in both of these endeavors, James T. Sparks has written The Chronicler’s Genealogies: Towards an Understanding of 1 Chronicles 1–9.

In Sparks’ research, he argues for the intentional placement of this genealogy and how it works in this book. After correcting a few modern errors on reading genealogies (check back for a post on that point), Sparks identifies a chiastic structure in these nine chapters that focuses on the cultic personnel (i.e., the priests). Continue reading →

Seeing Christ in All of Scripture: A Few Words from Herman Bavinck

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enoc-valenzuela-WJolaNbXt90-unsplashThus the whole revelation of the Old Testament converges upon Christ,
not upon a new law, or doctrine, or institution, but upon the person of Christ.
— Herman Bavinck —

As Herman Bavinck closes out a section on special revelation in Our Reasonable Faith, he reminds us that the goal of Scripture is not a law, nor a religious belief or practice, nor even a gospel, as in an impersonal message of good news. Rather, the unified goal of Scripture is a single person—Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

In recent years (and for all of church history), there has been debate about how much Christ we can find in the Old Testament. This sort of thinking, one that sets limits on how much of Jesus we can see in the Old Testament, seems fundamentally at odds with the tenor of Scripture. Yes, we cannot turn every word, object, or event into a mystical revelation of Christ. But as Christ and his church is the mystery once hidden now revealed, the canon of Scripture leads us to see how every parcel of the Old Testament belongs to Christ and brings us to Christ.

For Bavinck, this is exactly how he sums up the Bible, as he states, “in the Old Testament everything led up to Christ,” and “in the New Testament everything is derived from Him.” Truly this is what is at stake when we, a priori, set limits on seeing Christ in all the Scriptures. Here’s the full text of Bavinck’s conclusion, Continue reading →

Genesis 24 and God’s Plan for the World

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sylwia-bartyzel-9217-unsplashGenesis 24 is the longest chapter in Genesis. And rather than recounting some revelation about God or some aspect of his covenant with Abraham, it spins a tail of how Isaac got a wife. Indeed, the longest narrative event in Genesis is a love story, one that seems Dickens-like in its profusion of extraneous information.

Certainly, as the promises of God are given to Abraham and his offspring, the marriage of his son is no small matter. Yet, it seems as though the account of the servant traveling back to Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac is prolix detour from the rest of Genesis. At least, it is not as crisp as the equally-important, but shorter accounts of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) and the meeting with Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18–24).

So why the long drama of finding Isaac a wife? My answer is that this story reflects God’s story for the world, and the long-time-in-coming union between God’s beloved son with his bride. Let’s consider. Continue reading →

Reading the Bible Better in 2019

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The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
— Psalm 19:7–11 —

On the eve of 2019, I want to share a new podcast that our church will host in the new year. In conjunction with our church-wide Bible reading plan, which is based on Robert Murray McCheyne’s classic plan, we are going to offer a weekly podcast that answers questions from the Bible and helps us to read the Bible . . . . and read the Bible better.

If this blog has been helpful to you over the last few years, perhaps this podcast will also be of interest. My hope is to help our church and those who listen in to read Scripture more and better—which I might define as seeing Christ more clearly and more fully in all of Scripture. As Jesus taught his disciples, all the Scriptures point to him (Luke 24:27; John 5:39). Yet, often we can miss how Scripture points to Christ.

For some time, I have found the most helpful books and teachers are the ones who help me see more of Christ from the whole Bible. In this blog, I have sought to share their observations and some of my own with you. In recent months, I have written very little on this blog as I’ve been finishing up a manuscript on a biblical theology priesthood.

That manuscript will be finished, Lord willing, by the end of January. After that I hope to resume more writing here. Until then, and after, I pray this podcast will serve as a catalyst for conversations about Christ from all Scripture and will complement the biblical-theological writing found on this blog.

If you are interested in listening to this podcast, you can find a button on the right side of my website, a webpage on our church website, and (in time perhaps) we’ll be able to link this podcast to Apple or wherever you find your podcasts.

As the hours tick down in 2018, let me encourage you to make plans to read the Bible in 2019. If you don’t have a plan for reading, consider using McCheyne’s reading plan. If you do have a plan, let me encourage you to read the Bible in community—ideally, in your local church. And if this blog or podcast can be of help to you in reading the Bible and reading it with an eye to Christ, then let me know some of the questions you have as you read Scripture. In print or on air, I will seek to answer them, as we seek to know more of Christ together.

Indeed, God’s Word is an incredible gift to us. May we see it as the treasure it is and shape our lives to read it and read it better, so that our wet be changed by it and our triune God would receive the glory he deserves!

Soli Deo Gloria, ds

The Lord’s Supper as the Origin of Christ-Centered Hermeneutics

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jesus.jpegThere are many arguments for reading the Bible with Christ at the center. But where do they come from? Are they the product of biblical interpreters? Or is there a source found in Scripture itself?

In answer to this question, the best place to see the Bible’s Christ-centeredness may come from Christ himself. Not only does he say explicitly that all Scripture speaks of him (John 5:39), but in the Passover he interprets the most important event in Israel’s history as his own. As Alastair Roberts and Andrew Wilson note, “Jesus is specifically identifying the unleavened bread as representing his body, . . . and he is telling his Jewish followers to celebrate the Passover in memory of him, not just their liberation from slavery in Egypt” (29). Continue reading →

Feeding on the Lord: So Much More Than a Metaphor

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breadHunger. It’s one of the most basic of human desires. And in the Bible it is one of the most important concepts related to salvation, faith, and one’s experience with God.

Physically, hunger and our attempts to fill our stomaches are experiences that unite all mankind. While experienced differently in famine-afflicted Africa or affluency-afflicted America, an “empty stomach” is something that speaks to everyone.  We cannot go without food, and thus we search for something to fill us up and give us life.

Spiritually, the language of food, famine, eating, nourishment, and emptiness fills the Bible. From the plethora of fruit trees given to Adam and Eve in the Garden, to the Manna in the wilderness, to the loaves and fishes that Jesus provided for his followers, God has provided physical sustenance. At the same time, food has been a source of destruction—sin entered the world through eating the forbidden fruit; Esau lost his inheritance when he chose stew over his birthright, and Paul says that men ate and drank destruction on themselves when they wrongly ate the Lord’s Supper.

So clearly, food plays a key role in our physical and spiritual pursuit of God. At the same time, Scripture often speaks of eating metaphorically. Psalm 34:8 reads, “Taste and see that the Lord is God.” And Psalm 36:8 says that the children of man “feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.” Apparently, our experience with food—physical bread, meat, and drink—is meant by God to teach us what it means to feed on the Lord and drink from his streams of life.

Still, I suspect that for all we know about food, we may struggle to understand what it means to feed on the Lord. If God is Spirit (John 4:24), then how do we feed on him? And if he is invisible, where do we go to find fullness in him?

Just this last week, I preached a message on feeding on the Lord. My repeated command: Feed on the goodness and grace of God. But how? I can imagine someone saying, “That’s sounds great, but what does that mean?” So here is my answer to that question: What does it mean to feed on the God who is invisible? Continue reading →

Finding Unity in The Minor Prophets

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roman-kraft-136249-unsplash.jpgHow do we put the Minor Prophets together?

That has a been a topic of discussion on this blog and at our church over the last few months. As we’ve preached Jonah, Nahum, and (now) Haggai, we’ve paid careful attention the literary structure of the Twelve. With help from Paul House and David Peterson and Jim Hamilton, we’ve considered how the Twelve is put together and how that arrangement influences our reading and interpretation.

Today, we continue that study with a fewbook qualifications and theological considerations from Richard A. Fuhr and Gary Yates. In their recent book, The Message of the Twelve, these two Liberty professors provide a reading of the Minor Prophets that finds unity in the “theological message . . . that emerges when these books are read as a collective whole” (42). In this approach, they engage with the differences between the Hebrew Bible (i.e., the Masoretic Text) and the  Septuagint (LXX), the chronology of the books, the catchwords that may contribute to their order, and the overall theological message that unites these books. While more reserved in their approach than Paul House and his plot line reading of the Twelve, their theological approach helps identify some key themes in the book.

In order, we will consider some of their observations, which help us read the Minor Prophets as a theological whole. Continue reading →

Reading the Bible Better: Finding Unity in the Book of the Twelve

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tanner-mardis-612668-unsplash.jpgWhat are the Minor Prophets about? Should we read them together, as one unified book? Or should we read them as twelve discreet books, written (Nahum) or spoken (the other 11) by twelve different prophets?

These are questions worth asking when we study the Book of the Twelve. And as our church has studied Jonah, is starting Nahum, and will soon look at Haggai, I wanted to share another post on ways we find unity in the Twelve. Already, I’ve shared the helpful work of Paul House. If you haven’t read that, start there and then come back here.

In this post I will look at the work Old Testament scholar David L. Petersen (not to be confused with David G. Peterson, the New Testament scholar) and biblical theologian Jim Hamilton. In David Peterson’s survey of research (“A Book of Twelve?” in Hearing the Book of the Twelve, ed. James D. Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney, pp. 1–10), he lists five evidences of unity in the Twelve. And in Jim Hamilton’s book God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, he shows how each book is connected to the others through various catchwords and themes. We’ll look at each of these studies to better read the Bible and better understand the unity of the Twelve. Continue reading →

Reading the Minor Prophets Together: Ten Observations from Paul House’s ‘The Unity of the Twelve’

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12By 1990 there was no consensus on the structure of the Minor Prophets. Observing this fact, Paul House, in his book The Unity of the Twelve, surveyed the way scholars looked to chronology and regional location as possible ways “the Twelve” were ordered. Such approaches were significantly lacking, however, and so he concluded: “It is probable that historical research has not successfully uncovered the structure of the Twelve because that structure is governed by literary principles” (67).

In conversation with literary critics and scholars employing methods of canonical criticism, House shows why we should read the Twelve as more than 12 similar but separated oracles. Rather, by examining the structure and plot of the Twelve we can come to a clearer understanding of the unified message that the Minor Prophets is seeking to convey.

As others have observed in the Psalms, there is an intentional ordering in the Minor Prophets, better termed The Twelve. Historically, these 12 books are always found together and typically in the same order (63). For that reason, a unified study of their message is valid and valuable. And Paul House’s book, though technical, is an important for helping read and understand the Minor Prophets.

To get a sense of his argument and how the twelve prophets are unified, let me share some of his observations—first on the structure of the Twelve, then on the plot of the Twelve. Continue reading →