Thoughts and Observations

May 19th, 2006 | by Scott |

From a year of studying the Old Testament:

  1. We often view God as Creator in the past tense.  I’m afraid that we approach those initial 6 days as the totality of His creating.  But there is so much that He is still doing.
  2. I’m struck by the cyclization of the Israelite people: from Exile to Exodus to Establishing to Establishment/Evil back to Exile.  I don’t have this fleshed out completely, but I believe there is much warning for us in that.
  3. You can preach Jesus from every single book of the OT, a worthwhile study of the enormity of “The Word.”
  4. God and the Israelites were not on the same page when it came to the temple.
  5. God and the Israelites were not on the same page when it came to the nation.
  6. God and the Israelites were usually not on the same page.
  7. I wonder how often we are on the same page with God.
  8. The Prophets may well be the most misinterpreted segment of Scripture.  Over and over, preparing my sermons, I saw other preachers drawing parallels between Israel and the United States.  This is a flawed, and ultimately, unhealthy exegesis.  The modern day parallel is between Israel and the church.
  9. All institutions will fall.  All that remains will be those faithful to Him.
  10. God loves the poor and the forgotten.  He really loves them.
  11. God is angered when we ignore the poor and forgotten.
  12. God is angered when we give our allegiance to anything over and above Him.
  13. He is so incredibly patient.
  14. Don’t be on the wrong side when His patience abates, however.  The “Day of the Lord” is a frightful thing for the idolatrous and oppressive.
  15. God is as graceful in the Old Testament as He is in the New.
  16. Jesus was, and is, the ultimate in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
  17. Jesus would ultimately turn upside down the Israelite notions of Kingdom, Nation, Rule, Law, Politics, Temple, Sabbath and Community.
  18. I believe He often does the same thing with our 21st Century Western notions of those things as well.
  19. While He was, and is, King, in the minds of many He was the anti-King.
  20. Reading the Old Testament with Messianic expectancy is a beautiful under-taking.
  21. Our stubborn refusal to regularly take spiritual inventory of our own lives should slow us from being too condescending to the immorality of the Jewish people.
  22. He is God.

I have so many more thoughts, but that’s enough for now.  What thoughts do you have?

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