Paul Loves the Old Testament
My friend Paul Caspers loves the Old Testament & waxes eloquently as to why. Well worth the read below...
I was reading this morning from The Daily Bible
. I'm currently around 586 B.C., that's when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar finally captured Jerusalem and killed most of the remaining people, took 4,600 into exile, and left behind only the extremely poor with a puppet governor and the prophet Jeremiah. So, in the months leading up to the final destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah tells the people, the army, and the king that if they will surrender themselves to the king of Babylon then they will not be killed. However, he warns, if they stay in Jerusalem, then they are all going to die by the sword, pestilence, or plague. (Jeremiah 38 is the particular passage that caught my attention this morning.)
Now, it struck me that this is a message I've heard before somewhere else in the Bible. Surrender to the king and live, or try to preserve your present state and die. ..."For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it," (Luke 9:24, see also Matthew 16:25 and Mark 8:35). Maybe the parallel is lost on you; I never saw it until today. You see, Nebuchadnezzar was known as "the king of kings" the LORD himself calls him by this name through His prophets. The God of Israel was telling his stubborn, rebellious, falsely-religious, idolatrous people that to surrender their lives to the king of kings was their way of salvation. It was time for them to give up on all the trappings of being God's people that they had clung to and spend some time in exile in a foreign land, but their was always the promise of restoration to the land and to their corporate relationship with the LORD.
The people, by and large, would have none of it. They imprisoned Jeremiah and sought his slow death, multiple times, but God preserved His man. Eventually, the army of the king of kings arrived at the gates, and time was up for Jerusalem. The king with most of his remaining soldiers and officials tried to sneak out of the city. They were all put to death except the king; his eyes were put out and he was taken to Babylon and thrown in a prison until his death...just as the prophet Ezekiel had said he would years earlier. Everyone else who remained in the city, with very little exception, died of starvation from the siege, disease, or the very indiscriminate slaughter by the Babylonians. ...for the rest of the details you can read it yourself, I've departed from my point.
This is the Gospel in type and shadow. It isn't as clear as the bronze serpent that was lifted up and anyone who looked upon it was saved from the vipers' poison. It isn't as specific as the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah. But here, in the destruction of Jerusalem, is the gospel. Give up all that you know...all that you think life is...and follow the movement of God into a land you do not know...into a life you cannot comprehend. It is by surrendering the ground you seek to hold and submitting to be in service to another that life is found. And, there is a time of full restoration and freedom coming. In the history, that meant that Jerusalem was going to fall, God was preserving his remnant in foreign lands in service to other peoples, and eventually he would draw his people back and restore the land of Israel to their political control.
Eternally, all people are born living a life that is not really life...a life destined to end in starvation, violence, disease, or otherwise. There is no future for us here. There is only true Life--eternal, full, and free--if we will follow the One True God into a new kind of citizenship. If we will admit that we have destroyed our lives and relationship with God by both what we have done and failed to do, if we can recognize with His help that all that we hold dear is worthless junk, if we will believe that the true King of Kings has come...that Jesus is God's Anointed One, the Son of God, God Himself (think on it too much and you might bake your noodle)...and if we will confess that truth with our mouths and our lives, then we will live. We will live as citizens of Heaven in this ungodly world until the time comes for the full restoration of God's reign on earth.
The time is coming when the King of Kings will come to the gate. It will be too late for those refusing to surrender to escape His coming wrath. There is no injustice in it, in a thousand different ways they been warned. But those who have submitted to the King will be brought into His kingdom to enjoy His goodness and prosperity and even to reign with Him...forever.
I love the Old Testament because the gospel is there. Believe it.
- Paul Caspers | Paul's Place for Saying Stuff
I was reading this morning from The Daily Bible
. I'm currently around 586 B.C., that's when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar finally captured Jerusalem and killed most of the remaining people, took 4,600 into exile, and left behind only the extremely poor with a puppet governor and the prophet Jeremiah. So, in the months leading up to the final destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah tells the people, the army, and the king that if they will surrender themselves to the king of Babylon then they will not be killed. However, he warns, if they stay in Jerusalem, then they are all going to die by the sword, pestilence, or plague. (Jeremiah 38 is the particular passage that caught my attention this morning.)Now, it struck me that this is a message I've heard before somewhere else in the Bible. Surrender to the king and live, or try to preserve your present state and die. ..."For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it," (Luke 9:24, see also Matthew 16:25 and Mark 8:35). Maybe the parallel is lost on you; I never saw it until today. You see, Nebuchadnezzar was known as "the king of kings" the LORD himself calls him by this name through His prophets. The God of Israel was telling his stubborn, rebellious, falsely-religious, idolatrous people that to surrender their lives to the king of kings was their way of salvation. It was time for them to give up on all the trappings of being God's people that they had clung to and spend some time in exile in a foreign land, but their was always the promise of restoration to the land and to their corporate relationship with the LORD.
The people, by and large, would have none of it. They imprisoned Jeremiah and sought his slow death, multiple times, but God preserved His man. Eventually, the army of the king of kings arrived at the gates, and time was up for Jerusalem. The king with most of his remaining soldiers and officials tried to sneak out of the city. They were all put to death except the king; his eyes were put out and he was taken to Babylon and thrown in a prison until his death...just as the prophet Ezekiel had said he would years earlier. Everyone else who remained in the city, with very little exception, died of starvation from the siege, disease, or the very indiscriminate slaughter by the Babylonians. ...for the rest of the details you can read it yourself, I've departed from my point.
This is the Gospel in type and shadow. It isn't as clear as the bronze serpent that was lifted up and anyone who looked upon it was saved from the vipers' poison. It isn't as specific as the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah. But here, in the destruction of Jerusalem, is the gospel. Give up all that you know...all that you think life is...and follow the movement of God into a land you do not know...into a life you cannot comprehend. It is by surrendering the ground you seek to hold and submitting to be in service to another that life is found. And, there is a time of full restoration and freedom coming. In the history, that meant that Jerusalem was going to fall, God was preserving his remnant in foreign lands in service to other peoples, and eventually he would draw his people back and restore the land of Israel to their political control.
Eternally, all people are born living a life that is not really life...a life destined to end in starvation, violence, disease, or otherwise. There is no future for us here. There is only true Life--eternal, full, and free--if we will follow the One True God into a new kind of citizenship. If we will admit that we have destroyed our lives and relationship with God by both what we have done and failed to do, if we can recognize with His help that all that we hold dear is worthless junk, if we will believe that the true King of Kings has come...that Jesus is God's Anointed One, the Son of God, God Himself (think on it too much and you might bake your noodle)...and if we will confess that truth with our mouths and our lives, then we will live. We will live as citizens of Heaven in this ungodly world until the time comes for the full restoration of God's reign on earth.
The time is coming when the King of Kings will come to the gate. It will be too late for those refusing to surrender to escape His coming wrath. There is no injustice in it, in a thousand different ways they been warned. But those who have submitted to the King will be brought into His kingdom to enjoy His goodness and prosperity and even to reign with Him...forever.
I love the Old Testament because the gospel is there. Believe it.
- Paul Caspers | Paul's Place for Saying Stuff
