The Old Testament Summarized

You'll have to take my word for it, but I had already prepared my lesson for this Sunday, September 25th, at which time I'll do my best to summarize the Old Testament. I probably could have saved myself significant time and effort if I had just read ahead a couple of days to Nehemiah 9:7-37.

In 31 verses, Ezra described the history of the people of Israel, from the covenant between Abram and God through their current situation as "slaves in the land you gave our forefathers" (v36). Ezra reminded the people of the promises they had made throughout their history and their almost-constant falling away from that promise. I'll have some major Old Testament themes in my presentation on Sunday, and I plan to discuss them in the blog next week, but believe me, this will be a major one, one I have commented upon frequently in the past.

Another of my themes will be the simple observation that things haven't changed at all in the modern world. We're just as much slaves to sin as the people of Israel were. We still cede the harvest that God promised to Adam to the "kings you have placed over us," the modern-day idols that we put between ourselves and God. As comforting as it would be to say to ourselves "Tut, tut, people of Israel, thank the Lord WE'RE not like that today," well, that's just not true. Anytime you find yourself saying those words to yourself, I kindly refer you to this brief parable of Jesus, pretty high on my list of favorite parables (I think it came in at #2 when I taught a class on them). The only thing that's changed is that we have many more opportunities to sin.

In case you can't tell, I'm very much looking forward to my presentation on Sunday--in many ways, it really wrote itself (to the extent that we really believe that), usually a pretty good sign to me that I'm on the right track. Ezra was reminding the people how far they had fallen because of their disobedience, and the contrition the people showed was real and genuine. At one point (Nehemiah 7:10), Nehemiah stated "Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." It's a small mention, but it was a precursor to Christ's message of forgiveness and redemption through him, and in case you didn't already know (but I'm sure you did), that's the major theme of the NEW Testament.

Scott