"Heart" in the Old Testament

1. The first step in understanding what the term “heart” (‏לב or ‏ לבב) means in the OT is that, at its core, refers to the organ of a person’s internal life or reality.

• Gen 17:17- “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, ‘Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’”
• Gen 24:45- “Before I had finished speaking in my heart, behold, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder, and went down to the spring and drew, and I said to her, ‘Please let me drink.’”

This encompasses intellect, emotions and will. Out of 867 total occurrences, Beale notes that the term refers to intellectual activity 205 times, emotional activity 166 times and volitional activity 195 times.

• Intellectual: 1 Kings 10:24 “All the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart.”
• Emotional: Gen 42:28- Then he said to his brothers, “My money has been returned, and behold, it is even in my sack.” And their hearts sank, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?”. See also Is 30:29 “You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, And gladness of heart as when one marches to the sound of the flute, To go to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.”
• Volitional: Is 32:4 “The mind (‏‏לבב) of the hasty will discern the truth, And the tongue of the stammerers will hasten to speak clearly.”

2. The OT is very clear that God is in control of the human heart in each of its dimensions (intellectual, emotional, volitional) to do with as He wills. This is clear in the Exodus account of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.

• Ex 4:21 “The LORD said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.’”

The Exodus narrative details this prediction of what YHWH would do with Pharaoh followed by a consistent hardening of Pharaoh’s heart through each of the ten plagues.
God is not merely sovereign in when it comes to a judicial hardening; the OT also views Him as responsible for the heart having a right orientation to God:

• Ezek 36:26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

While God is ultimately sovereign in determining the orientation of the heart, this is fully compatible with mankind being responsible before God for their thoughts, decisions and actions:

• Deut 15:7 “If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother”

3. The heart, in its intellectual, emotional and volitional dimensions, is the organ through which a person’s spiritual relationship with God is governed. It is this three-dimensional internal reality through which a person is oriented to God, either rightly or wrongly. An improper orientation to God has already been seen in the example of Pharaoh’s hard heart. Moses, in several places, exhorts Israel to be rightly related to God with reference to the heart:

• Deut 6:5-6 “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.”
• Deut 8:2 “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”

As it applies to one’s relationship with God, the heart is to be totally and completely devoted to God. The Psalmist prays that His heart would be undivided in love for God:

• Ps 86:11-12 “Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And will glorify Your name forever.”

The wholeness of heart and right relationship with God that is an internal reality in the heart is expected to spill out in outward obedience to God as is seen in David’s prayer to God on behalf of Solomon:

• 1 Chr 29:19 “and give to my son Solomon a perfect heart to keep Your commandments, Your testimonies and Your statutes, and to do them all, and to build the temple, for which I have made provision.”

However, it was precisely a division of heart or lack of “wholeness” of heart that lead to Solomon’s spiritual downfall:

• 1 Kgs 11:4 “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been.”

However, God foretells a time when He would, through the Spirit, orient His whole people’s hearts to Himself properly with the corresponding outworking of covenantal obedience:

• Jer 31:33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

4. If 1-3 above are true, then it follows Biblically that when God acts to bring a person into right relationship with Himself by acting internally on their heart, it has a corresponding result that transforms a person intellectually, emotionally and volitionally. The prophecy in Ezekiel 36 that God would give His people a new heart of flesh indicates spiritual transformation. If the heart consists of an intellectual, emotional and volitional component then it follows that all three will be renewed when God acts to give people a new heart. Those who have been spiritually transformed and given a new heart should think about the world and their life differently. Their emotions will be correspondingly affected so that they will respond to God with the proper emotional response. In addition, it should affect the way a person lives their lives and the decisions that they make.
When these three dimensions are combined, it results in an internal life that is wholly committed to God and the cause of His glory and kingdom on the Earth. Because we are whole beings and not merely a body a soul loosely united, the transformation of a person’s internal reality will result in a life that manifests outward obedience to God that is properly motivated by the heart.

• Ps 119:34 “Give me understanding, that I may observe Your law and keep it with all my heart”

Mark Driscoll on CNN

Mark Driscoll talks straight about sex and Jesus on CNN with D.L. Hughley.

Tortured for Christ

By all accounts, Christianity has been a religion of suffering from its very inception. It was birthed out of the ashes of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion and was spread through the sufferings and eventual violent deaths of all but one of the 13 Apostles. The Apostle Paul himself wrote of Christian suffering in Philippians 1:19, “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake….” In the second century, it was the noted Father Tertullian who wrote that, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

While the persecution in the early centuries of the Church was certainly fierce, our modern period, with the Twentieth Century in particular, have seen the worst persecution of Christians on a global scale. The rise of the Totalitarian states and world Communism at the dawn of the Twentieth Century particularly signaled troubled times ahead for the Church who desired to remain faithful to their profession of Christ and His mission in the World. It was into this milieu that Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor in Romania, began to minister. Because of his profession of faith and ministry involvement with the underground Church in the Soviet Bloc countries, he was imprisoned for a total for fourteen years and suffered intense periods of torture and solitary confinement. Eventually, his plight became known in the West and he was ransomed out of Romania so that he could be a spokesman for the suffering, underground Church worldwide. After leaving Romania, he recounted his experiences along with the vibrant faith of the underground Churches in his book Tortured for Christ. Three aspects of Wurmbrand’s testimony in this book particularly stuck me as lacking and needing work in my own life; first, the necessity of Christian suffering; second, the love of Christians for their enemies and third, the Gospel zeal that should be an enduring mark of every Christian.

As I read Wurmbrands portrayal his time of intense suffering under the Communists and the sufferings of his fellow Christians, I was struck not merely by their perseverance through suffering but their willingness to suffer. He wrote, “A man really believes not what he recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die for. The Christians of the underground Church have proved that they are willing to die for their faith.” Rather than deny Christ or remain private with their faith, the underground Christians in the Soviet countries were prepared to go public with their confession knowing full well that do to so was to invite prison, torture and likely death. How different is this from my faith, which is not really willing to suffer anything, let alone intense torture that could not have been conceived of even in the worst of nightmares? Yet, this is clearly the standard that the New Testament sets for followers of Christ. To follow Him is to take the way of the Cross. The path of suffering leading to the cross is not incidental to the Christian life, it IS the Christian life and is the main means by which God has appointed that the faith should spread. I pray that our faithful God would strengthen me individually and our Western Church corporate to be willing and eager to suffer in order to show the world the dazzling beauty of Jesus.

The Christians of the Underground Church were not only willing to suffer, they suffered in such a way that they have become a model for us of loving our enemies. At one point in the book Wurmbrand writes,

“I have seen Christians in Communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold- and praying with fervor for the Communists. This is humanly inexplicable! It is the love of Christ which was poured out in our hearts.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lists humble love for enemies as one of the marks of those who are truly a part of His New Creational rule. Such a mark is conspicuously absent from most of the Western Church and my life in particular. I want to see such a powerful demonstration of the Spirit’s power in my life and in the life of the Church here in the West but sadly we are so often consumed with our rights and we tend to cover our hatred for our enemies by calling it our “righteous indignation”. I desperately need God’s grace through His Spirit to produce this astonishing fruit that is so counter-cultural but so central to God’s purposes on Earth.

One of the astounding facets of Wurmbrand’s narrative is how zealous Soviet Christians were to tell of the grace of God through Jesus in their lives. In reality, both the suffering of those Eastern Christians and their passion to show Christ’s love to their enemies are ways in which the Gospel spread in the Soviet Bloc. However, their evangelism was not confined merely to this sort of “lifestyle evangelism”. They were very quick to want to be witnesses to the grace of God to the Communists. Wurmbrand writes of his own zeal for evangelism, “In the first days after my conversion, I felt that I would not be able to live any longer. Walking on the street, I felt a physical pain for every man and woman who passed by. It was like a knife in my heart, so burning was the question of whether or not he or she was saved.” In the midst of the suffering of the Communist nations, there was a blood earnestness about the work of evangelism and discipleship which is greatly lacking in my life. I greatly need God’s grace to push the reality of the Gospel deeper into my soul to feel this kind of passion and desire that Wurmbrand felt for the evangelism of the Communists around him.

Winter Life

This is our front walk in the process of being shoveled

This is our front walk when the shoveling was done!

As a native Southern Californian, this whole winter thing is still very new and strange even though it is our second winter in Chicago.  The sun-loving beach bum in me wants to revolt against staying indoors for the majority of 5 months of the year, not to mention all the snow shoveling and car cleaning that must take place.  However, in experiencing real seasons and real winter for the first time, I think there is a kind of natural rhythm that God has built into life by the seasons.  Winter is a time when God slows life down and we have more time to think and reflect.  If such seasons are used well, they can be profitable times of introspection, ministering the Gospel to my soul and greater reflection on the greatness of our God!  This runs totally contrary to how I'm wired as a white, Western, Southern-Californian male.  If it weren't for times like this, I might never stop for extended periods of time to slow down the pace of life.  So, while I'm still not a huge fan of dealing with winter in the frozen North, I'm learning to appreciate its beauty and God's grace through giving us each season of the year.  

Reflections on a Semester with Calvin

It looks as if for once in my life I'm ahead of the game.  While everyone who is (worthily) celebrating the 500th Anniversary of John Calvin's birth by reading through his Institutes of the Christian Religion is only beginning their work, I just completed reading through the Institutes for my Pastoral Ministry Apprenticeship.  In the spirit of the Calvin Quincentennial, I offer this reflection on my past semester with Calvin.

John Calvin was likely the greatest theological mind that God has brought the church since Augustine of Hippo. While many have recognized Calvin’s theological and exegetical brilliance, far less realize that he was also a deeply pastoral man whose heart beat for Christians to know God and live in covenant relationship with Him. This is evident all throughout his commentaries, which are not obscure, scientific observations on the Biblical texts in the ancient languages but incisive, careful exegesis combined with a pastor’s confidence that God’s Spirit authored the Scriptures so that we might know him. Such a concern is also evident in Calvin’s magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion, a work that Calvin intended to have the dual function of an apologia for the faith of the Protestants and an instruction for Christian on what being a Christian is all about. The Institutes is certainly a towering work of theology but it is not theology in the vein of dusty Scholasticism; it is theology that bleeds a passion for God and a passion for men to know Him and ascribe to Him the honor that He is due. Such is evident in the very first sentence of the Institutes, in I. i. 1., “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” After having spent the last semester with Calvin reading the Institutes, I can say that through this study Calvin has helped me to know God and myself more. Not only this, but Calvin lays God before us and in so doing allows us to understand ourselves better in His light. Therefore, I seek to lay out in this paper some reflections on how Calvin has helped me to know God and know myself better in the course of reading the Institutes of the Christian Religion. 

From the very beginning of the Institutes, Calvin is concerned to demonstrate God’s utter freedom and majesty. God is totally “other” and can in no way be sought out through mere human reason. Calvin writes in I. iv. 13.,

“In short, even if not all suffered under crass vices, or fell into open idolatries, yet there was no pure and approved religion, founded upon common understanding alone. For even though few persons did not share in the madness of the common herd, there remains the firm teaching of Paul that the wisdom of God is not understood by the princes of this world.”

In this way, Calvin rejects the entire scope of Medieval “Natural Theology” which found its ultimate expression in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Such a strong insistence on the transcendence of God can often have the negative effect of making God seem quite remote from humankind. However, the Triune God is not only transcendent, He is paradoxically very immanent and intimate with His people. Such is the importance of revelation. Everything that we know about God is what God chooses to reveal to us by means of His Word. Therefore Calvin writes, “since either the custom of the city or the agreement of tradition is too weak and frail and bond of piety to follow in worshiping God, it remains for God himself to give witness of himself from heaven.” Revelation is our lifeline to God and ultimately this revelation was given to us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, any knowledge of God must come through the working of the Spirit on a person’s life to allow them to see the glorious radiance of God in the person of Jesus.

While it is wonderful good news that the transcendent God makes Himself immanent through revelation in the living Word of His Son and the written Word that bears testimony to Him, Calvin also offers us caution about our knowledge of God. In I. xiii. 1. Calvin writes,

“For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us. Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.”

As Paul writes in 1 Cor 12:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Because God is transcendent and we are mere finite creatures, God must accommodate himself to our limited capacities for knowledge and understanding if he is to reveal anything of Himself to us. It seems that such an insight as this should lead us to great caution in how we do Theology. We don’t know God as He is in Himself, we know Him as He has accommodated Himself to us through revelation, the primary and fullest means of which is Jesus. The implication of this is that Jesus is central to revelation and to our ability to know God.

In addition, it was encouraging to see that Calvin understood the essence of what Piper calls “Christian Hedonism. He writes in I. xiv. 22., “It is to recognize that God has destined all things for our good and salvation but at the same time to feel his power and grace in ourselves and in the great benefits he has conferred upon us, and so bestir ourselves to trust, invoke, praise, and love him.” Here is contained the astounding truth that God’s work on our behalf is what bring Him the most glory. God destines all things for our good which displays his power in the creation and also invokes the response of love, trust and praise. So, in this way, when we are satisfied in God, God is most glorified.

In III. ii. Calvin deals with the topic of faith in a way that is more comprehensive and sweet to the Christian than I have seen anywhere else. He defines faith in III. ii. 7. As “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” It is this faith that God uses to unite us to Christ and which assures us that God is merciful and kind towards us. This kind of firm and confident assurance must be present in the life of a Christian as it is one of the primary marks of the Spirit’s work in a person.

However, this is not to say that in this “now/not yet” age that faith will not have its moments of doubt. While it is certainly true that doubt in faith should cause to always go back and examine ourselves to see whether we are truly in the faith. However, weak or doubting faith is not a sign that one is not a Christian; it is actually an assurance that one is indeed a Christian. Calvin writes, “He who, struggling with his own weakness, presses toward faith in his moments of anxiety is already in large part victorious.” So a faith that, despite its weakness and doubt, still moves toward Christ and longs for Him is actually a sign that ones faith is real and genuine.

Again, God knows the human frailty and weakness and sustains us with faith empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit so that we remain faithful to Him in confident assurance of His grace towards us throughout our life. However, this sign of God’s goodness towards us is not merely an internal reality, it is something that is signified for us through the two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Calvin’s understanding, particularly of the Supper, is a beautiful exposition of God’s love and care for us. Calvin writes of this in IV. xviii. 19., “the Supper should be a sort of continual food on which Christ spiritually feeds the household of his believers.” It is a visible sign of the invisible reality that Christ flesh and blood are our true food which nourish us and give us life which will fully be experienced in His presence for eternity. So, as the Church gathers to partake of the Lord’s Supper, Christ is there present through His Word, continuing the flow of grace towards us that was begun with His sacrificial, atoning death on the Cross.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that Calvin does as points fall into a sort of Platonic dualism by which he seems to indicate that the “body” is evil and the “spirit” is good. Such dualisms have had a powerful influence on Western Society and the Church in particular. So for a man such as Calvin, who got so many things right in his theology and understanding of the Scriptures, such accommodations to the culture should serve as a warning that there are “gaps” in our theology where we have unwittingly become entangled with the philosophy of the age and not with the doctrine from the Word of God.

So much more could be recounted in spending a whole semester soaking in the God entranced theology of a man such as John Calvin. Space hinders me from discussing Calvin’s Trinitarian vision, his account of the substitutionary atonement, his vision of the Church that is so desperately needed in our Western, individualistic society and his stunning accounting of God’s sovereignty both over the entire creation in general and in the salvation of man more specifically. If his theological work were studied more closely and heeded more carefully, it could have the same radical, powerful impact on the Church of the 21st century as it had in the 16th century when Calvin lived and wrote.

Fiction Family

Over the past couple of years, I've really appreciated Nickel Creek's folk influenced style and Jon Foreman's solo work on his 4 EP's for each season.  So how stoked was I when I found out that Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek and Jon Foreman had teamed up to record a side-project together!  They're going to be at the NCC Union on Friday Jan. 16th and I can't wait to enjoy this show.  In the meantime, enjoy this preview music video...


Fiction Family - When She's Near from ATO Records on Vimeo.

Sons of Thunder

My wife, Katie, and I are huge fans of the worship music that comes out of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  The music has a pretty awesome Seattle/indie feel to it.  The Church has made available quite a few live MP3's available for download on their website.  Check out this sample of the amazing song "Redemption" from their band Sons of Thunder.  

"

Together for the Gospel- Christmas Edition

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

What is Christmas?

That's Christmas! from andy pearce on Vimeo.

If you're tired of the commerciality and exploitation of the Christmas season and you've ever wondered what Christmas is all about... you should check out this video.

The Role of Reason in Coming to Faith

For my New Testament Theology class at Wheaton with Dr. Nicholas Perrin, we were recently asked to do an online bulletin board post and interact with other students in regard to the role of reason in coming to faith.  My professor was looking for some integrated theological thinking from the New Testament that bears on this issue.  So, for what its worth, here's what I posted on the Wheaton bulletin board for my class.    

At the outset, I believe that it is important to first lay down a definition of what I mean by the concept of “reason” as I approach this discussion. Although the concept has been weakened in our postmodern climate, reason is often understood in terms of the autonomous reason that grew out of the period of the Enlightenment. In this case, reason is a universal principle to which all of life must conform and by which all things are judged, even the concept of “God”. Such a concept of reason has no place within a Christian worldview shaped by the Bible. The New Testament makes it clear that all things are created by and for Christ and that He continues moment by moment to uphold the created order by the word of his power (Col 1:15-17 & Jn 1:3). So, there are no universal principles at work in the world that do not have their source and continuance constantly upheld by Jesus.

While Christians should reject the autonomous reason of the Enlightenment, there is a Biblical place for reason in New Testament Theology. This definition of “reason” is the rational faculty or cognition that human beings possess by virtue of their being created in the Image of God. However, the problem with this reason is that, as Paul points out in Rom 3:9-20 and 1 Cor 1:21 & 2:14, it is fallen and unable to seek God or find Him on its own.

If unaided human reason is thus useless with regard to faith so that it does not even begin to seek after God, what then is its role in a human being coming to faith? I think that we must affirm that the New Testament writers use language which expresses the exercise of human rational faculties in the process of salvation. Language such as “seeing”, “hearing”, “knowing”, “receiving”, etc all speaks of the human exercise of the rational faculties. However, it is part of the process of coming to faith in such a way that it cannot be said that man works together or cooperates with God in the process of coming to faith. Nowhere is this made more explicit than in 1 Cor 1:18-2:16. Wisdom which equates to a profound grasp of Christ’s eschatological victory and atonement on the Cross, is mediated to human beings only by the Spirit. Human reason or wisdom, unaided, is of no value and so must be brought about by the Spirit who imparts True Wisdom embodied in Christ crucified. This spiritual “making alive” is not done apart from human responsibility. The Spirit energizes our reason so that we are willingly drawn to Christ and call out to God for grace. This is done in such a way that human beings can in no way claim credit for this astonishing work of God’s grace through Jesus. It is, as Paul said, “all for the praise of his (God’s) glory.”

20 Books in your 20's

In keeping with the book them I seem to have going, I thought I'd post a link to Justin over at the Buzzard Blog who has compiled a list of "20 books to read in your 20's".  I have read many of these books on his list and have heard very good things about the one's I haven't read.  So, I pray that this list can be helpful for your faith and walk with Jesus.  

A Few Books I'm Looking Forward to Reading in the Next Few Months

As a follow up to my last post, I thought I just list a few books that I'm excited to read in the next few months.  Whether or not that will actually happen is another story since I'm always too ambitious in my reading plans.  Maybe God will be gracious and I'll have the time and discipline to finish them all...

1. We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry by G.K. Beale

2. The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright

3. Death By Love: Letters from the Cross by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

4. Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

5. John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace by Jonathan Aitken

6. Communion with the Triune God by John Owen

7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

• I was encouraged recently that technical exegesis is not truly reading.  It is common for Biblical Scholars to get so caught up in the details of exegesis that they forget how to read literature AS literature.  

Top 10 Books I've Read this Year (In no particular order)

A lot of bloggers tend to give a "Top 10" list at the end of the year.  While I am in no way a consistent blogger, I've read quite a few books in the last year both for personal edification and for school.  I thought I would post the top 10 from this past year with a run down on each one.  So, here goes:

1. Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark by Rikki Watts:

This book has literally revolutionized how I see not only the gospels but also Biblical Theology in general.  It's a quite technical read but is worth the effort in order to understand Jesus' significance and to feed your faith!

2. The Temple and the Church's Mission by G.K. Beale:

If you're not familiar with the writings of Dr. Beale, you need to get familiar as quickly as possible!  While also on the technical side, Beale gives a maximalist account of Biblical Theology in light of the Temple theme.  Has massive implications for how we read the Bible and how we function as a Church.

3. When I Don't Desire God by John Piper:

This MAY be the best book that John Piper has ever written on the Christian life.  It combines his robust theology of Christian Hedonism with the practical nuts and bolts of striving after God to enjoy Him even while our passions are pathetically weak.

4. The Peacemaker by Ken Sande:

I had the privilege of reading through this great book this summer in a couples bible study at my church.  It is ostensibly a book on Biblical conflict resolution (which it is) but it has much wider implications for my life than simply conflict resolution.  This is really a manual on how to apply the Gospel to every relationship in your life!

5. The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin:

While I have read portions of the Institutes before this year, I was able this fall, to read through the entire institutes over the course of a semester.  It has been breathtaking to see the broad-brush overview of Calvin's thought.  It has also served to reinforce in my mind the dictum that there is nothing new under the sun!  Most if not all of the controversies that Calvin was involved with in his day have some sort of contemporary representation among the theological challenges to Orthodox, Reformed teaching.

6. God Crucified by Richard Bauckham:

All I can say about this book is "WOW!"  In such a short book Bauckham manages to weave an incredible picture of Jesus' divinity in light of OT and first century Jewish thought.  This is not a dry scholarly work, it will feed your faith and cause you to worship Jesus in new and greater ways!

7. Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics by Graeme Goldsworthy:

Extremely helpful for seeing how the entire Bible relates to Jesus.  This is not simplistic I-See-Jesus in every passage of the Old Testament.  The Gospel message about Jesus Christ is not simply the result of our Biblical Interpretation, it is also the grounds of our interpretation!

8. The Mission of God by Christopher J.H. Wright:

I technically read this book last fall but I'm including it here because I'm beginning to take my college guys small group through it this year.  This is probably one of my top 5 all time books.  If you haven't read it, you need to... 'Nuff said!

9. The Glory of the Atonement edited by Charles Hill and Frank James:

A collection of Biblical and Theological essays defending a classic penal-substitutionary view of the atonement.  Extremely helpful for clarifying the discussion of the atonement.  Most of the authors in the work see penal-substitution as the central facet of the atonement but also have a healthy understanding that it is not the only facet of the atonement that the Bible presents.

10. How to Pray for Your Wife by Mark Weathers:

This is a 31 day devotional guide intended to help men pray for their wives by using... what else... Proverbs 31!  While I can't stand behind all of his exegesis of Prov 31, his suggestions on prayer for wives are extremely helpful.  God has used this to help me be more faithful in praying for Katie.

Spiritual Leadership

A proper understanding of spiritual leadership is an urgent necessity in the Church today. Ours is a culture in which there is both a lack of mature leadership and in which leadership principles and values have been so inverted that much of what is said and written about leadership is of no value to the leaders of the Church. However, in spite of these deficiencies, there has been a broad movement within the American Church to incorporate the values of Corporate or Political America into the Church. Thus, sadly, many Pastors have become no more than CEO’s of the Church and frequently lack the Biblical qualifications to lead and pastor a flock of Christians. As Paul makes starkly clear in 1 Cor 1-2, the wisdom of God will be foolishness to the world. The converse is true as well that what the world considers wise will be seen as foolish in the sight of God. What the Church needs is the robust and glorious vision of spiritual leadership that is given across the pages of the New Testament. This vision will be radically counter-cultural and subversive in as much as it takes the Cross as its foundation with the goal of bringing all of life under the gentle dominion of Christ. Therefore, I want to try to elucidate the marks and purpose of spiritual leadership and trace out how these aspects work themselves out in the context of the Church body. 

A helpful place in the New Testament to begin is in the book of Titus where Paul writes to a younger pastor with instructions on how the Church is to function and how the Elders are to fit into the body of believers. In Titus 1:6-9, Paul lays out the qualifications that must be in a man’s life in order for them to serve as an Elder in the Church. He writes,

“…if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.”

When compared with the similar list of Elder qualifications in 1 Tim 3:1-7, the picture that emerges is the Elder as the ideal mature Christian. All of the qualities that are prescribed by Paul for Elders are qualities that every Christian is exhorted towards at various places in the New Testament. Thus the Elder is one who evidences in his life the maturity towards which all Christians are called and exhorted. Obviously, this does not mean that an Elder must be a sinlessly perfect Christian. That is impossible on this side of the final resurrection. However, it does mean that the Elder is an exemplar of a mature Christian who, empowered by God’s grace and in constant dependence on the Spirit, perseveres in the process of sanctification.

The overarching characteristic that Paul seems to be concerned with, particularly in Titus, is that spiritual leaders be “above reproach”. The importance of this defining quality is not concerned as much with personal piety as it is with God’s reputation. Paul seems to be concerned with God’s reputation in the world in the course of his letter to Titus; a concern that makes a great deal of sense in light of the cultural context in which Titus ministered. Every part of the body of Christ is supposed to conduct themselves both in and out of the Church so that “they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior”.  God’s reputation or glory in the world is the primary reason for the existence of the Church and so they must naturally conduct themselves in such a way that reflects God’s ultimate beauty and worth to the world. This purpose aligns perfectly with Jesus’ words in Matt 5:14-16,

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

If this is the purpose of Christ’s people here on Earth, then it is necessary that their leaders be models of such a life that is above reproach. Put another way, the life of the Spiritual leader is meant to be a model of treasuring God and being ultimately concerned with the cause of His glory on the Earth. John Piper sums this concept up well when he writes, “The ultimate goal of all spiritual leadership is that other people might come to glorify God, that is, might so feel and think and act as to magnify the true character of God.”

Therefore spiritual leaders must model this overriding concern for God’s glory. However, this is not the full extent of the need for spiritual leaders. There is much good that can be done from having a good model but there is still something lacking if there is not teaching that accompanies this model. I believe this is the thrust of Paul’s command to Titus in Titus 2:1, “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.” Following this injunction, Paul goes on to describe the proper fruit that should be in place in the lives of Christians in different segments of society so that they will not bring reproach to the name of Jesus. This leads to the conclusion, supported elsewhere in the New Testament as well, that right living flows from right teaching. If the Church has teachers who are carefully teaching people the Word of God, lifting high the glory of God and showing people God’s redemptive purpose to fill the Earth with His glory as the waters cover the seas, then people will be gripped by such visions and live lives in accordance with that teaching. Therefore, both the modeling and the teaching are essential functions of a spiritual leader.

To many, the idea of the glory of God may sound rather abstract and many teachers aid this unfortunate misunderstanding in their teaching. Paul was clearly not one who would have left God’s glory as a mere theological abstraction. As Luther so forcefully emphasized, good pastors and teachers must be theologians of the Cross. If pastors and teachers want their people to come to grasp the glory of God and its full implications they must learn to bring people before the Cross which is the brightest and fullest display of God’s glory possible in this created order. In 1 Cor 1-2, Paul makes it clear that it was his mission to preach Christ and Him crucified and not to tickle people’s ears with rhetorical niceties. Such preaching was not hip and fashionable but was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to those in the Greco-Roman world. However, Paul’s was not simply a teacher of the message of the Cross, it was a daily reality of his life. He tells the Corinthians in 2 Cor 3:8-12,

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”

So, we see that Paul’s very life was cruciform. He both modeled and taught the message of the Cross. Both his manner and his speech were mutually beneficial so that the glory of God through the Cross of Christ would be most fully and powerfully evident among those to whom he ministered.

The message of the Cross, which mediates God’s glory to us is what, people are in most desperate need of. Therefore, it should be the chief goal of all spiritual leaders to lead their lives and conform their speech to God’s redemptive purposes through the Cross. This is how true spiritual leadership is to be exercised; it models the example of Christ who “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

HHCM?

Check out the just complete sermon series "The Peasant Princess" from Mars Hill Church.  This is the goal of the series of messages:

Pretty worthwhile huh? My name is Scott Newman and I approve this message.

Meaning, Postmodern Theory and the Glory of Jesus

This is another paper which I wrote this semester dealing with the topic of hermeneutics. This was also written for Dr. John Walton at Wheaton College Graduate School. As always, comments are welcome as I want to continue to grow and mature in this area of my thinking.

Hermeneutics: The Glory of God in Meaning

According to Anthony Thistleton, “Hermeneutics denotes critical reflection upon processes of interpretation and understanding, especially the interpretation of biblical texts or texts that originate from within other cultures.” Thus the science and art of hermeneutics deals with the epistemological underpinnings of the process of interpretation as well as the methodological processes by which the interpreter will seek meaning in a given text. To many, the process of self-critical reflection upon the act of reading and interpreting may seem like intellectual and academic overkill. In the case of contemporary literature, this critique may be appropriate although it still reflects a certain naiveté about the nature of discourse, communication and meaning. However, when one comes to the Biblical text by which the interpreter is separated chronologically by the span of 2000-3500 years, linguistically by the difficulty of learning and understanding Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and culturally by the immense differences in thought and worldview, the possibility of simply reading and interpreting correctly becomes problematic. In light of these barriers to understanding, having a well though out and epistemologically grounded approach to interpretation is essential for faithful interpretation, particularly when it comes to the text of Scripture. Therefore, I will seek to argue for the supremacy and sovereignty of Jesus Christ as the basis by which interpretation and appropriation of the Biblical text is possible followed by a brief sketch of an epistemologically humble, methodological approach to Scripture.

As has been said previously, the goal of hermeneutics as applied to the Biblical text is faithful interpretation and appropriation of its content. Interpretation and appropriation both relate to knowledge since knowledge is what is sought in interpretation and is a necessary ingredient for the process of appropriation. Therefore, epistemology bears greatly on the subject of hermeneutics. This is especially so when it comes to discussions of meaning about which no clear consensus exists in the philosophical or literary community. The nature of meaning and how texts “mean” are issues that have filled volumes at least since the time of Socrates and Plato and show no signs of abating in the scholarly literature any time soon. In the face of such lack of understanding regarding meaning, one wonders if it is possible humanly to account for the phenomenon of meaning in a text or communication. It is at this point that I take Derrida’s critique of modernity to have been successful.

Derrida begins by addressing himself to the issue of structure within modern thought. These structures, or meta-narratives as Lyotard termed them , are the means by which humans make sense of the world around them. Language, Philosophy and Theology all fall under the category of structure in Derrida’s thinking. Every structure is held together by what is termed a “center”. According to Derrida, “The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure… but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the play of the structure.” However, while also being the integral part of a given structure, the center is also an element that is outside the structure and thus governs how much play is possible within the structure. “Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which, while governing the structure, escapes structurality.” This very idea upon which the structures or meta-narratives of modernity rest is fundamentally incoherent in that the center cannon simultaneously be both within and without a structure. In order to manage this incoherence there must be a sign-center substitution in order to try to maintain stability in the structure. Because of this Derrida writes, “it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play.”

It is this infinite-regress in substitutions of signs for center that ultimately makes meaning, humanly speaking, impossible to get at. There is a constant deferring of sign for signifier by which language and meaning, for all intents and purposes, is broken. Now, at this stage, it is important to grasp what Derrida, and those postmodern theorists who followed him, is saying and is not saying. He is not saying that there is no “world out there” or that truth and meaning do not exist. His critique does not amount to a denial of absolute truth. It is rather as Lyotard put it, “incredulity toward the meta-narrative”, the inability to access or know that we have access whatever is real. Fish writes of this, “this is not say that the world apart from the devices of human conception and perception doesn’t exist ‘out there’; just that what we know of the world follows from what we can say about it rather than from any unmediated encounter with it in and of itself.” What this amounts to is a recognition of brokenness or, might we say, fallenness in the ways that we as humans access reality. The postmodern posture then is not to nihilistically reject the meaningfulness of everything in life but rather to work within the broken systems while simultaneously recognizing their brokenness. It is impossible for humans to have an unmediated access to reality and therefore it is impossible for humans to escape the systems or meta-narratives with which we make sense of the world.

Theologically, it appears that Derrida and the postmodern theorists have stumbled onto an astounding realization, namely the fallenness of the creation. The Bible makes it clear throughout but particularly in the New Testament that the fallenness of the creation extends not only to the physical realm but also the metaphysical realm. In the realm of human thought, Theologians have termed this phenomenon the “noetic effects of sin” . The implication of this is that humanity should not be able to understand anything rightly, communication and knowing should not happen. Yet, experience alone tells us that meaning does happen. I am able to sit down to dinner and have a conversation with my wife in which we can (most of the time) understand each other. I can read a text and grasp the basic content contained therein. Ultimately there is no human way to adequately account for this phenomenon; the answer must be theological. In Colossians 1:16-17 Paul writes, “For by him (Christ) all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Typically, this statement by Paul is thought of in the physical sense that Christ is the Creator and Sustainer of all that we see, interact with and experience. However, creation was not simply the physical realm but the metaphysical realm as well. Therefore, because Christ wills it, the universe holds together and does not fly apart and also, because Christ wills it, metaphysical reality still works despite its fallenness.

That knowing, communication and meaning still happen should be viewed as a work of common grace, by which glory must be given to Jesus. Indeed, Jesus Christ is the logos or wisdom of God and the Scriptures take great pains to help us understand that Truth is no mere metaphysical abstraction, it is a person; Jesus Christ, the perfect image by which we know the Triune God. Truth is not merely an attribute of God as if Truth was some sort of abstract that stands over and against God; He is rather Truth Itself!

This understanding has immense implications for how we, as Evangelical Christians, approach Biblical interpretation. The systems which man has set up in order to make sense of texts are all broken and unable to account for meaning. Meaning is located in the Triune God as He has manifested Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. It is the role of the person of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity to overcome man’s fallenness and lift the veil from our eyes to see God rightly in the person of Christ, the Word of God. There is, therefore, hope in interpretation because the Bible is the Written Word of God which corresponds precisely to the Living Word of God. The Spirit can be expected to overcome the noetic effects of sin and allow us to accurately understand the person of God on the pages of Scripture because that is how the Father has chosen to reveal the Triune God to us. It is not in hermeneutical systems but in the working of the Spirit of God then that we must place our trust for confidence in interpretation.

However, it is impossible for us to function interpretively outside of a hermeneutical system and so we can have confidence that the Spirit will work through our broken systems in order to bring us to a knowledge of and relationship with God. Therefore, I wish to briefly propose some methodological considerations to help us as interpreters come to the Biblical text and pray for God’s Spirit to allow us to understand the meaning of the text of Scripture.

First, I propose that what we are seeking when it comes to Biblical interpretation is/are completed speech-act/acts. According to Speech-Act Theory as laid out by Kevin Vanhoozer, a speech act involves a locution, illocution and perlocution. The locution is the mechanical act or content of communication, i.e. the text or the act and words of speaking. The illocution refers to the intentionality that the communicator invests in the locution. Finally, the perlocution refers to the effect that the locution and illocution have on the recipient of the speech act. A speech act is successful when each of the components has been successful.

Interestingly enough, this tri-partite structure corresponds to each of the three aspects of interpretation: author, text and reader. A text is a locution, it is the content that is being communicated. The author is the one who invests intentionality in a text and the reader is the one who receives the communication and is affected by it according to the intention of the author. It is because of this that interpretation cannot focus on merely one component of a speech act; it involves a triangulation of all three elements in order to get at meaning. A functional definition of meaning then can be understood as Vanhoozer puts it, “’Meaning’ is the result of communicative action, of what an author has done in tending to certain words at a particular time in a specific manner.” In light of this, a faithful approach to interpretation will then seek a triangulation of these three components.

In addition, a faithful approach to interpretation should begin from the ground up with a healthy recognition of the place and necessity of presuppositions in the interpretive process. For Christians, the gospel is the most basic presupposition which accurately understands Christ’s mediatorial role in the interpretation of the Bible and, indeed, of all reality. This should not be mistaken as a license to impose our theology on the text and to thus run roughshod over it. Rather, it is viewing the hermeneutical spiral as something that is good and God-ordained to help us in the process of interpretation. Our theology gives us a grid with which to make sense of the Biblical text and then the detailed, ground-up exegetical work in the text re-shapes our theology where it is not completely faithful to Scripture. This balancing process leads to exegesis that is properly shaped by the Gospel and Theology that is properly shaped by exegesis.

Finally, the process of ground-up interpretation is not completed until a text is viewed in its full, canonical context. In other words, if all of scripture is Christo-telic and history is unified by God’s sovereign plan to redeem the creation through the work of Christ then each text of scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, is not fully interpreted by us as Christians until we grasp how the trajectories in the text point us towards Christ and the Gospel. As Christians, this should not be an optional step to add to the end of the interpretive process; it is essential for our Biblical understanding as God’s covenant people. I do not deny that every passage in the Old Testament had authority for the Old Testament community when it was originally written. However, for Christians living on this side of the Cross, our appropriation of texts in the Old Testament must be done in light of the Christo-telic trajectories present in the text.

For Christians living at this period of history, the interpretive times are extremely confusing. The implosion of modernity and the postmodern turn are events which have sent shock-waves through the world and affect anyone engaged in interpretation of any kind. Ultimately, the anchor to which we must fasten ourselves as systems rise and fall is Christ. Mankind is desperately quick to latch on to and seek security in interpretive fads but God is the only true source of security and stability in the process of interpretation. Therefore, I think it is appropriate to emphasize again that God through Christ by the working of the Spirit needs to get all the credit and glory for our knowing and communicating just as we give Him glory for our breath and our salvation.

Bibliography

Briggs, Richard S. “Speech-Act Theory.” Pages 763-766 in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company, 2005.

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass; Chicago, IL.: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Fish, Stanley. “French Theory in America.” No Pages. Cited 9 September 2008. Online: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/french-theory-in-america/.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel- Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpreation. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2006.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000.

Gracia, Jorge J.E. “Meaning.” Pages 492-499 in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company, 2005.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Theory and History of Literature 10. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Newbigin, Lesslie. Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.

Thisleton, Anthony C. “Hermeneutics.” Pages 283-287 in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company, 2005.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Is There a Meaning in This Text: The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. “Lost in Interpretation: Truth Scripture and Hermeneutics.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48/1 (2005): 89-114.

Preaching the Old Testament as Christian Scripture

This is a paper that I recently wrote for Dr. John Walton at Wheaton College Graduate School on how to preach and teach from the Old Testament. Please be aware that much of this was footnoted in the copy I turned in to Dr. Walton. Unfortunately, I'm not able to bring these over into a blog post. If anyone happens to read this I would love to get feedback. God Bless!!

Preaching the Old Testament as Christian Scripture

Since the inception of the Holy Spirit’s New Covenant ministry, the Church has been characterized by the proclamation of God’s message of salvation through the written Word of God. Throughout the narratives of Acts, the apostles are shown to preach the gospel wherever they go. Interestingly, as they proclaim the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the apostles preach on the basis of Old Testament texts and frequently cite the Old Testament as they describe the work that Christ has accomplished. This pattern continues into the New Testament epistles where we find the apostles laying down doctrine and exhorting local congregations by citing the Old Testament. It goes without saying that, in the Apostolic period, much of New Testament scripture had not yet been penned and those works that had been penned were not in wide circulation. Thus, we find the apostles supporting their message about Jesus Christ from the Old Testament scriptures. In comparison to the period of Apostolic preaching, today there is a sad neglect of the Old Testament in the Church’s teaching and preaching. I believe that this situation derives from two primary factors; a lack of understanding how to faithfully interpret the Old Testament and secondly, an inability to apply the Old Testament to the lives of New Covenant Christians. Therefore, what the Church needs is a recovery of the ability to exegete the Old Testament scriptures in their original historical, literary and theological context followed by the ability to fully articulate the theological significance of Old Testament pericopae as they pertain to Christians living under the New Covenant. The act of proclamation is thus the fruit and culmination of the process of careful exegesis and theological development.

Ideally, the full process of exegesis should undergird the act of preaching or teaching an Old Testament pericope. The preacher thus should go through the process of examining the literary aspects of the text from the top down. Issues of genre and rhetorical strategy need to have particular importance at this stage for a proper contextual understanding of the passage. Once this stage has been completed then the preacher should examine the exegetical details of the passage. This would include the process of lexical and syntactical studies, discourse analysis as well as any historical background issues that may affect the interpretation.

Expository preaching that works systematically through a book of the Old Testament is ideally suited for such an exegetical approach as all these steps are necessary for understanding the Biblical book in its entirety as well as relating each preached pericope to the message and rhetorical thrust of the work as a whole. However, even when preaching solitary sermons on a text or topical studies that center on one or two passages of scripture, it is necessary to engage in the whole process; even if to a lesser extent. The goal in this exegetical process is to understand the message in the text in the way that the original author and the original recipients would have understood it. It is by this triangulation of the three points of the hermeneutical spectrum; author, text and reader that the preacher can maintain his link to meaning as we best understand it. Unless one goes through the labor of understanding the details of the text, he is cut off from the authority inherent in the message that the Holy Spirit inspired into the text.

While the exegetical work in the text is certainly foundational and indispensable to the enterprise of interpretation in order to maintain the link to inspiration and the authority of the Holy Spirit; it is not the last word when it comes to the interpretive process. Revelation was given to us so that we might know God and His ways and plans more fully. In this way, the text of Scripture is no mere historical artifact; it is the authoritative revelation of the God with whom the Church is in Covenant relationship. Therefore, for our knowledge about God and His ways and purposes is to be authoritative, it must be based on what is communicated about Him through the text of Scripture. In this way, the interpretive process must not be satisfied only with the historical exegesis; it must press on to the theological dimension.

The first aspect of the theological dimension relates directly to what the text under examination for preaching communicates about God. Every text, in some way or another, will communicate something to us of the character or purpose of God. Even texts where there may be a conspicuous absence of direct mention of God may lead us to greater understanding of His providential ways of governing the world and its systems. It is important, therefore, to understand that this first aspect of theological reflection flows directly from the pericope at hand.

However, just as historical exegesis is not the stopping point for interpretation but necessarily leads into the theological process, the theology which is explicitly drawn from the exegetical detail work in the text is the foundation for further theological reflection across the canon to understand God’s ways and purposes in the full light of progressive revelation. This is especially true when it comes to the task of preaching. It is important and necessary to demonstrate how there are trajectories in every OT text that find their telos in Christ and His salvific work on behalf of God’s people. Thus this step is, in a sense, a bridge between the theological reflection stage and application stage for the Church. While it is true that the Old Testament texts contain knowledge about God that is true and authoritative on its own, Christians living in the New Covenant era inaugurated by Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and ascension cannot end the theological process merely with grasping a texts original theological significance. Any knowledge of God at this stage of redemptive history is mediated by Christ who is YHWH revealed to us in the flesh and who represents the culmination of God’s saving work on behalf of His people.

Sidney Greidanus has done much work on how to preach the Old Testament scripture Christianly in a hermeneutically responsible way. He outlines six broad ways in which the Old Testament texts can find their telos in Christ. Each of these ways is gleaned from ways in which the New Testament authors are shown to understand and interpret the Old Testament texts in light of the Christ event. These include the way of redemptive-historical progression, promise-fulfillment, typology, analogy, longitudinal themes, and contrast. Thus, any text can be shown to have trajectories that lead to Christ’s work in at least one or possible several of these ways. It is by careful understanding of redemptive history and the careful application of these categories based on an accurate exegesis of the text that safeguards the theological process from fanciful conclusions. It can thus be said that for Christians, the Old Testament is to be understood to have its own authority as it did for the Covenant community in the OT. Now, in addition, it also has authority in as much as it provides the categories by which we understand the culmination of YHWH’s saving and redeeming work through Jesus Christ.

Once the detailed work of exegesis and the Christo-telic theological reflection are completed, it is important for a preacher to grasp how to apply the text and its accompanying theology to the gathered Church. Unfortunately, preaching in the contemporary, Evangelical church is often shallow and moralizing to the extent that much of Western Christianity is theologically impoverished and legalistic. Western Christians are so pragmatically driven that unless they have an “action step” to take home with them from a Sunday service, they feel that the preacher has not made application. Against this, it must be asserted that having our view of God enlarged is certainly a sure starting point for application if not a sufficient application in and of itself! Seeing the grandeur and sovereignty of YHWH played out across the OT narratives and beautifully expressed in the prophetic and poetic books should be enough to move the Church to worship. In this way, the process of theological reflection based on the exegesis of the passage is directly applicable to New Covenant believers.

In addition, I believe that it is possible to preach ethics from the Old Testament in a hermeneutically responsible and non-legalistic manner. Unfortunately, the vast majority of preaching from the Old Testament in the American church, which attempts to focus on ethics, tends to try to exhort Christians from the moral examples of the characters portrayed in the OT. The sad fact of such preaching is that it gives people a standard, whether real or fabricated, without the accompanying theological motivation necessary for the ethic to not be legalistic. Whenever right action is done from improper motivation, it is just as sinful as doing the wrong action. However, anything done from the motivation of wanting to see God’s Name honored through Christ will be pleasing to God. Therefore, the Church needs to recover a theocentric approach to ethics.

In addition to gaining a proper motivation for honoring God through preaching His glory from the Old Testament, there needs to be an accompanying emphasis on the Gospel. It is through the work of the Spirit which was purchased by Christ’s atoning and victorious death on the Cross that Christians are able to live lives that honor God by exalting His glory. It is ultimately in the Gospel that Christians find the proper motivation and necessary power to please God in their lives. This primacy of the Gospel in the Christian life is what necessitates the Christo-telic interpretation of the Old Testament. Unless Christians are continually brought back to the Gospel or shown how Old Testament texts culminate in the Gospel, any ethical exhortation a preacher makes will be in danger of producing legalism in the life of the congregation.
It is through the process of top-down and bottom-up exegesis and canonical theological reflection that is based in the exegesis of the text that we can see preaching and teaching as the culmination of the entire interpretive process. It is essential to recognize that each of these elements must be in place in order to maintain our link to scripture which is the authoritative, inspired Word of God. However, there is no value in the detailed exegetical work or theological process unless it produces fruit for the sake of the Church. These texts were meant to be understood and God was meant to be seen for the sake of His Covenant community of which we are a part. In addition, we must also remember that each step of the process of preparation for teaching and preaching needs to be done in conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit. As the One at Work to inspire the texts of scripture, it is through his agency that our hermeneutical models and ways of drawing application from the text will ultimately be successful.

Bibliography

Broyles, Craig C., Editor. Interpreting the Old Testament: A Guide for Exegesis. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.

Chapell, Bryan. Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon. Second Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.

Chisholm, Robert B. From Exegesis to Exposition: A Practical Guide to Using the Hebrew Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic, 2006.

----------------------. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000.

Greidanus, Sidney. Preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999.

----------------------. The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988.

Stuart, Douglas. Old Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors. Third Edition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.