I'm doing a "read through the Bible in a year" program (thank you, Bible Gateway), and have been mostly keeping up. The last couple weeks have been tough, though, as I'll mention in post #100 later. The plan I've been following takes me through some of the Old Testament and some of the New Testament every day, so I am now in I Kings and nearing the end of Luke. I think I have come to appreciate more how much Jesus focuses on and references things in the Old Testament.
It's possible my analysis is just crap, since after all I'm no Hebrew scholar, but I feel like all the books in the Old Testament since Deuteronomy have been making two main points. First, God's people need a king. They can't be orderly on their own, and they can't protect themselves against the sinful designs of those both outside and inside the family without a single, powerful leader. Of course, they are terrible at choosing their king (i.e., they don't want God as their King), and thus God gives them Saul, who again proves they need a better king, David. Even David proves they need a better king, since David doesn't govern his own family that well, and thus cannot insure justice beyond his own lifetime. With Solomon comes peace and prosperity, but it is short-lived, and to get these benefits Solomon is sometimes a cruel task master, acting more like Pharaoh than God. And the kingdom is split after Solomon. The People Need a King.
Second, God's people need a temple. After all the intricate instruction for how to build the tabernacle, and all the victories bound to the Ark of the Covenant, once Israel occupies the land they start setting up alters and making sacrifices and having priests and "worshiping" God wherever and however they please. Unless I missed the part in the Law where it's a good idea to keep private priests in your home, ignoring the feasts God commanded, not feeling like traveling all the long way to wherever the Ark is, this is a problem. Even David isn't great on this front, what with transporting the Ark by oxcart and such. The people need to know where the dwelling place of God is, they need to see the cloud enter and live amid the people. They need a God-With-Us. But even once Solomon builds the Temple in Jerusalem, again the peace is short-lived. The kingdom is split and Jeroboam sets up rival temples. Israel is again left to wander about meeting with God in haphazard ways (or not at all). The People Need a Temple.
I'm sure there are more insights to come, but I can see now why Jesus is so concerned with the Kingdom and the Temple. The Church can't really be the people of God without them.
(I should have put links in this post, but I got lazy. I hope you don't mind. But if you do...)
HOW I FEEL WHEN I’M TWO WEEKS OUT FROM QUALS
9 years ago
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1 comments:
Jenny and I are completing a Bible reading plan too, on which I am also slightly behind, but I think it is a little different. We are - or ought to be - in Judges and Acts right now.
People do need a king. That's basically the thematic point of the Judges narrative, which always struck me as weird given how shabbily the kings worked out. Ditto the temple: it was great for a generation... if that long. But then it wasn't any good and a distinguished line of prophets made various unpleasantries in its direction up through Jesus.
So I wonder how much of an improvement either of them was over the former judge-and-tabernacle system. Do you think there is a difference? I certainly would not dispute that people need leaders and holy things (and that God ought to pick 'em), but are you trying to compare David with Moses? Or are you simply saying that both are insufficient types of Christ, (which seems clear enough), or is it something else entirely?
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