This is a quick article I wrote as I was preparing to preach on the book of Judges to help people learn how to begin the process of read the Old Testament. It is very, very simple, and doesn’t come close to the depth one can have in understanding how to mine the depths of God’s word. It is also mainly focused on historical narratives, not wisdom literature, not poetry, not apocalyptic literature, not prophesy.

Here are some Key Questions to ask to help us learn how to open up the Old Testament, specifically the historical narrative sections. 

Who read the Old testament?

The Jewish Scriptures were read by the Jewish people all along the way. As the Old Testament scriptures were written, they were read by faithful Israelites to help them follow YHWH. The question lies before us, who read the completed Old Testament?

How and when was the OT completed?

Most Biblical scholars, whether they believe in God or not, believe that the Jewish Scriptures were edited and completed by scribes and prophets in the years during and after the exile to Babylon–while the people were returned to the Promised Land, but still under foreign occupation.

These scribes and prophets understood that the exile from the Promised Land was a foundational event in the history of Israel and the event that the history of Israel pointed to. Therefore, they wrote and edited the Old Testament with the theme of exile as a foundational understanding of life with God. This begins with the exile from Eden and continues through the book of Chronicles, the last book in the Jewish Scriptures.

They believed the Scriptures are pointing forward to these three events: the Exile, the Return, and the coming of the Promised One, who would fully undo the exile.  The main Jewish belief was that the Promised One (The Anointed One, Messiah, Christ) would come and restore Israel to self-rule, establishing the Kingdom of God, and reign as King, much as strong Israeli rulers had done in the past (Moses, Joshua, David).

The hermeneutical lens of the Jewish Scriptures 

Because of the editing of these scribes, these three events (Exile, Return, Messiah) provide a hermeneutical lens through which to read the Jewish Scriptures.  Throughout the Scriptures there is the promise of blessing if the people follow God, but the peoples’ inability to consistently and fully follow the Law. If they do not follow the Law, the curses of the Law will fall upon them, leading them to Exile—the removal of the people from the Promised Land and the removal of the Presence of God from the Promised Land as well. This Exile happens in 586BC, attested by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the books of Kings and Chronicles.

While in Exile, if they return in their hearts to follow God, He will Return them to the Land. In the midst of that Return, the promise of a New Heart and a New Covenant stands a beacon of light to the people. This Return to the Land and establishing of a New Covenant is in the hands and hope of the Anointed One.  But the Jewish Scriptures end as an incomplete story, with the people sitting in the Exile in 2 Chronicles waiting for the True Return and waiting for the Anointed One promised way back in Genesis 3.

This means the Exile is the tragic end to which the entire Old Testament points. The Exile is the removal of the people from the Promised Land, but it is also the removal of the presence of God from the Promised Land. The nature of the Jewish people’s connection with God is fundamentally different after the Babylonian army takes over Jerusalem in 586 BC. They have broken the Mosaic Covenant, and suffered the consequences of breaking that covenant.

This also means that waiting for the Promised One, the Messiah is the hopeful expectation of the entire Old Testament. God’s people need saving and forgiveness, and are waiting for God’s Anointed One to bring them that salvation. The nature and means of that salvation is hidden in the Old Testament, how God will bring justice to the nations, justice to Israel, forgive their sins, heal the human heart and restore the world to it’s intended purpose of God and humans partnering to create an amazing creation is hidden. (For the Christian, the seeds these answers are gloriously shown in Jesus words in the Gospel of Mark 1:15–“The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.”)

The question to every reader becomes, ‘What now?’

Now that Israel has broken the covenant with God, what will happen? What will God do? How is a faithful Israelite to live? Especially in the times when the Jewish people didn’t have a temple to worship God in, how are they to relate to Him?

This is the fundamental and unanswered question that lies at the heart of the Jewish Scriptures, bringing up 2 main sub-questions:

Is the covenant relationship with God conditional or unconditional?

Is God’s covenant love for His people based on their faithfulness? What happens when the people, the leaders, and the entire nation proves to be unfaithful to God and His Law? This unfaithfulness is not simply the daily difficulties of treating others rightly (righteous), nor the difficulty in creating a society of justice, but it is the difficulty for humans to give their ultimate and absolute allegiance to YHWH alone.  When the Israelites fail in that regard, and live lives based not on God’s Law but on the cultures and gods of the world, will they remain as the people of God, or will He disavow them and bring upon them His righteous judgment?

How to live in exile?

An additional question the Jewish Scriptures ask is, ‘how are God’s people supposed to live in exile?’  The people lived in Babylon, they lived under Persian Rule, or under the Greeks or Romans. “How can you live faithfully to YHWH when the entire culture seems to run counter to how YHWH says to live in the world?

These are two of the main questions the Old Testament scriptures continuously ask. Another might be, ‘How long Oh Lord?” Another might be, “How does God choosing one person or people group to bless affect the other people groups around them?” There are many, many questions the Jewish Scriptures ask us to consider. My hope is that this article gives a little bit of clarity on how we could read books like Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings and understand the force of the message of these amazing narratives.

You’re going on a short term mission trip. That’s awesome! My hope is this trip helps you become a global missional Christian, whose life is deeply changed because of what you experience. I hope you see God more clearly as you step into new cultural experiences—meeting people who are like you, yet different—and come away with a greater appreciation for the awesome diversity and creativity of God. I hope God uses you to bless the people on your team and the people in another place, in another culture, from another background. I hope this trip makes an incremental change in you to help you reach out to those back home both in your own culture and in different cultures.

What makes a short-term mission trip ‘good.’ What are the objectives we should shoot for? Our goals are both that we are blessed and that we are a blessing. These are both good motives. We want to get something out of a trip, whether we are the ones going, or the ones receiving. We want to be a blessing to the other, whether we are going or are receiving. When both being blessed and being a blessing are viewed as complementary values, the results will honor God and build His Kingdom. This idea goes back to the beginning of God’s people, in Genesis 12:1-3 — The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country and the people of your father’s family. Go to the land that I will show you. I will cause your descendants to become a great nation. I will bless you. Everyone will know your name. You will bring my blessing to other people. I will bless those people who bless you. But I will curse anyone who insults you. Through you, I will bless all the families of people on the earth.’  Abraham was to be like Lake Galilee, which has water flowing into it and water flowing out of it, to bring life to the whole nation of Israel. This is a picture God uses for His people–we are blessed to be a blessing.

Being Blessed

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” —The Apostle Paul (Eph 1:3)

The goal for you as a participant of a short term mission trip isn’t drastically different from your long-term goal as a disciple of Jesus. Simply put, it’s to become more like Jesus. A short-term trip can be a spiritual greenhouse. Make sure you set aside time on your trip to draw near to God in an undistracted way—take time to spend time in prayer alone and in groups. Keep a journal of what you’re learning. Read your Bible daily. Use your time traveling and your down time to read, pray, listen to sermons or worship music, as well as hanging out with friends.

On a trip, you’re experiencing new things. New things are exciting. New things are hard. New things can cause you to think and feel differently than you’re used to. New things can cause you to want to shut down. It’s good to not just experience new things, but to think about what you are experiencing. Think about why this is good, or why it is confusing or hard. Learn more about a new culture. Ask yourself, ‘what new things about God could I learn from these new people, places and things?’ God is the Lord not just of you and your culture, but is the Lord of Life in every culture. He has designed the world so that a multitude of cultures exist. When we experience new things, we are pushed to grow, to expand, to get beyond our ‘normal’. These new things are a great way to grow in your trust of God in the midst of hard things, as well as to grow in your praise of God in good things and your thankfulness that He is such a good and creative God.

On your trip, you will experience crossing cultures (if you do the trip right). Each culture has different values and beliefs that drive what people do and what they don’t do. If we want to honor God, we need to know how to love, respect, and honor others, but love, respect and honor are experienced differently in different cultures. One of the goals of your trip, whether you knew it or not, was for you—with God’s help and the help of your team—to grow in your cultural intelligence, so that you can have a lifetime of blessing others.

You are on your trip to be blessed—to be blessed with really fun and awesome new experiences and to be blessed with being transformed to be more like Jesus. But if that becomes your only focus, or even your primary focus, then this won’t be a mission trip, it will be a church-sponsored vacation. No! Like Abram, we are blessed to be a blessing.

Being a Blessing

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” —Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 20:35)

The goal for your short-term mission trip isn’t drastically different from some of the goals of everyday life—learning how to bless other people. It’s helping people hear about and experience the love and sacrifice of God. It’s learning how to become a servant by meeting others’ needs and in doing so, to experience the blessing of God. 

What does this look like when you’re on a mission trip? It looks like laying down your plans, your schedule, and your preferences to serve the local gospel workers in their plans, their strategies and their preferences. When you travel to another country, the leaders of that country are like the head coach. You are there to please and serve the head coach. You don’t get to set your own practice schedule. You don’t decide the lineup for a game or match, the head coach does. Your trip is there in order to serve the coaches (the local workers), not yourself.

I led the first summer trip to the Dominican Republic in a new partnership reaching college students. When we got to the country, we learned that the local staff member had received many missions trips in the past, and had seen many, many students indicate decisions to follow Jesus, but these trips never had any lasting effect to build the ministry. The students wanted to hang out with the Americans, but never connected with the Dominican believers. So we spent many days in conversation about what we should do, and finally landed on the goal for our 5 week trip to find student leaders who could help her lead the ministry. We pivoted from reaching out to the general student population and decided to focus on an English language program. We made sure to be outside the building during every break and after classes were done for the day to build relationships and share the gospel. We started a meeting to disciple believers and platform the in-country staff member to share her vision for the campus ministry. We had a leadership meeting at the end of our 5 week trip and had 5 student leaders who wanted to work towards the vision of building a student movement on campus. The staff member who initially had her resignation on her desk before our mission trip kept working in that country for 15 years and counting after our trip. We went to bless her, not fulfill our own goals.

As a participant on your mission trip, be flexible. Lessen your expectations. As a trip leader, loosen up your grip on your plan. Communicate well and frequently. Be a team player by not merely deferring to the local ministers of the gospel but by actively looking how you can serve. Follow their rules and follow their game plan. If you do well, they will reap the benefits for years. If you do poorly, they will be the ones cleaning up the mess.

Go, asking the question, ‘What can we do to be a blessing?’ There will be times when cleaning up garbage, doing repair work, or teaching English will be the biggest blessing. There will be times when doing sports camps or playing games and meeting hundreds of people and doing huge outreaches will be the biggest blessing. You may have one thing planned, then something unexpected comes up. BE FLEXIBLE! You may plant a new church in a village, show the Jesus Film, meet college athletes, disciple younger believers or spend hours and hours in prayer. 

Our biggest goal for the short-term trip is to be a catalyst and a help to the overall strategy and plan of the local ministry. Our goal is to be a sidekick to the real heroes (the local, long-term gospel workers), not to be the heroes ourselves. If we do this well, then we will get our goal, hearing national leaders say, “They were a blessing. We are glad they came.”

A final talk to seniors and students heading info finals…and I hope a blessing to you

I want to pray a blessing over you all, a blessing for your finals, a blessing for the summer, a blessing for your post-college life.

I’m sure for some of you, you’ve never had a blessing prayed over you.

I’m sure for just about every one of you, you have a vague sense of what I’m talking about, but you’re not really sure.

Blessing. What is a blessing? What is this idea?

• Some of you when you go home may be asked to give a blessing at a meal. (This happens to me a lot, now that I’m a professional Christian)
• Blessing to get engaged
• Sometimes say ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes.

But what is its meaning?

Bible: Genesis 1:22 — God makes animals, then it says, Genesis 1:22 — And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (ESV)

Genesis 1:28 — And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (ESV)

Genesis 2:3 — So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (ESV)

So we see that blessing has two ideas:

1. God’s favor: His positive inclination towards something or someone. It is the promise of a more powerful person to give, to protect, to bless, the lesser. It’s entering into a relationship with them for their good.  All the life we see around us is because God has blessed the living creatures of the earth to have life. All the people of the earth are blessed to produce more life, as well as to be good stewards over the other things God has blessed. We are blessed with responsibilities. To bless is to give favor
2. Consecration: God blessed the seventh day, the day of rest. He set it aside as a day of rest to people, because we need that rest. When Israel were slaves in Egypt, they had no days off. I wonder, are we slaves to our work and school in America?  God blessed the day off to worship God through rest, through praise and thanksgiving. To bless is to consecrate it.

These two blessings fall to all people. It’s called God’s common grace.

There is another blessing God gives called a covenant.

1. Covenant: God’s special relationship for favor and consecration, to set apart people for a more specific purpose. We see this in Genesis 12:1–3

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (ESV)

God made a special partnership with Abraham, to bless Him, so that through Him, all the other families of the earth, the other tribes, cultures, people groups, could experience the blessing of God’s covenant with them.

Which brings up the opposite of a blessing…a curse.

To be blessed by God is the most wonderful thing you can possibly have, but that isn’t the default of the world God’s common grace is the default, but we are separated from God’s covenant because we’re all under the curse.

The curse is when death and destruction come, when things fall apart. 

How did this happen, how does this happen?

When God put our first parents in the garden he put before them two trees. The tree of blessing, called the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. They were to trust God to define right and wrong, trust God to live for Him, not for themselves, and thus eat from the tree of life, experiencing that covenant relationship of love.

But the deceiver came, and tricked them. God had told Adam and Eve that they day they eat of  the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, that death would come…not that God would kill them, but that the curse would come, death would come, because they would no longer be under God’s blessing, but out on their own.

So the blessing of covenant is now the main story of the Bible. How will humans get back out of the curse and into the blessing of God?

The answer lies in God Himself. What humans could not do, get back to God, God did for us.

Jesus is God who became human. He lived a life that earned God’s blessing, yet when he was about 33 years old he received now the blessing, but the curse.

When Jesus died on the cross, he took the full weight of the curse upon himself. The apostle Paul says it like this in the book of Galatians

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (ESV)

The blessing of Abraham, that every culture and people would be blessed through his offspring comes to us through Jesus, because he took the curse.

He was cursed so that we could be blessed.

We can experience the blessing of God, because God himself took the curse for us.

Now let me read the ancient blessing that God commanded the tribe of Israel, the descendants of Abraham to speak over one another.

Numbers 6:22–26

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (ESV)

Out in the village

Fun Times

Pacaya Volcano

We’ve been studying Romans 8 in church recently, in small group, we looked at v16-18.

Romans 8:16–18

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (ESV)

So here are some of my thoughts on suffering. Suffering is inherently evil, bad. I say this because suffering will not exist in the age to come, in which we live glorified on a glorified earth. In that age there will be no sickness, no death, no dying. God will wipe away ever tear and we will be in perfect union with Him and with each other forever. I long for those days. But what about now? How are we to think about suffering, and specifically, how is suffering, which is bad, related to sacrifice, which is good?

So here’s what I wrote in my journal (excuse me if it’s unedited): “Should we seek suffering? No. But we should seek sacrifice. We should seek sacrifice, not suffering. We choose sacrifice, when we intentionally choose to say no to a good thing in this world. It could be for our spiritual growth, fo the sake of giving to other, for building God’s Kingdom. We choose sacrifice. But suffering comes to us. It’s an external thing that comes upon us. We don’t want it, didn’t choose it. Sacrifice is our fit to god. Is suffering God’s gift to us? No. And yet, God in His wisdom allows and even at times brings suffering to us, for our good, to call out to us, to chasten us, to discipline us, to mentor us, to form us into Christ-likeness.

And both sacrifice and suffering are the family business, they are what Jesus id while on earth. He suffered at the hands of sinful men when He offered his life as a sacrifice for our sins. He worshipped the Father in sacrifice even as suffering came upon him. Let me be like Him.”

I’ve been pulling weeds in my grass for the past few days. Runners. The kind that have a bit that sticks out on the top, but really, it’s a huge system of connections under the surface. You want a healthy lawn, so you pull hard on one bit and you feel like you’ve done something, but you really haven’t addressed the root issue (see what I did there?).

Sin is like that. It manifests in one way, and you might get rid of a little thing (which often feels quite big), but there is really something much deeper and insidious that must be attended to if you are to have a healthy soul. For example, you may struggle to do your dishes—unloving for sure. You could get yourself to do the dishes so your roommates don’t have to, but underlying may be a love of pleasure, relaxation and self. It may be a pride that says others must serve you. It may be a desire to control those around you. You could probably just do your dishes, but that ugly undersin will still be there. Addressing that undersin is a great personal application to this little parable.
I think that systemic racism is similar. One horrific way its manifesting right now (and has been) is the treatment of black men by some policemen and by those doing “citizens arrests”. There are many other ways towards many other cultural groups that the undersin of tribalism and racism has reared its head in the USA and around the world. Underneath is a whole system of injustice that is deep and long. You could check out the podcast 1619 by the New York Times to learn more about slavery and its continuing affects in the African American community today. It’s been very enlightening for us to learn as the parents of two black children. Addressing the undersin of our country is a corporate application to this little parable.

This is a bit similar to what the Bible talks about when it says that a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit. Jesus at one point says, “make the tree good.”

We have a lot of work as a culture to do of carefully seeing how the different little weeds are connected to get out the root of it all, but it’s worth it to have a nice, healthy lawn that all can enjoy themselves upon.

Isaiah 35

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus;  it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God. 

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” 

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;  then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;  the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.  And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.  No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.  And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.  – Isaiah 35

As I read this passage of Scripture in the midst of sheltering in place because of Covid-19 I am encouraged. I am encouraged not because anything has changed this morning, unless what has changed is my perspective. The world remains the same, and so does God.

This was written to ancient Israel. It was written as a closure of the first 34 chapters of the book of Isaiah, in which the people of God were chastised for their idolatry and their injustice. They had failed to worship God with their whole hearts, to worship Him alone. They had failed to care for the least of these among their own people: the poor, the widow, the fatherless. Therefore God was going to exile them to a distant land. He was going to bring upon them their just punishment, in the form of ancient Assyria.

This passage looks past the exile to a time in which the people would again rejoice greatly and shout for joy. It looks ahead to the return from exile, the time in which God would do amazingly greater things than He had done. The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel also see ahead to that day, the time of when the Messiah would come.

So I read this passage and see backward, to the day when Israel came back out of the land of Babylon, back to Jerusalem. It was a day of great joy. And yet, it was a day of great disappointment, as the walls were broken down, the temple was destroyed, and people’s hearts had not yet been made new. That New Day was still to come.

I read this passage and see backward, to the day when Jesus came. He lived an amazing life of blessing and healing. It was verses 5-6 and He quoted to John the Baptist’s followers when asked if he was the Messiah. Jesus ushered in this New Day, the Return. He is the Messiah who brings this New Day, yet mostly only in our own hearts, in our soul, and not yet in the culture and in the world as a whole. The New Day is here, but not yet fully.

So as I sit here, sheltering in place, listening to the birds, I have hope, for this passage reveals who God is. He is one who turns the desert into the oasis. He is the one who calls to us and says, “Be strong, do not fear, your God will come.” God will clear up this pandemic, this disaster that has come upon the world. It is a disaster unlike any other, though certainly not the worst the world has ever seen.

My fear is that people (myself included) are not actually looking to God for His saving hand. I hear much from leaders of plans, or no plans. I hear of reopening things, or not opening things yet. I hear little of prayer. I know there are people in different administrations that are praying, but this thought led me to pray for mayors and governors and presidents and kings today. I pray they would be given wisdom from on high, from God, who actually knows all things, unlike we broken and fallen humans.

I sit here and look forward to the day when we will return to hugging our friends, to going out to eat, to kids seeing their teachers and enjoying playing on playgrounds. Because God is who He is, these things will return. I do hope it’s a return to less idolatry and less injustice as well. I will do what I am able.

But mostly, reading this, I look forward, far forward, though I do not know how far. I look forward to that Day, that Final Day, in which God wraps up this age as one wraps up a cloak. I look forward to that Day in which He fully and finally creates that highway called the Way of Holiness. Right now that Way seems like a trail through the wilderness, in which faithfulness to God feels difficult and dangerous. One day, it will truly be a highway, and people of all nations will walk upon it, going to His temple to worship Him. “The redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the LORD will return and come to Zion with singing.” It will be a day in which “sorrow and sighing will flee away” finally and fully away. This is the hope of the Bible, that the earth will be redeemed. Jesus came to pay the way for us, to pay for our sin and rebellion by taking the just punishment of that rebellion upon Himself, so that we could go free.

So until that day when God turns the whole desert into an oasis (the New Earth), I wait. But I wait with eyes that see our true end, and I begin to sing.

“Some bright morning, when this life is gone, I’ll fly away.

To a land where joy will never end, I’ll fly away.

I’ll fly away o‘ glory. I’ll fly away.

When I die, hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away…”