Tag: Old Testament

Tule Fogs and Lament

Week three of the great isolation is nearly complete. The novelty has worn off, and we’re confronted with realities that seemed impossible six weeks ago. And, we have that nagging in our stomachs telling us that all of this has just begun.

Growing up in Northern California, several times a year we would experience what weather geeks called “tule fogs,” times when the fog was so thick that you could not see even six feet in front of you. I remember a time when Renee and I were driving from LA to San Francisco on Christmas morning 1981 for dinner with friends. We ran into a tule fog near Bakersfield, and it was so dense that you could not see three feet in front of the car. We crawled to the next exit and waited it out in an overflowing Denny’s parking lot where everyone else had the same idea.

These last three weeks have felt like a California tule fog. We are forced to drive blind without any sense of where we are, where we are going, and what the path ahead looks like. We are disoriented and unable to get our bearings. All around us we find sickness, death, job loss, and we wonder if we’re next. It is easy to wonder where God is in all of this.

I’m not here to offer cheap platitudes or easy bromides. I don’t claim to offer a magic Bible verse or theological argument that will suppress our anxiety and fear. Frankly, anyone who tries to offer things like that should be ignored. Instead, I think Holy Scripture points us in a radically different way. That way involves sorrow and lament. I agree with N.T. Wright when he writes that at this time, the way of lament is the best, perhaps the only authentically Christian response we can make.

Lament is found throughout the Old Testament, but especially in the wisdom literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes). It is seen in the cries of prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Even Jesus laments over Jerusalem in Matthew’s gospel and in the Father’s absence as he suffers on that Jerusalem cross.

Lament is what we do when God seems absent. Lament is how we respond when we find ourselves in sustained times of suffering, isolation, even death. Lament recognizes that evil is truly evil, and not a mere illusion that we see on our screens. Lament is what we express when justice seems absent. Lament is what we do when the future disappears right in front of us.

A lot of Christians, especially evangelicals, have a difficult time with lament. We’ve been conditioned to think that we must always show victorious Christianity, lest others think that there is something wrong with us or that somehow God is not to be trusted. American culture teaches us to strive for “your best life now” and even many Christians have bought into the lie of prosperity. No, we don’t do lament very well.

Perhaps it is time for us to learn. This is a season of deep sorrow, one that should drive us to our knees in dependence on the Triune God. This is a time when we should mourn the suffering and isolation that has come upon millions of our fellow human beings throughout the world.  This is a moment when we offer our plaintive cries. “I say to God my Rock. “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?” (Psalm 42:9-10).

As I write Easter is less than two weeks away. This year, we will mark the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a season that few of us in Canada and the United States have ever known. Perhaps we will identify more with Good Friday this year. We will lament not only our present world, but the very death of our God and Savior. But for us, it is always sorrow and lament tinged with hope. Way out in the distance, I can hear a faint roar. Aslan is on the move, and he is coming one more time to Narnia.

Bearing God’s Name

For this post, I was privileged to review a new book written by one of our former Gordon-Conwell, Charlotte students, Carmen Joy Imes. From GCTS, Carmen studied and completed her PhD at Wheaton (IL) College and is now Associate Professor of Old Testament at Prairie College in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada. Carmen’s research focus has so far been in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament and in this newly published book, she writes for lay people and church leaders to remind us that the Old Testament is integral to God’s revelation of himself to you and me. This is a great book for Sunday school classes, small groups, and for understanding the essential message of the Old Testament. I hope you’ll pick up a copy.

Imes, Carmen Joy. Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity 2019), 240pp. (Reviewed from a pre-publication manuscript).

Most people know little about the Old Testament beyond what they have heard as children. We probably have some favorite Psalms and in church we’ve probably heard sermons where the Ten Commandments are used. We may even have a few favorite passages like the New Covenant described in Jeremiah 31:31-34.  Many Christians view that passage as a precursor to the main event described in the Gospels.

Hence, it is not surprising that most Christians, when they read the Bible, concentrate on the New Testament and essentially ignore three quarters of the Bible. This reviewer has been there. Perhaps, that is as it should be when as new followers of Jesus we are finding our way in what St. Augustine describes as “faith seeking understanding.” After all, the Old Testament is filled with teaching and events that are hard to make sense of. Or, so we think.

Carmen Joy Imes wants us to move beyond that and find in the Old Testament a rich resource for learning to follow Christ in the 21st century. What she proposes in Bearing God’s Name is wrapped up in the title of her book. God’s people bear God’s name as they live and work in the world. This reviewer must admit his own personal perspective. Carmen is a graduate of the school where I serve as librarian, Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Charlotte, NC. I remember good conversations with her in the library about all kinds of fascinating topics related to Bible, theology, history, and ethics. Even more, I remember the passion Carmen had (and still has) for teaching the Bible to laypeople and students. The fruits of that appear on the pages of this book.

The author suggests that Christians must not “un-hitch” their faith from the Old Testament, but “re-hitch to Israel’s Scriptures so that we can truly understand who Jesus is and what he came to do” (3). In other words, we cannot understand Jesus’s mission and purpose without understanding the Old Testament narratives and what they teach us about God’s purposes and plans for Israel. Understanding those purposes and plans centers in God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai. Part One of the book frames Sinai as central to the Old Testament because it is there that we see the revelation of God’s justice and mercy for Israel and by extension, all of the peoples of the world in God’s desire for Israel to be a “light to the nations.”

One misnomer that many contemporary Christians often carry is that the Old Testament focuses on law (in terms of rules and regulations) while the New Testament speaks of grace. That is a serious misreading of the Old Testament’s teaching and purpose. “We miss the grace because we too often see the Ten Commands without the glorious context of deliverance. We miss the grace because we read the judgment stories in isolation, without the long litany of second chances” (30). According to Imes, the OT legal teaching is not about a means of salvation through the keeping of the law. Instead, it provides instruction for the people of God “on how to learn to live as free men and women” (35).

Covenant faithfulness

This reviewer especially likes how the author describes this reality. “Israel’s laws are the fences within life can flourish. They make possible a distinctive way of life so that other nations can see what Yahweh is like and what he expects. The law was never the means by which Israel earned God’s favor. The Israelites were saved the same way we are—by grace through faith. But their obedience expressed their covenant commitment” (35). Exactly.

In her exposition of the Ten Commandments, the author makes an important point that this reviewer especially appreciates. The final two commandments, in her view, hint at the function that the entire law plays in the life of the Old Testament people of God. “This is not legislation in a modern sense, but character formation. The instructions paint an ideal picture of a covenant-keeping Israelite, including both outward behavior and inward motivation” (56). As such, they function as Godly wisdom for both individuals and the community. Modern Christians often read them in a regulatory sense (as we do with most legal prescriptions in Western society), while God’s purpose for them focuses much more on covenant faithfulness meaning that through their keeping, we represent God well and we enhance the covenant community  among God’s people. “Every Israelite is a covenant member. Everyone is responsible to ensure the covenant is kept” (64). The practices of community life and worship are designed with precision in order that God’s people may fulfill their purpose in “bearing God’s name” to the surrounding peoples.

The author uses the balance of her work to describe how the people of God bear God’s name in their community life and in the world. Here she traces this through the Old Testament prophets and into the New Testament. In response to the covenant breaking described in the prophets, God engages not only in covenant renewal, but in the making of a new covenant. This new covenant “involves the same partners and the same law. The difference is that will enable every Israelite to internalize it” (129). The sacrificial system of Old Testament worship will no longer be necessary because through this new covenant, God will “put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” Moreover, God “will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:33-34).

This new covenant finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. “By bearing God’s name, Jesus lives out Israel’s vocation, show us how it ought to be done” (139). This assertion gets at something vitally important. Imes wants us to grasp that the mission of “bearing God’s name” is key to understanding the purposes that God has for his people. As Christians, we are challenged to live in a way that honors God and reflects God’s glory to the world.

Treasured possessions

In addition, through Jesus Christ this new covenant becomes open not just to those of Jewish descent, but to Gentiles (non-Jews) as well. “If Gentiles have been incorporated into the people of God, included in the righteous remnant without distinction, then our inheritance is one and the same. As we follow in the footsteps of Israel’s Messiah, we too take on the responsibilities of God’s “treasured possessions.” That is our identity as God’s people, and together Jews and Gentiles who declare allegiance to Jesus Christ bear God’s image in the world. “Gentiles who follow Jesus bear Yahweh’s name” (175).

The author’s work in biblical theology is beginning to draw notice among Old Testament scholars, and with Bearing God’s Name, she has written a wonderful survey of the Old Testament (and how its teaching impacts the New Testament) organized around one of the most vital themes found on the pages of Holy Scripture. She has done it in a way that people looking for a first book on understanding the essential message of the Old Testament will find it especially helpful. Bearing God’s Name is a book that I will recommend to lay Christians at my church and to students looking for a introduction to the Old Testament.

Especially helpful are the sidebars where she explains ideas that shed important light on how we read and understand the Old Testament. These sidebars offer concise descriptions of matters like the debate on how Scripture represents the population of Hebrews in Egypt, the nature of Yahweh’s purity and how that impacts Old Testament worship, the origin of the term “Decalogue,” among others. These are helpful to those who are reading the Old Testament scriptures for the first time or who wish to dig deeper into the biblical text. Also helpful are the bibliographies at the end of each chapter as well as the comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book. Endnotes appear after the final chapter so that they do not take away from the narratives of each chapter.

This reviewer hopes that this will be the first of several books from the pen of this new biblical scholar, teacher, and guide in the years to come.