No Objective Thoughts

As most of my writing starts, i find myself buried in another book written by someone five times as smart as i am and loving every minute of it. This time it is The New Testament and the People of God by N. T. Wright. It is heady reading, but rich with treasure on every page. i am struck by how long it must take to write all of those thoughts down and with aspirations to write a book one day, i am left wondering how i will accomplish such a feat.

He writes about how we must view the Gospel accounts from all three approaches, theological, historical, and literary. We need to look at these accounts in the original context, trying to understand why the authors wrote them the way they did, and with a healthy theological viewpoint not forgetting that they were carried along by the Spirit of God. The thing that struck me as i was reading was that no thought or idea ever comes to us without some interpretation attached to it.

We read books that are written with the lens of the particular author who wrote it. We hear sermons with a certain skew to the message (not necessarily bad). The point being that we must be well rounded in our learning or we can be miles from the truth of a matter. In particular, it is absurdity to teach solely the New Testament to the saints without equal emphasis on the Old Testament.

The OT is foundational for understanding the NT and you will be quite lost and lead many astray if you have a feeble grasp on what God has been doing from the beginning. For example, the Gospel was preached to Abraham:

Galatians 3:8
8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN
YOU."

According to the Scriptures, the gospel is not a new thing; it has always been the plan of God. In verses, 7 and 9 of Galatians 8 which this verse is the sandwich material, we see that all who are of faith are "sons of Abraham" and "blessed with Abraham".

This means that people in the OT got saved (there's is one of those terms again) the same way we do today. God intervenes and speaks into your life like Abraham, you hear and obey (Abraham left all that he knew and went somewhere he knew nothing about), and then God works on you through the Holy Spirit to change you to be like His Son. Just go read about the conversations God had with Abraham. He is still speaking to us, we are just too busy to hear Him.

We must be careful not to avoid the OT because it is hard reading. God has set forth patterns in the OT that help us to understand what He did in the NT and what He plans to do in the future (find the Greater Exodus, hint: Jeremiah 16:14-15; 23:7-8). One last example and i am done is Joseph who is set up as a type of Christ.

He is thrown into a pit and is then raised up, after being rejected by his brothers, and is preeminent over them and has authority to save them. From the time that Joseph was thrown in the pit till he saved his family during the famine is close to 30 years.

i find it no coincidence that our LORD lived approximately 30-33 years before He died for our sins. The patterns are there if we will search for them. Be wary of the lenses that you view life through and remember that we all have a bias of some type. God can set us free because He is Truth. Do not slay your brothers and sisters because of your biases or different colored lenses. Always be searching for the truth of God in everything, reject what does not line up with His word, and treasure what is from His word.

1 Samuel 2:2-4
2 "There is no one holy like the LORD,
Indeed, there is no one besides You,
Nor is there any rock like our God.
3 "Boast no more so very proudly,
Do not let arrogance come out of your mouth;
For the LORD is a God of knowledge,
And with Him actions are weighed.
4 "The bows of the mighty are shattered,
But the feeble gird on strength.