Act 3 in God’s divine play of life is Redemption Initiated. This Act deals with God choosing Israel and the covenant relationship he makes with them.
Act 1 dealt with The Kingdom Established, how God had created everything good and given his creation everything it needed to thrive in life. Act 2 addressed Rebellion in the Kingdom and the spiral of creation into chaos. Sin has been unleashed throughout the Kingdom.
Here, in Act 3, we see God’s response.
Before we dive too far into it, however, let’s address some of the initial questions we have as we try getting a grasp on the Old Testament.
1. How Should We Understand the Old Testament?
The Old Testament (OT) is a rich and complex text—not mention ancient! How should we read and understand the stories and events we’re told about in the OT? Let me give you five things to keep in mind as you read the OT in order to better understand it.[1]
We should read individual narratives in their specific context, but with the wider narratives in mind.
For instance, the story of Joseph is a rich and profound demonstration of trusting God and being faithful even when we feel as though we’re not doing anything meaningful with our lives.
But step back and we see that without a friend in Egypt (Joseph) the Israelites (Jacob’s family) would have most certainly died in the famine. Joseph’s enslavement in Egypt was the sovereign working of God to protect and care for his people.
Step back even further and we begin to discover a prototype of Jesus in Joseph. Just as Joseph was betrayed by his closest friends, so Jesus gets betrayed by close friends. Just as Joseph in that betrayal ends up saving his family, so Jesus in his betrayal saves humanity.
The significance of the story of Joseph goes beyond learning how to work diligently even when you don’t know what’s coming next.
We should take the Old Testament narratives at face value, reading for the natural sense.
If we’re not careful, we can impose symbolic or allegorical meanings where there aren’t any intended when reading OT stories. Not every story has a meaning. The purpose of narrative (or story) is to tell us what happened and help us understand the broad significance of what happened.
There are places in the OT where there seems to be symbolism going on (the first couple chapters of Genesis are good examples). There also pieces of direct poetry where we know there are figures of speech at play.
But when we’re reading the story of Joshua crossing the Jordan River, we should not impose a hidden meaning to the River, or to Joshua, or to the place where they crossed. The story means just what it says.
It’s okay if we don’t come away from every OT story with some tremendous revelation. Taking them at face value removes much of the anxiety we might have if we are always looking for some supposed hidden meaning.
We should also avoid moralizing or spiritualizing every Old Testament story we read.
I have heard people point to Isaac and Rebekah and their two sons, Esau and Jacob, as examples of an unhealthy family. They surmise that Rebekah was controlling and playing favoritism with Jacob when she had him dress up to receive the blessing from Isaac.
But the text doesn’t actually say that.
In fact, God tells Rebekah that the older will serve the younger before the two were even born. Rebekah is aware that God has chosen Jacob for something special.
What if, similarly to how Abraham and Sarah misunderstood God and tried having a child through Sarah’s maid, Rebekah is misunderstanding God and trying to bring about in her own way what he had said? It could be quite innocent.
We should withhold our moral lessons on family health when looking at the story of Jacob and Esau and instead wrestle through what the text says, and the greater narrative at play.
We should learn from the complex lives of the characters of biblical stories.
We can feel tension when we realize Abraham, the father of faith, seemed to struggle as much as any of us with trusting God. He lied to Pharaoh in order to save his own skin and tried having a child through his wife’s servant.
In a way it could feel like cognitive dissonance.
What if, instead, it points to the fact that trusting God and following him is messy and we sometimes don’t get it right? People who follow God aren’t above the brokenness of the rest of the world.
We are all the broken world.
And God is doing a wild work of redemption in the midst of and in spite of our brokenness.
We should read through biblical narrative seeing it as the great story of God who is its central character.
The story of David and Goliath is not about us facing our giants. It’s about Jesus freeing us from the bondage of sin. God and his redemption are the focus; not us and our ability to do great things.
The narrative of the Old Testament shows us the Creator of all things as the God of holiness and love. Throughout these stories, we witness God’s holiness. For him, right and wrong, good and evil really do matter. Through his love we see his patience, forgiveness, guidance, protection, and mercy.
The beautiful thing about story, especially the story of Scripture, is that every time we go through it we will see something new. A detail here, a detail there. An attitude in one of the characters that reminds us more of ourselves than it did before. We see how the story is telling our story, how fallen and sinful we are. We also see hope, the hope of Jesus and his redemption.
The Old Testament is preparing us for the coming of Jesus Christ.
2. Why did God choose a select group of people?
God chooses Abraham and his family through which to bring the Promised One. Humanity had become grossly depraved from its origins in Eden. The Israelites were to be a light to the nations, demonstrating what it looks like to walk with God again, as Adam and Eve had done in Eden.
He set them smack in the middle of all trade routes—everyone came to know about Israel. And the land where they lived required them to trust God for provision—they were not to depend on themselves.
As we’ll see more and more as we walk through this Act, salvation was available to everyone. But God chose one family to make known his way of salvation and to bring forth his son—God coming to dwell with man.
3. What happened to non-Israelites when they died?
If they had come to know Yahweh, the God of Israel, and served him and only him, the Old Testament seems to indicate they would be saved (1Kings 8:41-43). If they did not come to know Yahweh, they would die in their sin.
4. Did God command genocide?
Dr. William Lane Craig has an excellent video on this, which you can watch here.
5. Did all Israelites go to heaven when they died?
This is a question that has been debated by scholars for centuries. The Bible never answers it directly, but it’s clear through the OT narrative that salvation comes through knowing and obeying Yahweh. Time and again, Israel is warned about not turning away lest their children and grandchildren come to not know him (Deut. 29:18-28). If they do turn away, God says, they would be taken away into exile.
6. Why was there polygamy if God doesn’t approve of more than one spouse.
As we saw in Genesis 3, mankind begins a course of doing its own thing instead of God’s thing. God never approves of the polygamy. Rather, he seems to work with it as he brings redemption, aligning people back to how he designed.
The same is true today. He works with us where we are at and brings us into his design and intention for our lives.
7. Is Israel still special today?
Again, another debated topic. Some people say Israel is just as special, just as elected as they were then. Others do not believe this. As we read through Romans 4-12, we get a clear picture that Israel is special in the sense that they’ve known Yahweh and they’ve heard of the Messiah all along. Furthermore, the Messiah came through them.
Gentiles, on the other hand, have not.
Yet, Paul also seems to make it clear that salvation comes through faith, through being convinced that God is following through on his promise to crush the serpents head (Gen 3:15). When a Gentile who did not have the law does what the law requires, he is saved. And when a Jew who has the law does not do what the law requires, he is judged (Ro. 2:12-16).
Israel demonstrates to us that we cannot in and of ourselves save ourselves. We need Jesus. And we are saved through our belief in him.
8. What all is going on from Genesis 3 until the time of Jesus in the New Testament?
That’s a great question! And it’s exactly what we’re going to look at as we walk through Act 3. Sin has been unleashed throughout creation, and God is responding to it. He is pursuing his creation to bring it back into the beauty and goodness he intended for it.
But creation is walking away. It doesn’t want him. So, he first must show them that they need him. This why he gives the law. Paul tells us in Galatians that the law is our schoolmaster, bringing us to Christ.
The law is not just a list of rules. The law is a book of instructions for how to live according to God’s design. But as Israel discovers, they can’t because of the corruption within man’s heart. So they’re exiled, and they come face to face with their deep need for transformation from the inside out.
I’d love to hear two things that stand out to you from this article and then at least one or two questions you have that didn’t get addressed. Share in the comments below.
[1] I get this from https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2014/12/how-should-we-understand-the-stories-of-the-old-testament/
