The Panorama of Scripture
The best I’ve ever been above the floor of the earth has been in an airplane. A industrial airline cruises at round 34,000 toes, which is about 5,000 toes greater than the tallest mountain on earth. Solely army pilots, astronauts, and some daredevils have been greater than I! In fact, numerous individuals—tens of millions?—have been simply as excessive, sitting comfortably in pressurized cabins, munching away on peanuts or pretzels.
Yearly an increasing number of individuals journey to faraway locations by flying. After we fly, we routinely get greater above sea degree than anybody had ever been only one hundred years in the past! For all of historical past, the report for the way excessive a human ascended into the environment would have rested with some adventurous, hard-working climber. Now, all we’ve to do is get to the airport an hour forward of time, stand in a few strains, after which sit in a well-padded chair for a number of hours.
My favourite second is takeoff. The airplane rolls alongside slowly. A pause comes, then it lurches into a better gear. Seconds later you look out the window and see that you’re racing sooner than any automotive on the freeway. Then the wheels carry off the bottom, first the entrance, then the again. Earlier than you realize it, you’re wanting down on the tops of the buildings across the airport, the highways that feed into it, the structure of the town, and the hills and rivers and shoreline!
Creator Mark Dever introduces readers to the Previous Testomony as an excellent entire in order that they’re able to see the large image of the majesty of God and the surprise of his guarantees.
I’ve simply regarded away from the pc as a result of I’m scripting this on a practice, and we’ve simply crossed a excessive bridge over a large river. Searching, I can see for a fantastic distance. Such sights—from an airplane or a practice—offer you a complete new perspective on the place you’re. You’ll be able to find your self, and higher perceive the place you’re going and the way you’re getting there.
In all of life, in fact, we have to higher perceive the place we’re going, and this requires finding the place we’re within the first place. After I preached by the Previous Testomony at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., I attempted to just do that by flying greater than sermons typically go. I hoped that these “Bible overviews” would assist my congregation higher be taught each the place we’re and the place we’re going.
I used to be already aware of a number of the Previous Testomony books when the week got here to evangelise them—Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Jonah, Malachi. However turning to different books felt extra like my first journey into a brand new nation! In each classes, nevertheless, I discovered way over what I anticipated: a richness, a newness, a wholesome strangeness, and, concurrently, a well-known high quality that allow me know I used to be merely seeing extra of the identical God I’ve come to know and love by Jesus Christ.
I keep in mind preaching by the Main Prophets in a sequence entitled “Huge Hopes.” As I labored by Isaiah one Sunday, Jeremiah the subsequent, then Ezekiel, and eventually Daniel, it appeared as if I had been listening to the 4 actions of a fantastic symphony. Isaiah begins the symphony with grand and brooding premonitions of destruction, the horrible love of atonement, after which the triumphant pleasure of eschatological hope. Jeremiah takes over the second motion with the horrifying siege of Jerusalem, minor in its key, but not with out candy themes of a promised deliverance and justice. Then we flip our ears to Babylon, the place we hear Ezekiel’s variations on Jeremiah. His tune is acquainted, however it’s much less particularized, extra abstracted. It offers us new and riveting views on God’s love for his individuals and his individuals’s rejection of him. Lastly, Daniel, taking the good themes of the earlier books, recasts them in a number of stunning vignettes of people who belief and hope in God, who oppose and are opposed by God, and of some who expertise his judgment and restoration. The themes carry ahead into Daniel’s visions of a mystifying and marvelous future, because the “music” of the Main Prophets fades out.
Understanding every guide by itself is one factor. Seeing them subsequent to 1 one other—how every one enhances, counterbalances, and expands on the others—brings a brand new luster to every and to the entire.
We All Want Reminders!
Within the busyness of life it’s all too simple to neglect who God is, what he has accomplished for us, and who we’re due to him. Crossway desires to assist! Enroll in the present day to obtain concise Scripture-filled, gospel-saturated reminders that can encourage you and strengthen your stroll with Jesus.
Lock and Key
We flip notably to the Previous Testomony. For some Christians, the New Testomony can really feel just like the densely populated states on America’s East Coast. The New Testomony books are typically smaller, extra traveled, extra acquainted. The books of the Previous Testomony, then again, can really feel just like the unknown and storied lands of the American West in all probability felt to nineteenth-century pioneers. The good open plains of Patriarchal historical past, the impenetrable Rockies of Levitical legislation, and the thick forests and deep canyons of prophets frighten off many would-be vacationers. Everybody is aware of a favourite story or two introduced again by the courageous souls who’ve ventured into the unknown, however many Christians are content material to spend their quiet instances among the many extra well-known, seemingly liveable landscapes of the Gospels or the epistles. The books of the Previous Testomony are massive. We don’t know them very effectively. They require us to know all kinds of historical past we’ve both forgotten or by no means discovered. And all these unpronounceable names! The entire concept of journeying into the Previous Testomony begins to sound overwhelming, time-consuming, unprofitable, and perhaps even harmful.
For causes like these, most of us have deserted the Previous Testomony for the New. Let the students, the archaeologists, the prophecy-hounds, and the kids’s Sunday faculty academics cope with it!
But, by abandoning these books, we abandon the revelation of God. Greater than that, we hinder our potential to know the New Testomony’s revelation of Jesus Christ.
In case you don’t get what the Previous Testomony teaches, you’ll by no means get Christ.
If Christ is the important thing to human historical past, the Previous Testomony rigorously describes the lock. If Christ is the climax of the story, the Previous Testomony units the stage and begins the plot. Do you learn simply the endings of books?
If the New Testomony presents God’s guarantees saved, the Previous Testomony tells us about God’s guarantees made.
In different phrases, in case you don’t get what the Previous Testomony teaches, you’ll by no means get Christ. Our God doesn’t waste phrases. Every Testomony wants the opposite. You’ll finest be capable of comprehend Christ’s cross in case you first perceive the query left unanswered by the Previous Testomony. The cross is the reply. How effectively are you aware the query?
With a view to purchase a way of the grandiosity of God’s work, the majesty of his plan, and the tenacity of his love, there is no such thing as a substitute for the Previous Testomony. Deprive your self of this a part of God’s revelation, and your God will appear smaller, much less holy, and fewer loving than God actually is.
This text is tailored from The Message of the Previous Testomony: Guarantees Made by Mark Dever.
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