Misfits Ministries

The Bible and the Christian Life

Since the time of the Reformation, which began in the beginning of the 1500s, Protestant Christians have held that God reveals himself to his people through the Bible. It was the Protestant Reformers who championed translating the Bible into languages that common people could understand so that they could read the Bible and have a direct encounter with God. The importance of the Bible has remained central up to the present day among most Protestants. Knowledge of the Bible is basic to the Christian life.

But biblical literacy is low in the United States and it's getting worse. A 2007 Vatican survey revealed that only 17 percent of Americans could answer 7 basic questions about the Bible’s contents and authorship correctly. A number of other recent surveys reveal declining knowledge of basic facts such as who delivered the Sermon on the Mount and who the twelve apostles were, to the point that modern high school and college students are not able to identify biblically based metaphors in literary works written prior to 1950.[1]

By biblical literacy I mean the familiarity of regular people with the larger story that the Bible tells. Historically, that story was taught to almost everyone beginning in early childhood in most of what we would today call "The West." The stories of the Bible were woven into the fabric of European and American culture, so that even if a person was not religious (which became increasingly common starting in the 1700s), that person would still be familiar with Bible stories, so much so that references to those stories would instantly bring to mind certain ideas.

This is still true to some extent. You can talk about a "Good Samaritan" and most people will know you mean a charitable person even if they have never actually heard the parable by Jesus (Luke 10:29-37). It used to be that most of the stories in the Bible were familiar enough that you could refer to them like we do the Good Samaritan and people would have a basic idea of what you were talking about. This is not true anymore. Try it out on your friends. How many of them know who Gideon was and what he did? (Judges 6-8). Or what is meant when someone talks about their Ebenezer? (1 Sam. 4:1ff) And I’ll bet you could get some really wild responses if you asked what the Bible says about Balaam’s ass! (Num. 22). Collectively, our culture has forgotten the Bible.

This fact is often pointed to by nervous people as proof of how far down the road to perdition we have gone. No doubt it is also pointed to with approval by those who hope to dismiss Christianity and wish it would go away. I am not going to argue here that this illiteracy is either good or bad (it might be either -- or both); I just want to point out that it exists. I want to point this out because, being true, it means that before we can really understand any individual section of the Bible we ought to have some idea how it fits in with the bigger picture, that most of us do not know. In order to understand individual parts of the Bible we have to have some foundational knowledge.

This short work is intended to introduce that knowledge. It’s not exhaustive. It barely scratches the surface, If you take a half hour to read this document you will have a basic knowledge of the biggest concepts related to studying and understanding the Bible and the Christian life. I have tried to avoid theological controversy by just representing basic facts that most Christians agree upon.

And, even though it is short, I wish it was shorter. I wish I could represent what I think is the minimum basic knowledge with less words. And, in that vein, the document is divided into sections that to some extent can stand alone. If you read the document end to end, you will get a good basic overview of Scripture and the Christian faith, but if you just want to know about one or another basic concept, that is also possible by consulting the individual sections.

The Bible: God Reveals Himself

The Bible is important to our Christian faith because it contains God’s complete revelation of himself to us. It is through the writings contained in the Bible that we know everything we know and need to know about God, ourselves, our condition, our history, and our eternal destiny.

The Christian Bible consists of a number of individual books divided into two main sections that are almost always referred to as the Old Testament and the New Testament. Sometimes the two sections are called the Old Covenant and New Covenant signaling a change in the relationship between God and humans caused by the work of Jesus Christ. More on what a covenant is below.

The Bible was created over a period of more than a thousand years by a number of different human authors. The Bible contains works in various styles or genres such as narrative (history), poetry, prophecy, wisdom literature, stories, and letters. The Bible contains works originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

Even with all of this diversity, however, the Bible has one author, and it has one subject. The author of the Bible is God himself. We believe that God inspired human authors through the Holy Spirit to write each part of the Bible, so that even though there is so much diversity in style, language, and authorship, the Bible is bound together by an overarching unity. Every part of the Bible concerns itself with a single subject. That subject is Jesus Christ.

People living at the time of Jesus didn’t call their scriptures either the Bible or the Old Testament. They called them the Tanakh. The name Tanakh derives from three Hebrew words: Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings), which represent the three different kinds of writings that were included in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the first century the books we know today in the Old Testament existed in individual scrolls rather than in a book, so they were not kept in a particular order, like the order of the books in today’s Bible.

First century Jewish society was one firmly rooted in the Scripture. Every man woman and child over the age of twelve knew the Scriptures well enough that they could identify everything the New Testament writers referred to in the Scripture, including where in the scrolls it came from and what it was supposed to mean. The New Testament stories indicate to us the truth that essentially everyone knew the content of the Tanakh. So when the New Testament authors wrote, they left out or didn’t explain a lot of what their audience would already have known as common knowledge.

Compare that with today’s society. In our society, most people are familiar with a few tidbits here and there from the Bible (although studies have shown that many cannot distinguish between maxims that really are in the Bible and pithy sayings that are not), but practically no one is familiar with the overall story of the Bible. So, if we are going to study the Bible, especially the New Testament, we have to be familiar with the content of the Old Testament and how it fits, again, in the bigger picture.

Interpretation: God Speaks. How Do We Know What He’s Saying?

A Christian oriented radio network called Family Radio spent $100 million to publicize the prediction of its founder Harold Camping that the world would come to an end on May 21, 2011. According to Camping, on that day Jesus would return and all of the righteous would go with him to heaven, and then there would be six months of fire and brimstone on the earth.

Camping based his prediction on a unique interpretation of the Scriptures. Camping knew the Bible, but was not faithful in trying to understand what the Bible says correctly. And so his prediction turned out to be false, and he and his organization, and to some extent all Christians, were held up to public ridicule. To be fair, Camping later repented (a fact almost completely missed by the mainstream media) and admitted that his interpretation and even the motive for his study, to learn when the world would end, was faulty. And he promised to devote the remainder of his time to trying to understand what God is really saying in Scripture.

This incident reveals a danger that exists in attempting to study the Bible without a valid methodology. Without a careful and humble approach to Biblical interpretation, it is possible to make the Bible say and mean practically anything. It is possible to be absolutely convinced of things that are absurd, and it is possible for people with incorrect understanding of what the Bible says to do really tragic things with the wrong notion that God is calling them to do it.

There is a doctrine called “Clarity of Scripture” that holds that the basic message of the Bible can be understood clearly by anyone literate enough to read it. This doctrine was put forward by people called “Reformers” who were responding to abuses in the medieval Church, one of which was to claim special knowledge of the Bible. A tradition had developed in that Church that held that people were not capable of understanding the Bible without the help of the clergy. So the Church forbade translating the Bible into languages that average people could read, and insisted that people had to go to the priests for Biblical knowledge. Of course this led to abuses, because the Church could (and sometimes did) teach people things about the Bible that were not true, and it was these abuses that the Reformers were trying to do away with.

The doctrine of Clarity of Scripture has caused some people to argue that there is no need for interpretation or Biblical scholarship. According to them a person ought to be able to sit down with a Bible they can read and God will make sure that they rightly understand what they are reading. But this is not what the Reformers had in mind when they translated the Bible. Many of the Reformers were biblical scholars themselves and based their opposition to the Church’s practice on what they considered to be a more valid interpretation than that of the official Church. As events like the Harold Camping incident and others demonstrate, there is a real need to approach Bible study using a trustworthy method of interpretation.

There is a whole field of study called hermeneutics that deals with methods for determining how to correctly interpret each part of the Bible so that we can understand it as accurately as possible. There are a number of really good resources that can help someone who is Biblically illiterate begin to read the Bible in a way that remains true, as best we can understand, to what God is saying. These resources essentially put forward principles for deciding how to determine the meaning of various aspects of Scripture.[2] We should not forget that fellowship with other believers is a tremendous resource for keeping us from errors in interpretation. Of course, even given these principles there exist many differences over what constitutes a valid interpretation of particular parts of the Bible. But the differences are based on knowledge, not ignorance.

In the Gospel according to Luke there is a story about two of Jesus’ disciples who were aware of Jesus’ execution and had heard rumors that Jesus’ tomb was empty but they did not yet know that Jesus had risen from the dead. As they were going on the way to their home in a place named Emmaus they were met by the risen Jesus, although they didn’t recognize him. Jesus asked them what they were discussing and they told him what they knew and expressed sorrow that the one they had hoped would be the Messiah apparently was not. Jesus responded to them by pointing out that everything in the Bible, which for them would have been the Old Testament scriptures, pointed to him. (Lk. 24:13-27).

This story reminds us that everything in what we call the Old Testament points to Jesus. God had already told his people through the Scriptures what was going to happen, why, and even how, sometimes in astonishing detail. But it also shows that even people who knew the Scriptures well did not fully understand what they meant. So this story helps us to keep in mind that we must be humble and teachable when trying to understand the Scriptures. It is impossible for any human to fully understand God’s revelation, so our interpretation should be based on the desire to more fully live according to God’s will rather than on an intellectual pride that judges how we think others ought to live.

One of the real joys of studying the Bible is learning more and more how it all hangs together as a bigger picture of God’s plan of salvation. I think you can literally spend years at it and still be able to mine new treasures. But I also think that before embarking on a journey of studying individual parts of the Bible we ought to have at least a cursory overview of the larger story that it tells. So here we go.

The Need: Creation and Fall

The Bible begins in the book of Genesis telling us that God created the world out of nothing. We don't know when and we don't really know how. The creation account in Genesis is not a science text. It tells us something about the nature of God. In fact, it tells us a lot about the nature of God. That is its purpose. A man named Moses was the human author of Genesis and all of the first five books of the modern Old Testament that make up the Torah. God used Moses to tell people about his real character.

The other peoples in the ancient Near East recorded gods who were fickle and selfish and cared little for humans. If you know anything about Egyptian, Greek, or Roman mythology you know this, and there were a number of other contemporary ideas about gods, humans, the world, and the relationship between the three that differed in substance but not in style. They were all polytheistic, meaning that they imagined many gods, and they represented humans as being little more than slaves and pawns of the gods. By contrast, the Genesis account records that God created everything perfectly out of nothing, and that everything he created, including humans, was good. And, very importantly, he created humans with love, respect, and dignity. He created humans in his own image, with his own nature. He created humans for him to love, and for them to love him.

One way that God reveals himself to us is as what we call the Trinity. God exists in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit, each of which acts independently and fully as God, but all of whom add up to one God. If it sounds a little weird, don't feel lonely. Many people through the centuries have struggled with this concept but no one has been able to fully understand or explain it. Nevertheless the Biblical evidence is that God exists in three persons all of whom together add up to one God.

The important thing here is that the three persons relate to each other in self-sacrificing love. The Apostle John tells us that "God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." (1 Jn. 4:16 ESV). When John writes about love, he doesn't mean a warm fuzzy feeling and pink hearts and valentines. He means a total giving of oneself for another. If you have a spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend who you love, you may be able to get a glimpse of this kind of love. You may feel like you would give up everything for the happiness of the one you love. I have found this feeling to be especially strong in parents for their children, including myself. I have often said that the love of a parent for their child approximates God's love for us, because your kid can puke on you, destroy your property, and get you in trouble with the law, but you still love them.

Love has its source in the lover, not in the one being loved. The one being loved will be loved regardless of any characteristic of the beloved. When children are born they haven’t done anything to deserve love. The one being loved doesn’t have to – and can’t – earn love. Here is a way that this idea was explained by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he was building a social justice movement based on this kind of unconditional love.

In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion…. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will. When we speak of loving…, we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape means understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart.[3]

I think this is probably as good a definition of divine love as we will find anywhere. When John says "live in love," he means this overflowing love that cares only for the other.

Think about what John is saying here. If we live in God, God lives in us. If we pour ourselves out completely to God, God pours himself out completely to us. If both we and God are doing this, then we live in God, and God lives in us. The theological term for this is perichoresis. The term itself is usually applied in theology to the relationship of the different persons of the Trinity to each other. A constant outpouring of love between all of the members forever. This love is the nature of God. That is why the Bible tells us, "God is love."

When the Bible tells us in the first chapter of Genesis that God created men and women "in his own image," (Gen. 1:27) what can this mean other than that God created men and women in love? So at the creation, the relationship between God and humans was the same as the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. God created humans to experience this love. But because God wanted the love given by humans to be spontaneous and free like the love between the persons of the Trinity, he created humans with the ability to choose whether or not to love.

When God created humans with the ability to choose he intended that humans would choose to love. The tragedy (and this is the greatest tragedy ever) is that in that state of perfect creation in the Garden of Eden, humans exercised their choice in quite a different way than was intended. Rather than choosing to love God in the same way that God loved them, the first humans chose to love themselves and the things around them. It had nothing to do with apples, nakedness, or sex. It had to do with self-sacrificing love. Rather than choosing to love the creator, they chose to love created things instead. (Ro. 1:25) And when they did that, they broke the love relationship between humans and God. That is what is referred to as "The Fall."

After that, everything was broken. All of creation was broken. Sin and corruption and pain and suffering and death entered the world. And once the first humans had made their choice, they couldn't un-make it. They couldn't put things back the way they were before. That awful willful choice echoes through the ages to us. All of the anxiety, pain, and suffering we experience or we see others experience finds its source in the choice of humans not to love. And it doesn’t take much reflection to realize that we continue to make that choice today.

God's Plan to Fix Things

If you have kids you know what it feels like when your kids do things that hurt themselves. You try to keep them from doing these things by setting rules and setting a good example. But kids are kids and even the “best” of them are going to be wayward sometimes. And when they are, if you are a parent, you know it breaks your heart. That is exactly what God felt after his children disobeyed and brought destruction on themselves by choosing not to love.

When God found out about the first humans' choice to rebel, like any parent who catches their kids in mischief, he read them the riot act. But what's recorded in the Bible is really interesting because even though God tells Adam and Eve (the first humans), and the serpent (their tempter) about all of the trouble they've caused and all of the consequences that will echo through history to us, at the same time he promised a fix. The humans couldn't fix it, the serpent didn't want to fix it (and couldn’t anyway), but God already had a plan to fix it. In Genesis 3:15, where God is reading the riot act, we see the first mention of the Messiah. The Messiah is the Chosen One who will come and fix everything better than new. So that tells us that as soon as there was a need for salvation, God had a plan for salvation.

Now you might wonder, if God could fix things, why didn't he just fix them then and there and get it over with? Why do generations of people have to suffer for this one screw up? The short answer to this question is to ask another: how do we know anything about why God does what he does? But probably a better answer is to point out that while we, bound by time, have to look at everything through the lens of time, God does not. And so we look back at this incident and God's plan and think he's taking his sweet time about fixing things. But from God's point of view that might not be true. The Apostle Peter wrote to a Church who was waiting for God to act, "Do not overlook this fact, beloved, that with The Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise." (2 Pet. 3:8-9 ESV).

God's Covenant with Abram

God set his plan to fix things in motion with a man named Abram. The Bible records that God chose Abram, who was neither a Jew nor a Christian because there weren't any such things yet, and made a promise to him. God told Abram to take all of his stuff (which was a lot because Abram was a very wealthy man) and just start walking. Imagine if one day you heard a voice in your head that said, "Just leave behind your home and your friends and everyone you've ever known and grab all of your stuff and get in the car and start driving and I'll tell you when to stop. And when you do that I'm going to bless you and every one of your descendants and in fact the whole world through you." What would you do? It would be hard to obey, don't you think? Especially if you were really rich, like Abram was, and especially if you were old and getting ready to retire. But Abram went.

As I said, this promise (called a covenant) to Abram was the beginning of God putting in motion his plan of salvation. Here's how it was supposed to work. Abram would have a child, who would have children, who in turn would have children, etc., etc. All of the descendants of Abram, who was later renamed Abraham by God, would become a special people. All of this did happen, although not without quite a bit of drama. That story is recorded in the Torah: the first five books of the Bible. Abraham's descendants came to be known as the Hebrews.

The Passover: A Holy People

Abraham moved to a country called Canaan that is where Israel and Palestine are today, and eventually had a child named Isaac who was to bear the promise. Isaac had a child named Jacob, who later changed his name to Israel, and Israel had twelve sons, who became the fathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. When Israel was old there was a famine in Canaan and he and his sons and their families moved to Egypt to escape the famine. The descendants of Israel lived in Egypt for a long time, over 400 years. At first they were welcomed there, but eventually the Egyptians came to fear and hate them, and the Hebrews were enslaved and oppressed, and they cried out to God for relief.

God heard their cry and used a man named Moses to help them escape from slavery in Egypt. The escape from Egypt was called the Passover and it is the most important celebration in the Jewish calendar still today. The Israelites escaped across the Red Sea into the desert of Sinai. It was there that God got them ready to carry out their mission to bring salvation to all of the peoples of the earth, just like he had promised Abram.

The Law

As already noted, the first five books of the Bible are called the Torah. Torah is a Hebrew word for "Law". Obviously, not all of the first five books of the Bible contain just laws, because there is a lot of narrative in there telling us what happened (like the stories about Abram and Isaac and Israel), but a good portion of this section of the Bible is actually what we would consider “law."

I have to confess I think that trying to read the stipulations of the Law is excruciating. Some people really get into it but it's really painful for me. Because for the most part the laws themselves don't really make any sense. They would probably make sense if we lived in the second millennium BC, but we don't.

But even though the Law is hard to understand it is really important. It is not necessarily important to know the specific stipulations of the Law, but it is important to know some things about the Law. The first and most important thing is that the purpose of the Law was to create a people who lived lives that exhibited God's character.

When we look at the Torah today, sometimes the things that are being described just seem wacky. There are parts that forbid boiling a goat in its mother’s milk, (Deut. 14:21) and wearing clothes made out of two different kinds of cloth, (Deut. 22:11) and a part that commands people to kill their children if they disobey. (Deut. 21:18-21) These things seem arbitrary and even vicious to us. But in the context of the time and place they were written, they set the Israelites apart from the pagan peoples around them. If the Hebrews lived by the Law, they would live lives that would be noticeably different from their contemporaries. The Israelites would be "set apart" from their neighbors.

Moses records in the book of Deuteronomy that God told the Israelites, "You are a people holy to The Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." (Deut. 7:6 ESV). Holy means "set apart." In this case we can see God telling the Israelites that they're supposed to be different from the other nations. But God doesn't bless and choose the Israelites "just because."

Listen to what he says next, "It was not because you were more in number than any other people that The Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because The Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers..." (Deut. 7:7-8 ESV). The oath here is the promise to Abram, the covenant, that all of the nations of the earth were to be blessed through his descendants.

How was that supposed to happen? The Israelites were to be holy ("set apart") from their contemporaries by leading lives, individually and in community, that reflected God's character. A lot of people point to the strangeness of the Old Testament Law to try to paint a picture of God as some kind of monstrous tyrant. But if you consider the stipulations of the Law in relationship to the practices of the other peoples who lived near the Israelites at the time the Law was given, and if you consider them all together in context, you will find that what stands out about the Torah is a passionate demand for justice, righteousness, and love on the part of God's people. Why? Because God's nature, God's character, is justice, righteousness, and love.

So the plan was that the Israelites would live lives that were so compelling that the people of all of the nations surrounding them would be attracted by it. They would compare the blessings the Israelites received by living lives of justice, righteousness, and love to the miserable lives they lived in subjection to their own tyrannical gods and would be compelled to adopt God's ways. This is indicated poetically by the prophet Isaiah, "I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach the end of the earth." (Is. 49:6 ESV).

A Forever Kingdom

After the Israelites escaped from Egypt their human leader was Moses, who was assisted by his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam. God divided the Israelites into tribes depending on which of the twelve sons of Israel (Patriarchs) they could trace their ancestry to. He also created a special group of priests who were the descendants of Levi (one of the twelve Patriarchs). This group became known as the Levites, and they were dedicated to offering up sacrifices for the people.

The number of people living in the desert was very large, although we don’t know exactly how large. The bible records that Moses led about 600000 men out of Egypt, so the actual number including women and children must have been much larger. Maybe more than a million. (Ex. 12:37). The actual number isn’t that important; what matters is that there were a lot of people for two or three leaders to govern. So eventually Moses appointed helpers called Judges to help him. (Ex. 18:25-26).

But the real leader of the Israelites was God himself. It was actually the real presence of God who had led the Hebrews out of Egypt, and as a pillar of fire he led them through the desert. While in the desert he instructed the people to build a tent for him to live in called a Tabernacle. The Tabernacle in many ways served as a portable temple for the people of Israel.

One of the distinctive features of Judaism, and later Christianity, is this near presence of God. Unlike the gods imagined by other peoples, who lived faraway, the God of the Bible has always wanted to live in the midst of his people. He has always wanted to have fellowship with his children. So we see that in the beginning in the Garden of Eden God walked with Adam and Eve. After the Fall, humans could no longer be in God’s direct presence, but God still wanted to be with his people. So when he instructed the Israelites to build the Tabernacle, he told them to make a special place in the interior of the tent called the “Most Holy Place” (or sometimes the “Holy of Holies”) that was separated from the rest of the Tabernacle by a heavy curtain, and God’s real presence dwelled in that place. (Ex. 403:34). That way he could live in the midst of his people, even if they could not approach him directly.

The Hebrews occupied the land of Canaan with a number of other peoples. At first the Israelites lived under the Judges as they had in the desert, but eventually they demanded a king and God reluctantly allowed it. The people wanted a king so they could be like other nations; God wanted his people to acknowledge him as their king. For the record, God still wants that.

The first king of Israel was named Saul. Saul’s history is very tragic. He started out with God’s blessing but was wayward like the nation of Israel itself. In the end God withdrew his blessing from Saul and chose another to be king named David.

David became the greatest king of Israel. Under David’s rule Israel became a powerful and important state in the ancient Middle East. Since the reign of David and even to today Jews remember this era as the golden age in their national memory. But even though David was a great king, and even blessed by God, David was also a great sinner. David did a number of things that were to cause great trouble in the kingdom; including committing adultery with the wife of one of his generals and then having him killed to try to cover up his sin. (2 Sam. 11).

David, an author of many songs and poems in addition to being a warrior and king, remembers this incident in his famous cry of contrition Psalm 51. If you ever find yourself suffering from guilt for sin, this story and this Psalm can be a great comfort. Because even though there were severe consequences for David’s sin, God still loved and forgave him.

David extended the borders of Israel to cover most of what we today call the Middle East. After he had established his kingdom and built for himself a comfortable palace, it occurred to him that he ought to build a place for the Lord to live. He was living in a nice house, but God still lived in a tent. He thought he ought to build a temple. But God told David that it was not to be him, but his son Solomon, who would build his temple. Solomon did build the Temple on a plan that resembled the Tabernacle, with a Most Holy Place in it that was filled with God’s glory. (2 Chr. 5:14).

It might have been a great disappointment for David not to be allowed to build the Temple. He might have regretted many of the sins he had committed and wished he had done things differently. But at the same time God told him he couldn’t build the Temple he also promised him that someone from his line, meaning a direct biological descendent, would rule over his kingdom forever. (2 Sam. 7:16). This promise is cemented in the Jewish national memory. After David, the consequence of his sin caused even more trouble for his son and heir Solomon. And after Solomon died the kingdom was divided in two: Israel in the north and Judah in the south, and after that both kingdoms were mostly ruled by wicked kings, until they both were eventually destroyed.

The Problem with the Law

Well the biggest problem with the Law was that even though the Hebrews, who God had saved from slavery in Egypt, had agreed to live by the Law for the purpose of being a light to the nations, they never did. Never. Not from day one. They were never the light that God intended. In fact, the way the Hebrews lived ended up alienating more people than it attracted.

The Hebrews believed that because God had given the Law to them and no one else, that they were saved and no one else. This made them arrogant, which you can imagine did not endear them to their neighbors. And, on top of that, they eventually forgot the intent of the Law (to be light), and instead made it about following rules. Rather than being a beacon of God’s love, the law became a barrier between people and God. If you followed all of the rules by keeping the stipulations of the Law, then you could be considered righteous before God. But the interpretation of the law was unbelievably detailed and oppressive. Few could actually accomplish the demands of the Law, although some thought they did. And hardly anyone who was not required to follow the law wanted to do it.

As a nation, the Israelites were a spectacular failure at keeping the Law. It is possible that some individuals kept it. Paul claims to have been especially strict in his legal observance. (Phil. 3:6). The same with the rich young ruler (Mark 10:20). But as a nation the Israelites utterly failed to do it. After a while they even forgot they had the Law. You couldn't tell the difference between the children of Abraham and everyone else. So they were not “set apart.” They were not holy.

The Exile: Promise, Law, and Prophets

When the Israelites agreed to follow the law, they agreed that they would follow the Law and be blessed. But at the same time, part of the Law stated that if they didn't obey they would suffer terrible consequences, called curses, and they agreed to that too. The blessing of keeping the law would be a blessed life in the Promised Land; the curse would be the destruction of the nation and exile from the Promised Land.

One of the major themes of the prophetic books of the Old Testament is God sending messengers (that's what a prophet is) to warn the Israelites that if they didn't keep their part of the covenant God would invoke the curses of the Law.

There is a kind of a cycle in the prophets that goes like this. The prophet will announce a warning against the people. The consequence of continued disobedience will be graphically described. And then the prophet will proclaim a word of comfort from God. It's almost like God is saying to the people of Israel, over and over again, "I hate what you're doing. You're not only not keeping your part of our deal; you are just as bad as the idolaters and unrighteous pagans. If you don't straighten up your act, I'm going to have to do what I promised I would do if you broke the covenant. I am going to destroy you as a nation, and I'm going to make you suffer in exile. But I will keep my promise, and in the end the world will be restored to where it is even better than it was in the beginning."

This theme of destruction and restoration is contained in a concept called "The Day of The Lord." The idea of the Day of The Lord was that there would be an apocalyptic reckoning for sin, followed by the restoration of all things. The Day of The Lord was associated with God's Chosen One, or Messiah.

After centuries of waywardness on the part of the Israelites, God finally invoked the curses. By this time the Israelites had settled in two countries: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and the people scattered. Judah was then defeated by the Babylonians, the temple destroyed, Jerusalem sacked, and the people dragged into exile in Babylon.

It seemed like it was the end of God’s plan of salvation. The holy nation was gone. The Promised Land was occupied by strangers. Of course this caused a lot of soul-searching on the part of the Israelites. But God cannot lie. So there developed among the Israelites a tradition that God would send a warlike king like David to restore the earthly kingdom of Israel.

Through the warnings that the Israelites received through the prophets there ran a theme of God's promise being carried out by a "remnant." The nation might be destroyed and the people sent into exile, but something would remain. A remnant of the people would inherit the promise, and God would bring about restoration through the remnant.

Several years after being taken into exile in Babylon the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem. They rebuilt the temple and from then on thought of themselves as the remnant that was supposed to carry out God's plan of salvation for the whole world. This is a common belief among Jews even today.

But after the return from exile, prophecy ceased. There was no king from the line of David on the throne. There was no throne. Far from being blessed, the Jewish people suffered conquest, warfare, and oppression, starting with the Greeks under Alexander the Great and finally ending up with the harsh rule of Rome. It seemed like the promise was all over. But even then many of the Jewish people believed that God would keep his promise, so they continued to look for a Chosen One, the Messiah, who was promised in Scripture and who would bring about God's final restoration. They knew he was going to come; they didn't know when, or how.

Gospel: The Shoot from the Stump of Jesse (Is. 11:1)

There wasn't any real agreement on what the Messiah was going to be like. Some thought of him as a suffering servant as described by the Prophet Isaiah, someone who suffered for the benefit of others. But given the political situation in Palestine at the time of Jesus, and especially given the association of the Chosen One with the line of David, it was a common notion around the time of Jesus' birth that the Messiah would be a warrior king who would free the people from Roman oppression and reestablish the Golden Age of Israel.[4]

I'm probably dating myself here but there was a British comedy show called Monty Python's Flying Circus that was popular in the early 1970s. I guess what made it so popular especially with the younger crowd was a kind of absurd surrealist brand of humor. One of the most memorable sketches was called "The Spanish Inquisition." The scene started with a middle class husband arriving home and being questioned by his wife about his day. After a few questions the husband remarked, "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition," at which point a number of actors clad as cardinals burst through the door and exclaimed, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" If the topic of eternal salvation were not so serious, the story of what God decided to do next would seem just as absurd as this Monty Python sketch. No one expected it.

Here’s what really happened: the Chosen One, who is Jesus, was born in a barn, the son of insignificant human parents: a teenage virgin with a carpenter for a step-father (his real father was the Holy Spirit). (Luke 1:35) Jesus lived a life hardly noticed by history apart from a dramatic flourish at the end. He was executed as a traitor by the most brutal and disgraceful means imaginable: crucifixion. All of this became a stumbling block for the educated people of Jesus' time. When Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, he was scorned by the religious leaders. And those who believed him were regarded as ignorant heretics. And the story remains an obstacle today for a number of people. It is an exquisitely unrealistic story. No one can believe it by reason alone. But it is true, nevertheless.

I'm not going to try to convince you of that. I know in fact that if you are not inclined to believe there is little I could say that would convince you. So I'm going to leave that part to God and just move to how we can place Jesus in the overall plan of salvation.

You remember I wrote a little earlier about the remnant. Associated with the Day of The Lord was the idea that the nation would be destroyed but that a remnant would remain to fulfill God's promise to Abram. The Jews returning from exile in Babylon thought of themselves as that remnant, and that is still a common view among Jews today. But in fact, the remnant ended up consisting of only one person: Jesus of Nazareth.

The Book of Matthew begins with a list of names that traces Jesus' lineage all the way back to Abraham. For modern readers this section of the book seems tedious and silly. But for Jews in the first century this genealogy (list of names) had tremendous significance, because it traced Jesus all the way back through David to the promise. The whole point of the genealogy was to establish Jesus historically and theologically as the remnant, the promised Messiah.

The rest of the Matthew’s book carries forward the notion of Jesus fulfilling prophecy about the remnant, the Chosen One, and the Day of The Lord. What really distinguishes Jesus from anyone else, particularly in the Hebrew tradition, is the fact that Jesus was able to do what the nation of Israel had been unable to do, and that is to fulfill the covenant. To fulfill the Law. He did that by remaining obedient to God and becoming the light that Israel was supposed to be. That is why it is so important to understand that Jesus was sinless. No one since Adam and Eve, and that includes all of us, was ever sinless. Only Jesus was. And because he was, when he sacrificed himself on the cross for sins he didn't commit, he fulfilled the purpose of the Law.

It would take a whole other Chapter to explain how Jesus fulfilled the Law and what it has to do with Christians. What we want to focus on here is that Jesus did die and did fulfill the requirements of the Law, and Jesus also rose to new life and now lives as the Light to the nations. And he freely offers his life to us.

I just want to mention here briefly one of the most important things about the work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was sent by the Father to suffer and die to pay for the sin of Adam and Eve and all sin that followed, which is all sin. God sent Jesus because he loved the world. (John 3:16). We need to notice that humans had done nothing to deserve that love. Quite the contrary. When salvation came, it came completely spontaneously. Humans didn’t deserve it, and they didn’t earn it. And, what is more, they can’t earn it.

This is what makes the Christian religion unique. In every other religion and philosophical system there is the idea that you have to earn your salvation. If you’re “good,” or you make the right sacrifice, or you have the right “juju,” you can gain favor from god, and god might bless you. But the Christian understanding is that, even though we don’t deserve and can’t earn God’s favor, out of his great love he gives it to us anyway. This is called the Gospel of Grace, because grace is love given when love is undeserved.

The word gospel means “good news.” It is the English equivalent of the Greek word euangelion which is the same root as the English word “evangelize.” When we evangelize, we are announcing the "good news." But this is more than just good news. This isn't like, “Hey, good news, I just got a great deal on my car insurance!” This is the kind of news that would accompany a great victory by the emperor or a great general. If you can think about the great big banner headlines that announced the end of World War II (VICTORY!), that is the kind of good news the gospel is. And if you think about it is appropriate. Because of Jesus' work, everything is fixed; he has paid the price to cover all of our sins and brokenness. Good news indeed.

The more you realize how much has been forgiven, the better the news is. John Newton, who was the author of the famous hymn Amazing Grace, was involved in the slave trade in the eighteenth century. Once his ship was lost at sea and he made a vow to repent, and he later became a Christian minister. Near the end of his life, he looked back on the magnitude of the suffering he had caused by being a part of the slave trade, and he is said to have remarked, "My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things. That I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior."

Born Again: A New Life

Well you might remember that I mentioned a little while ago that we always talk about God restoring things to the way they were in the Garden of Eden but in fact the Bible tells us that God restores them to better than that because he makes all things new. (Rev. 21:5). So we can expect that God will keep his promise to re-create the world. But beyond that, as followers of Jesus we don't just get a new world, we get a whole new life.

There is a famous scene in John's gospel about the Pharisee Nicodemus visiting Jesus at night to try and figure out what was up with him. And Jesus told him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3 ESV). Now there is an incredibly deep and rich theology contained in these few words that we're going to mostly bypass for the moment. But what we want to note is that if we are going to be Jesus' followers we are going to have to undergo a fundamental change. In a very real sense we have to die, as Jesus died, and rise again with Jesus, in Jesus. That is what it means to be born again. It means to lose the life that I lived apart from Jesus, and to gain Jesus' life. The new life I am born into is not another human life, not another individual life; I am born into the life of Jesus. I become a "member" of Jesus' body.

On the night before Jesus died he was trying to encourage his disciples, who were depressed because they knew that Jesus was leaving them. He told them that they were actually going to be better off because after he left he would send them a helper who is the Holy Spirit. (John 16:7ff). This must have seemed surprising and maybe even unbelievable to the disciples. But in the Book of Acts we read that after Jesus had gone into heaven the disciples were waiting in Jerusalem on the Jewish feast of Pentecost for something to happen and they were suddenly filled with the Holy Spirit. What seemed like tongues of fire came to rest on them. (Acts 2:3-4). After that, they were able to go out into the city and preach the gospel, and many people were converted, and that day is considered to be the beginning of the Church.

What happened when the Holy Spirit filled the disciples was that they were filled with the life of God. This is what is meant by being “born again.” Every person who is a follower of Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit. It may not be as dramatic as the description in Acts (although it often does seem that way), but it is as real. If we are baptized into Christ, we have a new life, and the life we have is the life of Christ. (Gal. 2:20).

The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is the New Testament equivalent of the Temple being filled with the glory of God. Before the destruction of Jerusalem the glory of God had departed from the Temple and there is no record of it returning in the Temple that was rebuilt after the exile. (Ez. 10:18). From a New Testament point of view, Pentecost is the return of God’s glory to the Temple. But the Temple is no longer a building, it is the Church.

The Church: The Body of Christ

The Apostle Paul was one of the first and arguably the greatest of the original evangelists. Paul was a Pharisee who was deadly opposed to the infant movement of Jesus followers that grew up after Pentecost. But he had a life changing encounter with the risen Christ while he was on his way to do damage to the Church, and was changed from Christianity's greatest persecutor to Christianity's greatest apologist. (Acts 9:1-19).

Paul was an intellectual of the first order. Paul knew the Hebrew scriptures and traditions as well as anyone, and when his eyes were opened to the truth of the gospel, he was able to see how all of the things he thought he knew about the Old Testament, that he originally thought were challenged by Jesus, were in fact fulfilled in Jesus. And so he wrote a number of letters that lay out an understanding of the Christian faith in the light of the Hebrew Scriptures, and these make up the largest part of the New Testament.

Paul sometimes has a bad time of it because some of the things he wrote can be challenging to the modern reader. As well, as much as you can pick up from the letters he wrote, Paul probably had a difficult personality. He can be sharp, intransigent, demanding, sarcastic, and intolerant of those who opposed him. In one place he actually writes that he wishes his opponents would castrate themselves! (Gal. 5:12). A lot of people don't really understand Paul, and even his contemporary the Apostle Peter acknowledged that Paul's ideas can be hard to understand, and that those who don't understand can twist the meaning of what Paul wrote. (2 Pet. 3:16).

That was true then and it is true now. Paul has a kind of a bad reputation and so a lot of misinformation about Paul and his teachings is floating around. I have to admit that I was once one of those who bought into this negativity toward Paul, but as the years have passed and I have studied and considered what Paul wrote more carefully, I have come to consider him brilliant.

One of the most important themes in Paul's theology is what some call the "Mystical Union with Christ." In his letters Paul expands on the idea of being "born again“ by showing that we are not born to new individual lives, but we are born to new life "in Christ." Here is how he says it in his letter to the Christians in Galatia, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." (Gal. 2:20 ESV).

In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul describes the relationship of Christians to each other and to God in terms of the human body. There he likens the Church to the Body of Christ. Every Christian is a member of the Body of Christ in the same way that every part of the human body is part of the whole. Thus, each part is indispensable, but no part is independent. The body can live without the hand, but it will not be whole. The hand cannot live without the body. In the same way the Church can live without all of the followers of Jesus but it is not complete, but Christians cannot have the life of Christ outside the Church.

Now this is a hard thing for us westerners to wrap our heads around, especially here in the United States. A fundamental aspect of the American character is what has been referred to as "rugged individualism." This is the most extreme manifestation of the celebration of the individual over the collective that arose from the Enlightenment. The concept of community is foreign. We know the word and have a notion of what it means, but very few of us know what it means to really live in community.

This is something that really separates us from the people who lived during the time of Jesus, and who would have been the audience of the New Testament writers. All of them were intimately familiar with community. One of the worst things that could happen to someone who lived at that time would have been being somehow separated from the life of the community. That could very literally lead to death, in the same way that separating the hand from the body would lead to the death of the hand.

The point I am making here is that the “Church” is not contained in a building or a denomination; it is the worldwide union of all of the followers of Jesus. What we commonly think of when we say church is but a local instance of this worldwide union of believers. Jesus intended his Church to be recognized as a single entity. The world tries to divide us, but Jesus prays to unite us. (John 17:22-23). So, rather than seeking to separate ourselves from others who call themselves Jesus’ disciples, we must seek common ground. And that common ground is love. (John 13:35).

Ministry: Spiritual Gifts

I want us to take a kind of a conceptual leap and consider that the way Paul describes the Church as the Body of Christ is not a metaphor but is real. Jesus physically exists on the earth today in the form of the community of all believers. Jesus himself lives in this community and is the head of the community. (Col. 1:18). Jesus lives in the Church, and in each member of the Church. Given this, we have to wonder what is the purpose of the members of the Body of Christ?

In the same place that Paul writes about the body, and in other places, Paul addresses the issue of "Spiritual Gifts." These are special talents and abilities that each of the members of the body possess, that are given by the Spirit. Think about the members of the human body. Each has a special purpose. The eye sees, the ears hear, the hand can pick things up, etc. All of the members of the body work together to protect the body and keep it healthy and whole.

It is the same with the body of Christ. Paul lists a number of gifts (teaching, serving, speaking in tongues, etc.) but there is no indication that the lists he writes in various places are exhaustive. The point is that every member of the Body, every follower of Jesus, every Christian, has one or more Spiritual gifts. And like the members of the human body, the gifts that are given to the individual members of the Body of Christ are given for the purpose of protecting and building up and keeping the Body of Christ healthy. The activity of the members of the body is called ministry. Ministry is the work that each member does to contribute to the well-being of the body.

One way to think about the Church is to think of all of these members working together to make the whole body healthy. This ought to help us avoid the temptation that arises out of western individualism to think that the purpose of being in the Church is to "get" something, like spiritual enlightenment or comfort or protection or whatever. We might get any or all of these things by being members of the Church, but that is not our reason for being in the Church. We are in the Church to minister to each other.

Mission: Building the Kingdom

If you look around you in the world, in the schools and colleges, and in the popular culture, you cannot help but notice that there is a profound sense of purposelessness in modern life. I think this is characteristic of the post-Enlightenment worldview that so saturates Western culture. Before the Enlightenment, people in the West experienced life in much that same way as a large portion of the world still does today. I think I have already alluded to this; this kind of living is characterized by a sense of belonging to something larger: a community.

In a community, every member has a purpose. The purpose of each individual, though different in function, is to contribute to the overall well-being of the whole. A body is an apt metaphor for a human community; because in a community every member has the purpose of nurturing and protecting the community in both material and spiritual ways. Because in our post-Enlightenment culture the sense (and the reality) of community is absent, our society consists of individual members who have no real sense of purpose.

Prior to the modern era, everyone knew what their purpose in living was. But people today have to strive to figure it out. From a young age our concept of purpose is focused on career. And even though there may be a nod toward making career about something greater: the well-being of the nation for example, or even service to others, in the end, in our culture, our purpose ultimately becomes associated with, first, survival, and beyond that, satisfaction. Individuals in our society exist to satisfy themselves.

I think it would be easy to put forward a mountain of evidence supporting this claim. Career counselors and toothpaste sellers alike pronounce the same message: if you do this thing, or you have this thing, you will be satisfied. And that is always the desired outcome. Probably one of the most crass expressions of this is the bumper sticker that was once popular: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” What an empty and pointless existence!

But, we should be encouraged to know that not very many people really buy that message, at least not wholeheartedly. Somehow people sense that, while they pursue different means of achieving satisfaction, real satisfaction must be found in something more than fulfilling material desires. And so there is a real sense of emptiness and loss, and a striving to some kind of a greater purpose. The individual body cannot be satisfied just to exist, even if that existence is characterized by comfort and thrill. There must be a real purpose.

Just so, the Body of Christ doesn’t exist just to exist. When the local church makes just surviving for the benefit of its members the focus of its corporate life, that church suffers. A community of believers that lives this way will eventually experience a crisis of identity, and will either be transformed, or die.

Why? Because the church, as the Body of Christ, has a purpose. It got its purpose from Jesus himself. Jesus commanded his followers to go and make disciples of all nations. (Mt. 28:19). He told his followers to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8). He wasn’t talking to individuals; he was talking to the Church. He was talking to his body, as he is the head of the body. (Col. 1:18).

Simply put, the purpose of the Body of Christ is to do the work of Christ. The work of Christ is restoration. It is, ultimately, to make all things new. We know that it is up to Jesus to accomplish the work that needs to be done and we don’t know his times or his methods. But we have as an example the work he did while he walked among us. When we look at the overall mission of Jesus on earth, we see him living the life of justice, righteousness, and love that God called the ancient nation of Israel to, for the purpose of drawing all people to himself.

We will not build the kingdom, Jesus will. But Jesus allows us to be coworkers with him.

When the world looks at the Church it ought to see Jesus. When we look at the life of Jesus, what do we see? Teaching, healing, comforting, standing up for justice, and ultimately sacrificing himself for others. Why should we not see exactly that when we look at the Church?

The challenge to each generation of those who call themselves followers of Jesus, and particularly to our generation, is to live in such a way that when the world sees the Church, not individual Christians nor local religious organizations, but the whole Body, they see Jesus. This challenge calls us to self-examination and careful consideration of how we live both as individuals and as communities.

Rather than the disdain and ridicule that characterizes what a large number of people think about Jesus and his followers, we ought to be bringing light to the world. When people speak of Christians, rather than saying, “What a bunch of nut jobs! What a bunch of bigoted, judgmental hypocrites!”[5] people ought to be saying with joy and relief, “We have found the Messiah.” (John 1:40 ESV).

Followers of Jesus don’t need to compromise God’s holiness to make themselves attractive. They need to reflect God’s sacrificial love. Even though the common view of Christians is rather low, people still admire Christian leaders who demonstrate this. People admire persons like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa not because of their religious affiliation but because of their courage and sacrifice.

Not everyone will be drawn to Jesus, but our words and actions ought to attract people by living out God’s righteousness, justice, and love.

The End of All Things

One of my favorite scenes in all of the movies is in the film “The Return of the King” where, after finally and at great cost completing their task of destroying the one ring of power, the protagonist Frodo and his companion Sam are caught in a seemingly hopeless situation. Destroying the ring has caused a massive volcanic explosion, and the two hobbits are stuck on an island rock surrounded by flowing lava that threatens to overcome them. There seems to be no chance for escape. At this point, Frodo turns to Sam and says, touchingly, “I’m glad to be with you Sam, here at the end of all things.”

Well we know that their story doesn’t end there; that they are rescued by eagles and live long full lives in their home in the Shire and that they eventually both cross over to the Undying Lands. I don’t know if Tolkien was thinking in these terms, but I find this a fitting metaphor for how the story of the Bible ends.

Most often when we think about the end of the world we think about the book of Revelation. That book is a remarkable document and parts of it do deal with the end times. But it is not the only place in the Bible where end times are depicted. There are large sections of the Old Testament Book of Daniel devoted to end times prophecy, as well as in other places in the Prophets, in the Gospels, and in the letters of the New Testament.

In our popular culture the end of the world is commonly depicted as a time of great destruction and turmoil. In the last few years we have seen a number of doomsday predictions gain great attention (Y2K, Harold Camping, the Mayan Calendar), accompanied by a lot of fear and stupidity, only to see the predicted day pass with no sign of apocalypse.

The Bible does tell the complete story, from creation to eternity. The Bible does tell us that the world as we know it will end. But it is not at all specific about when and how that will happen. Jesus cautions us not to try to figure out the signs to predict the end, but to always be ready (Mt. 24:36). We know that Jesus will come again. It is indicated in a number of places in the Bible. And there is also strong evidence to suggest that the end will be accompanied by hardship and suffering for many.

But, as Christians, we do not fear this. We take comfort from the words of Paul in his letter to the Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even apocalypse. (Ro. 8:37-39). And even further, for Christians, the end of this world is the beginning of a new and eternal life. Again, when popular culture considers the book of Revelation destruction and hardship come to mind first. But how many remember or even know the picture Revelation paints of the final end?

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:1-5 ESV)

As Christians, we do not fear the end. We rejoice that as those who now live new lives in Christ, we have lives that will never end. And we look forward to the day when death shall be no more. What the world fears as the end of all things is really the end of all suffering and sorrow, and a beginning of an eternity of joy. And so we pass our days in this world filled with the power of Jesus to be coworkers with him in bringing about restoration, and we echo the words of John, the author of Revelation, who looked forward to the final consummation of the kingdom in the last words in the Bible, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” (Revelation 22:20-21 ESV).

[1] “Vatican Survey compares Americans and Europeans on biblical literacy,” Christian Century, Vol. 125 Issue 11 (6/3/2008), 17. See also Kristin Swensen, “Biblically challenged,” Christian Century, Vol. 126 Issue 22 (11/3/2009), 22; Gary Burge, “The Greatest Story Never Read,” Christianity Today, Vol. 43 Issue 9 (8/9/99), 45; Biblical Literacy Report, (Front Royal, Va.: Biblical Literacy Project) 2005.

[2] See, for example, Fee, Gordon D., and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003.

[3] Martin Luther King, Jr., “An Experiment in Love,” 1958, in James Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 19.

[4] That is what the quote from the prophet Isaiah in the title of this section is about. Jesse was the father of King David, and the Isaiah quote refers to someone who will arise from the “stump of Jesse” to accomplish the restoration pointed to in the concept of the “Day of the Lord.” The “stump of Jesse” poetically describes the destroyed kingdom of Israel.

[5] David Kinnaman, UNchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity... and Why it Matters (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 2007), 25ff.