What the Old Testament Means to Us. . No.8

SOME PROMISES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Jesus Christ has become a servant to confirm the promises made to the fathers.—Ro.15:8

I have cautiously called this installment “Some of the promises . . . ,” for obviously one could hardly deal with all the promises of the Old Testament. In being highly selective, therefore, I will choose those promises that the apostle Paul might have had in mind when he wrote the above passage, referring to “the promises made to our fathers,” and when in the same chapter he said, “Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”

It is noteworthy that Paul found hope in what we call the Old Testament, but which to him was the holy Scriptures. Hope has to do with promises made. The apostle saw the promises of the OT fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That was in fact, according to Paul, the reason for Christ to come into the world as a servant, “to confirm the promises made to the fathers.”

The thesis that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the OT promises runs all through the New Testament. Acts 3:24 says it well: “Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also told of these days,” as does Lk. 24:27: “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” It is evident that our Lord saw his own life as fulfillment of the OT, for he would refer to the Scriptures as “they that testify of Me” (Jn. 5:39). As Jesus turned toward the Cross he understood that some of the details of his passion were to fulfill the OT, as in Mt. 26:54 when he told Peter not to defend him with a sword: “How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus? “ When he began his ministry in his home church he read from the OT and said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk. 4:21).

To the writers of the NT it is not claiming too much to say that they saw the NT as the fulfillment of the OT, or to put it another way, all the promises in the OT could be added up as “the one promise,” and that was Jesus Christ. Paul, for instance, in laying out the facts of the gospel as the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ says again and again that it was “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). In the preaching of the gospel, as Philip to the Eunuch, the point of reference was Christ in the OT (Acts 8:35). The most Biblical book in the Bible is Revelation, for it has scores and scores of references to the ~T. Being a book of promises, it is rooted in the OT.

But this does not mean that the OT writers themselves had any such idea that they were preparing a kind of preamble to a Christian Bible. There was of course a Messianic consciousness on the part of some, but overall they were speaking for God in their own time and situation. To put it another way, to the NT writers the OT writers were foretellers, but the OT writers saw themselves as forth tellers. They were writing (or speaking) not so much in reference to the future but in response to the problems of God’s covenant people in their own age, such as their unfaithfulness to God in such terms as idolatry and social injustices. Much of the OT is speaking, for God, calling upon the people to repent and return to God.

In such a context there are promises given to Israel that are independent of any Christian interpretation in the NT. If for the moment we lay the NT aside and ask what the OT says to its own people in terms of hope we could at least list the following promises.

1. The faithfulness of God.

The promise that God will always be faithful to His covenant people runs throughout the OT. Typical of such a promise is in 2 Sam. 7 where God’s providential care of Israel is recounted. He brought them out of the land of Israel (v. 6). He led them in their wanderings and protected them from their enemies (v. 9). He will give them a land of their own from which they will not be uprooted (v. 10). He placed judges over them (v. 11). He will preserve their seed and give them a kingdom (v. 12). He will be to them a Father and they will be to him a son (v. 14). He will chasten them for their sin but His mercy will never depart from them (v. 15). The people may be unfaithful, but God is always faithful.

When Karl Barth, the great Christian theologian, exulted in the promise God is for us! he was recalling a truth that has its roots in the OT. Ps. 118:6 says it this way, “The Lord is on my side. I will not fear. What can man do to me?” This promise is “boldly” referred to in the NT, as is that beautiful promise in Josh. 1:5, “I will never leave you or forsake you,” which is another way of underscoring God’s faithfulness (Hb. 13:5-6).

As Christians we sing that grand old hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” in which there is that moving line, “Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed Thy hand hath provided; Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!” It doesn’t read “All I have wanted. . . ,” but all I have needed. What is remarkable about that hymn is that the faithful OT saint could sing it as well as a Christian, every line of it. The hymn is in fact drawn from an OT passage (Lam. 3:23).

2. Salvation by grace and mercy.

It is a mistake to conclude that we find grace and mercy in the Bible only when we come to the NT., for the God of the OT is as gracious and merciful as He is faithful. One is not saved by works of the law in the OT anymore than in the NT. One hardly finds more spiritual truth than in Dt. 10:16: “Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer,” or in Ps. 51:16-17: “For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and contrite heart.” While Judaism has not placed emphasis upon faith as Christians have, it has always held that salvation is God’s doing, his “pure grace,” as one rabbi puts it, and not by keeping Torah. Early on, as in Ex. 34:6, God is described as merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abounding in mercy and truth, and throughout the Psalms it is evident that God “blots out iniquities” (Ps. 51:9) and that it is because of His grace and mercy (Ps. 103:4).

3. Dawning kingdom.

The promise of the kingdom of God, on earth as well as in heaven, is found first in the OT. And it is properly described as dawning, for it seems to be always both present and future, both earthly and heavenly, both temporal and spiritual. If it is here to some degree, it is always coming, sometimes imminent. A reality but never fully realized. Always a blessed promise, related to peace, joy, glory, victory, dominion, power. Our Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” was the prayer of a faithful Jew schooled in the OT, a prayer any good Jew could have prayed. Jesus was on familiar ground when he began preaching among his fellow Jews, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But it is only occasionally that the OT, like the NT, points to God’s coming kingdom in glorious and transcendent terms, as in Dan. 2:18: “But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.”

4. The Holy Spirit will make new creatures with new hearts.

The OT as well as the NT promises inward renewal. Every good Jew could pray with David, “Create in me a clean heart, a God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take your Holy Spirit from me.” It would be difficult to find a passage in all the Bible that promises more than this one: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them” (Ez. 36:26-28). In these passages it is evident that the Holy Spirit was at work in the OT.

5. The land and the people.

One cannot help but be impressed with how the OT consistently couples the promised land (Canaan, now Palestine) with the promised people. At the outset God not only promised Abraham a posterity that became God’s own covenant people, but He promised the people “the land.” In Scripture the people and the land are virtually inseparable. It begins with a covenant God made with Abraham: “The Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give this land” (Gen. 15:18). It continues in a mandate to Moses: “Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Command the children of Israel, and say to them; When you come into the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall to you as an inheritance’” (Nu. 34:1-2). When at last the people reached the land but were reluctant to enter it, Moses said to them, “Look, the Lord your God has set the land before you; go up and possess it, as the Lord God of your fathers has spoken to you; do not fear or be discouraged” (Dt. 1:21).

Once the people had occupied the land only to be uprooted and taken into captivity because of their sins, it was the theme of the prophets that God would be faithful to His promise and restore them to the land, as in Jer. 24:6: “I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up.” And Amos 9:15: “I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them, says the Lord.” The position of the OT is that God owned the land and He gave it to His special people (Dt. 2:29). Thus the idea of “Divine right” emerged, the basis for modem Zionism.

Unlike the other promises we have listed, the land promise has been obscured by confusion and disagreement, by Jews as well as Christians. This is because “real estate theology” is sticky and subject to abuse. Some premillennialists, who rank first among Christians in support of Zionism, insist that Israel will have “the land” with or without the help of any nation on earth, for God has ordained it, and it will be! Their insistence is sometimes without ethical consideration, for if Israel must wrest the land from the Palestinians by force as their forebears did the ancient Canaanites, so be it, for God wills it! In 1977 fifteen theologians and church leaders ran a full-page ad in The New York Times titled “Evangelicals Concerned for Israel.” In the ad they referred to “Israel’s divine right to the land.” They made no reference as to what was to be done with the Arabs who have made Palestine their home for over a thousand years.

Other Christians have gone to the other extreme, some even denying that there is any longer any definable “Jews,” that they have been amalgamated with other cultures and have lost their identity as a separate people. Other Christians argue more theologically, that the church has replaced ancient Israel and the “new covenant” has replaced the “old covenant,” and therefore Israel no longer has a covenantal relationship with God and that the State of Israel has no theological legitimacy. Israel may exist as a secular state but not as part of a divine plan. It is probable that many readers of this journal hold this view. They are not necessarily anti-Semitic, but they believe that all geopolitical promises in the OT have been either fulfilled or canceled. If the Jews have any “special” relationship with God it must be in reference to Jesus Christ, the true Messiah that they have thus far rejected.

There are even many Jews that have a problem accepting modern Israel as theologically legitimate, mainly because it came into existence, not by way of a spiritual renaissance on the part of Israel, but by forces that were mostly secular, political, and naturalistic. It is even accused of being mostly an atheistic state. Many within the Hasidic community in Israel, the most religious in the land, see Israel as one more secular state with little or no interest in a coming Messiah or things spiritual. For this reason they will not serve in the Israeli army.

If there is a middle ground between these opposing views, I think this is where the church should be. In the light of the NT, especially Rom. 9-11, we must allow that Israel does indeed have a future in God’s plan, even if we have difficulty determining precisely what that is. And our heritage as Christians is so rooted in the OT and Judaism that we can be indifferent neither to the Jews as a people nor to “the land” that is inextricably tied to that heritage. After all, Palestine is Abraham’s land and we are his spiritual heirs, and it is the land to which our Lord came from heaven to live and to die for us all. It is therefore very special, more than any other part of the world. News events about Israel should gain our closest attention, for it is our land too.

The land promise, which we are to take seriously, must be seen not only in reference to God’s faithfulness but to His demand for justice and peace among nations. And as Christians we view all the OT in reference to Jesus Christ and the NT, which will assure us, if the OT does not, that God is no respecter of persons. We must conclude, therefore, that God loves the Palestinians as well as the Jews, and that He wants justice for both. That does not mean that “the land” promise does not relate to Israel in a special way, but does it have to mean that the Palestinians must be uprooted from their homeland?

If a “two-nation” solution cannot now be accepted as a fulfillment of the land promise, which presently appears to be the only fair option, perhaps it one day can be. We should be more concerned for peace, justice, and equity than for what we suppose “fulfills prophecy.” We don’t have to be pro-Israel and anti-Arab anymore than anti-Israel and pro-Arab. Our concern both as Christians and Americans must be liberty and justice for all.

That old hymn about God’s faithfulness, referred to above, also has a phrase that says “strength for today, hope for tomorrow.” That is what we want for all peoples of the world. Believing in God’s faithfulness will make it so. That should be our worldview, our international view, our Israeli-Palestinian view.—the Editor