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August 12 - August 31, 2022
Psalm 82 states that the gods were being condemned as corrupt in their administration of the nations of the earth.
Our traditions, however honorable, are not intrinsic to the Bible. They are systems we invent to organize the Bible. They are artificial. They are filters.
Christian history is not the context of the biblical writers.
The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers—the context that produced the Bible.1 Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.
In the ancient Semitic world, sons of God (Hebrew: beney elohim) is a phrase used to identify divine beings with higher-level responsibilities or jurisdictions. The term angel (Hebrew: malʾak) describes an important but still lesser task: delivering messages.2
The original morning stars, the sons of God, saw the beginning of life as we know it—the creation of earth.
The Old Testament writers understood that Yahweh was an elohim—but no other elohim was Yahweh. He was species-unique among all residents of the spiritual world.
The Greek word translated by this phrase is monogenes. It doesn’t mean “only begotten” in some sort of “birthing” sense. The confusion extends from an old misunderstanding of the root of the Greek word. For years monogenes was thought to have derived from two Greek terms, monos (“only”) and gennao (“to beget, bear”). Greek scholars later discovered that the second part of the word monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (“class, kind”). The term literally means “one of a kind” or “unique” without connotation of created origin.
The story of the Bible is about God’s will for, and rule of, the realms he has created, visible and invisible, through the imagers he has created, human and nonhuman. This divine agenda is played out in both realms, in deliberate tandem.
To be human is to image God.
The distinction helps us see that the original task of humanity was to make the entire Earth like Eden.
The only truly perfect Being is God himself.
Without genuine free will, imagers cannot truly represent God. We saw earlier that the image of God is not an attribute or ability. Rather, it is a status conferred by God on all humans, that of representing God.
This passage clearly establishes that divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination.
That which never happens can be foreknown by God, but it is not predestined, since it never happened.
Since foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination, foreknown events that happen may or may not have been predestined.
evil is the perversion of God’s good gift of free will.
The heart of salvation in biblical theology—across both testaments—is believing loyalty to Yahweh.
The Septuagint version has a multitude of divine beings at Sinai whereas the traditional Hebrew text does not.
Salvation in the Old Testament meant love for Yahweh alone. One had to believe that Yahweh was the God of all gods, trusting that this Most High God had chosen covenant relationship with Israel to the detriment of all other nations. The law was how one demonstrated that love—that loyalty.
The text does not say angels cannot have sexual intercourse; it says they don’t. The reason ought to be obvious. The context for the statement is the resurrection, which refers either broadly to the afterlife or, more precisely, to the final, renewed global Eden.
Consequently, there is no need for sex in the resurrection, just as there is no need for it in the nonhuman spiritual realm.
Bashan was considered the location of (to borrow a New Testament phrase) “the gates of hell.”
books like 1 Enoch teach that demons are actually the spirits of dead Nephilim.
Prophets were simply people who spoke for God—men and women who, at God’s direction, looked their fellow Israelites in the eye and told them they were being disloyal to the God to whom they owed their existence and who had chosen a relationship with them over everyone else on earth.
Prophets told people the unvarnished truth and often paid dearly for it.
the people need to listen and will listen to the person who is validated by an encounter with the presence of God.
true prophets have stood and listened in Yahweh’s divine council; false prophets have not.
The prophets would fail in their ministry, in the sense that they were not able to preserve and revive Israel’s loyalty to Yahweh. Israel’s failure meant a change in Yahweh’s approach to reviving his kingdom rule. The prophetic message would change to judgment and redemption—but the means was deliberately veiled. Even God’s loyal angels couldn’t quite figure out exactly what God was plotting (1 Pet 1:12).
God understood that only he could be trusted with perfectly accomplishing his own will. He would therefore have to become man and, in addition, he would have to inhabit the hearts of his children.1 Residing in a tabernacle or temple was not enough. He had to indwell those who chose to follow him.
Yahweh would send his Spirit to indwell his people. They could not be trusted with their freedom, but he would not eradicate it, nor would he leave them without enablement.
Only someone who knew the outcome of the puzzle, who knew how all the elements of the messianic mosaic would come together, could make sense of the pieces. Jesus had to enable the disciples to understand what the Old Testament was simultaneously hiding and revealing. It wasn’t a matter of reading a verse here and there.
We shouldn’t create connections where the biblical text doesn’t.
The story of the cross is the biblical-theological catalyst to God’s plan for regaining all that was lost in Eden. It couldn’t be emblazoned across the Old Testament in transparent statements. It had to be expressed in sophisticated and cryptic ways to ensure that the powers of darkness would be misled. And it was. Even the angels didn’t know the plan
THE ARRIVAL OF JESUS, THE MESSIAH OF ISRAEL, IS THE FULCRUM UPON which God’s plan for the restoration of Eden tilts toward realization. He is the center of the biblical epic. Even though someone reading the Bible straight through has to wade three-quarters into it before encountering him, he’s been in the shadows the whole time.
The idea of the Church being “the body of Christ” reflects the truth that it is through Christ’s physical incarnation, physical death, and physical resurrection that believers—Jew or Gentile—become members of God’s family.
WE ARE THE children of God, destined to displace the defeated, disloyal sons of God who now rule the nations.
Jesus is heir to all things because he is Yahweh, made flesh to provide a secure way of restoring humanity’s place and role in a global Eden. He is superior to angels
Jesus is superior to the angels since he was “begotten” as the son of God.
God himself became man in Jesus of Nazareth. His death and resurrection were the catalysts.
Angels are “ministering spirits” who serve the human believers who inherit salvation and are adopted into Yahweh’s family.
We are the ones united to Christ, not angels. We are the ones given the morning star, the credential for rule, by Jesus himself. We are the ones who will be put over the nations.
When an enemy wants nothing but your defeat and annihilation, neutrality means choosing death.
Christians must withstand persecution and persevere in their faith.
A type is basically an unspoken prophecy. It is an event, person, or institution that foreshadows something that will come, but which isn’t revealed until after the fact.
Broadly speaking, the underworld is not hell; it is the afterlife, the place or realm where the dead go. That “place” has its own “geography.”
Some experience eternal life with God in the spiritual realm; others do not.
Baptism, then, is not what produces salvation. It “saves” in that it reflects a heart decision: a pledge of loyalty to the risen Savior.
Baptism was—and still is—spiritual warfare.
Participation at the Lord’s Table meant solidarity with and loyalty to Yahweh. The Lord’s Table commemorated not only Jesus’ death (1 Cor 11:23–26) but the covenant relationship Yahweh had with the participants.
