Tried With Fire

For much of my Christian life, I had the bad habit of inserting myself in the leading role of a Bible story. After all, the Word of God was supposed to apply to my life, right? So during a severe trial, I identified with Hezekiah in Isaiah 36. My antagonists were Rabshakeh and Sennacherib, and my situation was a metaphorical siege. Another time, I put myself in Elizabeth's place and believed that my daughter had been regenerated in the womb like John the Baptist. But what right did I have to step into Hezekiah's or Elizabeth's sandals and think that what God did for them applied exactly to me? Here is what Graeme Goldsworthy has to say: Is it in fact true that if God took care of baby Moses, God will take care of me? Such application simply assumes that what applied to the unique figure of Moses in a unique situation applies to all of us and, presumably all of time. But why should our children be privileged to identify with Moses rather with the other Hebrew children at...

God kept His promise from Genesis 3:15: "The New Testament witnesses to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is the One in whom and through whom all the promises of God find their fulfillment. These promises are only to be understood from the Old Testament; the fulfillment of the promises can be understood only in the context of the promises themselves. The New Testament presupposes a knowledge of the Old Testament. Everything that is a concern to the New Testament writers is part of one redemptive history to which the Old Testament witnesses. The New Testament writers cannot separate the person and work of Christ, nor the life of the Christian community, from this sacred history which has its beginnings in the Old Testament." The Goldsworthy Trilogy: Gospel and Kingdom by Graeme Goldsworthy, 2011, Paternoster Press, pp. 18-19.