Christian Faith in the Old Testament: The Bible of the Apostles

By Gareth Lee Cockerill

Sometimes it is easy to view the Old Testament as difficult to apply to our day-to-day lives. As contemporary Christians, we may even wonder whether it is possible for us to establish our apostolic roots in the Old Testament.

Christian Faith in the Old Testament helps us complete this daunting task with ease. In this intriguing and informative study, Gareth Lee Cockerill helps us view the New Testament as a fulfillment of the Old Testament, giving us a broad perspective on Scripture as a whole. In language that is easily accessible to the layperson, Gareth explores the role of each major part of the Old Testament Canon and what part each plays in the total scope of biblical revelation. Additionally, Christian Faith in the Old Testament offers important guidance to contemporary believers about how each part of the Old Testament Canon applies today. This book is the perfect choice for intelligent modern Christians looking to discover their apostolic roots in the Old Testament.

 Features include:

• Understand how the Old Testament applies to life today
• Discover the contemporary Christian’s apostolic roots in the Old Testament
• Gain a broad perspective on Scripture as a whole

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Feb 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781401677367

Gareth Lee Cockerill

Gareth Lee Cockerill is the author of Hebrews (2012) in the prestigious NICNT commentary series. He is professor emeritus of New Testament and biblical theology at Wesley Biblical Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi, and an associate fellow of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology, Cambridge, UK. Other interests include the canon of Scripture, the relevance of the Old Testament, and cross-cultural interpretation. He and his wife Rosa served for nine years in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Christian Faith in the Old Testament: The Bible of the Apostles is the result of more than thirty years of study, meditation, and prayer. God has given me the opportunity to preach and teach this material in a variety of contexts. Almost everything that I have done has contributed to this volume. My study of the book of Hebrews has fueled my interest in the continuing relevance of the Old Testament.¹ Teaching biblical theology and the principles of biblical interpretation has forced me to think deeply about the way the Bible fits together as a whole. Service to the church in Sierra Leone, West Africa, afforded me the opportunity to grasp the message of the Bible in a fresh way. Several series of Bible studies that I have done in camps and conferences have found their way into this book. I offer what insight has been given me out of a sense of vocation, with deep thanksgiving to God, and with the hope that it will glorify God by enriching ordinary people in their understanding of, and obedience to, his word.

I owe a debt of gratitude to a multitude of people. More scholars have contributed to my understanding of scripture than I can name or remember. Those familiar with Christopher J. H. Wright will easily note my debt to him and to his work on Old Testament ethics. I am very thankful to Alee Anderson, Study Resources Editor at Thomas Nelson, for her enthusiasm, support, and editorial guidance. Frank Couch, Vice President of Thomas Nelson for Study Resources and Translation Development, has also been a great encouragement. I am also thankful to Heather McMurray, who helped kick-start the publishing process for this book. Pastor Steve Schellin graciously read the entire manuscript and provided feedback, as did my good friend Dave Steveline and my father, W. Lee Cockerill. My son-in-law, Dr. Carey Vinzant, helped me with chapter 2 in particular and also with other parts of the book. I am grateful to Dr. John Neihof, President of Wesley Biblical Seminary, for his encouragement. I’m also grateful to the former and current directors of Reformed Theological Seminary library, Dr. Kenneth Elliott and John Crabb, for providing me with a research room. Dr. John McCarty, Circulation Director, has also been a great help. My thanks to all who have provided an endorsement for this book.

I am especially grateful to my wife, Rosa, who has encouraged me at every step, given me feedback on the manuscript, and provided me with the resources and leisure necessary to complete this project. Sometimes she has even cut the grass so that I could write. It is to her that I lovingly dedicate this book.

NOTES

1. Gareth Lee Cockerill, Hebrews, New International Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012).

INTRODUCTION

An Invitation to Embrace the Old Testament

The inscription high above the door of the old Roman Catholic cathedral in St. Louis caught my attention. After the construction of the new cathedral, the pope designated this historic church as the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France. This inscription was not only in the expected Latin, but also in Hebrew. At the top were clear, gold Hebrew letters that formed the Old Testament covenant name of God: YHWH. This was the name by which God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus 3: Jehovah or, more accurately, Yahweh (I Am.)² Below this Hebrew word was a Latin inscription, still in letters of gold: "Deo Uni et Trino (to God One and Three.")³

Before I saw the Latin I thought I was looking at a synagogue. Then I recognized the appropriateness of joining these two inscriptions. Christians have always affirmed that the God they know as Triune through the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is a fuller revelation of the God of the Old Testament. Their God was the Creator who made covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and delivered their descendants from slavery in Egypt. In controversy with the Gnostics, Irenaeus and other early Christian writers resolutely affirmed that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ was the Creator/covenant-making God of the Old Testament. He had revealed himself in his co-eternal Son and was at work in the world through the equally co-eternal Holy Spirit. This truth is affirmed by the Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son. . . . I believe in the Holy Spirit . . . .

In fact, continuity with the Old Testament is the bedrock of the New Testament, stated or assumed on every page. Jesus beginning at Moses and all the Prophets . . . expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:27; cf. 24:44–49). God, who at various times and in various ways spoke to our forefathers through the prophets, has now spoken to us in one who is Son (Heb. 1:1–2, my own translation). Paul reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ’ (Acts 17:2–3).

Paul and the other New Testament writers clearly recognized the Christian faith in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was indeed the Bible of the Apostles. The first Christians were thoroughly convinced that God had revealed the salvation now provided by Christ in the Old Testament. Christ was God’s intended fulfillment of its story, promises, prophecies, and types. They understood the fullness of the Old Testament through Christ. They grasped Christ’s identity and significance for the world through the Old Testament. The Gospel writers believed that this perspective had its origin in Jesus.

Modern Christians, on the other hand, are often ignorant of the Old Testament and its significance. For some it is, at best, historical background for the New Testament. For others, it is a collection of primitive stories, now superseded in Christ. Some avoid it because it is hard to understand or because some parts of it seem incredible or morally problematic. We read Psalms for comfort and Proverbs for wisdom (after all, we can get these two books bound at the back of our New Testaments), teach (some of) the stories of Abraham and Moses in Sunday school, and read Isaiah at Christmastime. We have lost the Bible of the Apostles, and in so doing we have lost much. We end up with an anemic view of Christ, a superficial understanding of the atonement, and an individualistic view of the church. Our God shrinks because we no longer see the majesty of his creation, the grandeur of his work in history, or the glory of his salvation in Christ. We have little basis for social ethics. We live in rootless isolation because we no longer see ourselves as children of Abraham and part of the people of God, stretched out across history and on its way to glory. If we do not have the Bible of the Apostles, we will not have the true apostolic faith.

This book is dedicated to helping ordinary, intelligent, modern Christians reestablish their apostolic roots in the Old Testament, the Bible of the Apostles. ⁴ First, the pages that follow are designed to help the reader understand how each major part of the Old Testament fits into the total scope of biblical revelation. Second, this study gives needed guidance concerning the way in which each part of the Old Testament applies to contemporary believers. How do the various sections of the Old Testament, given before Christ, function as Scripture for people who live after Christ’s coming?

Thus, our approach will not be thematic, nor will we divide the Old Testament material by historical period. We will consider each part of the Old Testament in the order familiar from our English Bibles. We begin with a chapter on Genesis 1–11, followed by a chapter on Genesis 12–50, and two chapters on Exodus through Joshua. These chapters will introduce three guidelines that are helpful in grasping the Old Testament’s continuing relevance as Scripture: the example guideline, the picture (or typological) guideline, and the pattern guideline. Next come chapters on Judges through 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles through Esther, Job through the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon NKJV), and Isaiah through Malachi. We will conclude with a brief chapter on fulfillment in the New Testament. We will suggest reasons for making the above divisions in the respective chapters that follow rather than cluttering this introduction with argument. Appendix 1 argues for the integrity of our Old Testament as the Bible used by Jesus and the apostles. The chart in Appendix 2 provides a graphic overview of Scripture’s unity. Each part of this chart also occurs in the chapter of the book to which it belongs.

The choice to follow this approach is motivated by practical, literary, and theological concerns. The practical advantages are obvious. This is the order in which modern readers encounter their Bibles. We want to know how this Bible fits together and how it applies to us. From the literary point of view, it is clear that different parts of the Old Testament play different roles. The Prophets,⁵ for instance, call God’s people back to the covenant established in the first five books of the Bible that we call the Pentateuch or the books of Moses.⁶ The Psalms give God’s people words to express their prayer and praise.

However, foundational to this approach is the theological perspective and interpretive practice of the New Testament. Over the centuries the books of the Old Testament have gradually assumed the order in which they now appear in our Bibles. This order reflects the New Testament conviction that all of God’s previous revelation is fulfilled in Christ. Fulfillment in Christ shifted the focus of the Old Testament from the Pentateuch to the Psalms, and especially to the Prophets. The Prophets did more than call God’s people back to the foundational covenant established in the first five books of the Old Testament. Both Psalms and the Prophets pointed forward to the grand and glorious fulfillment of that covenant in Christ. Thus, it was most appropriate that the Old Testament end with the Prophets who looked forward to the coming of Christ rather than with Chronicles, the final book of the Jewish Bible, that looked forward only to the return of Israel from exile. In Malachi, the last book of our Old Testament, God declares, Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple (Mal. 3:1).

The book that you have begun to read—Christian Faith in the Old Testament: The Bible of the Apostles—is the result of more than thirty-five years of meditation and study.

⁷

I have taught this material in both popular and academic contexts. I offer it here with the prayer that it will help its readers be true Berean Christians. When Paul left Thessalonica, he went to Berea. Acts 17:11 tells us that the Bereans were more fair-minded than the Thessalonians because they received God’s word readily and searched the Old Testament scriptures daily to see whether the things Paul taught them were true. This book is written to help modern Christians faithfully and fruitfully search those same Old Testament scriptures, the Bible of the Apostles.

NOTES

2. The casual English reader might not realize how often this name occurs in the Old Testament because most of our English Bibles translate it as LORD (with small caps).

3. These words over the entrance are part of a larger inscription affirming the dedication of the cathedral to God one and triune in 1834.

4. This is not a book about Old Testament problems. No one would deny that the Old Testament presents some interpretive challenges. Occasionally we may touch on some of these, but they are not the topic under discussion. Our purpose is to help the reader get the big picture. We don’t want anyone to miss the forest by stumbling over the stumps.

5. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

6. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

7. Thus I have profited from many who have written on the Old Testament using other approaches.

CHAPTER 1

GOD’S DESIGN ESTABLISHED and LOST

Genesis 1–11

INTRODUCTION

Richard Dawkins betrays the weakness of his atheism by admitting that the world appears to be the product of design.⁸ When we open the pages of Scripture we find a world carefully crafted to carry out the divine purpose. We do not live in a self-produced universe. We are not dealing with a blind Mother Nature. We are confronted with a creation: a world designed by and dependent upon God. We come face to face with this Creator God: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). God’s role as universal Creator is the foundation of all biblical teaching (Heb. 11:3). It determines the way in which we understand the world, our place in it as human beings, and our destiny.

Genesis 1–2 sets the stage for the biblical drama by affirming God as Creator, the world as his creation, and humanity as made in the divine image. If we add human disobedience/divine grace to these three, we have the setting for the biblical story that follows. We can think of these four—God as Creator, the world as creation, humanity in God’s image, sin/grace—as the four sides of a picture frame that appropriately highlights God’s gracious design for humanity to live in joyful community as his people in the world he created to be their home (see Figure 1). This world is the result not of blind chance but of divinely planned opportunity for human fulfillment. If it is the setting for The Greatest Show on Earth, it is a show produced and directed by the gracious Creator and Redeemer of mankind.⁹

Figure 1

A SOVEREIGN, PURPOSEFUL CREATOR WHO BLESSES AND JUDGES

Figure 1: A SOVEREIGN, PURPOSEFUL CREATOR WHO BLESSES AND JUDGES

I. GOD’S PLAN ESTABLISHED: THE PICTURE FRAME AND THE PICTURE (GENESIS 1–2)

A. The Creator

The top of the frame appropriate for the picture of God’s plan can be nothing other than the Creator himself (see Figure 1 ). Many features of Genesis 1–2 show us that God is the sovereign, purposeful Creator who blesses and judges. His sovereignty is immediately evident. All he has to do is say, Let there be . . . , and what he speaks becomes reality. Note the things that God names. On the first day of creation he calls the light Day and the darkness Night (Gen. 1:5). On the second, he designates the expanse as Heaven (or Sky; Gen. 1:8). On the third, he names the dry land Earth and the gathered waters Seas (Gen. 1:10). In the biblical world, to name something is to have authority over it. The visible world consists of sky, earth or dry land, and bodies of water or seas. Time is governed by day and night. Thus, by God’s naming these things, he proclaims himself the sovereign Lord of space and time.

Many commentators have noted how the first three days of creation lay a foundation for the second three: On day one God created day and night, and on day four he established the greater and lesser lights to rule the day and night; on day two he created the sky and separated the waters above from those below, and on day five he created the birds of the sky and sea creatures for the water; on day three he separated the earth from the seas and had the earth produce vegetation, and on day six he created land animals and humanity. Days one through three established and ordered a world; days four through six populated that world. This ordered cadence of days underscores divine sovereignty. Such order also demonstrates that God acts purposefully. His revealed purpose climaxes in his creation of humanity on day six.

Beginning with day three (Gen. 1:9–13) Genesis says, And God saw that it was good. In fact, this statement occurs twice on each of the two climactic days, days three (Gen. 1:10, 12) and six (Gen. 1:25, 31). The whole concludes with, "God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good" (italics added). Everything conformed to God’s gracious purpose. The Creator God alone is the one who has the right to evaluate his creation. He determines what is good and is the judge of his creation’s conformity to that good. He is the judge of the human beings with which it climaxes.

The Creator God alone is the one who has the right to evaluate his creation. He determines what is good and is the judge of his creation’s conformity to that good.

This panoramic account of creation assumes the goodness of the God who so lavishly prepares a world and gives it to human beings as their home and for their enjoyment. This goodness comes to clear expression with the blessings of day five (Gen. 1:22) and day six (Gen. 1:28–30). Creation concludes with this second bountiful blessing for humanity, given to the first human beings God created. He is not only the Judge to whom humans are accountable, he is also the Blesser who gives them all to enjoy.

B. Creation

The left side of our picture frame ( Figure 1 ) is the creation derived from this Creator-God. If God is the Sovereign, Purposeful Creator who Judges and Blesses, then his creation is Limited, but Meaningful, Good, and Purposeful. The features of this creation account that affirm the sovereignty of God assert the limited nature of his creation. It is finite, derived from, dependent upon, and determined by him. Its ordered structure and evident design affirm its meaningfulness and the purpose for which he made it. By declaring the creation to be good, Genesis lays the foundation for human accountability before God.

C. Humanity in God’s Image

Creator and creation establish the context for the right-hand side of the picture frame ( Figure 1 ): humanity, created in God’s image. Human beings, like other animals, are part of God’s creation. They, too, are from the Earth (Gen. 1:24, 2:7). And yet human beings are a unique part of God’s creation, made in the image and likeness of God. God affirms the creation of humanity in his image as his intention (Gen. 1:26). Genesis 1:27 confirms that God carried out his intention. The description of God’s forming Adam from the dust but uniquely breathing into him the breath of life gives this reality concrete shape (Gen. 2:7).

Theologians continue to debate the full significance of the divine image. Several aspects of this reality, however, are evident from Genesis. The image of God distinguishes humanity from other animals. No animal could be a suitable companion for Adam (Gen. 2:18–20). Only the woman God made from Adam’s side whom he called bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh (Gen. 2:23) could be a helper comparable to him, one who also shared in the divine image. Thus the divine image includes the ability to live in companionship with other persons and to fulfill God’s plan for a harmonious human community. Because human beings are made in God’s image, they are able to live in fellowship with God, the source of all true community. The divine image includes the ability to love and to be accountable.

Only the woman God made from Adam’s side whom he called bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh (Gen. 2:23) could be a helper comparable to him.

The dominion over creation given to humanity by God was also closely associated with the divine likeness (Gen. 1:26, 29). God established humanity as his vice-regent over creation, which was to be humanity’s home. The first humans were privileged to enjoy creation’s blessing, charged with caring for it, and accountable to God for performance of this charge. Adam and Eve were given the abundance of the Garden of Eden for their enjoyment, but were also responsible to tend and keep it (Gen. 2:15). They were accountable to obey God’s command.

D. Sin and Grace

The first three sides of this picture frame bring God’s plan or design for humanity into clear focus ( Figure 1 ). First, God created human beings for obedient fellowship with himself. They were made in his image and were his vice-regents over creation. Fellowship with him was the source of their blessing. It was the foundation of the other aspects of his design. Second, they were given the gift of harmonious fellowship with one another. Eve was God’s gracious gift to Adam so that he would not be alone. The innocence of their nakedness exemplified the uncluttered and noncompetitive nature of the free companionship they enjoyed (Gen. 2:25). Third, they were given responsible enjoyment of the Garden and the world God had created. It was to be their home, the blessed place of their fellowship with God and with one another, the context and sustainer of the fruitfulness with which the Creator had blessed them.¹⁰ This indeed was the God-intended blessedness enjoyed by the first humans in the Garden. We have not, however, looked at the bottom of the frame—Sin and Grace. The whole of Scripture that follows is the story of both human destruction and divine restoration of this divine order.

II. GOD’S PLAN LOST: THE NEED FOR RESTORATION (GENESIS 3-11)

A. Living Contrary to God’s Plan: Through Sin

In contrast to Genesis 1, which begins with In the beginning God, Genesis 3 begins with, Now the serpent. We know nothing about the serpent but that he was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made (Gen. 3:1). We know that he was part of the creation and subject to the Creator. We are warned about his craftiness. The writer provides no other information about the origin of this tempter or his relationship to the devil. Genesis acknowledges that temptation comes from outside the original human pair. Yet Genesis refuses to lessen their accountability by attributing the responsibility for their sin to another. They are not the source of temptation. They are, however, as far as humanity is concerned, the source of disobedience. Figure 2 shows what we learn about the nature of sin and its effects from Adam and Eve, Cain, the people before the flood,