Retelling the Story of God: An Apologetic for the Christian Worldview

By Scott Allen Davis

People in our culture today desperately need explanations for the big questions of life: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? People in the twentieth century concluded that God did not exist, so the vastness of the universe and the finitude of man came together to create a crisis of existence for them. Their skepticism has been passed on to those of us who live in the twenty-first century, so that crisis is still with us. The great questions still demand answers, but none will be forthcoming until we begin to see our existence in light of the existence of God and His story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512734386

Scott Allen Davis

Scott Allen Davis is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, and the pastor of Berean Bible Church in Livonia, MI.

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Copyright © 2016 Scott Allen Davis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Those readers interested in additional apologetic resources may visit

www.christtheory.wordpress.com

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-3439-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-3440-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-3438-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016904233

WestBow Press rev. date: 9/2/2016

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The New Covenant

Chapter 2 In The Orchard

Chapter 3 Give Us A King!

Chapter 4 The Sacrificial Lamb

Chapter 5 Fully God, Fully Man, And Fully Dead

Chapter 6 A Glorious New Kind Of Life

Chapter 7 The Story Is Retold … In Us

Chapter 8 The Fourth Cup

Selected Bibliography

I am deeply thankful to God for the many wonderful teachers He has used to disciple me, both at Dallas Theological Seminary and in various other settings in my life. Without their combined ministry to me, this book would either not have been written, or would have been written much more inadequately. I am also thankful for the followers of Jesus at Berean Bible Church in Livonia, Michigan, who have given me the great privilege of serving as their pastor over these last few years. I would also like to thank Micah Jelinek and Andrew Schaad of Moody Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Michigan, for their willingness to help me track down many of the resources I needed to write this book.

The book is dedicated to my beautiful wife, Lori, and the two arrows in our quiver—Sarah and Kyle. I pray we can aim you well. This book is also dedicated to followers of Jesus Christ who believe their mission in life is to pass the faith on to the next generation.

Preface

Professional photographers know there are many ways to view their subjects. Wide-angle lenses, for instance, are best for taking in the overarching scope of a scene, while zoom lenses can capture details of small objects. No one lens, however, can capture all the vastness and all the detail of an image in one shot; something will always be lost regardless of the lens.

Trying to tell the story of God is like trying to capture all the fullness of an image with technology that is not up to the task. We need a wide-angle lens to understand the overarching theme of the story. The details are also critical in helping us see how compelling the story is, but if we dwell on the details, we risk losing the big picture.

In this book I have attempted to view the story of God through a lens capable of zooming in to see the details and zooming out to capture the big picture. I have attempted to explain the story from a larger perspective, and then I have encouraged the reader to zoom in or flash forward or backward to the center of the story to look at connections they might otherwise miss. By doing this, I hope to offer a perspective on the story that will cause some people to think about it in a new light.

People in our culture today desperately need explanations for the big questions of life: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? People in the twentieth century concluded that God did not exist, so the vastness of the universe and the finitude of man came together to create a crisis of existence for them. Their skepticism has been passed on to those in the twenty-first century, so that crisis is still with us. The great questions still demand answers, but none will be forthcoming until we begin to see our existence in light of the existence of God and His story.

If there is a solution to the crisis of humanity that God has communicated to us in a story, it would surely be the greatest of all stories. We might imagine that it would have a complexity to it (since it is from God, it must be infinitely complex) and yet also a simplicity to it (since God would be able to make the complex understandable to us). It would be something like a simple equation that could explain great complexities, perhaps along the lines of Einstein’s E = mc². It would have to be a story that we could not have thought up ourselves because it would have been from God. When it was fully revealed to us, it would surely have the power to explain everything in a compelling way. It would have to be the theory of everything, so perfect that it would have to be right. It would also have to be so attractive and desirable that it would make all other ways of living pale in comparison.

When the story of God is understood rightly, it will be viewed as a wonderful convergence of the simple and the complex. The story of God as told in the Scriptures does bring the simple and the complex together in a profound way, which is one reason I believe it provides the solutions to all the big questions and mysteries of life. The Scriptures summarize the essence of the central part of the story as the death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances of God in the flesh (Jesus Christ) to His followers. It is this identity and work of Jesus that allows all who truly believe in Him to begin to experience life in its fullness.

While these things are difficult to believe, they are in fact relatively simple. This is why I will zoom in to the central part of the story in this book; that is where the simplicity of the story can be communicated. In the process of telling the central part of the story, I will also zoom out to capture some good pictures of the overarching scope of the story of God from beginning to end. No one picture can capture the story in its fullness, but if we put enough good pictures together, chances are you will see how they are interrelated. In this way, I hope to bring the complexity and the simplicity of the story together.

It is also my hope that other followers of Jesus Christ will be willing to put their stamp of approval on this book. Christians are a diverse group and we disagree on many things; however, the essential beliefs we hold should serve to bind us together, regardless of our diversity. I pray that as other Christians read this book, they will gain a deeper appreciation for the power of the Christian story and a greater ability to answer some of the difficult questions associated with it. I pray also that they will be inspired to work more closely with other believers to find creative ways to retell the story to a generation in desperate need of hearing it. Our God is unimaginably creative, and we are to be His imitators.

However, if you are not yet a follower of Jesus Christ, you should know that this book is written primarily for you. My desire has been to summarize God’s story for you in a straightforward manner that addresses some of the difficult questions you might have about Christians and what we believe. To that end, I have included a great deal of discussion about other worldviews and many footnotes that address some of the big questions in further detail and provide resources for further study. It is my hope that this book will bring you to a deeper understanding of God’s story and that by His grace you actually become a part of it.

As Christians, we believe God’s story is the only hope for this broken world. As a result, we cannot be silent; we must retell the story. This book is simply my attempt to do that in a way that is simple enough to understand without compromising the depth of the story in the process. May God use it as He sees fit.

—scott

CHAPTER 1

The New Covenant

The LORD who commands armies will hold a banquet for all the nations on this mountain (Zion in Jerusalem). At that banquet there will be plenty of meat and aged wine - tender meat and choicest wine. On this mountain he will swallow up the shroud that is over all the peoples, the woven covering that is over all the nations; he will swallow up death permanently. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from every face, and remove the people’s disgrace from all the earth. Indeed the Lord has announced it!

—Isaiah 25:6–8; written 700 years before Christ

Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah … I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

—Jeremiah 31:31, 33; written 600 years before Christ

I am a historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.

—H. G. Wells

The Passover Setting

On the night of April 2, in AD 33,¹ a man who would come to be regarded as the dominant figure of history met with His disciples in the second story of a house in Jerusalem to have a meal with them. The man was Jesus of Nazareth, and the meal was of such significance in Christian history that it was recorded in each of the four independent accounts of the ministry of Jesus, the Gospels.² Jesus had been teaching for several years by that time, and He had done so with an authority that had never been seen in Israel. He had announced that the kingdom of God was near, and He had backed up this claim by healing multitudes of people of their diseases and physical deformities. In a few cases, Jesus had even raised people from the dead. He had also demonstrated the power to make nature itself obey His commands. Demonic spirits came out of hiding and begged for mercy in His presence. Jesus was continually challenged by the highly educated religious leaders of the day, and He continually exposed their logical fallacies and hypocrisy. The disciples of Jesus had been following Him for several years, and they had concluded that He was the promised Messiah—the one prophesied in the Scriptures to come and save them. Jesus had developed relationships of such depth with them that we can hardly imagine what they would have been like today.

As Jesus shared the meal with His friends on that evening, an especially ominous feeling was in the air. Jesus was deeply troubled. He told His disciples that one of them would betray Him. He said that another would deny Him and that they would be scattered because of what was about to happen to Him. Jesus said He would no longer be with them, and they could no longer follow Him at that time. Because of these things, sorrow had gripped the disciples. It was as if a dark cloud had settled over Jesus, and the disciples were also feeling its effects.

The events of that evening felt even more ominous because they came at the time of an annual celebration of the Hebrew people known as Passover, a ritual meal that marked the greatest act of redemption in the history of the nation. Some 1,500 years earlier, as the Hebrews were suffering in slavery at the hands of the Egyptians, God raised up a prophet named Moses, a Hebrew who had been raised as a royal son of Egypt but who could not bear to see his own people enslaved by the Egyptians. He had given up his royal privileges and for forty years had been a shepherd in the wilderness. Then, suddenly at age eighty, Moses was chosen by God to lead the Hebrews out of slavery. He returned to Egypt in dramatic fashion with a message from God to the pharaoh, Let my people go that they may have a feast for me in the wilderness.³ It was God’s intention for the Hebrews to renew their relationship with Him through this feast. The pharaoh would not agree to this, so plagues of various kinds swept through Egypt. These plagues exemplified the power the Hebrew God had over the supposed gods of the Egyptians.⁴

At the point of the tenth plague, Moses instructed the people to sacrifice a lamb and to place the blood of the lamb over the doorframes of their houses to protect their firstborn sons from death. Moses told the people that God would allow an angel of death to slay the firstborn sons of anyone who did not follow this instruction. The people were to eat the lamb along with bread, wine and other elements of the Passover meal, and as they did these things on that night, the angel of death would pass over their homes and they would be protected.

The Hebrews followed this instruction and received the protection. However, the angel of death came for the firstborn sons of Egypt, including the firstborn son of the pharaoh. At this point, the pharaoh finally conceded the defeat of his gods and sent the Hebrews from Egypt, and the people also encouraged them to leave by offering them silver and gold. After God miraculously intervened for His people at the Sea of Reeds, the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt was no longer in doubt. It was through this remarkable series of events that God redeemed the Hebrews by bringing them out of slavery in Egypt.

Passover was therefore a time to look back at the redemption God had performed in the past. However, it was also a time to watch and see how God would intervene in the affairs of His people in the present. This element of watching was actually there from the beginning of the establishment of Passover, as recorded in Exodus 12:42: It was a night of vigil for the Lord to bring them out from the land of Egypt, and so on this night all Israel is to keep the vigil to the Lord for generations to come.⁵

All these things came together to make this particular night one of heightened expectation for the disciples. It would prove to be a night unlike any other they had ever experienced.

Reinterpreting Passover

In biblical times, it was part of the culture of the people of the ancient Near East to enter into alliances and make promises these alliances would be kept. These alliances were called covenants. A covenant was technically a treaty, pledge, agreement, or an alliance of friendship between individuals.⁶ A solemn oath often sealed the relationship with promises of blessing for keeping the covenant and curses for breaking it. These covenants were accompanied by animal sacrifices to symbolize the seriousness of the commitments. They were also often accompanied by a meal, since eating together was a sign of intimate fellowship in ancient Near Eastern culture.

The Hebrew God is clearly portrayed throughout the Bible as a covenant-making God.⁷ After He led the people out of Egypt, He initiated a covenant between Himself and the Hebrews that consisted of laws the Hebrew people were to keep so they would be prosperous in the land God was about to give them. God, however, knew the Hebrews would not keep their part of the covenant. God made the covenant with the Hebrews (in part) in order to demonstrate His character through His loyal love for His people. Another part of His larger purpose in giving the covenant was to show that the Hebrews were not loyal. The covenant God made with them was never intended to be a covenant for their ultimate redemption; instead, it was intended to reveal the need for a greater covenant of redemption. External laws could not provide redemption for the people; they needed a renewal that came from within their own hearts.

As we zoom in again on the Passover of AD 33, we find Jesus speaking of a new covenant. Jesus announced the arrival of the new covenant at the Passover meal, and in the days immediately following He would inaugurate it with His people. The covenant was new, but it was set in the context of the old. Passover, while connected to the old covenant, was not the ratification ceremony of that covenant.⁸ Instead, it was a mysterious foreshadowing of something else God had planned for His people. Finally, fifteen hundred years later, Jesus was about to reveal the mystery. With this new covenant, Jesus was about to meet the need that the old covenant exposed and at the same time unveil the true meaning of Passover.

In the celebration of this Passover, Jesus did and said things that were beyond the expectations of His disciples. It would take them some time to fully understand the actions of Jesus that night, but over the next few days and weeks, they would come to realize He was opening a new chapter in the story of redemptive history. He was teaching them through the Passover meal that He was about to provide a second redemption, and that He would do so in a way none of them would have imagined. This second redemption was a new kind of Passover, one not just for the Hebrew people but also for all humanity.

The gospel accounts tell us that during the Passover meal that evening, Jesus took the bread, broke it, and said, This is my body which is given for you—do this in remembrance of me. He then had the disciples eat the bread. Next, He took a cup of wine and said, This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.⁹ He then had the disciples drink it. As the meal progressed, Jesus reinterpreted the ancient symbols to indicate that they actually referred to Him. By doing these things, Jesus was not just celebrating Passover with His disciples, He was also teaching them He actually was the substance of the Passover sacrifice.

Without having knowledge of the way a typical Passover was conducted, we might get the impression that there was only one cup of wine served at this Passover, and that it