Core Christianity: Finding Yourself in God's Story by Michael Horton

Author:Michael Horton [Horton, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2016-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

THE POWER OF THE PROMISE

PROMISES ARE POWERFUL. I knew an elderly woman who was dying of multiple complications from surgery. On one of my visits, I left her bedside certain that this would be my last. However, that evening she received a call from her son. He promised her that he would catch the next flight from Hong Kong to see her. Amazingly, she remained alive until he arrived. In fact, for the few days of his visit she seemed to be recovering. After he left, she said her good-byes and left this world.

Depending on what is promised and the one who is making it, a promise can have the power to spark hope and life beyond all odds. And God made us such a promise. It’s a worldwide, game-changing promise, and every story in the Bible finds its way back to this promise. Yet when we read the Old Testament without understanding how the parts fit together, it all feels rather confusing, like a jigsaw puzzle without the box-top. You have hundreds of these little pieces, but you aren’t sure how they all fit together or what pattern they reveal when the puzzle is complete. As you start working on the puzzle, the only way to know the picture is to locate the box-top. What do you see? A portrait of Jesus Christ.

Another helpful way to see how everything fits together is to understand that the Bible is made up of many different genres, or types of writing. Jews, including Jesus and his apostles, would refer to the Old Testament as “the law and the prophets” or “the law, the prophets, and the writings.” The Law includes the five books of Moses (also called the Pentateuch). Much of this part of the Bible is historical narrative—reporting how God gave his law and how Israel did in keeping it. Then you have “the writings,” a name that is generic enough to include a variety of genres. Among the Writings are wisdom books and a hymnal—the Psalms—for doxology (lament, confession, praise, and worship). Finally you have the prophetic writings. As God’s lawyers, they argue the case of “God versus Israel” (Hos 6:7). And yet they also bring a word of hope, of God’s promise of life beyond the fall, just as we first heard in Genesis 3:15. The thread that ties it all together is the development of this single promise, repeated in various ways and with slightly different emphases, from Genesis to Revelation. Let’s take a closer look at how the promise of Genesis 3:15 unfolds throughout the Old Testament and into the New.

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