Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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Change, Part 3: Promise Keeper

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Sovereign, Attentive, and Good

As we’ve seen, God is great, the great sovereign over his created order. He is able—and certain—to act on behalf of his people. How will he do that?

2. God keeps his promises.

As the narrative proceeds, God reminds Joshua that he has made promises to the people of Israel:

3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and the Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, to the Great Sea in the west shall be your territory (Jos 1.3-4).

The Lord refers specifically to the promise he made to Moses (Dt 11.24), and through him to the people of Israel. And you’ll recall that even earlier, at the burning bush (Ex 3.8), God had commissioned Moses to bring his people out of Egypt “to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” And God prefaced that commission by identifying himself as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3.6). Why does he describe himself that way? clearly because he had made the same promise to the patriarchs, beginning with Abraham (Ge 12.7; cf 17.8), then Isaac (Ge 26.4) and then Jacob (Ge 28.13).

God is the kind of person who 1) remembers his promises and then 2) keeps them. It had been about 600 years since God made the original promise to Abraham; for more than 400 of those years Abraham’s descendants had been in Egypt—not in the Land God had promised them—and for most of those 400 they had been slaves.

But God had not forgotten; he had not reneged; he had not failed to keep the Promise.

One of the evidences of sovereignty is that you’re not in a hurry. If you see the White Rabbit hopping madly by, crying, “I’m late! I’m late!” then you know that he doesn’t have his life under control at that moment.

And so now, six centuries of providentially directed history later, it’s time—time to fulfill the promise, time to give Abraham’s seed the land.

As I’ve noted, you and I are not Israel, and we have no claim to the land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates.

But if God is the kind of person who remembers and keeps his promises, then he remembers and keeps his promises to us as well.

And there are hundreds of them, more than I can list here.

But there a few that might be profitable for us to recall here where we find ourselves in history.

Some apply to us as individual believers.

  • “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16.25).
  • “This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day” (Jn 6.40).
  • “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (Jn 14.3).
  • “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it” (1Co 10.13).
  • “The one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Php 1.6).
  • “I will never leave you or forsake you” (He 13.5).
  • “It is God’s will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish” (1P 2.15).
  • “Let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good” (1P 4.19).

And others apply to us as Christ’s body, the church, in corporate unity.

  • “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Mt 16.18).
  • “Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’ ” (Ro 12.19).
  • “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart” (1Co 1.19).
  • “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this” (1Th 5.23-24).
  • “All who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2Ti 3.12).

He remembers all of these. And he will keep them.

Part 4: Present | Part 5: Trust | Part 6: Obedience | Part 7: Meditation

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The Really Important Bible Story that Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 5

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

December 18, 520 BC, has been a pretty good day so far; Haggai’s third sermon has given us a lot to chew on.

But he’s not done yet.

Later the same day, Haggai delivers his fourth and final sermon, and it goes far beyond any of the others.

This sermon is different from the others; for starters, it’s delivered not to the crowd of onlookers or the workers themselves, but to just one man—the governor, Zerubbabel (Hag 2.21).

And it’s brief and to the point.

And cryptic.

Haggai talks about the shaking that’s coming (Hag 2.21b-22). He’s mentioned that before, in his second sermon (Hag 2.6-7). And in that day, he says to Zerubbabel, I’m going to make you a signet ring!

And that’s it. End of sermon, end of book.

What on earth does that mean?

Zerubbabel would know very well what it means. I’ve mentioned that he’s the grandson of the last Davidic king. This statement is about his grandfather.

His grandfather went by several names. Jehoiachin. Jeconiah. Or just Coniah.

And in his reign of just three months (2K 24.8), he was an evil, evil king. So evil, in fact, that God had placed a special curse on him through Jeremiah: he would be cut off, the royal signet ring pulled off of God’s finger and cast aside (Jer 22.24-27). And worse, none of his descendants would ever sit on the throne of David (Jer 22.30).

How about that. God just cursed the Messianic line. To all appearances, his promise to David (2Sam 7.4-17) was over. No eternal Messianic king after all.

The end of hope.

And now, to Zerubbabel, two generations later, he speaks again of the signet ring. What does it mean? Will Zerubbabel become king again?

Not until the shaking (Hag 2.21-23). When would that be?

Well, Zerubbabel never becomes king, so not in his lifetime. And not for the next 400 years, through all of Zerubbabel’s royal descendants (Mt 1.12-16). And along about 5 BC, the royal heir—cursed—is a carpenter in Nazareth.*

He will never be king. Nor will any biological son.

I think he knew that. The very existence of the genealogy in Matthew 1 testifies to the fact that the Jews kept track of such things.

And now he learns that his fiancée—a woman whose character he had never questioned—is with child, and he knows he’s not the father.

Anguished, he ponders his next step. In the dark of night, a heavenly messenger appears to him. The situation is not what you think, he says. Marry the woman. Adopt the baby.

Joseph’s reputation will be ruined if he does what the messenger says. It will cost him everything.

But he does it anyway. Does he know? Does he realize that this is God’s remarkable way of keeping an apparently broken promise? Or does he just figure that you ought to do what a heavenly messenger says?

He adopts the baby.

And in that instant, it all comes together. The adopted child becomes the legal heir to all the promises of God to David. He becomes the eternal king, the child born to bear all government on his shoulders. Yet he is not heir to the curse on Coniah. He can reign.

How much do we owe to this Joseph, the man who sacrificed everything to follow God’s hard command and then disappeared entirely from history? What if he had said, “No, let the next generation do it!”?

There can be no next generation. Daniel predicted the death of Messiah around AD 30 (Dan 9.24-26). This is the time. If Joseph doesn’t do it, the promises are all broken, and it all falls apart.

Back to Haggai’s day. Does Zerubbabel understand any of this? Can he make sense of the prophecy of the signet ring?

We’re not told. Maybe Haggai explained it to him. Maybe he never knew. Maybe he thought, “And this is the thanks I get?!”

But the theme of the sermon is clear to us. God keeps his promises.

He has made plenty more. And he keeps them all.

Walk in the light of that trust.

* What follows assumes that Matthew’s genealogy is the royal line of David culminating in Joseph, while Luke’s genealogy is a non-royal Davidic line culminating in Mary. No space to defend that view here, but it’s common and justified at length in standard reference works and commentaries.

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Fables Again, Differently

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A week ago I posted about possible lessons from Aesop for weather forecasters. This time I’d like to broach the subject again in a very different context.

In my university’s chapel program today, my colleague Eric Newton briefly referred (about 16:30 minutes in) to my experience of having my faith rescued through the study of OT genealogies. Since others may find the story helpful, I share it here.

In seminary I had to study a lot of theology, including aberrant theologies. Those included the first major theological innovation of the 20th century, neo-orthodoxy, tied to the thinking of Karl Barth. Barth’s system and writings are complex, but the feature that got my attention was his “two-story” hermeneutic. There are two kinds of history, he said. There’s the stuff that really happened, which he called by the German term Historie. That’s the first story of the house, where we live. But there’s an upstairs too, with another kind of history, Geschichte. That’s the stuff that we believe. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t; that doesn’t matter. What matters is that our belief helps us make sense of a confusing world and, more importantly, it energizes an existential experience with God, which is the whole point of being. There’s no staircase in the house; we can reach the second story only by an existential leap of faith.

Neo-orthodox thinkers make this kind of thinking clearer to the average guy by calling the Scripture’s early history “fable.” They don’t intend the term to be an insult; in their minds, it’s a great compliment. Fables are delightful and artful literary works, and they play an important role in our education and broader culture. For example, Aesop told a story about a boy who cried “Wolf!” It teaches us that we shouldn’t lie. That’s important.

Now. In what country did this boy live? In what century?

Ah, my friend, by asking these questions, you’re indicating that you completely miss the point. It doesn’t matter where or when he lived—in fact, it doesn’t matter if he lived at all. The point is the lesson, and historicity is irrelevant. Just learn from the story. Recognize the literary technique, and don’t be such a knuckle-dragging literalist.

Well. That concept hit me pretty hard. What if Barth’s right? What if we’re completely missing the author’s intent? (Authorial intent is a really big deal in biblical interpretation, right?) What if none of it’s true? And then, what’s the point of Jesus being the Second Adam to solve the problem of human sin (Rom 5), if there was no First Adam to originate the sin in the first place?

Maybe it’s all just stories.

At that point in my thinking I made a really foolish mistake. Being too proud to ask any of my teachers—or fellow students—for help, I determined to push through this on my own. That was foolish for a couple of reasons—first, because human beings aren’t designed to suffer alone, and second, because, as I later realized, I was surrounded by people who could have given me the answer without my having to spend weeks in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

But, foolishly, I spent some time as a doctoral student at BJU wondering whether there’s even a God, and whether there’s light at the end of this dark valley.

Well, there is light. God is gracious; he knows and loves and cares for his children, and as he always has, he overlooked my foolishness and treated me with grace instead of giving me what I deserved.

I was seeking the answer to the question of authorial intent: did the narrators of early biblical history intend for me to read their accounts as fable, or as Historie? Is there evidence in their literature that would answer that question?

Yes, there is. One day it hit me like a brick. It’s the genealogies.

You see, when you tell the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!” you don’t tell how he grew up and had a son, and then a grandson, and then a great-grandson, and how his 200-greats grandson is the mayor of Cleveland. It’s fable; you leave it in the world of fiction.

That’s not what the authors did. They tied those very early people to the people of their generation. And later authors recognized that and extended the genealogical record through 4000 (or so) years of history to the central figure of history, Jesus Christ himself.

Barth was creative, but he failed to analyze the literature carefully. He missed clear evidence of the obvious answer to the most basic question—what did the author intend to say?

Postscript

Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is profitable (2Tim 3.16). All of it. Even the boring parts. Even the parts you tell new believers to skip.

Don’t do that. It’s all profitable. It’s there for a purpose. Recognize, embrace, and live in the light of that purpose. My 200-greats grandfather, Adam, would tell you the same thing.

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Sublime to Ridiculous

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God is great, and he is good.

He created all things in the span of six days, and the Scripture describes the origin of all the stars in all the galaxies in all the galaxy clusters in all the universe with just three words (two in Hebrew): “and the stars” (Gen 1.16). And the speed with which he made it all implies no hurry or lack of attention to detail; he made the earth perfect as a residence—a sanctuary—for us humans, with all of our needs—oxygen, water, food, light, heat—freely and abundantly provided (Gen 1.29).

He made us in his image (Gen 1.27) and sought out our companionship in the cool of the day (Gen 3.8). And despite our faithlessness to him and our rejection of his commands (Gen 3), he set out on a long plan to woo us back to himself, as the one whom his soul loves.

Why so long?

For at least a couple of reasons, I think.

First, because his long, unflagging pursuit of us assures us of his love. He’s serious about this. He’s not going away. This is true love of the purest and most devoted kind.

And second, because he gives us time. We are stubborn—he knows that (Ps 103.14)—and we need to be shown that we will not be satisfied with anything or anyone but him. So he lengthens our leash, and he lets us sniff all the sidewalks to our heart’s content. He patiently endures the jealousy his own heart feels toward us, watching us seek satiation in everything else there is. He lets us exhaust ourselves in our foolishness. He’s a patient lover.

And when we’ve come to the end of our orgy, to the end of ourselves, wrecked and ruined and unattractive and repulsive (Ezek 16), then he draws us to himself, graciously, tenderly, and whispers to us of love. And we ought to believe him. His patience tells us of his love; his revelation of himself tells us (Rom 2.4); and most especially, his giving of himself in brutalizing, deadly sacrifice—for our filthiness, not his—tells us beyond any doubt (Rom 5.8).

But even as believers—forgiven, welcomed, indwelt, gifted, guided, protected, loved—we find ourselves faithless. We doubt his promises—or worse, forget them—and fear the place he’s called us to serve. Like toddlers in the checkout line, we find ourselves distracted by bright colors and sugary treats, and we seek our fulfillment in light and worthless things. We go through the motions of marriage to him, but our heart is elsewhere. We’re glad for his grace—don’t you feel bad for all those (other) people going to hell?—but we pursue our own joys and our own ends. We’ve hired other people, you see, to serve him “full-time,” to take the gospel to the ends of the earth as he has commanded us.

And we fear. Oh, do we fear. Will I lose my health? Will the wrong guy get elected? Will the market crash? Will laws be broken?

What if it does? What if they are? Is our God asleep? Is he in the men’s room (1Ki 18.27)? After millennia of pursuing us, is he going to abandon us now?

This isn’t the first time the kings of the earth have raged against God’s anointed (Ps 2). It isn’t abnormal that God’s people are not the powerful of the earth (1Co 1). His plan for us, apparently, is very different from our plan for ourselves. Once again.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me

and delivered me from all my fears (Ps 34.4).

 

So then.

PSA: I’ve seen all those memes. You know, those fearful and snide and unoriginal and hostile and divisive ones about Colin Kaepernick and Cory Booker and Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein and whatever else. So you can stop posting them now, OK? Maybe you could post about–oh, I don’t know–the things I’ve mentioned above. Thanks.

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On Reading Numbers (the Book, not the Digits)

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Well, you got through Leviticus, and you found that it’s got a real devotional punch if you pay attention to the big ideas. And now you’re in Numbers. Funny name. Lots of repetition. And details. And, well, numbers.

What’s with that?

When Numbers begins, Israel is still at Sinai, where they’ve been for the year since leaving Egypt. They’ve received the Law (that’s the last part of Exodus, and all of Leviticus), and they’re preparing to continue to Canaan. When Numbers ends, the people of Israel are at the Jordan River, ready to enter the land (Dt 1.1). For those of you keeping score, that means that the entire 40 years of wilderness wandering takes place in Numbers.

So what’s with the numbers? What’s that all about?

Oh, this is really good. Really good.

The book begins, as you might expect, with numbers: a census. God directs Moses to count all the men in the Israelite army (Num 1.2-3). Moses obeys, and we’re told that Israel’s army numbers just over 600,000 (Num 1.46).

Hold that thought.

Now Israel prepares to travel from Sinai, what we might call Constitution City, to their permanent home, promised by God to Abraham all those centuries ago. If there are 600,000 soldiers, then you probably have about 2 million people in all, and moving that many people around is going to require some organization. So God describes the organization of the camp (Num 2); the jobs of the Levites in breaking down, carrying, and setting up the Tabernacle (Num 3-4); and the dedication of the Tabernacle to active service (Num 7-9).

Now we’re ready to move. Off we go.

The Israelites decamp and head for Canaan (Num 10-12), arriving at Kadesh-Barnea, near Canaan’s southern border, where God instructs them to investigate the land they’re about to enter (Num 13). What they see makes them afraid, and they refuse the land God has assured them is theirs (Num 14). God sends them on a 40-year hiatus, where the fearful adults will all die, leaving their “vulnerable” children to take the land by force (Num 14.28-35).

Yikes. That’s a turn of events.

And the rest of the book describes the torturous turns of those 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Someone has estimated that for those 40 years, about 85 people died every day, on average, until all the adults were gone. That’s 40 years of daily grief, reminding Israel of the perils of faithlessness.

God is killing them all. Will he eradicate them? Or will he keep his promise to Abraham, 400 years ago, that they would occupy the land (Gen 17.8)?

Well, that’s where the numbers come in.

In chapter 26, Israel has arrived at the plains of Moab, just across the Jordan River from Jericho and the rest of The Land. All the older generation is gone now, and the current generation can see the land ahead of them. Will they be able to take it?

God answers their question with a second census. Count all the soldiers, he says. They do.

How many soldiers are there? 600,000 (Num 26.51). Just as many as there were before.

In judgment, God remembers mercy. He destroys the faithless generation, but he sees to it that four decades later, the army is just as large as it was before, despite their less-than-ideal living and breeding conditions.

The promise is still good. The land is still theirs. God’s judgment has not disabled the promise.

The numbers have spoken.

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