“In the beginning, God.” That is where history, horror, hope,
everything known of the past, experienced in the present and hoped for the
future was birthed. Genesis 1 records
that darkness and nothingness and timelessness were pierced by the Word of God
in an instant, and that after seven days, all things were made that have been
made [John 1:3], and God looked at it “and behold, it was very good” [Genesis
1:31]. This is the God who revealed His
character to Moses in Exodus 34, saying, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful
and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and
sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the
fourth generation [vs. 6-7].” These
words are repeated throughout Scripture [see Numbers 14:18, Psalm 86:5, Joel
2:13, especially], and God’s dealings with mankind prove them true: He is holy,
He is unchangeable, He is gracious and merciful, and He does not tolerate sin.
Man was originally in perfect fellowship with the
Maker. He was not God, but he was made
in the image of God [Genesis 1:26] and “unashamed” before God [2:25]. This incredible harmony was shattered by
man’s choice to disobey God. Adam and
Eve desired a fruit and a false promise of wisdom from the Serpent over the
command and blessing of the Almighty.
Because of one man’s sin, sin consumed all mankind [Romans 5:19],
corrupting not just his actions, but his very nature [Genesis 8:21, Psalm
51:4-5].
From the animal slain to cover man’s nakedness in the
Garden [Genesis 3:21], to the Tabernacle established for sacrifices of
atonement for the people of Israel [Exodus-Deuteronomy], to the Lamb who was
slain for the sin of the world [John 1:29], the gulf between God’s holiness and
man’s sinfulness and the need for interposition and atonement is emphasized Bible-wide. Man’s situation is universal iniquity and universal
guilt, and all men are universally deserving of the wrath of God. Man cannot fix the problem because, as David
Platt wrote, “No one who is morally evil can choose good, no man who is a slave
can set himself free, no woman who is blind can give herself sight, no one who
is an object of wrath can appease that wrath, and no person who is dead can cause
himself to come to life [Platt, pg. 31].”
The eternal character of God and the enslaved sinfulness of man cannot
be reconciled except by the eternal purpose of God to do just that. He did not wipe out man. He promised redemption for him. God gave a glimpse of reconciliation in
Genesis 3:15 (the protevangelium)
where a Savior is foreshadowed. William
Hendriksen, in his Survey of the Bible,
writes of this passage, “Over against Satan viewed as an individual - ‘you shall bruise his heel’ – stands the
one, definite person; namely, the coming Redeemer, ‘the Seed of the woman’ [pg.
86]”; He is the One Who will finally crush the head of Satan and destroy the
power of sin over His people. We see this
“eternal purpose” of hope from the very beginning. It is clearly stated in Ephesians 3 that this
purpose includes God’s wisdom and glory being made known to all rulers and
authorities in the heavenly places and His redemption being preached beyond
Israel among the Gentiles [vs.8-12].
Terry, Smith and Anderson write in Missiology
that “God’s missionary concern was from the beginning a part of His divine
nature [pg. 51]” and creation. The God
abounding in love and forgiveness on Mount Sinai had purposed to display His
grace and goodness through the Gospel from the very beginning. The record of the Old Testament is centered
on that God and the promise of His coming [Luke 24:44-45]. Louis Berkhof writes of God’s creation and
purpose in general, that God did not create “the world primarily to receive glory
from His creatures in adoration and praise, but especially to manifest His glory [emphasis added, pg. 98]” and attributes. This is specially seen in His dealings with
the Israelites.
God’s relationship with His chosen people, Israel, is
on the front row of the Old Testament, and it is an example of His relationship
with all those who would believe in Him, for, even as He called Abraham and his
descendants to be the chosen people of God, He promised that all the families of the earth would be
blessed through them [Genesis 12:3]. First,
God communicated and covenanted with His people. Throughout the Old Testament, and
specifically the Pentateuch, He laid down laws for His people to follow and
they covenanted to follow them. He
promised blessing to those who were obedient and cursing to those who were
disobedient [see Deuteronomy 30]. His
first commandment was this: “You shall have no other gods before me [Exodus
20:3] and “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your might [Deuteronomy 6:5].” The uniqueness of God choosing a people,
preserving a people, drawing those people out of slavery, triumphantly taking
them into a Promised Land, not forsaking those people and forgiving those
people is highlighted even as those events unfolded. It is asked in Deuteronomy 4:33-40, “Did any
[other] people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the
fire, as you have heard, and still live?
Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for Himself from
the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a
mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deed of terror, all of which
the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that
the Lord is God; there is no other besides Him…Therefore you shall keep His
statutes and His commandments, which I command you today…” The center of the commands in the Old
Testament, the Hero of the stories of the Old Testament, the hope in the trials
of the Old Testament, the Voice that spoke to the prophets of the Old
Testament, and the One who slew the enemies of Israel in the Old Testament was
all the same: God. Second, this God who
communicated and covenanted with His people, used them to showcase His glory to
the whole world. He repeatedly showed grace
to them, and repeatedly said that He is doing it for the glory of His
Name. Thus, when Jesus prayed “hallowed
be Thy Name [Matthew 6:9]” His heart was beating with the purpose of God from
the dawn of time, John Piper points out in Let
the Nations Be Glad! [Piper, pg. 35].
God does not forsake His people
because of “His great Name’s sake [1 Samuel 12:22]” (also see Exodus 33). He said of the Exodus, “I acted for the sake
of My Name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among
whom they lived, in whose sight I made Myself known to them in bringing them
out of the land of Egypt [Ezekiel 20:9].”
He enabled a shepherd boy to slay a giant warlord “that all the earth
may know that there is a God in Israel [1 Samuel 17:46]”. He caused King Solomon to pray that “all the
peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel
[1 Kings 8:43].” Even when sinning,
judged and scattered among the nations, God used His people to spread the His
law and Name far and wide. In Babylon,
where He rescued three Hebrew boys from the fire, He caused the king to
proclaim, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego…for there is no
other god who is able to rescue in this way [3:28-30].” In Isaiah 42:8, speaking to His rebellious
people, He said, “I am the Lord; that is My name; My glory I give to no other,
nor My praise to carved idols.” The
Psalms are replete with declarations of God’s innate glory and sovereignty and
His purpose to gain glory through His dealings with His people. Hezekiah prays that Israel’s enemies would be
turned back “that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone are God
[Isaiah 37:20].” God says that Cyrus
will be used in His hand “that people may know, from the rising of the sun and
from the west, that there is none besides Me; I am the Lord, and there is no
other [Isaiah 45:6].” His relationship
with Israel was a platform to invite the nations into relationship with Him as
well. Psalm 67:1-2 beautifully states,
“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face to shine upon us,
that Your way may be known on earth, Your saving power among all nations.” The Old Testament shows that “Israel was
blessed in order to be a blessing among the nations [Piper, pg. 188]”; they
were a platform for the advance of His Name and fame. Third, the covenant God of Israel repeatedly
promised a Messiah to them who would be the Savior of all men. Throughout the Old Testament, the history and
preservation of the line of David, which is the line of Christ, is emphasized. The coming redemption through the line of
David is ever foreshadowed (especially in Noah’s flood [Genesis 6-9], God’s
provision of a ram for Abraham and Isaac [Genesis 22], and the Passover [Exodus
12]); however, the minor and major prophets seem to zone in on the coming hope
of reconciliation, heart change and new life.
They emphasize purity of heart over religious ritual. They declare that promised hope is near. They urge the people to look to the
promise. God makes clear that the point
of redemption is the glory of His Name in Ezekiel 36: “It is not for your sake,
O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy Name,
which you have profaned among the nations to which you came…and the nations
will know that I am the Lord [vs. 22-23].”
The “new heart” mentioned in verse 26 is the result of the sacrifice of
Christ, who was able to put a hand on sinful man and holy God and reconcile the
two [Job 9:33] by bearing God’s wrath against men and bearing the guilt of
man’s sin against God [see Isaiah 53]. “Break forth together into singing, you waste
places of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted His people; He has redeemed
Jerusalem. The Lord has bared His holy
arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God [Isaiah 52:9-10].”
Immediately, the redemption of the Israel emerges as the hope for all
the world, and the longing of God’s chosen people becomes the longing of His
children everywhere: “The time is coming to gather all nations and
tongues. And they shall come and shall
see My glory...And they shall declare My glory among the nations, and they
shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord
[Isaiah 66:18-20].” His salvation
reaches to the end of the earth [Isaiah 49:6].
This “mystery hidden for ages and generations” was most clearly revealed
in the New Testament where “God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the
glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory [Colossians
1:26-27, also see Matthew 28:18-20]”, but that full revelation was just under
the surface even left of Malachi.
The Gentiles have no covenant claim on God, but have
been included in God’s eternal purpose of salvation from the beginning because
God is gracious, and because God is worthy of all glory from all people. Israel was chosen “for the sake of the other peoples [Terry, pg.
54]”; they were “the firstfruits [Romans 11:16]” so that this expansion of grace
would be seen for what it is: amazing. While
natural revelation reveals enough of God to leave all men guilty and condemned
before Him [Job 38-41, Romans 1:20], even special revelation is not confined to
Israel alone. Before Paul saw that vision
of the “unclean called clean” and witnessed the Spirit fall on Gentiles in
Caesarea [Acts 10], foreigners were invited to hear the Word of God
[Deuteronomy 31:12] along with the Israelites, a Moabite woman was welcomed
into the people of Israel [Ruth] and a Canaanite woman of Jericho declared,
“Your God, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath [Joshua
2:11]”. The queen of Sheba heard of
Solomon’s splendor and God’s blessing and came to see, declaring, “Blessed be
the Lord your God…[2 Chronicles 9:8]” and Naaman, the commander of the army of
the king of Syria, was healed of his leprosy and declared, “Behold, I know that
there is no God in all the earth but in Israel… [2 Kings 5:15]”. God was declaring His glory among the nations
before the Great Commission was given [Psalm 96:3]. He was doing this because “the most
passionate heart for the glorification of God is God’s heart [Piper, pg. 7],”
and He knows what man lives his life to grasp: there is no limit to the glory
He is worthy of. This is seen everywhere
in Scripture, but especially at the beginning and end of it.
The central theme of all Scripture is God. The only hope for Jew or Gentile is God. One could spend all day strategizing how to
get the Gospel to Gentiles the depths of the jungle, or proving that atonement
is limited, or discussing what it means to be “grafted in [Romans 11]” and “a
children of the promise [Romans 98, Galatians 4:31, Hebrews 11:8-16]”, or
expounding the Great Commission and “everything God has commanded [Matthew
28:18-20]”, or praising Jesus Christ for becoming sin for us [2 Corinthians 5:21],
busting the curtain that separates man from God [Matthew 27:51], conquering the
grave and reigning victorious over Satan [Revelation 17:14], but all of this
only matters because God eternally purposed to create, redeem, purify and bring
home a people for His own possession [Titus 2:14]. In the beginning, there was God, with “no
unmet need in Himself [Platt, pg. 64]”.
At the end, there will be God, surrounded by “a great multitude that no
one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language...[crying] out
in a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to
the Lamb [Revelation 7:9-12].’” Nate
Saint wrote, “If God would grant us the vision, the word ‘sacrifice’ would
disappear from our lips and thoughts; we would hate the things that seen now to
dear to us; our lives would suddenly be too short, we would despise
time-robbing distractions and charge the enemy with all our energies in the
name of Christ [Hitt, pg. 272].” He was
killed just weeks later in an attempt to reach the Ecuadorian Auca tribe with
the Gospel. “God blesses His people with
extravagant grace so that they might extend His extravagant glory to all
peoples on the earth [pg. 69],” Platt writes.
This pleases Him [1 Peter 2:9].
This is His purpose in the world as the Founder and Perfecter of faith [Hebrews
12:2]. And if we read the Old Testament
and miss God - the revelation of His
goodness in every act and command, the expansion of His promise from Israel to
all peoples, and the purpose for His own glory in every tribe and tongue for
all eternity – then we’ve missed what is
really there.
Works Cited
The
Holy Bible: English Standard
Version (ESV). Wheaton, Illinois:
Crossway, 2001.
Berkhof, Louis.
Manual of Christian Doctrine.
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1933.
Hendriksen,
William. Survey of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1976.
Hitt, Russell. Jungle
Pilot: The Gripping Story of the Life and Witness of Nate Saint, Martyred
Missionary to Ecuador. Grand Rapids:
Discovery House, 1997.
John Mark Terry, Ebbie Smith, and Justice
Anderson. Missiology: An Introduction
to the Foundations, History and Strategies of World Missions. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers,
1998.
Piper, John. Let
the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993.
Platt, David. Radical:
Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream. New York: Multnomah, 2010.
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