BibleProject - Who Is the Bible About? – Paradigm E5

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Is the story of the Bible about humans or God? Because the Bible is about the Messiah—the God who became human—it’s about both God and humans. In this episode, Tim, Jon, and Carissa discuss how the story of the Bible and all of its main themes come to their fulfillment in Jesus, making it a story that’s personal but not private, a redemption story for all of us.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (00:00 - 16:45)Part two (16:45 - 31:00)Part three (31:00 - 46:30)Part four (46:30 - End)Referenced ResourcesThe Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1, J. Richard MiddletonDavid Andrew Teeter, Hebrew Bible scholarInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“On a Walk” by FantompowerShow produced by Cooper Peltz. Edited by Dan Gummel and Zach McKinley. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

The Bible is both human and divine. It's a collection of literature produced through humans, human words written down and edited by ancient human authors, but it's also divine. Those words were breathed out by God Himself through them. The Bible is a unified story, and that story is also about a human and divine partnership. How God appointed humans to be His image to rule the world on His behalf. But the problem is that we're unable to choose God's wisdom. We are unable to rule.

And God's solution to this problem is the most important theme in the story of the Bible. How God will raise up from among us and appoint a human who will show us what it means to be the image of God. Because Messiah is a category that comes from the Hebrew Bible itself, and the story is building up this crisis and this need for someone to come and do something.

One of the titles for that figure who's needed is the Hebrew word Messiah. And then if I'm a follower of Jesus, Messiah. Of course, my confession of faith is that I believe Jesus is that one. Jesus famously said that the Hebrew Bible is all about him, about his sacrifice for us, about the salvation we could find through him. The whole story, every story, every poem, every word,

it's all about him. I've come over the years, whatever struggles that I might have in seeing the story, Jesus says, is in the Old Testament. I've come to the place where if I don't understand how a book of the Bible is somehow about that, the problem is for sure me. I'm not asking the right questions. I don't know what to look for yet when I'm looking at XYZ book in the Hebrew Bible. And once I know what the right questions are, then I'll see how it fits into this thing. And so what is the story of the Bible about? It's tempting to think it's about me, but it's not. It's about the Messiah. And yet, we're called to become one with the Messiah, so that his life can become our life, and his victory are victory.

Bibles not about me. The Bible is about the Messiah, and therefore it's about us. Which has very personal implications that it's not private. It's not about me, it's about us. And who we are in the world together because of what the story of Messiah is all about.

I'm John Collins from Bible Project, and today I talk with Tim McEan, are in the world together because of what the story of the science is all about. I'm John Collins from Bible Project and today I talk with Tim McEan, Chris Aquan, about the third pillar of our paradigm. The Bible is Messianic Literature. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Alright, we're walking through our mission statement that the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus and talking about how that's a paradigm for reading the Bible that we really

want to unpack. And we're unpacking it slowly and actually seven different attributes of this paradigm we've done the first two, which is that the Bible is both human and divine. And then secondly, that the Bible is unified literature. This third attribute is about how the Bible is messianic literature. Big fancy word that you don't use every day, unless you're a Bible scholar, I suppose.

But we're gonna get at it. And with me is Tim and Karissa. Hey guys. Hello. So Tim, you wanna lead us through what do you mean, what do we mean that the Bible is Messianic literature? Yes. We spent the last few episodes talking about what we mean when we say the Bible is unified.

Or it's a collection of diverse literature, but that is unified. And one of the ways that we said it's unified, that we spelled out a little bit in the last two conversations, the last two podcasts episodes, was that there's a governing story that unifies it that's being told from beginning to end. Not always in a straightforward linear way. Sometimes the story will pause and double back and recover parts of it or go back and focus in on certain things. But there's a basic governing story. There was even one video that we made because the first words of Jan Cessar in the beginning, and then in the second to last paragraph of the revelation, the narrative ends, but saying,

and they reigned forever and ever, referring back to the image of God on page one, which is God bless them and appointed them to reign, left them reign. So there's a governing story, and that governing story is what we're referring to in this point, we're just going to focus in on the unified storyline of the Bible,

which is what we're calling messianic. The story is messianic. It's a story about the Messiah. Okay, that's what the story is about. Story's about a lot of things. Mm-hmm, right. But what is it mainly about? What is it mainly about?

Here it just raises the bigger question of what is the Bible about? Which will give us really significant guiding lines as to what it's for and what you do with it? So back to our kind of three unhelpful approaches, or paradigms for reading the Bible. It's the theology dictionary and organized as such. Therefore, I read it as a dictionary. That's one unhelpful paradigm. Now, there's a moral handbook, and I read it as such, or the theology, or no, the spiritual grabback. Devotional grabback. So each of those assumes an approach to the Bible based on what it is. And so what we're saying here is that what it is

is a unified story that you could say is about the Messiah. But that itself forces you to ask, like, what does that mean? So that means we'd read it in a different way than we would if it were a moral handbook. And it would have a different impact on us. Yeah, that's right. It's a simple point that I think has massive implications to one of those kinds of things. Okay, so before we get into what the Messiah is, well, maybe we have to get into it to answer this question, but I'm just curious why you would say it is the most important part of the story. It's what the story is all about. Because you could say the story is all about God ruling the earth through humans. You could say the story is all about that. Yeah, that is Messianic. That is Messianic. Okay, that's Messianic. Let's Messianic. Okay, that's Messianic.

Let's get into it. Here's the definition. Yeah, we wrote a sentence, amazing it. It says, the story of the Bible and all of its main themes come to their fulfillment in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit. Okay, right. Yeah, because every time we write a theme video video We isolate kind of one kind of interesting motif going on in the story of the Bible and we trace that and every single time It comes to this climax in Jesus

Whatever reason Jesus is like this gravity that every theme just like R Usch is to him and then through his life You see the theme come to some sort of fulfillment. And then in his death and resurrection, even more so, and then through the life of the people who follow him. So what, there's some like gravity to him. And that's what you mean by messianic. Yeah, that's right.

Okay, that's right. So a couple of simple places to turn to come start this conversation are, you could ask question this way. Why should anybody care about a collection of ancient Jewish literature? What does that have to do with anything? Yeah, that's a great question actually. It's not obvious to anyone Why you should care about the Hebrew Bible. Why should you care about it more than you care about Egyptian? Yeah, totally. Literature or Shakespeare. So one one way to think about it is, if I'm a follower of Jesus,

or I could use the word Christian, which is a English word, that's spelling a Greek word, that is the Greek word for Messiah. Oh, that's right. The word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Masjihach, which is the word Messiah. So even if I'm a Christian, it means I'm a Messiah person.

Messiah person. And why would I care about the Hebrew scriptures? Well, they were of huge significance and importance to the person I think is the Messiah, and that is Jesus of Nazareth. So here's a story about Jesus from the end of the Gospel's Luke. Luke chapter 24, it's one of these stories where Jesus appears, surprisingly, to his followers after he's risen from the dead. And they're freaked out.

They think he's a ghost at first. And then he's like, hey, do you have any fish? I'm so hungry. So hungry right now. Just it took it out of me. Stereo, I'm the dead. I'm rising from the dead. So hungry.

It is need a snack. So what he says to the people in the room, and he says, this is Luke 24, 44, these are the words that I was speaking to you while I was still with you. All the things written about me in the Torah of Moses, in the prophets and in the Psalms, notice he's got a three-part shape to the scriptures on the mind, on this mind.

All that was written about me in the Tanakh, Tor the Prophet's writings, had to be fulfilled, had to come to its fullness. It's as if Jesus reads the Hebrew scriptures as something that forms like an empty container. It's a story that creates an emptiness that must be filled full. That's a cool image. It is. The Tor and the Prophet's had must be filled for. That's a cool image. It is. The Torah and the prophets had to be filled for. And what he says is, it's about me.

It's what he just said. All the things written about me, and the Torah, prophets. And that's similar to what he says on, in the Sermon of the Mount, right? What he says. Yes. Because people were worried, like, hey, are you teaching something beyond the Torah and the prophets, or are you dismissing the tour in the prophets? And he's like, no, I've come to fill them full.

That's right. It's the same word. Yeah, play rock. Yeah, to fill up. So what happens in this story after he says that, Luke tells us that then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And he said to them, this is what's written. So this is so great, because it's in one sentence, it's a long one, a long sentence, but it's in one sentence, Jesus' summary of what the Hebrew Bible is about. And here's what he says, this is what is written, that the Messiah would suffer, would rise again from the dead on the third day, and that repentance

for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. This is Jesus' summary of what the Torah, prophets, and writings are about. Why does he... there's nowhere where it's written in this sentence. No, no. No, this is Jesus' shorthand summary. So when Jesus says it is written, he doesn't mean like, go and you could find this written somewhere. He means it's about. This is what the whole story is about.

This is, yeah, what it's about. But you're right to pay attention to the same little phrase, thus it is written or so it's written, is often a quotation formula to mark a specific sentence that is quoted. So, in our thoughts to make it in his words very authoritative, like the same way that if he were quoting from the Hebrew Bible, it would be authoritative he's saying this is what it's all about. Yeah, so connect it with what he said earlier, it's about

me, and then here he says it's about the Messiah. So, yeah, we should do a little session on the word Messiah, what that implies, what that means. But it's about a figure who would go into death and suffering and then come out of death and suffering. And that somehow that would release or open up something that's really good news for other people here, that it's about the announcement that all of the failures of humanity are forgiven and that that message will be announced to all the nations starting in Jerusalem. That's a summary. I just remember years I would sit with this and be like,

man, you know, when I try to read some part of the Old Testament, I just have a hard time seeing that. Right. That's not the summary I would give after my first few years of trying to read the Old Testament. So how did Jesus get there? Yeah, how did Jesus get there? Yeah. It almost like causes an amount of trust. You know, when you read this, out of Jesus' mouth and he's saying, this is what it's all about. It's like, okay, I'm going to make that my underlying assumption now reading sympathetically with Jesus, the Old Testament, when I can't see that, I should be asking the question, how is this book of the Bible

fitting into the story of the suffering Messiah who will rise from the dead and offer forgiveness of sins to all nations? Yeah, totally. And that's not an easy question to answer in every text that's right. In every text that you read in the Hebrew Bible. You know, it's also interesting. I remember, you know, vividly, the season, I'd just been a Christian a few years trying to read the Bible, like figure out how it all works, having a hard time. But I do remember I was attending a church at the time, and I remember one particular

Bible teacher at this church, and he had a really w win some way of preaching from the Old Testament. And I didn't, all of my categories are being formed, like I didn't know. And what I could notice was that he would take a story from the Old Testament and then he would abstract it, abstract kind of like a moral lesson. And then the person who would get put into the slot of the main character was, he would invite you, the listener, to see yourself as what the story is about. So it's a story about Isaac. It's really about you.

And he's digging wells and the Philistines don't like him because he's finding wells everywhere, but he's God's chosen one who wants to provide wells for him even in a difficult season. And so you, dear listener or reader, are like Isaac. God wants to bless you and give you wells of water and the wilderness when all your enemies are against you. But the technique was for you to see Isaac in this case or any given story, but actually I remember a really specific sermon about Genesis 26 on Isaac. You see them as like a model for yourself in the world. And so what I can do is then look at my life circumstances and see that this story is ultimately a model for me and my circumstances.

And that's not totally wrong, but there's something about making each story about me and my spiritual journey That I think is actually really different than what Jesus is trying to tell us about what all the stories in the Torah prophets and Ritings are about he says they're about him Mm-hmm and and they're being about him that will implicate me and speak to me in a very important way But to me that's a helpful way to think about it. Is it about me? Or is it about the Messiah?

But by being about the Messiah, and we'll talk more about this, but that does mean that it is about us. Yes, it's about me because it's about the Messiah. So there's like a process of interpretation. Yeah, that's right. But if you skip the Messiah bit, and you're just like, oh, Isaac's a model for me. Yeah.

Then you start to just moralize all of these stories versus seeing how their patterns towards the need of a Messiah, which then implicates me. Yeah, I think part of the reason why the moral handbook approach, especially to Old Testament biblical narrative, only works part of the time, is when biblical characters are portrayed positively, and they're doing good and they are a models of positive behavior.

But the problem is those same characters. David's in the glass. Exactly. The same characters are just as often, not just portrayed as having like flaws and I'm flawed too, but as like being really horrible people. And so it raises the whole question of like, but I'm not supposed to be like that, you know? And then it kind of makes it be like, well, I'm not, I'm not supposed to be like David anyway, I mean. It's just, and so it raises the quote, maybe that's the wrong question. The whole question is, what does David's story point to? What does it tell me about what humans are like?

And about if humans are to be God's partners in the world, that assumes all things we should talk about. What kind of human are we going to need? Well, probably not someone like that, but probably someone like that. And it's just a different orientation point. And maybe I didn't think this through super thoroughly before raising it, but this brought clarity to me along the way.

A fundamental point of is the Bible about me, and that's why I read it, or is the Bible about the Messiah. And therefore it's about me because it's about the Messiah. Yeah. It speaks to me because it's about the Messiah. And those are different starting points. Let's make this very concrete. We're talking very abstracted. Okay, deal.

So let's talk what can we just do, David? And what way is David about the Messiah? Okay, actually, so here, I'm gonna press pause. Okay. Because the way that David is about Messiah is the same way that the story of Moses or the story of Abraham or the story of Noah or Seth in Canaanable. It's the same question. How are any of those about the Messiah?

Okay. Because that is what Jesus is saying. The whole thing is about me. We could take any character, which David's a good one. Before we do David, let's back it up and say, what is the fundamental story about that would help you see how any of these characters is a story about the Messiah? Does that make any sense? Yes, although we just said the fundamental story is about the Messiah suffering and dying. Yeah. So that's Jesus' shorthand.

That's a shorthand. So let's pause. Okay. Right. Let's go back and let's say, okay, let's try and think through what the Old Testament story is about that someone could arrive at that conclusion. Okay. Maybe we can like reverse engineer something like that. Yeah. I think saying that the Bible is about Jesus could be difficult on the one hand

because we're thinking no actually isn't it about David or Canaan Abel or Adam and Eve or myself? Like that's the one side. But the other side of saying the Bible is about Jesus could be maybe an error we could make when we think that is that we too quickly say everything is about Jesus without going through a process I don't know how to describe that more but I'm talking about like with the Passover lamb Reading that story Outside of the ancient Israelite context to just be about the person Jesus Mm-hmm and that the authors were writing about Jesus and they knew it and this is why they said it this way. Yeah, yeah. So maybe we can distinguish from that. Yeah, because I would make a distinction between saying it's about Jesus and saying it's about the Messiah.

Yeah, okay. Because Messiah is a category that comes from the Hebrew Bible itself. Yeah. And the story is building up this crisis and this need for someone to come and do something. And that someone, and one of the titles for that figure, who's needed, is the Hebrew word Messiah. And then, if I'm a follower of Jesus, Messiah, of course, my confession of faith is that, I believe, Jesus is that one. To me, it's an important little difference to say, looking for the Messiah in Old Testament, so a little bit different than looking for Jesus. Even though I do believe Jesus is Messiah.

It's helpful for me at least, to kind of. And maybe helpful even to think about how that portrait of the Messiah develops throughout the story. So it maybe just starts as there's a need for a true human or humanity to rule with God. And then as that story develops, it becomes more and more specific. Yes. That this is a certain kind of person, not that kind of person, it's this kind of person.

It's also this kind of person. Yeah. It becomes more specific. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. So the basic dynamic of the story is that it generates expectation that becomes future hope based on just the sheer momentum created by the plot crisis of the biblical story.

So it begins by saying God's purpose. God's purpose is to rule the world through his human images, male and female, fruitful multiply, happy people and birds and animals and gardens and there you go. It's the Eden ideal. It is the Eden ideal and can I say that that does seem kind of human-centric. You know, like you kind of just went out your way to say like, hey, let's not read the Bible and just try to see us in it.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And yeah, that's right. And then I've also been told throughout the years is like, hey, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you're like, this story seems like a lot about than humans, what God wants to do with humans. Yes, it's about God and humans. Yeah, that's right. God's a rescue of humanity. We're right at the center of the story. Yeah, yeah, it's also written by humans. So we've got to buy us there.

It's not written by Martians, we're like, okay, so the first title given to humans, other than the word Adam, Hebrew word Adam, humanity is image image representative the word image means representation yes one who represents another and also is the word for idol statue It's the same word as statue. That's right. Which is what a physical representation of a deity. So even though the word image is different than the word Messiah, they actually mean roughly the same thing. Really? So humans are appointed as God's representatives.

They fail, they betray and fail. So then the opportunities passed on to the next generation. Another story of murder and failure. Next generation keeps down, down, down, down. So things get so bad that there is a lot of violence spreading on the land. This is Genesis 4, Genesis 6. So God allows the cosmos to collapse back in on itself

through the flood, the waters coagulate again, come back together. But he takes one representative and then a few others with that representative Noah, those with Noah and he delivers that one through the waters of death up to a high place where he offers a sacrifice on behalf of creation Noah. Plans in New Garden. Plans in New Garden and the story begins to thematically recycle. and the story begins to thematically recycle. Because then he fails. So in the know of replays the failure of Adam and Eve,

and the cycle begins repeating. And so each time you go through the cycle of a human set up, to be the image, be the image, then failure, creating chaos and violence, there's a collapse of order, and out of that collapse is a remnant or a chosen one who is delivered through and then God starts over with them. Yeah and often through waters or through a deathly experience like waters. That's right. Yep. Yeah.

Through waters like in the flood, through the scattering or the dissolution of Babylon, which is an exile of sorts, which is like Eiffelod. That's right. Or the Israelites going through the waters of the Red Sea and out the other side. Yeah. Through the reign of fire that comes on Sodom and Gomorrah, it rains. Just like in the flood, but it rains fire instead of water. These are all de-creation moments. Yeah, these moments were God let's order collapse in on itself because of the evil and violence of human beings. And so that story set on repeat

dozens and dozens and dozens of times throughout the Hebrew Bible starts to train your mind to think about the world in a certain way. So what emerges from the story is all of these representative figures. Sometimes they're given various names, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses. But then sometimes they're given titles. And when you get into the heart of the Torah, in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, the representative figure is a Israel's High Priest,

who's called for the first time that he revival the Mishyach and Hebrew. Mishy? A Hebrew? A Newynted one. The first person in that he revival the Mishyach and Hebrew? Mishy? High Priestess. Aointed one. Yeah. The first person in the Hebrew Bible called the Mishyach or Messiah is Israel's High Priest. Yeah, and they go through the whole process of anointing. Yes.

The priests. Yeah, so the High Priest is an image. Is a representative figure. Of all of Israel. Yeah, represents Israel before God. So represents a whole group of humans in front of God. This figure is of both priestly and royal. They were crown, they were golden crown.

They have all the jewels that have written the tribes of the families of Israel. And the tabernacle in temple that the high priest goes in and is out of is all designed as the symbolic Eden. It's a return back into Eden to offer intercession and sacrifice before God for the failures of the people. So they're acting out what all humanity is supposed to be doing? Exactly right.

Yes. So a high priest walking into the tabernacle carrying the blood of a sacrificed animal, going in, offering, sprinkling that blood symbolically seven times before God as an offer of complete surrender in the offer of a life, then the high priest emerges out alive from the tent and then announces God's blessing on the people once a year on the day of atonement. It's a messiah. You said that like you're surprised they're alive.

Well, yeah, yeah, here. It's a human who's just taken symbolically, every is real life failure over there. I'm talking about the day of atonement. Yeah, okay. Which is the center chapter of the Holtora, it's the day of atonement. And he goes in and it's like every time

Mosha cursed his neighbor, every time Esther's like short-chains somebody at the market, and I just, everywhere. Every failure of this whole people group gets symbolically placed upon. The high priest who carries the blood of a surrendered animal life into the tent. And there's this little detail in the

high-priestly clothing chapters and Exodus that says you put little metal pomegranate bells on the hems so that he won't die. It says if there needs to be little noise, so you can hear him walking around because the moment you hear those bells stop ringing. There's something went wrong.

Something went wrong, you know. So the idea is that it's a human going... They're going to the holy space, carrying all of the failures of Israel. That's right. And so it takes the symbolic offered life on behalf of the people, an animal that's died instead of the people, and that blood sprinkled.

And then the priest emerges out before everybody and we're like, he's alive. God accepted our surrender. And then the priest blesses the people. Wow. Even hearing that and then remembering what you said about what you just read about Jesus in Luke 24 that the Mashiach, like we're thinking about the priest,

the Mashiach will proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins. That wouldn't have been a foreign concept. Yeah, no, no. And even entering into death, and then emerging out of death alive. Yeah. That's how they would have thought about that. That's what the day of atonement is all about.

Day of atonement, ritual. That symbolic practice. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. The day of atonement, in a way, is being summarized in the symbolic form here by Jesus in the end of Luke 24. And the day of Atonement, what the high priest is doing, is a ritual practice that is also

being played out in all these narratives about Noah and the flood, or Moses being up on Mount Sinai and offering his life for the sins of the people down below because they're worshiping an image instead of being the image of God. Yeah. Yeah, so it's not just one story. It's not just the high priest. Yeah, and sometimes high priest. That's right.

It's all these narratives working together. You got it. And creating a pattern of deaths through the waters or through suffering life out the other side. Yeah. Yeah. The other figures named Messiah and the Hebrew Bible are Israel's kings, and specifically David, and then his lineage. Because they are also anointed

to represent the people before God. Which is kind of what traditionally an image was, right? Was the king of a nation. Yeah, that's right, the religion. So if I use started, I think, by saying the image and the masjih are a similar concept. Yeah. Like a neighboring civilization would call the king the image of God.

Yes, that's right. Yeah, exactly right. This is a liberating image scholar who wrote the liberating image. Richard Middleton. Yes. Richard Middleton's amazing book on the image of God in the Hebrew Bible called the liberating image. But yeah, he surveys Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian cultures looking for this vocabulary of the image, and it's used specifically to describe the kings of these nations. So we've talked about this, whereas in the Hebrew Bible, every human is a king and a queen. But then they want a king. Israel wants a king. Yeah. Yeah. God lets them have a king.

Just like they want an image of God instead of God who can't be seen. So also they want a single king to image God to them instead of taking on the responsibility as whole. So the selection of a machiach in one person as a king ends up being a failure story, that's a story of Saul. But David arises, and David's whole story is like constantly going in and out of death, and trusting that God will raise him from the dead out of all of these terrible scenarios. And then ultimately God promises that he would raise up a future seed from his line who will build a temple that connects God and his people and heaven and earth, and that that king will reign forever and ever.

Second Samuel chapter 7. So that's it for sure, another passage and character and theme that's on Jesus' mind here. So, I've come over the years, whatever struggles that I might have in seeing the story Jesus says is in the Old Testament. I've come to the place where if I don't understand how a book of the Bible is somehow about that, the problem is for sure me. And I'm not asking the right questions.

I don't know what to look for yet when I'm looking at XYZ book in the Hebrew Bible. And once I know what the right questions are, then I'll see how it fits into this thing. What kind of questions would you ask that might just be helpful to keep in mind as people are reading? Well, I think for me it's been about discovering how the Eden story is actually on recycle throughout the whole rest of the Hebrew Bible. And so every later book and story and theme is somehow all connected back to the story of the image of God failing in Eden. And so, like Song of Songs, for example, it's a story about the seed of David and Lady Wisdom being reunited, and that's the image of the reunion of Adam and Eve as the new humanity in the garden. And you can follow the hyperlinks through Song of Solomon's, and it goes back through

the story of Solomon connected to the Garden of Eden's story But it's about the reunion of humans with God's wisdom to be his Lovers and co-rulers in the Garden And so funny that was the that was the book I was gonna ask about like there's Still times where you get kind of like how's this about? Yeah, yeah, I was like yeah like sometimes I mean the brilliance of a song of songs is its ability to communicate on multiple levels at once. It can be a love story between people or a love story between humanity and God. It's a love story.

Yeah, that's right. It's between humanity and the garden. There's so much garden imagery, so much temple imagery. And Solomon, obviously Solomon figures in the book a number of times. Yeah, so the king, it's associated with the king. So the question you're saying is when you read something you ask, or a helpful question to ask is how does this relate to the garden story, any themes, any repeated words or patterns that come out of that and how later stories after the garden story are reused in like song of songs because you see the temple themes there.

It's not just the Garden Story, it's a temple too. Yes, so not every book of the Hebrew Bible has to be about the whole biblical story. What it means is every book in the Hebrew Bible is picking up some core theme of the meta story and riffing on it, filling it out, developing or focusing on it. And so in that case, song of out, developing or focusing on it. So in that case, song of songs, I think it's focusing in on the reunion of humanity with divine wisdom. By telling a story about a man and a woman, which maps on to Adam and Eve, but even Adam

and Eve get developed as characters and book of proverbs as the seat of David and Lady Wisdom and so on. And so this Messianic literature, if we're reading Song of Songs, is Messianic literature. By our definition, the story of the Bible, or the story of Song of Songs, maybe in all of its main themes, come to their fulfillment in Jesus' life,

death and resurrection. So you'd see the story of humanity being reunited with God as a part of the story of that's fulfilled in Jesus. The humanity being reconnected to God's wisdom. Yeah. And as we're talking a song of songs, what's like in Genesis 2 or Genesis 3, humanity decides not to eat it to tree of life and use their own wisdom and thus like the first mega

failure story, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's this kind of theme of like abandoning God's wisdom for something else. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's what the story of the tree is all about. Yeah. A misguided quest for wisdom. And so how does the Messiah reconnect us to God's wisdom?

Yeah, that's right. And that comes in a fulfillment with Jesus. Yeah, absolutely. Both in the story of the Gospels, but then also giving us a framework to think about Jesus' relationship to the Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom. Yeah. And then therefore my relationship to the Spirit, that the Spirit can give God's wisdom to the followers of Jesus, which is like a reunion of Adam with Lady Wisdom. It turns out that I am an Adam, because the word Adam means human.

So in that sense, it is about me. The story of the Bible is about me, because it's about a dumb humanity, but it's about me, because what the story is trying to do is create the need for a kind of human who won't fail. The way all of the characters keep failing. Right. And so it's a different way of thinking about how the Hebrew Bible points forward, then maybe more typical ways of thinking about the Old Testament as predictive prophecy. Like there was a prophecy, a prediction, and then Jesus did this thing and then that fulfilled it,

and that proves that he's the Messiah. But if you look at how the Old New Testament authors quote from the Hebrew Bible, they say Jesus fulfills it, that model doesn't work for all the cases. But this forward momentum model, I think accounts for a lot better. There's a portrait and we come to expect a certain kind of a person who will bring about the rescue of all humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we could do another example that doesn't begin with Eden, but it relates to Eden. But it's one that I remember from a few years ago, John struck you and I in a big way. The Moses story, the Golden Calf story, but the story about where God resties his people.

He's going to bring them into the Eden land and on the way reveals himself to them outside. And I says, hey, don't make any images because y'all are the image that is the kingdom of priests. But what they do is make the golden calf. And so Moses goes up to intercede on behalf of the people and God says, leave me alone. Literally give me rest. He uses no as name as a verb.

Give me noach. I going to destroy the people. And then Moses proceeds to not leave God alone. And he starts interceding. And then it says God relented, God changed course and forgives the people. And you know, that's a famous story for raising theological debates about God change. Right, it's God changes mind. That's right. The famous story for raising theological debates about God change. Right, it's got changes in mind. That's right.

But what's interesting about the story, and this is striking me, I guess, in a new way, is if being God's image is representing God, there is this sense of we are interceding. Right? That's our purpose. We're interceding on behalf of God for creation. And so Moses going up and saying, God, I'm not, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm standing up for humanity. He's being the image of God. Exactly. He's doing it. That's right. Yeah.

And God's like sweet. You're doing it. Yeah. Actually, what Moses assumes is that he's gonna have to die. He says, listen, I know like these people have done a really terrible thing, and that's worthy of an act of justice. Yeah. So take me out instead of them. Right. He said, blot out my name for their sin. Yeah. And what God does is he has both, forgives the people, but he doesn't require Moses' life

in that case. But Moses' intercession is successful. So it's a good example of, like, if the Bible was a theology dictionary, and if that story is about, it's got to change his mind. You would expect the story to like resolve the puzzle. But all the story does is raise this crisis of human's fail. They're worthy of God's justice, but someone steps in and intercedes and God shows mercy. They're worthy of God's justice, but someone steps in and

intercedes and God shows mercy. And then that person is this image of the image of God as he comes down the mountain. Yeah, that's right. Glowing. Glowing. Yeah, that's okay. And also, you're like, well, look at this person so closely connected to God, they're glowing.

Yeah, yeah. Like this human is getting it and doing it. Okay, so the whole book of Isaiah is modeled on that pattern. The book of Isaiah begins with a whole accusation about how Israel is failing to live by the terms of the covenant. Just like the people during Moses time. Yep. And so then the whole in many parts of the book, especially the opening chapters, it works out how God's going to bring judgment on Jerusalem in Israel for what they've done in the form of a Syria and then Babylon. So just like he says to Moses, yeah, leave me alone, let me destroy them. Totally. And so lo and behold, Moses was called the servant of the Lord in that story in Exodus. And so in Isaiah, there raises up this portrait of the figure who's never named, just called the servant, who comes in to offer his own life, to come before God and offer his own life for the failures of the people.

And this figure, it's like the high priest, but it's also like Moses. But it's never named, and it's held out as something that needs to happen. And so that is precisely the role that Jesus is presented as filling when you come to the Gospels. John the Baptist comes on the scene saying, yeah, the axe is at the root of the tree, you guys, like the day of the Lord is coming. And Jesus takes that... That de-creation moment. Yeah, it's the de-creation of Israel's coming. In that melody you're talking about, it's failure, failure, de-creation moment. Yeah, it's the de-creation of Israel's family. In that melody you're talking about,

which is it's failure, failure, de-creation is a come, and then a remnant or a chosen one will be pulled out from a remnant to bring a new creation. Anointed representative steps in. We'll intercede and offer his own life. Yep. For the people's sins. Yeah.

Maybe the first time you see that with Moses, you wouldn't think, oh, this is going to be a pattern exactly like this. Like you know that there's going to be a profit like Moses to come, but you don't know exactly what that looks like until you start to see that pattern develop. Like in Isaiah, you see, oh, the servant also offers their life for the people. That's just like Moses. Yeah. So I guess this is the pattern developing. That's right. But remember those patterns later on with Moses are themselves developing a pattern from Abraham's story of having to offer Isaac in a substitute being delivered, which is itself patterned after Noah, offering the sacrifice after he gets off of the ark. Yeah, this is the first Moses is the first one that is a self

sacrifice. Except for maybe Judah. That's right. Offering his life in the place of Benjula. Yeah, this is the first Moses is the first one that is a self-sacrifice. Except for maybe Judah offering his life in the place of Benjamin. Oh, that was so rad. Totally. Yeah, but that's right. No, the turn to the tide in the Joseph story is when Judah offers his life on behalf of Joseph's younger brother. When Judah was the one who betrayed the older brother that is Joseph anyway. But it just makes a point where it's what it's about.

What Jesus is saying that he revival is about is actually what it's about. Like every story, every book, it's about anointed representative going into death on behalf of others, coming out to life so that new life and forgiveness can be announced to the world. That's what it's about. It's not about something else. It's about that in order for all humanity to be God's image. Yes, that's right. Because in a way, all humanity is the call to be the anointed representative. That is the image of God.

And so that calling all comes down onto one. So that the many can be restored to become. When I call Paul, are you there? You know, sorry, but think of the irony. Think of the word Christian. Messiah person. Means I'm a Messiah person. I'm an anointed one.

That's what the word, it's saying it in English from Greek through, from Greek to Hebrew. Yeah. But the whole point is that the one, the spot the one in the many. There's got to be some sort of crude that are called the Messiah people, isn't there? Oh, it's like something from the Seppes. Sounds very hippie. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of ways we could go in unpacking this point.

But I think for me, there's just in terms of our beginning point, what is the Bible about and therefore what do you do with it? It's a story. It's a unified story about God's purposes for humanity that all come focused in on one anointed representative who goes into death out the other side so that life and forgiveness and nutrition which is then what we're all supposed to do as well. Totally. It becomes the model for me. Yes. So it's about me precisely being about the Messiah. Or it's about the Messiah so then it can then become about me.

Yeah. There's just a way to think something it's about me that feels like. Or about all of us. It's about all. Yeah. There's just a way to think something it's about me that feels like. Or about all of us. It's about all of us. It's about the calling of humanity, which we can accomplish. We continue to fail at. There's this consistent narrowing down to like, well, maybe this human, maybe this group over and over and over, developing this pattern for the need of someone who can actually do it. You can see people get really close. You see Moses' shining. You see David... Yeah, killing, cutting off giant's heads.

Cut off giant's just defeating chaos. Yeah, crushing heads. Sorry, which is... Oh, the like this snake. It's crushed, yeah. Oh, okay, sorry. No, that's the way the David is the seed of the snake pressure. That's what the whole story of Glaya is about. Have we ever talked about this before?

Uh, you haven't mentioned that before. We haven't really got to do it. Okay. Here's a fun little homework assignment for podcast listeners. Go read for Sam 17, story of David and Glaya. Just count how many times the word bronze is used in the chapter. So you use an exorbitant number of times to describe Goliath. Is it a multiple of seven? No, the word bronze is spelled with the root letters of the word snake. Oh yeah. And you're even told that Goliath's armor has Kash Kashon, the word scales. That's used just a couple other times they were to describe reptiles scales.

So Goliath is depicted in the narrative as being covered with snake and having scales. And then his head gets caught. And then he's also connected to this idea of the giants, the nepheleme, and they're the ones that were behind a lot of the violence for the initial blood. So David is just like, I'm getting to the initial for the flood. Blood and, yeah. So David is just like, I'm getting to the root of the chaos.

That's right. I'm just gonna slice the chaos head off. That's right. Sliced chaos head off. So in this, in this viewer, what we've been talking about when we come to the story of David and Goliath, we would be asking in what way? What are my five smooth sounds?

Exactly. Who are my five smooth sounds exactly Who are my giants? But no, we'd be asking how is this about the Yeah, and what way is David or the story creating this portrait? How is he fulfilling the image of God? Which is what we're supposed to be doing and then how is that going to give me hope that the image of God can be fully Made possible. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So this story about David is about the Messiah Which has impugnive implications for me as a follower of said Messiah, but it's not about me in that way. Yeah, there, there you go.

I think for again, for me, it's a simple point, but it's reoriented. My view of what the Bible is about. And therefore what it's for. Yeah. And what you do, you know, you really can't, is it too bold to say you can't separate whether the story about me or the Messiah? And that that. How about us?

I liked what you made that. It's about us. About us, humanity. Humanity. Or the Messiah. Yeah. Because the Messiah is God become human to show us what humanity can be.

Exactly right. And following Jesus the Messiah is becoming part of Him, His body. Yes, yes. And then also imitating Him through sacrificing ourselves and going through death and finding a new way of life. So it's like the two things are the same thing. Yeah, okay, all right.

So let me, I'll try to reformulation. Yeah. The Bible's not about me. How's about me? The Bible is about the Messiah and therefore it's about us. Yeah, it's what we're claiming the image of God for all humanity. Yes, yeah, including me which has very personal. Yeah, very personal implications, but it doesn't it's not private. It's not private. It's not about me. It's about us. And who we are in the world together. I like that too.

Yeah. Because of what the story of Messiah is all about. Nice. Hey, what's the deal with the three days? Where does he get that? Oh, man. Right. Yeah.

That's like, totally. Yeah. Well, I'm one of the first, most significant ones, is with the story of Abraham and Isaac going up to Mount Mariah because it's on the third day that Isaac is delivered from death by a substitute on the top of the mountain. On the third day from when they left? They arrive on the third day and then he and Isaac go up the mountain. And then you can track through there's a number of ways that it works. There's lots of narratives where the moment of testing

and often passing through the test happens on the third day. So it could become a shorthand for the test, passing the ultimate test of surrender, which often goes through a moment of risking life to surrender all to God. It'd be fun video to make. Oh, on about the third day. But yeah, but focusing on the pattern of the third day. Yeah, yeah, that's all. And that phrase maybe. Yeah, there, that's one phrase. Maybe yeah There's also one then Jonah famously using the whale Three days three nights. That's what the trick is is there's a few different ways the formula can work It can be on the third day after three days or after three days and three nights

And so whether it's strictly about 72 hours or What if it's not that's not it's not yeah, it's strictly about 72 hours or what, it's not 68 hours or something. It's a figure of speech, referring to a passage of time, in which one undergoes an ultimate test. So when Jesus says the Messiah of a Sephiron die and after three days, I mean, in space time, Jesus was in the grave for three days. Or I guess not.

Yeah, yes. Friday afternoon, the Sunday morning. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. But it's about another way of refraising what Jesus was saying was, the Messiah, Massifer and die, and go through the test. Yeah. Yeah.

And then come out and then offer forgiveness. Correct. Yeah. You're not victorious through the test. Yeah. Yeah. That's the three days. He did, after all, say, in the garden, the garden of Gassemini, that was his time of testing.

Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't just being in the grade. It wasn't just a test. I guess it started Thursday night. Okay, so summarized the last two aspects of the paradigm that we did over the course of three conversations. Yeah, they're really related. The Bible is a unified collection of literature that is about the Messiah, or in our parlance.

It's a unified story that leads to Jesus. That's a big part of what's underneath that shorthand statement. And by its being about the Messiah, if I believe it's Jesus, it is also about us. That is how it's about us by being about the Messiah. Yeah. And when you say Messiah, you could be referring to Jesus or you could just be referring to God anointing someone

for a task in which case all humanity. Yeah, sure. It's the Messiah. But we couldn't. So we needed a Messiah to do it for us that then we can join and through the power of that Messiah, which happens to also be the power of God's Spirit, accomplish the task. Pass through the test, go through the chaos waters, rip off some heads of giants, and find Shalom.

When I go back and think about when I was first introduced to the Bible, it would have been so helpful if I was introduced to the Bible. At least everybody is saying, you want to know what it's about? It's about this. It's somehow just taking me a much longer, more complicated journey to come to a place of clarity about what it's about this. It's somehow it's just taking me a much longer, more complicated journey to come to a place of clarity about what it's about. It's sort of like hidden in plain sight if you read one of the Gospels. It's what Jesus says it's about. But I read the statement in Luke while also taking classes at a Bible college and it wasn't clear from many of those classes that this is what the Bible's about. That's just that's weird when I step back. It was like that. So anyway, I guess that's why we're doing what we're doing.

It's trying to help people start on a different foot. I have a feeling if you've been following along with this podcast this episode, probably was a lot of fun. I think if you're kind of new to the Bible, we covered a lot of, we used a lot of... We were jumping over.

We were jumping over the place using Bible vocabulary. I can imagine being kind of hard to follow. I hear that. But, maybe not. This was great. So the next attribute, axiom, principal of

paradigm of the Bible. I forgot. We were calling it something new. Are we happy with this? I think in the next conversation we will have some discernment. Traditionally we've been calling this Jewish meditation literature. And is that something we coined like the term? No, no, I adopted that phrase from Hebrew Bible scholar David Andrew Teeter. Great. Yeah. And he...

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How do you read the Bible as a Metician literature? Yep. What does such thing even mean? That's what we're talking about next. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week, we talk about the fourth pillar of the paradigm that the Bible is meditation literature. You would only get this when you're reading these texts backwards and forwards and up and down and comparing parts that you wouldn't have thought to compare. But once you've followed the design cues, it illuminates, it brings illumination

into what it's about. We'd love to hear your questions and have them for an upcoming question and response episode. So if you find yourself wondering about things that we're talking about and want us to engage more, you can send us your question. Send it to info at BibleProject.com.

Try to keep it to 20 or 30 seconds. Let us know who you are and where you're from. And if you're able to transcribe your question when you send it over, that would be immensely helpful to us. Our podcast is Produced by Cooper Peltz. This episode was edited by Zach McKinley. Our lead editor is Dan Gummel

and the show notes are done by Lindsay Ponder. Bible project is a nonprofit organization and our mission is to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything we make is free because of the generous support of many people around the world just like you, so thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hi, this is Ali and I'm from Luffborough. I first heard about the Bible project when I was completing an Ignite discipleship course. I used the Bible project for my own spiritual growth and I like to share with my friends and new believers.

My favorite thing about the Bible project is it is a great visual aid and really helps break down the Bible into bike-sized chunks and simplifies and explains the Bible in more detail. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We are a crowd-funded project by people like me. Find free videos, study notes, podscats, classes and much more at Bibleproject.com. Come.