We are continuing to look at this matter of the harmony of the Scriptures in terms of the Old and New Covenant. We remind ourselves that as we come to the New Testament we are coming to the final development of the covenant of grace that has been unfolding in the Old Testament administration by administration of the one covenant of Grace.
This continued fulfillment and extension of the Promises that are constitutive of the covenant of grace that we find in the Old Testament is called by theologians “the progress of redemption,” or “salvation history.” This history recorded in Scriptures is real history but it is also a unique history inasmuch as that history is uniquely concerned with what redemption is, looks like, and means.
the Old Covenant is so concerned with Israel and the life of the Nation of Israel because the tribes of Israel is where God gives us this unique salvation history. This is so true that we can say that Israel’s unique experience as God’s chosen people to be the container which God would incrementally and increasingly fill with the meaning of redemption is unmatched by the history of any other people. This unique experience of Israel whereby they receive the law, the covenant(s), and the promise(s) is important to the flowering of redemption that comes in and through Jesus Christ in the New Testament the way that exposition, conflict, and rising action in a story or novel, are important to climax, falling action, and resolution of that novel. This is important to say because so many in the Church in our country today want to believe that they can understand the story of redemption’s climax (New Testament) w/o understanding its exposition, conflict, and rising action in the Old Testament. And as we have said before by peeling off the climax of salvation history from its exposition, conflict, and rising action in the Old Covenant the consequences is that the climax is reinterpreted (usually in a humanistic direction) in order for it to remain consistent with the previous story line that is now retold with a completely different narrative line then Gods. The result is then that we have a different story and so a different salvation history then the story that God tells in Scripture.
All of this explains why we must understand what happens in all of Scripture as being God’s salvation history, thus being one story.
Now, in this story, Israel’s experience is unique as is clearly set before us in the passage read this morning (Deuteronomy 4:32-40). No other people as a people were called and raised up by God to be the players in the progress of redemption. No other people were known by Yahweh and were to know Yahweh the way the people of Israel were known and did know. They are unique. This does not mean that God was absent in the histories of other people but his presence in the histories of other peoples is not a presence that is unfolding His story of salvation. Only in Israel did God work within the terms of the covenant of grace as that was initiated and sustained by His covenantal relationship with them.
The passage in Deuteronomy 4:32f communicates that the history of Israel as being absolutely sui generis in all of space and time.
32 “For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard. 33 Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? 34 Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? 35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD Himself is God; there is none other besides Him. 36 Out of heaven He let you hear His voice, that He might instruct you; on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire. 37 And because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them; and He brought you out of Egypt with His Presence, with His mighty power, 38 driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land as an inheritance, as it is this day. 39 Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the LORD Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 40 You shall therefore keep His statutes and His commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD your God is giving you for all time.”
In this passage some of the peculiar elements of God’s relation to Israel that comprise integral parts of Salvation history are heard. Here we find the ideas of election, redemption, covenant, and inheritance to name but a few. We even find in the emboldened passage above that the uniqueness of Israel’s national experience points to the uniqueness of Yahweh Himself as God.
As such it is easy to see why Christians would contend that the revelation of God and His method of redemption are bound up with the history of tiny Israel. God told the history of salvation in the unfolding of the history of Israel. This is something that is not true for any other nation.
However, this peculiarity of election for Israel that provides the meaning of redemption — and which causes so much resentment among other peoples and gods — was not a peculiarity that was to insular. Their unique calling and function in the world was to facilitate God’s promises to the nations. Israel’s role was to be Priest to the nations — doing what a Priest does by representing the nations before God.
6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
Israel was to be the means by which the saving knowledge of God would be brought to the nations. Israel was to be the nation leaven that leavened the whole world. In order to fulfill that assignment Israel’s national life was to be Holy (separated) unto God, exemplified by their taking seriously God’s Law.
For I have known him (Abraham), in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.”
And because of this reality the Deuteronomy text in vs. 39-40 can give us the moral necessity that is built upon the theological reality that God is God alone.
So in this salvation history Israel’s one of a kind position was one that spoke of missionary duty as much as it spoke of privilege. If Israel failed in its missionary duty and moral high calling then it’s special status became festooned with heavier judgments then the other nations. (To whom much is given, much is required.)
The book of Amos reveals this truism.
Amos recounts the blessings and privileges of Israel as God’s salvation history people but this recounting of blessings and privileges is used by God through Amos to indict them for their societal injustice and cultural corruption. A people who had the privilege that Israel had, by walking crosswise to those privilege would be inflicted w/ even greater penalty (Amos 2:6-16, 3:2).
2 “ You only have I known of all the families of the earth;
Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”
So God calls upon Amos to bring covenant lawsuit against Israel and the verdict is that Israel would be severely chastised and the land left deserted. And in the face of possible protest that God would never do such a thing to His special people God says through Amos,
7 “ Are you not like the people of Ethiopia to Me,
O children of Israel?” says the LORD.“ Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
The Philistines from Caphtor,
And the Syrians from Kir?
Now keep in mind that God is not saying here that Israel’s history is not unique. The point seems more to be that if Israel will violate the covenant then Israel’s uniqueness is forfeited and they become not substantially different then the other nations. The point here is not that the other nations are like Israel in terms of God’s salvation history but that Israel has become like the other nations as seen by their covenantal degradation. The point here is not that God has worked in the other nations redemptively the way He worked w/ Israel but rather that Israel has become altogether corrupt like the other nations.
What Amos says in 3:1-2 reveals the unchanging uniqueness of Israel,
1 Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying:
2 “ You only have I known of all the families of the earth;
Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”
Note here that it is precisely because of God’s unique relationship w/ Israel that they will be punished because of their iniquities.
All this to say that the uniqueness of Israel, as the telling of salvation history is clearly part of the teachings of the OT. God is indeed sovereign over all the nations as Amos clearly teaches but He is intimately sovereign over the affairs of Israel. However, keep in mind that this intimate sovereignty of God over Israel was always w/ the purpose of calling the nations. Israel unique position existed only to be a vessel to accomplish God’s intent to call all the nations to Himself.
Now … in light of all of this when we consider Jesus in the New Testament he is presented to us as the Messiah — Jesus the Christ. And this Messiah was individually what Israel was to have been corporately. As Israel was to be for the calling of the nations, so Jesus, the Messiah is for the gathering of the Nation. Where Israel failed in its calling the Messiah succeeds. The Messiah was the success of all that Israel had been a failure at in God’s setting them apart. The Messiah is God’s self-revelation for the work of the redeeming of the nations. Because Christ is all that God called Israel to be, like Israel Christ is absolutely unique and it is still the case that should the nations desire to come to God they must, like the nations in the OT were to come through Israel to God, come through the one that has been uniquely set apart to be the revelation and redemption of God. This explains why the synoptic Gospels are so given to a kind of recapitualation story of Israel when they tell the story of Jesus Christ.
As God’s true Israel, Christ is the successful High Priest to the nations that Israel never was. This explains the Christian faith’s insistence, to this day, that Jesus is the only way to the Father.
So, in this OT history God concentrates the uniqueness of Israel’s salvation history into one man and from this Messiah God opens the way to the universal offer of salvation to the nations. Israel’s salvation history was unique because God has a universal design for them. Jesus embodies the unique salvation history of Israel and achieves God’s universal goal that through His faithful Son all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He is, indeed, the savior of the world.
And so, because we have all this history of redemption and because we find its climax in Christ we command all men everywhere to repent so as to taste and see that the Lord is Good.
