Bournagain

There is a fact about the Bible that we don’t often consider, but which has significant implications for the way we handle and interpret the Scriptures today, and it is this: the early Christians managed to promulgate the good news of Jesus Christ all over the then known world without access to the New Testament as we know it today.  Certainly the writings that were later collated into the gospels and epistles were in circulation at a fairly early date, but basically the scriptural tools that the apostles used to support their teaching were all in what later came to be known as the Old Testament.

Why is this significant?

It means, for example, that the Old Testament gave a sufficient revelation of the gospel before Jesus was even born.  ”Sufficient” does not mean “complete” – indeed it could be argued that even with the New Testament added we still don’t have a complete revelation of the gospel, because there are many things that can be learnt about God that are not explicitly revealed in the Scriptures.  But “sufficient” does mean exactly that.  It means that I can take any book of the Jewish Scriptures and find that it points me toward Jesus, sometimes as a simple signpost, but often even in explicit teachings, without which our understanding of “who Jesus was, what he did, and why it matters” is very limited (to quote Tom Wright, whose latest book Simply Jesus is the next on my book pile – watch this space).

Take Job for example – most likely the oldest book in the Bible, and the book I am ploughing through in my daily readings at the moment.

As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, so man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, men will not awake or be roused from their sleep.  Job 14:12

As Job sinks deeper and deeper into his suffering he gloomily focuses on death as being a finality which is the only hope of escape from his pain.  But even here there is a glimmer of an indication that death actually isn’t the end.  Yes man may lie down, but it seems Job is entertaining the thought that when “the heavens are no more” man will again be roused from his sleep.

This thought continues to develop as he responds in anguish to the judgements of his fair-weathered friends.

I will wait for my renewal to come.  You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made.  Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin.  My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin.  Job 14:14

Through his blinding pain, and the railings of his “friends”, somehow Job manages to keep hold of some deep truths that he can only have received by revelation.  This is all the more fascinating when we remember that the poetry of the book of Job is among the most ancient writings in the Bible, and indeed in antiquity period.  Job understood that a renewal was coming; that part of this renewal involved a reconciliation with the eternal Creator God, in which his sins would be be covered over.  But how was this to take place?

Even now my witness is in heaven, my advocate is on high.  My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend.  Job 16:19

Sometimes the revelation about Jesus in the Old Testament comes in vague whispers, but at other times with flashing neon lights and blaring sirens – this is one of those occasions.  The covering over of sin would involve a witness and an advocate who has direct access to God in heaven.  Job also understood that one of the qualifications of this advocate was that he would have to be human:

[God] is not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court.  If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more.  Job 9:32-34

Not only would he have to be human, but he would have to be  a friend, a friend whose great love would be poured out in tears before the throne of God.

We know such a man.  We learn about him in hindsight, whereas Job was looking into the distant future.  His revelation of this intercessor was partial, ours is somewhat more detailed (although still not complete), but although separated in time by many thousands of years, we are looking to the same man.

Reading Job we have the impression that the more he poured out his lament to God, the clearer the revelation became.

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me.  Job 19:28

Job’s friends seemed to believe that death truly was the end.  But like the light at the end of a tunnel Job’s understanding brightens to the point where deep down he knows that death is not the end.  Indeed, the renewal he speaks of is indeed a resurrection. Though his intercessor and advocate is now in heaven, the day is coming (and has already been) when he will stand on the earth.  Though his body was temporarily destroyed through death, it will be renewed in order that with his own eyes he will meet his intercessor in the flesh.

Here we have a full-fledged doctrine of resurrection right in the most ancient book of the Bible.  Job had a revelation of Jesus.