What Does God want of us Anyway? - 1 (in english)

The Message of the Whole Bible

1. One Great Story of Promises Made and Promises Kept

Dever begins this first chapter showing what different reactions exist about the Bible. He talks about faith, mistrust, about the fact that the Bible is more purchased than read.

"Americans revere the Bible, but they don ´ t read it" (George Gallup)

Based on this premise, Dever says that many who call or consider themselves Christians are, in reality, biblically iliterate, with this in mind he explains what  the Good News or Gospel means.

Dever summarizes the crux of the biblical narrative, there is something that connects Bible´s 66 books.

"The storyline that we will follow is the story of promises made and promises kept. God makes promises to his people in the Old Testament, and he keeps his promises in the New Testament. this message of promises made and promises kept is the most important message in all the world, including for you "(p. 21)

2. The Particular History

It´s so easy for churches and believers to ignore the Old Testament, even knowing that this was the "Bible" that Jesus and the disciples had. It´s message and history is often confusing, there are strange names, the geography that we ignore only increases the difficulty of reading and understanding it, the tribes and peoples who inhabited the Holy Land seem too distant. Dever argues that the Old Testament is the basis of the New Testament, we only understand the message of the New Testament if we understand the Old Testament. Can we understand correctly the person and work of Christ if we ignore the teachings and stories in the Old Testament?

How can we realize and explain the need for a Messiah without proper understanding of divine creation, humanity´s rebellion against God, the consequences of sin, the election of a people, the revelation of sin through the law, the history of the people of Israel, the work of God in the midst of other people?

Dever tells a story, a story that begins in Genesis 1.1. I do not want to replicate the summary that Dever makes from creation until the return from exile, but i want to describe the way he divides the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament.

Dever describes them in a simple way, but also new, at least for me.
The first five books, the Pentateuch, are the books of the law. After these we have twelve historical books, Joshua through Esther. These seventeen books together chronicle what happened from creation to the return from exile and they conclude around four hundred years before the birth of Jesus. Together they are fairly chronological.

So far nothing new, but it is the assessment of the other books that make me like this explanation and find it very useful in the perception of the Old Testament as a whole.

The five books that are after the historical books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon) focus their attention on the personal experiences of people of God, together are a set of wisdom literature, poetry and devotional literature. The last seventeen books are usually called the prophets, major and minor, not so much by its importance, but by their size. Dever considers them "God ´s autorithative editorials", God´s commentary on the history of his people and were written during or after the exile.

Through these 39 books we can know God, as He is, as He acts with His people, how His people replied to His divine action.

3. The Passion for Holiness

The third chapter focuses on the nature of God, especially His Holiness. For many, reading the Old Testament is difficult because the only conclusion they can get is that God is unjust, the wrath of God is difficult to contemplate. Dever invites us to look at it from another perspective.  "But nothing could be further from the truth. He ´ s a God of love who makes covenants. (...) He is committed to his own holy and glorious character, and he is committed to his covenant with his people. " (p. 29)

Here he discusses the significance of the Alliance, atonement and sacrifice, words that today seem to be reserved for theologians and pastors, too difficult for a common believer. But, aren't all believers theologians? Is it not true that all believers have a personal relationship with God and respond to it according to their faith?

"The covenant is a relational commitment of trust, love and care, and God makes a number of covenants with his people in the Old Testament. (...) we can define sin breaking the law, but we also know that law breaking means covenant breaking, relationshio breaking, and-at the deepest level-"God's holiness defying ´". So does the Old Testament present us with an angry God? Yes, but it is a God who is angry exactly because he is not indifferent to sin and the incredible pain and suffering it causes. " (p. 30)

"An offering of atonement enables two earring parties to be one, or reconciled." (...) Atonement in the Old Testament is unique in other way. As in many cultures, it is linked with sacrifice. But in the Bible, the sacrifice of atonement does not depend on human initiative (...) the living God speaks, and he tells his people how to aproach him. He takes the initiative in providing the way of reconciliation. " (p. 31)

"God very clearly is the object of the sacrificial event. Sacrifices are done to satisfy him and his just requirements. So God says to Moses, "When I see the blood ..." (Ex. 12: 13)

Dever shows that the animals sacrificed had nothing to do with the person's sin, but the Atonement had to be done through blood, it is through this act that God implants in the mind of his people the image of an innocent life in exchange for sin. Dever also teaches us that sin separates us from God using the Temple´s structure to show this, namely looking at the Most Holy Place. Clearly sacrifices never rescued anyone, its repetition demonstrates this, but they pointed to something, to someone, more wonderful. Chapter four talks about the promise of hope.