Tag: Old Testament

Achan’s Curse and the Cross of Christ

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

The stoning of Achan is one of the most horrific accounts in the Bible. Many Christians cringe when reading the account.

Let me quote it here at some length, and then point you to a very helpful meditation on this passage.

Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the LORD God of Israel and give praise to him. And tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.” And Achan answered Joshua, “Truly I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and this is what I did: when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them. And see, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”

So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent; and behold, it was hidden in his tent with the silver underneath. And they took them out of the tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the people of Israel. And they laid them down before the LORD. And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons and daughters and his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they brought them up to the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, “Why did you bring trouble on us? The LORD brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his burning anger. Therefore, to this day the name of that place is called the Valley of Achor. (Joshua 7:19-26 ESV)

The thought of being stoned for a crime seems barbaric. Stoning Achan’s family and servants, his flocks and possessions, and then burning them seems unconscionable. Is not this evidence that the God of the Old Testament, is not the Christian God of Love, presented in the New Testament Scriptures?

Some would say so. But our revulsion to this event is actually an important emotion for us to ponder. In fact, the wrath and fury of God against sin is bound up in the violent action taken against Achan. And when we think of this event from a redemptive historical perspective, when we look forward to how this story prefigures the work and death of Christ, a glorious picture comes into focus.

Christ’s cross was the place God poured out all his violent anger and fury, for God is a Holy God who cannot tolerate sin, even sin in his covenant people. Ultimately, no one could be completely holy and stay perfectly true to God’s covenant. This is why Jesus came to take our punishment for us. God’s just and holy anger against sin was meted out in full measure upon His own Son! What love and mercy, what amazing grace and pity!

My thoughts were turned in this Christ-centered direction by reading a meditation on Achan’s curse from my friend Nathan Pitchford of Psalm 45 Publications. Let me share his concluding paragraph and encourage you to read the whole thing.

Oh, that you would flee to this great Savior and Sacrifice, who was hanged on a tree as a curse, who was made a spectacle before all the people, and went to a bloody death for them, and suffered all the fire of God’s wrath, who was numbered among the sinners, and experienced all that an accursed sinner ought to experience, for no wrong of his own, but only that he might deliver his people from all their sins, and lead them in triumph over all their enemies! Oh, what a Savior is he!

Nathan goes through many Old Testament passages like this mining rich jewels for our meditation. He speaks with the heart and words of a true Puritan. Lately, he has been going through the book of Joshua. I encourage you to feast on his devotions on the Old Testament.

Along these lines, I did a post on the typological aspects of the Battle of Jericho some time ago, which you may also like to read.

Meditating on Mediator-Types

~ Bob Hayton

Last week, our pastor taught on Noah and the Flood. As we read Gen. 8:20-22, I started thinking about Noah as a type of Christ. This got me thinking and I came up with the beginning of a list of Mediator-Types in Scripture.

The following pattern merits further mediation and study.

God’s punishment and/or wrath for sin > a Mediator > a burnt offering for sin and/or prayer > God stops his judgment and blesses mankind

Flood destroys the earth > Noah > burnt offering Gen. 8:20-22 > a new covenant and pledge to preserve earth

Sodom & Gomorrah’s judgment > Abraham > prayer Gen. 19:27-29 > rescue of Lot

Death of firstborn > Moses > Passover lamb, blood applied to doorposts Exod. 12 > Destroyer passes over

Angel of the Lord destroys 70,000 > David > burnt offerings on the threshing floor of Ornan
1 Chron. 21:14-17, 26-27 > Angel sheathes his sword

Any other examples come to mind? I realize this is just a bare sketch, but it the Mediator theme in the Old Testament is a great study.

Christianity Today Interviews John Sailhammer re: His Book The Meaning of the Pentateuch (IVP)

~ Bob Hayton

John Sailhammer’s new book The Meaning of the Pentateuch continues to garner publicity. I was blessed with a copy of this important book (thanks IVP), and will be reviewing it in a few months (it’s 610 pages long!!).

Christianity Today‘s Collin Hansen recently interviewed Prof. Sailhammer about his new book. I’ve included the first question and answer below (HT: Justin Taylor). Be sure to read the whole interview.

How do you explain the meaning of the Pentateuch to evangelicals who revere these foundational books but do not see their relevance?

Experience has taught me that we really have to want to understand the meaning of the Pentateuch before we see its relevance for our lives. I’ve been fortunate to have students who have kept me looking for answers about the meaning and relevance of this book. The old theologians used to speak of “the love for Scripture” as a sign of true faith in Christ. They would say, “We should read the Old Testament as if it were written with the blood of Christ.” For them, the Old Testament and the Pentateuch in particular was a Christian book, a book about Christ. For most evangelical Christians today it is a book about archaeology and ancient history.

Here we have to be careful because, to be sure, the Old Testament is about ancient history. But that is not its meaning. Its meaning is Christ. Saying that also calls for a great deal of caution. In my book, I take the view that the whole of the Pentateuch is about Christ, but that doesn’t mean that Christ is in the whole Pentateuch. Finding Christ in the Pentateuch means learning to see him when he is there rather than trying to see when he is not there. I like to tell my students that we don’t need to spiritualize the Old Testament to find Christ, but we do need to read it with spiritual eyes.

I have a good friend who likes to chide me by saying you don’t need “exegesis” to find Christ in the Old Testament. All we need is some “extra Jesus.” I wrote my book in part to show my friend and others like him that serious scholarship leads one to find Christ in the Old Testament because he is really there. The author of the Pentateuch put him there when he wrote the book. I’ve found that if you show someone that Christ is really there in the Pentateuch and the Old Testament, they will come back to see more””not merely because they have come to revere the Pentateuch as a foundational book, but more importantly because they want to see more of Jesus.

The introduction of the book is available online. I recently posted a quote from his introduction (which will make you really want to read the book!). You can pick up a copy of the book at Amazon.com, or support a Christian bookstore with your purchase: Westminster Bookstore or Monergism Books.

That's Hebrew to Me!

~ fundyreformed ~ 6 Comments

I’ve been studying Hebrew this year, and let me tell you. The phrase, “That’s Greek to me” now communicates nothing to me. Greek is far easier than Hebrew. I wanted to share the new Hebrew grammar we’ve been using: A Modern Hebrew Grammar by Duane Garrett and Jason Derouchie.

The book will be published in July by Broadman and Holman, but we’ve been using a prepub version. One of the authors is my Sunday School teacher at church, Dr. Jason Derouchie; so that makes studying Hebrew a little easier, as I can get help from the author, himself.

Let me give you the Shema. Here’s Deuteronomy 6:4-5 in Hebrew.

click to expand

If you’re interested, bibleworks.com offers the Hebrew Font I used for this, for free download. They also have a helpful keyboard legend. And for a final Hebrew note, you can download a free Greek & Hebrew Interlinear from Scripture4All.org.

Thoughts on the Battle of Jericho

~ fundyreformed ~ 10 Comments

I recently read the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho in the new kid’s Bible storybook I’ve been promoting. In that story I read these words:

Then God made his people a promise. “I will always be with you….    If you do what I say, your lives in the new land will be happy and everything will go well.”

So Joshua gathered his army together…. They were ready to fight. But the plan wasn’t about fighting; it was about trusting and doing what God said. (emphasis added, quote from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones)

Canaan as a Type

These words spurred me to think about the battle of Jericho as it relates to the battle of our own personal sanctification. Christians for centuries have interpreted the story of Israel’s redemption and exodus form Egypt, their wandering in the desert, and their conquering the promised land in some kind of a spiritual sense. Scripture certainly presents Jesus as the archetypal Passover Lamb. The misadventures of Israel in the wilderness teach us spiritual lessons (1 Cor. 10). And the promised land is a type of Abraham’s “better” and “heavenly” country which he sought (Heb. 11). Numerous hymns have also  equated crossing the Jordan with entering our eternal rest.

Certainly a redemptive historical hermeneutic finds great significance in the story of the Israelites conquering the promised land. As my friend Nathan Pitchford has so clearly shown, the land of promise is intimately connected to fellowship with God. The land was to be the place where God would be Israel’s God and they would be His people. Fellowship was the goal of the land promise, even as later with David, God chose Jerusalem to be the city where His name would be. The OT covenants and promises became increasingly particularized and focused on the heir of David to be ultimately fulfilled with Christ.

All that is to say the possession of Canaan by the people of God was important because this land was to provide a restoration, in part, of Eden. It was to be a place where God communed with man in intimate fellowship. Such a place clearly typifies the abundant Christian life of a believer. A believer experiences fellowship with God which is truly a foretaste of heaven. Just as the land of Canaan ultimately points forward to the New Jerusalem and the New Earth (see Rev. 21), so the believer’s experience of life in Christ is the foretaste of the true essence of eternal life.

The Battle to Win Canaan

Now that we have established the typical significance of the land of Canaan, we are prepared to see how the battle of Jericho wonderfully instructs us. (And I grant I have not truly established it, rather I  explained it. This post is not a full-fledged  defense of the redemptive historical hermeneutic.) Before the Israelites could possess their inheritance, they had to conquer their foes. The battle of Jericho was the first fight to win the promised land, and it sets up what proves to be a pattern. The Israelites trust in God’s power to win each battle for them.

I hope you can see how this applies to us. In order for us to reach our inheritance — the ultimate promised land of heaven, we must trust in God to win our battles.    In Jesus (the Captain of the Lord’s hosts) must be our trust. So with ultimate salvation, we must trust in God to undertake for us and win the battle.  

But this applies to our sanctification as well. For us to enjoy the abundant life in Christ, we must fight the flesh and engage our besetting sins. We must mortify sin (see John Owen’s excellent work On the Mortification of Sin, which is an exposition of Rom. 8:13). And how do we win the battles of sanctification? By trusting in God to win our battles for us, of course. We follow in Joshua’s footsteps.

The Point of this Post

What most blessed me in thinking through all of this was an observation. Joshua and the army of Israel did not sit around on their hands and wait for the walls to fall down. They obeyed. Scripture repeatedly tells us that good works are the inevitable, even the required fruit of believers.   (See my post Once Saved, Always Saved?!?!) If we are not obeying, we have good reason to be doubting our salvation.  

Today, there are many who so stress the necessity of good works that they have redefined justification. They claim  justification is based on our good works, yet they claim such works are only done through the Spirit, and so this position still qualifies as justification by faith.  

Against the backdrop of this whole debate, the example of Jericho becomes all the more clear. If the Israelites had not obeyed by marching around the city, God would not have given them th evictory. Obedience is necessary. But obedience does not earn or obtain anything. It is only God’s grace which would topple the walls of Jericho. And certainly marching around the city did not do anything to earn the victory. God throwing the walls down earned the victory.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as we face the struggles of personal sanctification, let us take heart. God is fighting our battles for us. We do need to be faithful and march around the walls of the sins in our life. But ultimately God is the one who tears down those walls and gives us spiritual victory after spiritual victory. Just like it took many years for the Israelites to conquer all of Canaan, our own struggle for sanctification is a slow process. And like the Israelites, we will never expel all of our sins. We can, however, win a victory and live a life of victory (see Josh. 21:43-45). And when we do, it is not our obedience which has won anything. It is all by God’s grace and His fighting for us. The battle is indeed the Lord’s.

So let us seek to trust our Great Captain, and follow His lead in fighting our sin. To God be the  glory, great things He has done, and will do!

(For similar posts, see My 219 Epiphany, parts 1 and 2; Once Saved, Always Saved?!?!; and Bitterness and Desire.)