Better Together

I love the Old Testament.  I love the puzzle of it, working the pieces of context, language, audience, and genre to understand the truest meaning.   I love to see how intricately God wove the Good News  in to each story, using history, poetry, wisdom, law, prophecy to reach us all in the way we learn best.  The Old Testament is FULL of stories of human rebellion and the consequences.  They are hard to read--frustrating, sad, disheartening, maddening, too familiar.  We learn from them by contrasting their rebellion with the faithful, loyal, steadfast, unwavering love of God toward them.  Over and over and over.  

Hebrews 11 lists many Old Testament people--rebellious, sinful humans at their core--trading their desires for faith in the One who makes all things new.  Some are famous--Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, David.  Others are unnamed--martyrs who suffered and died by stoning, sword, destitution, afflictions, mistreatment.  They hoped for a different reality--not a "cross your fingers" hope, but something they looked forward to as fact.  Something better.  

What do these ancient stories have to do with us?  They are from a different time, a vastly different culture, seemingly a completely different world.  Yet Ecclesiastes 1:9 says "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun."  The base human experience is the same across the ages.  We see the same rebellious choices made then being made now.  The same faithful, stubborn, loyal, unwavering love and mercy God extended to them He extends to us.  God pointed them forward to the promise and they died clinging to it without seeing it.  God points us back to the promise-- Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of their faith and ours.   Believers in Christ now make perfect the faith of believers in the promise then.  We validate their faith in the Promise Made by testifying to the power of the Promise Kept.   We are living their dream. Their stories and ours are woven into the same story, all intended to point to Jesus.

What's the next step?   6,000+ years of faithful witnesses urge us forward.  They have handed us the baton of faith.  Let's lay aside every sinful desire that so easily trips us up and run the race set before us.  We have a story to tell--theirs and ours.  All pointing to Jesus.  We are better together.  

(Don't forget to join us tonight for prayer.  Where two or three are gathered in His Name, He is there among us.  Truly Better Together.)