Old Testament Biblical Figures
“No, go away. Your words just suck the life
From me and now our sons are scared of you
With all your fatal talk of rain and storm.
Leave me to weep on all you’ll take from us.” […]
Some of my earliest impressions of Eve were shaped by C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In the world of Narnia, to be a “daughter of Eve” is simply to be human—not centaur or dwarf, fawn or talking animal. But to descend from Eve is also to have a royal destiny, […]
The sun is high, the land brilliant and beautiful
this morning as I tend the flock, the whole
camp behind me, the land before, the burning […]
The Old Testament depicts a host of potential saviors who end up failing (often spectacularly) to show that even the best of us are not enough. Even our prospective redeemers need salvation. It is not until we get to Jesus that we find a Savior who can bear the crushing weight of our sin because […]
"The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way." ‘C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism In the Parks and Recreation episode "The Camel," Tom Haverford (played by Aziz Ansari), bon vivant and assistant to Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), hires a local art […]
So, this is death. My son’s body, yesterday strong and lively, is lying listless and cold in a pool of blood. I have seen animals dying, even back in the Garden, when the Lord replaced our inadequate leaf coverings with animal skins, sacrificing an animal for our protection. But this is different. Death has come […]
My feet rarely stand idle when God is around. He's always telling me to go. It's been that way from the beginning, when he spoke to me in Ur: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." I remember hearing those first words as […]
I awoke to the sound of screaming. I sat up with a jerk, my throat knotted as the piercing cry filled the tent again. "A snake!" It was my wife, Adah. Grabbing my spear, I sat up. "Where is it?" "I don't know. Close!" I heard a rasping sound. My wife jumped, yelling and shaking […]
You have asked me to share my wisdom with you; you have come here to sit at my table in the hope that you will be enlightened. So I will share what I know. I have thought for a long time about all that our God has made’all of us wonderful creatures he has wrought, […]
I, King Ahaz, admit it. It didn’t turn out as I expected. But realistically, what alternative did I have? My administration and my nation were under military assault from all sides, and I needed to forge an alliance with a rising power, one with expansionistic aspirations and that would welcome a pretext for invading my […]
"Welcome to Babylon, Daniel," said Ashpenaz, bow?ng low before us. I stared numbly at Nebuchadnezzar's chief eunuch. So much had just happened to me and my friends. When Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and I were little more than boys, we had looked on in horror as the king's army destroyed Jerusalem. The city was sacked and […]
Promises are powerful. God made a promise, a worldwide, game-changing promise, and every story in the Bible finds its way back to this promise of hope. Yet, when we consider the Old Testament, it can be confusing to dip into one part of it, especially without knowing much about the other parts. The thread that […]
Israel walked into the future facing backward. She spoke of ‘what would be’ in terms of ‘what had been.’ She longed for a resurrection and transfiguration of her past in the days of the Messiah. Her hope was in a new genesis, a second Adam, an eschatological exodus. Thus, when Israel’s prophets spoke of the […]
There are some specialized chapters in Scripture, such as the "love" chapter (1 Cor. 13), the "godly woman" chapter (Prov. 31), and the "resurrection" chapter (1 Cor. 15). But the best known is Hebrews 11, the "faith" chapter. One of the challenges to a right understanding of Hebrews 11 is our temptation to extricate it […]
This series of sidebar articles from Dennis Johnson is adapted from the presidential address atthe annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society Far West Region, “From All the Scriptures (Luke 24:27): Preaching Jesus from the Old Testament” (April 2012). Dennis Johnson is professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido. 1. The Sermon […]
