Understanding God, Part 2

Last time I wrote about trying to understand God.  You might want to review that post to get the background on this one.  Basically, we talked about trying to comprehend a God we can't see, and some of the ditches people fall into in trying to explain him.  Reading Hebrews 1:1-3, we discussed how Jesus, the living Son of God in human form, is the greatest revelation of God.

Now, some of my friends have questions and concerns about that.  Isn't the Bible the real word of God, and the full explanation of who God is?  (See for instance 1 Peter 1:23-25.) Yes and no.  Yes, in that we have the written word and can read it any time (and should read it often!).  But within that written word is revealed the Living Word, Jesus -- as in John 1:1 "In the beginning the Word already existed.  The Word was with God, and the Word was God."  And verse 14, "So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son."  Which is more important -- the text or the person?  My money is on the Son of God!

Jesus then gives some important clues about himself, in relation to the written word.  Let's look at John 5:39-40 which says "You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life."  And in Luke 24:25-27, after his resurrection, Jesus is walking with two disciples and says " 'You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn’t it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?' Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."  And then in verse 44, he says to the whole group, “When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled.”  

To properly understand the Hebrew scriptures, often called the Old Testament, we have to look back at them through the lens of Jesus himself -- how he fulfilled those writings and brought them to life.  "Moses and all the prophets" wrote about Jesus, in one way or another.  A full analysis would take many more pages than I can write today, but in the next few weeks I'll try to unpack a few of them here.  To preview that series, let's just say that the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the history of Israel as a nation; the Law of Moses; the sacrifices and festivals in Israel's worship liturgy; and the writings of the prophets, all lead to Christ.  Some have said that the entire nation of Israel existed to prepare a people and the perfect way to understand how the Son of God could enter the world to rescue us and bring us to the Father.  Biblical Israel's national history and religious practice gives us a rich picture of multiple dimensions and facets -- like a huge, perfectly-cut diamond -- sparkling and shedding light on what God wants us to know about himself. 

And the full picture is more breathtaking and wonderful than anything else we could imagine!