Are the promises in the Old Testament valid for us today?

We are discussing the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In this post, we are talking about the promises in the Old Testament and how they might apply to us today. It is clear that the OT promises are for the Jewish people, but what about the Christian church? In what way might these promises be applied to us.

First, we must look at what the New Testament, which was written to the church, says about the Old, which was written to the Jewish people. 


For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

There is a wonderful statement! All the promises of God, in both the Old and New Testaments, are ours! That is good news.

Of course, now we have to look at some promises and see how they might fit us. After all, many promises were made to the NATION of Israel and not individuals within it. There are good examples of this in the writings of the prophets. They prophesied about the future restoration of the nation of Israel, which will culminate when the messiah comes to establish His kingdom in its fullness. (We know that this occurs at the Second Coming of Christ.) How can we apply something like that to ourselves? Let's look at one passage from Isaiah. 

O you afflicted one,
Tossed with tempest, and not comforted,
Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems,
And lay your foundations with sapphires.
¹² I will make your pinnacles of rubies,
Your gates of crystal,
And all your walls of precious stones.
¹³ All your children shall be taught by the Lord,
And great shall be the peace of your children.
¹⁴ In righteousness you shall be established;
You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear;
And from terror, for it shall not come near you.
Isaiah 54:11-14 

I have quoted here just a portion of a prophecy and promise that Isaiah gave to the Jewish people regarding the coming restoration of the nation of Israel. In fact, this passage is really about the Millennial Reign of Christ when there will be perfect peace - no terror, etc. We can see that quite clearly. But equally clear are some promises that could as easily apply to Christian believers. For instance, there is a verse in the middle of it that says, "All your children will be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children." That is a promise that is as much for us today as it will be for Israel during the Millennium. I personally have prayed this verse over my own children many times. 

[I think it is a good practice to pray the promises of God. The promises of God are the will and plan of God. Therefore, they are the proper basis for the prayer of faith.]

So, a promise that applies to Israel in one way can apply to the church in another. Sometimes we have to "spiritualize" a promise to make it apply to Christian believers today. For examply, there are many passages in the OT where God promises Israel victory over its enemies. 

The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.   
Deuteronomy 28:7 

This is a good example of such a promise (though the promise was conditional upon Israel's obedience). And Israel did defeat its enemies when they were in obedience to God. But for the church, we are told that people are not our enemies. (Some Christians need a revelation of this.)

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12

This NT passage shows us two things. One - people are not our enemy. Two - the devil and his demons are. So, do we go fight the devil in the same way that the Israelites fought their enemies? No. Jesus has already defeated the devil; we just have to enforce his defeat. 

Jesus, in giving the Great Commission to His apostles, said, "In My name they will cast out demons." (Mark 16:17) It is our responsibility to cast the devil out of every part of our lives. That is how we deal with our enemies. 

So, we can apply every promise in the Bible to ourselves, but we do have to remember that the NT church is in a different situation, physically and spiritually, than were the ancient Israelites to whom the promises were made. Those promises are truly for us, but may be applied rather differently than they are for the Jews. On the other hand, we should not hesitate to ask God to fulfill those promises in our lives because in Christ, they are "Yes" and "Amen" to the glory of God. 

 

Old Testment laws for today?

In the next few posts, we will be discussing the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We are still covering principles of Bible interpretation, so I have not really started a new series. Consider this Season 2, Episode 1 of Reading the Bible in Context. The Old Testament (OT), for the Christian, is interpreted by the New Testament. Then, again, the New Testament (NT) cannot be understood without the Old. 

When we read from either the Old or New Testament, we must keep the other Testament in mind. And this we generally do without thinking about it. We turn to Isaiah 53 where it says, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities" and we understand this as referring to the cross of Christ. But we should realize that Jewish rabbis, as a whole, reject this interpretation. It seems obvious to us, but that's because we understand the New Testament. On the other hand, we understand a lot about the cross by reading Isaiah 53. We must know that the OT enriches our understanding of the NT. 

What OT laws must the Christian obey today? 

This is one of the most difficult subjects to deal with in regards to understanding the OT in particular. There are 613 laws in the OT of which less than 300 could even possibly be obeyed today. That is because most of the laws have to do with the temple and sacrifices. Since the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, those laws cannot be followed at all. Additionally, the NT teaches that Christ fulfilled those sacrificial laws by sacrificing Himself. By accepting Christ and His sacrifice, we are considered to have fulfilled all of that. 

But let's look at some other OT laws. How about the kosher laws about what can be eaten or not. Leviticus 11:2-3 reads, 

Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘These are the animals which you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth: Among the animals, whatever divides the hoof, having cloven hooves and chewing the cud—that you may eat.

 What follows is a list of criteria of what can and cannot be eaten. Must we eat like this today? I know of Christians who say that we do. But what does the NT say? Are Christians ever told to eat kosher? Are they ever rebuked for not doing so, or exhorted to do so.
Not at all. In fact, Jesus tells us that it is irrelevant to us if our hearts are pure. "Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” (Matthew 15:11). Later Paul would write to Timothy, "Food [which]  God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:2-4). 

We have made some progress! We have determined that some laws - sacrificial laws and kosher laws - do not apply to the Church. 

Now let's look at some other laws and what some have said about them. We are told by some (so-called?) Christians that since the aforementioned laws, the sacrificial and kosher laws, are in the book of Leviticus, mainly, then we should not have to obey any of the laws in Leviticus which are supposedly "out-of-date". Why do they say this? Well, it just so happens that the prohibitions against homosexuality are in Leviticus 18 and they approve of that. They want it removed from the list of sins. Of course, what they fail to mention is that the prohibitions against incest and bestiality are in that chapter as well. 

So, what can we say to this? Quite simply, we look at the New Testament and see what it says. Paul writing Romans 1:27 condemns homosexuality outright. "men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due." I could quote other NT passages including statements by Jesus, that condemns that and similar sexual sins that we find were condemned in Leviticus. 

Now we have established a principle that if an OT law is repeated in the NT, the OT law is still to be followed. In fact, sometimes the OT law contains more detail than the NT "version" of it, but we should still apply the parts of that OT law that do not appear in the NT. 

There is one more area that remains: what about the laws that are not specifically done away with in the NT, like the kosher laws, but are not repeated in the NT. The biggest of these are the sabbath laws. Exodus 20:8 says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work." This is one of the Ten Commandments and, yet, Christians disagree as to whether or not to keep it. Some Christians, Seventh-Day Adventists, keep a Saturday sabbath. Many other Christians keep a Sunday sabbath. They say it was changed to the first day of the week. Their reason is that Jesus arose on a Sunday and we now commemorate that day of the week as "the Lord's Day". 

I must say that I find the reasoning behind changing the day of the week as very weak. It "makes sense" in some ways but we find no such reasoning in the NT. Now it does seem that the church met on Sundays, but nowhere is it even implied that it was a new sabbath day. If you want to keep it as a day of rest and do it to honor the Lord, then that is fine. But if not, then that is fine, too. Nowhere in the NT are Christians rebuked for not keeping a sabbath day. Nowhere are Christians specifically enjoined to keep a sabbath day. This is telling. I am convinced that if Christians were to keep a sabbath, it would have been put in the NT somewhere! I cannot believe that no church ever needed to be reminded or exhorted to keep a sabbath day as we find it in the OT if, in fact, Christians were supposed to keep it. They had to be reminded about everything else! 

My conclusion is this: If an OT law is repeated in the NT, then we must keep that law. If not, then we need not do so.

Reading the Bible in Context, part 5 - Patterns

One the most important ways you can tell what a passage means is to compare it to similar passages. Otherwise, we might reach the wrong conclusion about what we may be reading. In this post, we will look at a passage from John’s Gospel that is frequently quoted, but not without controversy. It is John 10:10.

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have Life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

When the first part of this verse is quoted, the assertion is made that the “thief” is Satan. However, there are many, especially among Christian academics, who say that the “thief” here is not Satan, but the Jewish leadership in Jesus’ day. After all, Jesus had just gotten through saying that “All who came before Me are thieves and robbers.” Jesus then asserts that a thief comes to steal, etc. There is certainly logic to this. Yet many still see the “thief” as Satan. Who is right?

Here is where studying patterns in other scriptures becomes very helpful. We will look at the OT prophets to see what we find. Isaiah had prophesied that during the Babylonian Captivity, a ruler named Cyrus would deliver the Jews from captivity. (Isaiah 45:1) While the prophet Daniel was in Babylon, the Persian king, Cyrus, overthrew the Babylonians and eventually ended the captivity.

When the captivity did not end right away, Daniel prayed and interceded to get an answer from God about the seeming delay of the return of the Jews to their homeland. While Daniel fasted and prayed, an angel came to Daniel. He informed Daniel that God had sent him with the answer when Daniel prayed, but “the prince of the Kingdom of Persia” withstood the angel for 21 days. (Daniel 10:13) No man, no king can resist an angel because angels are spirits. Who, then, is this “prince”? It is clearly an evil spirit. It is revealed to be the ‘power behind the throne’, so to speak. In other words, behind the human ruler of Persia, there was an evil spirit who actually ruled that kingdom.

So, there is a dual kingdom – a natural and a spiritual existing side-by-side. Daniel saw that this pagan kingdom was actually ruled by an evil spirit and not men. This idea is confirmed in other scriptures as well.


Ezekiel 38


“Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, ‘Thus says the Lord God:

“Because your heart is lifted^] up,
And you say, ‘I am a god,
I sit in the seat of gods,
In the midst of the seas,’
Yet you are a man, and not a god,
Though you set your heart as the heart of a god …
You shall die the death of the uncircumcised
By the hand of aliens;
For I have spoken,” says the Lord God.’ ”

Notice that above it says that this prince of Tyre is a man who exalted himself and therefore will be judged. Below we have the “king” of Tyre who is not a man, but is Satan himself. He was the true ruler of Tyre.

 Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord God:

“You were the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

 You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone was your covering:
The sardius, topaz, and diamond,
Beryl, onyx, and jasper,
Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.
The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes
Was prepared for you on the day you were created.

You were the anointed cherub who covers;
I established you;
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
Till iniquity was found in you.

By the abundance of your trading
You became filled with violence within,
And you sinned;
Therefore I cast you as a profane thing
Out of the mountain of God;
And I destroyed you, O covering cherub,
From the midst of the fiery stones.

Your heart was ^[b]lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor;
I cast you to the ground,
I laid you before kings,
That they might gaze at you.

You defiled your sanctuaries
By the multitude of your iniquities,
By the iniquity of your trading;
Therefore I brought fire from your midst;

It devoured you.

This king of Tyre is definitely Satan. He was in the garden of Eden. It was he who tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Much later, he ruled over Tyre. (Tyre is north of Israel so it seems that Satan wanted to be close by Israel to keep an eye on it.)

So, we see a simple truth here. Behind evil human rulers and kingdoms, there are Satan and his evil spirits motivating and manipulating them. God has pulled back the veil of the flesh to reveal the unseen realm where angels and demons exist. They have real influence in our world. 

Getting back to John 10:10, we can see the same pattern of evil human rulers (the Jewish leadership of Jesus’ day) and the devil, who is motivating and manipulating those rulers. So, having established a pattern of evil human ruler with evil spirits behind them, it makes sense that the “thief” is, in fact, Satan. Even though Jesus had just called those who came before Him “thieves and robbers”, He indicates who our true enemy is, the devil.

This theme continues throughout the New Testament. Paul almost always called evil spirits some kind of name that indicates that they wish to rule over men. He taught us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against “rulers and authorities”, indicating that demons and not men are our problem. So, the devil and his demons not only want to put us into bondage to sin, but they seek to rule over us and oppress us. We must learn to resist the devil and keep him from stealing, killing and destroying us.

“The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 4

Reading the Bible in Context, part 4

We are going to discuss two issues regarding the interpretation of a verse of scripture. One we have dealt with somewhat: Interpreting a verse without comparing it to other similar passages. In this case, we will take a careful look at a verse which is both well-known and well-loved, but generally misinterpreted.



The second issue is not interpreting a text according to its ancient context, rather putting a modern interpretation on an ancient text and doing so erroneously. Now errors like this are understandable since the correct interpretation depends on a knowledge of ancient history and culture that not many have. However, we will see that if we had looked at similar passages containing a particular word, then we might have questioned our interpretation. But when something seems crystal clear we tend to assume that we have understood it perfectly.



The passage for study is Psalm 47:1-3. It reads:

Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with the voice of triumph.

For the Lord Most High is awesome, the great King over all the earth.
He subdued nations under us,  peoples under our feet.

 I have put the word “clap” in bold because that word is the key to our study. It seems at first glance to be talking about what we call “applause” or a “clap offering”. The “clapping” is in the middle of a praise to God. So, it basically means “clap offering”, right? Case closed?



No, the case is not closed. First of all, there is uncertainty as to the meaning of the Hebrew word translated “clap”. Is it clapping in rhythm, applause or simply putting one’s hands together? We have assumed it means “applause” and have practiced it that way, but the meaning is uncertain.



Moving on, we now will look at passages that contain that same word and see how it is used. Let’s use several.



Job 27:13-23 (with verses skipped for the sake of brevity)


Here is the fate God allots to the wicked, the heritage a ruthless man receives from the Almighty …
However many his children, their fate is the sword; his offspring will never have enough to eat. The plague will bury those who survive him, and their widows will not weep for them ^…  Terrors overtake him like a flood; a tempest snatches him away in the night. The east wind carries him off, and he is gone; It claps its hands in derision and hisses him out of his place.



Job 34:36-37 [Elihu condemns Job]



Oh, that Job might be tested to the utmost
    for answering like a wicked man!
     To his sin he adds rebellion;
    scornfully he claps his hands among us
    and multiplies his words against God.



Lamentations 2:15


All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?


There is something very strange here, isn’t there? Whatever a “clap” was, it was not like the applause we know today. In fact, we can only trace ‘applause’ back to first century Rome. In the contexts in Job and Lamentations, the term “clap” or “clapped their hands” has nothing to do with praising God. It seems to be a custom that is associated with the defeat or overthrow of an enemy, especially as a result of a judgment of God. Job is (falsely) accused of doing this wickedly, but correctly applied it is often a result of God’s righteous judgment. The people of God then may clap over the enemies that God has defeated. 


The word ‘clap’ is put together with speaking words against someone (Job 34), wagging the head (Lam. 2) and hissing (Job 27 and Lam. 2) It all seems to be a way of expressing the downfall of evil people (clapping) followed by a show of contempt for those who are fallen (hissing and head-wagging).

Now we can return to our original text. I am quoting again Psalm 47:1, 3 (sans verse 2) 


Clap your hands, all you peoples;
    shout to God with voice of triumph …
He subdued nations under us,
    peoples under our feet.


Now there is certainly a “shout to God”, which is praise, but a careful examination of the context reveals that the Israelites were to “clap their hands” to indicate the fall of their enemies, but they were not to show contempt for them by hissing. Rather, they were to praise God for “subduing the nations under us.” 

This is a victory psalm that tells God’s people to declare victory over their enemies and then praise God for it. So, praise is present, but it is the shout that is praise, not the clapping. The clapping is the custom that showed the overthrow of one’s enemies. (In my view, if you want to clap, clap over the devil – Jesus defeated him!)


In fairness, there are other OT scriptures that speak of clapping in a positive manner and even in praise. However, they are clearly metaphors from nature. Isaiah and some psalmists speak of trees and waves “clapping their hands”. When the wind blows, both waters and trees move in such a manner that it resembles people clapping their hands over their heads. But we are neither trees nor waves. All of creation gives praise to God but in different ways than humans do. 


I am fairly certain that the clapping of hands in worship began in the 1970’s. It seems to be unknown in the ancient church or the New Testament. I don’t find that practice in the Bible in light of a thorough study of Psalm 47. 


I trust that I have not lost too many of my readers from this. Whenever a person shows that a verse does not mean what they think it means, they sometimes turn you off. But even if you disagree with me, please do pick up on the fact that we must not interpret passages in isolation. We must study the uses of the same word elsewhere or we might miss the meaning altogether. I used to think that "clap" meant "clap offering", but now I have a fuller and richer understanding of the Bible because I found out differently. 


Even more important, we must be aware of the fact that it is very easy to read our modern culture and meanings and impose them onto the Bible when the ancient world would have had no idea what we are talking about. We do this a lot when we read the Bible and it is hard to do otherwise. But as we study and grow and learn, we can rejoice that our minds are being renewed to the Word of God and that we are thinking biblically and not according to this world's wisdom.