4 Mar 2024
As we study the Gospel of Luke, and look closely at the Magnificat, the prophecy of Zechariah, and the prayer of Simeon, we see the revelation of the link between the Old Testament and New Testament highlighted by the three individuals in their praise, prophecy and prayer.
Perhaps we can focus on the link and relationship between the two testaments by likening the Bible to a symphony. All the basic themes of the symphony are presented in the OT and can be seen and enjoyed on their own terms. All the reality of God’s self-revelation in creation and redemption comes to expressions in these themes. There is a real movement of God towards humankind and a real fellowship between them – not just the promise of such movements and fellowship. The NT then takes these themes, develops them and, while adding melody lines of its own, transposes the whole into a higher key, weaving everything together in a rich and beautiful way.
So rather than seeing the OT as temporary or partial – something to be outgrown and discarded – we see its incompleteness more as chords calling for resolution, or to change the metaphor, as plots calling for denouement (end of the story). What the NT gives us then does not leave the OT behind as much as bring out its deepest reality. One has the feeling that in going ever more deeply into the reality of the OT one comes to the truth of the NT.
So the Gospel of Luke, in bringing out the praise of Mary, the prophecy of Zechariah, and the prayer of Simeon, truly brings out the link and relationship between the OT and the NT effectively. It emphasises the unity of the whole Bible and the progressive revelation of God from Genesis to Revelation. We must study and appreciate the Bible as a whole and as a complete revelation of God to us, and we cannot afford to ignore the OT.
Now it is possible to understand the biblical view of history. This relationship between God and his people arose in the course of actual events. There is a dimension and a momentum to things that point us naturally to the crucial events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth; in Luke, we see what was a “seed” in the OT “sprouting” in the births of John the Baptist and the Messiah, and we can be confident that this “sprouting” would go on to blossom into “fruitfulness” in the culmination in the new heaven and new earth. Biblical history does not go around in ‘circles’; it is progressing towards an end with the second advent of the Lord Jesus, according to God’s eternal purpose and plan.
The Bible, then, is the revealed Word of God, in the sense that in its pages God speaks his mind – all his mind – concerning his purpose for his people. To call the Bible a record of, or a witness to, a revelation made in history, is insufficient. The Bible is all this, and more. It is not merely a report of what God said: it is what he says, here and now. It is itself a link in the chain of God’s redemptive action. Its contents, heard or read, are the means whereby, on the grounds of the historical ministry of Christ which it records and explains, and through the regenerating action of the Spirit who works in and with the Word, sinners come to know the Father and the Son. It is not the Word of God in the sense that every separate sentence, including the words of evil men, express his mind or reflects his will. ‘God’s Word written’ is the Bible as a whole, or, more accurately, the theology of the Bible, that organic entity which our fathers so happily and suggestively termed ‘the body of the divinity’. Here is the image of God’s mind, the transcript of his thoughts, the declaration of his grace, the verbal embodiment of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hid in his Son. And here faith rests.
And the call is for humility which bows before the Scriptures and accepts them as instruction from God. They are God preaching, God talking, God telling ,God instructing, God setting before us the right way to think and the right way to talk concerning him. They are God showing us himself, God communicating to us who he is and what he has done so that we in the response of faith may truly know him and live our lives in fellowship with him.
So we can understand how unsettling it is to hear some brethren doubting the Word of God and expressing their unbelief, with questions like “how can we blame so and so in the Bible for not believing what God reveals (when based on natural understanding, their doubt seems valid), or some brethren expressing doubt regarding the accuracy and integrity of what was written in the Scriptures. again based on our human wisdom and logic. It is even more unsettling to hear so-called believers stating that they do not desire to participate in Bible study because they are not ‘gifted’ in this area; they prefer to serve in other areas, forgetting that true service of God arises and overflows from a knowledge of, and a relationship with a living God.
We must know that in doubting the Bible, we are doubting God and His ability to keep intact his revelation and communication to us his people in the written Word. Also in dismissing the need to know and study the Bible, we are in fact saying that we can do God’s work without knowing and assimilating his Word.
Do we truly recognise the place the Bible has in God’s communication of himself to us? Do we thank God for the Bible as one of his greatest gifts of grace to us? Do we recognise that it is as great and as glorious as the gift of his Son to us? For if we do not have the Bible to lead us to the Son, we could never know the Son as our Saviour and could never come to know God as our Father. Think of the Bible first and foremost as a gift of the grace of God and prize it accordingly.
God’s living Word is the most precious thing this world affords, the most precious that the the world knows; Christ and the Scriptures belong together as gifts of the grace of God. Reformed theology begins, in recognition of this truth and in glad submission to the teaching of Scripture, that from it we may learn of our Saviour. God teach us to value and prize his Holy Word! Unless we do this, there is no possibility of delighting in him and dwelling in him richly.