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Overview
Originally delivered as sermons by pastor Mark Dever at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC, these three studies are now available in one hardcover volume. Dever guides readers to take a step back and look at the Bible from a broader perspective. As we notice new features of an object when viewed from a distance, so too the major themes of Scripture become more apparent when we take in the Bible as a whole. Part of the IXMarks series, this book considers the central messages of the Bible as seen in the promises of God.
Dever examines the general narrative of God's Word to answer the question, "What does God wants of us anyway?" Readers looking for a panoramic view of Scripture will be reminded of the faithful, persistent love of God and find themselves drawn into a broader, but deeper, understanding of the maker and keeper of promises.
About the Author
Mark Dever (PhD, Cambridge University) is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and president of 9Marks (9Marks.org). Dever has authored over a dozen books and speaks at conferences nationwide. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Connie, and they have two adult children.
Mark Dever (PhD, Cambridge University) is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and president of 9Marks (9Marks.org). Dever has authored over a dozen books and speaks at conferences nationwide. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Connie, and they have two adult children.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
ONE GREAT STORY OF PROMISES MADE AND PROMISES KEPT
The Bible has been the subject of numerous and varying opinions.
Many people have not liked it. The great French philosopher Voltaire predicted the Bible would vanish within a hundred years. He said that more than two hundred years ago — in the eighteenth century. His kind of skepticism may have been rare when he lived, but it became more common place in the following century. One historian writes, "By the nineteenth century Westerners were already more certain that atoms exist than they were confident of any of the distinctive things the Bible speaks of." By the twentieth century, great sections of the formerly "Christian" parts of the world had fallen into official skepticism about the Bible. A Dictionary of Foreign Words, published by the Soviet government about fifty years ago, defined the Bible as, "A collection of different legends, mutually contradictory and written at different times and full of historical errors, issued by churches as a 'holy' book."
At the same time, many people have had a very high opinion of the Bible. Ambrose, bishop of Milan in the fourth century, described the Bible beautifully when he said, "As in paradise, God walks in the Holy Scriptures seeking man." Immanuel Kant once stated, "A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I have ever read." Daniel Webster said of it, "I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct." Abraham Lincoln called it "the best gift God has given to man." He also claimed, "But for it we could not know right from wrong." Theodore Roosevelt said, "A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education." Certainly one of the most profound understandings of the Bible comes from the great Greek scholar A. T. Robertson, who attested, "Give a man an open Bible, an open mind, a conscience in good working order, and he will have a hard time to keep from being a Baptist."
Some people believe they have great faith in the Bible, yet their sincerity is no guarantee of understanding. King Menelik II, the emperor of Ethiopia a hundred years ago, had great faith in the Bible. Whenever he felt sick, he ripped a few pages from the holy book and ate them! This was his regular practice, and it never did seem to harm him. He was recovering from a stroke in December 1913, when he began to feel particularly sick. He asked an aide to tear out the complete books of 1 and 2 Kings and feed them to him page by page. He died before he could eat both books. Whether you like the Bible or not, it has certainly been popular. It is an all-time bestseller. Polls show that Americans generally say they believe the Bible.
Yet the book is probably more purchased than read. Most Americans may not have the gastronomic fervor of King Menelik, which is just fine; but they may also have less knowledge of the Bible than he did. Pollster George Gallup reports:
Americans revere the Bible, but they don't read it. And because they don't read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates. Four Americans in five believe the Bible is the literal or inspired Word of God, and yet only 4 in 10 could tell you that it was Jesus who gave the Sermon on the Mount and fewer than half can name the Four Gospels. ... The cycle of biblical illiteracy seems likely to continue — today's teenagers know even less about the Bible than do adults. The celebration of Easter ... is central to the faith, yet 3 teenagers in 10 — 20 percent of regular churchgoing teens — do not even know why Easter is celebrated. The decline in Bible reading is due in part to the widely held conviction that the Bible is inaccessible and less emphasis on religious training in the churches.
It is exactly such ignorance we hope to help remove with this study. You or I may not be able to learn everything about Christianity in one fell swoop. In fact, I am certain we cannot. But I do hope to bring your attention to the overarching theme of the Bible as well as the basic message of Christianity, or what is called "the gospel."
Many people are surprised to hear that the Bible has any sort of overarching theme or story. It is well known as a collection of books. As one Bible scholar put it:
No less than sixty-six separate books, one of which consists itself of one hundred and fifty separate compositions, immediately stare us in the face. These treatises come from the hands of at least thirty distinct writers, scattered over a period of some fifteen hundred years, and embrace specimens of nearly every kind of writing known among men. Histories, codes of law, ethical maxims, philosophical treatises, discourses, dramas, songs, hymns, epics, biographies, letters both official and personal, vaticinations....
Their writers, too, were of like diverse kinds. The time of their labors stretches from the hoary past of Egypt to and beyond the bright splendor of Rome under Augustus....
We may look, however, on a still greater wonder. Let us once penetrate beneath all this primal diversity and observe the internal character of the volume, and a most striking unity is found to pervade the whole. ... The parts are so linked together that the absence of any one book would introduce confusion and disorder. The same doctrine is taught from beginning to end. ... Each book, indeed, adds something in clearness, definition, or even increment, to what the others proclaim.
Clearly, the Bible is made up of many parts. Yet this book is one whole: "utter diversity in origin of these books, and yet utter nicety of combination of one with all." It tells one great story.
The storyline that we will follow — and the outline of the next six chapters — is the story of promises made and promises kept. God makes promises to his people in the Old Testament, and he keeps his promises in the New Testament. This message of promises made and promises kept is the most important message in all the world, including for you. Maybe you will "get it" in this study. Or maybe it will get you. As Martin Luther said, "The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold on me." I pray that happens to you.
CHAPTER 2A PARTICULAR HISTORY
Not everyone who reads the Bible regards it as one whole. Some ignore the Old Testament. Toward the close of the second century, the followers of a man named Marcion rejected the Old Testament, even though the Old Testament was the Bible of Jesus and the apostles. No Christian today says exactly what Marcion said, but the effect is the same: we may mine it for good stories about Joseph, David, or Moses. We look for good examples of bravery or devotion for our children to emulate. But on the whole, we ignore it. Is it just laziness?
If you are a Christian, you surely know of God's wonderful revelation of himself in Christ as recorded in the New Testament. Yet if you ignore the Old Testament, you ignore the basis and foundation of the New. The context for understanding the person and work of Christ is the Old Testament. God's work of creation, humanity's rebellion against him, sin's consequence in death, God's election of a particular people, his revelation of sin through the law, the history of his people, his work among other peoples — I could go on and on — all these form the setting for Christ's coming. Christ came in history at a particular point in the storyline. So the parables taught by Jesus often refer back to the storyline begun in Genesis. His verbal battles with the Pharisees are rooted in differences over the meaning of the law. And the Epistles build upon the Old Testament again and again. Understanding God's purpose in history, understanding the storyline, requires us to begin at the beginning. If we can better understand the Old Testament, we will have gone a long way toward better understanding the New Testament and, therefore, better understanding Jesus Christ, Christianity, God, and ourselves.
Over this chapter and the next two, we will consider what God teaches us through the Old Testament. First, we will consider a particular history. Second, we will consider God's passion for holiness. Third, we will observe the Old Testament's promise of hope.
In this chapter, we start with a particular history.
The Story
The Old Testament text begins, not surprisingly, on page 1 of your Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). That is where the storyline of a particular history begins. The Bible is not only a book of wise religious counsel and theological propositions, though it has both. It is a story, a real story set in real history. It is a historical saga — an epic. And the story in the Old Testament is amazing!
In this very first verse, the story begins with the greatest event in world history. You have nothing, and then all of a sudden you have something.
But keep reading; there is more! You have inanimate creation, and then all of a sudden you have life.
You have creatures, and then you have man made in God's image.
You have the garden of Eden, and then you have the fall.
And all this occurs in the first three chapters of the Bible. Some people have called the third chapter of Genesis, where Adam and Eve sin in the garden, the most important chapter for understanding the whole Bible. Cut out Genesis 3, and the rest of the Bible would be meaningless.
After Adam and Eve's sin, Cain kills his brother Abel. Humankind further degenerates for a number of generations. And God finally judges the world with a flood, saving just one righteous man — Noah — and his family.
The generations following Noah fare no better. Humankind rebels at the Tower of Babel; this time God disperses everyone over the face of the earth.
A new beginning is then promised as God shows his faithfulness to another particular person, Abraham, and his family. After a brief period of prosperity, Abraham's descendents, now called Israel, fall into slavery in Egypt.
Then the exodus occurs, in which Moses leads the people out of Egypt. God gives Israel the law. The people enter the Promised Land. They are ruled by a series of judges for a short time. A kingdom is established, with kings David and David's son Solomon representing the pinnacle. Solomon builds the temple, which houses the ark of the covenant and functions as the center of Israel's worship of Yahweh.
Shortly after Solomon's death, the kingdom divides between Israel and Judah — the northern and southern kingdoms. Idolatry grows in Israel until the Assyrians destroy the northern kingdom. Judah then deteriorates until it is destroyed by Babylon. Survivors are carried off to exile in Babylon, where they remain for seventy years.
A remnant then returns to Jerusalem and rebuilds the temple, yet Israel never regains the glory it knew under David and Solomon. And that is the whole history of the Old Testament!
The Books
If you turn to the table of contents in your Bible, you can see that this storyline is not recounted in just one book but in thirty-nine smaller books. These books, which together make up the Old Testament, are quite different from one another. Genesis through Deuteronomy, the first five books, is called the Pentateuch or the five books of the Law. Following these five are twelve books called the Histories — Joshua through Esther. Taken together, these seventeen books chronicle the narrative from creation to the exiles' return, and they conclude about four hundred years before Christ. All seventeen books, one after the other, are fairly chronological.
The five books that follow the historical narrative books in your table of contents — Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon — focus on some of the more personal experiences of the people of God. These books are largely collections taken from throughout this Old Testament period of wisdom literature, devotional poems, and ceremonial literature from the temple.
Following Song of Solomon, you will see in the table of contents a series of seventeen books, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. These are the Prophets. If the first seventeen books follow Israel's history, and the middle group describes individual experiences within that history, this last group provides God's own commentary on the history. The books of prophecy are, as it were, God's authoritative editorials.
The Revelation
So the Old Testament as a whole provides one very clear and concrete revelation of God to his people, given through a variety of authors and genres over a long stretch of time. And through that revelation it gives us a particular history.
What a tremendous way God has chosen to reveal himself to us! If you have ever been in a position to hire someone, you know what it is like to get a one-page résumé that attempts to sum up an individual. And you know how unsatisfying a one-page summary is for knowing an individual and making an important decision. Meeting and interacting with someone in person is much more revealing. Well, in the Old Testament, God provides us far more than a flat résumé. He gives us an account of how he worked with his people over the ages. We see how he treated them. We see how they responded to him. We see what he is like. And that brings us to the second thing for us to notice about the Old Testament if we want to understand the message of the Bible, which we turn to in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 3A PASSION FOR HOLINESS
The Old Testament presentsus not only with the particular history of Israel; it introduces us to God's passion for holiness. The question this raises is, what does this mean for an unholy people?
A lot of people associate the Old Testament with an angry God. They even think of this Old Testament God as unjust. But nothing could be further from the truth. He's a God of love who makes covenants. When God becomes angry in the Old Testament, you can be sure it is not whimsical tyranny. He is committed to his own holy and glorious character, and he is committed to his covenant with his people. Sin, the culprit that stirs up God's anger, robs God of glory and breaks his covenant with his people.
Covenant
What is meant by this language of "covenant"? Christians refer to a "covenant" when they gather at the Lord's Supper and recall Jesus' words, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20). Jesus' language of covenant is not cold or legal, as some might think; he takes it from the Old Testament language for relationship-making. A covenant is a relational commitment of trust, love, and care, and God makes a number of covenants with his people in the Old Testament — with Abraham, Moses, and others. God's passion for holiness becomes most evident when his people break the terms of their covenantal relationship with him, terms that are defined by the Mosaic Law and that accord with his own holy character. So we can define sin as law breaking, but we also know that law breaking means covenant breaking, relationship breaking, and — at the deepest level — "God's holiness defying." So does the Old Testament present us with an angry God? Yes, but it is a God who is angry exactly because he is not indifferent to sin and the incredible pain and suffering it causes.
Like the New Testament, the Old Testament teaches that every man and woman is a sinner, and that no one can deal with this by himself or herself. Sin requires some kind of reparation. But how can reparation occur? God is holy, and justice can be restored only, it would seem, when God justly condemns the person who has wickedly broken his law (the terms of his covenant with Moses). So the sinner must be condemned! Or — and here is our only hope — some type of atonement must be made.
Atonement
What is atonement? Our English word atonement, Anglo-Saxon in origin, is a great picture of what the word means — 2 at-one-ment. An offering of atonement enables two warring parties to be at one, or reconciled. The people of Israel were not the only people in the ancient Near Eastern world who knew they needed atonement before God; the idea of placating a deity was common, yet only the Old Testament places the idea of atonement within the context of a genuine covenantal relationship between God and man.
Atonement in the Old Testament is unique in another way. As in many cultures, it is linked with sacrifice. But in the Bible, a sacrifice of atonement does not depend on human initiative, such as some pitiful attempt to propitiate a volcano god by dropping a beloved object into the fire. In the Old Testament, the living God speaks, and he tells his people how to approach him. He takes the initiative in providing the way of reconciliation.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is not the only image the Old Testament uses to describe atonement, but it does play a central role from the beginning. Immediately after the fall, Cain and Abel offer sacrifices (Gen. 4:3–4). Before leaving Egypt, the Israelites are commanded to slaughter a Passover lamb without defect and paint its blood on the doors of their houses (Exodus 12). The lamb's blood causes the Spirit of God to pass over a house, sparing the life of a family's firstborn (who represents the whole family) from God's just punishment of sin. In all of this, God very clearly is the object of the sacrificial event. Sacrifices are done to satisfy him and his just requirements. So God says to Moses, "When I see the blood ..." (Ex. 12:13).
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "What Does God Want of Us Anyway?"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Mark Dever.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Big Picture,
Part 1: The Message of the Whole Bible,
1. One Great Story of Promises Made and Promises Kept,
2. A Particular History,
3. A Passion for Holiness,
4. A Promise of Hope,
5. The Promised Redeemer: Christ,
6. The Promised Relationship: A New-covenant People,
7. The Promised Renewal: A New Creation,
Conclusion: Believing God's Promises,
Questions for Reflection on the Whole Bible,
Part 2: The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made,
8. Is the Old Testament Really Worth Reading?,
9. A Particular History,
10. A Passion for Holiness,
11. A Promise of Hope,
Questions for Reflection on the Old Testament,
Part 3: The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept,
12. Where Do You Set Your Hopes?,
13. Christ,
14. A New-covenant People,
15. A New Creation,
Conclusion: The Maker and Keeper of Promises,
Questions for Reflection on the New Testament,
What People are Saying About This
“Mark Dever is an able and sure guide to the message of the Bible, which tells us what God wants of us all. The reader of this book is in reliable hands because the author depends not on himself but on the Word of God to answer life’s greatest questions. We cannot live lives that please God unless we know what God has said about himself and about us. This book will help you to know God through knowing his Son revealed in his Word.”—Thabiti Anyabwile, Pastor, Anacostia River Church, Washington, DC; author, What Is a Healthy Church Member?
“In this fantastic little book, Dever shows us what it means to say that Jesus Christ is the point of the Bible. He offers us a breathtaking, panoramic view of Scripture. Since the message of the Bible is so important, and since Dever has captured that message so succinctly, I’ll give this book away again and again—both to Christians eager to get a sense of the whole and to seekers wondering just what the Bible is all about.”—Aaron Menikoff, Senior Pastor, Mount Vernon Baptist Church, Sandy Springs, Georgia
“The Bible’s size and complexity can overwhelm many new readers. Mark Dever’s friendly overview both provides a map to its complexity and downsizes its message to the heart of the matter—what is the passion of God’s heart? Keep a bunch of these at your church for giving to anyone unfamiliar with the grand narrative of God’s word.”—Matt Schmucker, Founding Executive Director, 9Marks