The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the Old Testament

Israel's In-Your-Face, Holy God

Rolf A. Jacobson, Tripp Fuller

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781506406350
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506406367
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The Old Testament bears witness to an in-your-face, holy God--a God who gets down and dirty with creation and history; a God who gets in people's face with love and law, with power and purpose. Yet Israel's in-your-face God is also "holy"--too other, too raw, too intense to be handled without oven mitts.

Rolf Jacobson wrestles with this in-your-face God.

The Old Testament starts at the beginning, where God digs in the dirt to create humanity and then gets in the dustlings' faces when they sin. God smiles on Abraham and Sarah, electing their descendants as the chosen people, but has to get in Pharaoh's face when he tries to enslave the people. Mostly, God gets in Israel's face: with laws about what it looks like to be God's people and through the prophets, who have to get in the faces of those who turn away from the Holy One.

Jacobson also explores the psalms, poetry in which God often hides his face. He closes by exploring how the Old Testament points us ahead to Jesus, when God took on a human face and offered us the most intimate picture of God we'll ever get.

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A Down-and-Dirty Creator—A Downright-Broken Creation

Sometimes, when you’re tackling a difficult question or a really big topic, the best place to start is the beginning. When tackling the Old Testament and wrestling with the really big question of God, the beginning is definitely a good place to start. As in, The Beginning. The beginning of creation, the beginning of life, the beginning of the universe.

Summary of Genesis 1–11

Let’s consider the first eleven chapters of Genesis as The Beginning. Here’s a quick overview.

The First Creation Story (Genesis 1)—Creation by Speech in Seven Days

In the first creation story in the Old Testament, God speaks creation into existence in six days and rests on the seventh. Notice how there is a connection between days 1 and 4, 2 and 5, and 3 and 6.

Day 1—God speaks in the darkness and creates light.	Day 4—God speaks and creates the stars, sun, and moon to populate the heavens.
Day 2—God speaks and creates the earthly environment, with air and water.	Day 5—God speaks and creates living creatures to populate the sea and the air.
Day 3—God speaks and creates the dry land in the midst of the air and water; God speaks again to create plants.	Day 6—God speaks and creates living creatures to populate the earth; God speaks again to create humankind in God’s image—every male and female human is in God’s image.
Day 7—God rests.

The Second Creation Story (Genesis 2)—Creation in the Garden

In the second creation story, the Lord God forms the human being from the dust of the earth and breathes life in the human. Then the Lord God places the human being in the garden with the purpose to “till and keep it” but with the commandment not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then, noting that “it is not good that the human should be alone,” the Lord God creates every animal and brings them one by one to the human being to name and to see if there is a fitting life partner for him. But none of the animals are fitting, so the Lord God creates “the mother of life” from the very body of the human being—and thus male and female are created—Adam and Eve.

I asked my fundamentalist brother-in-law how his creationism makes sense of both creation stories in Genesis. Some questions are best left unasked.

The Rebellion (Genesis 3)—Human Beings Want to “Be Like God”

The third story in the Bible is often called “the fall from grace,” because the human beings violate the Lord God’s commandment. The snake—the craftiest of God’s creatures—promises the woman that if they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The woman and man do eat from the tree, and indeed, they now know good and evil. They experience shame, they fashion crude clothing for themselves to cover their nakedness, and they hide from God. The Lord God realizes what has happened and punishes them by casting them out of the garden. As a consequence of sin, the man must struggle with the earth to wrestle the means for survival from the soil. The woman must struggle in childbirth to give birth to the next generation so that the species may survive. And the snake and human beings will be in constant enmity with each other.

Life, Death, and Sin (Genesis 4a)—The First Family and First Murder

Adam and Eve settle down and have a couple of kids. Cain, the first born, likes plants. Abel, the second born, likes animals. They both offer the Lord sacrifices, but the Lord likes the animal sacrifice better than the plant—we don’t know why. Remember that part about knowing good from evil? Well, knowing good from evil doesn’t mean that humans have the ability to choose good instead of evil. So what does Cain do? He kills Abel in fit of jealousy. As a result, God banishes Cain. Cain goes away, marries, and starts his own family. Adam and Eve have another son, and the human race grows.

Begetting and Begetting, Part I (Genesis 4b–5)—Lots of Kids

In the second part of Genesis 4 and through Genesis 5, lots of people have lots of sex and have lots of kids. People live long lives and then die. More sex, more people. Not much else happens.

Trivia, part 1: Jubal was the father of music—I’m pretty sure he preferred classic rock (it was the stone age, after all).

Trivia, part 2: The oldest person on the list is named Methuselah—969 years.

I am glad to hear Jubal liked rock. Barth had me scared of heaven with all his Mozart and Bach talk.

The technical name for these lists of people having sex and offspring is genealogy. The technical euphemism for having sex is “to know.” Thus, “the man knew his wife Eve” (Genesis 4:1) means that they had sex. Thus the phrase “to know in the biblical sense,” which means having sex. Who knew!? Well, in this passage, Adam and Eve knew . . . in the biblical sense.

But how much knowing is too much knowing before marriage?

The Big Flood (Genesis 6–9)—A Not-So-Gentle Kid’s Story

Then “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). And so, God sends a flood to destroy creation. But God notices Noah and realizes that there’s some good in creation. So God downloads for Noah some plans for a giant floating box in which to preserve two of every kind of animal. And Noah and his family weather the great flood in the big box. As soon as the flood is over, Noah gets hammered drunk and passes out naked. Oh well. Sin still exits.

Begetting and Begetting, Part II (Genesis 10)—Lots More Kids

In Genesis 10, lots of people have lots of sex and have lots more kids. People live shorter and shorter lives.

Trivia, part 3: Nimrod is the first mighty warrior and hunter.

Nimrod is also the album title for what punk rock band?

The Big Tower (Genesis 11a)—God Confuses the Languages

In the first part of Genesis 11, the humans still want to be like God. They try to build a mighty city and a tower to heaven. God scatters the people and confuses their languages.

Begetting and Begetting, Part III (Genesis 11b)—Lots and Lots More Kids

In the second part of Genesis 11, you guessed it, more sex and more kids. No trivia. Apparently the confusion of the language ended the trivia for a while.

God Is Law—God Brings about a Trustworthy Creation

By now you may be wondering: What kind of literature is this? I mean, God speaking reality into existence, then digging around in a garden, breathing life into a dirt man, snakes talking, brother murdering brother? What’s up? Well, let’s come back to that really perceptive question in a little bit. But first, how about a look at some of the more important themes of the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament.

CHAPTER 2, OPTIONAL QUEST #1: READ GENESIS 1 (COMPLETE QUEST AND LEVEL UP TO OT RECRUIT, FIRST CLASS).

The first crucially important theme is that God is a God of law. And, furthermore, the purpose of God’s law is life—the very existence of creation and the existence within creation of life.

Role-Playing Game references make me happy. Should I go grab my D20? (That’s a twenty-sided dice for all ye Dungeons & Dragons newbies.)

Take a closer look at a few of the words for God’s actions in Genesis 1. According to the verbs, God does a few things in the first chapter of the Old Testament. Remember that most of the Old Testament is written in ancient Hebrew, so there are a few references to the Hebrew verbs. In order of occurrence:

• God “separated” and “divided” and “gathered together”
• God made heavenly lights to “rule” over the day and night
• God “blessed” humanity to “subdue and have dominion” over the living creation

All of these verbs describe the ways in which the Creator works through law, through ordering, and through the gathering of energy . . . all for the purpose of bringing a trustworthy and life-giving creation. This is a theme that we will return to throughout this book. But it is a critical theme already in the very first chapter of the Old Testament. The Creator is a God of law. Through the law—here it is the natural law—God works to bring about a trustworthy creation that can sustain and nurture life.

Reflect on this point for a moment. In order for the creation to exist—and even more importantly, for there to be a life-supporting environment within the vastness of creation—natural law must exist. God’s very first act of creation is to bring order—through natural law—into the universe in order that a trustworthy and life-supporting creation might exist. God sustains creation from moment to moment. From instant to instant, God’s very being holds creation together, sustaining natural law and nurturing life. One might even say that God is not a thing—not a noun—God is a verb. God sustains, God effects natural law; one might almost say that God is law itself.

If God is a verb, can I do God? That might be less awkward than knowing God . . . biblically.

The Creative Process—Peaceful, Nonviolent . . . Loving

In the Old Testament, the Creator God is one God. The Creator. It isn’t done by a committee. And God the Creator is not a tortured, confused artist, searching for motivation and unsure how best to proceed.

W...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Series Introduction
• The Homebrewed Posse
• Introduction
• The Old Testament—The Library of an In-Your-Face God
• A Down-and-Dirty Creator—A Downright-Broken Creation
• Blessed to Be a Blessing, and Other Terrifying Thoughts
• From Pyramid to Promised Land: God’s Free People (Exodus through Joshua)
• You Cannot Serve the Lord—Really, You Can’t (The History of Israel and Judah; Joshua 23–2 Kings)
• Mourning into Dancing, or How to Get in God’s Face
• Epilogue: What about the Prayer of Jabez?
• Notes