biblical roadmaps

Jeremiah 33:14-16

For Sunday, November 29, 2009

First Sunday of Advent (starting Year C)

““ ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.’”

(Jeremiah 33:14–16 NIV)

Passages like this are fascinating because to be understood they point to the need for a roadmap for understanding the Bible as a whole. The context here is this: the kingly line of David had been cut off leaving only the stump of a tree. Yet a shoot would spring forth from that stump and grow to provide eternal and enduring refuge for God's people. Most if not all Christians agree that the shoot is Messiah, and that Messiah is Jesus.

What we don't all agree on is what Jeremiah had in mind when he says, "Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety." Is this a promise already fulfilled when the Jews returned to Jerusalem under Persian King Cyrus? Or is it a promise being fulfilled in our own day with the establishment of the modern State of Israel? Or is it a future promise, and if so, is it to be fulfilled with reference to the nation-state of Israel, or with regard to the church as spiritual Israel?

There is a wonderful chart and article in Wikipedia to help you determine whose roadmap you want to use. The chart appears at the beginning of this post.

The article contains a good summary of a number of hermeneutical roadmaps of the Bible. They are:

• Supersessionist
• Covenant Theology
• Kingdom-Dominion Theology
• Dispensational
• Allegorical

The two that I find most compelling are Covenant Theology and Kingdom-Dominion Theology. Between these two I find Kingdom-Dominion Theology most persuasive. It suggests that the incarnation of Christ is the center point of all of history and that the overarching theme of Scripture is the Kingdom of God, meaning the establishment of God's rule over God's people in God's place.

Here is how this roadmap makes sense of passages such as Jeremiah 33:

In the New Testament, God's rule is exercised through Jesus Christ the King, who is also the "temple" of God (John 2:19-21), over his people the Church (of which Israel was a type). Salvation for all people in all times is found by trusting (explicitly or implicitly) in Jesus. Thus, Abraham, Moses, David, and all Christians today are saved by the same faith. The Jews are regarded as special in God's plan (as in Romans and Ephesians) and yet the Old Testament prophecies regarding Israel find their fulfillment in Jesus and the Church rather than in a literal restoration of Israel.^[1]

If you haven't already chosen a biblical roadmap for yourself, let this be the week that you pick one by which to navigate your understanding of Scripture as well as the very trajectory of your own life. A secular culture which has lost its way as well as its very belief in a destination desperately needs people who know where they are going and what to expect along the way.

'all Israel' will be saved

Rom. 11:1-2a, 29-32
For Sun. Aug. 17, 2008
Proper 15

Romans 11 represents the culmination of Paul's argument in chapters 9-11, so it's important to understand what he's really saying. The key verse may be v. 26: "and so all Israel will be saved." What does Paul mean by 'all Israel'?

There are three major options: first, Paul could mean national Israel; second, Paul could mean spiritual Israel; or third, Paul could mean elect Jews from within national Israel. I believe the second option is the best choice for the following reasons:
1) A key point for Paul in this whole section is that "not all who are descended from Israel are Israel" (9:6).
2) Chapter 10 is all about how salvation is available to anyone who believes - in other words, spiritual Israel.
3) The point of the olive tree illustration in chapter 11 is that there is one tree, with branches grafted in from among the Gentiles and then also from among the Jews. What does this olive tree best represent? Spiritual Israel.

Chapter 11 does also suggest that there will be a time when Jews, out of envy for their Gentile counterparts, are grafted back into the olive tree from which they were cut. Yet the overall point is not that God will re-establish national Israel: the point is that God will fulfill his promise to spiritual Israel, which are the individuals comprising the remnant of Jews and Gentiles saved by the righteousness of faith offered through the mercy of God.

Note where Paul is then going with this in chapter 12: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices." We are to live our lives with the gratitude that flows from God's mercy extended to us. We are part of the Israel that God has and will save - and as Paul notes as he concludes chapter 11, this is glorious indeed.