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AMAZED and CONFUSED

When God's Actions Collide With Our Expectations

Thomas Nelson

THE STORY

"In the beginning, God ..." (Gen. 1:1). He references Himself more than thirty-five times in the opening chapter of Genesis alone, as if to settle once and for all that He is both the author and the protagonist of this great story.

In the beginning, God created ... and when He created, light beamed from the heavens and waters covered the earth. Valleys dug deep and mountains sprang high. Birds flew in the air and fish swam in the seas. Insects filled the ground and dinosaurs thundered across the land. The Creator declared that it was good.

Surrounded by four rivers, a garden was planted. In that garden He created a man and a woman, marked in His image—their Storyteller and Creator. God was present, community was perfect, and their life objective was to enjoy relationship with God and one another.

He gave them food to eat ...

The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden He placed the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The two trees. The tree that represented the objective: life—breathed by God, eternal, and resulting in perfect communion and wholeness. And the tree that represented the obstacle: the knowledge of good and evil.

Every character in every great story makes a choice. Sometimes even the best characters with the best intentions confuse the obstacle and the objective.

The villain—the thief of the souls of men—crawled into the garden in the form of a serpent and planted a seed of doubt in the woman's heart: "Did God really say ...?" (Gen. 3:1 NIV). Embracing the wrong tree, the man and woman reached for the very thing that snatched away the life for which they were created. They left the Story of God to pursue a story of their own making. And in an act of great grace, God banished them from the garden—protecting them from the Tree of Life. For if they were to eat of that tree, they would be doomed to live forever in a state of brokenness, severed from relationship with their Creator.

The garden would be hidden and the Tree of Life removed from their midst, but God hinted that redemption was already in the works—that the woman's offspring would crush the serpent's head. Distant glimpses of the Messiah. The Story was not over ... it had just begun.

But the people did not look to God; instead, they spiraled downward more and more into their own evil desires. In a rage of grace, a moment where God's wrath and mercy showed up simultaneously with equal parts intensity of force and love, God decided to begin anew and flooded His creation. He appointed one man, Noah, to build a boat and save humanity through the waters. The rainbow in the sky indicated God's presence and promise for a new story.

But they did not learn; they continued to follow stories that were not true, that did not lead to life, that were not written by the great Author.

Nonetheless, God continued to write His Story. He appeared to a man named Abram and promised that he would become a great nation and that all other nations throughout history would be blessed through him. The age of the patriarchs began. From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob ... from the miraculous provisions of a ram in the thicket to a night of wrestling with God ... God remained faithful and promised to these faulty yet faithful men that they were the beginning of a great nation and a new story. The twelve sons of Jacob became the twelve tribes of Israel.

Four hundred years later, God's people found themselves enslaved in a foreign land. God raised up a leader named Moses to lead His people out of slavery and oppression and toward the land He had promised their ancestors centuries before. This was a foreshadowing of the redemptive work of the Messiah. He gave Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers to record the Law—a pathway to righteousness and relationship with the Storyteller. But they turned away from the Author, longing instead for Egypt, so they were doomed to wander in the wilderness.

Forty years later, a new generation had grown up, and Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy—a retelling of God's Story, which was their story—to remind them of who they were, whose they were, where they were going, why they were going there, and how they were to live once they arrived.

Led by Joshua, the people of God entered the promised land.

With the people newly settled in the land that was promised them, the era of the judges began. Righteous men and women, appointed by God, provided leadership and counsel. But over and over again, a "generation grew up who did not acknowledge the LORD or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel" (Judg. 2:10 NLT).

They forgot the Story.

Looking around, the people desired to be like the other great nations they saw. They did not trust the sovereignty or the grace of their Storyteller and sought to establish leadership they could see ... they asked for a king—and God gave them what they asked for (1 Sam. 8–9).

As time passed, Saul showed the weakness of a king, David showed the redemption of a king, and Solomon showed the danger of a king who takes his eye off the giver of wisdom. At the end of Solomon's reign, the pride of men caused a great rift in the palace, and the great kingdom split in two. The ten tribes of the north strayed from the line of David, built new places of worship, and became known as Israel. A series of evil and corrupted kings sat on its throne. The two tribes of the south remained centered at Jerusalem, embraced the line of David, and became known as Judah. Some of its kings were generous and kind and turned their hearts toward God. Other kings were seduced by the stories of other gods. Some were a tragic mix of good and evil.

For two centuries God's people existed as two separate nations—sometimes at peace, sometimes at war.

The prophets thundered warnings—reminding the people of their Story, of their Maker, and pleading with them to return to the Story where they belonged.

But the people did not listen.

In 722 BC, the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and scattered God's people across their empire. Thirsty for dominance, they next turned their eyes toward Judah. They marched on Jerusalem and taunted the people of God at the city gates. Under the noble reign of King Hezekiah and the prayerful guidance of the prophet Isaiah, the Assyrians were miraculously defeated outside the gates of Jerusalem. Judah was safe ... for now ... and Isaiah wrote of a coming Messiah.

But the time for that chapter of the Story had not yet come. A new empire was rising. The Babylonians, a ruthless, impetuous, and dreaded people, were marching across the earth, leaving destruction and despair in their wake, and their eyes turned toward Judah.

Neglecting worship and forgetting God, the people of Judah were ruled by corrupt and power-hungry kings who believed they were invincible. The prophets wept, for though they knew God was slow to anger, they also recognized He was jealous for His name and His people. Through their cries, they also pointed to the dawning of a new day of hope and salvation. Habakkuk thus stepped into the spotlight on the stage of the Story of God.

THE VOICES

We often think of the Bible as one long, continuous book. In reality, it is a collection of sixty-six books written by approximately forty authors over the course of sixteen hundred years. The Old Testament contains thirty-nine books, written between 1450 and 400 BC, which tell the story of God's pursuit of and relationship with one family who became the Jewish people. The New Testament is made up of twenty-even books and letters, all written in the first century AD. These tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth, the Savior promised in the Old Testament.

The books were written by myriad voices—fisherman, tax collectors, shepherds, kings, doctors, political prisoners and advisers, farmers, and poets—and the style of each book is as unique as its author—histories, prophecies, poetry, letters, law, and visions of the future. At the same time, the books tell one cohesive and central story about a passionate God on a relentless pursuit to redeem His creation.

In the Old Testament, the books are grouped into categories as follows:

1. THE LAW

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy

The primary themes and stories in these books include:

* he primeval stories of the creation, the flood, and the tower of Babel

* The age of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and God's promises to Israel

* The fall and rise of Joseph and Israel's captivity in Egypt

* The miraculous exodus from Egypt and the engraving of the Ten Commandments

* The design and construction of the tabernacle

* The complete law of Moses

2. HISTORY

Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. These books cover the narrative history of the Old Testament.

The primary themes and stories in these books include:

* The conquest of the promised land

* The era of the judges (Gideon, Samson, Deborah, Samuel, etc.)

* The kings of Israel

* The building of the temple

* The division of the kingdom

* The exile in Babylon and the return to Judah

The remaining books are poetic and prophetic writings that are grouped together at the end but were written at various points throughout the histories.

3. POETRY

Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), Lamentations

Primary themes include:

* Poetry

* Philosophy

* Prayer and praise

* Love songs

* Suffering and survival

4. THE PROPHETS

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

Primary themes include:

* Declarations of God's character

* Guidance

* Judgment of sin

* Hope for the future

O. Palmer Robertson explained, "If Moses and Joshua provided the direction for Israel in their possession of the land, then the writing prophets provided the direction for Israel through their loss of land." The exile was ultimately a redemptive act of God, and the prophets gave guidance and hope to help people navigate the tragedy. The major prophets include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. They are referred to as "major" only because their writings are significantly longer than the others, and not because their messages are somehow more important. Gordon Fee explains to us that their designation stems from Latin translations of the Bible that categorized them that way. In Latin, "minor" meant "shorter," not "less important." Conversely, "major" meant "longer," not "more important."

The minor prophets include Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Ancient Judaism grouped them together as one long book called "The Twelve." When compiled, the book was longer than Ezekiel and Daniel but shorter than Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Some of the prophets wrote in and to the Northern Kingdom, while others wrote in and to the Southern Kingdom. Later prophets included those who wrote during and after the exile in Babylon.

READING THE PROPHETS

Several years ago, a friend of mine commented, "I really hope I don't get seated next to Obadiah at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, because I'm going to have to tell him, 'I'm really sorry, dude, but I never read your book.'"

I laughed, but I also embraced a new mission to help people navigate the odd world of prophetic writings. They seem so weird and irrelevant. In Handbook on the Prophets, author and professor Robert Chisholm admits:

The prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible presents great interpretive obstacles. Its poetry, though teeming with vivid imagery that engages the imagination and emotions, challenges the reader's understanding because of its economy of expression, rapid shifts in mood, and sometimes cryptic allusions. The reader of the prophetic literature quickly realizes that these books were written at particular points in time to specific groups of people with whom the modern reader seems to share little.

So true. However, Chisholm also contends that they demand our attention because they are the Word of God and contain a message that transcends time and space by helping us see dimensions of God's character more clearly and challenging us to relate to Him and the world around us according to His ways.

As I read the prophets with new eyes, I realized they were more relevant than I had thought. The prophets accepted the tension of living in a fallen world while waiting hopefully for a new world to come. Their hearts pounded for justice, and they warned that religion was empty unless accompanied by action. They lived through circumstances that didn't make sense, questioned authority, and challenged people to live at a level higher than the rest of culture expected of them. To me, it seemed the Prophets might be the most real, raw, and relevant writings in the entire Bible. The world in which these authors lived, though separated from my own by thousands of years and thousands of miles, also felt very familiar. Their voices and their messages were as critical and germane to my life as they were to a distant generation; it just took some unraveling and cultural and historical insight to ensure their words resonated in my ears the way they hit their original audiences.

Here are some things to keep in mind when reading and interpreting the prophets:

"Prophecy." In the wise and immortal words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." We tend to think about prophecy as future-oriented. A few clarifications are in order. First, much of biblical prophecy is oriented around forth-telling more than foretelling. In other words, at its core, prophecy is about declaring the truth of God's character and ways in the midst of earthly realities and providing a new set of lenses through which to view the current circumstances. Second, prophets did not deliver new messages; rather, their words were rooted in the old covenant. The blessings and curses they pronounced were not novel or peculiar to each individual prophet; rather, the prophets echoed the same sentiments declared in Leviticus 26:1–39, Deuteronomy 4:15–40, and Deuteronomy 28:1–46. If you invest some time in reading and studying those passages, your reading of prophetic writing will deliver a richer and more rewarding experience. Finally, in the places where the biblical prophets were obviously foretelling the future, we must bear in mind that it was the future for the original readers but not necessarily the future for us. Less than 2 percent of Old Testament prophecy pertains to the coming Messiah. Less than 5 percent describes the current age. And less than 1 percent concerns our future. We need cultural and historical framing in order to fully appreciate their words.

Not only are the prophetic writings different from all the other categories of Scripture, but each prophetic voice reflects a different personality and a unique perspective. Some prophets lived out the message they wanted to convey in dramatic ways. For instance, God told Hosea to marry a prostitute to show His people a picture of His faithfulness to them, and he did. Similarly, He instructed Ezekiel to perform several weird stunts, such as writing words of mourning on a scroll and eating it, baking bread on excrement, and shaving all the hair off his body with a long sword. Ezekiel thus became an ancient performance artist who would have received mixed reviews in an off-off-Broadway experimental lab theater, but his actions were pictures of the prophetic message he carried. While Jonah carried a specific spoken message to the people of Nineveh, the events of his life became a broader message about God's forgiveness and response to repentance.

Other prophets spoke and wrote their messages. While Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and others conveyed various messages of warning, Habakkuk offers us a unique opportunity to eavesdrop on a conversation between God and one of His prophets, and it's particularly interesting because it isn't the kind of conversation we might expect: the heroic prophet expresses doubt and concerns and dares to question God.

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Excerpted from AMAZED and CONFUSED by HEATHER ZEMPEL. Copyright © 2014 Heather Zempel. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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