RELATING NT TO OT

Thursday, June 06, 2013

  Much of what Jesus said was in reference to or quoting OT writings. He didn’t do this just because his audience was quite familiar with the OT. Nor did He use the OT just to show its relationship to the NT. Jesus presented eternal thread showing I AM THAT I AM. (Ex.3:14)
  This is why I sometimes tack on question asking what you think are connecting passages in OT and NT. Several responded to the question yesterday:

                “Per your question:  ‘PS. Can you come up with NT passages speaking to wilderness ministry commitment?’ I think of Paul and Silas in prison. Acts 16:16-40 They could have complained and remained in prison, but instead they sang praises to God. Diane (NE)”

“I can't think of a passage off the top of my head but wilderness ministry to me always brings to mind John the Baptist.  At least we don't have to eat bugs - right?! Penny (NE)”

“NT passages speaking to wilderness ministry commitment: 1 & 2 Tim. & Titus. Tom (IL)”

  After I wrote and published yesterday’s thots with PS question I drove to day 3 of volunteer commitment as helper at Heartland Christian School summer day camp. (Single combined group of so far 3 to 10 year old active boys and girls.) There are theme verses we are learning. Yesterday the teacher presented 1Corinthians 9:24. I looked up the context: “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” (1Cor.9:24-27) 

  Was Paul concerned about rejection of and/or sloth in godly vocation resulting in 40 year tenting in the wilderness?   
  Read again of results of historical rejection of serving Jehovah: "How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, 'As I live, declares the LORD, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.'” (ESV Num.14:27-34)
  To me this connection between then and now is unchanged and definitely something to consider daily; indeed the choice of running for Him or becoming by Him being a wilderness castaway remains an ever present individual question.  EBB4