Life on the rubbish dumb in Mae Sot is "Better than Burma" Amos spoke about justice (photo by Jacob Baynham)
In Understanding the prophets: Part one I spoke about the “Three Cons” as a key to reading the prophetic books of the Old Testament with understanding and in ways which are faithful to their original intention. In this second part we’ll look at an example from Amos 5:18ff. and apply this approach. The result will be an uncomfortable word from God for us today.
How Raffael imagined Ezekiel's vision, but what was the point? (Raffaello Sanzio, Wikimedia Commons)
I am doing a three part series at South City Baptist Church on Sunday afternoons on Understanding the prophets. This week thinking, about what a prophet was and how they spoke, I used the title: “What does a prophet? What does it profit?” these are the slides from the talk.
A key idea in this talk was the ideas in my Prophets: three principles to unlock the code another podcast that uses the same idea (but to address a New Testament prophet) is: The teachings of Jesus the prophet. There are many more of these 5 minute audio teaching about the Hebrew prophets and about particular prophetic texts. Just use the menu above > OT > and choose a prophetic book.
Another good place to explore the nature and contents of biblical prophecy is the book of Amos. My commentary with also a huge amount of Bible Dictionary type material is here Amos: Postmodern Bible.
This week’s readings contain a sample of Jesus teachings. In reading them we will notice two things particularly that will help us better understand:
(a) Jesus is a prophet: so the rules we learnt for reading Old Testament prophets will help us understand Jesus. These rules were:
Prophets spoke to a context: knowing the who, what, when, where, how & why can help us get the point.
Prophetic speech is often a conversation.
Prophets are about conversion (not prediction).
(b) Jesus taught (often) in parables. Parables are picture language. Parable in Greek parabole or in Hebrew mashal means a “comparison”. So to understand a parable, as well as looking at the context we need to ask what comparison is being made?
In the first reading (the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, Mat 5:1-6:4) we’ll notice that Luke has a Sermon on a Plain and so how each Gospel remembers Jesus for themselves, that like any good biography Gospels are not transcripts, but meaningful retellings of the life of Jesus.
The second reading is the second part of the Sermon on Mount (Mat 6:5-7:29) we’ll notice that Jesus teaches like the prophets and how radical that teaching is.
The third reading Mat 13 introduces us to parables, and also shows us that parables are sometimes intended to make us think not provide quick simple answers.
For the fourth reading, Luke 10:25-37, I’ll suggest that the “Good Samaritan” is not about the Good Samaritan Jesus remember is a prophet and prophets turn things upside down and inside out.
Then we’ll apply all this to the lost and found parables Luke 15:1-32, especially to “The Prodigal Son” and again I’ll suggest the parable is not about the prodigal son, or even his forgiving father.
Prophets and prophecy: the most misunderstood part of OT, “mysterious messengers”. A random chunk from a prophetic book will offer a confusing, seemingly muddled, confusion of vivid picture language. Yet, three simple principles can (usually) unlock the mystery and allow the prophets to speak:
conversion not prediction
context not timeless
conversation not monologue
As I’ll explain briefly in this podcast these three principles can cause mere fortune tellers to become evangelists, and their mysterious messages to become a call to convert, to change our behaviour, to redeem our world…
