5 minute Bible

OK this story must be one of the best-known that Jesus ever told, everyone has heard it! And if not (at least if they speak English or French or just about any other European language) they know the main character’s name – The Good Samaritan. Except that, what we know if we know this, is all wrong!

Jesus was a prophet so to understand what he’s doing here we need to remind ourselves how Prophets work. So after a quick recap on prophets we think about what Jesus the prophet is doing when he tells this story.

For more on prophets try these:

• E100-36: 2 Samuel 11:1 – 12:25: David and Bathsheba?
• E100 Week 10: Prophets: three principles to unlock the code
• E100-46: Isaiah 51:1 – 53:12: Reading prophets for pleasure and profit
• E100-47: Jeremiah 1:1 – 3:5: Getting started as a prophet
• E100-50: Malachi 1:1 – 4:6: The book that makes the bridge

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These four chapters tell the story of God’s prophet Jonah (who attentive Bible students know from 2 kings 14:25:

He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.

This true prophet runs away from  God, says a long prayer inside a fish, preaches a five word sermon and converts the capital of an unusually brutal empire, and then tells God off grumpily! The story of Jonah is told in ways that cause us to laugh, or at least smile. This book is funny from beginning to end – which is different from other Bible books even though many of them contain humour see the podcasts here.

What’s going on? and Why’d he do it?

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There are a number of podasts if you want more on Jonah, or I have some study notes on the book of Jonah (not yet quite finished, or a longer lecture on Jonah.

I have not focused these 5 Minutes on how Is 53 speaks so clearly about Jesus, it is the Old Testament passage that is most clearly, directly and simply fulfilled in Christ. But that status should not make it paradigmatic for undedrstanding how Jesus fulfills Scripture. For more on that (and there is nothing on that in this podcast :( see What DOES “fulfil” mean? And other podcasts on this topic here.

Bible Jesus Read, The

Philip Yancey. Zondervan 2002, Paperback, 240 pages, $2.73

Instead in this audio talk I want to focus on reading the prophets. The prophets are problematic today, in part because  Christians sometimes make them seem more like Nostradamus than Nathan, but even more because these books do fit Yancey’s friend’s description: “weird, confusing and all sound alike”. In these five minutes I’ll mention two key tools background (“context“) and hearing the “voices”.

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William Blake: The Ghost of a Flea

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…

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Wadi Qelt, Judean Desert, with St George's monastry by Ester Inbar, available from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ST

Perhaps the best known and popular psalm among both Jews and Christians but not easy to categorise, except that it expresses trust in God. The imagery makes even better sense when some geography and culture is understood:

• sheep follow shepherds, they are not left on the hills and then driven
• green pastures, means land where there is some green vegetation, not just rocks and dust
• wadis: steep sided gorges, semi-desert little vegetation, quick run off from  hills = flash floods

For more on this see also my “Psalm 23 in context”

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