Nothing New Under the Sun

“There is nothing new under the sun,” wrote the Preacher in Ecclesiastes a little over 3,000 years ago. People have been quoting him ever since, and the manifest accuracy of his statement is both reassuring and humbling for the Christian in search of truth.

Humbling, because it implies that none of the ideas that come to us as we read the word of God and discover great ‘new’ things about it are actually original to us. Someone always got there before us; we just don’t necessarily know whom. Reassuring, because the fact that others have walked the same path before us and come to exactly the same conclusions about scripture provides confirmation that we are correct in our understanding of it.

Mining the Minors: Nahum (9)

The New Testament is full of staggering numbers of quotes and allusions to the Old. Its writers directly cite or make passing reference to all but four Old Testament books at least once: Ezra/Nehemiah (a single volume in Hebrew), Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. If we are going to be technically correct, we should probably add Nahum to these, as I will shortly demonstrate.

So here’s a question for you: if the New Testament writers can find no reason to quote Nahum, what good is the book to Christians?

“Christianizing” the Psalms

In Sunday School we used to sing, “Every promise in the book is mine: every chapter, every verse, every line.” And of all the books in the Old Testament that we Christians love to apply to ourselves, the book of Psalms is right at the top of the list.

I suspect this is because despite being mostly composed between 4,000 and 2,500 years ago by Hebrews living in a very different cultural setting, the psalms contain statements of great universality which we may reasonably apply to believers in every era of God’s dealings with mankind, up to and including ourselves.

Hyperbole and Analogy

When trying to understand individual psalms, three questions are helpful to ask:

1. How was this psalm understood by its original audience?
2. To what other circumstances might this psalm legitimately apply?
3. Where is Christ in this psalm; and, conversely, where is he not?

The first and third questions are easily understood, even if it is sometimes tough sledding to find the answers to them. The second requires a little explanation.

Good Applications and Bad Ones

Billy Graham noted that the character of our loved ones, friends, and acquaintances may change. Jesus does not.

TL Osborn says that because Jesus Christ does not change, you can count on being healed from sickness, just as he healed the sick in the first century.

A commenter at Christian Forums says the fact that Jesus Christ never changes means dispensationalism is false teaching.

We all agree that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” However, it is evident we do not all agree about precisely what that means.

Nouns and Pronouns

Pronouns are noun-substitutes. They save us from cluttering up our sentences with unnecessary repetition. A long string of names can be easily replaced with a four-letter pronoun like “they”, saving all kinds of space.

I’m not telling you anything new here. We learn this in grade school.

Reports and Opinion Pieces

When Israel reached the borders of the promised land, while the mass of the nation continued to camp in the wilderness of Paran, Moses sent twelve men to spy out the land of Canaan.

He did not do this on his own. God gave the instructions directly, and he even insisted the spies be of high caliber: “every one a chief”.

In hindsight, there were probably several very good reasons for this.