understanding

The idiom that says “you must read the old testament to understand the new testament, and you must read the new testament to understand the old testament” is so true.

But the statement is confusing if we come from the angle of the new testament to understand the old testament, because we usually go “Whaaaaaat? But you just can’t do that!

But why do the New Testament authors and Jesus always quote the things of the old testament? (and still you can see the other way around, the understanding of the authors of their forefathers intentions of the Godly life.)

Where we have to change our understanding of the bible is that God’s story (must remember that this is God’s story, not Jesus’s) was known to God all along and was told in completeness because God already knew it, all of it.

So we must ‘see’ things in the OT that pertain to the NT and ‘see’ things in the NT that pertain to the old. One of first things that we need to ‘see’ is in Leviticus of the description of God’s temple that he describes to the jewish people to build and design. His articulate descriptions of the measurements and instructions of the ‘building’ is articulate to a ‘T’. This was God’s Temple that was to be built in honor of him and for his people. Everything about it was to ‘say’ God. His people’s God. It was where God and man joined together in one place to be. Even tho, it was now thru an representative of one, the High Priest. It still was the ‘connection between the two, God-people.

This concept of a God having a ‘connection’ with his people is not just important but this concept was not just the only way of looking at gods in this time. One such notion of how the gods worked was that they had created their specific item(sun, moon, stars, water, love, death) and then went on their way of doing their thing, with no involvement with the  participants. They were just out there, somewhere. This is why it was so unique in God’s design of the temple for his people to have that connection of God and his people together.

Now, knowing this design and creation that God designed for his (yet still, idolatry was in effect. Not worshipping God.) people for God to still be involved in their lives to be an influence upon them. God had already designed this exact model or paradigm for his people, but their desire to not worship what their God had gave them as a point or a gathering place to be with God and of God in his Kingdom was not to be. Their desire was to be apart of their own kingdom of their things to worship, and to be lord over them(those ‘things’ as we know have become lords over us).

The Garden of Eden was this such thing of the original ‘temple'(worship)(worship, has been misunderstood of its meaning for along time and we have just ran with it and using it in a very liberal way that has come to the point of blasphemy.) Worship is/was the living of life with our God. It’s just that simple. This was what adam and eve were doing at first in God’s Kingdom. After all, it was his creation(world, planets, earth, vegetation, animals, living beings and their God.)

It is this paradigm that we must ‘see’ all thru the bible, old and new testaments. God is trying to get his people, in their land, with their God! This will take off on a maybe different message that God will show you as you read the bible now with this understanding of God’s intentions from day one!!