How does anyone know about God . . .

 

In many Bible classes and sermons the leader or speaker says that the OT people of God did not have the same knowledge as we now have with the NT. For them, the promised salvation was not as clear.

Something in me disagrees. I read the Bible for years and didn’t ‘get it’ so understand how people cannot ‘get it’ but when Jesus Christ came into my life, everything changed. This is not because I moved from the OT to the New but because the things of God are not fully understood by more information but because God reveals truth through the Holy Spirit who illuminates minds.

How else could Job say in 19:25–26, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” or else could the psalmists and the prophets write about His role as REDEEMER?

Some uses of that term is about redemption from slavery in Egypt, exile in Babylon, enemies and sickness, but some of it is clearly redemption from slavery to sin as He proclaims through Isaiah: “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.’ And they shall be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the LORD.”

In Psalms and Isaiah, the Redeemer helps His people in need, but also frees them from sin. This verse is an example of pleading for such a redemption:

Psalm 19:14. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Isaiah speaks often for the Redeemer who reveals Himself as the Holy One of Israel, their Creator and King. He says, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” and “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea; your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.”

They knew about sin and obedience. They knew that their peace depended on God as well as their prosperity. Not only that, the pagans around them knew this also, all without a full Bible:

Isaiah 49:7 and 26. “Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: ‘Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you . . . I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine. Then all flesh shall know that I am the Lord your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.’”

While many references are about redemption from troubles in this life, others clearly point to redemption from sin and the need for repentance:

Isaiah 59:20. “And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord.

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. How many times did I read through the Bible and miss the fact that Jesus died for my sin? At least a dozen and maybe more. But the day came when He came into my life and I knew without a doubt that Christ is God the Son who came to redeem me — a sinner enslaved and under the curse of the law. He did it by suffering the death I deserved. That is, the sinless, uncursed Christ suffered an accursed death so that He could remove God’s curse from me!

Without reading 1 Peter 1:18–19 again, I knew I was “ransomed from the futile ways inherited from my forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”’

I also knew the truth of Titus 2:13–14, that my “great God and Savior Jesus Christ, gave himself for me to redeem me from all lawlessness and to purify me for himself . . . for his own possession.” The words were there for me but I didn’t ‘get it’ until the truth was put into my heart, just as Zechariah praised God because He “made redemption for his people” when John the Baptist was born and Anna “gave thanks to God, and spoke about him to all the Jews who were looking for redemption when she saw baby Jesus. This was revealed to them.

All this does not mean we can get truth without the Word of God. It does mean that God reveals truth so we can understand it and then use it to verify anything that comes to us as “God told me” apart from reading it. He is the truth-Revealer — and our Redeemer, Savior and Friend.