I sit down with my old high school buddy, and now Leukemia-survivor, to ask what he means when he says that he wishes everyone would have a “successful brush with death” and that “getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Access the episode here (available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more).
On Sunday, January 24th, 2016, I began a Core Seminar on Redemptive History & Biblical Theology at my church, Lake Drive Baptist Church. During the course of this series I’ll be sending out emails recapping lessons and directing recipients to resources for further study.
Rather than just share these recaps with my church family, I’ve decided to share them here on the blog for anyone else who might be interested. I will be posting them occasionally over the next couple of months on a weekly basis or so.
See previous posts:
We continue this week’s core seminar recap with a brief–and I mean brief–survey of the wisdom literature and the psalms.
God supplies wisdom and songs for his covenant-bound, new-creational kingdom people.
The wisdom literature and songs (psalms) lead God’s people to live properly as his redemptive-historical people with regards to (a) how they are to relate and respond to God (worship and prayer [think: the psalms]), (b) down to earth, everyday, practical living (think: Proverbs), and (c) abstract questions about life (think especially Job and Ecclesiastes).
These books–Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon–are often the ones that feel the least “redemptive-historical.” They feel the least storied, in other words. The least related to the movement of God’s saving purposes across Biblical history. They feel closer to what we might call “timeless truths.”
But, even still, these books still assume redemptive-historical realities. They have redemptive history in their background.
For example, their guidance assumes the realities of redemptive history like…
(a) God’s original creation design…
e.g., Proverbs understands wisdom as something built into the fabric of creation (see Prov 8).
(b) The fall and the entrance of evil and sin into that design…
e.g., the account of Job is only possible in a world of suffering and evil. Or, again, the book of Ecclesiastes warns us of our sinful (i.e., fallen) tendency to seek meaning apart from God.
And (c) God’s activity to restore his creation through salvation and judgment…
e.g., the Psalms speak of God’s saving activity and his promises to save in the future, i.e., redemptive-historical promises.
Or, again, Proverbs makes clear that wisdom begins with something of a converted state–a disposition that is called “fearing God.” As such, Proverbs assumes the fall, that we are all sinful “fools” who need to be rightly re-oriented to God (conversion, regeneration).
In addition, these songs and wisdom books equip God’s people to live out that role as his redemptive-historical people in the nitty gritty aspects of every day life, in the midst of the full-range of human emotions and experiences.
Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon.
And, so, in closing, to recap the role of these books within redemptive history–God supplies wisdom and songs for his covenant-bound, new-creational kingdom people.
The “non-conclusive conclusion” of the book of Job–no direct answer to Job’s complaint is provided; but rather, the conclusion is just to trust God–is not a cop-out after all, but an incredibly satisfying response if you understand the profundity and appropriateness of that conclusion. It’s appropriate because it’s consistent with the finiteness and humanness of humanity and recognizes the Godness of God. It may not be the most philosophically satisfying conclusion in that it does not explain suffering; but that is not the purpose of Job. Although it does not provide a philosophical answer to suffering, it does provide a legitimate answer nonetheless, and an answer I might say is even more satisfying than any philosophical answer–there is a purpose to suffering; and it is rooted in the wisdom of God even if access to or comprehension of that wisdom and purpose is beyond our reach. That it is beyond our reach, and that we are instead to reach to God for whom it is in reach, is the opposite of problematic. We don’t need to know the exact reason for suffering in order to know that there is a reason for suffering that is known, directed, and controlled by God.
Kirk E. Miller 