Jan 11, 2007
HD Jesus
Without the gracious gift of God which is the Old Testament, we would not see the extent of the beauty, majesty and glory of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Our vision of him in the New Testament would be very accurate, but it would be small and the horizon incomplete. Let me give an example. My wife and I used to have a 13’’ Orion5 cathode ray tube television that we would watch in our bedroom. For those of you have not seen one of these sorts of ancient devices, it has a small screen and it is fat panel, not flat panel. If I were to watch a movie on this TV I would see it, I would get it and could honestly say I watched the movie. Now, think for a second if I got this same film on HDDVD and watched it on a 60 inch, 1080p HDTV along with theater surround sound. Same movie? Absolutely! Same vision and experience of the film? Well, those of you with the home theatre system know the answer to that. The same thing could be said of seeing Jesus in the Bible. If you only had the New Testament you might be asked who Jesus is and reply in a 13 inch TV fashion: Jesus is the Savior and the Son of God. This would be absolutely and beautifully true. Now if you looked at both Testaments you would get a full featured High Def Jesus. This Jesus is the promised one who would crush the head of Satan (Genesis 3:15), who is the seed of Abraham through whom the whole world would be blessed (Genesis 12), the long promised messiah of Israel who sits on the eternal throne of David as our covenant King (2 Samuel 7), who fulfilled the law of Moses perfectly (Matthew 5:17, 18) and lived without sin (Hebrews 4:15), the final priest of the tabernacle (Exodus 25-28) and sacrificial lamb foreshadowed in the book of Leviticus (Leviticus 16). He is our Savior, he is our God, and he is the suffering servant prophesied long ago by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 53). He is our great high priest, our covenant mediator, and unique sacrificial Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world (Hebrews 8-10). The one whose cross reconciles all things to God and whose return will usher in a new Kingdom which will have no end. 60 inch HD Jesus, we have to study the whole book to see the difference.
The Old Testament is central to seeing the big picture of the history of redemption, understanding the character and attributes of God, and seeing Jesus, God the Son in all his glory. Now that we see a bit of the importance of the Old Testament, let’s go ahead and unroll the first part of the scroll and get an overview of this first section of Scripture.
Notes:
5. Orion is the brand of the TV, it seems it is a Japanese company who sells inexpensive TVs at places like Wal-Mart.
Up Next - A Brief Overview of the Old Testament...
Comments
I thought Jesus had long hair and was thinner (because everybody was back then).
Also, I'm trying to build a 7' tall solid walnut entertainment center. The section for the TV is huge. My electronic engineer friend told me that the standard cathode ray TV was a lot cheaper and had a better picture than the HD's and Flat Screens. Is this true? I hate TV but my wife likes it. She also likes a $3500 entertainment center, that's why I am building the monstrosity, to save a couple of bucks. So, fat or flat, what's best?
Posted by: Greg R | January 12, 2007 08:37 AM
Reid, I can't help but think a better image is Lord of the Rings. The New Testament is like getting Return of the King without having ever seen FotR or the Two Towers. You still get the story: Jesus is Lord of all and we owe him our lives, futures, and salvation, but how did it ever get to that point? We can still figure out that Sauroman's a bad dude and the rings must be destroyed; we can still figure out that we are sinner's in needs of grace. But the redemption of the world and everyone/thing in it makes much more sense in the context of creation, fall, and election, no? Am I totally off or just repeating?
Posted by: Benjamin Schellack | January 12, 2007 03:20 PM
Ben, no you are not off at all. I love your illustration and it is very rich and helpful. You are focusing on knowing the complete "storyline" - the LOTRs illustration would go great with my "scroll" illustration about redemptive-historical context earlier in the paper.
My illustration here is to say that we see Jesus in more clarity and focus through the lenses of old and new testaments. And I like HDTVs better than lenses :)
On the other part, remember, my paper is finished and I am rolling it out in parts on the blog :) In the next section I will give an overview of the OT. I have done that in two ways. First, through the worldview categories of creation, fall, redemption, restoration (very similar to what you said w/ creation, fall, election - good job! though the order of decree may need to be tweaked when using "election") and then secondly, I will overview the OT through the major covenants in the Bible. So stay tuned.
Very good thoughts.
Posted by: Reid Monaghan | January 12, 2007 04:09 PM
Greg, since we do not have photos of Jesus we can only speculate as to his appearance. We know he was not the white dude with blue eyes in a flowing dress we see so often in European art.
An ancient near eastern jewish man would have not been "white" and would not have had long hair. We have no evidence historically or biblically that Jesus took a Nazirite vow to not drink wine, cut hair, etc. (see Sampson and likely John the Baptist) - So it is very likely the image on the HD screen would be similar to an ancient jewish carpenter from Nazareth.
As to TVs - a CRT does well on standard, low def, airwave TV. But if you are watching DVDs or want to see HD signals any time a flat panel LCD is much better. Some times standard TV (not cable, or digital satellite TV) signals can look a bit downsampled/not as clear on flat panel TVs. CRTs are very cheap though, and if you got an HD CRT it would have a fantastic picture, though the resolution not as high as some of the LCD or plasma displays. Just my "partially" educated, but probably not perfectly correct thoughts.
Nweid
Posted by: Reid Monaghan | January 12, 2007 04:16 PM