Old Testament Themes: Theme Noun
Old Testament Themes: Theme Noun
Old Testament Themes: Theme Noun
Theme /θim/
noun
2. a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in a literary or
artistic work – it was the usual ‘boy gets girl’ theme
syn: motif
Before leaving our study of the Old Testament, it will be useful to review it, not as an historical review of the facts, but as a
review of the big ideas presented throughout the entire Old Testament.
1. Historic Themes
a. Historical themes of the Old Testament are things that God has done in history that represent recurring ideas.
b. By identifying these themes we will make certain that we don’t miss the greater meaning that God wants us to
learn.
c. We learn reasons behind God’s movements in history – the “why,” not just the “what.”
d. If the New Covenant in Jesus blood is a fulfillment of all things in the Old Testament, then we would do well to
understand the meaning of those things.
2. Metaphoric Themes
a. God makes extensive use of metaphors in both Old and New Testaments. Through the use of metaphors God
can teach His children much more effectively. Some advantages to using metaphors in teaching are
i. Complex concepts can be communicated more effectively by associating many of the attributes of one
object with another.
ii. Metaphors transcend the limits of the language of a specific time and place by appealing to more
universal symbols.
b. God, as the author of life, and the chief contributing author of the storyline of history, has the unique
advantage of being able to build His metaphors into the creation and into the events of history.
i. If a poet says, “My love for you is as big as the ocean,” it has a greater impact than if he simply said, “my
love for you is really vast.” Imagine if the poet is Himself the one who made His beloved and the ocean in
the first place!
B. Themes
1. God Is.
a. Let’s not let this first and most basic theme escape our notice.
b. Because it is usually taken for granted in the Bible, we may not notice it.
2. God Created
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b. God is the source of all things and of all life
c. The primary meaning of the word “father” throughout the Bible is the concept of “procreator,” “genitor,”
“originator,” or “one who causes another to be born.”
d. Isaiah 42:5-10
Thus says God the LORD,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and its offspring,
“Behold, the former things have come to pass,
Now I declare new things;
Before they spring forth I proclaim them to you."
e. Isaiah 43:19
"Behold, I will do something new,
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.”
f. Isaiah 43:1
But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel,
"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!
g. Isaiah 45:7-8
The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well-being and creating calamity;
I am the LORD who does all these.
God's Supreme Power
"Drip down, O heavens, from above,
And let the clouds pour down righteousness;
Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit,
And righteousness spring up with it.
I, the LORD, have created it.
h. Jeremiah 31:22
Speaking of Zion, the New Covenant church, He says “For the LORD has created a new thing in the earth.”
i. This theme is carried through to the New Testament in a spiritual application, communicating the idea of
causing the child to behave like the father, as in
i. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who
believe in His name.” (John 1:12)
v. 2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things
have come.”
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vi. Galatians 6:15
“For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”
a. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
b. Heaven (or sky) is where God dwells – metaphorically, in a place higher than we, who are bound to the earth.
d. Deuteronomy 26:15
'Look down from Your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless Your people Israel, and the ground which You
have given us, a land flowing with milk and honey, as You swore to our fathers.'
e. Psalm 113:4
The LORD is high above all nations;
His glory is above the heavens.
f. Isaiah 66:1-2a
Thus says the LORD,
"Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool
Where then is a house you could build for Me?
And where is a place that I may rest?
"For My hand made all these things,
Thus all these things came into being," declares the LORD
"But to this one I will look,
To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.
g. 1 Kings 8:27
"But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how
much less this house which I have built!
h. Isaiah 55:9
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than
your thoughts.”
i. Nehemiah 9:13
"Then You came down on Mount Sinai,
And spoke with them from heaven;
You gave them just ordinances and true laws,
Good statutes and commandments.
j. In the New Testament, though we are told to pray, “Our Father, Who art in heaven…”, we are also told that
God is with us, as predicted “his name shall be called ‘Immanuel.’”
i. John 3:10-13
Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?
"Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not
accept our testimony. "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you
heavenly things? "No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of
Man.”
a. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”
b. Psalm 27:1; Isaiah 5:20; Isaiah 60:1-3,19; Exodus 25:37; Nehemiah 9:12
5. Separation – Day 1
a. “And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness”
c. Leviticus 20:24-26
'Hence I have said to you, "You are to possess their land, and I Myself will give it to you to possess it, a land
flowing with milk and honey " I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples. 'You are
therefore to make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and
the clean; and you shall not make yourselves detestable by animal or by bird or by anything that creeps on
the ground, which I have separated for you as unclean. 'Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am
holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine.
6. Heaven/Sky – Day 2
(We already covered this.)
c. Very often the Gentiles are called “the sea,” and Israel is called “the land.”
d. Psalm 65:5-7
By awesome deeds You answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation,
You who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea;
Who establishes the mountains by His strength,
Being girded with might;
Who stills the roaring of the seas,
The roaring of their waves,
And the tumult of the peoples.
e. Isaiah 57:20-21
But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
For it cannot be quiet,
And its waters toss up refuse and mud.
"There is no peace," says my God, "for the wicked."
f. Jude 12-13
These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for
themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted;
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wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness
has been reserved forever.
i. Isaiah 24:14-15
They raise their voices, they shout for joy;
They cry out from the west concerning the majesty of the LORD.
Therefore glorify the LORD in the east,
The name of the LORD, the God of Israel,
In the coastlands of the sea.
j. Malachi 1:11
"For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every
place incense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name will be great
among the nations," says the LORD of hosts.
k. Revelation 21:1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is
no longer any sea.
l. James 1:6
But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and
tossed by the wind.
8. Plants – Day 3
b. Genesis 2:8
The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had
formed.
c. Exodus 16:35
The sons of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate the manna until
they came to the border of the land of Canaan.
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d. John 6:47-51
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. "I am the bread of life. "Your fathers ate the manna
in the wilderness, and they died. "This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of
it and not die. "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live
forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh."
b. “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.”
c. Man is valuable.
i. Genesis 9:5-6
d. Man Is Personal
i. Being in His image apparently qualifies us for a personal relationship with Him.
ii. Whatever else being in His image may entail, it must include having a free will.
v. In John 17, Jesus expresses the depth to which He hopes to have a relationship with man, that is, that we
may be one with Him in love in the same way that Jesus and His Father have been one in love since
before the foundation of the world.
a. Genesis 2:1-3
i. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed
His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God
had created and made.
b. Exodus 31:12-18
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i. “…that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you… 'Therefore you are to observe the
Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any
work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people… but on the seventh day He ceased from
labor, and was refreshed.”
ii. In the Old Testament the paradigmatic act of redemption is the exodus from Egypt. God delivered his
people from bondage in Egypt where they had no rest. He brought them into the land promised to
Abraham, where he gave them spatial rest. Along the way, at Sinai, he gave them the gift of the Sabbath
day (shabbat). God commands his people to sanctify the Sabbath, observing it as a day of rest on which
no work is done. In the Ten Commandments as given at Sinai, he bases this on creation:
“For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and
rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”
iii. In the ten commandments as repeated by Moses forty years later, he bases this on redemption:
'You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought
you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God
commanded you to observe the sabbath day.”
c. Hebrews 4:9-10
So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also
rested from his works, as God did from His.
a. “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living being.”
b. In Hebrew, “breath” and “spirit” are the same word; and in Greek, “breath” and “spirit” are the same word.
c. In both cases, they are something invisible that is breathed into a physical being that causes it to come to life.
ii. God spoke words when he gave the law, and he called the law our life. (Deut 30:15 & 19)
iii. Jesus said "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are
spirit and are life.” (John 6:63)
a. We would live with a constant example of the relationship of God and man.
a. Genesis 2:9,16-17
Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food;
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the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
f. New Covenant
i. Jeremiah 31:31-34
"Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a
husband to them," declares the LORD. "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel
after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I
will be their God, and they shall be My people. "They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and
each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the
greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no
more."
i. Deuteronomy 30:15-20
h. The sanctions of the law are good – to whatever degree the sanctions help uphold the law, they have the
same value as the law. To remove the sanctions would be as damaging to our well-being as removing the law.
e. Exodus 9:23 – Fire ran down to the earth, and the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt.
f. Exodus 12:8-10
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i. “eat the flesh…roasted with fire…” – for the Passover meal.
ii. 'Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs
along with its entrails. And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until
morning, you shall burn with fire.”
g. Exodus 24:17
And to the eyes of the sons of Israel the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a consuming fire on
the mountain top.
h. Exodus 29:14
"But the flesh of the bull and its hide and its refuse, you shall burn with fire outside the camp; it is a sin
offering.”
i. Exodus 35:3
"You shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day."
j. Proverbs 27:21
The crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold,
And each is tested by the praise accorded him.
k. Deuteronomy 4:20
"But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own
possession, as today.”
l. Psalm 12:6
The words of the LORD are pure words;
As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.
m. Isaiah 48:10
"Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
o. Malachi 4:1
"For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff;
and the day that is coming will set them ablaze," says the LORD of hosts, "so that it will leave them neither
root nor branch."
i. Matthew 13:49-50
"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the
righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of
teeth.”
q. Hell
i. Mark 9:43
"If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your
two hands, to go into hell [Gehenna], into the unquenchable fire,”
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18. Water
a. Washing
b. Examples
iv. Crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land – Joshua 3:7-17
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And the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the middle
of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground, until all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan.
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iv. John 13:5-10
Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the
towel with which He was girded. So He came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, "Lord, do You wash my
feet?" Jesus answered and said to him, "What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand
hereafter." Peter said to Him, "Never shall You wash my feet!" Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you,
you have no part with Me." Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my
hands and my head." Jesus said to him, "He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is
completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."
v. John 15:3
“You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.”
19. Blood
b. 1 Corinthians 5:7
Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our
Passover also has been sacrificed.
c. Hebrews 9:22
And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of
blood there is no forgiveness.
d. 1 Corinthians 11:25
In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this,
as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."
a. In the Garden
The Wrong Way
Genesis 3:7
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves
together and made themselves loin coverings.
i. Matthew 23:23
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have
neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things
you should have done without neglecting the others.”
ii. 1 Samuel 15
Samuel said,
"Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
As in obeying the voice of the LORD?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed than the fat of rams.
i. Galatians 4:10-11
You observe days and months and seasons and years.
I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.
e. Sacrifice for sin allows God to justly set aside the penalty of the law if the goal of the law is fulfilled. The goal
of the law is our obedience from the heart.
Question: How does Jesus’ sacrifice accomplish this where the old covenant failed to?
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The Progress of Creation