22/10/2022
*10 Talking Points Lesson 4: The Old Testament Hope*
1. Last week we learnt about human nature at the beginning of life and at death to underscore that there is no conscious existence of a person who has breath of life separated from the body. In this week’s lesson, we explore the ‘Old Testament Hope’ which projects the future restoration of life to those who died.
2. The Old Testament (OT) indicates that the secular world did not believe that there will be a physical restoration of the body after death. For example, the work of the Greek god Haides or Hades was to keep the dead imprisoned permanently in the grave. This could have influenced the Sadducees’ belief ‘that there is no resurrection’ (Mat 22:23).
3. Against the then dominant societal belief that rejects resurrection, we learn glimpses of hope for resurrection from Job, David the Psalmist, and Prophets Isaiah and Daniel. Through these patriarchs and prophets, God reveals the good news that the grave is not the final place in His plan for humanity.
4. The righteous but suffering Job clearly understood death as physical cessation of life or existence. He was also futuristic in the hope of living again when he talked of “seeing God” (Job 19:25) at the second coming of Jesus to redeem the faithful. This is so because in this sinful world, ‘no person can see God and live’ (Exod 33:20) except Jesus who is sinless and has immortality (John 1:18; 1Tim 6:16).
5. The Psalmist (chapter 49) also challenges the view that the grave is a permanent prison. He expresses hope that ‘God will redeem my life from the power of the grave’ (Ps 49:15) in the future. How does the belief in the future resurrection affect our attitude on materialistic culture now?
6. The psalmist further refers to the grave as the ‘depth of the earth’ (71:20) where the children of God have ‘continual hope’ (vs. 14) that they will be brought up from should they die before God comes (vs. 20). This is another glimpse of belief on the hope of resurrection in future. David also argues that God can raise or revive us from depressive moments while living.
7. The prophet Isaiah contrasts the eternal destinations of the wicked and the righteous at death. The righteous dead ‘shall live, together with their body they shall awake’ in the future when God commands the grave or earth to cast out the dead (Isa 26:19). The opposite happens to the wicked (Isa 26:14).
8. The prophet Daniel (chapter 12) gives another evidence of OT hope in the future resurrection where both the righteous and the wicked will be resurrected. He argues that ‘at that time’ (12:1) or ‘at the end of days’ (12:13) ‘those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake’ (12:2) to two separate destinations. How many resurrections are there at the end and what is their sequencing?
9. Did the OT church have hope in the future Messiah who has ‘keys of death and Hades’ (Rev 1:18)? Does resurrection at the second coming of Jesus Christ seem impossible? How does the lesson on understanding human nature relate to the resurrection of God’s people? How did Job grow in the knowledge of the resurrection hope from his view in Job 7:9 to that in Job 19:25-27?
10. Though sinful humanity lived under the shadow and body of death (Ps 23:4; Rom 7:24), God’s promise of hope to all generations in the OT included being alive bodily once more after the experience of the grave. The promised Messiah and restoration of the nation from bo***ge was linked to the individual hope of resurrection of the body. Next, we study ‘Resurrections Before the Cross’.
