The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the Old Testament: Israel’s In-Your-Face, Holy God

The Old Testament bears witness to an in-your-face, holy God–a God who gets down and dirty with creation and history; a God who gets in people’s face with love and law, with power and purpose. Yet Israel’s in-your-face God is also holy –too other, too raw, too intense to be handled without oven mitts.

Rolf Jacobson wrestles with this in-your-face God.

The Old Testament starts at the beginning, where God digs in the dirt to create humanity and then gets in the dustlings’ faces when they sin. God smiles on Abraham and Sarah, electing their descendants as the chosen people, but has to get in Pharaoh’s face when he tries to enslave the people. Mostly, God gets in Israel’s face: with laws about what it looks like to be God’s people and through the prophets, who have to get in the faces of those who turn away from the Holy One.

Jacobson also explores the psalms, poetry in which God often hides his face. He closes by exploring how the Old Testament points us ahead to Jesus, when God took on a human face and offered us the most intimate picture of God we’ll ever get.