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Thomasius: Old Testament
Selections with Interpretation
and Homiletical Adaptation
Dr. Johann Michael Reu |
Greetings in the Name of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
When preparing listings for our online sales through Quality Music and Books and other venues, I always check condition by going through every page of every book. This selection caught my attention. The intended audience for Reu's book is preachers, yet Steuer's translation offers inspirational reading and commentary that the average reader will understand. Some passages from the book in quotes are here placed in italics. Longer paragraphs have been broken into smaller sections for ease of reading.
...Mary Katherine May
Thomasius Old Testament Selections with Interpretation and Homiletical Adaptation
Dr. Johann Michael Reu (1869-1943)
Translated from the German by Max L. Steuer, D.D. Dr. Reu's exegetical treatment of Thomasius Old Testament Selections appeared originally in German in two volumes (Die alttestamentlichen Perikopen nach der Auswahl von Professor Dr. Thomasius), the first in 1901 and the second in 1903.
Columbus OH: The Wartburg Press, 1959
x, 704 pages
Isaiah 61: 1-7 New Living Translation (NLT) (source: BibleGateway.com)
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has annointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord's favor has come, and with it, the day of God's anger against their enemies.
To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory. They will rebuild the ancient ruins, repairing the cities destroyed long ago. They will revive them, though they have been deserted for many generations.
Foreigners will be your servants. They will feed your flocks and plow your fields and tend your vineyards. You will be called priests of the Lord, ministers of our God. You will feed on the treasures of the nations and boast in their riches. Instead of shame and dishonor, you will enjoy a double portion of prosperity in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.
From The First Sunday in Advent, Isaiah 61: 1-7 (pp.
10-11)
Also
in adapting the second part of the text for our preaching it will be necessary
to sketch briefly what the Lord wanted to accomplish with Israel and thereupon
make the application to our own times.
The two points which should be noted are the meaning of the expressions oaks of righteousness (v.3) and priests of the Lord (v.6). This we are to be
and become in our own day through the work of the exalted Christ.
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Tamme-Lauri Oak at Urvaste,
oldest oak tree in Estonia. |
Oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord: Paradise has been lost, but God desires to create a new one
for us. In the new Paradise Christians
as individuals are to stand like trees planted by streams of water, like mighty oaks, able to resist the violence of the storm.
Christ first sees man only as an uprooted
plant, lying wilted on the ground, ready for the fire. He then plants us again through baptism into
a heavenly soil and nurtures us with His Word so that being ever more firmly
rooted in the same, we may grow up into mature
manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; into sanctified
persons, able to withstand the storms of temptation, resolutely taking our
stand for Christ and ever verdant abounding in good works. (So Paul speaks, but
without imagery, in Titus 2:14 and also in Romans 8:34.)
A treeless region looks barren and
empty. Only trees can give land life and
beauty. So we Christians are to give to
the earth a beauty that will delight the eye of our God and cause Him to
rejoice. Luther says,
This is a beautiful picture, containing the
excellent comfort that Christians, whom the world despises and considers
worthless and weak, are in God’s eyes as a paradise and as the loveliest of
trees, flourishing evermore and bringing forth fruit. The world also has gardens, in which, however,
only trees of unrighteousness grow.
These are not to be compared with the Christians. Again this imagery shows that a Christian is
not made but born, not fashioned by human power but planted by the hand of
God. For Christ is the gardener, and the
Christians are the work of His pure grace, being uprooted from the garden of
the world and transplanted into a different life from that of the world.
Christians are to exist for the glory of God
so that everyone must confess, What a
gardener he must be who has such trees in his garden! (See 1Peter 2:9, and
Matthew 5:16).
Priests of the Lord,
ministers of our God:
Through the operation of His Word in our hearts Christ desires to make priests
of us. The same gracious purpose,
according to which God chose His ancient people, is to be realized in us (1Peter 2:9). As priests offer sacrifices, so Christians are to offer the
sacrifices of thanksgiving, presenting their bodies a living sacrifice to the
Lord (Romans 12:1). Priests draw near to God, and we, too, are permitted to draw near to God with the prayer, Abba, Father!
But above all, priests are to bear witness
before the world of God’s grace and omnipotence. So also the Christian is to be a herald of his
Savior, overcoming the world by his testimony (John 15:47). And by all that a Christian is and does he is
to bear witness, by his words and deeds as well as by his sufferings.
Ministers, servants of God!--is there a higher, a kinder, and a richer Lord
whom one might serve? To be servants of
God should be our one desire. And there
is great reward, for God promises us a double portion for all that we might
have to suffer (v.7). All things shall
be added unto us already in this life, and in the world above, Christ, as the
true Joshua, will bestow upon us our true inheritance.
From the Preface of the first edition by M. Reu, Rock Falls, Illinois, September 1, 1899: This book grew out of a pastor's studies in preparation of his sermons. A number of years ago when I began to preach on these Bavarian Old Testament selections I could find no helps as Somer and Nebe have provided for the New Testament selections for the church year, so I had to dig for myself. The results of these studies are now offered to my brethren in the ministry.
Luther regarded the Old Testament very highly and recognized its great value for the congregation. In his work on the order of divine worship he gave instruction for its use on weekdays and in vespers.
Other friends and pupils of Luther did a great deal of preaching on Old Testament texts, among them Joh. Mathesius, Nic. Selneccer, Ag. Hunnius, Ph. Nicolai, Spener, and others.
Among the Reformed theologians and preachers Calvin and others made abundant use of the Old Testament books in their preaching, sometimes giving them even an unwarranted preference.
Even a brief study of preaching will show that at one time, especially in the sixteenth century, homiletical treatment of the Old Testament was quite general. Toward the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, however, preaching on the Old Testament began to decline. this can be traced in part to the influence of such men as Schleiermacher, but most directly to the rise of rationalism.
Every pastor should deem it his duty to preach on the Old Testament. Not to do so deprives the congregation of the opportunity to understand the New Testament. To understand the plan of salvation one must give attention to its development from Adam to Christ. The more one studies and meditates upon this, the greater Christ becomes, and the grander one's conception of God's holiness and righteousness and of His love and grace will be. How God has "in these last days spoken unto us by His Son" will be much better understood when we also listen to Him "who at sundry times an din divers manner spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets." Christ literally "lived" in the Word of the Old Testament, especially in the prophets and the Psalms and presented nothing new that was not organically connected with the Old Testament.
To be sure, our preaching on the Old Testament will not be in the same manner as was that of the fathers of the seventeenth century, who, so to speak, simply carried the New Testament into the Old. Considerable progress in exegesis has been made since then. Our interpretation must, first of all, introduce our hearers to the history and the conditions of the times concerning which the man of God is writing so that the applications will proceed naturally from the Word itself.
Such a treatment of any Old Testament text, of course, presupposes a fairly thorough exegesis. For this part of the treatment of these texts this book hopes to provide some help. In the second part, the homiletical adaptation, hints for the body and the structure of sermons on these texts are given. The moral and the prophetic significance of the text is set forth showing not only how it applies to our own times but also, especially in the prophetic texts, how the message is often directed to us as well as to the prophet's contemporaries. This is vital since fulfillment was not exhausted in their day, nor is it in ours. The sermon outlines offered at the end of each text are, of course, intended merely as suggestions.
From Wikipedia:
Gottfried Thomasius (1802-1875) was a German Lutheran theologian, an important representative of the Erlangen School within the German Neo-Lutheranism movement. He is credited for introducing the concept of Kenotic Christology into German theology, of which, his aim was to provide an understanding of the limited consciousness of Jesus Christ, without denying the unity of deity and humanity in Christ.
