Failing to recognise both the continuity AND discontinuity between Old and New Testaments.
Actually, this issue has lots in common with the second post of this series about how the Old Testament is NOT 'all about me', and how we need to read it recognising its original historical and theological contexts before making immediate (and often wrong) applications of it to ourselves. So, apologies for the overlap but hopefully this will be helpful with respect to 3 particular issues we tend to make mistakes over - God's people, God's House, and Worship.
Allow me to briefly revisit the concept of the OT's original context:
Historical Context:
The one, true God chooses the nation of Israel to be His people, to dwell in His special place for them (Canaan, the promised land), and to live under His rule (as described for them in the Law).
Theological Context:
God covenants with Israel that He will be faithful to them as their God, and they must be faithful to Him as His people. Israel fails, repeatedly, in their side of the covenant. God never fails, repeatedly bestowing grace and favour on His disobedient and undeserving people.
The best is yet to come - a Messiah (Saviour) who will perfectly live as The Representative Par Excellence of faithful Israel - God's person, in God's place, under God's rule. His perfect faithfulness to God will be the means through which Israel - and the nations - can also truly be God's people (His church), in God's place (God's Kingdom), under God's rule (expressed through obedience to the New Covenant Scriptures).
A good question to ask at this point would be - how does the New Testament tell the same story as the Old Testament? And how does it tell a different story? Because that's the point of continuity and discontinuity. Like a road that first runs through a forest and then passes through fields, the Bible is one unified story that winds through different landscapes of time, place, and people. The landscapes share things in common but they are nevertheless distinct and we can get ourselves into trouble if we try to mix them or ignore their differences.
I'll just take the first example for now (House and Worship to come later): God's people.
In the Old Testament, God's chosen people are clearly the nation (or geographical and political entity) of Israel. God reveals this in His covenant to Abraham (the Patriarch, or Father of the Israelite nation) in Genesis 12 when He promised to make Abraham's descendants into a great nation which He would then bless and use to bless others.* In Exodus 19 God expressly calls Israel into this covenant relationship with Him - promising to bless them and be their God if they will obey Him and be His people. They are to be His treasured possession through whom He will reveal Himself to the nations (Isaiah 49:6). Israel is to be 'a kingdom of priests and a holy nation' (Exodus 19:6) - mediating the presence and knowledge of God to the Gentiles (all non-Israelites) so that they too may come under His sovereign Lordship.
But what does this road do when it reaches the junction between Old and New Testaments? Who are God's people now and what is their role? What is the place of the Israelite nation in God's plans and is it the same or different as in the Old Testament?
In God's wisdom and timing, He reveals Jesus as the Saviour not only of Israel but of the world. Where Israel had failed to rightly represent God to the nations, Jesus would do this perfectly - inviting and enabling Gentiles to join with righteous Israelites in right worship of God. Jesus would call to himself a new people, a new treasured possession, a new kingdom of priests and holy nation - not a geographical and political entity, but the Church (1 Peter 2:9). This church would be his beautiful bride, a people of multiple peoples, a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language. It would be the church - all believers in Christ, whether Jew or Gentile - who would now mediate the presence and knowledge of God to the world with the help of the Spirit as they preached the word.
So if the special, treasured people of God is no longer the nation of Israel but the Church, what does this mean for us?!
Well, it has heaps of ramifications (including politically!). As Christians, our primary personal and corporate efforts in belonging, participation, and protection are owed not to a nation but to the body of Christ. In fact, what nation we were born into or pledge our allegiance to is inconsequential to God, relative to whether we are part of His holy nation - the church. It's His great plan to see people from all nations worshipping Jesus around his throne for eternity, and so what should concern us is not primarily whether our nation is helping any other nation with its geo-political endeavours - because it is no longer any one nation that is God's instrument or possession, but whether all the nations are being called and enabled to worship Jesus... and whether we're being obedient to God in playing a part in this. (If it helps you, feel free to change your surname by deed-poll to match ours so it acts as a constant reminder for you too.)
So that's how the continuity of God choosing a people for Himself plays out in the New Testament against the surprising discontinuity of who He chooses and how. But let's not leave it in the abstract. We are -
a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, so that we may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His wonderful light.
(1 Peter 2:9 with emphasis added and pronouns adjusted)
May we - God's chosen people - both revel in our status as well as fulfil its purpose.
*Some Bible scholars like to emphasise that it's this covenant that forms the road that winds its way through all the landscapes of Scripture, because it's a promise that's repeated and renewed by God again and again. God's patience to repeatedly renew it is expressed by the Hebrew term 'hesed' - a self-giving, enduring, covenant faithfulness that is never thwarted by Israel's unfaithfulness.
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