The Age-old Promised Thing

“The story [of the Gospel of Luke] is thus one of movement and fulfillment; movement and mission; God and his promises to Abraham; God and Abraham’s seed; God and his covenant with David; God and recalcitrant Israel; God and renewed Israel; God and the nations he said he would bless: for God himself is on the move (keeping promises, answering prayer, filling a people, working  miracles, stretching out his hand, setting prisoners free, spreading his people abroad, and overseeing their participation in his redemptive mission). God is doing something new in the world – first through his Spirit-empowered servant Jesus (3:22; 4:1, 14, 18-19) and then (and now) through the Spirit-filled followers of Jesus (11:11-13; 24:48-49; Acts 1:4-8; 2:1-21). But this new thing is the age-old promised thing, the thing for which faithful Israel had for so long been waiting. The story of national Israel has reached its divinely intended climax – it is time for Yahweh’s renewed temple-people to be a house of prayer made up of all nations.” (Craig G. Bartholomew and Robby Holt, ”Prayer in/and the Drama of Redemption in Luke” in Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation, Bartholomew, et. al. eds., p. 360)