Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, September 19, 2021
The days in the Old Testament seem to be backwards. Of course, I’m sure we can all grasp that they count time differently, so it’s not wrong but different. Except, I would like to contend that the Old Testament’s way of counting days is instructive to us. Honestly, it’s also better. The day starts in the evening as the Sun sets and then continues into the daytime after the night, ending at sunset the subsequent evening. Think, perhaps, of the Jewish observation of the Sabbath to see this in practice: beginning on Friday evening and following through to Saturday evening.

Have you ever noticed that in Genesis chapter one, the days are the wrong way around?
When I say the wrong way around, I mean backwards to what we expect, and before you rush off to compare the order of creation and question whether it means anything meaningful that the sun and moon come so late (it does, but that’s not our topic today), look at each day.
They’re backwards.
“And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” and each day thereafter. Evening, then morning. That’s backwards. We all know that days start in the morning, unless we’re pedantic enough to insist that they start in the middle of night. If we are that pedant, we are a prime example of what happens when you give a scientist a poet’s job, or when we let people learn the natural sciences before they’re thoroughly grounded in real subjects, like poetry.
But the destructive results of carving the day into twenty-four sections and thinking we’ve done something clever aside, the days in the Old Testament seem to be backwards.
Of course, I’m sure we can all grasp that they count time differently, so it’s not wrong but different. Except, I would like to contend that the Old Testament’s way of counting days is instructive to us. Honestly, it’s also better.
The day starts in the evening as the Sun sets and then continues into the daytime after the night, ending at sunset the subsequent evening. Think, perhaps, of the Jewish observation of the Sabbath to see this in practice: beginning on Friday evening and following through to Saturday evening.
Ok, they count days differently, so what?
Little things like this shape the way we see the world. They subconsciously tell us stories. Day, followed by night tells us a story: we have limited time to work, then our death will come. Make the most of your days in the sun while you can, for they are brief. The best comes at the beginning, the worst at the end: or in other words, youth is better than old age. This is as good as it will get, or nearly, once you hit a peak it’s downhill from there. There is nothing to hope for, for the Sun is dying, slowly, inexorably, and we will perish with it. We are brief. Life is short.
This is the liturgy of the hours, day, then night. It is a story of swelling sadness, of endings, and of the death of God. Everything that is good withers and perishes.
You might think that you are not affected by this, but you are, we all are. The smallest of things done day after day will shape the way we see the world.
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We can learn from the Bereans in the authority over men that they recognize in God’s Word. The Bereans “examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” What “things”? Paul’s preaching. Even someone like the great Apostle is not over or above the Bible.

On his second missionary journey, Paul made a sudden detour to Berea after the fledgling Christian church in Thessalonica was violently threatened. While Paul’s plan may have been disrupted, his pattern of ministry was not: in Berea he continued his established method of reasoning from the Scriptures in the synagogues with Jews and other God-fearers. There is not a lot told to us about the people of Berea except that they were “more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).
Luke clearly admired their enthusiasm for the Word, and Christians for centuries after have admired the same. To this day, it is not odd to find their name adopted by congregations. In my own city, we have a Berean Baptist Church. Colleges have taken on these Berean Jews as their namesake, and settlers in Kentucky hundreds of years ago named their small village Berea—now it’s the fastest-growing city in the state. While we don’t know a whole lot about this group of God-fearers in Berea, we know enough to model ourselves after them in at least three ways.
The Attitude We Have toward the Word
First is in the attitude that we give to Scripture. The Bereans “received the word with all eagerness.” The Greek word here, prothumia, means “readiness of mind.” It doesn’t mean that they were naive, willing to accept anything. But they were leaning in and expecting something great to come from God’s Word. They anticipated that it would speak to them, guide them, and not fail them.
We struggle with that eagerness, don’t we? Often, we approach the Scriptures like a child approaches the spoonful of cough syrup being offered to her. But we should approach the Word with the joy of the psalmist, who said it is “sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Ps. 19:10). The Bereans viewed God’s Word as a great gift. That’s why they “received” it—they took what was given them. They received with a thankful, eager, and expectant attitude because what comes from God’s hand is always good. If we come to God’s Word with eager expectation, we will not treat it flippantly.
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The sister of Theodosius, Pulcheria, was next in line to the throne.  She was a supporter of the orthodox view of Christ’s two natures, and not only her, but also her husband Marcian.  Her husband became the new emperor and he fairly quickly convened another ecumenical council to settle the issue of Eutychianism and other Christological heresies. This council began in Chalcedon (in modern day Turkey) on October 8, 451.  Debate was intense and deep regarding the person of Christ, particularly his two natures. 

The Council of Nicea was decisive for addressing Trinitarian heresies. But following this meeting, other heresies continued to infect the Church. In today’s instalment of this series, we’ll look at how heresies regarding the doctrine of Christ were addressed.
In the late 300s and into the 400s, controversy raged about the relationship between the divinity and humanity of Christ.  The fact that he was both God and man wasn’t so much in dispute.  It was more about how these natures interacted.  So, for example, we find Nestorius in Antioch.  He taught that the human nature of Christ is separate and distinct from the divine nature.  Bishop Cyril of Alexandria exerted himself against this teaching.  Both Cyril and Nestorius had large groups of followers.
The Council of Ephesus was convened in 431 to sort this out.  It was actually the initiative of Nestorius.  He was convinced that an ecumenical council would see his teaching vindicated and Cyril convicted as a heretic.  It was supposed to be a meeting of the minds, but half the minds didn’t appear and they were the ones supposed to vindicate Nestorius.  Consequently, Nestorius was roundly condemned.  But he and his followers met separately and returned the favour.  They condemned and excommunicated Cyril and his followers.  All of this history resulted in the establishment of a “Church of the East,” which includes the Assyrian Church.  To this day, this church remains Nestorian, along with several others in the East.
Things blew up again with a monk from Constantinople by the name of Eutyches.  He taught that, after the incarnation, Christ had only one nature.  It was a single nature composed of a mixture of the divine and human.  Eutyches compared it to mixing wine with water.  Once the two are mixed, they become indistinguishable from one another.
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