In early April, Sandra Richter delivered the annual Biblical Studies Lectures at 色虎视频’s Beeson Divinity School, discussing the attitude of God toward women in the Old Testament, Christian environmentalism and reminding guests of the goodness of the Gospel.
Richter, who serves as the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, preached during Beeson’s weekly chapel services, encouraging those in attendance to remember the Gospel.
Using the four cups of wine of the traditional Jewish Passover seder as a guide, Richter described how Jesus reinterpreted the traditional meal to teach His disciples about the new covenant He initiated with His life, death and resurrection.
“This time, the oaths are not sworn or sealed with the blood of rams or bulls. This time, the oaths are sealed with the blood of God the Son. Has this become old news to us?” Richter asked. “We who were once not a people, by the mercy and sacrifice and relentless love of our God have become a people. Do we remember? Do we know who we are?”
The fourth cup is traditionally the cup of the consummation, and at the Last Supper, Jesus turned it into a promise that the disciples “did not yet know that they needed,” Richter said.
“The promise is that we will be together again. The very gates of hell will not be able to keep Jesus from His people. Another table awaits us, and this time there will be no tears, no soldiers, no panic, no death. His oath is that the fellowship we have right here, right now, is a bond that He has given His very life to make eternal. This fourth cup is a cup of hope,” Richter said.
In her first lecture, “Does the God of the Old Testament Dehumanize Women?” Richter carefully looked at passages detailing the law in regard to women, showing how the Bible, rather than the common accusation of being misogynistic, in fact elevates and protects women.
In her second lecture, Richter discussed whether a Christian can be an environmentalist, calling the issue “one of the most misunderstood topics of social justice and holiness within the Christian community today.”
Creation care is an expression of God’s character, she said. In the Genesis creation account, God commands Adam and Eve to “tend” and “guard” creation. Sin has subjected the created order, as well as mankind, to futility, she reminded those in attendance, as seen in Romans 8.
“The final declaration of our salvation is the resurrection of our fallen bodies from the dead, when we are delivered from the curse of Eden. And in Romans 8, we find that the created order also longs for this.
“There is one voice that I know every Christian wants to hear, and that is the voice of Scripture. One seems incontrovertible to me. The Garden and its creatures are not ours. They are His,” Richter said. “Our God-ordained task from before the fall was to care for this garden. Our sin has left us using it for our own ends with no thought as to what God wants or how to care rightly for His creation.”