What God is doing in the Bible according to Tim Saleska

I made some notes on a MP3 lecture by OT lecturer Tim Saleska entitled "Interpreting Scripture in a Systematics Context". He describes the lecture as a few thoughts on what he sees God doing in the Bible. It is always interesting what people choose to highlight and what to miss out in introductory summaries, and I really liked Tim Saleska's selection.

• You can't escape God - God is the 'problem'. Because the Bible clearly presents God as in control of everything, there is nowhere we can go to avoid him.

• Israel is chosen by God - it is Israel's heart that God is interested in. His relationship with Israel is a love story, husband and wife, father and son. But because Israel is unfaithful she needs to disciplined and put to death so that she can have a new heart that beats for God. So it is Israel who gets the resurrection, and the blessing belongs to Israel
• Who gets to be Israel? God decides. Throughout the OT God is choosing some and not others.
• His choice is Christ. In his Baptism, and throughout his life God shows his choice of Jesus as his people in one person. Christ receives all of God's promises to Israel.
• Christ is God's Word to us - so in Christ he speaks to us of his choice of us, our death and resurrection, which makes us his children with Jesus.