Essentials of Old Testament Theology - Lesson 1

I am grateful to have the chance to speak. I thank the musicians and for Bruce. We got together and planned this service for minutes and minutes before it happened. I like being at College Church on Wednesday night. It’s interesting to meet and talk to people in the community and elsewhere about College Church so that somebody asked me awhile back, “Where do you go to church?” I said, “I go to College Church.” They said, “Well, that’s a great big church, isn’t it?” I said, “Why, it all depends on when you go. If you want to be a member of a smaller church, come on Wednesday night. We’re there.” 

It’s good to see many of you that I’ve seen and prayed with quite a bit. I mentioned our Sunday school class, which is a different size on Sunday morning. We have a whole variety of Bible studies. In fact, I suppose in this church if women didn’t want to worship with men, they wouldn’t have to and vice versa. So really, it’s a chance to be together on a Wednesday night. This is a good opportunity. On Wednesday night, it feels a whole lot like the kind of church I grew up in size and even, frankly, the age make-up in the room. 

I have been asked to do five talks on Old Testament themes, putting the pieces together, trying to put the whole Old Testament together. First of all, they asked me if I would do a five-week survey of the Old Testament, 30 minutes for each session. We had just done in the Genesis class—some of you’re in there, the intro, the Old Testament. As I came in tonight—I love this— Leland Reich asked me if I was going to do the same thing I’d done in Sunday school. He hadn’t had his coat off yet. I didn’t know if he was going to stay, but I said the same thing to mark my fare when he asked me to do this. I asked, “Couldn’t we do something like some major connecting themes in the Old Testament?” That’s what we’re going to try to do. Tonight, I want to clear the ground for doing that by talking about approaching the Old Testament, how we study it and why we study it. My overall hope in these weeks is to help us connect the Old and New Testaments so we can display the unity of the Bible for God’s glory in his service. I want to apply the themes and the ideas as much as possible to our daily lives so we can live for the Lord.

I. Why?

To begin this process. I’m going to ask a question and try to answer it at least partially. This question is often asked of me as an Old Testament teacher. Now, I don’t know all your professions, so I don’t know if you ever get asked to defend what you do for a living. My father was a lawyer. I suppose unless you need help from a lawyer, a lot of people have nasty attitudes about lawyers. I don’t suppose anyone asked a doctor, “Why are you a doctor?” Seems to be something self-evident about that. But I’ve been asked from time to time why I teach the Old Testament why we need it? I first got experience early on when I was starting my doctoral work in Old Testament. I met a fellow who had some influence in the school we were in and he asked, “What are you studying?” I said, “I’m studying Old Testament, doing a doctorate in Old Testament.” His response was, “Why couldn’t you get into the New Testament program?” He was shocked when I said I’d gone for this straight away. This is what I wanted to do. 

It strikes me odd that we don’t find it odd to ask this question, “Why study the Old Testament?” I really believe the New Testament writers and the early Christians would have been floored that you would ask such a question. You might’ve said, “They were a few books of Scripture short, they were still working on theirs, and maybe they just made do till they had something better!” But I don’t think they thought that way. I think they would be absolutely astounded that you would ask why we would study the Old Testament. They would rather ask a second question that we’ll talk about, and that is, “How shall we, as Christ’s followers, understand and interpret and apply the Old Testament?” They ask a ‘how’ question, not a ‘why’ question. But because it’s fairly typical to ask, maybe some of you will be asked why we would study Old Testament. 

Let me offer a few traditional answers. I have heard people say one reason we study the Old Testament is because it offers a central, historical, and terminological background. We don’t know who Israel is. When you read the New Testament without this historical background, without certain terms like ‘sacrifice,’ ‘Passover,’ and that sort of thing, we wouldn’t know what some of the New Testament passages are talking about. So, we really need to know something about the Old Testament just to be able to read the New intelligently.

Also, historical and terminological background are not an unimportant thing. We need that in every profession in which any of us would work. I’m not opposed to that, though I think there is more to it than that. Oftentimes in our society you’ll hear people say, “We study the Old Testament because it offers essential ethical components for a just society and for individuals to live in an ethical manner.” Often, they then stress the importance of the Ten Commandments. 

Where I lived in Ambridge, Pennsylvania teaching at Trinity Episcopal School for ministry, we had a kind of freedom forum there in our park. It had a big mural to the four freedoms, and it had monuments to the war dead. Then in this little stone off the corner of the park, it had the Ten Commandments. I don’t suppose there was ever any protest over the Ten Commandments in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. We have bigger problems than whether the Ten Commandments are in the park in that town! But when it was all said and done, the average passerby would probably say, “Those are the great ethical principles, and the more you know them, that would be a good thing,” and I’m not against the Ten Commandments, as you might suspect. 

What else could we say? Well, many Christians would tell you that we study the Old Testament because it offers the essential promise of the Savior. We know that God has promised to the world from the first sin onward that evil would not overcome the Lord’s plan. We know that through Abraham and then through David, God was going to send the Savior. We believe Jesus is that Savior. I’ve often heard very fine Christians basically say the one purpose—not the most important or the overriding purpose, which I would agree with—but the only purpose for the Old Testament is the promise of the Savior.

As important as that is, I think there might be some other things we could say. These days, too, people say you ought to study the Old Testament if you’re going to understand what’s going on in our world. One of the bestsellers now is a book about Abraham. One of the ways it’s billed is that he’s the father of the Jewish people. He’s very significant to Islamic peoples and very important to Christians too. You really can’t know what’s going on today and be a cultured, educated person without knowing something then about Abraham and the Old Testament—there’s some truth in that. 

A friend of mine was once talking to a whole bunch of us in our Bible department when I was teaching at Taylor University. He said, “I’ve become very interested in all the subjects that the Old Testament covers that the New doesn’t address.” I don’t remember all that he had in mind, but he was particularly talking about leadership issues, and he was working with some political scientists at the time. It was noted in the Old Testament—much more so than in the New—you have people working in government like Daniel or like David. You try to understand that sort of thing. I had this fact of the Old Testament covering some issues the New Testament doesn’t address come home to roost. A few years ago, I heard a sermon titled “God Doesn’t Care.” It went something like this— I thought that was an interesting title, particularly since the sermon would be in a Presbyterian church. It was interesting to preach a sermon about how God doesn’t care to people of a Calvinist tradition. I didn’t know if it was a gimmick or what. I was there because my kid was singing, so I had to go. Anyway, I heard this sermon, and this individual had come from a convention in which they had been addressing the issue of the ordination of homosexuals. Here is how the sermon went: he said the clearest statements in the Bible opposing homosexuality are in the Old Testament. Then he said, “We know that the Old Testament has been set aside.” 

Point one. And by the way, if you grant the logic I’m about to follow, you couldn’t disagree. His second point was many folks point to Romans 1 as being opposed to homosexual activity. But he said that’s not as clear and explicit as the Old Testament makes it. Paul could be talking about other things. Some scholars think that it is and it is not as clear as we’d like it to be. Then he made pretty much a valid point when he said Paul mentions homosexual acts elsewhere. There are specific acts, particularly of the nature of a man with a boy for money in a specific sort of sin, not general activity. So, he said we would be opposed to any sort of pedophilia. Then he said, Jesus says nothing on the subject. God doesn’t care, and neither should we. We ought to get on with life and let people be and accept people for what they are. 

I was intrigued by his sermon. And no, I didn’t throw anything. I didn’t walk out because my kid had been a guest singer. And these were my neighbors. Some of them had odd expressions during the message. But if you grant the person his first point, you know—the Old Testament is where this is addressed in any sort of detail—we know that set aside. 

I got thinking about the other subject, what the Old Testament addresses that the New doesn’t. Besides what my colleague had said, and besides what I’d heard here, I think about issues of rape and specific help for the poor and a whole lot of other things. So, I began to ask myself if we just stopped and thought. If we would just stop and ask somebody like the Apostle Paul, why he didn’t write more about issues like child abuse and other things and things like being more honest in business. There are probably more verses in the book of Proverbs about being honest in business than in the whole New Testament. You stop [inaudible] Paul and tell him, “I want you to write more about that,” I think he would have handed you a soul-winner’s Old Testament saying, “Look, we have a Bible. It has addressed these issues.” 

So, what does Jesus say about the Old Testament? If you look at Matthew 5:17 in the very first few verses of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus answers the ‘why’ question a little bit differently than those five traditional answers I gave. Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I’ve come to abolish the law of the prophets. I’ve not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (ESV). For those of us who want to break from following God’s standards, we think, “Wow, that’s good. Jesus surely fulfilled them.” Then in verse 18, he says “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away…” That just put a different time frame on things. As I like to say, you may have had a bad day today. It may look like the end of the world, but the best I can tell, it isn’t yet.

Here we are, “…not an iota, not a dot will pass” (Matthew 5:18). My law to all is accomplished. “Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19). Then in verse 20—this verse is astounding because we really make fun of the Pharisees, sometimes talking about how scrupulous they were. We kind of worry about them, joke about them. “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Every time I read that, it sinks in deeper and deeper into my soul. That because of my commitment to Christ and because of following his standards, because we love him, our testimony in all the appropriate ways our lifestyle should exceed that of the scribes the Pharisees. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 about the issue of the Old Testament. The passage you know well. Encouraging Timothy to stay in the Word and to live the Word, Paul writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” So, all Scripture, all holy writings are “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” So, Jesus says that he hasn’t come to abolish the Law, but fulfill it. And Paul says that all this Scripture is profitable to you, to guide and shape and lead your life. When I read that I understand God gave the Scripture to me because he loves me and he wants to shape my life; he wants to guide me and help me. When I read this, my attitude switches from something like, “How much of this Bible do I have to live anyway?” to, “How might I do anything God would ask me to do?” Because whatever he has given me is for my own good in all the best senses of that word. It is to shape and train and reprove and correct and help me. That’s why God has given all Scripture, twice breathed it out. It’s part of maturing, isn’t it? It’s part of maturing to believe that Scripture, an authoritative Word, would come for my good. 

Now, when we’re little—either of stature, hopefully only of stature and of age—we really think that rules and standards are meant to harm us, to make us go to bed when we don’t want to and they take all the fun out of life. And I suppose as you get a little older, you begin to see somebody might have had your best interests in mind. My brother, who will have a birthday this week, who’s a year older than I—he was a rebel. He was a lawbreaker who liked to push the limits. From where we grew up, there weren’t too many laws to break. I don’t know what you thought you could get away with, but, you know, one of the things he loved was to drive and he wanted a car before he was old enough to have one. My dad didn’t permit that, but as soon as my brother was old enough, he bought his own car, and it was the fastest thing he could find. Really, he claimed it hurt it to drive it below 65 or 70; it wasn’t good for it. Some of you probably drove a car just like it. I can only say at some point along the way, on a fairly narrow two lane road as I was riding with him in excess of 110 miles an hour, it dawned on me that the speed limit was not just derived by a bunch of old coots in Jeff City at the state capitol trying to see to it the teenagers did not have a good time. I had fear in my heart and truly I thought my dad had gone soft in his standards to let me ride in the same car with this mad man. The truth is, I grew up a little bit. I understood that these standards had to do, frankly, with the community’s concern for me. I don’t know if we’re going to convince all the faculty and staff at Wheaton College that’s what some of our rules are for. I see Ward over there. I don’t know what Ward’s favorite rule is. Mine is no rappelling off Blanchard Hall. Now, Ward, you want to explain to people why we have that rule? Sure. Of course. My other favorite friend noted this one for me: no wheeled vehicles on raised or paved surfaces. Some kid broke his arm on a skateboard. But after a while, because you think it’s dangerous to be rappelling off of Blanchard Hall, as attractive as that sounds to all of us tonight, we realize the rule came because of interest in the person. 

Why did God give us the Scripture to reprove, to correct, to train till the day we die? All Scripture. Paul says writing in 1 Corinthians 10 in a very negative example from the book of Numbers—these things were written for our examples so that we might not sin. Some of the accounts in the Bible are rather disturbing, aren’t they? There are negative examples that we might learn not to sin. Or in 1 Corinthians 11 there are positive examples by faith. By faith, they achieve great things. There are negative examples in the Bible. But my goodness, there are extraordinary individual situations that teach us how to live. Some of us have gotten some odd ideas about what the Old Testament teaches about salvation. But when Paul wanted to explain to people why it is—that it was not true at that point in time when he was writing Romans 4—that you didn’t work your way into salvation, but rather you believed and had faith in God and your works reflected that trust in God. He quoted Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to his righteousness.” Paul’s point was salvation cannot now be by works because it has never been by works. So, he taught them the Scriptures. We read in Exodus 19 that the purpose for God’s people is that they would be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation ministering to the world. In 1 Peter 2, the Apostle tells his group that’s the same purpose you are to be, a kingdom of priests ministering to the world. The purpose hasn’t changed. 

I would say the reason we study the Old Testament is to take full advantage of all Christ has given us to be his disciples for his glory in this world. And to help us, to help us live the way we must for him. 

II. How?

How do you interpret the Old Testament? Just in a general pattern? There are those who say, you listen to the Old Testament if what it says has been repeated in the New. That’ll get you a long way, because about the time you think that maybe the Old Testament’s a little bit tough, the New Testament will repeat the same commandment. Or Jesus will just offend you totally because he says, “You’ve heard it said, but let me make it harder,” and leave some of us just crying to have Moses back. He was a nice guy, easy to get along with, so that would get us far enough.

But I think rather the way the New Testament writers read the Old Testament is that unless they make a specific statement to the contrary—and there are times that they do about food laws, about sacrifices being replaced by the work of Christ, etc. and there’s a list of those. But unless the New Testament makes a specific statement to the contrary, we need to look forward to study and understand the Old Testament so that we would know how to live for Christ. Rather than making the Old Testament prove itself to us, we ought to look at it as God’s blessing in our lives like we do the New Testament, hopefully, and allow God to shape us through it. 

Now, I’m assuming if you’re Bible believing people, those will kind of be your options: Old Testament being repeated in the New and Old Testament being valid unless we have a different word. Now there are those who would say there’s another option, and that is to use some other philosophy or current belief system to judge whether we think the Old or the New Testament is accurate. Assuming we’re Bible believing people, the question is that they have questions answered by the standard which is, “let us take the word of God” and believe about the Old Testament and the New based on Psalm 19:7-11, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, [inaudible] rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” Or Psalm 119: How can we keep our way pure? How can we live for the Lord? By taking his Word, his Law, seriously and obeying it. I guess I believe that any truth in the Scripture is helpful to us. Good God has given it to us to help us. I believe that every great theological theme is practical because it’s given to us by God. 

Next week I want to talk about God’s creation, God being the Creator. When we study creation, we’re going to find purpose for our own life. We’re going to find comfort for our own lives. We’re going to find worship of the Lord. We’re going to find several practical things. But one of the ways you put the pieces of the Bible together is to say, “I will study it with my whole heart, knowing that a good God has given it to me, all of it, so that I might know and love him.” Then come to the idea that God is the Creator and find the truth and the practicality of that truth as we try to put some pieces of the Bible together.